In the News
American Thinker: Kamala Harris, Dem Rising Star, Goes for the Jugular on Conservative Nonprofits
Mark J. Fitzgibbons
As or even more importantly, what Harris is doing flies in the face of the 1958 landmark Supreme Court decision in NAACP v. Alabama. That case held that membership lists are protected by the First Amendment from demands of states and their attorneys general.
The petition for the court to hear this case filed by the Center for Competitive Politics will be supported by an amicus brief filed by the Free Speech Coalition of Virginia, along with dozens of policy advocacy groups, and even charities such as animal sanctuaries. 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations may still add their name to the amicus brief in what may be a landmark case protecting privacy and rights of private association.
CCP
The False Heroics of False Statement Laws
Brian Walsh
Ultimately, such false statement laws, which are on the books in a number of states, force bureaucrats to make a decision on the “truthiness” of a statement during the middle of a campaign. Given the deep shades of gray that tinge all hot button political issues based on one’s personal beliefs and worldview, determining the truth or falsity of a statement in the heat of a campaign is a job best left to the voters and not an unelected panel of government bureaucrats.
Free speech advocates are fond of saying that the solution to speech you don’t like is more speech. In the Massachusetts decision, Justice Robert Cordy reiterated that age-old wisdom in his own words: “that solution is counterspeech.” All political speech – and “counterspeech” – is and should be vigilantly protected from the threat of government intrusion and punishment. After all, the core principle of free speech is that individuals are allowed to say things that we do not like or agree with. And in politics, the difference between a lie and mere controversial rhetoric is often hard to parse.
Independent Groups
Washington Post: A dark $1 million
Editorial Board
Priorities USA Action got the donation June 29 from another super PAC, called Fair Share Action, the AP reported. And that super PAC received the money from two nonprofit “social welfare” groups, Fair Share Inc. and Environment America Inc. These organizations, regulated by the Internal Revenue Service, do not have to publicly disclose their donors. According to the AP, Fair Share advocates for job creation, and Environment America works on issues such as climate change. The groups told the AP that their funds come from many small donors, but the exact origin of the $1 million remains in the shadows. A spokesman for Priorities USA Action insisted the group is “playing by the rules” and is unwilling to “unilaterally disarm” in the presidential fundraising arms race.
This opaque shuffling of cash from one group to another is exactly what Ms. Clinton meant by “unaccounted money.” She should tell all groups supporting her — including the supposedly “independent” super PAC — that they must identify the original sources of contributions, or else give the money back.
Texas Tribune: Democracy, Millionaires and Billionaires
Ross Ramsey
It’s funny what happens when you say the billionaires are keeping candidates alive long enough to allow more Americans a chance to choose their presidential nominees.
Some people get cranky. They say it’s not democracy. They use the word “oligarchy,” which is in a way a turn-up-your-nose elitist thing to do. And they have a point: The people with money are getting more than their fair share of influence over the election process.
A billionaire’s favorite candidate gets into the finals, whether that’s the favorite candidate of voters or not. That ain’t right, and it’s not very democratic.
On the other hand, any candidate who can attract a good billionaire — or a bad one — can stay in the race for president even if voters are not responding in the relatively dinky states that start this process — places like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
Lawrence Lessig
Slate: The Strangest Campaign Pledge
Eric Posner
But in the economy of political influence that Lessig describes in his book, none of these things can make much difference. Most Americans are terribly uninformed about the political process and rely on very crude proxies (such as endorsements or partisan identification) to determine how to vote. Many people fail to vote not because of barriers to voting but because they’d rather spend their time doing something else. Candidates who suited voters a bit better because of ranked-choice voting (assuming it works as advertised) and who received more small donations from low-income people would still need to rely on well-informed lobbyists with whom they had relationships and would still benefit from massive infusions of cash from big business. Lessig’s cure just doesn’t follow from his diagnosis.
Bloomberg: Larry Lessig’s Dream Candidate
The Editors
There is only one candidate who is thus far eschewing the money race altogether, running an (intentionally) frugal campaign and attacking Washington’s culture of corruption, and the politicians — in both parties — who dance for dollars.
Usually such candidates struggle to get their message out. It has long been the dream of campaign finance reformers to have an unbought, unbossed, unvarnished crusader who would capture the public’s attention and galvanize public frustration with the system.
Finally, they’ve got their man: Donald Trump.
