Friday, May 14, 2004
527 Soft Money Loophole Stays Open
Yesterday, the Federal Election Commission rejected a proposal that would have set $5000 limits on contributions to political groups that attack, promote, support, or oppose federal candidates. They say they might look at the issue again in 3 months. These groups, organized under section 527 of the IRS code, are formed for the explicit purpose of influencing elections. However, under longstanding FEC precedent, as long as those groups don't specifically tell people to vote for or against a candidate, they are not subject to the $5000 contribution limit that political action committees (PACs) are. The Los Angeles Times has a good story on this here.
Contrary to what many are saying, the McCain-Feingold bill did nothing to change this. An editorial in The New York Times says this decision will "reopen" the taps to again flood us with soft money. Wrong. These taps were never closed.
One of the many flaws with the McCain-Feingold law was its failure to really ban soft money. As I pointed out here, in a March 2002 letter released just after McCain-Feingold passed Congress:
There are a lot of things going on here:
1) Extremely wealthy liberals, like George Soros, are using 527s to spend big money to defeat president Bush. Many of these liberals, including Soros, backed the McCain-Feingold bill, so they know all the loopholes to exploit.
2) Wealthy business interests, like the Bush Rangers, love McCain-Feingold because it allows them to give twice as much money directly to Bush as they could before. So, even though most of them opposed McCain-Feingold, they have wrapped themselves in the mantle of reform and are attacking the liberals for using these 527 groups. However, now that the fat cat liberals have all screamed about how this flood of 527 money is quite legitimate, the Republicans are now well positioned to raise boatloads of it themselves with nobody left on the left to complain about it. See the Republican press release here and this AP story here where they are bragging about their intention to do just that.
3) Looking to remove the egg on their faces, the people who brought us McCain-Feingold (like the New York Times editorial pages) are now seeking to blame the FEC for creating a loophole in the law. But, they didn't. They simply left open the same loophole that Congress did in passing McCain-Feingold. And, these same folks have been crying for years (correctly it turns out) that the FEC is a toothless tiger. So yesterday's inaction really comes as a surprise to nobody.
4) The $5000 limit to PACs is so high anyhow, and these 527 groups are such a small slice of the overall problem, that even if the FEC had applied these modest regulations to them yesterday, it would have done little to bring politics back to the level of ordinary Americans.
What all of this demonstrates, of course, is that we shouldn't count on liberals, conservatives, Congress, or the FEC to get big money out of politics. The rest of us will have to take matters into our own hands if something is ever to be done about this mess.
Yesterday, the Federal Election Commission rejected a proposal that would have set $5000 limits on contributions to political groups that attack, promote, support, or oppose federal candidates. They say they might look at the issue again in 3 months. These groups, organized under section 527 of the IRS code, are formed for the explicit purpose of influencing elections. However, under longstanding FEC precedent, as long as those groups don't specifically tell people to vote for or against a candidate, they are not subject to the $5000 contribution limit that political action committees (PACs) are. The Los Angeles Times has a good story on this here.
Contrary to what many are saying, the McCain-Feingold bill did nothing to change this. An editorial in The New York Times says this decision will "reopen" the taps to again flood us with soft money. Wrong. These taps were never closed.
One of the many flaws with the McCain-Feingold law was its failure to really ban soft money. As I pointed out here, in a March 2002 letter released just after McCain-Feingold passed Congress:
Soft money will not vanish. McCain-Feingold proponents claim that this dramatic increase in hard money is justified by a ban on soft money. We should first remember that soft money is just a small part of the problem, comprising only 17% of all money raised by federal candidates and parties in the last election cycle, up from 15% in the 1998 cycle and 13% in 1996. Even this relatively small slice of the problem won't go away under McCain-Feingold. Some current soft money will simply be converted into hard money using the higher hard money limits. Much-or perhaps most-of the soft money that currently goes to federal parties will go to state and local parties, to independent expenditures, and to non-party issue groups to use for electioneering-all of which is legal under McCain-Feingold.
There are a lot of things going on here:
1) Extremely wealthy liberals, like George Soros, are using 527s to spend big money to defeat president Bush. Many of these liberals, including Soros, backed the McCain-Feingold bill, so they know all the loopholes to exploit.
2) Wealthy business interests, like the Bush Rangers, love McCain-Feingold because it allows them to give twice as much money directly to Bush as they could before. So, even though most of them opposed McCain-Feingold, they have wrapped themselves in the mantle of reform and are attacking the liberals for using these 527 groups. However, now that the fat cat liberals have all screamed about how this flood of 527 money is quite legitimate, the Republicans are now well positioned to raise boatloads of it themselves with nobody left on the left to complain about it. See the Republican press release here and this AP story here where they are bragging about their intention to do just that.
