Campaign Finance Reform

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see 2 capt 719 html Bradley Smith

See Citizen's United and 28th amendment

 see mcConnell, mcCutcheon, dark $

POST WATERGATE?

see outside $

 includes TRANSPARENCY

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THIS NODE IS PRETTY UNDIGESTED

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9 24 the lever podcast series

RR promo for pacific legal

trailer: Master Plan | Listen Now

ep 3 ken sTARR, BOPP AND ABRAMS BELOTTI AND BUCKLEY

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A modern history of campaign finance: from Watergate to ‘Citizens United’

by John Dunbar

November 15, 2017

A legal war has been waged since the campaign finance reforms that followed the Watergate scandals, when Congress passed the bedrock for our modern money-in-politics regulatory regime. And while reformers have notched significant victories, deep-pocketed deregulators have slowly chipped away at major provisions by challenging them all the way to the Supreme Court. Here’s a look at how we got here, to a system where unlimited and often undisclosed cash is used to directly influence modern elections.

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Kochs key among small group quietly funding legal assault on campaign finance regulation – Center for Public Integrity

NOV 2017

Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are well-known for pumping tens of millions of dollars into so-called “dark money” nonprofits — groups that actively promote or criticize candidates for office but are not required to reveal their donors.

Not so well known is the duo’s role in underwriting and sculpting the legal landscape that led to the court decisions that made possible these and other groups such as super PACs.

The Center for Public Integrity investigated an array of organizations that have participated in legal challenges dating back 40 years that have resulted in a system allowing unlimited sums to be pumped into modern elections. It’s a system that both Republicans and Democrats now fully rely upon ahead of 2018 midterm elections that could reaffirm — or torpedo — President Donald Trump’s congressional majority.

Throughout that history, Koch-backed groups have stood out as reliable, stalwart opponents of regulation of money in politics. While far from the only players in the legal battle, the Kochs are certainly among the most recognizable — and significant.

“They’re not the only group in the game,” Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said of the Kochs. “But I think what you’ll see, it’s a deep well with a long-term commitment.”

The Center for Public Integrity identified the sources of $293 million received by groups that lodged formal arguments in key campaign finance deregulation cases. It also identified $64 million in funding for groups that defended campaign finance regulations, including significant cash from liberal billionaire and Koch foil George Soros.

Funds underwriting the legal campaigns to shape how money influences politics come from individuals, corporations, unions, foundations and family trusts of all sizes. Some have come from surprising sources, according to tax records, internal documents and other records reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity.

Not all the money identified went toward campaign finance fights, and much of the funding is simply untraceable, since most of these groups keep their donors secret.

But the funding that is known offers key clues about the players behind the greatest unraveling of campaign finance regulation in U.S. history.

‘Buckley’ and Cato

One must travel back in time more than 40 years to understand how today’s motley collection of campaign money laws came to be — and how limits on political fundraising and spending have unraveled along the way.

It began with the Supreme Court’s *Buckley v. Valeo* decision of 1976, a reaction to Watergate reforms passed by Congress. The court upheld limits on contributions to political campaigns, but in a critical part of the ruling which would play a major role years later, allowed for unlimited spending on campaigns.

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The Buckley v. Valeo fight also helped inspire Ed Crane, former national chairman of the Libertarian Party, which was one of the case’s plaintiffs, to create a libertarian equivalent to the predominant think tanks of the day — the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

With $500,000 from Charles Koch, Crane became the leader in 1977 of the Cato Institute, previously named the Charles Koch Foundation. In 1981, it moved from San Francisco to the heart of American political power — Washington, D.C.

Ever since, the Cato Institute has tirelessly fought against campaign finance laws it considered antithetical to its philosophy of small government and largely unencumbered speech.

“We stand against campaign finance laws in general,” Cato Institute research fellow Trevor Burrus said. “We believe that most campaign finance laws are unconstitutional. They are clear impediments of political speech.”

For the Kochs, was Cato an ideological enterprise or vehicle for self-interest? Both, to some degree. Avowed libertarians, the Kochs control a vast empire of heavily regulated companies that would undoubtedly benefit from less government intrusion. Coloring the political system red instead of blue has practical, financial implications for the Kochs, who overwhelmingly support Republican candidates and causes.

The nation’s campaign money system largely stood unchanged until 2002, when Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, named for its two Senate sponsors. The law curtailed a variety of political activities and included a ban on unlimited “soft money” contributions — corporate and union cash — given to political parties.

It also attracted an immediate backlash by foes of campaign finance legislation. Twelve suits brought by more than 80 plaintiffs — were consolidated as McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, named for Mitch McConnell, a U.S. senator from Kentucky and current majority leader, who has long been in favor of liberalizing restrictions on campaign contributions.

‘McConnell’ et. al.

Those joined together under McConnell included the National Rifle Association, the Republican National Committee, the National Right to Life Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others.

Generally, the backers of these campaign finance case litigants are well-known, but not always.

And some are surprising.

Take the ACLU. Despite its reputation as an unabashedly liberal organization, the ACLU has routinely aligned itself with libertarians and conservatives in recent legal fights against campaign finance regulations. Who are the top donors to the ACLU?

Tops is the left-leaning Sandler Foundation, having given more than $24 million to the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation since 2001, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax records.

Other known funders of the ACLU’s 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit arms include the ACLU Foundation; Equal Justice Works; Proteus Action League; GLBTQ Legal Advocates; and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, The Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Together, they’ve given more than $856,000 since 2010, tax filings show.

Proteus Action League is an affiliate of Proteus Fund, a left-leaning philanthropic organization. It also creates and oversees grants aimed at limiting money and politics, according to its website. Between 2013 and 2015, the Proteus Fund and the Proteus Action League have together given $306,000 to the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation.

Publishers Clearing House money has infused the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, which in turn has contributed more than $6.6 million to the ACLU Foundation for various initiatives, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s review of available tax documents from 2005 to 2015.

The National Rifle Association is prominent for its passionate support of firearms rights, and more recently, the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. But it, too, began supporting campaign finance deregulation in earnest at the time of the McConnell case.

One of the NRA nonprofit’s more notable funders is the Cabela’s Outdoor Fund, a social welfare organization connected to the famous outdoor outfitter Cabela’s, which is also a major firearms retailer.

From 2012 to 2015, the fund gave the NRA $1.3 million. Richard Cabela, the now deceased founder of Cabela’s, was a passionate supporter of the NRA. The company, which Bass Pro Shops acquired earlier this year, had about $4.1 billion in revenue last year, according to its annual report.

Koch-connected organizations have also been quite active.

Cato intervened by filing an “amicus brief” in McConnell, as did the Institute for Justice, a group that got its start thanks to the Kochs.

The Supreme Court, for the most part, upheld the “soft money” and political advertising restrictions of the McCain-Feingold law but struck down the age restrictions on minors’ ability to contribute money to politicians as a violation of free speech rights.

The mixed ruling gave pro-political speech advocates fuel to continue challenging campaign laws, and the chipping away of the reforms began in earnest.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC in 2007 further eroded the McCain-Feingold law by allowing certain nonprofit groups to air political issue ads within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. Wisconsin Right to Life Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group, wanted to run ads that would ask voters to call their senators urging them to oppose filibusters of judicial nominees.

Emerging as a national figure in this case after working for years in lower courts was James Bopp, who was counsel for Wisconsin Right to Life.** A bevy of organizations intervened in the case, many arguing for religious freedom of speech. The American Civil Liberties Union, a regular stalwart opponent of limits on free speech, had its say, as did a number of Koch-connected organizations.

Among them, the Center for Competitive Politics (now the Institute for Free Speech), the Cato Institute, the Goldwater Institute and the Institute for Justice.

The Goldwater Institute is a public interest legal organization based in Phoenix, Arizona, named after former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. Timothy Sandefur, vice president for litigation for Goldwater, said its primary mission is “to defend constitutional principles, through direct litigation and amicus participation.” Donors Capital Fund, the Mercer Family Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation are among its most generous funders with a combined total of $4.2 million.

‘Citizens United’

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations, unions and certain nonprofits could raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against politicians. The enormity of the impact of the decision would not be realized for months, even years.

But those who argued the case and participated in it were well aware of its importance. The usual liberal reform groups chimed in, as well as a cadre of Koch-backed crew members, including: the Cato Institute, the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice.

A few months later, a federal court ruling in SpeechNow.org v. FEC allowed for the creation of “independent expenditure-only committees” — political groups soon nicknamed “super PACs.” These super PACs could themselves accept unlimited money from corporations, labor unions and even 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits and business trade associations that themselves could keep their donors secret.

Four years later in *McCutcheon v. FEC*, the Supreme Court axed limits on how much money a person could give, in aggregate, to political parties, candidate committees and PACs. The practical effect: people are now allowed to directly pump hundreds of thousands of dollars more into party and candidate coffers.

Among the organizations involving themselves in the case? The Cato Institute, the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice.

Institute for Justice

The Institute for Justice is a nonprofit, libertarian public interest law firm headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with satellite offices in states including Florida, Minnesota and Arizona.

It was co-founded in 1991 by former Department of Energy Deputy General Counsel Chip Mellor and Clint Bolick, a former assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch provided $350,000 in seed money for the organization.

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The players who have shaped campaign finance »

The Center for Public Integrity combed through tax information for the Institute for Justice and found some of its top donors include the Claws Foundation, Dunn’s Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking, Searle Freedom Trust and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, totaling about $19.8 million since 1998. But the largest donor identified for the Institute for Justice was the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, giving more than $15.5 million since 2003, according to tax records.

Wilson was a notable hedge funder and philanthropist who jumped to his death from his New York apartment in 2013.

Donors Trust, a Virginia-based free-market charity and “donor advised” fund that distributes money to charities across states has been the Institute for Justice’s most consistent supporter.

Tax records show that Donors Trust has contributed to the Institute for Justice every year since 2004, giving it more than $1.6 million. Charles Koch’s foundation is one of the heavyweights that holds an account with Donors Trust. Koch’s organization also directly gave the Institute for Justice $9,600, according to 2014 and 2015 tax records. The David H. Koch Foundation gave $250,000 in 2001, according to records.

The Jewish Communal Fund, another donor advised fund, has given $317,050 to the Institute for Justice since 2010, according to tax records. The John Templeton Foundation, an avid promoter of free market ideas, gave $900,000 between 2013 and 2014, according to a review of tax records.

One of its other generous donors, however, is the National Christian Charitable Foundation, which gave almost $2.8 million since 2007.

This donor advised fund typically gives to Christian churches and ministries with a mission of “mobilizing resources by inspiring biblical generosity.”

The political leanings of organizations such as the Institute for Justice are not a basis of scrutiny for the National Christian Charitable Foundation, and they’re mostly unknown to the foundation, Chief Creative Officer Steve Chapman said.

“NCF doesn’t have any stance on campaign finance issues,” he said in a statement. “We don’t hold positions on such political topics, and we don’t hold stances on whether charities to which we make grants should or should not be active on that issue.”

Richard Uihlein, a wealthy conservative donor who increased his political giving after the *Citizens United* decision, gave the Institute for Justice $17,500 between 2014 and 2015. But, he wasn’t the only well-known donor to contribute. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which usually contributes to global health and economic development causes, donated $600.

The Institute for Justice has more than 8,000 donors, said Paul Sherman, a senior attorney for the Institute for Justice who specializes in First Amendment litigation. No one donor provides more than 8 percent of its budget. In its most recent fiscal year, donations comprised more than 96 percent of its income, while the rest came from court-ordered awards of attorneys’ fees.

But that doesn’t mean those donors shape the Institute for Justice’s work, Sherman said.

“IJ’s donors give to us because they support our mission,” he said, noting that the organization has litigated in the same areas for more than over 25 years. “We have never taken a case or passed on a case because of pressure from a donor.”

Other notable contributions to the Institute for Justice include $90,000 from the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, which was started by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her husband in 1989. The foundation has given yearly since 2004, except for 2012 and 2014.

‘SpeechNow.org’ victory

The Institute for Justice notched a win in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, a critical lower-court case.

In the case, the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics represented David Keating, who now serves as president of the newly renamed Center for Competitive Politics.

Together, the groups questioned whether the federal government had the legal right to make Keating’s SpeechNow.org group register as a political committee — forcing it to adhere to contribution limits for political committees.

The court ruled in SpeechNow.org’s favor, thereby allowing it to raise unlimited amounts of money to independently advocate for or against political candidates. Limits on how much it could receive were found to be in violation of the First Amendment. It was the first time the Citizens United decision was applied in federal courts.

And it gave birth to a kind of political committee that would soon be dubbed a “super PAC.”

Although the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice have no formal affiliation, they are “allies in the fight to defend political speech from government regulation,” Sherman said.

Sherman said both organizations have supported each other’s work with amicus briefs, and SpeechNow.org v. FEC was a great match of their strengths.

“CCP’s people had extensive experience with practice before the FEC, and IJ’s people had extensive experience litigating in federal court,” he said. “And we all knew one another. The world of libertarian public-interest lawyers is not huge.”

But the Institute for Justice isn’t always taking up the long, arduous process of going to court. Like other groups that want to provide suggestions and expertise to courts on matters, it has done so through amicus briefs in McConnell, Wisconsin Right to Life, McCutcheon and Citizens United.

The positions that the Institute for Justice has taken on campaign finance issues are made clearer when looking at who funds their endeavors, which include many donor advised funds and conservative-leaning family foundations and charitable groups.

While the Institute for Justice has some history with big money and politics because of its founding relationship with the Kochs, the Center for Competitive Politics can also be counted among the names of Koch beneficiaries.

Center for Competitive Politics

Former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith founded the Center for Competitive Politics in 2005, lamenting the extent of federal regulation on political activity.

The Center for Competitive Politics has waged war against the FEC as litigators, and it has represented others when political free speech is under attack.

