{"id":1974,"date":"2010-02-03T23:43:20","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T07:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/?p=1974"},"modified":"2010-02-03T23:52:59","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T07:52:59","slug":"attention-conservation-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2010\/02\/03\/attention-conservation-notice\/","title":{"rendered":"Attention conservation notice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know I&#8217;m kind of harping on this, but I remain really upset and angry about the Citizens United decision, and it would appear I am not alone.  Public Citizen and three other organizations have launched <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freespeechforpeople.org\/\">Free Speech for People<\/a>, a campaign to fix the problem, constitutionally or otherwise.  Even if you don&#8217;t feel like signing their petition or throwing some money at them, they&#8217;ve got <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freespeechforpeople.org\/blog\/\">a blog<\/a> that I hope will be a good clearinghouse for news on the fight.<\/p>\n<p>Uncle John has made the case that requiring full disclosure of corporate campaign spending would be a good compromise solution&#8211;that transparency would allow voters to simply turn away from candidates if they didn&#8217;t like where their money was coming from.  I respect that opinion, but I really couldn&#8217;t disagree more.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=122958233\">We already have disclosure requirements<\/a> that the decision didn&#8217;t affect, and they haven&#8217;t yet solved anything.  Disclosure didn&#8217;t keep Max Baucus from getting the tiller on health care reform after taking four million dollars from the health care industry.  It didn&#8217;t keep Mitch McConnell from taking three hundred thousand from coal and then, coincidentally, fighting to keep mine owners from having to measure mercury discharge.  It&#8217;s already a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/1209\/30770.html\">shock<\/a> when an entrenched politician manages to say a few stern words about a regressive, destructive industrial backer; actual voting that way is unheard of.  Doesn&#8217;t that indicate our ingrained acceptance that our representatives&#8217; ballots are already purchased?<\/p>\n<p>About half the people who voted against Obama didn&#8217;t believe he was born in the United States.  A quarter of those, in turn, believed that he was born in Hawaii, but that Hawaii <a href=\"http:\/\/publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/deeper-look-at-birthers.html\">was not a state.<\/a>  What does that mean?  That people don&#8217;t vote on passive facts; they vote on what they <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/research\/200907170039\">hear and see<\/a>.  Money isn&#8217;t speech, it&#8217;s volume, and when you turn the volume up too high, it distorts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know I&#8217;m kind of harping on this, but I remain really upset and angry about the Citizens United decision, and it would appear I am not alone. Public Citizen and three other organizations have launched Free Speech for People, a campaign to fix the problem, constitutionally or otherwise. Even if you don&#8217;t feel like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,63,39,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angst","category-injustice","category-john-dixon","category-obsessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1981,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions\/1981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}