Tag: campaign finance reform

Pro Bono No Bueno

The twisty highways and byways of campaign finance regulation bring us to another strange pass.

The Texas Ethics Commission is considering whether to effectively ban pro bono legal work for candidates. The method? Mandate that such work be regarded as an in-kind contribution subject to campaign finance regulations.

David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, observes that most candidates “can’t afford to hire counsel and spend probably hundreds of thousands of dollars challenging the constitutionality of a law where the opinion may not come out until after the election. . . . Basically, the opinion would slam the courthouse door shut to candidates and most political committees.”

Campaign finance regulation has always meant curtailing speech and the activities that enable it and flow from it. This latest regulatory prospect is more of the same. As long as campaign finance regulation exists, there will always be obnoxious new ways to use it to hamper speech and action.

The commissioners, apparently seeing some merit in the pro-pro bono argument and therefore judging the issue at least worth mulling, have deferred their decision. It would have been far better to simply accept Keating’s objections and put an end to the proposed new crackdown then and there.

Meanwhile, Texans — especially potential candidates — must sit on the edge of their seats until the commission decides whether to make it prohibitively expensive to fend off unconstitutional assaults on candidates and campaigns.

Not unlike the unconstitutional assault exemplified by campaign finance regulation itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags campaign finance reform, freedom, government

political challengers

Message or Money?

“I don’t know if I truly am fearless,” Edward Durr remarked to an NJ.com reporter, “or stupid.”

“Because who in their right mind would take on a person with that kind of power and clout?” he asked rhetorically, before he answered, “But his power, his clout, did not scare me.”

Durr, a Republican, is the 58-year-old truck driver who last Tuesday defeated one of the most powerful politicians in New Jersey, State Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat. Durr has never before held public office and spent just a smidgen over $2,000 in the entire race. His campaign video was filmed on his smartphone.

On the other hand, Sweeney was the longest serving legislative leader in the Garden State’s history. The powerful teachers’ union attempted to take Sweeney out four years ago, spending a whopping $5 million, but he still won handily by 18 percentage points.

Was it a conservative-leaning district? This southern Jersey district “has reliably elected a Democrat since its creation in 1973, save for one year when the Democratic incumbent switched parties,” reported The New York Times.

At Reason, Rob Soave called it “one of the biggest political upsets in American history,” offering this important takeaway: “Durr’s victory is another reminder that for all the pearl clutching about money in politics, contemporary American campaigns are less determined by big piles of cash — to pay for massive ad blitzes, expensive consultants, and the like — than ever.”

Clearly, message meant more than money.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags campaign finance reform, democracy, New Jersey

Accountability moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Obscene Amounts

George Clooney, Campaign finance, money, big money, election, Hillary Clinton

Actor George Clooney, star of the current Coen brothers picture, Hail Caesar!, is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. When asked on NBC’s Meet the Press if the $353,000 per couple dinner he organized last Friday constituted an “obscene amount of money,” he answered, simply, “yes.”

Clooney went on to explain, “It’s ridiculous that we should have this amount of money in politics.”

He’s an advocate for campaign finance reform. He is, specifically, “against” Citizens United, though he doesn’t know that it isn’t a law but a Supreme Court case that overturned previously passed legislation that regulated what people and corporations could do to support or oppose (or mention) candidates in elections. The government, authorized by the campaign finance legislation, had suppressed a movie.

Interestingly, that movie was a polemical documentary against . . . Hillary Clinton.

Campaign finance regulation has been shown to help incumbents. Not unexpectedly, since the regulations are written by sitting legislators against their competitors.

But “getting money out of politics” would advantage other groups, too. For example, one consequence of limiting political donations would be to nudge challengers to (a) be rich and mostly self-funding (like Trump is said to be), and (b) be more demagogic, leveraging the “free” publicity from major media.

More demagogues aren’t needed.

But then, the whole issue is demagogic, appealing to the knee-jerk reaction of everyday people who are, indeed, often nonplused by how others spend their money.

As for Clooney, he’d like not to have to spend money for his candidate.

We’d all like the important things in life to just happen. But it turns out we have to work for what we want.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Common Sense Needs Your Help!

Also, please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money.

Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!

Tags campaign finance reform, campaign finance regulation, George Clooney, Hillary Clinton

Accountability general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Big-Dollar Impact

campaign finance reform, contributions, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, corruption

Last Saturday, The Washington Post’s top-of-the-front-page headline blared, “50 donors with outside impact.”

If that doesn’t curdle your blood, readers were further warned of a new “Gilded Age.” Yes, in concentrated fundraising the Post heard “echoes of the end of the 19th century, when wealthy interests spent millions to help put former Ohio governor William McKinley in the White House.”