David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, said the organization is simply honoring the guarantees of the First Amendment more so than political ideology or deregulation.

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The players who have shaped campaign finance »

The Center for Competitive Politics prides itself on being part of changing the scope of campaign finance laws since its founding, while noting that there is still more freedom to be sought, especially when it comes to contribution and disclosure rules.

“Our country didn’t have campaign contribution limits until the 1970s,” he said. “I don’t see there’s any evidence that it’s made people we’re electing better than they were before the 1970s.”

Keating said government should make it easier for average citizens to become politically involved and, therefore, it should rethink contribution laws.

While the Center for Competitive Politics has not objected to disclosure by candidates and PACs, it is not in favor of pushing for more disclosure. Doing so, said Keating, would result in more difficult fundraising for groups and misleading disclosure information.

“Disclosure is where a lot of the action is right now,” he said. “That’s going to be in the courts and we may well be the ones representing the plaintiffs.”

Because the Center for Competitive Politics’ mission is the protection of free political speech, its legal argument in Wisconsin Right to Life, McCutcheon and Citizens United cases are just part of that mission.

The terrain of money and politics has the Center for Competitive Politics’ opponents questioning whether its ideals are truly its own — or if it’s just the mouthpiece for its wealthy benefactors.

Although the Center for Competitive Politics does not disclose the identity of its donors, the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax and other financial records indicates the group is funded by a bevy of right-leaning organizations.

Since 2006, the Center for Competitive Politics has received more than $5.3 million from Donors Capital Fund, $1.3 million from the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust and $511,000 from the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation — itself funded in full by Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein — and $440,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

As far as its Koch alliances? The Charles Koch Institute gave $20,700 from 2014 to 2015, and the Charles Koch Foundation donated over $57,000 from 2012 to 2015, the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax and other records shows.

A Koch spokeswoman declined to answer specific questions about the brothers’ giving. In a statement, spokeswoman Tonya Mullins said the Charles Koch Foundation “gives to non-profit organizations and more than 300 colleges and universities around the country that are exploring diverse ideas to meet the challenges of our day.”

The majority of the Charles Koch Institute money goes toward a fellowship program between the Center for Competitive Politics and the Charles Koch Institute, in which both organizations split the cost to pay for the fellow’s compensation, Keating said. The fellowship seeks to groom future free enterprise workers. The Charles Koch Institute provides support for internships and job placement for free-market professional hopefuls.

Keating said the Center for Competitive Politics’ donors give because they’re genuinely concerned with protecting free speech and they have a right to maintain their privacy.

If the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics are just mere soldiers in an overall battle plan to charge against reform, their success makes them among the most decorated and skilled in the field.

War on disclosure?

Polls show most Americans agree that the names of political donors should be public information. But Dave Trabert, president of the right-leaning Kansas Policy Institute, does not agree. He has had his own issues with intimidation because of his stances on school choice and tax policy.

“I’ve had to file two police reports over threats of violence,” he said.

Trabert and Cato’s Burrus, like many with right or libertarian views, believe that mandatory disclosure of politically related contributions or contributions to politically active nonprofits is just another form of intimidation.

To support that belief, Kansas Policy Institute filed a collaborative brief with other State Policy Network-affiliated groups, such as the James Madison Institute, FreedomWorks and others, in SpeechNow.org v. FEC.

The Kansas Policy Institute has benefited from Donors Capital Fund and the Charles Koch Institute, receiving $576,000 from the former and $10,000 from the latter.

The State Policy Network is a web of right-leaning think tanks whose benefactors also include the Charles Koch Foundation, the Charles Koch Institute and the DeVos family. It is also affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, another conservative nonprofit that writes model policies for state lawmakers to use.

Carrie Conko, a spokeswoman for the State Policy Network, said affiliate organizations such as the Kansas Policy Institute make their own decisions when determining which issues to pursue.

People within the State Policy Network web will send out emails inviting others to sign on to various issues, said Don Racheter, president of the Public Interest Institute in Michigan and co-signee of the brief with the Kansas Policy Institute.

Racheter said Public Interest Institute signed on because it was something it could do at low cost and in a short amount of time. The group hasn’t done much work on money and politics since, as its focuses on budget, tax and education matters in Michigan.

But others such as the James Madison Institute, another conservative think tank and Koch Institute partner, saw free, anonymous speech under assault and felt compelled to express its views to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

While it also has moved on from campaign finance laws being at the top of its agenda, it still weighs in on the issue of disclosure as it did in a commentary on the matter last year, where it called donor disclosure laws “reckless” and a threat to free and anonymous speech.

The James Madison Institute has received more than $404,000 from the Koch-affiliated State Policy Network during the past 15 years and more than $188,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation from 2007 to 2014, according to tax documents.

Logan Pike, spokeswoman for the organization, said the James Madison Institute will continue to push against disclosure laws, which it sees as an “assault on the Bill of Rights.”

“JMI is committed to defending the rights of all organizations to operate free of government intrusion,” she said.

But intrusion might be what the public wants. A 2015 Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 60 percent of Americans say that disclosing donors to all groups would be effective in reducing money’s influence on politics.

That same poll found that 75 percent favor laws requiring organizations that raise and spend unlimited money to publicly disclose their donors.

There are other players who have offered strong campaign finance arguments for the courts to consider — including a few most often associated with liberal causes.

Activists on the left

Left-leaning organizations frequently tout the merits of political disclosure and often fight in court for it.

But they don’t always follow their own advice.

The American Association of Retired Persons fought alongside Common Cause in McConnell v. FEC in support of the McCain-Feingold law. AARP and Common Cause argued that the McCain-Feingold law was a needed tool to combat post-Watergate political scandals and to close various campaign finance loopholes.

Ahead of the McCutcheoncase, it teamed up again with Common Cause, the Campaign Legal Center and a host of others, warning of the significance that joint fundraising committees could have and contending that federal campaign finance limits should be upheld for the sake of staving off corruption or the appearance of corruption.

AARP operates a 501(c)(3) charitable branch and a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” branch, the latter which may engage directly in political campaigns.

Issue One, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for reform, does disclose its donors upon request. Like many of its right and left counterparts, Issue One’s donor base largely consists of family foundations with a few donor advised funds intermingled.

William Gray, Issue One’s deputy communications director, said donors aren’t listed on its website because some donors don’t want to be solicited for donations by other organizations. (Gray previously worked as media relations specialist for the Center for Public Integrity.)

Two donor advised funds, Impact Assets and National Christian Foundation, gave Issue One $372,500 and $1,000, respectively. The original sources of these funds are not publicly known.

Hewlett-Packard co-founder William Hewlett’s William & Flora Hewlett Foundation has given at least $400,000, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. has given $40,000.

Jonathan Soros is the son of Democratic mega-donor George Soros and a prominent Democratic funder in his own right, contributing to dozens of different liberal candidates and political committees, according to FEC records analyzed by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

According to the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax documents of organizations that filed pro-reform briefs to the courts, the Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros Foundation has donated $508,000 to other allied groups, such as the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause Education Fund and the Brennan Center for Justice.

But that’s just a fraction of what Jonathan’s father, billionaire tycoon George Soros, has given to some of the same institutions. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, formerly called the Open Society Institute, has shelled out more than $9.4 million to these groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice, Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Public Citizen, the League of Women Voters and Democracy 21.

George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management and a top Democratic donor, speaks during a forum at an IMF/World Bank meeting in Washington, D.C., in September 2011.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

George Soros’ foundation has also given to groups that stood on the opposite side of campaign money reform, such as the ACLU Foundation and Alliance for Justice. Open Society Institute has given $19.8 million since 2001 to the ACLU Foundation. It’s given $1.1 million since 2002 for Alliance for Justice.

The money went toward a variety of issues on which the groups work, such as judicial nominations and public education reform. Millions of dollars went toward general support.

These groups vary on what they disclose about their donors.

The Campaign Legal Center lists all its donors — past and present — on its website, but does not provide specific donation amounts. Based on available tax data, the Ford Foundation has given $2 million to the Campaign Legal Center for its pro-reform work. The Stuart Family Foundation has also shelled out almost $1.9 million, beginning in 2004. Other notable donors include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. ($254,700) and Brennan Center for Justice ($140,000).

Most of the Brennan Center for Justice’s donors can be found in their annual publication, Democracy & Justice: Collected Writings. The 2016 edition of the publication lists the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, The JPB Foundation and Open Society Foundations as donors that have given $1 million or more. Open Society has given nearly $6 million to Brennan since 2002. It can also count the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. and the Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros Foundation among its funders, totaling $880,000. The Craigslist Charitable Fund has also given the Brennan Center for Justice $375,900 since 2010.

(The Center for Public Integrity has received funding from the Open Society Foundations as well as the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. A complete list of Center for Public Integrity funders can be found on our website.)

Daniel Weiner, senior counsel for the Brennan Center, said he thinks electoral politics and issue advocacy don’t carry the same weight when it comes to election influence.

“I do think a lot of us in the [nonprofit] community need to wrestle with that,” Weiner said. “If you’re trying to get people elected, you should disclose.”

Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, both 501(c)(4)s, aren’t required to disclose their donors, but they both have 501(c)(3) branches, Common Cause Education Fund and League of Women Voters Education Fund.

Lloyd Leonard, senior director of advocacy for the League of Women Voters, said the league would be happy to disclose its donors if every other organization like it were required to also. The League currently doesn’t disclose donors to its 501(c)(4).

“You have no way of really verifying what I’m saying to you because of the dark money system,” he added.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Craigslist Charitable Fund were the largest donors the Center for Public Integrity identified for the League of Women Voters Education Fund.

The Sunlight Foundation is perhaps the most transparent, naming donors and listing amounts given.

Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics scoffs at pro-campaign disclosure reform organizations that don’t disclose their own donors.

“If it’s such a good idea, why aren’t they doing that already?” he said.

Has the campaign finance battle already beenwon?

So how much sand is left in the campaign finance sandlot since the Citizens United, SpeechNow.org and McCutcheon cases have been fought and won by the campaign finance deregulation advocates, including the Kochs?

Disclosure is a fight that continues to rage, but there are few prospects — in Congress or federal courts — for major campaign money reforms that would tighten regulation.

Richard Briffault, professor of legislation at Columbia Law School, sees reformers on the defense for the foreseeable future, given that Republicans are in control of all branches of government until at least 2019 and the White House until at least 2021. Meanwhile, Republicans may further roll back campaign finance restrictions.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the limits on the donations are eliminated or raised and some of the restrictions on collaboration can be weakened,” he said.

But Bopp, the conservative lawyer central to several key campaign finance deregulation fights, isn’t so sure.

“The courts have upheld contribution limits under certain circumstances, so that’s what makes that litigation more difficult,” he said.

Bopp added that the fight for free political speech has otherwise largely been won.

Briffault’s concerns are parallel with liberal-leaning organizations that have now switched their focus from campaign finance reform to other issues of the day, such as gerrymandering, immigration and voting rights.

Refocusing attention is a matter of recognizing when you have the potential for change, which seems unlikely for campaign finance reform, said Michael Macleod-Ball, former manager of the ACLU’s federal advocacy office who now works in a consulting capacity for it.

Macleod-Ball said there are a number of factors that determine an organization’s priorities, such as considering what debates the public is having and what policies are directly affecting people’s lives.

“As a result, I think campaign finance reform or anything having to deal with campaign finance reform or disclosure is a relatively small priority compared to other things that are definitely occupying ACLU resources,” he said.

*Ashley Balcerzak, John Dunbar and Dave Levinthal contributed to this report.

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wowsa. he was for it before he was against it

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/newly-uncovered-video-exposes-mitch-mcconnells-corrupt-flip-flop-on-millionaires-funding-campaigns/

Newly uncovered video exposes Mitch McConnell’s corrupt flip-flop on millionaires funding campaigns

Newly uncovered video exposes Mitch McConnell’s corrupt flip-flop on millionaires funding campaigns

written by Alex Henderson June 7, 2019

recent years, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has wholeheartedly agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and opposed a broad swath of campaign finance regulations as a violation of the 1st Amendment. Citizens Unitedequated campaign contributions with speech, and McConnell backed that view. But an unearthed video of McConnell speaking in 1987 shows how egregiously he has flip-flopped.

Back in 1987, the Kentucky Republican (who is now 77) had only been in the U.S. Senate a few years: he was first elected to the Senate in 1984, defeating Democrat Walter Huddleston. In the 1987 video, McConnell was not only in favor of campaign finance regulations — he wanted a constitutional amendment setting limits on campaign contributions....“The constitutional amendment that I will be introducing is rather simple, and it deals with the millionaire problem,” McConnell explains in the video. “It simply would grant to this body and to the various state legislatures the authority to regulate what an individual could put into his own campaign — just like we have the constitutional authority to regulate what any of us can put into somebody else’s campaign.”

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https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/blowing-democracy-and-charities-one-fell-swoop

There’s a great deal wrong with the House-passed tax overhaul bill, but its most heinous provision may be one that effectively blows up both the campaign-finance laws and the charitable sector at the same time.

By essentially repealing the so-called Johnson Amendment, a tax provision that bars charities from engaging in partisan politics, the House legislation frees up big donors to funnel even more unlimited, undisclosed money into campaigns, and, for the first time, to deduct that money from their taxes. The bill also threatens the credibility and viability of charitable groups, and would drastically reduce charitable giving—even as it robs education, housing, and health-care assistance from working families who invariably will turn to charities for help.

The Senate tax bill does not repeal the Johnson Amendment, enacted in 1954 at the urging of then–Senate Minority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, and thousands of charitable and religious leaders are now lobbying to ensure that it stays in the final legislation. The list of those lined up against the repeal is impressive: 5,500 charities and foundations, 4,200 faith leaders, and more than 100 religious and denominational organizations.

