Congress
Washington Examiner: Cruz plan would make super PACs ‘irrelevant’
By Al Weaver
The bill, titled the SuperPAC Elimination Act of 2017, would remove caps on individual contributions, which are limited to $2,700, and require disclosure within 24 hours, creating, what Cruz believes would be, a more “simple” and direct system that makes campaigns more accountable and transparent…
The bill is not without its critics, including those who believe this would drown out the influence of small-dollar donors and give even more power to big donors now that they can contribute whatever they please directly to candidates. Cruz pushed back on this idea, arguing that while big-dollar donors are important – noting that they played a big role in his campaign – small-dollar donors will not be silenced no matter the system in place…
“Wealthy donors primarily contribute through super PACs where the messages are disconnected from what a given candidate believes or doesn’t believe, and that’s nonsensical,” Cruz said, adding that it’s “nonsensical” for both political parties.
The Media
Inc.com: Why Political Ads Are Regulated but Fake News on Facebook Isn’t
By Tess Townsend
While some fake-news websites are just chasing profits, it’s clear a subset of them have been doing something more akin to content marketing, using made-up headlines as a form of persuasion. The phenomenon raises uncomfortable legal questions for Facebook, the venue of choice for fake-news purveyors. The social network has proven to be a zone where campaign finance rules are difficult if not nearly impossible to enforce, at least from outside…
With nearly 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook controls a huge portion of Americans’ time and attention. If restrictions on political communications are to have any meaning, they must apply to what happens on Facebook. But it’s not at all clear how they do, and regulators have failed to come to a consensus on that issue. In the case of “fake news” and its promotion, enforcement is largely up to Facebook. And so far Facebook has shown no appetite for policing its content to conform with either the letter of the rules or the spirit behind them.
Reason: Hillary Clinton’s Call for Congress to Do Something About Fake News ‘Epidemic’ Is a Reminder of How Bad Her Presidency Would Have Been on Free Speech
By Matt Welch
“It’s now clear the so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” Clinton warned, referencing the gunman who arrived at Comet Pizza to investigate a nonsensical conspiracy theory. “Lives are at risk-lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days, to do their jobs, contribute to their communities… It’s imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy and innocent lives.”…
This is the classic Hillary Clinton progression toward the (often unconstitutional) government restriction of speech…
“Fake news,” by whatever definition, does not require a new legislative response from government. Americans and their political leaders have been trafficking in conspiracy from the founding to the present day. Including the conspiracy that there’s a fake news epidemic in the first place.
The Hill: Tech giants are set to take the regulation of online speech into their own hands
By Jonathon Hauenschild
Over the past few years, there has been a push by various federal agencies to control, or restrict, online speech, and specifically online political speech. With Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, some argue that this push will likely temporarily stop. But will it?
The brief answer is, “No.” The tactics are simply going to shift from regulatory processes to encouraging companies to control online speech through “voluntary” measures that include categorizing uncomfortable political speech as “hate,” “improper,” or “fake.”…
A couple examples highlight what to expect with respect to the change in tactics. First, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and other companies agreed to remove posts filled with “hate speech” in Europe. Second, social media services and search engines are taking steps to identify and remove “fake” news stories…
As technology companies, or academics, label sources from one side of the political aisle as “fake,” they create excuses to discriminate against those sources. As technology companies discriminate against a particular political viewpoint, they fulfill the ultimate objective progressives are encouraging in front of agencies: the regulation and silencing of online political speech.
Trump Administration
Washington Post: Trump’s pick for White House counsel is wrong for the job
By Ellen L. Weintraub
The White House counsel operates out of the public eye but has the president’s ear. In the Trump administration, with the unprecedented multiplicity of conflict-of-interest challenges facing the businessman-president, the job will take on added importance. As a Democratic commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, I served five years alongside Donald F. McGahn, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for the post. My experience may be instructive – and disquieting.
The FEC’s fundamental mission is to fight corruption by shining a light on money in politics, empowering citizens to assess their elected officials’ potential conflicts of interest. From the moment he walked in the door in 2008, McGahn made no secret of his disdain for the agency, its mission and the commission staff.
Bloomberg: Former GOP Officials Join Watchdog Calls for Trump Divestiture
By Ben Brody
Six days before Donald Trump is set to announce a plan to exit operations of his company, former Republican officials and a conservative author who targeted the Clintons — and has close ties to a top Trump adviser — signed a letter urging the president-elect to put his business enterprises into a blind trust in order to avoid any suggestions that his decisions benefit him, a watchdog group said.
“We believe you need to act now to ensure that as president you will not have conflicts of interests or the appearance of such conflicts,” says the letter, which Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington helped organize.
The signers include former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson, former Rhode Island Representative Claudine Schneider — all Republicans — and “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer, according to CREW.
CPI: Donald Trump rewarding million-dollar donors with plum postings
By Michael Beckel, Dave Levinthal, and Carrie Levine
In all, 18 ultra-wealthy Americans – the majority are billionaires whose fortunes are greatly affected by government decisions – contributed at least $1 million to the Republican’s presidential campaign and political efforts supporting Trump’s bid, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis shows.
At least one person on this list, former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon, is slated to serve in Trump’s Cabinet: Trump this week tapped McMahon to lead the federal government’s Small Business Administration. In addition to spending $6.2 million to support Trump’s presidential effort, she and husband Vince McMahon have together donated millions of dollars to Trump’s scandal-plagued charitable foundation.
