CCP
The Presumption of Free Anonymous Speech
Scott Blackburn
Public Citizen is exactly right. The right to speak without identifying oneself is an important safeguard for critics. If we don’t allow anonymous criticism of businesses, the threat of backlash will mean that less people will speak up, there will be less debate about which businesses are good and bad, and that suppression of speech will lead to less information for consumers. The assumption, therefore, needs to be that anonymous speech is protected until those in power convincingly prove that there is a significant and legitimate reason to violate that protection.
What Public Citizen does not seem to understand is that the same is true, to a far more important degree, about government. Governments, and the elected officials that run them, are far more powerful than a divorce attorney in Tampa. Speaking out against politicians, consequently, is at least as risky as criticizing a business. If it is too easy, therefore, to out critics of politicians, the result will be that one side of the debate about the quality of government will be suppressed.
Supreme Court
Bloomberg: Democrats’ Supreme Court Litmus Test: Citizens United
Sahil Kapur
Caroline Fredrickson, the president of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal advocacy group, said the backlash has echoes of how conservatives responded to the 1973 Roe ruling, which remains deeply divisive today.
“I think it’s happening,” she said. “Whether it’ll reach the level of fervency of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to say. But it certainly seems to be going in that direction.”
IRS
Washington Times: IRS official: ‘Lois Lerner was the tip of the iceberg’
Joseph Curl
The IRS’s director of privacy, governmental liaison and disclosure division testified Wednesday that the tax agency set up a special team with hundreds of lawyers to handle the probe into whether Tea Party groups were targeted, but repeatedly said she had no idea how it operated.
Mary Howard, who also works as the head Freedom of Information Act officer in the IRS, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that once the “special project team” was created and operational, she never saw requests for information.
Washington Post: The IRS chief’s mistake about ‘dark money’
Miriam Galston
A recent ill-conceived statement by Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen could make this crisis even worse. A key class of tax-exempt groups, he said, could spend up to 49 percent of their revenue on politics without losing their tax-favored status. Koskinen even suggested that this position corresponds to the intent of Congress.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The commissioner’s statement was inconsistent with the legislation under which the IRS operates, contravenes a long line of judicial opinions and is bad public policy. Here’s why:
FEC
Daily Beast: Feds Blast Ted Cruz’s Shady Donations
Betsy Woodruff
One of those notices, sent to the treasurer of his Cruz for President committee, contained a 6-page list of problematic contributions. These contributions came from donors who gave more than the legal limit of $2,700 per candidate per election…
Thus, couples can give up to $10,800 if they note that the donation comes from two adults — for instance, $5,400 from a wife for the primary and general, and another $5,400 from her husband for the primary and general as well.
The compliance issue that the FEC noted for Cruz was that many of his donors cut $10,800 and $5,400 checks without noting how their donations were to be allocated.
That in and of itself isn’t unusual, as most campaign donors aren’t campaign finance law experts.
Campaign Finance
National Review: Every Man a Political Donor
Jay Cost
Writing recently in the Daily Beast, John Pudner of Take Back Our Republic, a conservative reform group, offered an interesting proposal for improving our campaign finance system. He suggested that each political donor receive a tax credit worth up to $200…
Campaign finance has been a problem since the initiation of party politics. When Thomas Jefferson and James Madison resolved to oppose the Washington administration, they enlisted poet Philip Freneau to publish the National Gazette. Jefferson financed Freneau’s operation by securing him a job at the State Department. Surely there is no better illustration of the ethical problems inherent in campaign finance: Freneau was hired by President Washington’s secretary of state for the express purpose of attacking the Washington administration, all on the taxpayer’s dime!
Roll Call: Doug Hughes: Postal Service Firing Me, but Letters Will Get to Congress
Hannah Hess
On April 15, Hughes landed on the West Front of the Capitol in a gyrocopter labeled with the USPS logo, wearing a letter carrier’s uniform. Capitol Police seized the aircraft and a USPS bin holding letters to Congress addressing what Hughes says is the corrupting influence of money in politics and the need to change campaign finance laws.
The Postal Service confirmed after Hughes’ flight that he had been placed on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.
Lobbying
Time: Senate Bill Would Limit Lobbyists From Bundling Campaign Donations
Carrie Levine and Michael Beckel
Beyond restricting how much money lobbyists may bundle, Bennet’s bill would also prohibit members of Congress and candidates from soliciting contributions from registered lobbyists while Congress is in session. It would furthermore force more people to register as lobbyists by eliminating certain regulatory thresholds.
Bennet, who faces re-election in 2016, introduced similar legislation during the 113th Congress, but it failed to even reach the Senate floor for a vote.
More Soft Money Hard Law: Lobbyists and Campaign Finance: The “Bundling” Question
Bob Bauer
A strength of any reform discussion is careful attention to the role of campaign finance in lobbying activity. Critics of standard reform proposals complain that “insiders” are attempting to regulate the political activity of “outsiders”, but this objection has less force when campaign finance restrictions fall more heavily on the insiders – – on legislators and the lobbyists who may build relationships with them by raising and giving campaign money.
Tax Financed Campaigns
Auburn Citizen: Zephyr Teachout in Auburn: Public financing of elections ‘most basic feminist issue right now’
Robert Harding
Far more women run for office when you have a public financing system. We’ve seen that everywhere we’ve experimented with it — in New York City, in Arizona, in Maine and Connecticut.”
In New York City, Teachout said seven new women of color ran for office in recent years who wouldn’t have been able to campaign without the city’s public matching funds system.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
Washington Post: We are becoming less and less interested in campaign launches
Philip Bump
You will not be surprised to learn that the splash each candidate is making as he or she jumps into the pool is getting smaller and smaller. (Which is sort of how pools work in reality, I suppose, given all of the waves washing back and forth.) A good way to gauge public interest is to see who’s Googling each candidate. And indeed, as each announcement has occurred, the number of people searching for the candidates has dropped.
Wall Street Journal: Hillary Clinton’s Missed Opportunity
Doug Heye
Somehow, amid all this sophisticated political maneuvering, Hillary Clinton’s campaign missed the mark. Free and clear of federal campaign finance laws, Mrs. Clinton would have been able to build huge cash advantages before she declared. Instead, she threw away that freedom, made her candidacy official, and took a road trip to Iowa (with a now-infamous stop at Chipotle).
It’s unclear why her campaign decided to forgo the opportunity to raise potentially millions of dollars free of federal constraints–and then send the candidate into the routine of hitting up mega-donors but not outright asking for money.
Bloomberg: Hillary Clinton Pushes for Voter Registration Overhaul
Jennifer Epstein
All U.S. citizens should be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 unless they take active steps to opt out, Clinton said, and all 50 states should allow at least 20 days of early voting. She also said she hopes to see Congress take action to roll back the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling allowing nine southern states to change their voting laws without federal approval.