Wisconsin John Doe
Wisconsin Watchdog: John Doe reform bill starts to move again
M.D. Kittle
A bill that would reform Wisconsin’s controversial John Doe law cleared a major hurdle this week.
State Rep. Jim Ott, R-Mequon, chairman of the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, has placed Assembly Bill 68 on the agenda for the committee’s executive committee. The reform proposal could soon be added to the Legislature’s fall floor session for debate.
“I am pleased Chairman Ott has made passing our important John Doe reforms out of his committee a priority before the legislature reconvenes this fall,” state Rep. David Craig, R-Big Bend, the bill’s author, said in a statement.
Supreme Court
SCOTUS Blog: Virginia ex-governor’s corruption case on way to Court
Lyle Denniston
In the new filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, McDonnell’s legal team said it would ask the Court to review two questions of major importance in cases bringing public corruption charges: what kind of official action must follow a request to an officeholder for a favor, and whether the trial judge in this case failed to ask potential jurors if they had made up their minds about guilt based on the massive publicity that surrounded the case before the trial.
The former governor, once considered a rising prospect for national leadership among Republicans, was convicted last September, and the Fourth Circuit upheld his conviction in July. His wife, Maureen McDonnell, was also convicted of corruption charges; she was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
IRS
Shelby Star: Free speech has government foe
Editorial Board
It is especially important that politicians refrain from training the Internal Revenue Service against citizens and groups that espouse views challenging those of government officials. Unfortunately, this basic understanding of the importance of protecting speech seems to have been lost on some in Washington in recent years.
The ostensibly nonpartisan IRS, we learned years ago, subjected especially conservative nonprofits to scrutiny and harassment in 2010 when they applied for tax-exempt status. When the news of this first came out, President Barack Obama denounced it, properly noting: “It should not matter what political stripe you’re from. The fact of the matter is, the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity.” But his Justice Department assigned one of Obama’s campaign contributors to investigate the matter, and nothing came of it. Complicating matters was the IRS’s destruction of the emails of Lois Lerner, the official responsible.
All this seemed a frightening assault on the First Amendment, but recent developments suggest a wider campaign against speech.
Free Speech
Wall Street Journal: A Free-Speech Clinic for the FDA
Editorial Board
The Food and Drug Administration thinks its powers are so total that it can even prohibit drug companies from making true claims about their products. Not so fast. A federal judge in an important and closely watched test case in New York has called this political control a violation of the First Amendment.
At issue are off-label prescriptions. Once the FDA approves new drugs, they are often repurposed by physicians in all fields for diseases, in doses or for patient populations that the agency has not reviewed. A therapy for breast cancer, say, might also prove effective against tumors elsewhere in the body, or a medicine for adults might be used in pediatric care. About one of five U.S. prescriptions are for non-FDA-sanctioned uses.
Candidates and Campaigns
Daily Caller: Trump: ‘I Love The Idea Of Campaign Finance Reform’
Chuck Ross
As he’s done in the past, Trump slammed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as a “puppet” and accused him of being beholden to donors his campaign and super-PAC donors. But the real estate billionaire went further by indicating he would support additional legislation to regulate campaign finance.
“One of the things you should do is everybody should be known. If somebody gives a million or two million or five million it should be known,” Trump said, while decrying rules prohibiting PACs from coordinating with campaigns as “nonsense.”
The States
Boston Herald: Level playing field for union, biz political donations
Jim Manley
Lawyers were in a Boston courtroom last week to ask a simple question: Should labor unions have special privileges to contribute thousands of dollars to politicians, while businesses on the other side of the bargaining table can contribute nothing?
Two small Massachusetts businesses — 1A Auto Inc., a family-owned auto parts retailer in Pepperell, and 126 Self Storage Inc., a small self-storage facility in Ashland — are asking a judge to stop enforcement of a state law that bans business contributions, but allows unions to donate up to $15,000 every year. All these businesses seek is equal treatment.
Sacramento Bee: Good luck trying to figure out California’s campaign finance data
Joyce Terhaar
It is the “most knotted ball of string you ever imagined.”
That’s how Richard Hertz – pollster, professor and former Fair Political Practices Commission staffer – describes California’s campaign finance database, called Cal-Access.
The secretary of state’s database, intended to allow the public to track campaign money, is virtually useless unless you’re particularly skilled at working with databases and have quite a bit of extra time. Launched in the late 1990s and since swaddled in some sort of bureaucratic tech-averse cloak, the site is described by some as the worst government site in the country.
