CCP
Oregon H.B. 2578; Taxpayer-Financed Campaigns – A Failed and Costly Policy
By Matt Nese
While proponents of so-called “matching funds” proposals tout these programs as a panacea for eliminating corruption and “fixing” perceived ills in government, the experiences of existing programs in New York City, Los Angeles, Arizona, Connecticut, and Maine – all of which have similar programs to that proposed in H.B. 2578 – is very telling…
I highlight a number of policy issues in my analysis: (I) recent corruption scandals in Oregon would have been unaffected by the existence of a tax-financing program; (II) New York City’s matching funds program, one of the oldest in the country, is fraught with corruption; (III) similar programs in Arizona, Maine, and Los Angeles have also experienced much corruption since their inception; (IV) academic studies have found no evidence that these programs decrease the incidence of public corruption or improve trust in government; (V) an analysis of Connecticut’s tax-financing program has demonstrated its failure to change legislative voting patterns; (VI) existing statewide programs have done little to diminish alleged “interest group” influence; (VII) many other claims by advocates of “clean elections” have also been shown to be false; and (VIII) the cost of a statewide program in Oregon is likely to be immensely expensive and rise in cost over time.
Free Speech
Competitive Enterprise Institute: For Virgin Islands Climate Subpoena, A Not-So-Happy Birthday
By Sam Kazman
Approximately one year ago, on April 7, 2016, CEI received a memorable, hand-delivered envelope from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker. It wasn’t a note congratulating Kent Lassman on his very new (two days old, to be precise) position as CEI’s president. No, it was a subpoena, issued under the Virgin Islands’ “baby RICO” statute, demanding a full decade’s worth of CEI documents on its energy and climate policy work. Those documents contained not just our internal deliberations, but also information about our supporters’ identities…
With the help of our outside counsel, Andrew Grossman and David Rivkin of BakerHostetler, we made our position clear within hours-the subpoena was a flagrant violation of our First Amendment rights, as well as those of our supporters, and we had no intention of complying. In mid-May we moved to dismiss the subpoena in D.C. Superior Court. Four days later, Walker officially terminated his D.C. subpoena. In late June we had a court hearing on our motion for sanctions against Walker and his local counsel. Within two days, Walker dropped his underlying Virgin Islands subpoena as well, adding to our claim that he’d been acting in bad faith.
Washington Post: The government is demanding to know who this Trump critic is. Twitter is suing to keep it a secret.
By Hayley Tsukayama
Twitter filed a lawsuit Thursday to block an order from the Department of Homeland Security that seeks to reveal the user of an account who has been critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Tweets from the account — @ALT_uscis — indicate that it is run by someone who is an employee of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services division of Homeland Security.
Free speech advocates said the DHS order appeared to be the first time the government has attempted to use its powers to expose an anonymous critic — a development that, if successful, would have a “grave chilling effect on the speech of that account” as well as other accounts critical of the U.S. government, Twitter said…
Twitter has defended its users’ rights to free expression — a position it has held for years, notably during the widespread Arab Spring protests in 2011. That right, the company said, is particularly important when discussing political speech.
“First Amendment interests are at their zenith when, as here, the speech at issue touches on matters of public political life,” the filing said.
The Intercept: The U.S. Government is Trying to Unmask an Anonymous Anti-Trump Twitter Account
By Sam Biddle
Soon after Donald Trump’s inauguration, persons critical of the president and his administration began creating anonymous Twitter accounts claiming to be dissident members of the federal government, such as the famous “Alt BLM” and “Rogue POTUS Staff” users. Today, Twitter is filing suit against the U.S. government, exposing an attempt to expose and attack one such account…
Regardless of the fact that many of these “alt accounts” appear to be individuals pretending to be members of a given federal agency, removing their anonymity simply because they are criticizing the president would be a devastating blow to Twitter’s ability to facilitate free speech.
Twitter is now asking the court to declare that “the CBP Summons is unlawful and unenforceable because it violates the First Amendment rights of both Twitter and its users by seeking to unmask the identity of one or more anonymous Twitter users voicing criticism of the government on matters of public concern.”
Supreme Court
Washington Post: Senate set to confirm Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court
By Ed O’Keefe and Sean Sullivan
Gorsuch, 49, a Denver-based judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, is expected to be confirmed shortly after noon. Vice President Pence will preside over the Senate during the vote and Gorsuch could be sworn in as the 113th Supreme Court justice as early as Friday.
His confirmation was all-but-assured on Thursday, when Republicans cleared the way for Gorsuch by overcoming a historic Democratic blockade and changing the rules of the Senate.
The long-anticipated rules change now means that all presidential nominees for executive branch positions and the federal courts need only a simple majority vote to be confirmed by senators…
Gorsuch’s nomination was announced by Trump in late January and earned immediate, widespread praise from Republican lawmakers excited by the prospect of maintaining the court’s previous ideological balance and relieved by how well the White House orchestrated the nomination.
Real Clear Politics: Fellow Democrats, Stop Misrepresenting Judge Gorsuch’s Record
By Josh A. Krevitt
A Senate that evaluates nominees based on their character and integrity and intelligence confirms Judge Gorsuch, just as it confirmed Justice Scalia 98-0 in 1986 and Justice Ginsburg 96-3 in 1993.
But those who oppose this nomination now contend that Judge Gorsuch’s judicial philosophy is not “mainstream,” and that he places corporate interests over the “little guy.” This caricature cannot be reconciled with the man I have known for more than thirty years. Nor can it be squared with his actual record on the bench.
