Tag: Campaign finance

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Hypocrisy on Campaign Reform

The opposing sides in the 2020 election differ more substantially in outlook than in any previous campaign in recent memory. The contrast is seen not just in particular issues, but in the most fundamental concepts of how America should be structured.    

While most of the attention has been paid to the radical ideas presented by leading Democrats on tax and economic issues, that party’s glaring departure from traditional American thought on free speech is equally important.

Restrictions on the First Amendment regarding political campaigns are the most prominent example. Attacks on freedom of speech have become somewhat of an ongoing theme for Democrats. In 2012, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) urged “there ought to be limits” on First Amendment rights. At a Senate Rules Committee hearing, Schumer, the senior senator from New York,  issued the stunning statement that ”The First Amendment is sacred, but the First Amendment is not absolute.”

Free speech exercised through political campaigns is the main target.

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The New York Times notes that seven Democratic presidential candidates have signed onto a “Reform First”  pledge that threatens free speech with further campaign finance restrictions.  Hypocritically, much of the press, ever eager to advocate for the left, has turned a comparatively blind eye (and quiet microphone) to the unprecedented sums spent by former NYC Michael Bloomberg and California environmental extremist Tom Steyer.

Even The New York Times, a key leftist bastion, wrote in an Alexander Burns editorial that: “Left-wing efforts to efforts to ban or severely restrict lobbying and PAC spending would silence the average Americans whose voices they promise to amplify.”

National Review explains that “If the plan ever passed, ‘a bunch of friends or civic-minded citizens in a small town who want to get together and pool their money to speak out about a school-board race wouldn’t be able to do that anymore without a lawyer, an accountant, registering as a PAC, and so on,’ says Ilya Shapiro, a fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in First Amendment issues. ‘For everyday people who want to get involved in their congressional race, or their city council or what have you, it becomes a lot more complicated, advantaging the bigger players who can just run issue ads independent of a party or a campaign. It becomes a lot more complicated for someone who doesn’t have a phalanx of lawyers or accountants at their disposal.’”

Louis Michael Seidman, in a Columbia Law Review symposium, writes that “Free speech cannot be progressive. At least it cannot be progressive if we are talking about free speech in the American context, with all the historical, sociological, and philosophical baggage that comes with the modern American free speech right.”

Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum reports that

 “Every Democrat in the Senate is backing a constitutional amendment that aims to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 decision in which the Supreme Court lifted legal restrictions on what corporations and unions are allowed to say about politics at election time. That would be troubling enough, since Citizens United, which involved a film that was banned from TV because it was too critical of Hillary Clinton, simply recognized that Americans do not lose their First Amendment rights when they organize themselves in a disfavored way. But the so-called Democracy for All Amendment goes much further than nullifying one Supreme Court decision. It would radically rewrite the constitutional treatment of political speech, allowing Congress and state legislatures to impose any restrictions on election-related spending they consider reasonable. ‘To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process,’ Section 1 says, ‘Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.’ By allowing restrictions on money spent by anyone to influence elections, that provision would nullify a principle set forth in the landmark 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo.”

Illustration: Pixabay

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Personal Freedom Under Attack

As Independence Day approaches, it is appropriate to recall that individual freedom was the central concept that inspired the birth of the United States two hundred and forty years ago.

Increasingly, however, that idea is imperiled by the rapid growth of government power to limit the personal, economic, and political rights of citizens. Particularly over the past seven and one-half years, key portions of the Bill of Rights, which legally enshrines American freedom, have been frequently attacked, treated as an irrelevancy, or wholly ignored on both the state and federal levels. The First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments—one half of the entire document– have all been subjected to this.

Throughout most of U.S. history, freedom of speech has been considered the most precious of personal liberties, and the First Amendment had been treated as sacrosanct.  Disturbingly, that respect has sharply diminished in several ways. Campaign finance regulations seek to regulate how positions are publicized in elections. Obamacare demands that religious organizations put aside their beliefs. In many public and private colleges, students who stray from left-wing orthodoxy are penalized. Federal agencies have been hijacked for partisan use. Local governments have even become involved in the personal dietary choices of individuals. (Philadelphia recently imposed a soda tax, which may only be the first of laws throughout the nation that will infringe on the rights of people to determine what to eat or drink.)

The institutions of the national government, including the IRS and the Department of Justice, have been used to attack those that use their freedom of speech to lawfully disagree with the Executive Branch of government. Various state attorneys general have harassed think tanks that merely question the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency. The U.S. Attorney General has considered criminally prosecuting those that disagree with the White House position on climate change.

During her 2009 nominating hearing, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan refused to agree with the concept of unalienable rights, a foundational concept of America expressed in the Declaration of Independence itself as a reason for the separation from England.   In 2012, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, speaking in Cairo, Egypt, said that if she were writing a constitution for a new nation, she wouldn’t use the U.S. constitution as a model.

The President has surrendered internet control to an international organization comprised of several member states that believe censorship is justifiable, and during his tenure in office, sought to have Federal Communications Commission monitors placed in newsrooms.

In the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, Mr. Obama and Secretary Clinton blamed an American video for the assault. Adding insult to injury, it turned out that the video had nothing to do with the incident, yet both still cling to the fabrication.
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Writing in MoodyMedia, Dr. Edwin Lutzer notes:  “The censurers, the radicals who are all too ready to deny freedom to those who disagree with them, are perceived in our culture as “tolerant,” and [those who disagree] are viewed as “intolerant.” In other words, the philosophy of the left is preach tolerance, but practice inflexible intolerance to anyone who has the courage to express a different point of view.”

