IRS
Forbes: Bristol Palin At Heart Of IRS Scandal – Who Knew?
Peter J. Reilly
I think the Republicans have busted her on this one. That email really is evidence of reflexive anti-conservatism. Certain liberals have a Pavlovian response to the Palin clan. The only thing that gets them to jump up and bark better is mention of the Koch brothers, but there does not seem to be anything funny about them. Conservatives seem to have more triggers – Jesse Jackson, Hillary Clinton, Benghazi, but the same principle is at work.
…The other thing that the report mentions is that during the whole period of the scandal no audits of exempts were initiated over the political spending issue. So the established dark money organizations were let off scot-free. All the grief went to the Tea Party insurgents who were least able to cope with it.
MSNBC: GOP candidate vows to use IRS as political weapon
Steve Benen
But there’s a small problem with idea: it’s brazenly illegal.
Remember, Richard Nixon, among other things, tried to use the IRS as a political weapon to target his political foes – and had he not resigned in disgrace, Nixon would have been impeached for having done so. More recently, Republicans and much of the Beltway media accused President Obama of using the IRS to punish far-right Tea Party groups. The allegations proved baseless, but for a short while, Republicans saw this as a devastating scandal involving an abusive, out-of-control White House using the IRS as a political weapon.
New Jersey Star-Ledger: Hamstrung IRS allows big money donors to stay hidden
Editorial Board
If you ever wonder just how self-defeating the political process can be, consider this: The dark money spent by shadowy tax-exempt groups will continue to pour down like silver over political campaigns, because the agency in charge of policing those private donations has decided that it is no longer worth enforcing the rules.
This is not entirely the fault of the Internal Revenue Service, where morale has cratered since Congress marked it as its favorite pin cushion. It has had the IRS in its crosshairs for a litany of sins under a previous regime, which include 225 conferences held between 2010 and 2012 that cost the taxpayers $49 million, and the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exemptions.
Independent Groups
Yahoo News: Fiorina bet on talent over TV ads, and it paid off
Jon Ward
That talent, Isgur Flores said, is what bolstered her confidence this summer that they did not need to blow cash, or have the super-PAC do so, to buy their way into the spotlight.
“For those of us who know her and have watched her for months, it’s not surprising. What we’ve said all along is that she has low name ID and we have to break through that barrier,” Isgur Flores said. “The barrier has never been whether she can stand out in a crowd.”
Campaign Finance
Sacramento Bee: The campaign money mess
Jessica A Levinson
But what happened next is a disaster. As so often happens as Congress passes a piece of landmark legislation, that legislation was challenged in court. The Supreme Court threw out half of the FECA, finding that many expenditure limits violate the First Amendment. Essentially Congress came to the Supreme Court with a nicely tailored suit and the court said, “Great jacket, but we hate the pants.”
During the next few decades, the court has revisited and thrown out other parts of the act, including sections that limited the amounts that corporations and unions can spend in candidate elections, and restricted the overall amount that individuals can give to candidates and political parties. That aggregate cap had been $117,000. Now, it’s all but limitless. So the Supreme Court not only threw out the suit pants, it ripped off the jacket sleeves and removed the collar.
Candidates and Campaigns
Buzzfeed: Breitbart Staffers Believe Trump Has Given Money To Site For Favorable Coverage
McKay Coppins
According to four sources with knowledge of the situation, editors and writers at the outlet have privately complained since at least last year that the company’s top management was allowing Trump to turn Breitbart into his own fan website — using it to hype his political prospects and attack his enemies. One current editor called the water-carrying “despicable” and “embarrassing,” and said he was told by an executive last year that the company had a financial arrangement with Trump. A second Breitbart staffer said he had heard a similar description of the site’s relationship with the billionaire but didn’t know the details; and a third source at the company said he knew of several instances when managers had overruled editors at Trump’s behest.
Vox: Donald Trump made one shockingly insightful comment during the first GOP debate
Andrew Prokop
Something Trump identifies that doesn’t always get mentioned is the way transactional politics transcend partisanship and ideology. Trump gave to Democrats and he gave to Republicans. He didn’t care what they believed. He cared what they could do for him. He wasn’t supporting them — he was buying them, and that’s completely different.
The States
Courthouse News Service: Louisiana GOP Challenges Federal Election Rules
Sabrina Canfield
In an Aug. 3 complaint, the party, joined by two of its parish executive committees, say that the Federal Election Committee’s Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which restricts federal election activity, is unnecessarily rigid and violates the First Amendment.
Under the act, federal funds must be used for federal elections.
The act requires that every entity wanting to contribute money to a candidate first establish a federal account and report on the account monthly as a federal political committee.
“And local committees wanting to send a single email in a federal-election-activity period merely exhorting registration or voting must first establish a federal fund to pay costs attributable to the email,” (39) the lawsuit says.
That means that local groups cannot so much as suggest local citizens “get out and vote” without first establishing a federal fund, according to the lawsuit.
Columbus Dispatch: Red-light-camera debate focused on money
Lucas Sullivan
When Columbus city officials began discussing expansion of the city’s red-light-camera program in 2008, Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s chief of staff didn’t ask how they could improve safety — he asked how much money the city would make.
Thousands of documents obtained by The Dispatch through a recent records request show that the city’s eventual expansion of the program was almost entirely about the money. Redflex officials asked for a no-bid contract expansion in 2010 and got it.
Michigan Live: Fine ‘kind of steep,’ says Grand Rapids campaign finance treasurer who made error
Matt Vande Bunte
The Michigan Secretary of State assessed the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce Ballot Committee $2,525 in fees and fines for failing to disclose a campaign contribution from Amway Corp. before the November 2014 vote. The state agency also has asked the penniless Protect Your Vote GR campaign committee to pay $7,455 in fees and fines…
“It’s essentially being negotiated,” said Glenn Barkan, a retired political science professor who is campaign treasurer. “If it turns out that there is a fine I guess we’ll have to raise the money, but as of now it’s sort of in limbo.
“There’s no question, as I understand the rules now, that an error was made. I think (the fine) was kind of steep for that kind of relatively small error, and an error that was non-intentional but actually accidental. Frankly, I’m not sure how any non-attorney can understand the complexity of election law”
