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

[John Tanner]

Just to jump off the CU merry-go-round for a minute, do people think that
the substance of Lessig's proposal is better or worse than Americans Elect

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Milyo, Jeffrey D. <milyoj at missouri.edu>wrote:

> 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 peopl
>  e 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
> ___________________
> Joseph E. La Rue
> cell: 480.272.2715
> email: joseph.e.larue at gmail.com<mailto:joseph.e.larue at gmail.com>
>
>
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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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>
> --
> Rick Hasen
> Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
> UC Irvine School of Law
> 401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
> Irvine, CA 92697-8000
> 949.824.3072 - office
> 949.824.0495 - fax
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> http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html
> http://electionlawblog.org
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