Free Speech
Medium: Campaign Finance Restrictions Fit Like a Straitjacket
Paul Jossey
FECA limited political contributions and expenditures to a non-inflation adjusted $1000/calendar year. It essentially barred — with criminal penalties — anyone with anything more than a bullhorn from speaking “relative to” a political candidate. For example, in 2004 the head of the California ACLU would have risked a $25,000 fine and a year in the slammer for placing a full-page ad in the Sacramento Bee protesting George W. Bush’s torture policies.
In Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court “trimmed” this absurd impediment to free expression. Subsequently, the Court tossed FECA-related restrictions on independent speech by PACs, political parties, and eventually corporations and unions.
Professor Levinson believes all these extra voices harm our political marketplace. And from a self-interest standpoint her view is understandable.
Lawrence Lessig
Huffington Post: We Are Not Thinking Big Enough
Lawrence Lessig
I want a chance to wage a campaign for that principle. Not for me, but for it. I want to be its advocate. I want to stand next to it, and defend it, not because I am as great or as inspirational as it, but because it is right, and inspiration enough. I want a chance to make the case for America to choose it. All of America. First. Because if we chose that equality first — an equality of citizens, an equality that would end this corruption, an equality that would begin to undo the institutionalized inequality that rends the life of so many Americans, blacks more than whites — then everything that every other candidate in this race is talking about would be possible.
IRS
National Review Online: As the EPA and IRS Have Shown, with Big Government Comes Little Accountability
Victor David Hanson
In our litigious society in which plaintiffs sue fast-food franchises for serving excessively hot coffee, why do government bureaucrats escape culpability when the innocent die or are injured as a result of bureaucratic negligence? When the IRS hounds citizens about their taxes, can Americans inform the agency that they are invoking the Fifth Amendment and refusing to answer out of fear of self-incrimination — and expect to face no criminal consequences? No? Why, then, was high-ranking IRS official Lois Lerner able to sign off on the excessive scrutiny of some conservative nonprofit groups, lie about it, and then invoke the Fifth — without any legal consequences?
CBS News: John Oliver pressures IRS for televangelists crackdown
The IRS uses 14 criteria for defining a church, including having ordained ministers, a recognized creed and holding regular services. But the agency will not evaluate church doctrine as long as they are “truly and sincerely held” and “not illegal.”
“A few years ago, the IRS named Scientology a church. Since that happened, anybody can call themselves a church,” Anthony said.
According to the General Accounting Office, the IRS suspended church audits completely from 2009 to 2013 and conducted just three from 2013 to 2014.
Independent Groups
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Big money looms larger in the 2016 campaign
Editorial Board
Skeptics of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 warned that it would open the door to a handful of mega-wealthy donors to buy national elections. The consequences have been worse than anyone imagined.
Next year’s presidential contest is expected to cost up to $5 billion — more than twice that of the 2012 campaign. That’s enough to pay for a year of food stamps for 3 million poor Americans, or award $5,000 college grants to a million students.
Tax-Financed Campaigns
WBFO: Public campaign finance system earns poor reviews
Karen Dewitt
DiNapoli, the Democratic candidate ,did not participate, and the Republican challenger tried but failed to qualify, saying he could not meet the $200,000 threshold of small donations needed to access the matching funds.
The State Board of Elections, in a final report required by the law, had little to say. “With no qualified participant or full program implementation, it is difficult and somewhat impractical for the Board to make comments to improve the program,”the report reads.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: Hillary Clinton campaign fundraisers: Cash bar only?
Colby Itkowitz
But Paul Ryan, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center, sees potential for abuse if campaigns find other ways to offload expenses to donors.
“I may be paranoid, but the campaign is clearly trying to minimize fundraising costs by offloading food and valet to contributors,” he said. “Then I’m wondering whether a corporation could pay for that food without making an in-kind contribution. Could they encourage employees to attend an event and say, ‘we’ll pay (for your meal)’?”
He went further, pondering whether a restaurant could coincidentally be having a Tony Bennett concert at their establishment the same night as a political event. It would attract donors, but should the restaurant featuring the celebrity count as an in-kind contribution to the campaign?
Daily Beast: Presidential Sensation Deez Nuts Is a 15-Year-Old Iowa Farm Boy
Ben Collins and Emily Shire
According to a Public Policy Polling survey released Wednesday, almost one in 10 Tar Heel State voters would vote for him in a race between Nuts, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton.
Dozens of real Deez Nutses or Deez Nutzes do live as citizens in the United States of America with legally changed names, from Phoenix, Arizona, to West Hartford, Connecticut, from sea to shining sea, but a potential president does not appear to be one of them.
The States
Helena Independent Record: Committee objects to campaign finance reform rules, delays adoption
Alexander Deedy
An interim legislative committee delayed adoption of new campaign finance reporting rules on Wednesday over concerns that they provide leeway that could lead to unfair demands on political candidates and organized groups.
The new rules were written after the 2015 Legislature passed a campaign finance reform bill to increase disclosure requirements following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.
Hartford Courant: Gun Control Advocates File Elections Enforcement Complaint Against the NRA
Daniela Altimari
The complaint, filed Wednesday with the State Elections Enforcement Commission, alleges that the NRA’s federal political action committee was used to fund contributions to candidates for state office, a strategy which it says violates Connecticut law.
“The NRA’s effort to subvert Connecticut’s campaign finance laws is literally putting lives in danger” said Carlos Soto, whose sister, Victoria Soto, was one of six teachers killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. “There is so much at stake when it comes to ending gun violence, and we won’t let our state elections be corrupted by the NRA’s dirty campaign tricks.”
