In The Wall Street Journal: Campaign-Finance Laws Created Candidate Bloomberg: They Don’t Level The Field; They Tilt It To The Advantage Of Billionaires, Especially If They Own Media Firms

Brad Smith and I have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the harm created by campaign finance laws. Since campaign finance laws carry criminal penalties, they are something that interests the Crime Prevention Research Center. The laws create a very uneven playing field, with a very wealthy person such as Michael Bloomberg particularly advantaged. But Bloomberg is also benefited and able to influence the election in other ways because he owns a large media company.

Here is their article:

House Democrats held a panicked hearing this month about how to respond to the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which upheld the right of corporations to spend in elections. Their concern was the undue influence corporate spending might have on the coming elections. 

In the entire 2016 campaign cycle, corporations spent less than $300 million on federal races, less than 5% of total spending. Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already spent more than $360 million on cable, broadcast and radio advertisements since declaring his candidacy in mid-November. That doesn’t include Mr. Bloomberg’s spending on staff, office space, logistics and internet advertising. Overturning Citizens United wouldn’t touch that money.

“It’s a shame Mike Bloomberg can buy his way into the debate,” tweeted Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent typifies liberal angst with the claim that Mr. Bloomberg’s spending “threatens to constitute a moral and political disaster.”

Whether Mr. Bloomberg’s ad barrage translates to more than a brief blip in the polls remains to be seen—he was savaged by his rivals in his first debate.

But Mr. Bloomberg’s ad campaign is likely to help the eventual Democratic nominee, whether it is Mr. Bloomberg or someone else. Many of his ads directly attack President Trump. Since Mr. Bloomberg is a candidate, federal law mandates that he get the lowest unit ad rate. If Mr. Bloomberg used the same money to fund a super PAC, it would have to pay market rates. Thus being a candidate wins Mr. Bloomberg an advantage in softening up Mr. Trump for the Democratic nominee. At the same time, super PACs backing other candidates have to pay far more for their ads than Mr. Bloomberg does, while their campaigns are subject to strict limits on the size of contributions they can receive. The former mayor doesn’t need contributions.

But all this misses an even bigger elephant in the room: Bloomberg Media, which Mr. Bloomberg owns. Federal law exempts the institutional press from campaign finance restrictions, allowing media corporations to coordinate their spending with campaigns—which is illegal for other corporations—and to avoid burdensome reporting requirements, all the while spending what they want to elect their favored candidates. Favorable media coverage—or hostile coverage of an opponent—is invaluable.

A media corporation owned or controlled by a candidate is excluded from the exemption unless its coverage is part of “a general pattern of campaign-related news” that gives “reasonably equal coverage to all opposing candidates.” But unless and until they are formally nominated, Mr. Bloomberg and President Trump are not, under the law, considered “opposing candidates.” The law holds that until then, Mr. Bloomberg is competing only with other Democrats for the nomination. So for now, Bloomberg News is free to trash the president and his policies all it wants.

Thus, attacking the president and sparing his Democratic rivals is the official policy of Bloomberg News and its 2,700 reporters. Bloomberg’s editor in chief has written, “We will continue our tradition of not investigating Mike . . . and we will extend the same policy to his [Democratic] rivals.” But it “will continue to investigate the Trump administration.”

Even if Mr. Bloomberg becomes the Democratic nominee, there is no way to prevent Bloomberg News from shaping its coverage of the economy and current events to help its owner’s candidacy or harm the president’s. For example, despite the strong economy, on a recent weekend Bloomberg News headlines included: “In Hot U.S. Jobs Market, Half of College Grads Are Missing Out,” “All the Ways Stock Market Bulls Have Gone Off the Rails. Again,” and “China Trade War Walloped More Than Half of U.S. States in 2019.”

Wage growth has been strong, and those with lower incomes have seen the largest percentage increases. But this decline in income inequality is no reason to celebrate at Bloomberg News, which frets, “In recent years, while high-school graduates have seen a sharp pickup in earnings, the lower-earning half of college graduates haven’t—and the gap between them is now the smallest in 15 years.” 

Bloomberg News also runs regular over-the-top opinion pieces criticizing Mr. Trump, with headlines such as: “An Unrestrained Trump May End Up Trapping Himself,” “Trump Is Already Making Stuff Up About Voter Fraud,” and “Trump’s Tariffs Haven’t Rescued American Steel.” Again, all from a single weekend.

The value of these stories to Democrats in general, and to Mr. Bloomberg in particular, almost certainly exceeds Mr. Bloomberg’s advertising expenditures. But there is no way that the government could or should police Bloomberg News’s content for political bias.

Further, Bloomberg News’s headlines and stories are not substantially different from those one finds in the Washington Post (owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos), the New York Times(which is controlled by the Sulzberger family and for several years counted Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim as its largest shareholder), or most other traditional news outlets. Meanwhile, candidates operate under strict limits on contributions, making it difficult to counteract the influence of magnates with newspapers.

