Event

Cato Institute: #CatoDigital – Free Speech in the Age of Trump

Featuring Flemming Rose, Recipient, The 2016 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty; adjunct scholar, Cato Institute; and author of The Tyranny of Silence; Nick Gillespie, Editor-in-Chief, Reason.com and Reason TV (@nickgillespie); moderated by Kat Murti, Senior Digital Outreach Manager, Cato Institute (@KatMurti)…

On the campaign trail, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump called for “closing down” parts of the Internet as an anti-ISIS measure. Trump further claimed that freedom of the press was detrimental to the fight against terrorism, and demanded that libel laws be expanded to allow individuals to sue media organizations that publish unflattering stories about them. Following the 2016 election results, pundits blamed social media for creating an increasingly polarized voting public; Facebook and Google announced an initiative to go after so-called “fake news sites,” despite controversy over which sites, exactly, should qualify as fake; and more and more platforms have adopted increasingly restrictive policies regarding acceptable speech…

On Tuesday, December 6, join the Cato Institute for a timely discussion of threats to freedom of expression, followed by a book signing and wine and cheese reception.  

Free Speech

Bloomberg: A response to the pleas to shut up Trump

By Stephen L. Carter

First, there were renewed cries for Donald Trump to be banned from Twitter…

Still, the present moment feels as if we have passed through the looking glass, into a world where everything is just the opposite of what it ought to be. How else to explain the sudden affection on the left for corporate power as a check on government?…

A conservative watchdog group is posting online the names of professors whom it believes promote a radical agenda in the classroom. The left is furious, accusing the group of trying to shame them into silence…

I look forward eagerly to their earnest condemnations of publication of lists of climate change deniers. I anticipate with pleasure and relief their fury when professors whose positions are unpopular on the left are pressed to disclose e-mails and funding sources. Because all of that is McCarthyist too.

Heady days. The post-Trump left has now come out for more corporate power and an end to shaming on campus. Any day now, I expect fear of Trump to move my liberal friends to decide that Citizens United was not such a bad decision after all: perhaps they would like to use some corporate cash to fund efforts to defeat him in 2020.

FEC

Bloomberg BNA: FEC Asks Congress for Authority to Battle Shady PACs

By Kenneth P. Doyle

The Federal Election Commission is asking Congress for new legal authority to battle shady groups, often called scam PACs: political action committees that pretend to support candidates but funnel contributions they collect to PAC organizers and vendors.

A new legislative recommendation adopted unanimously by the FEC commissioners Dec. 1 said it “believes that Congress should give the commission the authority to protect contributors from committees that defraud their contributors.”

The scam PAC proposal was advanced as part of a package of 13 legislative recommendations approved by the FEC at an open meeting of the commissioners.
The FEC’s recommendation regarding scam PACs-titled “Prohibiting Fraudulent PAC Practices”-said that Congress should amend federal campaign finance laws to extend a current prohibition on fraudulent solicitation of campaign money to include “false claims of candidate endorsement.” 

Washington Examiner: FEC Dem: Rich white guys block women, minorities from office 

By Paul Bedard

Despite the election of America’s first black president and its first female presidential nominee, a top Democrat on the Federal Election Commission charged that rich white male campaign donors are blocking women and minorities from public office.

In a speech to foreign election observers, Ann Ravel also said that campaign finance loopholes threaten to undermine the country.

Her pre-election address to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems was just posted by the organization. In it she said Americans are turned off to voting because of the high amounts spent especially on Super PACs…   

“I’m not so troubled by the money, per se. What I think is troubling about it is that the vast majority of campaign funds comes a tiny highly unrepresentative segment of people who then wield disproportionate power. And they certainly, together with corporate interests, have much greater influence on public policy,” she said.

Ravel later blamed those donors for blocking the paths of minorities and women to office.  

Citizens United

The Hill: Democrats complained about Citizens United until the cash rolled in

By David E. Weisberg

So, notwithstanding the supposedly nefarious effects of Citizens United, the Democratic candidate was able to raise very close to twice what the Republican candidate raised. If one adds in the amounts given to the Super-PACs, the Democrats actually raised more than twice the amount raised by the Republicans.

Despite having a very substantial advantage in campaign funding, the Democratic candidate, as we all know, lost to the Republican candidate. If Citizens United opened “the floodgates,” the end result seems to have been to drown the very candidate who was supposed to float to victory on a sea of cash; this may prove that there is a limit to what spending can accomplish in a national election.

And if Obama was worried that the Citizens United decision meant that American elections would be decided by “America’s most powerful interests” rather than “the American people,” it looks very much as if he was worried over nothing.   

