Matt Yglesias makes a number of good points about campaign finance reform, money, and free speech:
My starting point is that the “money isn’t speech” mantra clearly has some real problems with it. It’s true that a law saying “Noam Chomsky can’t publish anymore books” isn’t the exact same thing as a law saying “Nobody can pay money to buy a Noam Chomsky book or donate money to non-profit institutions that employ Noam Chomsky.” But that’s still an effort to censor Noam Chomsky. Right? Money isn’t speech, but we’re talking about enacting regulations whose purpose is to limit people’s ability to disseminate Noam Chomsky’s ideas. Shifting the law to make it less Chomsky-focued makes it less unfair. We could have an even-handed rule prohibited the sale or financing of foreign policy commentary in general. But making the rule fair and agent-blind in that case also means it’s a more draconian censorship regime.
However,
I will say is that even though you can’t just waive away free speech objections by saying that “money isn’t speech” you can certainly restrict the permitted activities of certain kinds of corporate forms. Least controversially (for now) a non-profit organization that wants to be eligible for tax-exempt status can’t be primarily engaged in political activities. That’s fine by me. Publicly traded corporations are already required to engage in lots of different kinds of financial disclosure, and beefing up disclosure requirements about political spending would be a very reasonable extension of that.
It’s important to note that money will find a way into politics one way or another. Citizens United didn’t open the floodgates for unlimited corporate cash. Those gates were largely open to begin with – if you could afford to jump through a few legal hoops. A lot of small players couldn’t, and Citizens United in many ways actually leveled the playing field.
The real problem with all of this is lack of transparency. I see no reason why anonymity should be protected. Speech, sure, but if Target is donating large sums of money to a group that wants to quash gay marriage, don’t you think Target should have to disclose that? We’re talking about public policy, and while I think speech should be fully protected when it comes to politics – including speech that comes at a financial cost – I don’t think it should all be done in secret.
We need a transparent political process both before and after elections.
I don’t know how I feel about this issue, really. I didn’t find Yglesias’s post especially persuasive — it was too cursory and I felt there were nuances he’d neglected — but I’m also not in favor of hitting the money moles with government hammers. I’m sympathetic towards ideas involving more public financing, and think the impending decision over Arizona’s law in this regard will be one of this SCOTUS’s worst yet. But I’m not as experienced with this issue as I’d like to be.
I am a fan of anonymity for private individuals but corporate personhood, as a legal fiction, should have no such protections.
I do have sympathy for citizens who want to donate money to certain causes without having their names put on lists…
Why? If Larry Page and Sergey Brin are spending billions of dollars of their own money on pro-Net Neutrality advertising, shouldn’t the voting public know about that spending? If major defense-company CEOs are turning their salaries into pro-military advertising, shouldn’t the public know about that? If members of the Mormon Church are putting their money into anti-Prop 8 advertising, wouldn’t you want to know it?
If I donate 25 bucks to Prop 19, should cops be able to look my name up on a list?
If I donate 40 dollars to a pro-voucher ballot group, should gym teachers being able to look up to see if they teach my kids?
Perhaps I’d be content with a dollar amount limit above which disclosure is automatic… but it’d probably not have fewer than four digits.
“If I donate 40 dollars to a pro-voucher ballot group, should gym teachers being able to look up to see if they teach my kids?”
Why is $40 an innocuous amount that shouldn’t mean anything to anybody? If it’s so small as to be below consideration then why even donate it? Are you “making a statement of support”? If so, then why do you want it to be anonymous?
Also, there are about 75 million members of the Catholic Church in the United States. If the limit is “five figures”, then that’s over seven hundred BILLION dollars that could be totally anonymous. Hire these people as “consultants” who never actually do anything or get paid, and make donations in their name.
Why is $40 an innocuous amount that shouldn’t mean anything to anybody?
Not my argument.
It’s that it’s not your business.
So Density, you think that the government should keep track of citizen political participation? And the government should force you to reveal your political activity to others? That’s a pretty illiberal position, isn’t it?
The flip side of “openness” is intimidation, Nixon’s “enemies list,” the “K Street Project,” threats from incumbents against citizens.
If I live in a union neighborhood and want to support a statewide referendum repealing prevailing wage laws, such the government force me to advertise that to my neighbors? If I’m a gay man and would prefer my employer not know that, and want to support a PAC that supports pro-gay candidates, should the government force me to disclose it? If I’m a conservative up for tenure at a university and, facing a supermajority vote, fear a few people might vote against me for my non-work related politics, should the government tell them about my politics (or force me to?)
“So Density, you think that the government should keep track of citizen political participation? ”
I think that either everybody should keep track of political participation, or that everybody shouldn’t.
