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By Molly Alarcon – 02/10/12
What We're Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
The federal government entered into a massive settlement with five of the nation’s largest lenders for mortgage abuses, but consumer advocates say the agreement doesn’t do enough for distressed homeowners. The Brennan Center’s Mark Ladov was quoted by the Albany Times-Union: “This settlement is a landmark, but much work remains to be done.” Mark was also interviewed on “Capital Tonight.”
US Representative Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) pens an op-ed in the San Antonio Express-News about the disenfranchising effect of voter ID laws, like the one pending in his state, citing Brennan Center research.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi released a web ad urging Americans to take down Stephen Colbert and his satirical Super PAC through the passage of the new DISCLOSE Act.
Jonathan Alter has a must-read in Bloomberg about runaway campaign spending and the need for a constitutional amendment to ensure fair elections and return power to the people.
Tags: What We're Reading Today
By ReformNY – 02/10/12
Crossposted on ReformNY.
Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics — and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd and Dan Rockoff.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics
NY Campaign Finance
1. A new report issued by NYPIRG identifies a “core group” of 127 donors who each gave $50,000 or more to state candidates and party committees in 2011, for a grand total of $16.8 million. Of the 127 deep-pocketed donors, the largest — a New York City property development group — contributed nearly $700,000 in total, and several organizations made single contributions in excess of $100,000. The report highlights New York’s chronically lax laws governing “housekeeping” and soft money accounts, which allows individual donors to skirt the $150,000 ceiling on individual giving. The full report can be seen here.
2. A coalition of more than 100 organizations, including policy institutes, community groups, and labor and religious organizations, delivered a letter to Gov. Cuomo expressing their strong support for public financing in New York state elections, and calling on the governor to “press hard for the creation of a robust public financing program” during the upcoming year.
3. The Wall Street Journal finds that Gov. Cuomo has built strong relationships with public interest groups committed to campaign finance, ethics, and disclosure reform, citing his hiring of Jeremy Creelan, a former deputy director at the Brennan Center, as special counsel for public integrity and ethics issues. The liaison was instrumental in the governor’s overhaul of state ethics laws last year, and reformers hope it will continue to bear fruit in upcoming legislative campaigns.
4. State Senator Liz Krueger is publicly calling for an end to political spending by “ghost campaigns,” which allow Albany’s lawmakers to spend campaign funds long after they’ve retired from office — and, in at least one case, after they’ve passed away. The article highlights continued spending by the campaign committees of former Rep. Eric Massa, who resigned in 2010, as well as the re-election committee of former State Sen. Ron Stafford, who passed away in 2005. “Politicians shouldn’t be able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign money hoarded years after their own careers end,” Sen. Krueger said. “It’s an invitation to corruption.”
5. US Congressman Joe Crowley (D–NY) was singled out this week as a top Democratic beneficiary of a private equity PAC with a history of spending on behalf of Republicans. The PAC, formed in 2007 by some of the country’s biggest private equity firms, has drawn unwelcome media attention since it emerged that Bain Capital, where Mitt Romney made his fortune, was one of its founding members.
6. Pay-to-play politics is alive and well in New York, as the Daily News reports that freshman US Congressman Michael Grimm (R–NY), seven months after sponsoring a bill to permit a natural gas pipeline under Jacob Riis Park in Queens, has received contributions from the pipeline’s developers. Two weeks ago, the New York Times also reported that Rep. Grimm was drawing scrutiny for allegedly soliciting campaign donations above the legal limit, and for enlisting the help of a fundraiser now under federal investigation for embezzlement.
Campaign Finance News Nationwide
1. On Tuesday, President Obama signaled that he would not oppose spending on his campaign’s behalf by Priorities USA Action, the super PAC that backs his re-election bid. Aides to the President confirmed that he planned to allow cabinet members, senior advisors and top campaign staff to speak at fundraising events led by Priorities USA. The decision was condemned by many as an about-face by an administration that has criticized the use of super PACs — but has also prompted at least one writer to observe that the decision presents a unique opportunity for Obama to make campaign finance reform a centerpiece of his election campaign.
2. Media mogul and philanthropist Leo Hindery, Jr., argues for a strong link between campaign finance reform and renewed corporate responsibility, proposing that national reform efforts should include not only stronger disclosure rules for corporate contributions and lobbyists, but also voluntary efforts by business leaders not to use corporate funds to influence elections. Such an approach, Hindery writes, would help to reclaim corporate responsibility as a duty extending to “employees, shareholders, customers, communities and the nation.
3. A new poll released Wednesday by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner finds strong support — by a 2-to-1 margin — for the Fair Elections Now Act, which would allow federal candidates who agree to contribution limits to receive public matching funds for donations from residents of their home states. The poll also finds that voters would be more likely to re-elect representatives who voted in favor of a campaign finance reform package that included the Fair Elections Now Act.
