In the News
National Review: Yale’s Idiot Children
Kevin Williamson
On Friday, I was honored to be a guest of the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale, where I participated in a panel on freedom of speech with the wonderful writer Harry Stein and Professor Bradley A. Smith, a noted law scholar. The Yale kids did their screaming best to prevent us from having a conversation about free speech — the Yale kids are utterly immune to irony — but the event went much as planned. Coming and going, we were chanted at by idiot children screaming, “Genocide is not a joke!”
If you’re wondering about the genocide thing, so were we. Turns out it’s a fairly typical college story — which is to say, a fairly stupid story — the short version of which is that Yale’s sensitivity babysitter sent out a pre-Halloween e-mail reminding all the smart Ivy League kids not to dress up like Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer; Professor Erika Christakis offered a reply bemoaning that college campuses have become “places of censure and prohibition”; a few students consequently went bonkers because their safe spaces were being invaded; and — here’s where we come in — Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, one of our panelists, remarked that these hysterical ninnies were acting like Professor Christakis had burned down an Indian village.
Which is to say: The idiot children were screaming about Lukianoff because he said they were overreacting to Christakis’s criticism that they tend to scream and overreact.
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: Gov. Scott Walker Discusses the Impact of the Super Pac
Wisconsin governor and former presidential candidate Scott Walker shares his thoughts on outside money and presidential campaigns during a breakfast discussion Tuesday with The Wall Street Journal.
Reuters: One possible weapon to ward off super PACs
Vincent DeVito
Candidates could instead strike preemptively with a court injunction that would halt potentially damaging Super PAC ads. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, any ad using content coordinated between a campaign and a Super PAC is illegal and should be disallowed.
The key issue is that Super PACs that support a candidate must act independently of that candidate’s campaign machinery. In many cases, however, the PACs have been less than pristine in following the rules. Some in the 2016 election cycle may already have stepped over the line.
FEC
Politico: Clinton, Bush lawyers square off in FEC proxy war
Isaac Arnsdorf and Theodoric Meyer
The super PACs’ request for guidance also turned into something of a proxy war for the legal masterminds behind Hillary Clinton’s and Jeb Bush’s campaign. Marc Elias, the lead lawyer for the two super PACs, as well as a lawyer for Clinton’s campaign, in effect asked the FEC to condemn tactics used by Bush this cycle or give Democratic House and Senate candidates permission to do the same. Charlie Spies, who is Elias’ rough Republican counterpart, told POLITICO in an interview that if Bush and his super PAC had crossed a line, then so had Clinton with her family’s foundation…
“Hillary Clinton’s lawyers asked questions they thought were cleverly worded to force the commissioners to comment on activity similar to what some of the super PACs supporting Republican candidates are doing,” Spies told POLITICO. “It would also taint everything that these nonprofit organization do.”
Elias rejected the suggestion that he was working on Clinton’s behalf, pointing to Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a Republican senatorial candidate in Florida who he says followed the same path with a super PAC.
Huffington Post: FEC Deadlocks On Whether Candidates Can Coordinate With Their Own Super PACs
Paul Blumenthal
The request before the commission asked if agents of a candidate could also raise money for super PACs supporting their candidacy, so long as the fundraising was not done in their official capacity as a candidate agent. Further, the FEC was asked if a candidate would be permitted to attend a super PAC fundraising event as a “special guest” with as few as one or two donors.
The commission, after hours of confusing deliberation, voted 4-2 to support an agreement that agents of candidates could raise money for a super PAC supporting them so long as they did so in their role as an individual actor and not as a candidate agent, and that there would be no minimum number of attendees required for a candidate to attend events…
The commission, however, voted on the issue after a recess. Chairwoman Ann Ravel and commissioner Ellen Weintraub voted no, while Commissioners Walter[sic], Matthew Peterson[sic], Lee Goodman and Caroline Hunter voted yes.