Even in the conduct of our national safety, rather than give full-throated fury at the horrible philosophy of Jihadi extremists who perpetuated the devastating tragedies in Orlando, Fort Hood, and San Bernardino, U.S. government at the highest levels spoke with far more fervor about limiting the Second Amendment rather than increased military action against the bigoted radicals who hate personal liberty.

The misplaced emphasis on restricting the practice of freedom rather than attack those who would abolish it can also be seen in the continuing power of government to invade the privacy of the citizenry, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Many small businesses have been jeopardized by financial regulations ostensibly emplaced to detect illicit foreign funds transfers, but which have in practice accomplished little or nothing.

There was a time when Americans jealously guarded their personal rights.  Over the past several years, however, Washington’s reflexive response to almost every problem has been to adopt new executive actions or agency regulations (Imposed without the consent of Congress by a President that ignores the Constitution’s Separation of Powers mandate and loudly proclaims that he “Can’t wait for Congress”) that don’t solve the issue at hand but further limit freedom.

This tendency was foreseen by the framers of the Bill of Rights, who, in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, specifically limited the powers of the federal government, and even noted that powers not specifically mentioned in the Constitution belong to the people, not the federal government.

Throughout humanity’s long history, there have been many names for oppressive government: monarchies, dictatorships, Nazi, Fascist, theocratic, Communist and Socialist regimes.  Despite differing titles and symbols, all share the same over-arching philosophy: the power of government overrules the rights of individuals.  America must stop heading down that path.

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2 Senators Move to Limit First Amendment

Campaign finance regulations are a tool frequently used by incumbents to prevent challengers from raising the financing they need to counter the free publicity an incumbent receives. It is also a nifty means to discourage ordinary citizens from thinking about running in the first place, due to the complications and potential fines that could be levied if complex reporting rules are not followed.

The U.S. Supreme Court has become wary of the infringements these procedures impose on First Amendment rights, and in recent decisions, such as the McCutheon case, have ruled against them.

Now, two Democrat senators, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Charles Schumer of New York, are attempting to circumvent the Supreme Court by proposing an amendment that would enshrine this gimmick in the U.S. Constitution.

The Democrats have led the charge for the anti-free speech measures since the U.S. Supreme Court held, in the Citizens United case, that these restrictions violated the First Amendment.

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Over the past several years, the First Amendment has come under attack from several different angles.  The Obama Administration’s decision to surrender control of the internet to an international grouping containing pro-censorship nations is among the most profound. Legislation penalizing religious institutions for following their conscience on insurance matters has been enacted. The FCC’s attempt to intervene in the editorial decisions of news editors is another example.

Together, the ongoing assault on the most basic of American freedoms is exceptionally troubling and wholly unacceptable.

Many totalitarian nations have wonderful sounding broad statement about freedom of speech and conscience in their general constitutions, but limit that right through a host of bureaucratic laws.  This is precisely what is beginning to happen in the United States.

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Supreme Court Ruling Protects 1st Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision in the matter of McCutheon et al v. Federal Elections Commission complies with the view that attempts to interfere in the electoral process in ways not specified by the Constitution must be carefully screened to insure that they do not violate the First Amendment.

Chief Justice Roberts delivered the decision, noting that corruption would be held in check by limiting how large a single donation could be.  The ruling indicates that the ceilings on the total amounts contributed each election cycle would not undermine that goal.

In its 5-4 decision yesterday, the Court held that “The right to participate in democracy through political contributions is protected by the First Amendment, but that right is not absolute.  Congress may regulate campaign contributions to protect against corruption or the appearance of corruption…It may not, however, regulate contributions simply to reduce the amount of money in politics, or to restrict the political participation of some in order to enhance the relative influence of others.”

That part of the decision—stressing that campaign regulations cannot be used to enhance the influence of some at the expense of others– is of extraordinary importance. Although the McCutheon case involves the question of aggregate limits on individual political contributions, that part of the decision may be seen as a cautionary note that the growing environment at the federal, state and local levels of campaign regulation may be violative of free speech rights.

Research indicates that campaign regulation efforts have not achieved the goal of reducing the influence of money in politics.  A study by the CATO institute found that “…there is no serious evidence that campaign finance regulation has achieved or will achieve its goals of reducing the influence of money, opening up the political system, and lowering the cost of campaigns.  Indeed, since the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act, spending has risen sharply, the number of political action committees and the amount of PAC spending are up, and incumbents have increased both their election rate and the rate at which they outspend their challengers.”

Campaign finance regulations have been abused in a number of ways. In some localities, local Campaign Finance Boards have used their authority to heavily influence the outcome of elections and enhance the power of political bosses.  The ability to do this is especially prevalent in jurisdictions where taxpayer funds are provided to help finance campaigns.
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Recent decisions of the Supreme Court—including both the McCutcheon case and Citizens United—have taken positions protective of the First Amendment.

The ban on any contributions from foreign sources, not part of the McCutheon case, continues.  Scandals involving contributions from foreign sources have affected both the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

According to a Washington Times article the web site Obama.com, owned by a China-based American business man, which attracted an overwhelming majority of foreigners to it, routed visitors to a donation site. Other published reports have revealed that an Obama web site accepted donations from abroad, while a similar Romney site rejected similar foreign donations.

Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign was also linked to a serious foreign contribution scandal. Approximately $100,000 from China’s military was funneled to the Democrat campaign in the summer of 1996 by the daughter of a top general in the People’s Liberation Army, General Liu Huaqing.  The funds were not returned until after an investigation revealed the illegal activity.

Both the limits themselves, and the complicated system of reporting under federal, state and local campaign finance regulations, can be seen as favoring “party-boss” backed candidates who have both access to the specialized skills necessary to timely provide mandated filings as well as access to the type of fund-raising abilities that comply with the regulations.