3) Looking to remove the egg on their faces, the people who brought us McCain-Feingold (like the New York Times editorial pages) are now seeking to blame the FEC for creating a loophole in the law. But, they didn't. They simply left open the same loophole that Congress did in passing McCain-Feingold. And, these same folks have been crying for years (correctly it turns out) that the FEC is a toothless tiger. So yesterday's inaction really comes as a surprise to nobody.
4) The $5000 limit to PACs is so high anyhow, and these 527 groups are such a small slice of the overall problem, that even if the FEC had applied these modest regulations to them yesterday, it would have done little to bring politics back to the level of ordinary Americans.
What all of this demonstrates, of course, is that we shouldn't count on liberals, conservatives, Congress, or the FEC to get big money out of politics. The rest of us will have to take matters into our own hands if something is ever to be done about this mess.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Money From All Sides
In this month's edition of The Washington Monthly, Nicholas Confessore looks in-depth at one way corporations and wealthy folks exploit the current law to funnel huge amounts of cash to organizations that influence our elections. The article shows that when it comes to big money flowing into elections, it comes from all sides.
In this month's edition of The Washington Monthly, Nicholas Confessore looks in-depth at one way corporations and wealthy folks exploit the current law to funnel huge amounts of cash to organizations that influence our elections. The article shows that when it comes to big money flowing into elections, it comes from all sides.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Whose Government Is This Anyway?
As Sharon Theimer of the AP reports here, corporations who won valuable contracts to provide the new Medicare drug cards spent over $35 million lobbying in 2003. In addition, many of the industry's executives and lobbyists have contributed or raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Bush's re-election efforts. One particular executive, president Alan Lotvin of Medco (a part of pharmaceutical giant Merck until last year), helped organize a $100,000 fund-raising event for Bush only a few weeks after his company was named by the Administration as one of the drug card providers.
This kind of article usually gets the reform vultures circling. "Influence!", they cry. "Access! Our government is for sale!" But let's give the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt, and assume that industry's contributions to his campaign coffers had nothing to do with the new Medicare policy or which companies benefited.
It's still a big problem for our democracy.
Here's why: the Bush Administration's policies are obviously good for Medco and others in the industry. They want him in office for another four years. So, they shoot big money into his campaign coffers, increasing his chances of getting elected.
But what about the rest of us?
What if, gasp, we don't necessarily agree with the pharmaceutical or Medicare card industry, and we think someone else should be in office? Most of us aren't rich. We can't afford to give $2,000 to anybody. We give less, therefore we have less of a say in who gets elected.
That ain't right.
As Sharon Theimer of the AP reports here, corporations who won valuable contracts to provide the new Medicare drug cards spent over $35 million lobbying in 2003. In addition, many of the industry's executives and lobbyists have contributed or raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Bush's re-election efforts. One particular executive, president Alan Lotvin of Medco (a part of pharmaceutical giant Merck until last year), helped organize a $100,000 fund-raising event for Bush only a few weeks after his company was named by the Administration as one of the drug card providers.
This kind of article usually gets the reform vultures circling. "Influence!", they cry. "Access! Our government is for sale!" But let's give the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt, and assume that industry's contributions to his campaign coffers had nothing to do with the new Medicare policy or which companies benefited.
It's still a big problem for our democracy.
Here's why: the Bush Administration's policies are obviously good for Medco and others in the industry. They want him in office for another four years. So, they shoot big money into his campaign coffers, increasing his chances of getting elected.
But what about the rest of us?
What if, gasp, we don't necessarily agree with the pharmaceutical or Medicare card industry, and we think someone else should be in office? Most of us aren't rich. We can't afford to give $2,000 to anybody. We give less, therefore we have less of a say in who gets elected.
That ain't right.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Petaluma's Quest for democracy
Some folks in Petaluma, California are trying to lessen the role that money plays in local politics. As Jose L. Sanchez reports here in The Press Democrat, these small-d democrats have collected over 4,000 signatures for an initiative to reduce the amount individuals can give to City Council candidates from $500 to $200 for every two-year election cycle. (See here for Derek's March post on the beginning of the effort.)