The Courts

New York Post: The disclosure that could end Eric Schneiderman’s career

By Editorial Board

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s witch hunt against supposed “climate-science deniers” became an even more embarrassing debacle late last month – and just might wind up ending his career.

A state judge ruled in favor of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank whose Freedom of Information request the AG had denied. That gave Schneiderman 30 days to cough up documents concerning his agreements with other states’ AGs, and with a group of green activists, about their joint persecution of ExxonMobile and other entities for supposed “climate fraud.”

CEI had been targeted by one of Schneiderman’s co-conspirators, the Virgin Islands AG, with legal demands that plainly aimed at suppressing free speech and scientific inquiry that the nonprofit sponsors.

The think tank’s lawyers believe the documents could show improper conduct by the AGs. If they do, Schneiderman faces serious trouble.

The Media

Richmond Times-Dispatch: The news, unfiltered

By A. Barton Hinkle

President-elect Poor Impulse Control provoked a fresh round of self-righteousness today when he suggested that people who mistakenly think they are being all daring and radical by burning an American flag should go to jail or lose their citizenship…

“The Supreme Court has said flag-burning is protected by the First Amendment,” noted Famous Correspondent for Nothing but Poverty and Race, who in countless other NPR segments has railed against the court for holding, in Citizens United, that independent campaign ads also are protected political speech.

In the 1989 case Texas v. Johnson, the Supreme Court struck down laws prohibiting flag desecration. The majority on the court included conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, whom President-Elect Off His Meds has held up as exactly the sort of jurist he would appoint to the court.

Off His Meds supporters, however, rallied to his defense. “Flag-burning is hate speech,” said Irony-Impaired Guy in Flannel Shirt Who Makes Fun of Political Correctness. 

Trump Administration

The Intercept: Donald Trump’s White House Counsel Is Proud “Architect” of America’s Corrupt Big Money Politics

By Jon Schwarz

“I’ve always thought of McGahn’s appointment as an FEC commissioner as analogous to appointing an anarchist to be chief of police,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president at Common Cause. “He’s largely responsible for destroying the FEC as a functioning law enforcement agency, and seemingly takes great pride in this fact. McGahn has demonstrated a much stronger interest in expanding the money-in-politics swamp than draining it.”

Ellen Weintraub, a current FEC commissioner, overlapped with McGahn’s entire tenure. McGahn and his two fellow GOP appointees, she recalled, possessed a “very strong ideological opposition to campaign finance laws in general.”…

Now, as Trump’s White House lawyer, McGahn will provide crucial advice on the nomination of judges, including to the Supreme Court. While Trump has criticized Citizens United, and called the Super PACs that sprang up in its wake “horrible” and a “total phony deal,” McGahn is a vociferous defender of the ruling.  

Politico: GOP wagers Americans don’t care about Trump’s conflicts

By Darren Samuelsohn

Republicans see the same ethically challenged complications lurking in Donald Trump’s business portfolio that Democrats are squawking about. They just think Americans don’t care about these entanglements anymore.

Indeed, the GOP is so easily dismissing Democratic threats of investigations and ethicists’ calls for divestment out of a belief that the political landscape has shifted. Voters rewarded Trump in part on the idea that success in business will equal success in government, and Republicans are therefore unwilling to encourage the president-elect to put distance between the Oval Office and Trump Tower, or between himself and the children who serve him as trusted advisers…

Trump and his army of lawyers are sorting through possible financial arrangements that might help him untangle national interests from his business interests globally, and he has scheduled a mid-December news conference with his children in New York to unveil the plan. With so many moving parts, and the prospect of a large tax bill depending on how he handles a range of real estate investments, lawyers from both parties admit there are no obvious and simple answers. 

The States

Kansas City NPR: Politicians fatten coffers before Missouri’s new campaign-donation limits kick in

By Jo Mannies

On Dec. 8, just a week from now, Missouri’s new campaign donation limits approved on Nov. 8 are slated to go into effect.

And although opponents pledge to swiftly go to court to block them, some politicians – notably Gov.-elect Eric Greitens – appear to be taking advantage of the guaranteed one-month window to stock up on cash…

Since Nov. 9, the day after the election, Missouri candidates and campaign committees have collected more than $2 million in donations over $5,000 apiece. Some of the recipients will, like Greitens, be covered by the new limits…

Jefferson City lawyer Chuck Hatfield represents some critics, such as Legends Bank and some rural utility cooperatives, who plan to return to court before Dec. 8 to try to change some of Amendment 2’s restrictions.

Hatfield emphasized, “We are not challenging the limits.”

Rather, Hatfield and his clients long have maintained that parts of Amendment 2 are unconstitutional because, among other things, it bars certain banks and utilities — notably, rural cooperatives — from donating to candidates.