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Campaign Finance Reform
By Jafreen Uddin – 08/15/08
Recent disclosure reports are now providing a great amount of detail into contributions made by registered lobbyists, and the result is...lobbyists are loyal?
As a result of the 2007 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, the disclosure reports that have been released give insight to the specifics of lobbyist contributions. Lobbyists are now required to file semi-annual disclosure reports, detailing contributions made individually and contributions made as leaders of an organization. A public database created by the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives contains all the details of the disclosure forms; the reports indicate that lobbyists donated over $140 million to campaigns in the first half of 2008.
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Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Disclosure
By Jafreen Uddin – 08/11/08
Given the recent slew of politicians being caught and investigated for accepting inappropriate donations and favors from special-interests, it is no surprise that the presidential candidates' fundraising strategies are getting a closer look. Large donations—and the motives behind them—are a murky issue, though hardly a partisan one; for every
billionaire hedge-fund manager who raises more than $100,000 for Sen. Obama, there is an
oil-trading company owner who bundles over $50,000 worth of contributions for Sen. McCain.
With bundled donations, special-interests can sidestep the contribution limits in campaign finance laws by allowing one individual to collect money from a variety of sources, thereby "bundling" the small donations into one large sum and delivering it to a candidate. It is no surprise that the collector in this scenario (or what the New York Times in an important editorial today aptly called the "hunter gatherer") can use this method of fundraising to their advantage, bringing in the usual suspects of special access and favors to the world of campaign finance. By controlling the contributions of many different donors, the bundler has more power (and a larger sum of money) than if he or she donated alone.
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Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Disclosure, Public Financing
By Thaddeus Kromelis – 06/25/08
Yesterday, I managed to catch Larry Lessig's latest "Change Congress" Power Point presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) here in New York City. Addressing the distorting effects of money on goverment policy (oil industry influence on global warming research, pharma money at the FDA, the sugar lobby on recommended caloric intake), the Stanford professor's performance was easily one of the more rousing presentations that morning and sparked a discernable buzz from the bloggers gathered in Rose Hall, the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
It doesn't appear Lessig has posted yesterday's version on YouTube just yet, so I've gone ahead and included one that's pretty close. However, one notable bit of information missing in April's presentation at UCSB posted below are the numbers he cited from MAPlight.org (where he's a board member). Released yesterday, the organization points out that of the House Democrats who changed their votes from March to June clearing the way for a FISA bill with immunity for the phone companies to pass, on average, those politicians received $8,359 in PAC contributions. Specifically:
Comparing Democrats' Votes (March 14th and June 20th votes):
Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging:
$8,359 to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for Telcos (94 Dems)
$4,987 to each Democrat who remained opposed to immunity for Telcos (116 Dems)
88 percent of the Dems who changed to supporting immunity (83 Dems of the 94) received PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint during the last three years (Jan. 2005-Mar. 2008).
Now, no one can say those contributions caused recipients to change their votes. But it certainly doesn't project the appearance of an open, honest, and accountable government for the people.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Justice, Liberty & National Security
By Michael Waldman – 06/20/08
An edited version of this posting appeared as a guest post on the Anderson Cooper 360 blog June 20.
Barack Obama's decision to opt out of public funding for the general election is not a surprise. It was so well telegraphed, he should take out a patent.
The presidential public funding system worked well for three decades after it was enacted in the early 1970s. It leveled the playing field, boosted competition and reduced corruption. Think of it this way: in the first five elections under presidential public funding, a challenger beat an incumbent president three times. There's no congressional district in America with that much competition!
But the presidential system needs repair, for reasons among those prompting Obama to turn away the federal funds. Principally, candidates simply don't get enough money to mount a fully strong race in a modern election. The amount, when it was set, was about two thirds of the amount spent by the McGovern campaign of 1972—in other words, two thirds of the least successful presidential campaign in modern history!