More power to 'em. Opponents of campaign finance reform like to use the high cost of political campaigns as one of their excuses for allowing wealthy donors to give unlimited amounts to political candidates. But what exactly are candidates spending so much money on? Tom Knudsen, a former President of the Petaluma Area Chamber of Commerce has this to say about it:
This doesn't only apply to local politics either. We've all seen how the game is played at the national level: high-paid consultants pay huge sums of money for attack ads or glossy candidate infomercials that tell us very little about where any candidate stands on the issues. And yet, these ads justify allowing big money to dominate the political discussion in our country? What? These politicians and their expensive ads remind me more of the spiraling volume of kids yelling over one another in the sandbox than informed political discussion.
Maybe more money isn't the answer for solving the communication gap between us and the people who are supposed to represent us. Maybe big money even acts as a buffer between we the people and those who would serve us, excusing the amount of time that candidates and elected officials spend collecting campaign contributions from "leaders" (read: rich people) instead of talking to normal folks who are struggling to pay for health care costs for their family or college for their kids, or are worried about where their next job is going to come from when the "leaders" export it offshore to increase their profits. Maybe big money is the engine driving much of what is wrong with American politics.
Regardless, the folks in Petaluma are trying to make their town a better place to live, and their government more responsive to their needs. As such, their efforts deserve our best wishes and close observation. Because maybe, just maybe, they're on the right track.
Some folks in Petaluma, California are trying to lessen the role that money plays in local politics. As Jose L. Sanchez reports here in The Press Democrat, these small-d democrats have collected over 4,000 signatures for an initiative to reduce the amount individuals can give to City Council candidates from $500 to $200 for every two-year election cycle. (See here for Derek's March post on the beginning of the effort.)
More power to 'em. Opponents of campaign finance reform like to use the high cost of political campaigns as one of their excuses for allowing wealthy donors to give unlimited amounts to political candidates. But what exactly are candidates spending so much money on? Tom Knudsen, a former President of the Petaluma Area Chamber of Commerce has this to say about it:
The money goes into mailings, and those I've seen have been distortions. Less money, less hit pieces.
This doesn't only apply to local politics either. We've all seen how the game is played at the national level: high-paid consultants pay huge sums of money for attack ads or glossy candidate infomercials that tell us very little about where any candidate stands on the issues. And yet, these ads justify allowing big money to dominate the political discussion in our country? What? These politicians and their expensive ads remind me more of the spiraling volume of kids yelling over one another in the sandbox than informed political discussion.
Maybe more money isn't the answer for solving the communication gap between us and the people who are supposed to represent us. Maybe big money even acts as a buffer between we the people and those who would serve us, excusing the amount of time that candidates and elected officials spend collecting campaign contributions from "leaders" (read: rich people) instead of talking to normal folks who are struggling to pay for health care costs for their family or college for their kids, or are worried about where their next job is going to come from when the "leaders" export it offshore to increase their profits. Maybe big money is the engine driving much of what is wrong with American politics.
Regardless, the folks in Petaluma are trying to make their town a better place to live, and their government more responsive to their needs. As such, their efforts deserve our best wishes and close observation. Because maybe, just maybe, they're on the right track.
Mike Pence Starts First Congressional Blog
Indiana Representative Mike Pence today became the first member of Congress to have a blog on his official congressional webpage. Check it out here.
"People can literally go on the Web, and on a daily, if not hourly basis, they can be up to date on what their Congressman is working on, understand the reasons for his votes, and fairly readily research just about any area that we've made statements or cast votes" says Pence.
This is a great idea that every member of Congress should implement. It would be particularly useful if every member posts the votes they took that day on behalf of their constituents and the reasons they voted that way. Right now, only a few members of Congress have their voting records easily accessible on their web sites, with the rest preferring to keep them harder to find.
Let's hope that everybody wants to be like Mike! In fact, you might suggest this to your member of congress. You can find their e-mail at: http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html
Indiana Representative Mike Pence today became the first member of Congress to have a blog on his official congressional webpage. Check it out here.
"People can literally go on the Web, and on a daily, if not hourly basis, they can be up to date on what their Congressman is working on, understand the reasons for his votes, and fairly readily research just about any area that we've made statements or cast votes" says Pence.
This is a great idea that every member of Congress should implement. It would be particularly useful if every member posts the votes they took that day on behalf of their constituents and the reasons they voted that way. Right now, only a few members of Congress have their voting records easily accessible on their web sites, with the rest preferring to keep them harder to find.
Let's hope that everybody wants to be like Mike! In fact, you might suggest this to your member of congress. You can find their e-mail at: http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html
Monday, May 10, 2004
The Hamstrung Heroes
Two years ago, in a wave of feverish pro-democracy feeling, the city council in Eugene, Oregon approved a measure that would allow candidates for city office to accept voluntary spending limits on their campaign. For the primaries, folks running for mayor would agree to accept no more than $30,000; candidates for city would accept no more than $7,500. Those candidates who signed the pledge would receive a little free publicity from the city to the effect that they had signed the pledge. Those candidates who did not were free to accept money in the same old amounts from the same old people. As reported here by Edward Russo in The Register-Guard, the results on the measure are in.
