Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Campaign Finance Reform

  • Democrats Running Anti-Romney, Pro-Gingrich Ads in Florida?

    From what I’ve found I’m not sure if these are largely against Romney, which could at this point be explained as getting a head start on the general election (though I doubt that), or actually pro-Gingrich. (Report in the Boston Globe, hat tips Stones Cry Out and American Thinker.)

    I pointed out in a comment at Stones Cry Out that one of the reasons I, as a non-Republican (as opposed to left-leaning, which I’m not sure what it means) blogger have not commented on this practice is that I didn’t know it was happening. But I’ll go further here. I think measuring things by what people do and do not condemn on blogs is a very error prone idea. For me, at least, what I comment on is determined much more by how much time I had that day than by a broader level of interest. Yes, I will choose among the things that interest me most on any particular day, but since I don’t generally go back and comment on old stories, if I don’t have time for immediate comment, I won’t.

    I’m an independent in a state with close primaries. When I lived in a state with an open primary, I only voted in those primaries for people I would support in the general election if they got on the ballot. I don’t approve of the kind of advertising referenced.

    But I will also note that I do not approve of the bulk of campaign finance laws. In other words, I think free speech is free speech, and it should be especially free when campaigning. And if we don’t consider the voters capable of exacting that penalty, how do we expect people they elect to manage speech any better?

  • When Campaign Finance Reform Has the Reverse Effect

    Radley Balko (The Agitator) has an interesting article on actions of the Institute for Justice, which is helping some folks in Mississippi challenge the laws on spending to advocate for a political cause. The idea of such laws, of course, is to provide for openness and accountability in politics. In this case, however, it provides a major barrier to a citizens’ group’s efforts to advocate for a cause.

    This is an area where I think liberal policy is largely a dismal failure. We keep writing new regulations, but I don’t think we’re getting cleaner or more intelligent elections.

    As a result, political speech is amongst the most regulated types of speech in this country, in spite of the first amendment. The combination of regulating political speech, and creating a sort of media class that has special rights in terms of free speech actually makes such speech much less free.

    Once the government gets to decide who really has free speech and who doesn’t, we have no protection from being placed in the class that “doesn’t.” Similarly, if the government can control the money that pays to disseminate speech, it can quite effectively silence whoever it would like.

    Beware of laws—they often accomplish precisely the opposite of what they claim.

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  • On Cutting Spending and Investment

    Rand Paul campaigning in Kentucky.
    Image via Wikipedia

    Mark at Pseudo-Polymath links to this post on Rand Paul’s ideas for cutting the budget, using the line: “Someone is forgetting that the left prefers social entitlements to science programs.” I think Mark has a good point, but not the best point.

    This illustrates one of the reasons I oppose across-the-board spending cuts. Some argue–and I understand their point–that since we can’t seem to cut spending point by point, the only way to proceed is with a general spending freeze. I would suggest, rather, that a general spending freeze won’t solve the problem; it just lets us pretend, because after the freeze, we still won’t have the courage to go after the real spending problem, which needs to be done program by program. I don’t see the courage on either side of the aisle to accomplish that mission.

    There are things the government does well, and there are things better done privately. Of the things the government ought to be doing, there are better and worse ways to accomplish those goals. This includes military, security, and law enforcement spending, which Republicans often hold sacred. It includes choosing which moral issues deserve to be enshrined in law and just how much we want to spend enforcing those positions.

    On the other hand, it includes looking at social programs to determine which ones are actually accomplishing their stated goals, not to mention asking whether the stated goals are likely to be accomplished at all.

    Science spending, in the right areas, is particularly important for our future, as is education spending. We could save huge amounts in social spending if we had a better educational system. How much of reforming our educational system involves spending more money, versus changing the structure or spending our money more intelligently, is another issue.

    Right now I’d merely like to suggest that if we want to both shrink the deficit and grow the economy we will need to look carefully at spending point by point. A freeze, unless it is immediately followed by such a reevaluation won’t do the job. And people on all sides of the aisle will need to be prepared to sacrifice things they love, especially if careful evaluation shows their favorite programs aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

    I like to suggest specifics, which the politicians rarely do. I’d also like to congratulate Rand Paul on giving specifics, even though I disagree with some of them, for the same reason. Amongst the things we need to ditch I would include almost all of public campaign financing. I don’t think it has made politics any cleaner. It certainly hasn’t made it more civil. It has only made it more costly. Add that to the suggestions I made earlier. There are more!

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  • Sabre-Tooth Campaign Finance Laws

    I think this is an excellent example of laws addressing problems that are out of date in ways that make little sense. (With due apologies to the book The Saber-Tooth Curriculum, which is old, but an excellent read.)

  • Quote of the Day on The Agitator

    I think it’s a good one. I part ways with many liberal and moderate friends over Citizens United. I simply cannot see that having the government regulate the political speech of any citizen or group of citizens will have a positive effect.