While serving on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals for more than a decade, Judge Gorsuch was renowned for forging consensus on a circuit that currently has seven Democratic-nominated judges and five Republican-nominated judges. That’s why two former Chief Judges of the Tenth Circuit-one nominated by a Republican, the other by a Democrat-came to Washington to urge the Senate to confirm Judge Gorsuch.
In fact, Judge Gorsuch decided with the majority virtually every single time, in case after case, year after year-ruling with judges nominated by Presidents of both parties. A judge outside the mainstream would not have voted with the majority in 99% of the more than 2,700 cases in which he participated.
The Courts
Boston Business Journal: Judge upholds state law on corporate campaign contributions
By Matt Murphy
A state law banning corporations from making political donations survived a legal challenge on Thursday when a Superior Court judge ruled against two local business owners seeking to overturn the restriction.
Superior Court Judge Paul Wilson found that the campaign finance laws on the books do not unconstitutionally discriminate against a business’s right to free speech or equal protection…
The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, which has successfully argued similar cases in other states, took on the case, and said Thursday it planned to appeal to the state Supreme Judicial Court.
“There is room to debate many campaign finance regulations, but this is not one of them,” said Jim Manley, the Goldwater Institute attorney who argued the case for the plaintiffs. “A total ban on businesses participating in the political process – while their counterparts from the other side of the bargaining table dole out stacks of cash to their preferred candidates and committees – is unfair from any perspective.”
Congress
San Francisco Chronicle: ‘No PAC Act’ offers voters hope to be heard
By Ann M. Ravel
During the last election cycle, six congressional candidates proved that you can run a competitive, successful race without relying on corporate political-action-committee funding. Two of those candidates now have a bill to prohibit candidates from accepting corporate PAC funds. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, and Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, have introduced the No PAC Act. If it becomes law, then it would be a positive step toward reducing the undue influence of corporations and special interests in the political process…
A number of our congressional representatives have decried the constant fundraising that’s required of them. And, of course, more money can be raised more easily from the wealthy or from corporate political-action committees than from small-dollar contributors.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United in 2010, corporate and special-interest influence in the political process has grown. One way that this influence is wielded is through corporate PAC contributions…
Candidates can reject this corporate PAC funding and become reliant on smaller-dollar individual donations. This requires more work to be able to raise sufficient funds to be competitive, as campaigns have become more and more expensive.
FCC
Broadcasting & Cable: FCC Asked to Review Neil Gorsuch Ads
By John Eggerton
The Campaign Legal Center has asked the FCC to review ads from the Judicial Crisis Network pushing for the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch as Supreme Court justice.
CLC says that JCN incorrectly labeled the ads nonpolitical and that instead they should have been subject to FCC disclosure rules that apply to “a message relating to any political matter of national importance.”…
Broadcasters are required to place ads related to political matters of public importance in their public files, and they must include who bought the add and the highest officers of that group. CLC argues that should apply not only to the groups like JCN but the often big money, unidentified funders of those groups. But the FCC has yet to tighten its rules under either Democratic or Republican chairs.
The Media
Wall Street Journal: Fake News and the Digital Duopoly
By Robert Thomson
Google’s commodification of content knowingly, willfully undermined provenance for profit. That was followed by the Facebook stream, with its journalistic jetsam and fake flotsam. Together, the two most powerful news publishers in human history have created an ecosystem that is dysfunctional and socially destructive…
As for news, institutional neglect has left us perched on the edge of the slippery slope of censorship. There is no Silicon Valley tradition, as there is at great newspapers, of each day arguing over rights and wrongs, of fretful, thoughtful agonizing over social responsibility and freedom of speech.
What we now have is a backlash with which these omnipotent companies are uniquely ill-equipped to cope. Their responses tend to be political and politically correct. Regardless of your own views, you should be concerned that we are entering an era in which these immensely influential publishers will routinely and selectively “unpublish” certain views and news.
The States
U.S. News & World Report: After Repeal, Ethics Law Supporters to Push Ballot Amendment
By James Nord
Supporters of a voter-imposed government ethics initiative repealed just months after it passed plan to return to the ballot in 2018 with an anti-corruption constitutional amendment, the sponsoring group said Thursday in a rebuke of Republican lawmakers who scrubbed the initiative from law.
The group, Represent South Dakota, said in a statement that supporters view it as a necessary response to the Legislature’s “brazen repeal” of the government ethics overhaul during the 2017 legislative session. Lawmakers passed bills intended to supplant provisions of the initiative, but backers of the overhaul have said the Legislature’s replacement measures fell short of what the voters passed in 2016…
Ben Lee, state director of Americans for Prosperity-South Dakota, a group that opposed the 2016 ballot measure and cheered its repeal, said lawmakers worked hard this session to come up with anti-corruption laws that met what the voters said they wanted.
“It appears that the folks at Represent.Us aren’t going to like any law that they didn’t write themselves, even though what the Legislature put forth this year addressed their largest concerns,” said Lee, referring to the Massachusetts-based group that funded the initiative.
Daily Caller: Virginia Governor Candidate Announces Huge Campaign Finance Overhaul Plan
By Phillip Stucky
Virginia Republican candidate for governor Ed Gillespie announced a new plan for a series of executive orders Thursday that will target campaign finance in the state, according to a press release.
Gillespie announced a massive campaign designed to increase the public’s trust in elected officials after the ethics investigation into former Gov. Bob McDonnell last year.
Although the plan was far-reaching, and includes accountability rules and further strengthens the cap on gifts that elected officials can receive, a core component of the plan will change how campaigns spend and raise money.
The most interesting part of the plan involves prohibiting candidates from using funds raised for one office to run for another office, a practice Gillespie calls “Bait and Switch” campaign finance practices.
