In the News
New York Daily News: Donald Trump’s big lie about ‘buying’ politicians
John Lott and Bradley Smith
Trump’s claim to control politicians, however, appears to be nothing more than braggadocio. His one concrete example of puppetry, offered in the GOP debate: “With Hillary Clinton, I said, ‘Be at my wedding,’ and she came to my wedding . . . She had no choice, because I gave.” Leaving aside that this isn’t a pressing matter of government policy, attending a lavish Trump wedding hardly seems like something that you have to pay people to attend…
Trump’s crass and cynical rhetoric aside, there is another way to explain political donations. Maybe donors give to candidates who value the same things they do. We’re no Pollyannas, but the evidence indicates that this is usually the case.
Wilmington News Journal: Delaware law wrongly invades your privacy
Allen Dickerson
Should newspapers need the government’s permission to report candidates’ positions on issues? Should they be forced to disclose their sources just because they mention a candidate? Should anyone?
Not in America, you might say. Unfortunately, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of a Delaware law forcing nonprofit groups that publish nonpartisan voter guides to violate the privacy of their supporters. That law requires nonprofits to file complicated paperwork in the same manner as candidates, political parties, and PACs. Now Delaware Strong Families, a nonprofit represented by the Center for Competitive Politics, is urging the Supreme Court to review its case.
Tax Analysts: Possible White House Candidate Blasts Temporary Tax Incentives
Paul Barton
But law professor Brad Smith of Capital City University and the Center for Competitive Politics said in an interview that Lessig has gone off the deep end. “This is not a serious proposal; this is not a serious person,” Smith said of Lessig’s platform. Laughing, he added, “I would call him clinically insane.” Smith, also a former member of the Federal Election Commission, has been a debate opponent of Lessig’s.
“What if a war starts while he is president?” Smith asked. “Will he just walk away and say, ‘That’s not my issue?'”
While saying money is important in politics, Smith said, Lessig’s focus on that alone oversimplifies the array of factors that influence lawmakers’ decisions. It’s not campaign contributions that make the National Rifle Association so intimidating to members of Congress; it’s the group’s ability to stir voters, the former FEC member said.
CCP
Comments to Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission Regarding Revised Draft Rules
Eric Wang
In addition to being contrary to the statute, by effectively erasing the “primary purpose” standard from the political committee definition, the revised proposal also imposes unconstitutionally burdensome registration and reporting requirements on entities that only incidentally engage in political speech. By blithely rewriting the relevant statute, arrogating to itself extra-statutory powers, and ignoring long-standing First Amendment precedents, the Commission has committed a trifecta of elementary legal errors, and conclusively demonstrated why rulemaking in this area is best left to the Secretary of State. [Citations Omitted]
Wisconsin John Doe
Wall Street Journal: Zombie Prosecutors
Editorial Board
Special Prosecutor Francis Schmitz has filed a motion for reconsideration and stay of decisions and orders with the state court. That motion is sealed but we’ve seen a copy. Mr. Schmitz asks the court for a “stay of the mandates directing the termination of the John Doe proceedings and/or the destruction of evidence obtained by subpoenas and search warrants” pending a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Wisconsin court decided a matter of state law, so an appeal to the U.S. High Court is unlikely to succeed. More troubling is that the Milwaukee Democratic prosecutors office and Mr. Schmitz are pushing to keep indefinitely the information seized in their illegal investigation which included donor names, bank records and personal communications of people who were never charged with a crime.
Lawrence Lessig
National Journal: What Lawrence Lessig Loves About Donald Trump
Clare Foran
But Lessig says that none of the Democratic candidates have shown that they would make campaign-finance-reform their No.1 agenda item. And he believes that Trump has done more than any Democratic presidential candidate to elevate campaign finance reform—in part, Lessig says, because when Trump talks, there is an element of surprise.
“He surprised people … and I think the Democrats when they talk about this issue, they surprise nobody,” Lessig said. “People believe he is credible on this … The press is constantly obsessing about the idea—how can people like Donald Trump when he has these horrendous views about immigrants and women, how can they love him? I think the answer is people are so desperate for someone they believe is actually independent that they’re willing to put up with the [other] views.”
Forbes: Tax Extenders: For Sale To The Highest Bidder?
