Once again, the Supreme Court has ruled that, in politics, money equals speech, but once again they apply it only narrowly, saying that contribution and spending restrictions on wealthy candidates and their opponents are unconstitutional infringements on free speech.
I applaud the ruling, but I wish they'd be a little consistent and just strike down McCain-Feingold entirely.
Sweet, delicious and entirely appropriate: lefty bloggers file FEC complaint aginst sanctimonious Presidential candidate John McCain regarding his acceptance and then withdrawal from public financing for his Presidential race.
If there were any justice, bloggers and donors from the left, right and center would keep McCain's campaign so tied up with FEC complaints that he wouldn't have any time to be corrupted raise money.
Unfortunately, IIRC, the FEC doesn't have enough members to have a quorum due to Senate Democrats holding up some of President Bush's appointees, which is further delicious irony.
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on the outsourcing of legal work by Attorneys General that is interesting in light of Julia Rietz's interesting relationship with Joe Phebus. Phebus has been working for the County for a year and a half and has not yet submitted a bill (that's nice) but also has not told the County Board how many billable hours he's put in on the cases he is pursuing on our behalf (that's bad). Also recall that the Phebus contract has a big loophole in it that leaves open the final cost to the County of his legal work.
The absurdities continue:
The early reviews are in, and three federal judges appeared in agreement Wednesday that a movie lambasting Hillary Clinton seemed an awful lot like a 90-minute campaign advertisement.
Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, is challenging the nation's campaign finance laws, which require disclaimers on political advertisements and restrict when they can be broadcast. The group argues "Hillary: The Movie" and related television advertisements are not political advertising even though the New York senator is in the presidential race.
Attorney James Bopp argued that they should be considered "issue- oriented" speech because viewers aren't urged to vote for or against the Democrat.
"What's the issue?" asked Judge A. Raymond Randolph, a federal appeals judge sitting on a mixed panel to review the case.
"That Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist," Bopp replied. "That is an issue."
"Which has nothing to do with her campaign?" U.S District Judge Royce C. Lamberth interjected.
"Not specifically, no," Bopp replied.
"Once you say, 'Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist,' aren't you saying vote against her?"
Bopp disagreed because the movie did not use the word "vote."
"Oh, that's ridic...," Lamberth said, trailing off and ending the line of questioning.
It's ridiculous, all right....
PoliticalBase.com has a great new site that maps Federal political contributions onto google maps. You can search by race type, candidate, party, ZIP, and a bunch of other stuff and then embed the maps or tables in a blog post. For example, here's all the 2008 Presidential donations for ZIP Code 61820:
Person |
Party | Contributed To | Date | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sharon Aday 502 W Hill St #105 Champaign, Illinois 61820 Not Employed @ Not Employed |
 |
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Jul 5, 2007 | $25 |
| Sharon Aday 502 W Hill St #105 Champaign, Illinois 61820 Not Employed @ Not Employed |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Aug 5, 2007 | $25 |
| Sharon Aday 502 W Hill St #105 Champaign, Illinois 61820 Not Employed @ Not Employed |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Sep 5, 2007 | $25 |
| Ms. Dorothy A Baker 6 Litchfield Ln Champaign, Illinois 61820 Retired @ Not Employed |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Mar 1, 2007 | $1,000 |
| Melina Barona 211 W Beardsley Ave Champaign, Illinois 61820 Academic Professional @ Uiuc |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Jul 27, 2007 | $200 |
| Mr. David W. Barr 1710 S. Neil Street Champaign, Illinois 61820 President @ Barr Real Estate |
 |
Mitt Romney for President in 2008 |
Aug 31, 2007 | $500 |
| Mr. Leslie Barr 1710 S. Neil Street Champaign, Illinois 61820 Information Requested Per Best Effo @ Information Requested Per Best Effo |
|
Mitt Romney for President in 2008 |
Sep 26, 2007 | $1,800 |
| Elizabeth Barstead 602 Haines Blvd Champaign, Illinois 61820 President @ Hendrick Dorms Inc. |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Apr 5, 2007 | $1,000 |
| Elizabeth Barstead 602 Haines Blvd Champaign, Illinois 61820 President @ Hendrick Dorms Inc. |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Jun 28, 2007 | $2,000 |
| Elizabeth Barstead 602 Haines Blvd Champaign, Illinois 61820 President @ Hendrick Dorms Inc. |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Jun 28, 2007 | $700 |
| Elizabeth Barstead 602 Haines Blvd Champaign, Illinois 61820 President @ Hendrick Dorms Inc. |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Jun 28, 2007 | $-700 |
| Mr. David C. Eades 5 Lyndhurst Place Champaign, Illinois 61820 Retired |
|
Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008 |
Jun 11, 2007 | $1,000 |
| Mr. Jeffrey Hartman 505 S. 5th Street Champaign, Illinois 61820 Apt. Owner/Investor @ Self-Employed |
|
Mitt Romney for President in 2008 |
Sep 13, 2007 | $2,300 |
| Stanley O Ikenberry 1310 S 6th St # 347 Champaign, Illinois 61820 Regent Professor @ Univ.111@Urbaaa-Champaign |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Aug 10, 2007 | $1,000 |
| Gina A Jackson 907 N 5th St Champaign, Illinois 61820 Retired @ Not Employed |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Aug 10, 2007 | $1,000 |
| Pauline Kayes 712 S Prairie St Champaign, Illinois 61820 College Professor @ Parkland College |
|
Hillary Clinton for President in 2008 |
Jan 22, 2007 | $250 |
| Pauline Kayes 712 S Prairie St Champaign, Illinois 61820 College Professor @ Parkland College |
|
Hillary Clinton for President in 2008 |
Sep 7, 2007 | $300 |
| Don Kleinmuntz 2001 S 1st St Ste 200 Champaign, Illinois 61820 Executive Vice President @ Strata Decision Technology |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Feb 21, 2007 | $250 |
| Mr. James J. Liautaud 2212 Fox Drive Champaign, Illinois 61820 Chairman & C.E.O. @ Jimmy John'S |
|
Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008 |
Aug 29, 2007 | $2,300 |
| Mr. Xi Lin 401 E Chalmers Apt 320 Champaign, Illinois 61820 Teaching Assistant @ University Of Illinois At Urbana-Ch |
|
Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008 |
Apr 18, 2007 | $250 |
| Ms. Jeanette Mccollum 409 W Hill St Champaign, Illinois 61820 Professor @ University Of Il |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Sep 21, 2007 | $50 |
| Mr. Carlos A. Nieto 6 Taylor Street Champaign, Illinois 61820 Owner @ Self-Employed |
|
Mitt Romney for President in 2008 |
Sep 12, 2007 | $2,200 |
| Michael Richards 409 W Columbia Ave Apt 2 Champaign, Illinois 61820 Information Requested @ Michael Richards Consulting |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Jun 8, 2007 | $2,300 |
| Yvette Scheven 107 N Elm St Apt 202 Champaign, Illinois 61820 Information Requested @ Information Requested |
|
Barack Obama for President in 2008 |
Aug 10, 2007 | $250 |
| Mr. Rodrick L. Schmidt 1605 S. Statesuite 112 Champaign, Illinois 61820 President @ Royal Properties |
|
Mitt Romney for President in 2008 |
Aug 31, 2007 | $2,300 |
| Mr. Jeffrey B. Wampler 627 E. Greenp.O. Box 1098 Champaign, Illinois 61820 President @ Sterling Management |
|
Mitt Romney for President in 2008 |
Sep 18, 2007 | $2,300 |
| Mr. Joseph D. Wampler 701 Devonshire Drive Champaign, Illinois 61820 Information Requested Per Best Effo @ Information Requested Per Best Effo |
|
Mitt Romney for President in 2008 |
Sep 26, 2007 | $500 |
This is cool stuff - as voters and citizens and bloggers, we need more tools like this and less crappy, heavy-handed unconstitutional regulations like McCain-Feingold.
Kudos to Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes for this new site:
Comptroller Dan Hynes today unveiled a user-friendly website that allows citizens to track political contributions made by companies that have state contracts.
“Open Book” is a searchable database of state contracts and campaign contributions that combines information from the Comptroller’s accounting system with official semi-annual campaign disclosure reports filed by political committees with the State Board of Elections (SBE).
“The purpose of Open Book is to make it much easier for the public to ‘follow the money,’” said Hynes. “That should make public officials more accountable to the people they serve. In turn, it is my hope that some measure of the public confidence in state government that has been lost over the years can be restored.”
Blog authors and commenters will hopefully do some digging on there.
(Hat tip: CapFax)
I thought this was really interesting:
For example, what percentage of Bush’s donors who gave more than $1,000 in 2000 do you think gave to the President again in 2004? I would have guessed in the neighborhood of eighty percent, but the CFI study found that only 31 percent gave again in 2004. For donors of $200 or more, it dropped to 30 percent. What’s more, only 24 percent of Gore donors from 2000 and 21 percent of Bradley donors in 2000 gave to any Democratic presidential candidate in 2004.
“It turns out there’s a lot more churning in the system than the political professionals normally expect,” Malbin said. “We picture a candidate going back to the old list, going to the same old, same old again and again, but not that’s really the way it works. People are constantly coming in and then leaving the pool of donors. Today, there are a lot of old donors who haven’t given yet – and who may not give at all.”
Those kinds of statistics have interesting implications for the debate about campaign finance restrictions.
These numbers are just a further re-affirmation of how heavily favored the Democrats are to win the White House in 2008:
Beneath those broad numbers lies harder evidence suggesting a Democratic financial tsunami is building.
The total number of donors who gave more than $200 in the first six months of this year to Democrats was 137,388 compared to 81,075 givers to Republicans, the Campaign Finance Institute study found.
If history serves as a guide, many of those primary donors will be inherited by the party nominee next year, much as Democrat Howard Dean’s Internet activists stuck with nominee John F. Kerry in 2004.
“The Democratic nominee will begin with an unprecedented fundraising base and will be able to draw on the unprecedented fundraising bases of other Democrats. That will make for a very powerful force,” said Anthony Corrado, a political fundraising expert who serves on the Campaign Finance Institute’s board.
The primary engine behind the Democratic gains is the upstart campaign of Obama. His new face and soaring rhetoric draws huge crowds on the campaign trail that can turn thousands of $5 donations into real money.
Discuss (or gloat or lament).
Random thought: should the Norman Hsu-Hillary Clinton fundraising scandal serve as a clear warning that McCain-Feingold hasn't done anything to limit corruption?
Why would anyone want to emulate a "reform" that clearly isn't working?
Thankfully, the FEC complaint that local blogger John Bambenek had filed against Daily Kos, arguing that the blog should be regulated as a Political Committee, has been dismissed.
Were these contributions to Illinois Democratic political organizations made by the Norman Hsu that's in the national news?
You can search contributions yourself at the Illinos State Board of Elections website. The PDF to which I linked above is just a screen capture of what I found when searching for "Norman Hsu."
UPDATE: The address this Norman Hsu used for these contributions is "445 Fifth Ave., Apt. 30-A, New York, NY, 10016" and "160 Wooster St., New York, NY, 10012." His occupation/employer is listed in one entry as "Director/Components Ltd."
Those addresses match some of the other Hsu contributions that are making national news.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Another search at the IL SBE for "N HSU" produces no additional relevant results. Searching for the company listed as his employer on one of the contributions ("Components Ltd") produces no additional results either. It would seem that Mr. Hsu made just these three contributions in Illinois.
The Federal Election Commission has fined one of the last cycle’s biggest liberal political action committees $775,000 for using unregulated soft money to boost John Kerry and other Democratic candidates during the 2004 elections.
America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits.
The group’s big donors included George Soros, Progressive Corp. chairman Peter Lewis and the Service Employees International Union.
The settlement, which the FEC approved unanimously, is the third largest enforcement penalty in the commission’s 33-year history.
Why would anyone want to emulate the steaming pile of feces that is McCain-Feingold, as the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform ("Speech for me, but not for thee!") wants to do here in Illinois?
Beacuse such reforms are working so well the FEC has dropped a $750,000 fine (which is about 0.5 percent of what it spent in 2004) on a group that no longer exists three years after the election they were trying to influence, even though everybody knew at the time that the organization was breaking the law and even though the group in question didn't care about the fines and penalties?
Campaign finance "reforms" don't work. The only thing that does is 100 percent, near-instant, online disclosure of every penny raised and spent, and relying on voters decide what is corrupt and what isn't.
Local blogger, former school board candidate, and contributor to IlliniPundit IlliniPundit.com John Bambenek has been named 'Wanker of the Year' by dailykos.com, a highly-trafficked liberal blog. Apparently Bambenek has filed an FEC complaint against the blog alleging they are a political committee and should be regulated as such.
Not only has this issue already been decided in the courts, but even the conservative blogs find this a troubling, bad idea that threatens the first ammendment of the constitution.
UPDATE: Edited by IP to clarify that Bambenek doesn't contribute to IlliniPundit (me, the blogger) but rather to IlliniPundit.com (the blog site). He "contributes" in the same way that curious and Rex Bradfield and Queen and dozens of others "contribute."
I only make this clarification because I know, at some point, there's going to be a story about "IlliniPundit blogger files FEC complaint against Kos" or some such thing. And nothing could be further from the truth. I don't support this complaint, I think it's invalid under current FEC rules, I think the current FEC rules under which this complaint was filed are unconstitutional, I think the FEC should be abolished and I think political speech should be as free and unregulated as possible.
Thanks for your indulgence.
The NG has this article about last night's Urbana City Council meeting:
The city council expressed misgivings Monday night about a proposal to create a civilian review board to review citizen complaints against police.
Aldermen liked the general concept, but some of them said the proposed ordinance put forward by the administration simply isn't strong enough.
Aldermen Danielle Chynoweth, Charlie Smyth and Brandon Bowersox said they thought the proposed ordinance needed more teeth, with Chynoweth saying the review board should be given the power to subpoena witnesses, case-specific records and evidence.
"If the civilian review board can't compel evidence, it is completely worthless – and I won't support it," she said.
Chynoweth expressed a number of other objections, including that review board members would be required not to talk about board proceedings and deliberations "in perpetuity." She also objected to a provision that would allow the suspension of complaint hearings if the city attorney or police chief determines a civil lawsuit is threatened against the city.
Chynoweth eventually made a motion, which passed, to postpone consideration of the ordinance until the next council committee meeting on July 23. In the meantime, she said she will meet with acting City Attorney Ronald O'Neal and Human Relations Officer Todd Rent to go over her concerns in detail.
Discuss.
The Supreme Court today struck down a portion of the steaming pile of feces that is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" act:
The Supreme Court loosened restrictions Monday on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections, weakening a key provision of a landmark campaign finance law.
The court, split 5-4, upheld an appeals court ruling that an anti-abortion group should have been allowed to air ads during the final two months before the 2004 elections. The law unreasonably limits speech and violates the group's First Amendment rights, the court said.
The case involved advertisements that Wisconsin Right to Life was prevented from broadcasting. The ads asked voters to contact the state's two senators, Democrats Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, and urge them not to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees.
Feingold, a co-author of the campaign finance law, was up for re-election in 2004.
The provision in question was aimed at preventing the airing of issue ads that cast candidates in positive or negative lights while stopping short of explicitly calling for their election or defeat. Sponsors of such ads have contended they are exempt from certain limits on contributions in federal elections.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by his conservative allies, wrote a majority opinion upholding the appeals court ruling.
The majority itself was divided in how far justices were willing to go in allowing issue ads.
Three justices, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, would have overruled the court's 2003 decision upholding the constitutionality of the provision.
I'll have more later, but I'm awfully pleased that the First Amendment has regained a tiny shred of its intended importance. I wonder what McCain's dying Presidential campaign will say? He's going to have a hard time criticizing this ruling while still pretending that he'd appoint constructionist judges.
Fred Thompson filled in for Paul Harvey for a couple weeks a while back. Now he is doing commentary for ABC radio, which often get picked up by internet media (like today at NRO).
Is this "fair"? As soon as he "announces", he will lose his gig at ABC radio. But as long as he is just "considering" running, he can keep pumping this stuff out - FOR FREE. ABC seems more than happy to provide him this forum. Does this make a mockery of current campaign finance laws?
Don't tell the well-intentioned folks over at the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (Motto: "Speech for me, but not for thee!"), but the McCain-Feingold campaign finance and political speech restrictions aren't doing a darn thing to reduce the amount of money in politics:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton raised $26 million and transferred an additional $10 million from her Senate war chest to post $36 million in the first quarter of the 2008 fundraising cycle, the New York Democrat's presidential campaign announced Sunday.
"We are completely overwhelmed and gratified by the historic support," Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle told reporters in a conference call Sunday afternoon.
Senior campaign aides noted that Clinton, a front-runner for the Democratic nomination, had raised the $26 million in a 10-week period, but still said their goal for the year remains at $75 million. Political analysts suggest the fundraising figure for Clinton and a handful of other presidential contenders is more likely to be in the $100 million range for the year.
If McCain-Feingold isn't working on the Federal level (and clearly it's not, whether one is considering results in reducing fundraising or reducing corruption), then why is the ICPR trying to get similar rules enacted in Illinois?
I can't remember the last time I agreed with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (whose unofficial motto is, "Speech for me, but not for thee!"), but I can agree with them on this:
CPR joins with others around the country in celebrating National Sunshine Week. Public access to records, especially records that contradict the official story, is a hallmark of democracy. A society that trusts the people to elect their leaders should also trust the people to understand the truth, even and especially when that truth calls into question the wisdom of elected leaders.
A related AP story from earlier this week details the efforts of the Blagojevich administration to close off public access to government documents and records:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich took office promising a new era of open government. He talked about weekly press briefings and a budget-making process that would be open to the public.
Instead, his administration has clamped down on sharing public information. It refuses to release government documents. It has defied the attorney general's legal opinions and punished people suspected of cooperating with reporters...
In denying requests under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, the administration has sometimes changed its explanations and cited out-of-state court rulings that the attorney general says don't apply here. It even has suggested the law raises constitutional questions.
And, of course, we have our own problems in Champaign County government, with the most high profile battles being fought in court as the News-Gazette and County Clerk Mark Shelden sued to obtain access to documents relating to the County Nursing Home construction boondoggle.
For those of you wondering about the spending in the 2006 Myers-Frerichs State Senate race, the reports were filed yesterday.
Mike Frerichs, who won by 517 votes, took in about $1.08 million in the last six months of 2006 in direct and in-kind donations, with about $1.03 million of that coming from Political Action Committees (or PACs), including over $900,000 from the Illinois Senate Democratic Fund (ISDF), the party committee controlled by Senate President Emil Jones of Chicago.
(As an aside, for those of you who said I was wrong to assume that Frerichs' early attack ads were paid for by Jones - the first ISDF contribution came on 9/4, exactly the day that the attack ads began airing on TV and radio. That said, the attack ads worked, so being right is absolutely no consolation.)
Judy Myers took in about $900,000 in direct and in-kind contributions from July through December, with about $800,000 coming from PACs. About $630,000 was from Sen. Frank Watson's two PACs (Citizens for Watson and the Republican Senate Campaign Committee) and the Illinois Republican Party.
The race in the 52nd State Senate district was easily the most expensive legislative race in the state in 2006, and may have been the most expensive in history (although I think there might have been a Chicago-area race in 2002 that was more expensive - Pam Althoff maybe?)
For the 103rd House race, Naomi Jakobsson raised about $215,000, with about 90% of it coming from PACs and Speaker Michael Madigan. Her opponent, Rex Bradfield, raised and spent about $14,000.
Discuss (or gloat) if you want.
UPDATE: Tom Kacich beat me to it, although his numbers don't include the in-kind contributions that make up a significant portion of the Party's support.
One of the most ineffective "reform" ideas ever proposed, public financing of Presidential elections, is nearly dead:
The public financing system for presidential campaigns, a post-Watergate initiative hailed for decades as the best way to rid politics of the corrupting influence of money, may have quietly died over the weekend.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York became the first candidate since the program began in 1976 to forgo public financing for both the primary and the general election because of the spending limits that come with the federal money. By declaring her confidence that she could raise far more than the roughly $150 million the system would provide for the 2008 presidential primaries and general election, Mrs. Clinton makes it difficult for other serious candidates to participate in the system without putting themselves at a significant disadvantage.
Officials of the Federal Election Commission and advisers to several campaigns say they expect the two candidates who reach Election Day 2008 will raise more than $500 million apiece. Including money raised by other primary candidates, the total spent on the presidential election could easily exceed $1 billion.
People involved in the Republican primary campaign of Senator John McCain of Arizona say he, too, is beginning to seek private donations for the primary and general elections, albeit with the option of returning them. A longtime proponent of campaign finance change, Mr. McCain has recently removed his name as a co-sponsor of a bill to expand the presidential public financing program.
I cannot think of a more poetic example of the absolute uselessness of campaign finance "reform" than John McCain forgoing public financing for his Presidential campaign. Of course, the "reformers" will still work to convince us of the need for further reforms without being able to actually point to any successes whatsoever from past reforms. When it comes to campaign finance "reform," don't listen to John McCain's words, but rather pay attention to his actions.