So who wants it? Far-right Christian groups were the first to convince authors of the House bill to let churches alone engage in endorsements. But that measure was expanded at the last minute to include all charities, suggesting that big GOP donors, who would like nothing better than to deduct the big donations they funnel through nonprofits to influence elections, are gunning for it, too.

The repeal’s backers say it protects free speech and religious liberty, but these are red herrings. Churches and charities are perfectly free to endorse candidates, they just can’t do it with tax-free money. The government’s bargain with such groups is: We will exempt you from taxes and let you raise tax-deductible contributions, if you stay out of partisan politics. This protects charities from government meddling, and ensures that taxpayers aren’t forced to subsidize endorsements of candidates they oppose.

Campaign-finance watchdogs hate the repeal because it would create incentives for all political money to flow into unrestricted, secret channels. Right now, super PACs may raise unlimited money, but they at least must disclose its sources. Social-welfare and trade groups may raise limitless contributions, which they need not disclose, and they spend hundreds of millions on campaigns under the guise of promoting issues—but at least that money is not tax-deductible.

The House bill creates the very real possibility that political players will create sham “charities” and “churches” to rake in massive, undisclosed, and now tax-deductible campaign donations that will become the new normal in American elections. The campaign-finance system may seem like a world without rules today, but the freewheeling realm of super PACs and politically active social-welfare groups will look like a paragon of accountability and transparency if charities become the new vehicles of choice for political spending.

Even worse, say nonprofit-sector leaders, the bill would erode the public’s trust in charities, lumping them in with unpopular parties and candidates, and driving down contributions. “Charitable nonprofits don’t want to be dragged into the toxic political wasteland,” declared Tim Delaney, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, when the House unveiled its revised tax proposal earlier this month. Delaney and his allies warn that the House plan would also make churches and charities vulnerable to pressure from politicians.

The House tax bill purports to limit abuses by requiring charities to engage in politics only minimally and “in the ordinary course” of their normal activities. But this ill-defined standard would force the Internal Revenue Service, which has done virtually nothing to enforce political abuses by tax-exempts in any case, into the impossible role of charitable referee. If voters begin to see charities as quasi-political groups, moreover, Congress could face pressure to eliminate the deductibility of charitable contributions altogether.

All this comes on top of several other provisions in both the House and Senate tax bills that are expected to substantially reduce charitable giving. Both bills expand the standard tax deduction, which nonprofit sector advocates say would reduce charitable giving incentives for all but the wealthiest families. The House bill removes the estate tax, which has historically spurred charitable giving. The Senate bill retains the estate tax, but doubles the exemption amount—still threatening charitable donations, but to a lesser degree. The House bill would reduce charitable giving in 2018 by $12 billion to $20 billion, estimates the Tax Policy Center.

This year marks the centennial of the charitable tax deduction, which was first written into the tax code in 1917. Instead of celebrating, the nation’s charities are fighting for their lives. The GOP tax plan not only slashes services to average Americans to underwrite tax cuts for the super-rich, but also makes it harder for churches and other charities to pick up the slack. By erasing the firewall between charity and politics, the House bill doubles the damage. As Delaney, of the National Council of Nonprofits, told The American Prospect: “This is dangerous for democracy, and very harmful to the 501(c)(3) community.”

Eliza Newlin Carney is The American Prospect's senior editor.

==

==

https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/cost.php

==

2016?

The price of winning just got higher, especially in the Senate

This election cycle, an average winning Senate candidate had spent $10.4 million through Oct. 19 (reflecting the latest reports filed with the Federal Election Commission). That’s a :{$1.8 million increase}: over the same period in the 2014 cycle. By the end of last cycle, the number rose to $10.6 million, and a similar uptick is expected this time once post-election and year-end reports are filed.

...read more.

---

Setting a new record and driving much of the :{higher cost}: of this year’s elections over 2012’s, outside groups that weren’t formally connected to either political party broke $1.4 billion in outlays in the 2016 cycle. That’s :{up from the $1 billion}: these groups — mostly super PACs and 501(c) organizations — spent in 2012, and way up from the $338 million spent in 2008.

...read more.

===

==

wfb's little bro:

v valeo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo

A lawsuit was filed in the District Court for the D.C., on January 2, 1975, by Senator James L. Buckley, Conservative Party Senator from New York, former Senator,1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, a Democrat from Minnesota, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the Peace & Freedom Party, the Libertarian Party, and numerous other plaintiffs. The named defendant in the caption was Francis R. Valeo, the Secretary of the Senate an ex officiomember of the FEC who represented the U.S. federal government. The trial court denied plaintiffs' request for declaratory and injunctive relief. Plaintiffs then appealed to the Court of Appeals and finally to the Supreme Court.

The plaintiffs argued that the legislation violated the 1st and 5th Amendment rights to freedom of expression and due process, respectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_L._Buckley

==

Senator Bob Menendez

Senator Ed Markey

Senator Kay Hagan

Senator Mark Begich

Senator Michael Bennet

Senator Tom Udall

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick

Rep. Annie Kuster

Rep. Bill Enyart 

Rep. Bruce Braley

Rep. Carol Shea-Porter

Rep. Cheri Bustos

Rep. Dan Maffei 

Rep. Dave Loebsack

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Rep. Elizabeth Esty

Rep. Gary Peters

Rep. Jim McGovern

Rep. Joe Kennedy III

Rep. John Tierney

Rep. Julia Brownley

Rep. Linda Sanchez

Rep. Lois Capps

Rep. Louise Slaughter

Rep. Mark Takano

Rep. Nancy Pelosi

Rep. Niki Tsongas

Rep. Nita Lowey

Rep. Paul Tonko

Rep. Pete Gallego 

Rep. Rick Nolan

Rep. Ron Barber

Rep. Scott Peters

Rep. Steve Israel

Aaron Woolf, Candidate for Congress

Aimee Belgard, Candidate for Congress 

Amanda Renteria, Candidate for Congress

Andrew Romanoff, Candidate for Congress

Ann Callis, Candidate for Congress

Bobby McKenzie, Candidate for Congress

Domenic Recchia, Candidate for Congress 

Eric Schertzing, Candidate for Congress

George Sinner, Candidate for Congress 

Jerry Cannon, Candidate for Congress

Jim Mowrer, Candidate for Congress

Joe Bock, Candidate for Congress

John Foust, Candidate for Congress 

Margie Wakefield, Candidate for Congress

Martha Robertson, Candidate for Congress

Pam Byrnes, Candidate for Congress

Pete Aguilar, Candidate for Congress

Suzanne Patrick, Candidate for Congress

Dave Domina, Candidate for Nebraska Senate

Sandra Fluke, Candidate for California State Senate

Mark Schauer, Candidate for Michigan Governor

Mary Burke, Candidate for Wisconsin Governor

AMERIPAC, Steny H. Hoyer, Chairman

Daily Kos

LeftAction

DCCC

DSCC

New Jersey Democratic Party

 ==

http://ecowatch.com:{/2014/:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:04/30/dirty-money-dirty-fuels-politics/

What if fighting dirty money in our elections was the key to fighting dirty fuels in our economy?

That’s the question asked in a recent reportreleased by the Sierra Club and Oil Change International. From the perspective of the fossil fuel industry, political contributions are just another form of investment. The only difference is that, for the millions polluters spend on elections, they see billions in bonus profits.

As the report says, “The return these polluters are getting on these political investments—in the form of billions in corporate tax handouts—exceed 5,000 percent, demonstrating that Congress remains the best ‘investment’ possible for the coal, oil, and gas industries.”

The oil and gas industries are among the worst offenders. Between 2009 and 2010, the report estimates that they spent $347 million on lobbying and campaign contributions, and in return netted a handsome $20 billion in federal subsidies. Most of these came in the form of**accounting gimmicks**that help hide corporate profits and obscure tax breaks that help cover**drilling**and**refining**costs. Because of loopholes like these, the actual taxes paid by most big energy companies fall**well below**the top corporate rate of 35 percent.

You would think that at a time when both Democrats and Republicans are preoccupied with deficits and debt, cutting subsidies for polluters should be an easy move. After all, these are some of the most profitable companies in world history; surely they need government support like Bill Gates needs food stamps. The fact that many of these giveaways are nearly a century old, dating from a time when fossil fuel extraction was a much riskier game, only adds to their irrelevance. At a time of significant fiscal strain, decades-old free money for rich polluters should be the first thing on the chopping block.

Unfortunately, in the new world of campaign finance born after Citizens United and supercharged earlier this month by McCutcheon vs. FEC, money speaks much louder than fiscal and environmental sanity. The report points out that solid majorities of Americans support action on climate change, investment in renewable energy, and a repeal of fossil fuel subsidies. And yet, Congress is arguably in its most rabidly anti-environment phase in U.S. history, voting repeatedly to block action on climate change, cut support for renewable energy, and hobble enforcement of clean air and water provisions.

The only way to solve this disconnect is through a new system of public financing. As such, the Sierra Club and Oil Change International are throwing their weight behind the recently sponsored Government By The People Act, which would allow federal candidates to receive money from small donors matched on a six-to-one basis. This would not end money in politics, or even strip polluters of their ability to purchase influence.

Winning those fights has to be part of a much longer campaign against corporate personhood and the idea of money as free speech. But in the meantime, it would give candidates who share the increasingly pro-environment sentiments of the American people a chance to be heard. Friends of the Earth supports the Government By The People Act and its vision for a more healthy and just world.

——–

YOU ALSO MIGHT LIKE

Supreme Court Chooses Dark Money Billionaires Over Environment

Activist Tom Steyer Challenges Koch Brothers to Climate Debate

Climate Leaders Tell Bill Moyers About The Need For Global Fossil Fuel Divestment

===

 SJ 19 scholar testimony: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/06-03-14RaskinTestimony.pdf

JH: Just one year after their Citizens United decision unleashed CEOs to be able to roll truckloads of their shareholders' funds into our elections (without asking those shareholders for permission or even informing them after the fact), that same five assaulted our democracy again. Their 2011 verdict in the Arizona Free Enterprise Club case increased the volume of CorporateSpeak in elections by decreasing the speech of non-rich candidates. Specifically, they rejected the will of Arizonans who had voted to provide public funds for candidates who are willing to forego all special-interest money. This system gave the political ideas of the non-wealthy a chance to be heard when up against the multimillion-dollar PR megaphones of the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, BigOil, the Walmart heirs, and other super-wealthy oligarchs. Public financing of elections was successfully widening public debate and freeing up political speech, so the five corporate supremists stepped in to kill it, absurdly declaring that such laws give an "unfair advantage" to little-guy campaigns.

Next came this year's McCutcheon opinion, in which the same five blew the lid off the limits on money that an individual can pour on candidates during any given election cycle. The limit had been $123,000--high enough that only about 600 people out of our 330 million reached that maximum in 2012. The Court's narrow majority lifted the allowable total for one person's election-year spending to a stunning $5.9 million. That empowers a handful of the richest of rich donors--even fewer than 600--to overwhelm the political voices of millions of common citizens, all in the name of free speech. Adding to this absurdity, this five-man wrecking crew blithely declares in its McCutcheon ruling that even transactions that appear to be obvious conflicts of interest are permissible (e.g., a CEO can give $25,000 to the head of a congressional committee--the same person who a week later can put a bill on the floor to benefit the CEO's corporation). Such corrupt transactions apparently "do not justify" putting restrictions on campaign contributions. Instead, the wily ones ruled that the only donor-to-donee corruption that can be regulated is outright quid pro quo bribery.

==

Note: The Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today approved an amended S.J. Res. 19, a constitutional amendment proposed by U.S. Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that aims to overturnCitizens United v. Federal Election Commissionand other U.S. Supreme Court decisions relating to campaign finance.

===

CA camp finance reform

:{Introduced by Senator Lieu

(Principal coauthor: Senator Jackson)

(Coauthors: Senators DeSaulnier, Hancock, Padilla, and Torres)

(Coauthors: Assembly MembersMuratsuchi, V.ManuelPérez, Skinner, Wieckowski and Williams)

}:

February 21, 2014

SB 1272 that would put a MTA measure on the statewide ballot has passed out of the Senate and is headed to the Assembly. They may actually beat the looming deadline.

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB1272

BTW, it passed on a 23-12 vote. Every one of the 12 are Republicans.

==

CA win:  We did it!  On Wednesday, Governor Brown signed SB 27, the bill to force Dark Money non-profits to reveal their secret funders in California elections.

Here's what I said about it in the Sacramento Bee:

“Governor Brown’s signature of SB 27 marks a turning point in the fight to reveal secret funders of political campaigns. It starts to shed light on dark money in California and serves as an example for the entire nation."

Here's the full story in the Sacramento Bee:

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/05/14/6406111/gov-brown-signs-law-requiring.html

===

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/mccutcheon-supreme-court_n_3678555.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

Next Citizens United? McCutcheon Supreme Court Case Targets Campaign Contribution Limits

Posted: 07/31/2013 7:25 am EDT  |  Updated: 07/31/2013 1:10 pm EDT

WASHINGTON -- The next big campaign finance case to go before the Supreme Court began in February 2012 in the grand ballroom at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel during the "Ronald Reagan Banquet" at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Alabama electrical engineer and budding political donor Shaun McCutcheon broached a problem in conversation with conservative election lawyer Dan Backer, who one day earlier had led a CPAC panel on rolling back campaign finance laws in which he predicted that campaign contribution limits would soon rise.

McCutcheon had recently learned there were overall federal campaign contribution limits on what a single donor could give during a two-year election cycle. He voiced his annoyance to Backer and wondered if he could just ignore the aggregate limits -- something that a few dozen donors wound up doing, whether deliberately or inadvertently, in the 2012 election.

"He could tell I didn't like 'em, so he said we could challenge and it would go all the way to the Supreme Court," McCutcheon recalled in an interview with The Huffington Post. "I didn't really believe him."