The whole saga illustrates the impossibility of putting government in control of campaign speech, and the unfairness that results from trying. Campaign finance laws don’t equalize political influence—they give an advantage to some of the richest and most powerful men in America. 

Congressional Democrats have busied themselves with proposing constitutional amendments to overturn Citizens United. That’s small beer. If Democrats want to make campaigns “equal,” they’ll have to repeal the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedom. I doubt they want to go that far. 

Mr. Smith served as chairman of the Federal Election Commission, 2001-05, and is chairman of the Institute for Free Speech. Mr. Lott is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

DNC Deputy Chair Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) advocates Censoring President Trump's posts on Twitter

Doesn't advocating censorship of one's political opponents draw media outrage?

There are a lot of questions that this raises.  But will the media ask?  If Democrats were in power would they use their authority to censor those that they disagree with?  Does this give a different picture of these same congressmen supporting campaign finance regulations? 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wants Citizens United overturned, What does that mean?

From the WSJ:

Her other goal is overturning Citizens United v. FEC, which in 2010 restored First Amendment rights for businesses and unions. “It would be an impossible dream. But I’d love to see Citizens United overruled,” she said, thus signaling she’ll do everything she can to see that happen. She also boasted that she expected to be back in the five-vote majority soon. . . .

Overturning Citizens United would allow the government to ban movies, TV, and books 60 days before elections. During presidential election years the government could ban all these things for almost 10 months.

The logical consequence of campaign finance laws: Judge rules that "School’s Facebook post a campaign contribution"

If you can't give a campaign money to take out an ad, can you be stopped from putting up an ad yourself?  Apparently a judge in Colorado sees the link.  From the Coloradoan newspaper:

A state judge has ruled that a Facebook post by Liberty Common School amounts to an illegal campaign contribution to a Thompson School District board candidate. 

In August, the Fort Collins charter school shared with its Facebook followers a newspaper article about a parent of a student running for a board seat in the neighboring school district. Liberty Common’s principal, former Colorado Congressman Bob Schaffer, then shared the post and called candidate Tomi Grundvig an “excellent education leader” who would provide “sensible stewardship” of Thompson. 

Liberty Common has 566 followers to its Facebook page. Schaffer, who lost a 2004 bid for U.S. Senate, has more than 3,900 “friends” on his personal page. . . .

New op-ed at the New York Daily News: Donald Trump's big lie about 'buying' politicians

My newest piece, which is co-authored with Bradley Smith, starts this way:

Donald Trump is spinning a lie about political contributions and influence — and it’s time fellow Republicans called him on it.

For years, Trump was a major contributor to Democratic campaigns. From 1989 through 2011, Trump gave over $580,000 to Democrats, approximately $85,000 more than he donated to Republicans. He also contributed at least $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Since 2012, however, over 99% of his contributions have gone to Republicans.

Trump might have argued his political giving has changed simply because his views on health care, taxes and other issues have grown more conservative. But he has offered quite a different explanation. He says that he has given to politicians not out of conviction, but because then they “do whatever the hell you want them to do.”

These comments draw “amens” from both the angry American middle, which is furious at the political class, and knowing nods from the liberal political cognoscenti, which favors stricter campaign finance regulations that would make it easier for them to control political discussion through the elite media.

Trump’s claim to control politicians, however, appears to be nothing more than braggadocio. His one concrete example of puppetry, offered in the GOP debate: “With Hillary Clinton, I said, ‘Be at my wedding,’ and she came to my wedding . . . She had no choice, because I gave.” Leaving aside that this isn’t a pressing matter of government policy, attending a lavish Trump wedding hardly seems like something people that you have to pay people to attend.

Trump asserts that because he is financing his own campaign, he can “do what’s right for the people.” He attacks his political rivals as beholden to wealthy donors: “Bush is controlled by those people. Walker is controlled by those people.” . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

With all the attacks on the Koch brothers during the midterm election, please note: "Big Democrat donors outspend GOP by 3-to-1"

From the Pittsburgh Tribune:

For as often as Democrats attack conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch for heavy spending on politics, it's the liberal-minded who shelled out the most cash on the just-completed midterm elections.  

At least, that is, among those groups that must disclose what they raise and spend.
Among the top 100 individual donors to political groups, more than half gave primarily to Democrats or their allies. Among groups that funneled more than $100,000 to allies, the top of the list tilted overwhelmingly toward Democrats — a group favoring the GOP doesn't appear on the list until No. 14.  

The two biggest super PACs of 2014? Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC — both backing Democrats.  

In all, the top 10 individual donors to outside groups injected almost $128 million into this year's elections. Democratic-leaning groups collected $91 million of it.  

Among the 183 groups that wrote checks of $100,000 or more to another group, Democrats had a 3-to-1 cash advantage. . . .  Not a single Republican-leaning group cracked the top 10 list of those transferring money to others.  

