[EL] Fwd: CCP Media Update 6/18
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Wed Jun 18 06:53:49 PDT 2014
FYI, this is a great daily update on money in politics stories from CCP
if you follow the stuff as closely as I do. For example, I just learned
of the Committee report on the IRS from this (see first item)
Rick
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: CCP Media Update 6/18
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 23:30:30 -0500
From: Joe Trotter <jtrotter at campaignfreedom.org>
To: Undisclosed recipients:;
/This is a daily media update on campaign finance and political speech
developments prepared by the Center for Competitive Politics. If you
would like to be removed from this list, or if you know someone who
would like to be added, please e-mail jtrotter at campaignfreedom.org
<mailto:jtrotter at campaignfreedom.org>. For e-mail filters, the subject
of this e-mail will always begin with “CCP Media Update.”/
*IRS*
House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform: How Politics Led the IRS to Target Conservative Tax-Exempt
Applicants for their Political Beliefs
Staff Report
/When the President speaks, people listen. The Presidential Bully
Pulpit is a unique and indisputably powerful tool available to the
President alone to persuade Americans and shape a national agenda.
President Barack Obama – a highly celebrated speaker noted for his
oratory – exerts this power with uncommon vigor. President Obama’s
ability to command the rapt attention of the national news media,
and by extension the American people, has become his most effective
and favored rhetorical tool. With his Bully Pulpit, President Obama
wields the power to singlehandedly shape the national dialogue. In
this case, President Obama’s Bully Pulpit led to the Internal
Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants. /
/On the evening of January 27, 2010, President Barack Obama stood in
the chamber of the House of Representatives to deliver his annual
State of the Union Address. Speaking to the assembled audience of
Congressmen, Senators, Cabinet officials, and Supreme Court Justices
– and to the millions of Americans watching on television –
President Obama delivered a stunning rebuke of the Supreme Court.
“With all due deference to separation of powers,” the President
intoned, “last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that
I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including
foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.”1The
President continued: “I don’t think American elections should be
bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse by foreign
entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I’d
urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct
some of these problems.”/
Read more...
<http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/How-Politics-Led-to-the-IRS-Targeting-Staff-Report-6.16.14.pdf>
Wall Street Journal: IRS Contempt of Congress
Editorial
/Yet in its letter on Friday the IRS slipped in the following: "In
early 2014, Chairmen Camp and Issa reiterated their requests for all
of Lois Lerner's email, regardless of subject matter . . .
Fulfilling the request," said the IRS, meant it had to compile
Lerner emails that went beyond the "search terms" it had "originally
loaded for review." By mid-March, the agency admitted, it had
produced for Congress only the Lerner emails that it—the
IRS—considered "related" to the scandal./
/In other words, the IRS has from the start been picking and
choosing which of Ms. Lerner's emails it deigned to show Congress.
And it did so despite knowing that Congress wanted everything./
/This IRS filter has delayed the investigation and denied Congress
access to important information. Congressional investigators learned
only last week that Ms. Lerner corresponded with the Justice
Department about potentially prosecuting conservative nonprofits.
Congress had to subpoena Justice to obtain that
Lerner correspondence. Only after Congress demanded the IRS explain
why it hadn't provided this Lerner-Justice correspondence did the
IRS suddenly confess in its Friday letter that it had been picking
and choosing emails./
Read more...
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/irs-contempt-of-congress-1403047938?KEYWORDS=%22irs%22>
Wall Street Journal: Notable & Quotable: Attorney Cleta Mitchell sends
the IRS a letter about Lois Lerner's "lost" emails.
/Late Friday, the IRS apparently advised the Ways & Means Committee
that the IRS has "lost" Lois Lerner's hard drive which includes
thousands of Defendant Lerner's e-mail records. However, several
statutes and regulations require that the records be accessible by
the Committees, and, in turn, must be preserved and made available
to TTV [True the Vote] in the event of discovery in the pending
litigation. . . . We are deeply troubled by this news and . . . seek
your consent to immediately allow a computer forensics expert
selected by TTV to examine the computer(s) that is or are
purportedly the source of Ms. Lerner's "lost" emails, including
cloning the hard drives, and to attempt to restore what was
supposedly "lost," and to seek to restore any and all "lost"
evidence pertinent to this litigation. /
Read more...
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-1403047118?KEYWORDS=%22irs%22>
NRO: IRS Has Lost More E-mails . . .
By Eliana Johnson
/It’s not just Lois Lerner’s e-mails. The Internal Revenue Service
says it can’t produce e-mails from six more employees involved in
the targeting of conservative groups, according to two Republicans
investigating the scandal. /
/The IRS recently informed Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp and
subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany that computer crashes
resulted in additional lost e-mails, including from Nikole Flax, the
chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller, who was
fired in the wake of the targeting scandal. /
Read more...