The Kochs
USA Today: Charles Koch has no plans to back a candidate in Republican primary
Fredreka Schouten
“I have no plans to support anybody in the primary now,” Koch told USA TODAY during a wide-ranging interview that touched on politics, his management theories and what he views as increasing threats to free speech at universities.
Asked what he wants to hear from Republican contenders vying for his support, Koch said: “It’s not only what they say.”
“If they start saying things we think are beneficial overall and will change the trajectory of the country, then that would be good, but we have to believe also they’ll follow through on it, and by and large, candidates don’t do that.”
Politico: How the Kochs created Joni Ernst
Kenneth P. Vogel
Ernst was then a little-known Iowa state senator and lieutenant colonel in the National Guard who was considering a long-shot campaign for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. Polls showed more than 90 percent of her state’s voters had no opinion of her. At least a half-dozen other Republicans ― some with better funding and connections and stronger establishment support ― also were positioning themselves to run against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Rep. Bruce Braley.
But Ernst was being watched closely by allies of the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who saw in her an advocate for their brand of free-market, libertarian-infused conservatism.
Contractor Disclosure
Huffington Post: Harry Reid Joins Call For Obama To Take Action On Dark Money
Paul Blumenthal
A video released on Wednesday by the liberal group American Family Voices shows 19 Democratic members of Congress reading a letter to the White House penned by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) back in June. Reid’s appearance in the video is his first public statement urging the president to sign the executive order.
Reid’s endorsement of the movement, and the video, are part of a delivery of more than 800,000 petition signatures to the White House by groups supporting a political disclosure executive order that occurred on Tuesday.
Candidates and Campaigns
Observer: ‘The Daily Show’ Is Crowdfunding to Release Jeb Bush From His Campaign
John Bonazzo
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah wants to help. It’s created a Change.org petition to “Demand (the) release of Jeb Bush from (his) cruel presidential campaign.”
“For years, Jeb Bush has been forced to squeeze himself into the unlivable confines of his family’s political lineage,” the petition states. “We’ve watched him grow thin, dull-eyed, and recently, void of all will to live.”
Signers of the petition are showing the world that “America cares about the basic human rights of worn-out political heirs,” the statement continues.
The States
Cleveland Plain Dealer: Ohio Republican Party is baffling feds with its accounting and math
Stephen Koff
Yet rarely a month goes by now when the FEC doesn’t notify the Ohio Republican Party State Central & Executive Committee that it needs to fix its math errors, a cleveland.com review of FEC filings and correspondence shows.
The FEC’s warning is always the same: Failure to adequately respond “could result in an audit or enforcement action.” And so the Ohio party, which told cleveland.com that it is working to fix the problems, responds with a new filing.
But then it makes a new error the next month. And the FEC writes another demand for another explanation…
Bookkeeping for these funds can be complex. Federal laws limit the total amount of money an individual donor may give to a campaign or candidate, yet some donors write excessive checks, necessitating a refund or a reallocation. Proceeds must be split among the entities involved in specific fund-raising events. There are a number of moving parts.
Capitol Weekly: Follow the money: Shining a light on political nonprofits
John Howard
This time, however, the inspiration comes not from the infamous break-in, but from an event closer to home – a tangled trail of some $15 million in so-called “dark money,” the source of which was initially unknown, which flowed via nonprofits into California’s 2012 elections during the final weeks of the general election. Ultimately, the money trail resulted in state investigations and a $1 million fine…
“It would strengthen the law and make sure the ‘dark money’ is disclosed. It would make it clear who is funding the ads,” Winuk said…
“The measure amends rules on the books, whether good or bad,” said one communications specialist who has worked on reform proposals in the past. “And ballot measures are mostly where nonprofits spend their money. But the IRS has campaign finance laws and it (the proposed initiative) creates a compliance hurdle that I suspect some nonprofits just won’t be able to comply with.”
Feng agrees, in part.
“In an effort to close a real loophole, you can end up hurting the nonprofits. We want to be sure we are addressing the problem without inadvertently creating another problem,” she said.