Jeremy Scott
Lessig argues that politicians basically sell year-to-year extensions of tax policy to donors. He thinks that lawmakers and lobbyists exist in a symbiotic relationship designed to shake down rich individuals and companies. Basically, Lessig is saying that each year Congress pretends it might not renew extenders in order to build support, and he believes support is just a euphemism for cash…
Could Lessig’s dreary view of Washington really be the reason that permanent extensions of the research credit never seem to go anywhere?
Probably not. Lessig’s arguments about the role of money in politics are obviously much broader than his smaller point about extenders, but he should look elsewhere for a better example.
IRS
Investor’s Business Daily: Outlaw The IRS Workers Union: Here Are The Reasons
Editorial Board
Senate Republicans are proposing to ban IRS workers from belonging to a union. Given the recent revelations of misconduct and possible criminality, this should have come much sooner.
Tucked into a congressional bipartisan report on political interference at the IRS is a statement that — quite accurately — says “it is virtually impossible for the IRS to maintain the reality, much less the appearance, of neutrality and fairness to all taxpayers,” when so many IRS employees “are members of the highly partisan and left-leaning National Treasury Employees Union.”
Fox News: IRS targeting scheme is a scandal with no end in sight
Jay Sekulow
And now we know that Lerner’s bias and mismanagement resulted in the IRS granting only one conservative group tax-exempt status in a three-year period.
In fact, one of the organizations I represent in a federal lawsuit against the IRS has been waiting for more than five and a half years for an answer to its application. More than five and a half years. Unreal.
And don’t think Lerner reserved her attacks just for lawmakers and conservative groups. No, she was an equal opportunity offender – going after the news media, too. The problem: She didn’t like the photos they took of her at the congressional hearing, complaining the pictures they used were unflattering.
Candidates and Campaigns
Politico: Hillary Clinton 2016: Campaign wants donors to pay for their own food, parking
Ken Vogel
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which has struggled to keep costs in check, wants donors to pay for their own food and valet parking at fundraising events, according to a request it filed this month with the Federal Election Commission.
The request, released publicly by the FEC on Tuesday afternoon, sketches out a novel accounting plan under which the Clinton campaign would shift some fundraising costs to donors, without counting against their contribution limits.
National Journal: Where Have 2016 Presidential Donors Given Before?
Stephanie Stamm and Scott Bland
Our analysis provides a conservative estimate of overlapping support. We matched names and zip codes from the Federal Election Commission’s donation records across campaigns; typos, name changes, and moving all could have caused shared donors’ records not to match. The analysis also omits donors who gave less than $200, since campaigns aren’t required to itemize and report those donations.
The States
Missoula Independent: Out of the dark
Derek Brouwer
Bopp is not amused by the state’s rules, calling them the “broadest, vaguest” and “most egregious” he has encountered. He’s representing another so-called dark money group (a term Bopp says is racist) known as Montanans for Community Development, which sued the state in U.S. District Court last fall over how it decides which groups must disclose their donors. He amended the suit in June to include aspects of the new law.
Bopp’s client had asked the commissioner’s office if fliers the group wanted to mail would trigger donor disclosure. Motl said the group didn’t provide enough information for him to issue an opinion. MCD sued, arguing its speech was “chilled.”
“It’s impossible to know in this state if your speech is regulated or not in advance,” Bopp says. “It’s like, ‘Don’t cross the centerline,’ but there’s no centerline.”
Arizona Republic: Can commissioners be bought? Here’s a test
Editorial Board
As candidates, Forese and Little had backgrounds that presented them as serious, well-grounded and, yes, conservative advocates for the public’s interests.
What’s more, they had no control — as best we know — over the millions of dollars spent by two independent campaign groups on their behalf.
Neither candidate took any serious step, however, to distance himself from the money. They both allowed the perception of them as the big utility’s friends to permeate the 2014 campaign season, and this is the end result of it.
Simply accepting, by their silence, the support of independent groups likely funded by a company they would regulate put them in the compromised position they now find themselves.
East Oregonian: Independent voters can become a force
Editorial Board
But in the eyes of the state, the Independent joins just the other two — Democratic and Republican — and will now be able to participate in the taxpayer-financed May primary election. There are nearly 110,000 Oregon voters registered Independent, although it is unknown how many of those knew they were actually joining a party when they did so. If you don’t want to be a member of any party, you have to register as unaffiliated, not Independent (note the capital I).