A little more than a year later, McCutcheon, now joined by the Republican National Committee, is bringing the biggest campaign finance case before the Supreme Court since the controversial 2010 Citizens United decision. If the justices rule in their next term to toss the overall limits, it would mark the first time the Supreme Court had found a federal contribution limit unconstitutional and would open the door for even more money to flood the political system.

It would also be a major victory for counter-reformers, who have racked up a string of wins rolling back campaign finance regulation ever since Justice Samuel Alito replaced the more campaign regs-friendly Sandra Day O'Connor. And it would be a major blow to the campaign finance regime crafted in the 1970s following a string of corruption scandals culminating in the abuses revealed in the Watergate investigation.

For the 2013-2014 election cycle, Federal Election Commission rules state that a donor can give no more than $123,200 to all political committees with two sub-limits of $48,600 to candidates and $74,600 to political parties and political action committees. Without these overall caps, a single donor supporting one political party could theoretically give more than $5 million in individually limited contributions to every House candidate, every Senate candidate, every state party committee, every national party committee and every leadership PAC.

The case of McCutcheon v. FEC is being managed by a team of attorneys who have made careers out of working a long game to roll back campaign finance laws, including lead counsel Jim Bopp, the first lawyer on the Citizens United case, and Backer and Stephen Hoersting. The challengers argue that the aggregate limits are an unconstitutional burden on free speech and do not serve the purpose of reducing quid pro quo corruption or the appearance thereof.

"This is a case about how to spend your money how you choose, and it's a very important First Amendment case about freedom of speech," McCutcheon said. "We should be able to support as many candidates as we want. There's no reason to limit the number of candidates or committees."

Supporters of stronger campaign finance oversight disagree strongly. They say that campaign contribution limits being up for debate is a sign of how successful the counter-reformers have already been and how unfriendly the current Supreme Court is to campaign finance regulation.

"The fact that they are setting their sights on even this most basic feature of campaign regulation just shows how far the conversation has shifted on campaign finance," said Brenda Wright, vice president for legal strategies at Demos and the lead author of an amicus brief opposing McCutcheon. "And it's really important for the court not to take that next step. The court really needs to put a stop to the damage that's been done to our campaign finance regulations."

In a string of amici briefs filed with the Supreme Court on July 25, campaign reform advocates argue that the elimination of the aggregate limits would open the door for candidates to solicit checks of over $1 million through joint fundraising committees and undermine the individual contribution limits by allowing donations to be shifted among an unlimited number of candidates and PACs.

"This is a not very thinly disguised first step to try to get an absolute anything-goes, no-limits regime on campaign contributions," said Charles Fried, a former solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan and the author of an amicus brief submitted by Americans for Campaign Reform.

McCutcheon, however, denies that he wants to change the direct contribution limits, stating, "This is not about base limits. This is about aggregate limits."

Yet a ruling undoing overall contribution limits could, in fact, undermine the legal standing of individual contribution limits in future court challenges. University of California-Irvine election law professor Rick Hasen explained on his Election Law Blog, "It is possible in this case, for example, that the conservative five Justices ... set out a general standard for reviewing contribution limits which makes them harder to sustain against constitutional challenge."

Further, in the most radical and unlikely possibility, the court could decide that the case requires a ruling on the underlying question of the constitutionality of all contribution limits -- much as it did with independent spending in the Citizens United ruling -- and then find all such limits to be unconstitutional.

In the past, the Supreme Court has supported the overall limits as an extension of the direct contribution limits. The court in the landmark 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision found that the overall limits "prevent evasion of the [direct] contribution limitation by a person who might otherwise contribute massive amounts of money to a particular candidate through the use of unearmarked contributions to political committees likely to contribute to that candidate, or huge contributions to the candidate's political party."

The court has also found the acceptance or solicitation of "huge contributions" by lawmakers to be a legitimate concern, creating the appearance of corruption, if not leading to actual corruption, as in the Nixon White House.

In their brief before the court, however, McCutcheon and the RNC argue that the system of contribution caps supported in Buckley and subsequent decisions has been made irrelevant by the Citizens United ruling, which opened the door to unlimited independent spending by corporations, unions and, through a lower court ruling, individuals.

The unlimited spending allowed by Citizens United does raise the question of whether overall limits -- or even individual contribution limits -- matter when a donor can simply give unlimited amounts to support or oppose a candidate through a super PAC or a non-disclosing nonprofit. This reasoning has been echoed in a handful of state capitals where lawmakers have passed legislation since the 2010 decision to raise contribution limits in order to help candidates remain competitive with the rising tide of independent spending.

After pondering and rejecting this argument, D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown, writing for a three-judge panel in the lower court,predicted where the arguments made by McCutcheon and the RNC would be decided. "Plaintiffs raise the troubling possibility that Citizens United undermined the entire contribution limits scheme, but whether that case will ultimately spur a new evaluation of Buckley is a question for the Supreme Court, not us," she wrote.

The Supreme Court may ultimately decide to strike down or uphold the overall limits, but there is also a middle path. The court could find the overall limits to be generally constitutional, but their level to be unconstitutionally low. This would require Congress to set new caps that meet with whatever requirements the court decides are appropriate.

Oral arguments in McCutcheon v. FEC are scheduled for Oct. 8, with a ruling likely to arrive just in time for a potential new explosion of money in the 2014 midterms.

==

http://www.alternet.org/print/news-amp-politics/how-one-state-senate-just-screwed-whole-nation

==

With the final 2012 campaign finance reports, and their amendments, all in (well, mostly), the Center for Responsive Politics calculates that the elections cost at least $6.3 billion -- more than we previously estimated.

The final figure cements 2012's status as the most expensive election cycle ever.

The 2012 Election: Our Price Tag (Finally) for the Whole Ball of Wax

By Russ Choma on March 13, 2013 4:04 PM

 More

With the final 2012 campaign finance reports, and their amendments, all in (well, mostly), the Center for Responsive Politics calculates that the elections cost at least $6.3 billion -- more than we previously estimated.

The final figure cements 2012's status as the most expensive election cycle ever.

In late October, we estimated that the election would cost about $6 billion. Even that figure was a revision of a $5.8 billion calculus made earlier in the year. Skyrocketing outside spending continually exceeded estimates, causing us to revise up.

The cost of the presidential election alone remains at roughly the figure we calculated in late October, about $2.6 billion. Spending on congressional races by candidates and other committees and groups topped $3.6 billion in 2012.

:{

On the presidential level, President Barack Obama's re-election campaign outspent the campaigns of all his Republican rivals put together. Obama's campaign spent about $737.9 million, compared to the combined Republican total of $624.8 million. Spending by other committees in the presidential race, however, heavily favored Republicans and helped make up the deficit.}:

The Republican National Committee, for instance, laid out $333.9 million for the presidential contest, far more than the Democratic National Committee's $197.8 million. Outside spending by super PACs and politically active nonprofits on the presidential race also came out heavily in favor of Republicans. Conservative outside groups spent $454.5 million to get a Republican elected president, while liberal outside groups spent a relatively paltry $124.5 million.

(click to expand)

Spending by all House and Senate candidates topped $1.7 billion, with House candidates alone responsible for almost exactly $1 billion of the total.House Republican candidates held the edge in spending, accounting for about $532 million, while Democrats accounted for $447 million. In the Senate, Democratic candidates were also outspent -- $331.4 million to $408.5 million by the GOP Senate candidates.

Outside spending on congressional races also heavily favored Republicans over Democrats. Conservative outside spending groups spent $103.5 million on House races, compared to $81.6 million by liberal groups. Similarly, conservative outside groups spent $171.3 million on Senate races, while liberal outside groups spent $98.5 million.

One calculation by which Democrats led Republicans was in non-presidential party spending. Both parties together spent a total of $1 billion this election, of which $583 million was spent by the Democratic party committees and Republican party committees spent $444.7 million.

An important note: We have modified the methodology by which we calculate total cost, and thus a precise comparison between the costs of the 2012 election and the 2008 election is not possible. Previously, we calculated party spending by relying on press releases provided by the FEC. Now, we are able to use more detailed and newly provided summary data to calculate these totals. Furthermore, we used to be unable to include a calculation for spending by PACs on overhead expenses such as salary and office rent, but the new data allows us to include these totals. We have recalculated the final cost of the 2010 election, but can't do so for earlier cycles because the more detailed data is not available from the Federal Election Commission.

A full breakout of our analysis is below:

Researcher Doug Weber contributed to this article.

Categories:

• Congress,
• Congressional Elections,
• Election Overview,
• Politicians & Elections,
• Presidential Election

Tags:

• $6.3 billion,
• 2012,
• barack obama,
• Democratic National Committee,
• DNC,
• GOP,
• presidential race,
• Republican National Committee,
• RNC,
• russ choma,
• total cost of election

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/03/the-2012-election-our-price-tag-fin.html

===

Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a new case — :{McCutcheon}::{ v. Federal Election Commission}:.

The McCutcheon case attempts to undermine the total combined contributions limit for individuals (already set at tens of thousands of dollars), which will open a whole new floodgate of cash into our electoral system reserved only for the wealthy.

===

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/06/20/9145/us-chamber-gop-block-election-ad-transparency-bill

DISCLOSE ACT beat by US CoC/gop:

In 2010, legislation introduced by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., would require nonprofits that buy political ads to disclose their donors. The bill — fought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's most powerful business lobby — failed. A stripped-down version introduced this year has been blocked by Republicans in both the House and Senate.

The Chamber claims disclosure would “silence free speech.” Critics say its opposition is more about shielding the business association’s corporate donors from a potential public backlash.

While a handful of moderate Republicans, most notably campaign finance reform champion Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have considered taking up the bill this year, it’s still considered a longshot.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio also opposes the bill. His office did not did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but Boehner said the 2010 version was a "backroom deal to shred our Constitution for raw, ugly, partisan gain."

But in 2007, Boehner said on “Meet the Press” that there should be “full disclosure of all of the money that we raise and how it is spent.” And seven years before that, McConnell said on the same show that “Republicans are in favor of disclosure.” 

Despite numerous requests, Van Hollen, the bill’s author, did not grant an interview and instead released a statement through his representative. 

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from the DISCLOSE Act 2012.”

Disclosure has become a partisan issue — only two out of 114 cosponsors of the 2010 bill in the House were Republicans — then-Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., and Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. This year, not one of the House bill’s 160 co-sponsors or the Senate bill’s 44 co-sponsors is Republican.

Adam Skaggs, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for campaign finance reform, said that since the 2012 bill is more closely tailored to disclosure and not cluttered with other issues support or opposition among members of Congress should be telling.

“By eliminating some of the provisions that prompted opposition in the first version of the act, the current bill presents members with Congress with a stark choice,” he said. “Do you support transparency in elections or do you not?”

For up-to-date news on outside money in the election, follow our*Source2012 Tumblr*and the hashtag #Source2012 on Twitter.

full:ish

In 2010, legislation introduced by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., would require nonprofits that buy political ads to disclose their donors. The bill — fought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's most powerful business lobby — failed. A stripped-down version introduced this year has been blocked by Republicans in both the House and Senate.

The Chamber claims disclosure would “silence free speech.” Critics say its opposition is more about shielding the business association’s corporate donors from a potential public backlash.

Transparency means ‘informed decisions’

“Disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion in the Citizens United case. “This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

But the reality is there is often no transparency in the current system.

Crossroads GPS spent $16 million on “express advocacy” in 2010, more than $15 million on ads bashing Democrats. That’s far more than any other non-disclosing group, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan, nonprofit group that tracks money in politics.

The outside spending addressed by the high court is in two categories: Independent expenditures and electioneering communications.

An independent expenditure group buys ads that urge voters to support or reject a candidate. Electioneering communications allow the mention of a candidate but stop short of urging a yes or no vote. In either case, coordinating the ads with a candidate is prohibited.

What DISCLOSE discloses

The 2010 DISCLOSE Act introduced by Van Hollen contained a number of provisions that were not strictly related to disclosure. For example, it barred campaign contributions from government contractors, foreign-owned businesses and companies that received government bailouts.

Nonprofits were required to report their donors when spending reached a certain level. And it required the group’s leaders to appear in a disclaimer approving the message conveyed in the ad.

The Chamber spends the bulk of its money on electioneering advertising. A key provision of the bill would expand the definition of electioneering. Currently, only electioneering advertising made within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election must be reported.

Consequently, there is a disclosure gap.

And even when an ad buy is made within the disclosure period, the Chamber and other groups in the past have not revealed their donors. In Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission a judge recently decided that all donors who give more than $1,000 to electioneering groups must now be disclosed. An appeal of the decision is pending.

In response, the Chamber — which is a nonprofit corporation — announced on May 21 that it would no longer make electioneering ads and switch to independent expenditures so it can continue to keep its donors secret.

In 2010 the Chamber was especially outspoken against regulations on government contractors and argued the bill unfairly targeted businesses’ speech while insulating unions.

Unions also opposed parts of the bill. They were concerned that reporting requirements would pose an unnecessary burden by requiring fund transfers among chapters be reported within 24 hours.

Broadcasters voiced their opposition in 2010, particularly when it came to the provisions expanding the requirement that they offer political airtime at the lowest rate.

Clean bill

The 2012 DISCLOSE Act eliminates almost all those points of contention.

Restrictions on government contractors are gone and unions are subject to the same reporting requirements as the other groups.

Like the first version, DISCLOSE 2.0 requires that once an outside spending group has spent a certain amount, it must report the identity of each contributor who gave $10,000 or more. Groups must “stand by” their ads, the same way candidates do. And corporations, unions and other organizations that file annual financial reports must include their campaign-related spending.