McKinley. The horror. The echoes.

Hopefully, self-immolations can be kept to a bare minimum as Americans discover the report’s main (only) thrust: 41 percent of $607 million contributed to 2,300 super PACs this election cycle has come from just 50 donors . . . at least, if you also aggregate gifts from the relatives of these 50 folks and their business interests as well.

Isn’t that terrifying? Destructive of democracy? Are our elections simply being bought by the billionaires?

No. No. And no.

Any common sense analysis of this year’s presidential contests, both Republican and Democrat, must acknowledge that big money did not trump. Pun intended. Sen. Bernie Sanders is now outraising Hillary Clinton with millions of small donations — not “millionaires and billionaires.” Jeb Bush’s massive financial warchest made no discernible difference. Even the Post concedes “the mixed impact that big-money groups have had on the presidential contest so far.”

Mixed? Name a single state where “big spending” determined the outcome.

Ideas matter. And securing the resources to advance and advertise ideas obviously matters, too. Same goes for candidates — and their ideas.

More money, more campaign spending, means more ideas and candidacies can reach the political marketplace. That’s where voters, not big donors, do the deciding.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Common Sense Needs Your Help!

Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!

Tags 2016 Presidential race, campaign finance reform, democracy, Presidential campaign 2016, SuperPACs

Accountability folly government transparency ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies

Money Means Nothing to Her

Post author By CS Admin
Post date April 18, 2016
2 Comments on Money Means Nothing to Her

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, campaign finance reform, big money, illustration, angel, Saint Hillary

Campaign finance reform is surely dead . . . if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

Which would be good.

Not Clinton being elected, mind you. What would be good is the death of so-called campaign finance reform — the kind supported by Democrats, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. They insist on a constitutional amendment to partially repeal the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protection and give Congress awesome new powers to regulate their own and their opponents’ campaigns.

But wait — if Mrs. Clinton supports campaign finance reform, why would her election kill this seriously bad proposal?

Well, Hillary Clinton made it abundantly clear at last week’s Democratic presidential debate, as I explained this weekend at Townhall: large campaign contributions do not influence her in any way. Even a fat $15 million from Wall Street interests to her super PAC — or $225,000 a pop speeches paid by Goldman Sachs and their ilk — registers no corrupting effect whatsoever.

And those millions deposited in Clinton Foundation accounts from foreign governments?

They couldn’t possibly sway the steady former Secretary of State. Not even the smallest smidgen.

Just like there has never been corruption at the IRS.

Don’t believe Hillary? Then trust President Obama, who also gobbled up major Wall Street funding when he ran in 2008 and 2012. But again, according to her, “President Obama was not at all influenced when he made the decision to pass and sign Dodd-Frank, the toughest regulations on Wall Street in many a year.”

Not. At. All.

So the solution to government corruption is simply to elect trustworthy, incorruptible candidates . . . like Hillary Clinton.

Well, call her half right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Common Sense Needs Your Help!

Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!

Tags 2016 Presidential race, Bernie Sanders, campaign finance reform, Hillary Clinton, Presidential campaign 2016

First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people

The Ultimate SuperPAC

SuerPac, Marco Rubio, Biased Media, Republican Debate, First Amendment, collage, photomontage, illustration, Common Sense, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob

Sen. Marco Rubio’s charge in last week’s presidential debate, that the mainstream media functions as a SuperPAC for Democrats, was not only accurate, I wrote at Townhall, it has deeper implications.

Consider the relentless media drumbeat for restrictive campaign finance regulations.

If the Federal Elections Commission mutes, at Congress’s instruction, voices of the political parties and silences issue-oriented advocacy groups — or such groups are prevented by the IRS from even forming in the first place — and if Democrats get their way and ban SuperPACs (other than the media), who would hold the loudest megaphone?

You guessed it.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, NBC News, etc. — corporate behemoths all — warn of the dangers of big, bad corporations and wealthy individuals, hoping to spur regulation that hamstrings the communications of others.

The regulations somehow never involve abridging the speech of those same powerful media outlets.

Last year, every single Democrat in the Senate voted to repeal the essential constitutional guarantee of free speech, voting for Senate Joint Resolution 19, introduced by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.).

Had it become part of our Constitution, the First Amendment’s words “Congress shall pass no law” would have been replaced with an open-ended invitation for politicians in Congress to “regulate” campaign spending — therefore speech — to their hearts’ content.

The amendment was so sweeping the authors felt the need to add: “Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press.”

Big Media is a major force promoting Big Government, always willing to attack advocates of a constitutionally limited government.

Except when it comes to constitutional protections for Big Media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF