When Republicans told us that they wanted to gut campaign finance laws, they said it wouldn’t matter, because they would support reporting and disclosure requirements. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. For anyone who relied on their solemn, heart-felt, good-government vows to support disclosure and reporting requirements, I got news for you.
During their long campaign to loosen rules on campaign money, conservatives argued that there was a simpler way to prevent corruption: transparency. Get rid of limits on contributions and spending, they said, but make sure voters know where the money is coming from.
Today, with those fundraising restrictions largely removed, many conservatives have changed their tune. They now say disclosure could be an enemy of free speech.High-profile donors could face bullying and harassment from liberals out to “muzzle” their opponents, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a recent speech. Corporations could be subject to boycotts and pickets, warned the Wall Street Journal editorial page this spring. Democrats “want to intimidate people into not giving to these conservative efforts,” said Republican strategist Karl Rove on Fox News. “I think it’s shameful.”
Boycotts and pickets! In other words, corporations could be subject to political speech, in response to their political speech. The unfairness of it all! You mean, people get to… talk back under this liberal “free speech” scheme? Who knew? Is that in the Tea Party Constitution?
“Disclosure is the one area where [conservatives] haven’t won,” said Richard Briffault, an election law professor at Columbia Law School. “This is the next frontier for them.”
Anti-abortion groups are leaders in suing to gut campaign finance, disclosure and reporting rules. Recently, anti-abortion groups targeted the state of Vermont’s laws regulating campaign finance and disclosure. They lost this round, but they’ll be back.
A federal judge has ruled that Vermont can impose contribution limits on a political action committee, dismissing a constitutional challenge of provisions of Vermont’s campaign finance laws from the Vermont Right to Life Committee and a related PAC and ruling in favor of the state.
The Vermont Right to Life Committee had filed a lawsuit saying Vermont’s campaign finance registration, reporting and disclosure requirements for political action committees were too broad and unconstitutional. And a subcommittee created by the Vermont Right to Life Committee, called the Vermont Right to Life Committee-Fund for Independent Political Expenditures, argued that it should not be subject to Vermont’s $2,000 limit on contributions to PACs because it said it did not give money directly to candidates and makes only independent expenditures.
But U.S. District Court Judge Williams Sessions rejected the arguments on Thursday, saying there was no clear accounting between the FIPE and the Vermont Right to Life Committee, Inc. Political Committee which makes direct contributions to anti-abortion candidates. Therefore, Vermont is permitted to impose a $2,000 limit on contributions FIPE may accept from individual sources, he said.
Registration, reporting and and disclosure requirements. Transparency. That goes next. They do not want people to know who is behind these political campaigns. Why is that? Why the abrupt change? Principled conservatives were arguing FOR transparency prior to Citizens. It was A Bedrock Principle and part of the conservative soul!
If you live in state with campaign finance, reporting or disclosure rules, you may want to add one more issue that any state and federal candidate should have to address: does the candidate support or oppose gutting state campaign finance, reporting or disclosure regulations? Do they support the GOP movement (led by anti-abortion groups) to come into these states and sue to set aside their campaign finance laws? If you know any anti-abortion folks, you might ask them if they know anti-abortion groups are big players in gutting campaign finance regs. The vast majority of people in this country believe campaign finance should be regulated. Ask them if they know that anti-abortion groups are quietly moving to gut disclosure and reporting requirements, along with the Republican Party.
This is an article about their lawyer, from 2011.
He says his first national client, in 1978, was the National Right to Life Committee. He was about 30 then and started handling campaign finance issues with right-to-life groups as his plaintiffs. Now he has dozens of clients across the conservative landscape.
He’s also on the Republican National Committee and is prominent in the Federalist Society, an incubator for conservative legal ideas.
Villago Delenda Est
Of course they lied.
It’s what they do.
I have no problem with rounding up the lot of them, covering them liberally in tar and feathers, placing them on a rail, and riding them out of this country to someplace more to their liking, for glibertarians, Somalia, and for theocrats, the vile shithole that is Saudi Arabia.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
The Washington Post editorial board are crushed by this betrayal. Despondent. They never dreamed that prominent conservative leaders would lie their asses off to reach a goal. These are our super-savvy political experts. They missed this one! Got right by ’em.