In 2010, the Chamber was one of 113 organizations to lobby the bill and by far the largest. In 2010, it spent $100.2 million on lobbying. The 2012 bill hasn’t attracted nearly as much attention, due no doubt to its almost certain failure thanks to Republican opposition. The Chamber is again leading the fight. It sent a :{letter}:, signed by 124 organizations, to the Senate in May voicing its opposition.

Among the signers were the Associated Builders and Contractors and several of its local chapters, Edison Electric Institute and the Wichita Independent Business Association, whose board of directors includes Koch Industries’ vice president of government and public affairs, Mark Nichols.

The bill “is designed to chill the political speech of corporations, business interests, and others, while giving labor unions special protections,” the letter says. “The bill does not propose genuine reform — its disclosure requirements are transparently political and ultimately unconstitutional.”

Chamber spokeswoman Blair Latoff called the bill “politically motivated” and designed “to single out and stifle the speech of …the business community.”

The bill does not ban businesses from election advertising — it only requires them to go public. When asked how DISCLOSE would “stifle” speech, the Chamber did not respond. Advocates for disclosure say the speech issue is a smoke screen.

“By keeping its donors secret, the Chamber prevents the brand names of its members from being associated with policies and politicians that half of the public — their customers — reject,” said Bill Allison of the pro-open-government group the Sunlight Foundation. “The Chamber serves the interests of its members, and in politics, that means anonymity.”

Speech or secrecy?

As a tax-exempt trade organization, the Chamber does not report who its donors are, though filings with the IRS do include contribution totals. In 2010, the Chamber collected $188 million from contributions alone.

Its 138-member board of directors includes top executives from a cross-section of the largest corporations in America. Their interests include oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, transportation, telecommunications, insurance and finance.

Unions have been much quieter this time around. Bill Samuel, director of government affairs at the AFL-CIO, said they strongly support additional corporate disclosure.

“We’re pretty much an open book,” Samuel said, referencing the detailed reports on membership, dues, revenue and expenditures that unions file with the Department of Labor. “There’s no comparable disclosure for companies.”

The nation’s best-known defender of individual rights, the **American Civil Liberties Union**, opposes the bill.

“Anonymity in speech is really critically important,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, the ACLU’s legislative chief of staff. He said the bill harms groups that are purely involved in policy issues, not electing politicians.

The ACLU runs ads that fall into the electioneering communications category but does not take sides. If the issue at hand is controversial — Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, for example — revealing donors could increase the chance of retaliation, MacCleod-Ball said.

But Richard Hasen, a campaign finance lawyer, testified before a Senate committee that the bill’s high dollar-amount thresholds and the option for nonprofits to create a separate account to preserve the anonymity of donors who do not make election-related contributions provide ample constitutional protections.

“Disclosure laws can prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption … provide valuable information to voters … [and] help enforce other campaign finance laws,” he said.

Social welfare?

Groups like Crossroads GPS are organized as 501(c)(4)s and known as “social welfare” organizations. They may not make politics their “primary” activity, according to IRS rules.

These 501(c)(4) groups make up an increasing percentage of outside spending.

In the 2010 election, they outspent super PACs by a 3-to-2 margin, according to a Center for Public Integrity study.

Crossroads GPS, co-founded by Republican operative Karl Rove, is one of the most active nonprofits. In 2010 and 2011, it raised $76.8 million, the Center for Public Integrity has reported, far more than the $46.4 million raised by its sister super PAC American Crossroads during the same period.

Top Democratic 501(c)(4)s include Priorities USA, affiliated with pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action; American Bridge, affiliated with pro-Democrat super PAC American Bridge 21st Century; and America Votes, which gained prominence from a $1 million contribution in early May from hedge fund billionaire George Soros.*

GOP opposes DISCLOSE

DISCLOSE 2012 has gone nowhere.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., led the filibuster that doomed the bill in the Senate in 2010. A representative for McConnell would not comment on the 2012 bill despite repeated requests. 

While a handful of moderate Republicans, most notably campaign finance reform champion Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have considered taking up the bill this year, it’s still considered a longshot.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio also opposes the bill. His office did not did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but Boehner said the 2010 version was a "backroom deal to shred our Constitution for raw, ugly, partisan gain."

But in 2007, Boehner said on “Meet the Press” that there should be “full disclosure of all of the money that we raise and how it is spent.” And seven years before that, McConnell said on the same show that “Republicans are in favor of disclosure.” 

Despite numerous requests, Van Hollen, the bill’s author, did not grant an interview and instead released a statement through his representative. 

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from the DISCLOSE Act 2012.”

Disclosure has become a partisan issue — only two out of 114 cosponsors of the 2010 bill in the House were Republicans — then-Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., and Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. This year, not one of the House bill’s 160 co-sponsors or the Senate bill’s 44 co-sponsors is Republican.

Adam Skaggs, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for campaign finance reform, said that since the 2012 bill is more closely tailored to disclosure and not cluttered with other issues support or opposition among members of Congress should be telling.

“By eliminating some of the provisions that prompted opposition in the first version of the act, the current bill presents members with Congress with a stark choice,” he said. “Do you support transparency in elections or do you not?”

For up-to-date news on outside money in the election, follow our*Source2012 Tumblr*and the hashtag #Source2012 on Twitter.

* George Soros is the chairman and founder of the Open Society Foundations, which is a financial supporter of the Center for Public Integrity. To learn more about the Center’s funders, please go*here*.

Correction (June 26, 3:02pm):The Center originally reported that Crossroads GPS raised $76.8 million in 2011 and that American Crossroads raised $46.4 million in 2011. The story has been updated to indicate these totals are for 2010 and 2011.

===

History, incl pacS:  GANGS OF AMERICA

Only one problem stood in the way of corporations putting together

a system for deploying political money at the federal level: a

174

Progressive Era law known as the Tillman Act. The Tillman Act originated

in an 1898 scandal in the Republican Party involving Ohio mining

magnate Marcus Hanna, a major player in the party and a fundraiser for

William McKinley. It was Hanna who made the memorable observation,

“There are two things that are important in politics. The first is

money and I don’t remember what the second one is.”

Under Hanna’s direction, the Republican Party systematically extracted

contributions from banks and corporations, each according to its

“stake in the general prosperity.” The scandal led to calls for campaign

finance reform, which went unheeded until 1904, when Alton B. Parker,

the Democratic presidential nominee, charged that corporations were

providing gifts to President Theodore Roosevelt in return for access and

influence. Roosevelt denied the charges, and in his annual messages in

1905 and 1906 he called for campaign finance reform. Under the sponsorship

of Senator Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman, Congress began considering

such legislation, which finally passed and became law in 1907.

The Tillman Act banned contributions by corporations to federal campaigns.

In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act added labor unions to the ban.

On the surface, the 1970s did not look like an auspicious time to

try to undo the ban on the use of corporate political donations. In fact,

corporate donations had a particularly bad image at the time after revelations

during the Watergate scandal that numerous businesses had

doled out money to President Nixon from secret political slush funds. In

one notorious incident, the chairman of Archer Daniels Midland had

walked into the White House and handed the President’s personal secretary

an envelope stuffed with a thousand $100 bills. Eventually, twelve

corporations were shown to have donated $750,000 in cash to Nixon.

Given public outrage over such activities, it was unlikely that the

Tillman Act ban on corporate contributions to candidates would be revoked.

A more sophisticated avenue would have to be developed.

That avenue arrived from an improbable source: the labor movement.

After the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 had banned labor unions from

contributing to federal candidates, labor unions had invented the political

action committee. PACs had allowed unions to get around the ban

THE REVOLT OF THE BOSSES 175

on union political contributions by encouraging their members to donate

on an individual basis to a union-sponsored PAC, which in turn made

contributions to candidates.:{ But even after PACs were legalized for

corporations by the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971 and 1974,

corporations found them of little use because the law allowed them to

solicit stockholders but not employees.}:

In 1975 the legal status of PACs was finally addressed by the Federal

Election Commission in a little-known 1975 decision known as the

SUN-PAC ruling. Not only did SUN-PAC give the green light to corporate

PACs, it also gave corporations permission to solicit contributions

from their employees and to use their own treasury funds to manage

their PACs.

Prior to the SUN-PAC ruling, the use of PACs had depended on

the rare stockholder who happened to have a high degree of interest in

the political agenda of the company. After the ruling, corporations were

freed to “work” their own employees for contributions. In the mid-

1980s, researchers at the University of Massachusetts and the University

of Maryland began a series of anonymous interviews inside corporations

about how PAC money is raised. The results were revealing. At

some companies, the researchers found no attempt to pressure employees

to contribute to the company PAC. At other companies, the official

stance was “no pressure” but the methods used involved meetings where

employees were repeatedly solicited by their bosses. A typical pattern

was for the head of government relations, one of the firm’s lobbyists,

and the supervisor of a work unit to jointly lead a meeting of that unit’s

employees:

“We talk about the PAC and what it means to the company and

what it means to them as individuals, and we solicit their membership;

if they are members we solicit an increase in their gift.”

Then the employees boss is asked “to get up and say why they

are members and why they think it’s important for an employee

to be a member.”

176 GANGS OF AMERICA

The chair of the PAC insisted that any pressure to contribute came

from the employees themselves, not from their superiors:

“And yet regardless of how many times you say that, there’s always

going to be some employees who feel that you got them

into that meeting to put pressure on. But if they feel pressure it’s

self-imposed from the standpoint of the solicitation. Because

there will be several of us, including myself, who will get up and

say, we want you to be a member and here’s why.”

The researchers concluded that, given the nature of employeremployee

relations, the pressure to contribute to PACs is real, if somewhat

veiled: “If your boss comes to you and asks for a contribution saying

he or she hopes that all team players will be generous, it’s not easy

for you, an ambitious young manager, to say no.”

Not surprisingly, the research found that positions taken by corporate

PACs on legislative issues were not derived by a democratic process

among the employees making the contributions. In every company

surveyed, all such decisions were made by senior management. In effect,

the PAC served as a means for a corporation to make direct political

contributionsthe exact opposite of the intent of the Tillman Act.

After the SUN-PAC ruling, the use of PACs by corporations exploded.

In 1974, labor PACs outnumbered corporate PACs by 201 to

89. Ten years later, the numbers were reversed, with corporate PACs far

outnumbering labor PACs, 1,682 to 394.

For lobbyists, PACs became a resource to be systematically managed,

with overhead expenses paid for out of company coffers. Making

this resource even more effective was the arrival of organizations devoted

specifically to coordinating PAC activity among corporations.

These included the Business-Industry Political Action Committee

(BIPAC), the National Association of Business Political Action Committees,

and the National Chamber Alliance for Politics. Such coordination

allowed PAC money to be deployed with maximum effectiveness.

PAC money was only part of the picture. Another major source of

corporate money in federal politics was “soft money,” a category of

THE REVOLT OF THE BOSSES 177

contribution made possible by an administrative decision by the Federal

Election Commission in 1978 that allowed corporations, unions, and

wealthy individuals to contribute money to the parties for “party building”

purposes unrelated to influencing federal elections. This money

had to be kept in separate party accounts known as “nonfederal accounts.”

In practice, this money flowed from national parties to state

parties, where it was spent in ways that supported candidates. Although

some of the largest donors of soft money were labor unions, corporations

overall outpaced labor unions in soft money contributions by a

margin of 10 to 1. In 1999, labor unions contributed $33 million in soft

money. Business interests contributed $368 million.

In 2002, spurred by public rage over the Enron scandal, the U.S.

Senate passed the McCain-Feingold bill banning soft money contributions,

and the House passed the similar Shays-Meehan bill. The two

bills were then reconciled as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act

(BCRA). The new law offered the hope that the flow of soft money

would be cut off, thereby reducing corporate influence over federal legislation.

But opponents immediately sued in federal court to have it

blocked on the grounds that the BCRA violated the “free speech” rights

of corporations.:{ It was expected that eventually those suits would end

up in the Supreme Court, where the bill faced an uncertain fate due to

the strong possibility that the Court would find it a violation of corporate

First Amendment rights.}:

But even if the BCRA were to withstand such a challenge, a more

practical problem was the likelihood that corporate political money

would merely be rerouted through political action committees. PACs are

certainly a less convenient way of raising money, since they require a

large amount of logistical attention in order to assemble contributions in

$1,000 blocks. Nevertheless, as had been shown by the entire nature of

the corporate political mobilization since 1971, that sort of logistical

expertise was where corporations, with their in-house organizational

resources, had their biggest advantage in the political process.

So what about a simple, direct approach? Why not simply ban corporations

from the political arenaperiod? Far from being a pie-in-the

178

GANGS OF AMERICA

sky proposition, such laws once existed in some states. Consider Wisconsin,

for example. Until 1970, that state had the following statute on

the books:

No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute,

or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly,

any money, property, free service of its officers or

employees or thing of value to any political party, organization,

committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or

for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote

or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment

or election to any political office. [Wis. Laws, Section

4479a (Sec. I, ch 492, 1905)]

Clearly, the enactment of such a statute at the federal level would

accomplish far more than merely removing corporate campaign contributions

from the political process. If written broadly, it could also stop

corporate political lobbying, corporate media blitzes on referendums,

and corporate influence machines like the American Legislative Exchange

Council. With such legislation in place, corporations could still

send their representatives to testify before legislative committeeson

invitation only. The 60,000 corporate lobbyists who work the hallways

of the Capitola hundred for every Congressman and Senatorwould

have to go home, and the democratic institutions of American society,

including courts, legislatures, and regulatory bodies, would all hang out

a prominent sign: for human beings only. gangs of am

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/efforts-amend-constitution-limit-speech-will-fail-citizens-united-president-says

---

GOP platform:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/gop-plank-in-2012-platform-wants-to-leave-campaign-spending-alone/2012/08/29/c1cc2dee-f202-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html

By Bill Turque, Published: August 29

The Republican Party’s 2008 platformcontained not a mention of campaign finance reform in its 68 pages. The omission was in deference to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the GOP presidential nominee and co-author of McCain-Feingold. The groundbreaking 2002 measure banned unlimited donations to parties, placed new strictures on political advertising and tried to roll back the ability of wealthy individuals to self-fund their candidacies.

