CCP
CCP v. Harris: Petition for a Writ of Certiorari
Beginning with NAACP v. Alabama and continuing through the facial ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, this Court has consistently recognized that the freedom to associate, and to speak in concert with others, would inevitably be chilled by unjustified governmental intrusion. The point is sufficiently obvious that the federal courts of appeals, with the exception of the Ninth Circuit, have required that forced disclosure of membership and donor information be justified under the heightened standard of“exacting scrutiny.”
The People’s Pledge Gimmick: Bad for Voters
Luke Wachob
“Instead of taking pledges with incomprehensible rules that bore voters, we should welcome more voices about candidates. It’s one reason we have the First Amendment,” said CCP President David Keating. “It’s not surprising that some candidates for office want to restrict speech, but let’s be real – it’s not because of some heroic defense of how to run campaigns – it’s because they don’t want people speaking out about them or their records and potentially costing them votes. More spending in elections means more voices are heard, and leads to better informed voters.”
IRS
The Hill: Senate Finance’s IRS report expected Wednesday
Bernie Becker
Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said he believes the committee would sign off on releasing the bipartisan report, now almost 27 months in the making, during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday.
IRS officials have long said they wanted the Finance panel to release the report, which would be the first bipartisan congressional inquiry to come to a close.
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: Thank You, Super Pacs
Editorial
Donald Trump is taunting those who attended the Koch brothers’ retreat for donors this weekend by suggesting that his competitors are “puppets.” What he really means is that he’d prefer if they raised less money so he can have the advantage. As Mr. Trump likes to say, it’s good to be rich. But why shouldn’t a middle-class politician like Mr. Walker have a chance to raise enough money to compete with a billionaire?
Another myth is that these big donors so dominate the political debate that they drown out the voice of unrich Americans. But the candidates still have to persuade voters, and there is no shortage of media voices. Mr. Bush’s super Pac haul hasn’t spared him from being pounded by the anti-immigrant right. Super Pacs make it more likely that more candidates will be able to last beyond the three early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and into the more populous states. This also broadens political competition
National Journal: The Candidates Who Owe It [Almost] All to a Few Massive Donors
S.V. Date
The FEC, bipartisan by design, has been deadlocked on further regulating super PACs since a pair of federal court rulings in 2010 permitted their creation. Democratic members have supported more rules and Republicans have opposed them.
Dan Backer, a campaign finance lawyer who runs the consulting firm DB Capitol Strategies, says all that extra money is merely increasing the amount of information available to voters—but that it is ultimately voters in the privacy of the voting booths who are making decisions. He said that if there is no “quid pro quo” corruption, where there is a direct correlation between money and the actions of an elected official, then government has no business restricting political contributions.
The Kochs
Wall Street Journal: Donors Who Fund Koch Brothers’ Causes Say They’re Tired of Being ‘Demonized’
Patrick O’Connor
The focus of this weekend’s event was the need to remedy the country’s economic disparities, a stark departure from popular perceptions of the group. Charles Koch warned of specter of a two-tiered society in which government regulations and other laws favor the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. Policy discussions centered on the need to overhaul the criminal justice system to be more forgiving for nonviolent offenders. He even likened the group’s efforts in support of individual liberty to the Civil-rights movement.
Washington Post: Charles Koch’s focus on ‘injustices’ is fueled by an unlikely partnership
Matea Gold
Last month, billionaire industrialist and conservative donor Charles Koch was meeting in his Wichita office with Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund, when the conversation turned to the recent church massacre in Charleston, S.C.
“The reaction of the people in that community, I mean, blew me away,” Koch recounted Monday in a rare interview with The Washington Post. “I said, ‘These people are a lot better than I am.’ Forgive this guy? I mean, it’s so monstrous what he did. It just shook me.”
Wisconsin John Doe
Wisconsin Watchdog: Attorney: audio confirms traumatic John Doe raid of Cindy Archer’s home
M.D. Kittle
The audio indicates Weiss did read the search warrant and the accompanying John Doe secrecy order to Archer and that he did inform her of her rights. But Rivkin said the tape confirms Archer’s account of the “traumatic morning in every relevant aspect.”
“As discussion on the recording confirms, Archer was roused from her sleep before dawn; the team of officers demanded that she open the door before she was dressed; the officers came in with guns drawn, threatening Archer’s dogs; Archer was detained for hours and followed at every moment of the raid; Archer’s partner was detained for the same duration despite the absence of authority in the warrant to detain her; and Archer and her partner were threatened with contempt for discussing the events that occurred in their own home with anyone,” the attorney said in his statement.
Donor Disclosure
Bloomberg: Citizens United Fighting To Keep Dark Money As Dark As Possible Loses To NY AG
Peter J. Reilly
In addition to the IRS exempt organizations that solicit money are also regulated by the states where they raise money. There are various filings required, sometimes much more rigorous than what the IRS requires. As part of the package though, they will usually want a copy of the Form 990 that the organization files with the IRS. That’s the way it is in Massachusetts anyway and apparently in New York too. CU had been sending the New York AG its 990 since 1995. They had not been including Schedule B and nobody seemed to mind. The Charities Bureau conducted a survey of its operations in 2012 and noticed that certain organizations were not including Schedule B with annual reports. The AG implemented an across-the-board initiative to identify and notify the organizations that had not been filing Schedule B with their state reports. In April 2013 the CU organizations were notified that their filings were incomplete.
The States
Minneapolis Star Tribune: Minn. Campaign Finance Board gets report about holes in disclosure law
Patrick Coolican
An independent expenditure must be declared if it expressly advocates for the election or defeat of a candidate, but Minnesota law is not clear on what that means. A prior U.S. Supreme Court ruling provided phrasing that demonstrates what is known as express advocacy. These include elect, support, cast your ballot for, Smith for Congress, vote against, defeat and reject.
The board previously has proposed a statutory change at the Legislature that would more broadly define express advocacy and thereby close the loophole and give Minnesotans more information about where political ads are coming from and who is picking up the tab. The Legislature has declined to take up the language.
Board member Daniel Rosen said the board could bypass the Legislature and use its rule-making authority to broaden the definition of express advocacy. He also made the case that more political spending is good for politics, pointing to a “rich history of anonymous speech” back to Revolutionary-era pamphleteers in defense of anonymous political spending.
Acton Institute: As You Sow Chases ‘Dark Money’
Bruce Edward Walker
Readers will note Ms. Timbers and Mr. Thoumi don’t seem terribly interested in anything other than shutting down a political point of view with which they both disagree, never mind the abject foolishness of Thoumi’s assertion that Pinnacle West’s spending on lobbying isn’t in the best interest of the majority of its shareholders, rather than the one-third who lose sleep over Citizens United. Repeat after me: This is about politics. This is not about religious faith.
Arizona Capitol Times: Republican Party Chairman: Obsession with “Dark Money” destroys editorial board’s credibility
Robert Graham
The message was simple: An alternative-energy group, unhappy with the five Republicans on the commission who refuse to extend subsidies for their industry, hired a fancy lawyer to seize a commissioner’s iPhone to see if they could sidestep the subsidy debate by creating drama around text messages…
Yet the Arizona Republic Editorial Board, in an apparently rabid misunderstanding of what is actually happening, wrote, “Discovering Commissioner Stump’s lost text messages is what matters here. Motives do not.”
Really? That’s certainly not the standard they apply to the “dark money” campaign spending they are so adamantly fixated on.