BGinCHI
Welcome to your new aristocracy: dumber and more inbred than your old aristocracy, and even more entitled and predatory.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
Do you suppose, Kay, that this traumatic major emotional event will cause Fred Hiatt and his band of idiots to reassess their positions that seem to be congruent with these betrayers of their trust?
And I answer my question, no, they won’t. Because they’re paid a great deal not to.
amk
They have their cake and eat it too, thanks to a corrupt and complicit media.
Davis X. Machina
In other news from northern New England, the NH state legislature overrides Gov. Lynch’s veto of a voter ID law. (Lynch faces veto-proof majorities in both houses.)
Southern Beale
Sorta related but this is a very interesting Twitter feed: Mail My Grandpa Gets. The account profile says,
The stuff on this feed is pretty amazing. He/she includes photos so you know it’s all real. And it’s all hysterical, “the-end-of-America-as-we-know-it” stuff. Seeing how these groups prey on these senior citizens with their lies is just … sickening.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: Company town paper. Nothing to see here….move along.
Next, in sports and weather–
Ash Can
I was never aware that they ever said they’d support reporting and disclosure requirements in the first place.
Villago Delenda Est
Apparently, these people are all like Sir Mittens.
They bravely run away from their positions when the heat gets to be too much. They need to return to their native environments, the dark places under rocks where slime like Karl Rove breeds.
They fear the light. It burns them. They cannot tolerate it.
Explains their maniacal jealousy of the melanin enhanced like our current President. He can stand in the light. They cannot.
maya
Protests and boycotts and pickets, Oh my!
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Anti-abortion groups and their role in political speech is interesting. Texas Planned Parenthood are suing the state of Texas for their denial of funding based on the 1st Amendment. They say anti-abortion groups and the state of Texas want to shut them down to shut them up. They say anti-abortion groups and the State of Texas don’t agree with their advocacy (speech) on abortion, and that’s why they’re the only provider being targeted, although OTHER funded providers perform abortions. Sounds plausible to me.
Older_Wiser
Not only that, but check out election fraud in Florida. They elect criminals and it’s easy to see how. It might happen (or have happened) elsewhere, too, exactly in this manner:
http://nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/07/governor-rick-scott-and-doubts-about.html
rikyrah
they lied. that’s what they do. of course, they dont want transparency.
but, thank you Kay, for keeping your eye on these issues.
robertdsc-iPhone 4
Hellfire missiles are a great disinfectant. Start raing them down on GOP figures & watch the fuckers scatter like cockroaches.
Deen
And here I thought their story was that the US was a right-wing conservative nation? Shouldn’t the public be on the side of the companies that support conservative goals then?
Southern Beale
Funny how the Republicans are claiming their big donors will be attacked by rabid liberals if they disclose who these people are, when Sandra Fluke and Valerie Plame were “fair game.”
Someone needs to give the GOP an irony meter.
Jerzy Russian
@Southern Beale: My parents (both in their 80s) also get between 10 and 20 pieces of junk mail each day. The mail from church affiliated organizations must be seen to be believed. It never occurred to me to set up a twitter feed discussing this.
the Conster
Republican hypocrisy? OH NOES! Wake me up when you find something that Republicans do that is in good faith, consistent, coherent, principled and doesn’t benefit them electorally or financially.
Lex
Naturally, Jim Bopp was behind it. If I left that sonofoabitch on a desert island with nothing but a pile of garbage, I would expect him to find a way to sodomize the garbage. One of the greatest satisfactions of my life in newspapers was catching him lying about what was in his own lawsuit against the N.C. Board of Elections and being able to call him a liar on the front page of my newspaper.
Baud
Proponents of campaign finance reform are some of the most virulent “both sides do it” groups out there. As we should all know by now, “both sides do it” = “permanent conservative political dominance.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
Followed up with a tire iron upside the haid.
Mino
So Sarah Palin was just a few months ahead of the Republican party. Well, she was a leader, then. Who knew?
Mino
@Jerzy Russian: That is actually a good idea. The items they come up with are amazing. And they are sub-public, circulating in e-mail lists. Shine a little light on ’em.
ned
God, sometimes I’m so glad I live in Europe.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
That’s an interesting argument, and the shutting up has to do with them informing people that there are ways to have sex that don’t involve reproduction, which of course to these people is absolute heresy.
They hate the idea of contraception, because it cuts out the punishments their asshole deity decress for those who have sexytime without his approval.
kay
@Lex:
Good for you. We have a lot of anti-abortion people where I live.
I’m going to tell them that their donations are going to help the GOP shield moneyed interests from disclosure laws.
Seems to be a case of false advertising on the part of paid anti-abortion advocates. They’re collecting donations to fight abortion when they’re really fighting on behalf of monied interests who want to buy state government.
May explain why corporations were funding ALEC, which also promotes an anti-abortion agenda.
Interesting alliance.
Davis X. Machina
@kay:
I wish it would matter. Between the argument that the end — saving babies! — justifies any means, and general rah-rah for Team Red, I expect you’d be just about better off taking them aside and quietly teaching them the ukelele.
the Conster
@Villago Delenda Est:
Bill Maher covered this nicely in his last show – it’s all about the birth control and consequence-less pleasure fucking. Married men and women should only fuck with God as your condom, and if pregnancy results then you’ve made Jesus happy.
thalarctos
So the oligarchs are worried that one form of “speech”–money–might be answered by another form of speech–activism. Better to keep the money on the hush-hush, in “quiet rooms” per the Mittster. Rather like the quiet manipulation of the LIBOR and EURIBOR.
Is it any wonder that people are cynical, that they come to believe that the whole game is rigged?
kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
It has a lot of facets. Here’s two.
Are conservatives prepared to deny funding to any health care provider that ever performs an abortion? Life of the mother? Wow.
Or this: imagine the screeching in media if a liberal state denied state funding to a provider based on that provider’s ANTI- abortion political speech or association? It’d be front page news.
Baud
@kay:
That won’t work. Tell them that this is a secret plot by George Soros to take over the government.
@kay:
I’m a little surprised you said this. If they could, conservatives would criminalize abortion even if it is performed to save the life of the mother.
kay
@Baud:
We have anti-abortion Democrats here. They vote for Democrats although they oppose abortion. They have real nuanced views, and they accommodate those views in ways I don’t understand. I don’t consider them adversaries, though.
It’s difficult. One of the hottest fights we had in our local group was over stem cell. I had no idea. I went to make coffee and I came back and people were screaming at each other. That was in 2005 or something.
Tehanu
No, they weren’t. Those who argued for transparency then were just liars who managed to delude the rest of us into thinking they were principled. There are no principled conservatives; the ones who actually were principled are independents or Democrats now, if they’re not still blindly clinging to an idealized Party of Lincoln that hasn’t existed since the Grant Administration — and those folks are just kidding themselves into thinking they’re not as bigoted and authoritarian as the rest of the Greedy Old Party. Principled? Ha!
Jay in Oregon
This seems like a good place to mention Fred Clark’s new piece over at Slacktivist:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/07/04/why-liars-for-jesus-cant-be-believed-when-they-say-theyre-anti-abortion/
An excerpt:
cckids
Thank you, Kay, for reporting on this. It makes me sick in my soul,the things conservatives do. They see the whole world as an “I-win, you-lose” proposition. They’ll destroy this country.
Baud
@kay:
I can see anti-abortion folks not being single-issue voters, so you have anti-abortion Democrats just as you have gay Republicans.
But if Roe is overturned and states are allowed to criminalize abortion, conservatives will oppose any exception for the mother’s life, no matter what they say now. (As your original post notes, conservatives once said disclosure was sufficient to prevent corruption – now that they have Citizens United, disclosure is a First Amendment violation).
Conservatives might lose that argument in a lot of places, but I think that’s where the debate will be.
Davis X. Machina
@Jay in Oregon: Fred’s been saying for years that America’s real drug problem, the one that may yet destroy the Republic, is an endorphin addiction, with outrage the preferred delivery device.
He’s a treasure, Fred is. If he had only done his years-long-and-still-running deconstruction of the Left Behind books, dayenu.
(He’s also been unemployed for over a year, thanks to newspaper down-sizing. And he has a tip-jar, wink, wink.)
The Republic of Stupidity
@Southern Beale:
And we all know how that would end up…
Nomad
@kay:
I can’t understand how any of these anti-abortion groups could possibly vote for Romney now. First he said back in 1994, that abortion (pro-choice) was a position he would never change. Then he did presto- pro-life.
Now there’s that Stericycle (Part Two) in which he was caught in a lie about his involvement in the Bain Capita investment of a company that disposed of human fetus. (Along with all bio-medical waste) Stericycle- the anti-abortion groups must know- was fined $42,000 for dumping human fetus in municipal landfills (According to one activist group). No wonder Romney lied about his involvement. Where are those Christian Coalition leaders who proclaimed Romney to be 100% pro-life?
http://nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/07/pro-life-supporters-should-be-thinking.html
Frankensteinbeck
Why ‘social conservative’ and ‘plutocrat’ movements end up being allied has always been a topic of curiosity, and this provides me some insight. If you’re fighting a rear guard action, trying to enforce old standards on a society that no longer believes in them, you are of necessity a shrinking minority. It makes sense to embrace a group fighting to keep their disproportionate advantages. You both badly want to enforce your will on a larger society that disagrees with you, and you’re not enemies on any other front.
So anti-abortion (and anti-women and anti-sex) advocates can’t afford to have to play on an even playing field, and neither can the corrupt wealthy. They’ll support each other in this and other things. Makes sense!
Valdivia
Kay, once again you are putting the disinfectant sunlight where it should be, in their love of darkness. This should be, as you say, something they get hit on every day of the week from daylight to dusk.
So the short of it is: corporations are people whose money is free speech but no one should know about their speech because if they do, they will engage in free speech of their own?
WTF?
Linda Featheringill
@kay:
Actually, you might point out to the anti-abortion folks that Romney/Bain made a profit off of abortion for several years. A total of almost 50 million, I think, partly from incineration of aborted fetuses.
ETA:
Stericycle is the name of the company.
Davis X. Machina
@Linda Featheringill: Won’t matter. Romney is Team Red’s captain for now, and besides, money = virtue.
Frankensteinbeck
@Davis X. Machina:
It would have been enough? How many Jews have we GOT on this ship, anyway?! And how appropriate is it that I’m making this joke about a Mel Brooks movie?
kerFuFFler
“Corporations could be subject to boycotts and pickets” WSJ
So they want to prevent the free speech on the other side by preventing boycotts and pickets?
Talk about free speech for me but not for thee!
Davis X. Machina
@Frankensteinbeck: Me, I’m one of those Boston Irish Catholic Jews….
JPL
If I donate more than 250.00, my name is disclosed. That is okay with me. What is not okay with me is corporations and individuals buying elections without disclosure. I don’t expect personal gain with my donation and they do.
karen
@Linda Featheringill:
Is that common proven knowledge and if so why didn’t Santorum use it against Romney?
Jay in Oregon
@Davis X. Machina:
It’s too bad his extremist political and religious views—love, charity, compassion, and all that “Sermon on the Mount” stuff—will keep him from getting work in the evangelical Christian community.
Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads
@robertdsc-iPhone 4:
Total overkill – after all, they are in mortal terror of a few DFH’s carrying signs. A couple of sternly wagged sparklers should do to defeat that bunch of Brave Sir Robins.
Davis X. Machina
@Jay in Oregon: If I had a living to give him, like the Great and Good do in Victorian novels, he’d already have it.
karen
Could Balloon Juice have as a reference, every product the Koch Brothers make and the companies they own that make the products? Could the reference also have every company affiliated with ALEC? I already boycott Domino’s (Pro-Life Pizza) and Chika Fillet (Christian chicken – and by Christian I mean Dominionist). Maybe the Super PAC giving makes them anonymous but if the news already announces the involvement of the Koch Brothers and ALEC then having a reference or even someone having a liberal registry of sorts would be free speech wouldn’t it?
AkaDad
Some people are saying that the reason the Republicans don’t want transparency is that it allows foreigners, Communists, Socialists, Nazis, terrorists, and NAMBLA to donate money to Republicans.
kerFuFFler
@karen: Because the information just came out recently about Romney’s involvement with Stericycle.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@kerFuFFler:
The subtext to this is infuriating.
We don’t have a vote, since we’re not on the board of directors nor are we majority shareholders. Now we’re not even permitted to exercise what little choice we have, as consumers? Yet every little donation We the Little People ever make is public knowledge, available on the FEC website, for any potential employers to see.
There is no logical or moral argument supporting that level of asymmetry. You’ve essentially declared that corporations are Lords. Economic Royalism, indeed.
Happy fucking Fourth, America.
Cassidy
@Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads: Yes, but hellfire missiles have a more permanent outcome.
Linda Featheringill
@karen:
I read about Stericycle only recently. I don’t know if it’s new news or not.
amk
@Linda Featheringill: It came out only just a coupla days back. Getting info on mittbot’s past is like pulling out a tooth.
Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads
@Cassidy:
Good point. I no longer agree with what I said several minutes ago, and anyone who quotes me is lying! But seriously, forget the Hecksparklers. Hellfire it is. Followed by mansion-to-mansion mopping up.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Two groups of elites with no conflicting interests, one with a ton of money and one with a ton of voters? It’s a marriage made in heaven. See “Ancien Regime,” also too.
the Conster
@karen:
Santorum and the other not-Romneys had zero money or staff to dig this shit up. Obama OTOH…..
Linda Featheringill
@amk: #60
True. However, I have emailed mention of Stericycle to Santorum’s campaign and to Focus on the Family. I’ll probably do some more of that as I think of likely targets.
amk
@Linda Featheringill: sick rantorum still has a campaign ?
Linda Featheringill
@amk:
He has a campaign website. And he has some honestly won votes from the campaign. Other than that, dunno.
Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads
@Older_Wiser:
So I followed the link, and it looks like there might have been ACTUAL VOTING FRAUD. So the wingers will be all over this, right? Because a single fraudulent vote is way worse than denying the vote to eligible citizens, right?
I am going to take my dogs for their walk now. When I return, I am SURE I will find news of conservatives demanding investigations and accountability and consequences etc.
I am, however, emotionally prepared to be disappointed.
Bubblegum Tate
@Southern Beale:
Holy crap, that’s amazing. “There’s no way to sugar coat it: Hillary Clinton is using the ACLU as her personal army to persecute Christians”
It is really gross the way seniors are preyed upon. I remember it happening to my grandmother as dementia started setting in for her, and it was just awful–people could talk her into anything, or, even worse, insist that she had already agreed to something when she hadn’t and therefore owed them money.
gnomedad
@Davis X. Machina:
David Brin, too:
An Open Letter to Researchers of Addiction, Brain Chemistry, and Social Psychology
GxB
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well that’s it – I’m off eating for the foreseeable future.
Otherwise count me in the Shocked – Shocked I Say group Funny thing is despite all the scams, scandals, and GOS diaries about how such and such will sink the R’s this fall, they’ll still get millions and millions of votes, guaranteed damn near 50% of the populous.
karen
@kerFuFFler:
Has it been proven? If it has and the GOP knows about it and STILL supports Romney then that will be interesting….
karen
@gnomedad:
The problem with an outrage addiction is that the tolerance grows quickly and it takes more and more outrage to feel that buzz…
karen
@the Conster:
I just did a google news search. The news black out of “Stericycle” is amazing but I shouldn’t be amazed by anything anymore. I just heard about it yesterday and only peripherally. None of the MSM is carrying this story. It’s as if *shhhhh* they’ve been bought off not to even mention it because if it was Obama, it would be page one 24-7.
catclub
@karen: “Is that common proven knowledge and if so why didn’t Santorum use it against Romney?”
It had been said many times that the clowns who were running against Romney in the GOP primary were incompetent. They could not get their names on ballots, they could not find a single thing to aim at Romney and have it stick.
They guy he is running against now IS competent and has a competent opposition research team. Surprise.
WereBear
So true! I see them as particularly vulnerable because so many are isolated; also, they were raised in a time when “you could trust Walter Cronkite” not to lie… while times have changed, their perceptions have not.
And just a few short years ago my own husband, an “old DC hand” from way back, thought my pronouncements on the chicanery of the Republican party, the depth of the lunacy that has taken hold, and the shill-role our national media now plays; he thought it was overblown and over the top.
Now, he doesn’t.
But I’m sure there are millions of low-info voters who might be lucky enough to have escaped the scythe’s edge for the time being; or attributed their recent troubles to bad luck or the right wing’s favorite scapegoat, personal responsibility.
If you tell them this is all orchestrated by a cabal of extremely rich, casually evil, people right out of a good James Bond movie; they would look at you as though you had two heads.
Even though it is real.
Cerberus
No one could ever have predicted that the same people who have fought against any meaningful political response against them straight up buying our democracy would fight tooth and nail against the few crumbs of a response we have left.
It’s almost like the aristocracy has never liked the idea of being even marginally countered by the will of the people.
And as if trying to pretend we don’t have an aristocracy in this country isn’t an adequate defense against them.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
Except both groups are spiteful, arrogant fucks, pretty much by definition. They need a strong glue, but ‘rigging the system so the few can oppress the many’ puts them on the same side of enough issues.
Randy P
Question I might start dropping on wingnut trolls: So if a Democrat’s campaign is being funded by Al Qaeda, you think it’s unconstitutional to reveal that, right?
pluege
Corporations could be subject to boycotts and pickets, warned the Wall Street Journal editorial page this spring. Democrats “want to intimidate people into not giving to these conservative efforts
not like murdering doctors that perform legal abortions, bombing clients, or shooting Democratic politicians. conservatives would never resort to intimidation of people they disagree with, but liberals might picket and boycott corporations.
There just aren’t words available to properly characterize the level of scum that is today’s republican.
Jebediah, The Cornstarch of the Comment Threads
@pluege:
Goddamn right we want to intimidate them into not giving – but peaceful intimidation, as in “your sales might drop significantly” NOT “you might get shot or bombed.”
Their willful assholishness in pretending otherwise is both staggering and unsurprising.
Lex
@kay:
Yeah, and an IRS with the guts God gave granite would have yanked the group’s tax-exemption long ago for excessive political involvement.
But that is not the world we live in.
What I’m looking forward to is when there’s nothing left of America but Christian dominionists and corporatists; while there might be some overlap, I also hope to be watching from a different, safe shore while they devour each other. Just hope they don’t take the rest of the world with them.
Gex
The anti-abortion people have just been tagging onto the anti-gay groups’ success at hiding their petition signers and their donors. Every area where people agreed upon certain principles in the past were easy to throw out with gay people.
Should businesses be able to discriminate based on demographic? Well most Americans would publicly decry segregation, yet they fully believe businesses should be allowed to refuse to serve gays.
Until Prop 8 and Maine, we had been pretty successful at keeping these sorts of things public. But the rules got thrown out when gays were on the other side. Now that will reap benefits when they go after women. And it will reap benefits when they go after blacks. It will reap benefits because Americans now consistently believe some groups must be treated differently by the law and all the normal rules do not apply.
Caz
That’s funny, cuz liberals are the most disrespectful of the 1st amendment out of any group. Their slogan is, “Free speech for me, but not for thee.” They have been trying to censor campaign speech, internet speech, candidate speech, etc. No one is a bigger enemy of the 1st amendment than liberals.
Now, republicans aren’t a whole lot better, but to pick a single issue that is debatable and say, “See, republicans are anti-free speech” is just inaccurate.
How about doing a few posts on recent internet “fairness” proposals? The Citizens United case is another one where liberals want to curb free speech.
People don’t lose their constitutional rights when they join together to form a group, like a corporation. Liberals would have groups of people severely limited in their speech rights, which is a bad idea. For some reason, liberals can’t figure out that the rights of association and speech are not mutually exclusive.