Rather than tarnish their standard bearer by challenging his signature legislative achievement, the platform’s authors skirted the issue entirely.

What a difference a presidential election cycle makes. A series of court decisions striking down parts of McCain-Feingold — and a new nominee — have led to a new plank in the 2012 platform on regulation of campaign spending.

It says there should be next to none.

“We oppose any restrictions or conditions that would discourage Americans from exercising their constitutional right to enter the political fray or limit their commitment to their ideals,” it declares on page 12. The platform calls for repeal of what remains of McCain-Feingold — mainly the ban on “soft” money contributions to parties — and either raising or abolishing donation limits. It also opposes passage of any law that would weaken the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which did away with prohibitions against corporate or union spending on elections. The platform specifically mentioned the Democrat-supported DISCLOSE Act, which would require independent groups to list the names of those donating more than $10,000. The bill died in the Senate this year. The plank also calls for no regulation of political speech on the Internet.

The enduring truism about party platforms is that every four years they are drafted, debated, voted on and forgotten. But Republican National Committee member James Bopp Jr., who drafted the campaign finance section, said it matters because it speaks to long-standing sentiment inside the party.

“I’m just glad we can reflect what the grass-roots of the party believe,” said Bopp, an Indiana lawyer who has worked for years to deregulate campaign funding. “They support the First Amendment and they support no campaign finance restrictions, by and large, ” he said.

 ...

In 1992, the GOP called for elimination of corporate and union political action committees. Four years later, it endorsed “full and immediate disclosure of all contributions” and a crackdown on soft money.

By 2004, the conservative trend emerged. The party firmly established campaign funding as a First Amendment issue with no government restrictions on individual political expression. But it also called for “full and timely disclosure on the Internet of all campaign contributions.”

Bopp and other supporters of minimal regulation said there has been no retreat from the idea of transparency.

“We’re not opposing any disclosure rules that we’ve supported in the past,” said Bradley Smith, a former Federal Election Commission chairman and now chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, a group that advocates for lighter regulation of campaign finance.

They said the DISCLOSE Act was a partisan measure that would have gone beyond anything the party previously supported — targeting for exposure individual donors to multi-purpose advocacy groups who may not be involved in campaign activity. One provision called for an organization’s top five contributors to be listed in ads. But supporters said donors could remain anonymous by stipulating that their money not be used for campaign purposes.

Democrats have yet to unveil the 2012 platform that delegates will vote on in Charlotte next week. DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse did not return a phone call Wednesday afternoon.

They might take a cue from President Obama, who sided with liberal activist groups when he suggested Wednesday that a constitutional amendment might be needed to blunt Citizens United and the rise of the super PACS that can spend unlimited sums.

In a chat with the Web community Reddit, Obama wrote: “Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.”

 ===

After a bruising months-long fight between media corporations and the Federal Communications Commission, a government website came online today that will feature political ad data from television stations around the country.

This means that detailed files about political advertising — which show who is buying political ads, how much they are paying, and when the ads are running, among other information — will finally be available online. In the past, those interested in the files, which are by law public, had to travel to stations to get physical copies.

Insisting on Transparency—Even from the Media

Though the new system is far from perfect, it will likely give the public and journalists a new window into how an expected few billion dollars are spent on political ads on local television this election cycle.

For now, only the affiliates of the top four broadcast networks in the top 50 markets will have to upload their political files to the FCC site. (The Sunlight Foundation has a map of the missing markets here.) All broadcasters will have to start complying in July 2014.  And the rule is not retroactive for political ad data — so the site will only have information on political ad buys going forward.

===

DISCLOSE act:7.12 The vote was 53 for and 45 against, along party lines. For a bill to proceed, 60 votes in favor are needed to overcome the filibuster threat.

Not one Republican senator crossed the aisle to join Senate Democrats in supporting this modest reform bill, which merely would require public disclosure when a corporation, labor union, billionaire or anyone else spends $10,000 or more on political advertising.

Not one Republican senator stood up to prevent unaccountable interest groups from anonymously funding the smears, half-truths and outright lies that will inundate our televisions, radios and computer screens.

Rooting out the corruption of our political system by corporations and wealthy special interests should not be a partisan issue.

Believe it or not, lots of Republican senators have said they think voters should know whose money is behind the attack ads that smear candidates during election seasons.

180

Among the Republican senators who once supported such reforms are Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Scott Brown (R-Ma.), Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and, of course, John McCain (R-Ariz.).

On Tuesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) even stood up and gave a speech about how she believes the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commissionis “corrosive” to our democracy.

Republicans Vote to Block Transparency on Political Ads

The opponents of a new rule to post political ad information online have opened up another front in a long-running fight, inserting language into an appropriations bill that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the transparency measure.

The FCC voted in April to require television stations to put detailed data on political ad purchases online. The information, which includes who buys ads, for how much, and when they run, is currently open to the public but is available only on paper at individual stations. Media companies have lobbied hard against the rule, and the National Association of Broadcasters recently sued in federal court to stop it. The rule is currently under review by the government and will not go into effect until July at the earliest.

Impact

Insisting on Transparency—Even from the Media

Related Coverage

Campaign 2012

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., chair of the financial services and general government subcommittee of the House appropriations committee,added language to an appropriations bill ordering that no funds to be used to implement the disclosure rule. The bill, which passed the subcommittee Wednesday, funds the FCC and other agencies for fiscal year 2013.

==

ucs recs 5/12

Specific Recommendations

for the Legislative Branch

No branch of government has a more important

role to play than Congress in creating federal

climate policy that is strongly based on climate

science. Congress should use its authority to

ensure that legislators and the public are being

responsibly served and informed.

• Congress should approve the Democracy Is

Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in

Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, or similar legislation,

to enhance disclosure of indirect political

contributions.

• The Lobbying Disclosure Act should be

strengthened and enforced. Although companies

are currently required to report their lobbying

expenditures, the content of these reports is

often vague and incomplete. A more robust

policy, including mechanisms for monitoring

and enforcement, is needed to inform the

public on corporate lobbying activities.

• Congress should investigate discrepancies

between climate positions presented by

Congress should use its authority to require greater transparency in the political activity of corporations and the

organizations that represent them.

companies in congressional oversight hearings

and those they have presented elsewhere.

Congress should hold companies accountable

---

research:  http://www.cgs.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=54

===

It Takes Dark Money to Make Dark Money

Karl Rove's dark-money group doles out $2.75 million to an outfit fighting to keep dark money in the dark.

By Andy Kroll | Fri Apr. 20,2012

---

When Crossroads GPS [1], the conservative nonprofit started [2] by GOP political gurus Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, isn't dropping millions of dollars on anti-Obama ads, it's doling out tens of millions more to like-minded groups. "The ATM of the Right," Politico recently called [3] Crossroads. Between May 2010 and December 2011, new tax records show, Crossroads gave [4] $4 million to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform and $500,000 to former Sen. Norm Coleman's American Action Network, among others.

But there was another recipient of Crossroads cash that stood out: the Center for Individual Freedom [5], which snagged $2.75 million. Among political money experts, CFIF is known for its aggressive legal strategy aimed at toppling disclosure laws at the state level. In other words, Crossroads GPS, which doesn't name its donors, gave millions to another dark-money group whose goals include fighting to keep dark money in the dark.

Spokesman Jonathan Collegio wrote in an email that Crossroads GPS' donations to "effective center right organizations" such as CFIF are intended to "help build an enduring infrastructure on the right—just as labor unions have funded organizations on the Left for decades."

Founded in 1998, the Center for Individual Freedom says its mission is to "protect and defend individual freedoms and individual rights guaranteed by the US Constitution." CFIF preaches [6] free-market reforms, opposes government regulations, and slams [7] labor unions [8]. The group blasts President Obama's Affordable Care Act as an assault on freedom [9], wants lower corporate tax rates [10], and demands less government in the lives of Americans. (CFIF did not respond to four requests for comment.)

Little is known about who funds CFIF. Archival records at the University of California-San Francisco show that CFIF once received financial support (PDF [11]) from the National Smokers Alliance, a tobacco industry front group. But that's about all. In its legal filings, CFIF's says its willingness to tackle "controversial" issues means that many of its funders ask to remain anonymous. To that end, CFIF "staunchly and zealously" guards donors' privacy, the group says. Forcing CFIF to reveal those donors would hurt its revenue and "its ability to speak would be impaired." Disclosure requirements cause "irreparable injury," as the group argued in one case, and violate constitutionally protected speech.

Since 2004, CFIF has launched a broad legal campaign to roll back disclosure rules. It has filed lawsuits in Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, arguing that those states' disclosure and reporting laws "chill" the free-speech rights of groups like CFIF. In Center for Individual Freedom v. Carmouche, a federal case filed in Louisiana in 2004, CFIF argued that it "wants to address citizens of Louisiana on matters of public importance, and many in Louisiana want to hear what the Center has to say." Yet Louisiana's laws requiring that groups behind political spending disclose their donors and disbursements "make it impossible for the Center to speak."

More recently, CFIF weighed in on the high-profile *Van Hollen v. FEC*lawsuit [12] winding its way through the court system. At issue in Van Hollenis a Federal Election Commission loophole that lets donors bankroll so-called "issue" ads without having to disclose their names—a break from years prior. Last month, a federal judge struck down that loophole. The result could mean that the US Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS have to reveal [13] more of their contributors. CFIF, which supports the FEC's loophole, joined the Van Hollencase as an "intervenor," which gives it the option of appealing the judge's decision.

Though little known, CFIF is a formidable player, say supporters and critics. It retained Jan Baran [14], a powerful DC election law attorney, to argue its disclosure cases in Louisiana and West Virginia, both of which it won. Known as the "dean of campaign finance," Baran has argued numerous campaign finance cases before the Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FECin 2003 and Citizens United v. FEC in 2010.

Paul Ryan, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center, which supports more campaign finance regulation, calls CFIF's anti-disclosure cases "meritless" but says the group shouldn’t be underestimated. "They don't come across as wingnuts who don't know what they're talking about," Ryan says. "They come across as skilled lawyers who need to be taken seriously."

CFIF's anti-disclosure efforts, Ryan adds, illustrate the latest salvo by conservatives and libertarians in their decades-long attack on campaign finance laws. Joining CFIF in this fight is Republican super-attorney James Bopp Jr., who has multiple disclosure cases in the works nationwide, and the libertarian Center for Competitive Politics. "Challenging disclosure laws," Ryan says, "is the new wave of campaign finance deregulation litigation."

Supporters of disclosure, like Ryan, hold out hope that such laws will survive these legal challenges, even if they make it all the way to Supreme Court. Although the Roberts court has repeatedly struck down political spending limits as unconstitutional, it has written in support of disclosure on multiple occasions. In the Citizens Uniteddecision, for instance, eight of the nine justices upheld the disclosure rules [15] under challenge; in his written opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy stressed [16] the importance of transparency, which "permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way."

Yet the conservative fight against disclosure laws isn't going away soon, says Fred Wertheimer, a leading advocate of campaign finance regulation with the group Democracy 21. "This is part of an effort that's based on the idea that they have a favorable Supreme Court majority," he says, "and they might as well try to take this as far as they possibly can."

---

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/karl-rove-crossroads-gps-center-individual-freedom

Links:

[1] http://www.crossroadsgps.org/

[2] http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-19/secret-donors-multiply-in-u-s-with-finances-dwarfing-watergate

[3] http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=D1E422E9-801D-4A80-9FD6-870A6719B97B

[4] http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-secret-donors-pour-millions-of-dollars-into-crossroads-gps-20120417,0,6124833.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

[5] http://cfif.org/v/

[6] http://cfif.org/v/index.php/the-issues/56-health-care/1291-direct-pay-medicine-a-free-market-approach-to-healthcare-reform-

[7] http://cfif.org/v/freedom_line_blog/13455/spectrum-stall-fcc-and-big-labor-impeding-innovation-and-economic-opportunity/

[8] http://cfif.org/v/freedom_line_blog/13562/louisiana-teacher-unions-happy-to-sell-out-kids-for-political-gain/

[9] http://cfif.org/v/index.php/commentary/56-health-care/1321-whats-really-at-stake-with-obamacare-legal-battle

[10] http://cfif.org/v/index.php/press-room/1290-conservative-leaders-call-on-president-congress-to-pass-corporate-tax-reform

[11] http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/qws17a00/pdf?search=%22center%20for%20individual%20freedom%22

[12] http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation/van_hollen.shtml

[13] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/koch-brothers-rove-fec-campaign-donations_n_1392838.html

[14] http://www.wileyrein.com/professionals.cfm?sp=bio&id=33#rep

[15] http://www.demos.org/publication/testimony-support-disclose-act-united-states-senate-committee-rules-and-administration

[16] http://eshoo.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1151:the-prescription-to-citizens-united&catid=5&Itemid=100014

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF HAWAII

IN THE MATTER OF MARY LOU WOO TRUSTEE, PLAINTIFF

vs

BOBBY N. HARMON, DEFENDANT

:{_CIVIL NO. 05-00030- DAE-KSG_:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:

(JUDGES DAVID A. EZRA AND KEVIN S. CHANG)

DEFENDANT’S WITNESS

MITCH McCONNELL

Republican Senator from Kentucky; majority whip in the Senate; major opponent of the McCain-Feingold Bill for Campaign Finance Reform and major proponent of unlimited campaign contributions based upon the First Amendment ; husband of U.S. Secretary of Labor, _Elaine Chao_.

On December 10, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 in a 5 to 4 decision seen as a victory for campaign finance reform advocates. After a six and a half year effort, the Senate passed BCRA in a 60 to 40 vote on March 20, 2002. President Bush quietly signed the measure into law (Public Law No. 107-155) on March 27, 2002; it took effect on November 6, 2002. The law next faced the Federal Election Commission's rulemaking process and _legal challenges_. 