If the fact of donation is so meaningful that it must be kept secret regardless of amount, then that holds true for every donation, not just the donations from people we don’t like to causes we oppose.
It’s a complicated issue to be sure. But one approach might be to report contributions over a certain amount, say $1,000, and not report contributions below that amount. This would provide privacy to most people while revealing large contributors.
75 million members of the Catholic Church just got employed as “consultants” whose whole job is to each donate $999.99 to antiabortion candidates.
I’m sure that they’ll do just as good a job at that as they do when it comes to not taking birth control, not getting vasectomies, and not getting divorced.
I believe that’s the current state of play when it comes to Presidential elections, isn’t it? (except the cutoff is lower, 250 I think)
I don’t think it’s asking too much to say that people willing to spend money on a cause should be expected to withstand potential opprobrium in response. There should be exceptions in cases where violent reprisal is truly possible or likely; but in general I think openness is a very important value for a functioning democracy.
Is Privacy?
I ask because, according to my worldview, Privacy is something akin to a “Right”. (Yes, I’m aware that this is pretty much a losing battle)
Such things as my support for gay marriage, and the end to the drug war, abortion, and any number of crazy, out-there, ideas are founded on the Right of people to not have others interfere with their Private lives. If I had, for example, “the good of society” as a prime concern, I could easily see coming to different conclusions on at least one of them.
I understand this viewpoint. I’ve got a weird blind-spot when it comes to privacy, I suppose; its disappearance just doesn’t worry me as much as others. But that’s not to say I’m right.
How do you know if violence reprisal is “truly possible or likely” until it occurs?
Concern troll is concerned!
I hate this method of argument.
“You don’t really care about X, so therefore I don’t have to address your argument about X.”
I’ve changed my mind and strongly support your argument for banning gun ownership. After all, bad things might happen if people owned guns, and are you really willing to wait until these bad things occur to take steps against them?
“I don’t have to answer your question since I know you don’t mean it.”
No, I don’t doubt that you mean it, but I think that you haven’t thought about what else you mean.
Both parties are way too obligated to moneyed interests and thus do not approach important issues with an open mind. My suggestion is a massive bipartisan petition drive to seek commitment from ALL candidates to seriously look to reform campaign financing in their next term in office. Here is the petition …
“I urge that all candidates for office be asked to sign the following statement of intent … As a candidate for ……., I pledge that, during the term of office I am running for, that I will undertake a serious bipartisan effort to reform campaign finance laws and free the decision-making of elected officials from the moneyed interests.”
Express your concern by clicking … http://signon.org/sign/give-us-back-our-votes to sign the petition. Thank you.
Me thinks the devil is in the details. How about this pledge instead: “I will undertake a serious bipartisan effort to reform campaign finance laws in order to protect freedom of speech, remove burdens on grassroots political speech and activity, and assure that criticism of and commentary on elected is not subject to government restraints in the guise of campaign finance reform.”
I take issue with the authors point regarding anonymous free speech. As Justice Thomas pointed out in the Citizens United case, anonymous free speech is older than our Republic. During the immediate pre-revolutionary period, speech which went against the King was punishable. If it wasn’t for anonymouse speach Tom Paine among others would have either been imprisoned (or worse) or would not have written Common Sense. In our own day, anonymous contributions still have a place. The activists opposing CA’s marriage prop what the names of contributors to be made public so that they can be harassed. I see no reason why anyone individual or otherwise should be harassed in America for their views on a public policy matter. If they choose to keep those views private and contribute their money without great fanfare, that is their right.
Michael’s point is well taken, but it does not stand alone. What sounds like a policy to allow small donors to contribute without public scrutiny, which I support, becomes instead the cover of secrecy for huge donors with agendas favorable to their interests but not, many of us think, to the public interest. There is clearly room for compromise if we think through the effect of policies rather than adhere strictly to the ideological view of either side.
I think one of the problems is that activists (especially those on the left) think nothing of showing up in from of someone’s home and harassing the head of a company and his family because of where they stand on a public policy issue. If I don’t like Wal-Mart (and I don’t) because of their business practices I will not (and I don’t) shop at Wal-Mart. The demonization of your opponent is nothing new in this country. The Patriots did it to the Loyalists. The North and the South did it to each other. I don’t see how we change that. So while disclosing money going to candidates is one thing, I think contributions that don’t go to a candidate are another. But I should mention that in some place in this country, there are people who are afraid to make a contribution to a candidate for fear of reprisal from a boss or a union. That type of heavy handedness still exists and an anonymouse contribution may be the best way to break up the status quo.