    Learn to live with freedom of speech. It may be messy, but it’s going to be better in the long run than regulated speech. As for money, the Obama campaign in 2008 proved how effective internet based fundraising can be.

  • More on the Citizens United Case

    I commented on this case earlier, and I still stand by what I said, but via Dispatches from the Culture Wars I found this article by Julian Sanchez, and he asks a very valid question.

    On the one hand, maybe for all our folly we’re basically engaged enough—or the people who decide to vote are engaged enough—that we can sift through the media maelstrom and figure out, on average, whose principles, character, and record best represent our community. On the other hand, maybe we’re a bunch of chimps who will vote for the shiny thing. I incline toward the latter, but I’ve never been all that big on the intrinsic virtues of democracy. I just have trouble wrapping my head around the view that combines these two beliefs: (1) The wisdom of the people, on the whole, justifies not just the installation of Candidate A over Candidate B, but a whole array of coercive state policies, and also (2) We’re really easily led, and will sell our firstborn to Altria if a slick ad says to. It seems strange for both those things to be true.

    Perhaps he’s a bit pessimistic, but it seems to me that the concern in this case is a bit paternalistic. We can’t manage as voters to sort out the various ads that we see, but we are somehow qualified to choose the people who will decide just what ads we will get to see, and how we can group together to pursue our political goals.

    That’s the problem with a sort of “elitist democracy.” The elite have to make sure that the rest of us vote for the right people. The people we vote into office are somehow qualified to decide which messages we should hear while we decide whether to vote them back into office again.

    I believe that corporations do have a great deal of influence on how elections go. They have even more influence on the crafting of legislation after the election. But there’s a funny thing here. No matter how many laws are passed regulated elections the influence doesn’t seem to change. It makes one wonder whether those legislators are all that well qualified to deal with excessive influence.

    Of course the corporations most involved in the election process are exempt from this regulation–the press. The traditional media are free to put their message in front of the people without regulation. That’s as it should be, but it makes one wonder why a few paid ads by other corporations are somehow so dangerous, while an entire season of biased reporting by supposedly objective media is such a major danger.

  • Supreme Court Favors Free Speech

    That title should illustrate the interesting types of headlines that have heralded the Supreme Court decision permitting advocacy ads by corporations and presumably unions in the time leading up to an election.

    The one from CNN reads Supreme Court eases ban on business, labor political spending, which is fairly calm and tells us approximately what the Supreme Court did. (I intentionally slanted my headline.) MSNBC.com, on the other hand, reads Supreme Court rolls back campaign cash limits, which implies action somewhat broader than the Supreme Court actually took.

    I welcome this court decision. I have never been able to understand how either public financing of campaigns or restrictions of what people can say around an election can be squared with free speech. It seems to me that the first amendment to our constitution has taken a beating in the area of campaign finance.

    I do understand the claim that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals, yet at the same time it seems to me that freedom of association should cover that with regard to corporations or to unions.

    I think this is also an area in which we should carefully measure results. Campaign finance regulations have a tendency to make criminals out of people who are otherwise trying to obey the law because they are often difficult to interpret. If the other guy interprets them more broadly than you do, you are at a disadvantage. If you interpret them too broadly, you can end up going to jail.

    What I think many people fail to realize is that large government bureaucracies don’t control the tendency of large corporations to overstep their bounds. Rather, they tend to end up with people from the industry regulating their friends in the industry. Thus “regulatory failures” should not be surprising in the case of banks or investment firms. The people who regulate them are largely tightly connected to the people who work in them.

    The same is true in the case of campaign finance. The current major parties select those who wind up on the Federal Election Commission, and the people in power create laws that work best for the large parties, making it difficult for minor parties or independent candidates. Today on TV I heard a commentator hit the nail on the head. (I wish I could remember her name.) She said that this decision had a good chance to drastically weaken the power of the two major parties.

    While that may frighten folks in Washington, I think it would be a great thing for the country. It will fit well also with the information age and particularly social media. I don’t think it will make as much difference as some of the pundits are saying, but it will surely make it possible for many more players to influence politics, and to do it openly.

    Update (1/22/2010):

    Allan Bevere links to my post, and there is a good discussion going at his blog, though it is largely populated by folks on the other side. The link to the opposed viewpoint he provides is at The Country Parson.

    Two more useful links:

    1. The Volokh Conspiracy with a short summary of the meaning of the decision
    2. Dispatches from the Culture Wars
      Key quote: “The standard reaction seems to be: “Oh my god, corporations can now spend tons of money to influence the outcome of elections.” But I’ve got news for you: They already do that. They always have. And the campaign finance laws did not prevent it.”