On March 21, 2002, the day after the Senate passed the bill, Sen. Mitch McConnell, who termed the measure "unconstitutional" and an "assault" on freedom of speech, announced the heavyweight legal team he has put together to challenge the legislation--Floyd Abrams, :{_Judge Kenneth Starr_}:, James Bopp, Bobby R. Burchfield, Jan Baran, and Dean :{_Kathleen M. Sullivan_}:. The very day Bush signed the bill, McConnell filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Suits by various other groups were consolidated into McConnell v. FEC. 

Senator Mitchell McConnell

361-A Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

Fax: (202) 224-2499

This witness is expected to testify regarding his political, business, professional and personal relationships with _Jack Abramoff_, _Karl Rove_, _“Scooter” Libby_, Hal Rogers, Ernie Fletcher, _Gale Norton_, _Bureau of Indian Affairs_, _The Nature Conservancy_, _Henry Paulson_, _Peter Savio_, Frank Carlucci, _Carlyle Group_, Ashland Oil, _Aloha Petroleum_, _:{Wackenhut_}:, _John Peyton_, _Corrections Corp. of America_, _John Snow_, _**CSX,**Inc._, Ralph Reed, Jr., Grover Norquist, Michael Scanlon, _Dan Inouye_, _Daniel Akaka_, _Neil Abercrombie_, _Ed Case_, _Linda Lingle_, Maurice Greenberg, _American International Group_ (AIG), Lippo Group, _Robert Rubin_, _Citigroup_, James T. Riady, John Huang, _Sukamto Sia_, Al Gore, William B. Blount, Protective Life Corp., CRC Protective Life Insurance, _Office of Hawaiian Affairs_, _Bill Frist_, _Columbia/HCA_, Hawaiian Tropics, _Randy “Duke” Cunningham_, _Titan Corp._, _:{Kathleen Sullivan}:_, and other entities to be named upon discovery. 

Internet References:

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell_ 

:{_www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a6553426d0f.htm_:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}: 

:{_www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002/03/22/usat-campaign.htm_:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}: 

_www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=393_ 

_www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/030519/19mcconnell.htm_ 

_www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mitch_McConnell_ 

_http://oakland.drinkingliberally.org/_ 

_www.cwa9430.org/ramblings.html_ 

_www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10723902/from/RL.5/_ 

:{_www.opensecrets.org/1996os/detail/S2KY00012.htm_:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}: 

:{_http://mcconnell.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=224452&start=1_:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}: 

_www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/07/18/loc_kydiscipline18.html_ 

_www.the-catbird-seat.net/Titan-Corp.htm_ 

_www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5394_ 

:{_http://hawaiiankingdom.info/C608676235/E20050723045558_:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}:_/_ 

_www.kpua.net/news.php?id=5812_ 

:{_www.the-catbird-seat.net/Title-VIII-Appropriations-10-28-0.pdf_:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}: 

_www.the-catbird-seat.net/Prisons-Mitch-McConnell.htm_ 

:{_www.the-catbird-seat.net/Octopus.htm_:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}: 

_:{www.the-catbird-seat.net/PrivatePrisons.htm:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}:_ 

_www.the-catbird-seat.net/BrokenTrust.htm_ 

_www.the-catbird-seat.net/NuclearNests.htm_ 

_www.the-catbird-seat.net/Paradise3.htm_ 

_www.the-catbird-seat.net/IndonesianConnection.htm_ 

_www.the-catbird-seat.net/DCBats.htm_ 

TO GO TO THE WOO VS. HARMON WITNESS INDEX 

---

apparently no correlation to real democracy?

Clean Elections

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Clean Elections" (variously called, "Clean Money," "Voter-Owned Elections," or "Fair Elections") is a term used to describe a particular system of government financing of political campaigns, in which the government provides a grant to candidates who agree to limit their and private fundraising efforts and limit their campaign-spending.

[edit] In the United States

Clean Election initiatives are used in a small number of states and local political jurisdictions in the United States. Some form of Clean Elections legislation has been adopted by ballot initiative in Maine, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. It was also adopted by legislative action in Connecticut and at the municipal level in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Portland, OR. However, the systems in Massachusetts and Portland were later repealed, while Vermont's was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds.

These laws have increasingly run into constitutional problems in the Courts. Substantial portions of the Vermont system were found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Randall v. Sorrell. Connecticut's statute was held unconstitutional in August, 2009, on grounds that it unfairly discriminated against third party and independent candidates.^[1] In July 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld portions of the District court's order but allowed the core program to continue.^[2]

On June 27, 2011, ruling in the consolidated cases Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett and McComish v. Bennett, the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional the matching-funds provision of the Arizona law.^[3] The decision throws similar provisions in Maine, Wisconsin, and elsewhere into doubt. As a result, the Wisconsin legislature eliminated funding for its judicial elections in 2011.

Additionally, voters have defeated clean elections in several recent referendums. In Massachusetts the system was repealed after a 2002 advisory initiative in which voters voted nearly 2 to 1 against using government funds to pay for political campaigns. Portland, Oregon's program was narrowly repealed by voters in a 2010 referendum.^[4] In 2008, a Clean Elections bill, the California Fair Elections Act (AB583) passed the California Assembly and Senate and was signed by Governor Schwarzenegger. To take effect, however, the law had to be approved by voters in an initiative in June 2010. On June 8, 2010, California voters defeated the measure by 57% to 43%.^[5] An earlier Clean Elections ballot initiative, Proposition 89 was also defeated in California in 2006, by 74% against to 26% in favor. A Clean Elections ballot initiative in Alaska failed by a 64% to 35% margin in August 2008,.^[6]

^....

Effectiveness

A 2003 study by the federal government's nonpartisan General Accounting Office (GAO), requested by Congress as part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law passed in 2002, found that the Clean Elections system had failed to produce measurable benefits in the two election cycles run under the system in both Maine and Arizona. The average number of candidates per district, percentage of contested races, incumbency rates, incumbency victory margins, perceptions of interest group influence among candidates and citizens, and voter participation did not change notably. Campaign spending decreased in Maine but increased in Arizona and independent expenditures increased in both states. 60% of Maine and 37% of Arizona voters were unaware of the public financing program. The study concluded that "with ... only one election from which to observe most statewide races, it is too early to draw causal linkages".^[10]

A 2006 study of the 2004 and 2002 campaigns by political scientists Mayer, Werner, and Williams of the University of Wisconsin—Madison argued that the GAO "understate[d] the reforms' impact, in part by making some unusual methodological choices and jettisoning valuable data." They found that the candidate pool and competitiveness increased significantly, while the incumbency rate dropped significantly.^[11] A 2007 update, however, found that in the 2006 campaign competitiveness continued to increase slightly but reelection rates "returned to pre-reform levels". The number of at least nominally contested races also continued to increase, reaching 100% in Maine. Mayer, Werner and Williams also found that women were much more likely than men to accept public funding but this had no effect on the gender composition of the legislature.^[12] A study by the non-partisan, privately funded Clean Elections Institute^[13] found that the number and geographic, economic, and ethnic diversity of campaign contributors increased significantly, with contributors almost quadrupling, contributions from people with incomes below $40,000 increasing by 40% and contributions from Latinos increasing significantly.^[14] A 2008 study by the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Competitive Politics concluded that the process of gathering small contributions needed to qualify for public funding still relied heavily on interest groups.^[15] Another 2008 study by the Center for Competitive Politics of Clean Elections programs in Maine and Arizona found that neither state had seen a decline in legislators with “traditional” [law and business] backgrounds in the eight years since the campaign laws were first implemented.^[16]

Other studies conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Competitive Politics, found that the programs in Maine, Arizona, and New Jersey had failed to accomplish other stated goals, including electing more women ([1]), reducing government spending (in fact in both states government spending grew more rapidly after the enactment of clean elections) ([2]), or meeting most other stated objectives, including increasing competition or voter participation. ([3])

A 2006 study by the non-partisan, libertarian-leaning Goldwater Institute found that "incumbency rates have remained near 100% [while] the number of candidates fell substantially ... from 247 to 195. Moreover, the law has not increased minor or third-party participation in politics, and Arizona campaigns remain every bit as hard-edged." However, according to the Clean Elections Institute, the number of legislative candidates increased from 135 in 1998 ([4]), the last year before Clean Elections, to 188 in 2004, as reported in the Goldwater study—a 40% increase. In 2006 there were 204 legislative candidates ([5]), a 51% increase over the pre-Clean Elections numbers.^[17]

In 2008, a study released by the non-partisan, non-profit organization Public Campaign, examined the demographic profile of $5 qualifying contribution donors in Clean Elections gubernatorial campaigns in Arizona over the course of the 2002 and 2006 elections, comparing and contrasting them with contributions raised by candidates running with funding from private sources — more than 67,000 contributions in all. The data were analyzed by zip code alongside U.S. Census data to determine the racial, ethnic, geographic, and economic characteristics of donors. The study, titled All Over The Map, found that Arizona’s qualifying contribution donors are more diverse racially, ethnically, economically, and geographically than donors giving to candidates who choose to rely on private fundraising. In nearly every category, Clean Elections $5 donors were more representative of the state's population than were donors to privately funded campaigns. However, the study has been criticized because it compares donors to Clean Elections only to donors of $200 or more to federal campaigns - in other words, it compared $5 donors under clean elections to $200 donors in federal races, rather than comparing the common universe of all donors, or donors at the same levels of contributions. Federal candidates are not required to report names and addresses of contributors of less than $200 to federal candidates thus the information is not made public.

[edit] Supporters

SB 752, the Fair Elections Now Act, calling for Clean Elections in U.S. senate campaigns, was sponsored in the 111th Congress (2009–10) by Senators: Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (D-PA).^[18] A companion bill, H.R. 1826, was introduced in the House, sponsored by John Larson (D-CT), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), and Walter Jones (R-NC). Unlike the Clean Elections laws in Maine and Arizona, H.R. 1826 dids not include the "rescue funds" provision, perhaps due to concern about constitutionality in the wake of the Davis decision. Neither bill moved out of Committee.

Others who have endorsed clean elections include:

• Barack Obama as an Illinois senator was the first co-sponsor of the 2007 version of the Durbin-Specter bill.^[19]

• John Bonifaz, founder of the National Voting Rights Institute
• Bill Bradley (D-NJ), former U.S. Senator^{[citation needed]}
• John Edwards (D-NC), former U.S. Presidential Candidate and Senator ^[20]
• Adonal Foyle, NBA player, and founder of Democracy Matters
• Cecil Heftel (D-HI), former U.S. Representative
• Ned Lamont (D-CT), former U.S. Senate candidate^{[citation needed]}
• John McCain (R-AZ), U.S. Presidential Candidate and Senator ^[21][22] (McCain has also expressed opposition to a national version of the system and has not endorsed or co-sponsored the bills introduced in the U.S. Senate.^[23])
• Ralph Nader of Connecticut, U.S. Presidential Candidate^{[citation needed]}
• Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), former Governor, current Secretary of Homeland Security^{[citation needed]}
• Bill Richardson (D-NM), U.S. Presidential Candidate and Governor^{[citation needed]}
• Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), former Governor ^[24]
• John Eder Green Party leader who utilized Maine's public financing to win office to the Maine State Legislature

[edit] See also

• Iron triangle
• Money trail
• Political finance, section on Regulation

---

hightower 8/11

2006. Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas vote to overturn limits that the people of Vermont placed on campaign contributions.

2007. The same five throw out Wisconsin's effort to keep corporations from swamping their elections with last-minute ad blitzes.

2008. The same five strike down the "millionaire's amendment," a part of the McCain-Feingold election finance reform passed by Congress in 2002; this provision had allowed candidates who were confronted by self-financed millionaire opponents to raise more money than otherwise allowed in order to level the playing field.

June 27, 2011. The same five kill the "matching funds" provision ofArizona's Citizens Clean Elections Act--a provision that was key to making the state's extremely popular and successful public financing system work.

The Arizona ruling was a stinging slap in the face to the conscientious citizens of that state. Arizonans have labored diligently to free their politics from the corruption of big money, while also opening the possibility of holding office to those who don't have piles of money or don't want to be beholden to those who do. Nauseated in the 1990s by an epidemic of gubernatorial and legislative scandals, the people themselves launched a grassroots initiative to get the democracy-destroying corrosion of special-interest political contributions out of their elections. In 1998, Arizona voters emphatically said, "yes."

Their Clean Elections Act established a voluntary public financing system that gave office-seekers of all parties and all economic classes an alternative, no-strings-attached way to finance their campaigns. By agreeing not to take any special interest contributions, these candidates received a fixed sum of public money--enough for them to be competitive under normal campaign conditions and have their voices heard. However, abnormal happens. So, if clean-running contenders found their voices being drowned out by a flood of special interest cash flowing to a rival, the "matching funds" provision allowed them to get a limited level of extra money from the public fund to help counter the free-spending opponent's unfair advantage.

It is this matching mechanism that the mammon-worshipping Supremes went after. Why? Because it works. Former Governor Janet Napolitano, for example, says she could not have even considered running for Arizona's top office without the availability of this funding alternative, but with it she won two terms. A majority of all parties' candidates use the Clean law, and it is enormously popular with the public.

But the corporate powers hate, hate, hate it, for it diminishes their political control. Having failed again and again to repeal it at the state level, they turned to the vipers nest of Koch-funded, right-wing policy fronts to find a way for the federal courts to inter- vene and do their dirty work. With support from the American Legislative Exchange Council (see Feb. 2011 Lowdown) and the Institute for Justice, this clique developed a perversely-novel theory of law, framed it into a lawsuit, and had the Republican leader of the state house, John McComish, sign on as plaintiff.