4. Politico reports that two PACs have used shell corporations to circumvent existing laws on fundraising and spending, making campaign committees into “black boxes” for anonymous contributions. According to the report, the Alliance for New America, which raised money for John Edwards in 2008 and now plays a supporting role in his trial, created an LLC through which it funneled much of its spending, while Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, accepted donations through shell corporations, allowing the names of donors to remain hidden.
5. Two recent reports highlight the corrosive potential of so-called “c4s” (after their 501(c)4 tax code designation), the “social welfare” arms of super PACs, to raise and spend money without disclosing their donors to the FEC. Based on their IRS filings, such groups have begun to play a bigger role in direct independent spending than supporters of campaign finance reform had expected, and their ability to filter money from contributors to their associated super PACs means that some super PAC spending is virtually untraceable. A report recently issued by Demos and the US PIRG Education Fund found that out of 10 super PACs active in the 2012 elections, 6 had received money from untraceable sources.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, NY Reform
By Molly Alarcon – 02/09/12
What We're Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
A US House subcommittee report on released detainees from Guantanamo criticizes the Bush and Obama administrations for releasing some prisoners who went on to become involved in terrorist activities (AP, Reuters, The New York Times).
A legal loophole in Illinois is causing some to be put in debtor’s prison, the State Journal Register reports.
Similarly, Rhode Island lawmakers want to lower the threshold that would put individuals owing child support in jail (AP).
Senator Tester (D-MT) follows the lead of Senator Scott Brown and his opponent Elizabeth Warren in calling for a Super PAC pact in his re-election campaign (Politico).
The Huffington Post’s Dan Collins says New York needs Lady Gaga to stop the state’s redistricting disaster.
Tags: What We're Reading Today
By Lianna Reagan – 02/09/12
This week, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera signed a bill into law that automatically registers its citizens to vote, which is expected to add 4.5 million people to Chile’s registration rolls. In doing so, the country joins many other democratic nations, including Australia, Canada, and France, that already have some form of automatic registration in place.
Unfortunately, the United States, where 35 percent of citizens — about 73.5 million — who are eligible to vote are not registered, does not have this policy in place. With such low registration rates, it is hard to imagine that in the last few years multiple laws have been approved across the country to restrict the ability of people to vote. In many states, there are even new burdens being placed specifically on the ability of community groups to register voters. One of the most onerous laws that passed was in Florida, and those restrictions are so severe that the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote had to suspend their voter registration drives.
Voting is not only a right, but a fundamental part of building an engaged citizenry and the foundation for civic participation. The Brennan Center advocates for a number of ways to modernize our country’s voter registration process that would be helpful to states to facilitate widespread registration. These provisions of voter registration modernization include automated registration (or automatically registering eligible citizens based on lists from other governmental agencies), online registration and access (being able to register to vote; or check, and edit one’s registration online), and permanent state registration (a voter’s registration record is moved as needed among jurisdictions within the state, but the voter is kept on the voter rolls as long as she resides in the state). All of these measures would effectively and efficiently improve voter registration, and enable more Americans to vote.
In addition to making our democracy more inclusive, voter registration modernization could make voting rolls more clean and accurate. The key is in sharing and comparing information between government agencies while moving away from the antiquated paper-based system on which most states rely. In too many states, a form has to get mailed to the county election office where it is hard-entered into the state voter registration database. This paper based systems is not only labor intensive, but also error prone, and can lead to numerous problems in the electoral process. These systems are also incredibly costly at a time when money is particularly tight in the states. Moving to a paperless system can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In Maricopa County, Arizona, they saved $450,000 by switching to online registration and partial automation, and in Delaware, they saved $200,000 just on personnel costs. Voter registration modernization has also gained bipartisan support around the country, as it is an area in which both parties can come together in the common goal of efficiency and cost reduction.
By following in the footsteps of many of the world’s developed democracies, Chile took an essential step toward modernizing its voter registration system. As a first-rate democracy the United States should do no less.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Registration Drives, Voter Registration Modernization
By Molly Alarcon – 02/08/12
What We're Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
The Director of the Brennan Center’s DC office, Nicole Austin-Hillery, writes in today’s Roll Call about Congressional partisanship and inaction, saying lawmakers should heed the President’s State of the Union plea to “get each others’ backs.”
The Democracy Program’s Jonathan Brater articulates why the US still needs Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in The Boston Review.
“We must not lose sight of the homeowners and communities who suffer the collateral damages of foreclosure,” as we await economic recovery and justice for victims of banking abuses, the Justice Program’s Neeta Pal writes at The Huffington Post.
USA Today: “The FBI has begun cutting back GPS surveillance in an array of criminal and intelligence investigations following a Supreme Court ruling last month restricting its use.”
California lawmakers are pushing for reform of the state’s harsh 3-strikes law (KQED).
The New York Times editorial board lambastes President Obama’s decision to begin fundraising for a major Super PAC that supports his re-election. Think Progress says the move is the best way to fight Citizens United in the long run.
