Hey 281 Care made the news and I think it says they made their point, as convoluted as it is...
MinnPost The Right to Lie
Numbers Guy, Thoughts?
Others, Thoughts?
This particular referendum is what drew me into Blogging...
G2A CARE 281 Letter
G2A CARE 281 at It Again 1
G2A CARE 281 at It Again 2
G2A Referendum Passes
The right to lie clearly should not be unlimited. There are laws against libel and slander, and those at a minimum should be upheld.
ReplyDeleteBut I think campaigns, generally speaking, should be given a wide berth to make their cases to the public.
It's not often that advocates of a particular position claim so visibly and emphatically that they have a constitutional right to lie to us.
ReplyDelete--Hiram
Hiram or Numbers Guy,
ReplyDeleteWhat were the specific "lies"/untrue statements in question?
I just can't remember or maybe I never heard.
You will have to ask 281 Care. They were the ones who went to great lengths to claim the right to lie.
ReplyDelete--Hiram
But the district also sued them from what I remember... I added some background links above.
ReplyDeleteBut the district wasn't claiming the right to lie.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why 281 Care went to so much trouble to assert the right to deceive. It's one of life's mysteries.
I am sure one of the reasons the issues has been litigated so little is that it's hard to imagine anyone in the business of persuasion so publicly and boldly claiming such a right.
--Hiram
My point was that I assume the District accused them of "lying", and that is why they sought the "right to lie".
ReplyDeleteSo you would think the District would have documented the "lies". I guess I don't remember seeing them.
I am unsure of the definition of "lie" in this case.
My point was that I assume the District accused them of "lying",
ReplyDeleteMy point is that they are claiming the right to lie. Why someone wishes to publicly claim the right to lie is something that needs explaining.
--Hiram
Star Tribune Coverage
ReplyDeleteThis seemed like a good case study from the article.
ReplyDelete"Teresa Collett, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas, said she was the target of a complaint of making a false statement by another Republican, when she was running for Congress in the Fourth District’s Republican primary in 2010.
She said she won her case, won the primary, but lost in the general election to incumbent Betty McCollum, the DFLer.
She called the appeals court action a good decision. “Litigation around campaign speech is not different from other types of litigation, and it can easily be used to harass an opponent,” she said. “The claims were made against my campaign, were unfounded and cost me time and money that we could ill afford.”
Her legal bill was $7,000, she said, “which could have spent on campaign literature.”"
I think the problem "lies" in the question of who decides if a lie or untruth has been told in the context of a political contest? Certainly having a court rule on the fundamental question of the "right" many years after the fact does absolutely nothing for the ability to give the public timely knowledge of an "offense against truth." In almost every case, the campaign with the biggest and loudest lies seems to win, lately, and any laws we have ought to try to restore the "penalty" for lying, rather than seeing it rewarded as we do now. The problem with THAT, though, is in the article itself, where it uses the examples "Bill Clinton's false assertions about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky or Swift Boat Veterans for Truth distorting John Kerry’s Vietnam record."
ReplyDeleteBill Clinton's assertion that "I did not have sex with that woman" is arguably true, so long as oral sex is not defined as sex. And the SBVFT were factually accurate but could have been accused, reasonably, of distorting the overall record by concentrating on those facts alone. So you have two questions: Who decides what is a lie and what is the truth? And what can be done about it?
What I have often told people is that you should never get legal advice from a politician or political advice from a lawyer. As a matter of first amendment law, I think lies are protected. But that's strictly a legal judgment. Politically, it's simply untenable for anyone going before the public to persuade on an issue, to first explain that they are claiming a right to lie. The absurdity impracticality of that is why the issue is under or unlitigated.
ReplyDelete--Hiram
Latest from MinnPost
ReplyDelete"Since I am in the Robbinsdale school district (281), so this discussion is very interesting. We had a school referendum going and 281 Care was against it. So they started to disseminate information that the district considered untrue. The belief being that 281 Care was "intentionally" trying to deceive and confuse voters so that the would reject the referendum.
I communicate occasionally with members of 281 Care and the District, and to this day I have no idea if it was mailicious intent or just different interpretations of reality.
So should citizens be free to say what they believe to be "the real scoop"? Even if the establishment denies it..." G2A
"“Different Interpretations of Reality?"
Gravity too, is then a “different interpretation of reality.”
One day skydivers will exit a plane & fall away into the sun!
Everybody gets their own “truth" - even to the point of defying gravity?" Ernst
"Facts vs Statements
Let's pick something more nebulous and divisive.
Who is lying about climate change, ACA, Fracking, etc? Or
We see "out of context" ads everyday during election season, when do these become lies?
I don't think us commenters lie intentionally, but our interpretation of what reality is is very different." G2A
Please, let us confine ourselves to the world of POLITICAL lies, which is already too large because government has usurped authority over so many aspects of our lives. Many simple issues, such as fracking and global warming, are easily resolved by considering "a preponderance of the evidence," and it is only when politicians choose up sides that the evidence becomes obscured, withheld or tainted.
ReplyDeleteBut the constitutional right of free speech is an INDIVIDUAL right, and therefore we should demand that governments, including school boards, not be lying to us. In this particular case, and in my own experience, the school district is simply incapable of providing all the facts" in an unbiased fashion. It would not serve their purpose. What DOES serve their purpose is to discredit the people who ARE pointing out the facts. The first ought to be illegal, and the second is most certainly immoral, but of course government has no morality, so here we are.
I think people have a right to lie, within certain boundaries. But it's a political problem for someone when they go to great lengths (and incur hefty legal fees) to assert they have the right to lie. That, in itself, becomes a political issue.
ReplyDelete--Hiram
I only wish that political lying were MORE of a political issue, where politicians paid a hefty political price for it.
ReplyDeleteI only wish that political lying were MORE of a political issue, where politicians paid a hefty political price for it
ReplyDeleteWhether someone is lying is more of a diversion than anything else. To determine if someone is lying, you have to know what one is subjectively thinking, and that's very difficult, and usually relevant. It's simply never the case that a policy is better or worse because of what some, usually arbitrarily selected, politician thinks about it. Whether global warming exists for example, is not determined by what Al Gore thinks about it.
--Hiram
Lie: a known untruth told with intent to deceive. Therefore:
ReplyDelete"I didn't know about that" is an excuse.
"I have a source that says it's true" is an excuse. And,
"I didn't intend to mislead anybody" is an excuse.
Most political advertising these days strains credulity to believe any of those three excuses. When one candidate tells me what another will do if elected, for example, I'm pretty sure he is telling me something that he knows is untrue, with an intent to make me believe something that cannot possibly even be known. Politicians should be punished for such egregious negative lying.