[EL] Dick Morris's foreign money claims

[Rick Hasen]

Steve,
Three things.
1. I hope you will join me in supporting enhanced disclosure laws to 
ensure that foreign money is not secretly flowing into our elections.
2. I believe the reason you don't see a lot of discussion of this on the 
editorial pages is that there's really nothing new in the GAI report.  
Here's what I wrote about it in arecent Slate column 
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/10/will_republicans_accept_if_barack_obama_defeats_mitt_romney_.html>: 


    This week features what conservative
    <http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/dubious-donations-peter-schweizer-speaks.php>
    blogs are touting
    <http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/08/obama-bundler-tied-to-chinese-government/>
    as an "explosive" new report
    <http://campaignfundingrisks.com/wp-content/themes/cfr/images/AmericaTheVulnerable.pdf>
    suggesting that the Obama campaign is illegally accepting massive
    foreign contributions via credit card. The so-called proof comes
    from a number of foreign visits to the Obama campaign website, the
    lack of any federal requirement to publicly disclose contributions
    from individuals who give less than $200 overall, and the Obama
    campaign's supposed failure to use credit card verification tools to
    make sure the contributions are coming from inside the United States.

    Never mind that the Obama campaign has denied similar reports in the
    past and has confirmed <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=33935> it does
    use the verification tools; that an extensive Federal Election
    Commission audit of the 2008 Obama campaign found no evidence
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=33193> of illegal foreign
    contributions; that foreign visits to the website does not mean that
    foreign contributions are being made; and that U.S. citizens
    (including those in the military) living abroad have the right to
    contribute to federal campaigns. The claims are a way to
    delegitimize the Obama campaign, even as Republican leaders in
    Congress stymie efforts to fix our broken disclosure laws
    <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/07/campaign_finance_after_citizens_united_is_worse_than_watergate_.html>
    and argue for /less/ disclosure of campaign finance information.


3. Dick Morris lacks fundamental credibility with journalists and 
others.  So his sensationalism won't bring attention to an important 
issue.  In fact, it will convince journalists to ignore the issue.
Rick




On 10/15/12 7:14 AM, Steve Hoersting wrote:
> http://www.dickmorris.com/is-obama-running-on-foreign-money-dick-morris-tv-video-alert/
>
> We often argue about corruption -- what makes up corruption, what 
> kinds of corruption matter, and which do not.
>
> Given Judge Kavanaugh's discussion in /Bluman/, I get the feeling that 
> this matter -- yet to be proved or discredited in any news outlet I 
> follow -- would far outrank unlimited IEs by the local Right to Life, 
> the US Chamber or even the dreaded Kochs.
>
> If we do not see meaningful discussion of this issue here and in the 
> editorial pages, will it be fair to conclude, as many have surmised, 
> that campaign-finance purists are campaign-finance instrumentalists or 
> partisans?
>
> Or is the relative silence just more evidence that retribution, or the 
> prospect of it, is real?
>
> -- 
> Stephen M. Hoersting
>
>
>
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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
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org
Now available: The Voting Wars: http://amzn.to/y22ZTv

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