The real question is what will Barack Obama—or John McCain—do to reform the system when one of them takes office?
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Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Other Reforms, Disclosure, Public Financing
By Kelly Williams – 06/16/08
Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff will be sentenced this September, according to papers filed by prosecutors and defense attorneys this week in federal court. Mr. Abramoff has been safely tucked away in a federal prison camp in Maryland since 2006 on bank fraud charges. Congress reacted to the scandal by passing reform legislation: This past January 1, the
Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) of 2007 went into effect, requiring more substantive and accessible disclosure of political and charitable contributions by registered lobbyists, among other changes. The first reports of these contributions are due on July 30 and should make for interesting reading.
With reform legislation in place and Mr. Abramoff's expense account out of reach, one might be tempted to breath a sigh of relief. One piece of this important legislation has yet to be implemented, however—HLOGA required the FEC to adopt rules for disclosing "bundling" by lobbyists. "Bundling" is the gathering of checks from multiple donors otherwise meeting the requirements of law which are then turned over "in bulk" to politicians—the virtues and risks of this practice should be self-evident to those who care about meaningful campaign finance reform. The lack of a quorum at the FEC has prevented the adoption of the rules, effectively neutering this part of the only ethics reform legislation to come out of Congress in recent years. True reformers should insist that passage of these rules is at the top of the agenda of a reinvigorated FEC.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Other Reforms, Disclosure
By Laura MacCleery – 06/13/08
Some cases are just too ugly even
for the Supreme Court, it appears. Last week it refused to grant review to a
claim from Washington State that challenged an important principle: the
requirement that outside groups disclose their electoral spending.
The group in question, called the
Voters Education Committee (VEC), was a classic astroturf 527 group (named thus
for a section of the tax code), that omitted to register with the state as a
political committee. Its one donor—the Chamber of Commerce—funneled it a
whopping $1.5 million as part of a 25-state campaign in 2004 to push
its agenda in key Attorney General and state Supreme Court races around
the country.
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Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Other Reforms, Disclosure
By Ciara Torres-Spelliscy – 06/10/08
Cross-posted from a Seattle Post-Intelligencer piece.
Whenever I admit to fellow guests at a dinner party that I work as a campaign finance lawyer, the following happens. Either their eyes glaze over, hoping for a rapid change of topic, or they launch into a heated discussion of why the case that decided "money is speech" is so wrongheaded—since after all, money is, well, money, and speech is something else entirely. Sad to say, the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court seem to be losing their grasp on this simple point.
Contrary to popular opinion, the landmark case, Buckley v. Valeo, never actually equated money with speech. Instead, the opinion analyzed political campaigns and concluded that lots of money is needed to get a candidate's message to voters. Buckley used gasoline as a metaphor for campaign cash. The fuel of contributions makes the campaign car go.
As Justice Stephen Breyer once wrote, "a decision to contribute money to a campaign is a matter of First Amendment concern not because money is speech (it is not); but because it enables speech." Despite this truth, the bumper sticker version—"money is speech"—has seeped into our collective unconscious.
> Read entire article here.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Fair Courts
By Mike Webb – 06/05/08
Once it was my job to monitor all three of the network
nightly news shows. Not as punishment, but as a way for the presidential
campaign that I worked for to keep track of what was and was not getting
covered. It was interesting to see which stories they covered, how they
covered them and where, in their programs, they placed them. But I was
often disappointed to see that networks tend to consider things like 120 second
consumer report segments more newsworthy than, say, a presidential candidate's
universal health care proposal.
Twenty million people get their "news" from network
broadcasts each day. I—and everyone
else—had to come to grips with the fact that these shows have lots of power
to sway public opinion. But in an ever expanding
media merger landscape where General Electric's outlets (get it—"outlets"!) don't spend a lot of time reporting on the enormous
amounts of money our government spends on the defense industry, people have to
be careful about the news nutrients they consume.
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Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform
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