<http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380576/irs-has-lost-more-e-mails-eliana-johnson>
Bloomberg View: Missing E-Mail Is the Least of the IRS's Problems
By Megan McArdle
/As it happens, I used to administer just the sort of e-mail systems
that the IRS seems to be using. So I fired off a set of queries to
the IRS about its e-mail system, its archiving policies and how the
loss of data happened. Many of those queries remain unanswered, but
I was given some documents that explain how the files could have
been lost. My conclusion: It is plausible that this was an innocent
coincidence. But it is only plausible if the IRS is managing its IT
systems so badly that it is very easy to lose critical records -- or
for abusive employees to destroy the evidence of their misbehavior.
A private company under investigation that responded to regulators,
or a judge, with this sort of explanation rather than producing
the requested documents would rightly expect to be handed an adverse
judgment or a whopping fine. This incident should be thoroughly
investigated, and steps should be taken throughout the government to
make sure that no similar incident can ever happen again./
/As far as I can tell, the agency is using exchange servers with
Microsoft Outlook e-mail clients. In a system like this, messages
are normally stored on the server. However, the IRS sharply limits
the size of mailboxes. In 2009, the limit was 150 megabytes; by
2011, it had increased that to 500 MB. Either way, this is a low
limit, in these days of sizable attachments. This would require
anyone but the proverbial Web-browsing grandmother to regularly
archive their e-mails on a hard drive or delete them./
Read more...
<http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-17/missing-e-mail-is-the-least-of-the-irs-s-problems>
*Independent Groups*
Des Moines Register: Turns out 'big money' isn't getting much for those
campaign donations
Editorial
/Post mortems on the election suggest that while Cantor had
apparently become detached from his Virginia House district, Brat
energized tea party Republicans. "The good news is dollars don't
vote," Brat said last week, "people do."/
/A similar story played out in Iowa, where Senate candidate Mark
Jacobs spent roughly $3 million of his own money in an unsuccessful
bid for the Republican nomination. His self-funded campaign
bank account dwarfed fundraising by his opponents, including Joni
Ernst who eviscerated them all./
/The outrage about big campaign contributors tends to be selective.
Democrats who have no problem with a multibillionaire like George
Soros spending is own money to influence elections are furious
when the Koch brothers do the same thing — and vice versa. There is
shared concern about corporate spending on elections, but research
shows corporate spending has been insignificant./
Read more...
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/2014/06/14/editorials-turns-big-money-getting-much-campaign-donations/10511841/>
*SCOTUS/Judiciary*
Cato Institute (Event): McCutcheon v. FEC: Two Books on the Supreme
Court’s Latest Campaign Finance Case
/Featuring Shaun McCutcheon, CEO, Coalmont Electrical Development
Co., and Author, Outsider Inside the Supreme Court: A Decisive First
Amendment Battle; Ronald Collins, Harold S. Shefelman Scholar,
University of Washington Law School, and Co-Author, When Money
Speaks: The McCutcheon Decision, Campaign Finance Laws, and the
First Amendment; and Donald McGahn, Partner, Jones Day LLP, and
Former Chairman, Federal Election Commission; moderated by Ilya
Shapiro, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute. /
Read more...
<http://www.cato.org/events/mccutcheon-v-fec-two-books-supreme-courts-latest-campaign-finance-case>
Wall Street Journal: Opinion: Supremes Rebuke Speech Censorship
/Best of the Web Today Columnist James Taranto on Susan B. Anthony
List v. Driehaus and its implications for the First Amendment. Photo
credit: Getty Images. /
Watch...
<http://live.wsj.com/video/opinion-supremes-rebuke-speech-censorship/04619CAD-48D4-41ED-BDF1-37EE94CFDB95.html?KEYWORDS=%2522campaign+finance%2522#%2104619CAD-48D4-41ED-BDF1-37EE94CFDB95>
More Soft Money Hard Law: The Court Bides Its Time in Susan B. Anthony
By Bob Bauer
/Yet it is a law that is so plainly unconstitutional that it seems
odd to keep it in place and available to anyone who in this
statute’s golden years wishes to make mischief with it. Does anyone
seriously doubt that the state may not take criminal action
against someone for making a false statement, as the state judges it
to be, about a political candidate or public official’s voting
record, or just “concerning” such a candidate, in order to
influence an election? Under a process, no less, that authorizes
anyone, including political adversaries, to file a complaint and
that expedites probable cause determinations, hearings and referrals
for prosecutions within weeks of primary and general elections?/
/The Court would not even conclude that the threat of administrative
proceedings alone was sufficient to confer standing. Only
by combining this threat with the risk of criminal prosecution was
it confident that the plaintiffs had successfully pled “injury in
fact.” It is a surprisingly equivocal performance./
Read more...
<http://www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com/2014/06/court-bides-time-susan-b-anthony/>
Cincinnati Enquirer: Give up trying to stop political lies
Editorial
/Ohio’s election law banning lying in political campaigns – while
perhaps well-meaning – is constitutionally questionable and should
be repealed by the General Assembly as soon as possible./
/We’d love to see candidates stop telling lies. However, the First
Amendment right to free speech trumps a wish that’s simply
unattainable./
/Truth – particularly in politics – is measured in shades of gray,
not black and white, and Ohio’s “false statements” law gives a
bipartisan commission appointed by the governor the power to decide
what’s true and false, and how egregious the falsehood is./
Read more...