It isn't working.
Two mayoral candidates have signed the pledge - both are trailing badly in the polls. And the two leading contenders in the mayor's race have spent a record $127,000 between them. In the city council races, none of the incumbents and only one of the challengers, a student at the University of Oregon, have signed the pledge.
Holy backfire, Batman!
No kidding, you might be saying to yourself. Who would agree to limit their spending in a political race without being sure that their opponent would do the same? And why would the Eugene city council pass a measure designed to curb spending in races for city offices that had the opposite effect? If you want to create a level playing field between candidates, why not just set mandatory spending limits that all candidates must abide?
Well, the answer lies in the Supreme Court case of Buckley v. Valeo, which equated money with free speech. The men in black decided that the First Amendment mandates that a candidate has the right to spend an unlimited amount of money on a campaign in order to "assure [the] unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people." Hmm. You'd think as much time as these guys spend hanging around in their robes that they would have caught a political ad or two on television. Looks more like finger-pointing and name-calling and fancy camera shots than it does an "unfettered exchange of ideas."
If we the people want a free exchange of ideas about our political system and the laws by which we live, there are plenty of ways to go about it that don't require huge sums of money. Candidates can use websites, write Op-Eds, appear in political debates, do interviews on radio or TV or the internet, or simply come talk to us at townhall meetings or other community forums. Sure, the high-paid political consultants and ad guys might miss out on their fat paychecks, but we might finally get candidates for office that would discuss their actual honest-to-god opinions with us instead of the same old watered-down crap their political handlers have spoon-fed them.
But no. As long as Buckley reigns, the folks in Oregon who would spend their money on solving civic problems rather than TV ads will just have to make do with an unsatisfactory solution to a very real problem. Which is what the rest of us will have to do as well until we let the men and women who would lead our country know that to do so they need the consent of all Americans, not just the few that can afford to exercise their First Amendment rights under Buckley.
Two years ago, in a wave of feverish pro-democracy feeling, the city council in Eugene, Oregon approved a measure that would allow candidates for city office to accept voluntary spending limits on their campaign. For the primaries, folks running for mayor would agree to accept no more than $30,000; candidates for city would accept no more than $7,500. Those candidates who signed the pledge would receive a little free publicity from the city to the effect that they had signed the pledge. Those candidates who did not were free to accept money in the same old amounts from the same old people. As reported here by Edward Russo in The Register-Guard, the results on the measure are in.
It isn't working.
Two mayoral candidates have signed the pledge - both are trailing badly in the polls. And the two leading contenders in the mayor's race have spent a record $127,000 between them. In the city council races, none of the incumbents and only one of the challengers, a student at the University of Oregon, have signed the pledge.
Holy backfire, Batman!
No kidding, you might be saying to yourself. Who would agree to limit their spending in a political race without being sure that their opponent would do the same? And why would the Eugene city council pass a measure designed to curb spending in races for city offices that had the opposite effect? If you want to create a level playing field between candidates, why not just set mandatory spending limits that all candidates must abide?
Well, the answer lies in the Supreme Court case of Buckley v. Valeo, which equated money with free speech. The men in black decided that the First Amendment mandates that a candidate has the right to spend an unlimited amount of money on a campaign in order to "assure [the] unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people." Hmm. You'd think as much time as these guys spend hanging around in their robes that they would have caught a political ad or two on television. Looks more like finger-pointing and name-calling and fancy camera shots than it does an "unfettered exchange of ideas."
If we the people want a free exchange of ideas about our political system and the laws by which we live, there are plenty of ways to go about it that don't require huge sums of money. Candidates can use websites, write Op-Eds, appear in political debates, do interviews on radio or TV or the internet, or simply come talk to us at townhall meetings or other community forums. Sure, the high-paid political consultants and ad guys might miss out on their fat paychecks, but we might finally get candidates for office that would discuss their actual honest-to-god opinions with us instead of the same old watered-down crap their political handlers have spoon-fed them.
But no. As long as Buckley reigns, the folks in Oregon who would spend their money on solving civic problems rather than TV ads will just have to make do with an unsatisfactory solution to a very real problem. Which is what the rest of us will have to do as well until we let the men and women who would lead our country know that to do so they need the consent of all Americans, not just the few that can afford to exercise their First Amendment rights under Buckley.
