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Comment on Rep. Deutch Presents Amendment To Ban Corporate Money From Politics

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Problems with this:

1. The press is exempted. So someone with a lot of money they want to spend promoting a candidate just has to buy a newspaper and push the candidate through the paper.

2. Section 1, which describes the organizations covered, lists for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, and other private entities stabled for business purposes or to promote business interests. It should not be hard to organize entities that don't fall under that to do your political advocacy.

3. Sections 2 and 3 refer to section 1 for their definition of the entities covered, so have the same problem described above.

4. Section 4 does not limit itself to the entities describe earlier. It appears to allow regulation of election expenditures by any entity.

Does that mean they could prohibit me from having a bumper sticker advocating a candidate? Worse, suppose there is some political issue that the incumbents do not wish the public to discuss. All they have to do is put some question related to that on a ballot so that issue is part of an election, then they can regulate all expenditures related to that.

This is simply a horrible proposed amendment. It has too many loopholes, and leaves too much open to interpretation so that it could be used for oppression.

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