[EL] Informational benefit outweighed by cost?

[Mark Schmitt]

Wait, /Vandersloot/ was intimidated?? You do realize that the guy has a 
long history of attacking and intimidating any and all critics, 
including Forbes, which first put up an article about "Four Romney 
donors he doesn't want you to know about," by a Republican operative, 
and then pulled the article after Vandersloot's legal threats. He placed 
a full page newspaper ad, signed in his own name, attacking a reporter 
as "a homosexual." He put anti-gay billboards all over the state of 
Idaho. He's a totally public figure, not, as Strassel pretends, just a 
quiet citizen who wanted to make a contribution.

I don't think divorce records should be made public, and they're usually 
not (and there's also no indication in Strassel's article that the clerk 
actually complied with the request for the records). But certainly if 
corporations are going to be major players in electoral politics, that 
activity should be open to public scrutiny, and the only way for that 
information to be useful is if we can also know the corporation's 
regulatory interests and legal issues. For example, Don Blankenship 
didn't give $3 million to replace a W. Virginia Supreme Court justice 
just to express his political views. It would have been useful for 
voters to know about the expenditure, and also about the 
legal/regulatory issues that motivated Blankenship and Massey Coal.



Mark Schmitt
Senior Fellow, The Roosevelt Institute <http://www.newdeal20.org>
202/246-2350
gchat or Skype: schmitt.mark
@mschmitt9 <https://twitter.com/#%21/mschmitt9>
On 5/11/2012 2:45 PM, Steve Hoersting wrote:
> Kim Strassel has another piece in today's /WSJ/ intimating that 
> the compelled disclosure of independent, non-corrupting speech poses 
> too high a cost on speech rights for too little benefit in voter 
> information -- especially absent a meaningful exemption available not 
> just to Vandersloot, for whom it is too late, but to other would-be 
> funders noticing this treatment, and eager to seek an exemption as 
> John Doe or Jane Doe.
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577396412560038208.html
>
> -- 
> Stephen M. Hoersting
>
>
>
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