[EL] Paz Harassment

[Mark Schmitt]

I should resist, but three small points:

1. Ms. Paz is not being harassed for a political contribution she made five
years ago. She's being harassed for her work as a mid-level public
employee, which some people find fault with. Even if you still believe
there is such a thing as "the IRS scandal," I think we can all agree that
there are official means to review a public employee's performance,
including the dozen congressional investigations. Harassment in this
circumstance is absolutely wrong, for the same reason that it was wrong
when someone tried to get Mr. VanderSloot's divorce record, if I remember
that incident accurately. It's the harassment, not the disclosure.

2. As others have noted, there are plenty of public databases, easily
accessible, that contain address information. There is no reason to focus
on a database that does *not *provide address information.

That said, I think we should acknowledge that the very nature of disclosure
changes somewhat when so much information is routinely available within
seconds on the internet. For example, I know what everyone of my neighbors
paid for their house and when they bought it. (Well, I've forgotten it, but
I did know.) It's reasonable that home sales should be public information,
but fifteen years ago, I would have had to spend an afternoon in some dusty
registrar of records' office digging it out. Or, for example, congressional
staff salaries have been disclosed for a long time. When I worked in the
Senate, I remember a young employee who went down to the Secretary of the
Senate's office, got the book, and figured out all the salaries in our
office. No one else would bother -- he did it because he was a jerk, and
the only person I've ever fired. (Not for that reason.) Now, it's all there
on Legistorm -- you can look up a staffer's salary in 30 seconds before you
meet with her -- but why?. I think it's worth having a conversation (not
this stale conversation) across a whole range of issues about what really
needs to be disclosed in an era when all disclosure is instant and
universal. Raising the small-donation disclosure limit might reasonably be
part of that.

3. I'm sure there's a deal to be made to raise the disclosure threshold in
exchange for covering all contributions intended to influence an election.
Right now we have a regime where medium donations are disclosed but large
ones are not. I don't know what the number should be in that deal, but both
issues should be on the table before anyone starts with numbers. I do know,
however, that the number can't be $5,000 or $10,000. That's because that it
would miss things like, the top fifteen executives of Vandalay Industries
each giving $10,000 (or $9,999) to an incumbent senator the week before a
key vote. There are a lot of transactions of that nature, and if the
threshold were $10,000, we wouldn't see any of them. (We probably can't see
many of them now.)

Mark Schmitt
Senior Fellow, The Roosevelt Institute <http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/>
202/246-2350
gchat or Skype: schmitt.mark
twitter: mschmitt9


On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Scarberry, Mark <
Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu> wrote:

> Wasn't there a congresswoman recently who left a voicemail for someone
> whose business was likely to be affected by her committee asking why he
> hadn't donated? Maybe we should know who has been asked for donations by
> incumbents.
>
> Mark Scarberry
> Pepperdine University School of Law
>
>
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone
>
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