  • I Hope He is Right

    Gaegan Goddard’s Political Wire reports that John McCain thinks he will be the last candidate to accept federal matching funds. One of the best savings, though small, we could make at the federal level would be to end public financing and also end all of the regulations on fundraising except for transparency.

  • Suspending Free Speech in Politics

    Though I have decided to support Barack Obama for president this year, one of the great negatives on my checklist for him and for the Democratic party is campaign finance laws. When I put the candidates side-by-side, however, McCain isn’t a significant improvement on that point.

    This is illustrated by this story on CQPolitics, informing us that the FEC has deadlocked on whether the National Right to Life Committee can use particular phrasing in some issue ads they want to display. The sentence is: “Barack Obama : a candidate whose word you can’t believe in.”

    Now understand that I don’t like the ads. I’ve received print versions and I didn’t like those. This is not speech of which I approve. I’m pro-choice, despite my own dislike of abortion. But on the other hand, I fail to see how it is not speech that can be permitted.

    Having dealt with non-profits myself, I do, in fact, understand that particular tax categories are confined to particular activities. Thus it’s generally OK with me from a constitutional point of view that churches are not permitted to explicitly endorse candidates, or that non-profits of particular types be restricted in their political activity in order to have a particular tax status.

    I say generally OK, because I think it falls within constitutional boundaries, but I question whether the lines are correctly drawn. In order to grant tax exempt status, the IRS has to define what is a church, what is a charitable non-profit, and so forth. But it is nonetheless troubling to me that a pastor can say “I think you should vote for a pro-life candidate (wink, wink)” without having his tax status threatened, but cannot say “I think you should vote for X who is a pro-life candidate” without risking it. Apparently if he says, “You can’t believe in X as a candidate” that would also be problematic. This is a whole subject in itself, but I can’t really discuss the rest without at least brushing against it.

    In this case, we’re talking about what various political action committees can do during an election, and bluntly it sounds to me like a frontal assault on free speech. I despise the ads. I think they should be legal. I think these election laws are not about making elections fairer; they’re about silencing people we don’t like. I don’t approve of silencing people. (Very narrow exceptions, such as incitement, are alright, though I draw the line as far out as possible consistent with some order.)

    This is one of the reasons I refuse to register as one of the major parties, besides the biggest reason, which is simply that I think it’s wrong to have political parties enshrined in law. Neither of our parties actually stands, even in a general way, for freedom. They stand in a general way for the freedoms of their constituent groups, and against those of others.

    I would like to see our politicians actually support free speech, whether it is spoken for them or against them. “Fair speech,” speech that is distributed according to someone’s idea of fairness, is ephemeral, indefinable, and ultimately results in censorship.

    That’s what we have in this case–the FEC deadlocked on whether to censor the speech of the NRLC. In a country that prides itself on constitutional freedoms, it shouldn’t even be an issue.

  • Flip-Flopping with Integrity

    I an earlier post, Public Financing, Integrity, and Mixed Emotions I discussed my mixed emotions on Barack Obama’s flip-flop on public financing. I dislike public financing of campaigns, and it’s nice to see the system receive a body blow, but at the same time, I have a serious problem with Obama’s action.

    Before someone thinks I’m looking for nasty things to say about Obama, I should mention that I’m over 90% likely to vote for him come November. The 10% is giving me room to change in changing circumstances. I like him, despite certain policy positions, but I believe this action, as carried out and explained, was wrong.

    I don’t believe politicians should be afraid to change their minds. If one is convinced by the evidence, then not changing one’s mind is more dishonest. But to change one’s mind honestly, and then to express that honestly is done in a different way.

    What would I like to see a politician in such a case?

    1. Acknowledge the error. Say “I was wrong.”
    2. Present the evidence and reasoning for changing one’s mind.
    3. Avoid spin, and don’t blame everyone else.

    I was watching a commentator the other day on I forget which network who commented that if Barack Obama didn’t reject public financing under the circumstances, he would have been committing political malpractice. The commentator went on to list the great benefits that would accrue to the Obama campaign and the Democratic party under these circumstances. It sounded to me as though one was advising someone to lie. They refuse. You point out just how much money one can earn from the lie. Would that make it right?

    My problem with Obama’s decision is that he still believes in public financing, yet he’s not living according to that belief. Nothing changed except for the fact that he found out just how effective he was as a fundraiser. The only difference between now and when he made the promise is that he found out just how much benefit he could derive from staying out of the system. The 527s were a factor before and they are now.

    If he had examined the system, and then announced that, while he used to support public financing of campaigns, he had learned the value of freedom, in the form of lots of ordinary people pooling their money to do great things, and thus he had come to realize that public financing was not the benefit he had once thought, I would have had no problem. It would be a simple changing of his mind based on the evidence.

    As it is, even though his current stance is closer to my own, I am deeply disappointed with the way in which it took place.

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.