<http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/editorials/2014/06/17/give-trying-stop-political-lies/10720879/>
*Kochs Obsession*
Washington Post: Koch network adds super PAC to its arsenal, expanding
into overt political activity
By Matea Gold
/The foray into explicit campaign activities is unusual for the Koch
network, a complex web of nonprofits and limited liability
corporations that was designed to cloak the identities of its
financial backers./
/The super PAC, on the other hand, will have to report its donors to
the Federal Election Commission. The group could still find ways to
protect the names of its contributors, however, if donors give money
through LLCs registered in states such as Delaware, which allow
corporate officers to remain a secret./
Read more...
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/06/17/koch-network-adds-super-pac-to-its-arsenal-expanding-into-overt-political-activity/>
*FEC*
FEC: Statement of Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel and Commissioner Ellen L.
Weintraub on Judicial Review of Deadlocked Commission Votes
/On December 3, 2013, the Commission deadlocked 3-3 on whether to
find reason to believe that Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies
(“Crossroads GPS”), a 501(c)(4) “socialw elfare organization,”‘
should have registered and reported as a political committee under
the Federal Election Campaign Act (the “Act”) and Commission
regulations. As we explained at the time, we believe that, as a
result of our colleagues’ votes in that case, the Commission “failed
to adhere to its own policy on political committee status or to
recent judicial decisions finding that policy to be valid and
constitutional.” The complainants then brought suit against the
Commission for its failure to take action against Crossroads GPS. /
/We are writing now to address an issue that arises in the context
of this litigation, but that has much broader significance^the issue
of how courts review a 3-3 deadlock at the FEC. In particular, we
are concerned about the potential that courts will continue to grant
deference to the perspectives of oniy half of the members of the
Commission when the Commission has a split vote. This “deadlock
deference” appears to be unique to the enforcement process at the
FEC, for reasons that the D.C. Circuit has never fully explained.
Such deference undermines the bipartisan structure of the agency and
puts complainants at a unique disadvantage in precisely the process
where Congress sought to empower them. Moreover, the longstanding
justifications for granting deference to an administrative
agency—the presence of subject-matter expertise and the ability to
craft policy compromises—are entirely absent in the case of a
deadlock. /
Read more... <http://eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/14044354045.pdf>
*State and Local*
Massachusetts –– Boston Globe: Grossman, Coakley spar over campaign
finance pledge
By David Scharfenberg
/Just two hours before the debate, Coakley challenged Grossman and
the third candidate in the race, former Obama administration health
care official Donald Berwick, to sign a People’s Pledge designed to
limit third-party spending./
/At the Jamaica Plain forum, Grossman labeled Coakley’s call for a
pledge “laughable,” because he had proposed something similar in
September and she had declined to sign it. He added that she should
not be lecturing the rest of the field, given that state election
officials recently found she had violated campaign finance law./
Read more...
<http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/06/16/grossman-coakley-spar-over-campaign-finance-pledge/KJuckVbORon1CJh08Jt9BM/story.html>
New York –– NY Times: Mistrial Declared in Malcolm Smith Corruption Trial
By JOSEPH BERGER
/Judge Kenneth M. Karas of United States District Court granted
Senator Smith and one of his two co-defendants a mistrial because
federal prosecutors had failed to turn over promptly to the defense
more than 70 hours of wiretapped conversations, about a third of
them in Yiddish, and translating and digesting them would require
jurors to serve longer than some could manage. /
Read more...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/nyregion/mistrial-declared-in-malcolm-smith-corruption-trial.html?hp>
North Carolina –– News Observer: Sen. McKissick’s testimony on campaign
donations irks Art Pope
By Ned Barnett
/In his submitted testimony, Pope rebuked the Durham senator for
making “the false and outlandish claim that I, Art Pope, a single
person, was able to ‘buy our democracy’ in North Carolina, and that
an amendment to the United States Constitution is needed so that
some people cannot ‘buy’ a legislature or governor’s mansion.”/
/Pope wrote that McKissick was responding badly to his party’s
political defeat. “Worse than simply trying to discredit the winning
Republican majority in a state election, state Senator McKissick
is now supporting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to silence
his opponents,” he wrote./
/Pope said the amount he spends on elections is inflated by critics
who cite groups “tied to Art Pope.” He wrote, “It simply is not true
that I or my company spent a single million dollars, much less spent
millions, plural, of dollars for either the 2010 or 2012 North
Carolina elections.” Moreover, he wrote, Democratic and progressive
organizations outspent Republicans and conservative groups in the
2010 state elections./
Read more...
<http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/06/14/3936826/sen-mckissicks-testimony-on-campaign.html>
Joe Trotter
Center for Competitive Politics
124 S. West St., Ste. 201
Alexandria, VA 22314
www.CampaignFreedom.org <http://www.CampaignFreedom.org>
jtrotter at campaignfreedom.org
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