[EL] Check out 'Citizen conventions' should respond to Citizens United, Harvard la

[Milyo, Jeffrey D.]

There should be no confusion as to the source of the confusion.

It has long been the standard practice in the media and among pro-regulation advocates to be sloppy about the distinction between direct campaign contributions and other types of political contributions and spending.  This was seen frequently in the context of soft-money contributions to parties, issue advocacy, and now with independent expenditures.  Part of the sloppiness is no doubt because the law is complex and many people don't understand or appreciate the distinctions.  But I ill assert that part of problem is from deliberate obfuscation on the part of goo-goos; afterall, if you want to carp about money in politics, it just sounds better to repeat the mantra "unlimited corporate contributions to candidates"... l

We see the same phenomena at work in how journalists and advocates calculate "corporate contributions": usually by summing all contributions from employees of a firm, the associated PAC, and in days past, the soft-money contributions to parties (and now add in independent expenditures financed by employees, PACs and firms).  This practice is facilitated both by the nature of disclosure --- for some reason it is vital to know who my employer is, but not what interest groups I belong to, how I vote, etc. --- and the otherwise laudable user-friendly data archives out there.

My favorite example of the effects of bad\careless\biased reporting on campaign finance is from a poll done circa 1994: only 12% of respondents could correctly answer a true-false question about whether corporations can directly contribute to federal candidates... Considering that untrained gerbils randomly pushing levers corresponding to "true" and "false" would be expected to be right on average 50% of the time, this suggests that the public is nopt just uninformed, but systematically misinformed about substantively important facts in the campaign finance debate.  So, such confusion is long-standing. 

And whle we can surely come up with many reasons why the public is systematically misinformed about money in politics in ways that are helpful to the anti-freedom side of the debate, I assert that if there is any responsibility for fostering misinformation, it is reform advocates who repeatedly make claims that are false or unsupported.  For example, that 1) campaign spending effectively buys elective office, 2) campaign contributions (and lobbying) are the functional equivelent of bribes, 3) that concern about money in politics causes alienation in the public and lowers voter turnout, and 4) that only more strict and expansive regulations can reduce politcalk corruption, increase trust in government and otherwise preserve the integrity of democracy.  It is well known by anyone with much familiarity with the subject (i.e., all of us) that these claims are at best poorly supported by systematic empirical evidence (and often contradicted); yet these claims are repeated by people that not only should know better, but do. To borrow a phrase, Rick, you should blame the "corrupt corruption squad" on the pro-regulation side of the campaign finance debate for misinformation and confusion.  

(There is also a recent study by Ansolabehere, Snyder and Snowberg which discusses exaggerated reporting of campaign finance stories in newspapers).

So while Jim Bopp can claim credit for many things, being the source of confusion about the details of campaign finance law is probably not one of them... 


Jeff Milyo
Middlebush Professor of Social Science
Department of Economics
University of Missouri
http://web.missouri.edu/~milyoj/
________________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Rick Hasen [rhasen at law.uci.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 9:41 AM
To: Joe La Rue
Cc: JBoppjr at aol.com; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Check out 'Citizen conventions' should respond to Citizens United, Harvard la

I agree with you that the holding is misstated.  I wonder if part of the confusion stems from the claims you and Jim have been making around the country (including in the San Diego case I litigated against you) in which you claimed that Citizens United compelled lower courts to strike down bans on direct corporate contributions to candidates.  So far,  your argument has been rejected by at least the 2nd, 4th, and 9th circuits, and is pending en banc in the 8th circuit in the Swanson case.  Yet I believe Jim is still making the argument.





On 7/25/2012 7:11 AM, Joe La Rue wrote:
You don't think there's a deliberate effort to misstate the holding, do you, Jim? Surely not!

Joe
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On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 6:13 AM, <JBoppjr at aol.com<mailto:JBoppjr at aol.com>> wrote:
Click here: 'Citizen conventions' should respond to Citizens United, Harvard law professor suggests<http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202564277666>

This is a classic example of the frequently distorted description of what Citizens United did:

In Citizens United, the Court found that corporations and unions cannot be banned from making independent expenditures to political action committees or candidates.

The subcommittee hearing examined the possibility of a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the authority to regulate campaign contributions by businesses.

One reading this would conclude appropriately that CU made contribution to candidates by businesses legal.  Of course, the ruling itself did not.

And what is so puzzling is why this happens when it is so easy to get it right. Jim Bopp

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