Tag: Campaign Finance

Elections: “Super PAC’s Upped the Ante”

One of the people I am thankful for is Bill Moyers and his quiet, rational discussion of the problem that plague this country and the world on his PBS program Moyers & Company. In an interview with Trevor Potter, the former Federal Election Commission Chairman and  the lawyer behind the creation and functioning of Stephen Colbert‘s PAC, “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow”, they discuss how Citizens United has effected, not only this campaign, but campaigns in the very near future with the influx of undisclosed money to Super PACs from very wealthy donors who want only to protect their influence in Congress.

Trevor Potter on Big Money’s Election Effect

Former Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter – the lawyer who advised Stephen Colbert on setting up a super PAC – dissects the spending on the most expensive election in American history. Many voices are claiming “money didn’t matter, Citizens United wasn’t a factor,” but Potter disagrees.

“Super PACs just upped the ante,” he tells Bill. “If you’re a senator and you have just been elected, or heaven forbid you’re up in two years, you’re thinking I don’t have time to worry about deficit reduction and the fiscal cliff. I have to raise tens of thousands of dollars every day to have enough money to compete with these new super PACs… And that means I need to be nice to a lot of billionaires who often want something from me in order to find the funding for my campaign.”

The transcript can be read here

Campaign Finance Game: Stephen Goes Stealth

Colbert Super PAC – Trevor Potter & Stephen’s Shell Corporation

Trevor Potter helps Stephen create his own shell corporation so that he can obtain secret donations for his Super PAC.

Stephen get schooled in how to game the campaign finance system by creating a 501(c)(4):

501(c)(4) organizations are generally civic leagues and other corporations operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, or local associations of employees with membership limited to a designated company or people in a particular municipality or neighborhood, and with net earnings devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes. 501(c)(4) organizations may lobby for legislation, and unlike 501(c)(3) organizations they may also participate in political campaigns and elections, as long as campaigning is not the organization’s primary purpose. The tax exemption for 501(c)(4) organizations applies to most of their operations, but contributions may be subject to gift tax, and income spent on political activities – generally the advocacy of a particular candidate in an election – is taxable.

Contributions to 501(c)(4) organizations are not deductible as charitable contributions for the U.S. income tax. 501(c)(4) organizations are not required to disclose their donors publicly. This aspect of the law has led to extensive use of the 501(c)(4) provisions for organizations that are actively involved in lobbying, and has become controversial. In 2010, a bill (the DISCLOSE Act) was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that addressed identification of donors to organizations involved in political advocacy, but the bill failed to pass in the Senate.

The entire transcript is below the fold but here is the punch line(s):

SC: Can I take this C-4’s money and then donate it to my Super PAC?

TP: You can.

SC: Well,wait. Super PAC’s are transparent.

TP: Right, right

SC: And the C-4 is secret

TP: Umhmmm

SC: So I can take secret donations of my C-4 and give it to my supposedly transparent Super PAC.

TP: And it’ll say given by your C-4

SC: What is the difference between that and money laundering?

TP: Hard to say.

SCOTUS Strikes Down AZ Campaign Finance

Once again the corporate owned, conservative Supreme Court has struck down the 1998 Arizona Campaign Finance Law provided escalating matching funds to candidates who accept public financing. How the Roberts’ court decided that law violates the First Amendment rights of these corporation is truly a backbreaking twist if logic and the constitution.

The vote was again 5-to-4, with the same five justices in the majority as in the Citizens United decision. The majority’s rationale was that the law violated the First Amendment rights of candidates who raise private money. Such candidates, the majority said, may be reluctant to spend money to speak if they know that it will give rise to counter-speech paid for by the government.

“Laws like Arizona’s matching funds provision that inhibit robust and wide-open political debate without sufficient justification cannot stand,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. Justice Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the majority opinion.

What about the under funded candidate’s right to be heard under the First amendment? The reason for the law, which  was written after a corruption scandals rocked the state’s election financing during the 90’s, was to foster free speech:

The idea was to encourage candidates to forgo the scramble for money, with all its inherent invitations to corruption — to spend more time speaking to the electorate, and less time speaking to potential funders.

In that sense, its goal was very much to increase genuine political speech. But to the Roberts court, money as speech takes precedence over speech as speech.

The court’s majority clearly telegraphed its antipathy to the Arizona provision during oral arguments in March. The only real suspense was whether they would go further, and use the case to cast doubt on public financing generally.

So there was a sense of relief in the good-government community Monday.

“This is not the death knell of public financing. This ruling affects only one mechanism of public financing, and there are numerous ways to fix it,” said Common Cause president Bob Edgar in a statement. “Today, in the wake of Citizens United, it is more critical than ever that we change the way we pay for our elections by moving to a small donor system that gives the public a voice back in our government. Nothing short of our democracy is at stake.”

Well, thank these corporate shill justice for that.

The dissent written by Justice Elena Kagan, which was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said that the Arizona law protected the First Amendment by promoting more speech and less corruption. It is not just a scorching criticism of the majority but an indictment of their own corruption:

Justice Elena Kagan on Monday began her blistering minority dissent with a morality play comparing two states. One of them limits itself to what is essentially current federal campaign finance law — and “remains afflicted with corruption.” The other tries to create a robust public-financing regime — and rids itself of corruption. The majority, Kagan writes, has taken the side of corruption.:

A person familiar with our country’s core values — our devotion to democratic self-governance, as well as to “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 270 (1964) — might expect this Court to celebrate, or at least not to interfere with, the second State’s success. But today, the majority holds that the second State’s system — the system that produces honest government, working on behalf of all the people — clashes with our Constitution. The First Amendment, the majority insists, requires us all to rely on the measures employed in the first State, even when they have failed to break the stranglehold of special interests on elected officials.

I disagree. The First Amendment’s core purpose is to foster a healthy, vibrant political system full of robust discussion and debate. Nothing in Arizona’s anticorruption statute, the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act, violates this constitutional protection. To the contrary, the Act promotes the values underlying both the First Amendment and our entire Constitution by enhancing the “opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people.” I therefore respectfully dissent.

After the recent rulings that have sided with corporations this ruling comes as no surprise.

h/t to David Dayen for further reading on this decision at The Brennan Center for Justice

American’s Have a Right to Know

Where is the money to finance the campaign ads coming from to influence Americans elections? The campaign finance system is broken and no one wants to fix it.

Load more