Discussion for article #228019
I thought money was speech? Cocaine is just another mechanism to conduct a trade so it should be speech too.
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I agree. And I think cocaine is probably less harmful to political discourse in the long run.
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The school board there must have some awesome power and influence to warrant distributing bags of coke.
Today, we buy votes with cocaine. Back in the 1750s, it was booze:
"Swilling the Planters With Bumbo: How George Washington Won Votes Before Campaign Ads
In colonial times, it was considered ungentlemanly, corrupt, and downright sleazy to openly solicit votes through campaign speeches and advertisements. Instead, upstanding politicians engaged in an old and cherished tradition called “swilling the planters with bumbo” – otherwise known as “getting voters drunk on Election Day.” (Bumbo was a type of rum.)
In Washington’s day, elections were largely an excuse to party.
Voting presented a rare opportunity for people to gather from miles around, catch up with their neighbors, and imbibe liberally. Crafty politicians capitalized on the festive climate to rack up votes. In fact, it was difficult for anyone to win an election without wining and dining his constituents. Though it was technically illegal to explicitly purchase gifts for voters, it was perfectly appropriate for a politician to buy a round for two hundred of his closest friends on Election Day.
But when 23-year-old George Washington made a bid for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1755, he made little effort to court the drunk vote. In fact, he believed that there were too many taverns in town. Washington even wrote the governor a letter complaining that local bars were a “nuisance” to his soldiers because they were “incessantly drunk and unfit for service.”
Washington’s beef with saloons, combined with his refusal to treat his fellow townsmen on Election Day, angered a lot of voters. Washington lost in a landslide – winning only 40 votes to his opponent’s 271.
Drink Up
Washington learned his lesson. When he ran again in 1758, he rolled out the booze: 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider royal — nearly enough for a half-gallon per voter.
But as Washington awaited the results of the election, he was plagued by guilt and anxiety. It wasn’t that he regretted openly bribing voters with liberal libations. To the contrary, he worried that people hadn’t gotten enough to drink. Washington feared that his campaign manager, James Wood, had “spent with too sparing a hand.” He also hoped that political opponents hadn’t felt left out, saying he hoped that “all were treated alike.”
But in the end, declaring independence from sobriety proved to be sufficient. Washington captured 331 votes, crushing his three rivals."
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I don’t know. When I’m coked up, I get kind of speechless.
I’m sure tighter voter ID and reduced hours would fix this.
He should have bribed them with Pepsi 
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The right school board can make schools teach Jesus had a pet dinosaur just 4000 years after his dad intelligently designed the universe.
Drug cartels are people too, my friend…
How times have changed. Remember when oil was the coin of the realm down there? Doesn’t matter; where he’s going, the traditional currency is cigarettes.
As long as we’re riffing on the speech-equals-money comparison, here’s another way this case succinctly shows that it’s a formula for corruption. People buy individual votes in some Texas school board elections because turnout is poor and a few votes and swing some elections. School boards have far more money at their disposal than, say, the city council. So, once you buy your way onto the board, you get to award contracts to spend that money - and, in some instances, contractors buy your vote.
When the USSC made the formulation it did in Citizens United, it ensured that only those with vast resources could sway the numbers of votes needed to control what happens on national issues of interest to them. It’s the same cocaine, only by the tanker instead of the dime bag.