Trump is also nominating six-figure contributors to cabinet-level positions: billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos as education secretary, restaurant mogul Andy Puzder as labor secretary and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross as commerce secretary. And four days before Election Day, Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary nominee Ben Carson’s old presidential campaign committee likewise gave a pro-Trump super PAC $100,000.
Candidates and Campaigns
Reason: Hillary Clinton Outraised Donald Trump Two to One, Last FEC Filings Show
By Ed Krayewski
The fight to keep “money out of politics,” such as it is, often ends up stifling speech critical of incumbents, whose incumbency makes outside money less important to their ability to engage in political speech. Campaign spending, after all, doesn’t affect election results much-Trump being outspent in the primary and general election being just the latest examples of that. Yet money can be useful to spread a message, hence the importance of an unfettered right to political speech that acknowledges that the means to engage in and amplify political speech are part of the right itself. No amount of money can make a flawed message appealing, as Jeb Bush and Clinton, among others, learned.
Now that Trump is set to become the 45th president of the United States, perhaps progressives hostile to Citizens United will realize that, like the filibuster and other checks and balances, free political speech plays an important role in curbing the power of government and its ability to act on unilateral agendas without impunity.
Daily Caller: It Took An Independently Wealthy Billionaire To Prove Money Doesn’t Win Elections
By Phillip Stucky
Trump spent a grand total of $600 million in his bid for the White House, according to official FEC reports, much lower than the estimated $1.2 billion former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised and spent in her massive attempt to win…
Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders assert that large donors carry too much influence in national elections, and use that argument to fight the Citizens United decision, which allowed Super PACs to raise huge amounts of money from private individuals towards political ends.
Trump smashed the Democratic narrative with the fact that an overwhelming majority of Trump’s funds came from donors giving less than $200 per donation. The president-elect was able to win the election, despite raising significantly less money than Clinton, who relied more on large donors to fund traditionally large ad buys.
Roll Call: Even After Electoral Defeat, Campaign Email Lists Don’t Die
By Simone Pathé
Candidates – even failed ones – hold onto those email lists and use them to advance future endeavors, whether it’s their next political venture or someone else’s, or simply a cause they’re passionate about.
“There’s a reason the FEC considers these kinds of lists to have value,” said Democrat Emily Cain, who lost a rematch against Maine Rep. Bruce Poliquin last month…
Cain’s not the only defeated candidate directing her supporters to other outlets after the election. In an email with the subject line “Keeping up the fight,” former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold urged “grass-roots progressives” to support other organizations that helped him during the campaign…
Candidates who have run for office multiple times may have spent years building up their email lists, which can make those lists valuable resources for others. “I think of it as an asset,” Cain said.
Mailing lists can be donated to charitable organizations, according to the Federal Election Commission, and can also be sold or rented to other political entities so long as the price reflects the actual value of the list.
CRP: Challengers who bested incumbents reaped $70,000 in post-election funds
By Ashley Balcerzak, Jack Noland, and SooRin Kim
“Giving after the election clearly shows the donation is not given to support the election of a specific candidate based on shared ideology or to see robust democracy, but to endear themselves to the particular candidate,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen.
Running a federal campaign is an expensive business, to say the least. Candidates can end the political season hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars in debt.
There were 145 winners with campaign debt as of mid-October, with a total $26.5 million to pay off between them…
Since our pool of candidates with debt is so large, let’s look just at newbies who beat out veteran lawmakers. Incumbents lost their seats in 18 races; post-election reports, due Dec. 8, haven’t shown up on the FEC’s site for three of them. The 15 we were able to look at reaped reaped almost $71,000 in donations after Nov. 8.
Bloomberg: The Millions Trump’s Businesses Made From His Campaign
By Bill Allison, Michael Keller and Blacki Migliozzi
Donald Trump ran as a billionaire businessman whose ability to finance his campaign from his own deep pockets would keep him free from the influence of special interests. While he put $66.1 million of his own money into his campaign and received an additional $264 million from small dollar donors, more than $14.6 million worth of campaign funds went back into Trump’s businesses in the form of air travel, event rentals and even $8,040.01 to Trump’s bottled water company, Trump Ice LLC.
The Federal Election Commission requires candidates using personal assets in elections to pay market rates for them. For Trump, whose businesses cater to the wealthy, that meant higher costs for his campaign, which was already struggling to catch up with Hillary Clinton’s money machine. His company assets, though, played a bigger role than simply shuttling him to rallies or providing a venue for a speech. They were ever-present symbols on the campaign trail of the business record he touted as his main credential for seeking the presidency.
The States
Sioux Falls KELO Newstalk: IM 22 supporters aren’t giving up
By Mark Russo
One of the big backers of Initiated Measure 22, Activist Rick Weiland, says that the anti-corruption package is constitutional and South Dakotans knew what they were doing when they approved it.
The former Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate is reacting to the preliminary injunction against IM 22 issued by a Judge in Pierre, requested by a group of Republican state lawmakers that claim the measure is unconstitutional.
“How is it unconstitutional to require Pierre to establish an ethics commission or how is it unconstitutional to limit what lobbyists can give to elected office holders?” asks Weiland. He says the taxpayer money needed for the public financing portion of IM 22, the so-called Democracy Credits, is “a very small percentage of the state budget” and other states have such systems…
Many top elected officials, including Governor Daugaard, have been highly critical of IM 22. In fact, Governor Daugaard has urged the 2017 State Legislature not to fund the Democracy Credits Program, saying the state can’t afford it.