CCP
Goodbye to a champion of free speech
By Bradley A. Smith
I, and all of us at Center for Competitive Politics, were saddened to learn of the death of Bob Wilson over the holidays. Most obituaries focused on Bob’s substantial charitable contributions to environmental causes and to the Roman Catholic Church (for non-religious education- Bob was an atheist). But Bob was also an ardent champion of free speech, and that’s how I came to know him and will remember him.
Bob was one of the very first contributors to CCP, and remained a substantial donor until his death. Although his contributions to CCP were a very tiny fraction of what he donated to environmental organizations, they reflected his deeply held beliefs in free and open debate, and his powerful commitment to freedom of speech as a valuable end in itself. Routinely in my visits to Bob’s Central Park West apartment, he would scold me for having written something making an instrumental argument in favor of deregulating campaign finance. “That doesn’t matter,” he would tell me. “It’s the freedom of speech that matters, and the First Amendment protects it. That’s all you need to write.”
Independent Groups
Daily Caller: Conservative group announces Obamacare ads against vulnerable Democrats
By Alex Pappas
The grassroots group Americans for Prosperity said the multimillion dollar ad effort will target Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. All three are up for re-election in 2014.
The group said the ads will run in major media markets for the next three weeks.
“President Obama repeatedly promised Americans that they could keep their current health care plans and doctors if they chose, but millions have found out the hard way that this was the Lie of the Year,” AFP President Tim Phillips said in a statement announcing the ad buys.
Politico: Social conservatives make big money plans
By Kenneth P. Vogel
On a recent snowy day in the Washington suburb of Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia, some of the religious right’s wealthiest backers and top operatives gathered at the Ritz-Carlton to plot their entry into the conservative civil war.
Their plan: take a page out of the playbooks of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers by raising millions of dollars, coordinating their political spending and assiduously courting megadonors.
Washington Monthly: The Corporate “Free Speech” Racket: How corporations are using the First Amendment to destroy government regulation
By Haley Sweetland Edwards
This time, NAM, the biggest trade group in the country, was arguing that by forcing companies to “engage in speech they would not otherwise issue,” the government was “in violation of their rights under the First Amendment.”
And that, dear readers, is a pretty ballsy claim. For one, it’s a little like dealing with your gopher problem by firebombing the neighborhood. By claiming that the government cannot, under the Constitution, compel companies to “engage in speech they would not otherwise issue,” NAM is essentially undercutting nearlyall economic regulation. “If that seems alarmist, it’s not,” wrote University of Tulsa law professor Tamara Piety, the author of Brandishing the First Amendment. In the legal context, the current definition of “speech” is famously fuzzy and could, depending on the situation, include very nearly everything a company does, from advertising and performing financial transactions to transferring data and utilizing computer algorithms. So if NAM’s claim were true, it’s very possible that the government couldn’t regulate any of those activities. “If you cannot regulate commercial speech,” Piety wrote, “you cannot regulate commerce, period.”
The other reason it’s such a ballsy claim is simply that until very recently, it would have been laughed out of court. Most jurisprudence from at least the past eighty or so years backs up the idea that the government, acting in the interest of the greater public, has the authority to force companies to convey certain non-ideological, government-mandated messages, so long as it’s clear that it’s the government “speaking,” not the company. Those messages can take the form of posters or warning labels, or those little placards in bathrooms reminding employees to wash their hands, or some other form of government-mandated “fine print” informing consumers, investors, shareholders, employees, or job seekers about risks or rights or government protections.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
Politico: Superdonor’s widow a GOP wild card
By Alexander Burns
Now, in the aftermath of Harold Simmons’s death, Republicans nationwide are looking toward the tycoon’s septuagenarian widow for clues as to whether the family’s legendary political largess might continue.
According to friends and political associates, it’s unlikely that Annette Simmons will either maintain precisely the same level of giving as her husband or disappear from the scene entirely. An evidently independent-minded donor who is said to have contributed to Santorum mainly because she liked him and his family on a personal level, Annette Simmons is “less political but no less passionate” than her husband, said one strategist who has worked with her, adding: “She has not been one to just dump money on things just because.”
Lobbying and Ethics
NY Times: The Unlobbyists
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
The strategic adviser with clean hands, who stands aloof from the grunt work of cornering members of the House and Senate in Capitol hallways and the hassle of remembering committee secretaries by name, is now ascendant. Never mind those nightly fund-raisers.
If you look at the numbers, it may seem that lobbying is in decline, but it isn’t; it’s just taking different forms. What was once straightforward lobbying has become, in effect, a full service PR-advertising-social media operation, very little of which is covered by federal regulation.
State and Local
Wisconsin –– WRN: Campaign finance bill stalls in Senate
By Bob Hague
A controversial campaign finance bill has stalled out at the Capitol. The bill would double current campaign contribution limits for legislative and statewide candidates and double – to $300,000 – the amount of special interest money the legislature’s own campaign committees could collect – but there weren’t enough votes in the state Senate. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said the legislation would need “major changes” before he’d be willing to consider it.