Tags: What We're Reading Today
By Adam Skaggs – 02/07/12
The mock outrage at President Obama’s campaign for blessing contributions to the Super PAC supporting him, Priorities USA, is a distraction from the real questions about today’s campaign finance environment — how to stop the abuses, and who will provide the leadership needed to achieve meaningful change.
The president’s apparent about-face — from condemning “the corrosive influence of money in politics” in the State of the Union to his campaign’s announcement that it will “do what [it] can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA” — provided plenty of fodder for critics. But it’s not surprising. In 2008, Obama reversed course, too — he first planned to participate in the presidential public financing program, but later eschewed it when it became clear he could raise more money outside the system.
The reality in 2012 is that no candidate with a serious chance of winning can afford, in the words of Obama for America campaign manager Jim Messina, to “unilaterally disarm.” The campaign fundraising arms race this election cycle, like it or not, involves Super PACs. They’ve already dumped $40 million of slash-and-burn attack ads into the Republican presidential primaries. Karl Rove’s Super PAC alone, working with a related non-profit group, raised $51 million last year.
However disappointing it was to campaign reform advocates, the only surprise about the Obama campaign’s decision to play by the same rules is that it waited this long to make the announcement. Any campaign that doesn’t take advantage of the rules that permit super spending by Super PACs doesn’t stand a chance.
The Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United v. FEC helped enable the Super PAC takeover of elections (as did other court decisions), but the Supreme Court isn’t entirely to blame. Under the Court’s decisions, the only groups that can raise and spend unlimited sums are groups that are completely independent of the campaigns. The candidate-specific Super PACs are anything but.
Why do these groups, which look like shadow arms of the campaigns to any common-sense viewer, operate under rules designed for groups that are wholly independent of campaigns? In large part, the answer has to do with the Federal Election Commission.
In 2010, the FEC issued an advisory opinion that green-lighted Super PACs: as long as a group tells the FEC it’s not affiliated with any campaign and won’t make direct contributions to candidates, it can raise and spend without limit. Later, in spite of laws providing that groups like Super PACs can’t coordinate with candidates and still claim to be independent, the FEC said that Super PACs could legally do a whole lot that looks like coordination. Only at the FEC can a group run ads that are “fully coordinated” with a candidate and still say it is “wholly independent” of his campaign.
The FEC was created under the Federal Election Campaign Act, enacted 40 years ago today, and the last four decades have shown that the agency isn’t up to the task of enforcing the nation’s campaign finance laws. The Alice-in-Wonderland approach it has taken to the Super PACs dominating this year’s election is just its latest failure.
Congress should replace the FEC with an agency that will actually carry out its mission. (While it’s at it, Congress could fix the Super PAC problem by passing laws that give real meaning to words like “independence” and “coordination.”) The abuses that will inevitably emerge from this year’s orgy of Super PAC spending should be sufficient to galvanize support from both sides of the aisle to pass meaningful campaign reform.
But even if partisan gridlock in Congress continues to stymie legislative reform, the president can take a significant step toward addressing the current state of dysfunction at the FEC. Five of the six commissioners who “lead” the agency are serving with expired terms, and the president has the power to appoint competent replacements committed to enforcing the nation’s campaign laws.
A coalition of reform groups under the leadership of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has been calling on President Obama to do just that — since 2009. So far, the president has ignored the calls to appoint new leaders to the FEC.
There is no excuse for further delay. If President Obama is genuinely concerned about the “corrosive” impact of big money in our elections, he should demonstrate it with action, not rhetoric.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Other Reforms
By Molly Alarcon – 02/07/12
What We're Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
Andrew Cohen looks back on the torture memos, 10 years later, at The Atlantic.
Both chambers of the Virginia legislature have now passed voter ID bills. A Virginian-Pilot opinion article on why the proposed laws are a bad idea quotes the Brennan Center’s Keesha Gaskins.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has a story on how mandatory minimum sentences for federal gun crimes cause disparities and unduly long sentences.
Under the Radar: South Carolina Rushes Through Yet another Voter Suppression Bill (ACLU).
U.S. Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota is leading the charge in Congress and his home state to fight suppressive voting laws, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.
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By Molly Alarcon – 02/06/12
What We're Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
CNN: “While the nation marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in later this year, some observers say our political leaders have already forgotten a key lesson of Watergate: that anonymous money corrupts political campaigns.”
At the American Bar Association’s Midyear Meeting this weekend, Attorney General Eric Holder announced $2.4 million in grant money for indigent defense services and research.
“Thirty-three civil rights groups from around the country complained to the New York attorney general Friday about police documents that showed the New York Police Department recommending increased surveillance of Shiite mosques based on their religion.” - AP
The Washington Post editorial board bemoans the Virginia legislature’s efforts to enact a voter ID law, citing Brennan Center research on how many people lack proper ID.
Actual confirmed voter fraud: the Indiana Secretary of State, the state’s chief elections official, was found guilty of multiple voter fraud-related charges, including lying about his address on voter registration forms (AP).
Tags: What We're Reading Today
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