The Roberts quintet happily swallowed the perverse legal theory fed to them in the case, known as Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett. Turning both common sense and the Constitution topsy-turvy, the Court found--get this--that Arizona's matching provision gives cash-poor candidates an unfair advantage over those flush with money. Huh?

Well, explained the five, money speaks in politics, and the speech of the rich is inhibited if they know that their money-raising can result in "counterspeech" from opponents. Corporatespeak, good; counterspeak, bad. In a twisted and overwrought opinion for the majority, Alito wrote that public matching funds impose an "unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises [the First Amendment right to buy an election]." Okay, I edited-in that last bit, but that's precisely what the Court's majority (and the Koch brothers) are actually saying. Not only are they freeing big money to shout as loud as it wants in our elections, but the Court has now allowed the money interests to quash the political speech of others. The good news is that Roberts & Company only nixed the matching provision, not the Clean Election Act itself. At least not yet. As Roberts wrote: "We do not today call into question the wisdom of public financing."

---

Tracking $:

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/10/cool-tools-tracking-campaign-cash

mojo

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/republican-public-financing-cantor-corporation

Mon Jan. 24, 2011 4:00 AM PST

On Wednesday, House Republicans plan to rush to the floor a bill that would eliminate the federal government's presidential financing system—in the process, violating recent pledges by the GOP's leadership of increased transparency and debate in Congress. Not one hearing has been held on the legislation, nor has a single commitee debated its merits. If it passes, it will roll back more than 30 years of law born out of the Watergate scandal, eviscerating one of the few remaining protections stopping corporations from heavily influencing, if not outright buying, American elections, reform experts say.

Democratic lawmakers and campaign finance reformers blasted the bill, not only for seeking to kill public financing but for breaking the GOP's campaign promises on transparency and accountability. "This is a sneak attack on the system," says Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). "It's a total break from their public pledge for transparency and openness." Fred Wertheimer, a longtime campaign finance reform advocate at Democracy 21, called the bill "a gross abuse of the legislative process."

House Republicans' much-touted "Pledge to America" bashed Democrats for "limiting openness and debate" during the legislative process and vowed to "ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square." The Pledge says the GOP "will fight to ensure transparency and accountability in Congress and throughout government." And in House Speaker John Boehner's first remarks after taking control of Congress' lower chamber, he spoke of a greater emphasis on "real transparency" and "greater accountability." He went on, "Above all else, we will welcome the battle of ideas, encourage it, and engage in it—openly, honestly, and respectfully."

Last week, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority whip, announced with little fanfare the GOP's plan to introduce and vote on the bill. The legislation to repeal public financing was first floated in by Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) in June 2009. But it wasn't until House Republicans added the elimination of the Presidential Election Fund, as it's officially called, to their "YouCut" initiative, an online list of federal programs that citizens can vote in favor of cutting, that the bill gained momentum. Cantor's "YouCut" site claims that cutting the program, which also funds party conventions, would save $520 million over the next ten years.

=

context: hightower

In 1986, Richard Kimball, a Democratic state legislator in Arizona, was running for a US Senate seat. In a televised debate, he did something that absolutely astonished his opponent and completely confounded his campaign consultants: He looked directly into the camera and spoke the truth about the money corruption of big-time American politics.

"Understand what we do to you," Kimball said to viewers. "We spend all of our time raising money, often from strangers we do not even know. Then we spend it in three specific ways: First we measure you, what it is you want to purchase in the political marketplace--just like Campbell's soup or Kellogg's cereal. Next, we hire some consultants who know how to tailor our image to fit what we sell. Lastly, we bombard you with the meaningless, issueless, emotional nonsense that is always the result. And whichever one of us does that best will win."

Unfortunately for Kimball he was not the best bamboozler on the ballot--he lost big to John McCain, who's presently in his 25th year as an Arizona senator. Ironically, McCain himself became a champion of campaign finance reform for a while. But he totally abandoned that pose about three years ago and has now wedged himself tightly into his senate seat with the very same kind of special interest campaign cash and vacuous politicking that Kimball had so rightly condemned.

based on www.opensecrets.org and www.sunlightfoundation.com.

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/2603

mojo: 1/11

The GOP's Campaign Finance "Sneak Attack"

Boehner and Co. fast-track a bill to kill the presidential public finance system and privatize election fundraising.

Mon Jan. 24, 2011 3:00 AM PST

On Wednesday, House Republicans plan to rush to the floor a bill that would eliminate the federal government's presidential financing system—in the process, violating recent pledges by the GOP's leadership of increased transparency and debate in Congress. Not one hearing has been held on the legislation, nor has a single commitee debated its merits. If it passes, it will roll back more than 30 years of law born out of the Watergate scandal, eviscerating one of the few remaining protections stopping corporations from heavily influencing, if not outright buying, American elections, reform experts say.

Democratic lawmakers and campaign finance reformers blasted the bill, not only for seeking to kill public financing but for breaking the GOP's campaign promises on transparency and accountability. "This is a sneak attack on the system," says Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). "It's a total break from their public pledge for transparency and openness." Fred Wertheimer, a longtime campaign finance reform advocate at Democracy 21, called the bill "a gross abuse of the legislative process."

House Republicans' much-touted "Pledge to America" bashed Democrats for "limiting openness and debate" during the legislative process and vowed to "ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square." The Pledge says the GOP "will fight to ensure transparency and accountability in Congress and throughout government." And in House Speaker John Boehner's first remarks after taking control of Congress' lower chamber, he spoke of a greater emphasis on "real transparency" and "greater accountability." He went on, "Above all else, we will welcome the battle of ideas, encourage it, and engage in it—openly, honestly, and respectfully."

Last week, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority whip, announced with little fanfare the GOP's plan to introduce and vote on the bill. The legislation to repeal public financing was first floated in by Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) in June 2009. But it wasn't until House Republicans added the elimination of the Presidential Election Fund, as it's officially called, to their "YouCut" initiative, an online list of federal programs that citizens can vote in favor of cutting, that the bill gained momentum. Cantor's "YouCut" site claims that cutting the program, which also funds party conventions, would save $520 million over the next ten years.

A spokeswoman for Cantor declined to comment beyond Cantor's announcement of the public financing bill. A spokeswoman for Cole confirmed that the bill has not been the subject of any congressional hearings.

Public financing of presidential campaigns provides matching tax dollars to the small donations received by candidates who agree to publicly finance their campaigns, instead of relying on private donations. The intent is to encourage small donations, and the burden on taxpayers isn't much: Americans can voluntarily contribute $3 to the fund on their federal tax filings. The public finance system was created in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s. After President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign was found to have illegally accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from big corporations, Congress created a public financing system so that candidates wouldn't have to rely on corporations and deep-pocketed donors to finance their campaigns.

Since 1976, every Democratic and Republican presidential candidate has used the public financing system except Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Obama opted out of the program and instead raised $745 million from small and large private donors and corporations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. 

The way reformers see it, the presidential public financing system needs repair, not repeal. Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, says the amount of public funds currently available to candidates is too small to be competitive in modern presidential races. She says lawmakers need to update the system to better emphasize small donations to candidates and raise the total amount of public funding available. "Imagine if you didn't make any changes to the tax code since 1976. Of course public financing is outdated. The issue, then, is not to get rid of, but how to fix."

Legislation to make presidential public financing more competitive has won support from both parties in the past. In 2003, Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) of and John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced a bill that would reform the public financing system; Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) filed a companion bill in the House. "The public financing system for presidential elections, which aims to allow candidates to run competitive campaigns without becoming overly dependent on private donors, is a system worth improving and preserving," the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

More recently, Rep. David Price (D-NC) introduced the Presidential Fund Act, which would notably increase the funds available to candidates who opt in to public financing. In 2007, when Price introduced his bill, cosponsors included three Republicans—Reps. Mike Castle of Delaware, Todd Platts of Pennsylvania, and Shays. (Castle and Shays no longer hold office.) Price offered the bill again in 2010, and says he intends to offer it yet again in the 112th Congress. As for the Republicans' plan to gut public financing, Price remarks that it "looks like the Republican Party moving to toss red meat to the tea party." 

Already good government groups and campaign finance reformers are drumming up opposition to the GOP's plan. Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the public interest group Public Citizen, says his organization and others like it will urge lawmakers to oppose the GOP's bill because it violates the GOP's transparency promises, both on the 2010 campaign trail and now as the House majority. "This just came out of the blue, has had no deliberation and no discussion within the Republican and Democratic conferences," Holman says. "They have just been seated and they're already breaking the ground rules on how they'll do business."

Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones.

=

These include flag-waving conservative organizations responsible for television ads such as one in which a U.S. marine recently returned from Iraq assails unnamed members of “Congress [who] talk about surrendering.” They include the cheeky liberals who wanted to change the name of General Petraeus to General Betray Us. They include the single-minded activists who obsessed on the alleged misdeeds of Senator Hillary Clinton. Yet while they were quick to delve into any real or imagined political scandal that might change the course of the campaign in their favored direction, there was one thing that most of these groups refused to make public: the names of their funders.

Behind the patriotic gloss and high-quality production values of their advertising, these organizations were operating as renegades along the untested margins of the law that purports to control spending in presidential elections. With their identities hidden under stunningly misleading names and legal technicalities, many offered questionable facts and unproven charges intended to confuse voters or appeal to their worst prejudices.

The result, veteran Democratic pollster Peter Hart told the Center for Public Integrity, was “democracy run amok.”

The irony is that all this negative advertising was unleashed by the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002, which was intended to limit political contributions and improve the electoral process. The goal was to control “soft money,” which in the patois of political insiders means money given with political intent but not specifically in support of a candidate; this contrasts with “hard money,” the tightly controlled and limited direct contributions to candidates’ campaigns and to parties.

Senators Russ Feingold and John McCain, lead backers of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (Office of Senator Russ Feingold)

The 2002 law prohibited parties from taking soft money, but political money is insistent in finding a productive channel. Very quickly it was flowing into the coffers of independent groups that have become such a force that they are changing the political landscape. In the 2004 presidential campaign, they found their voice, and major groups in support of both parties found themselves defending charges of corrupt collusion – and paying fines to the Federal Election Commission.

Critics of the reform were obviously wrong when they predicted that it would stifle free speech. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the leading GOP opponent of the legislation, did foresee one of the law’s biggest drawbacks. “McCain-Feingold does not take the money out of politics,” he said. “It takes the parties out of politics.” Even though the Democratic and Republican parties were raising record amounts of hard money, they found that the upstarts were even better funded and the parties’ voices struggled to compete with the independent groups’ aggressive advertising.

In the 2004 election, it was a pro-Republican group, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, that had the biggest impact by producing an ad that smeared the military record of Democratic nominee John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran.By 2008, the technique of “swift-boating,” as it came to be called, had become so widespread that it was considered an integral part of the presidential selection process. These groups were technically independent of the candidates and parties, but there was seldom — if ever — any mystery about the politicians who would benefit from their negative advertising.

Hart said the proliferation of independent advertising groups with hidden motivations made it difficult for voters to assess the information they received from broadcast advertising. “In the end,” he said in an interview, “all it means is voters are getting bombarded with a message they don’t know where it’s coming from, and there’s no accountability.” He said the real beneficiaries of this “boondoggle” were the media consulting firms that made millions of dollars creating and placing the ads on broadcast outlets, as well as the broadcasters themselves. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, independent groups reported spending more than $200 million on the 2006 elections and more than $440 million on the last presidential election, in 2004. And those numbers only include one type of independent organizations: 527 committees.

Some of these groups publicly identify only a few, if any, of their big funders. The most generous donors include billionaire investor George Soros, a contributor to liberal Democratic organizations; Bob Perry, a conservative Republican who has made millions building housing developments in Texas; and Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson, also a contributor to Jewish and Israeli causes, who is focused on the threat posed by Iran. In the past, wealthy donors such as these were the source of soft money contributions that went directly to organizations controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties.

Joe Sandler, a lawyer whose clients include the Democratic National Committee as well as some independent groups, said he worries that these groups will eventually sap the vitality from the party organization. “Long term, it’s not in the institutional interest of the party to have [independent groups] be big players in the presidential campaign,” Sandler said. “It diverts some resources and control from the party.”

But suspicions abound that behind all the secrecy the independent groups may not be so independent. During the 2004 presidential election, a Washington Post reporter witnessed what seemed to be evidence of collusion between a nonprofit independent group, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Bush-Cheney campaign. As reported in the newspaper, she saw ATR’s founder, Grover Norquist, give Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman a confidential list of conservative activists in 37 states. When a watchdog group filed charges against ATR based on the Post story, the Federal Election Commission found “reason to believe” that the transfer constituted an illegal contribution from a corporation (ATR) but declined to take further action. ATR and the Bush-Cheney campaign maintained that the list had no monetary value because the information in it was publicly available, a premise the FEC did not accept.

The moral of this story: It is almost impossible to prove cooperation between candidates and independent groups, even though everyone assumes that it happens on a daily basis. And even violations that could be proven would likely not be punished.

Also in the 2004 campaign, a number of consultants worked both for a presidential campaign as well as an allied independent group. Washington attorney Ben Ginsburg was forced to resign when it was learned that he was serving as counsel to both the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans organization. Ginsberg also was counsel for Progress for America during 2004. Tony Feather, a former political director of Bush-Cheney 2000 and a good friend of White House adviser Karl Rove, was the founder of PFA. Originally, the group’s purpose was to support Bush’s agenda. When the group began running independent issue ads supporting Bush’s reelection, Feather left PFA. But his firm, Feather Larson Synhorst-DCI, went on to do campaign work for Bush-Cheney 2004 and the Republican National Committee. When then-Federal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith was asked on MSNBC whether Ginsberg had violated the law, he replied: “Clearly, a lawyer can advise two clients. What he can’t do is transfer inside information from one to another.”