Overall, for the campaign season that just ended, donors who gave more than $1 million sent roughly 60 cents of every dollar to liberal groups. Among the 10 biggest donors, Democrats outspent Republicans by an almost 3-to-1 margin.  

“They're total hypocrites when it comes to this subject,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. “They've made a living off campaign talking points when, in reality, they've been raking in more money from millionaire donors than Republicans for quite a while.”  . . .

Note that the list of donors that the Associated Press study provides doesn't include all the money that Michael Bloomberg gave to promote gun control efforts that went overwhelmingly to help Democrats.

Newest piece at the Wall Street Journal: "It’s Shocking How Little Was Spent on the Midterms"

My newest piece in the Wall Street Journal, co-authored this time with Brad Smith, starts this way:

The “most expensive election in history.” Our democracy is being “bought and sold.” This election, “debased by money, shames us all.” These are some of the recent expressions of outrage about what the Center for Responsive Politics estimates to have been $3.67 billion spent for federal offices during the 2014 midterms.  

Two days before the election on “Face the Nation,” CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked viewers to name one item whose costs have gone up as much over time as campaigns. That’s easy. While campaign spending soared to $3.67 billion this year from $1.6 billion in 1998, federal government spending rose 5% faster, to $3.9 trillion from $1.65 trillion.  

It is logical that these expenditures have gone up in tandem. The bigger the federal government, the more is at stake, and the harder politicians and special interests fight to see who gets to control it. If the federal government were still the 2% to 3% of GDP that it was a century ago, people likely wouldn’t care as passionately about the outcome of most elections. 

In the Journal of Law and Economics (2000), John Lott, one of the authors here, studied gubernatorial and state legislative campaign expenditures from 1976 to 1994. After accounting for such factors as the number of contested races, how close the elections were, and how closely divided control of the legislature was, his research showed that almost 80% of the increase in campaign spending for state offices was explained by changes in the size of state governments. States with the fastest-growing budgets saw the biggest increases in campaign expenditures. . . .

Taxpayers pay for this "nonpolitical" speech by Obama

Here is the transcript from Obama's talk at Northwestern Unversity:

Now, I am not on the ballot this fall.  Michelle is pretty happy about that.  (Laughter.)  But make no mistake:  These policies are on the ballot -- every single one of them.  This isn’t some official campaign speech, or political speech, and I’m not going to tell you who to vote for -- although I suppose it is kind of implied.  (Laughter and applause.) . . . 

There’s a reason fewer Republicans are preaching doom on deficits . . .  There’s a reason fewer Republicans you hear them running about Obamacare . . . Republicans in Congress actually had to take a stand on policies . . . at least one top Republican in Congress said . . . 

Of course, since this was a non-political talk to the students, Obama was able to get taxpayers to pay for his trip out to Chicago so that he could to this $50,000-a-head fundraiser for the Illinois Governor.  

Federal Election Commission warns that it wants to regulate media discussion of candidates as campaign contributions

Note that the current chairman of the FEC is a Republican and that he is upset by the pressure from others in the FEC for the government to regulated the content of media coverage because of concerns that it benefits different political candidates.  From Fox News:

The chairman of the Federal Election Commission warned Wednesday that officials at the agency want to start regulating the media, despite a longstanding congressional ban on doing so.  

"The impulse to regulate the media within the FEC is alive and well," Chairman Lee E. Goodman told FoxNews.com in an interview.  

Goodman pointed to several recent decisions and developments that stoke concerns about the commission -- which is supposed to regulate money in federal elections -- sticking its nose in the affairs of the press. . . . 

But Goodman voiced concern that it was seriously considered at all, saying the commission was in the position of trying to "second guess the editorial decisions" of the network.  

The consideration, he said, "clearly indicates that there are people in the FEC who believe we have the power to regulate the media."  

Goodman also pointed to recent cases where the FEC was deadlocked, 3-3, on cases he argues should have been unanimously struck down. This includes a 2010 complaint about "The Sean Hannity Show" over an endorsement that went out on the radio show's distribution list. . . . 

James O’Keefe video gets Republican Senate President to Drop out of Re-election race

Despite a very closely divided state Senate in Wisconsin, Project Veritas did an undercover video that caused Republican Senate President Mike Ellis to not seek re-election this fall.   From Fox 6 in Milwaukee:

In the video, recorded two weeks ago, Ellis talks about creating a super PAC to spend money attacking his Democratic opponent state Rep. Penny Bernard Schaber.Ellis said he did not pursue the idea after realizing it was illegal. . . .

I have two thoughts on this: 1) this shows James O’Keefe is willing to go after what he considers bad behavior even when it targets Republicans (which is something that he deserves points for) and 2) whether this is bad behavior depends on the timeline here: the amount of time between the discussion and the release of the video.  If it is clear that Ellis wasn't going to follow through on the discussion, I don't see the problem.  There are so many complicated laws even legislators can't be expected to understand all the implications of them.

Why campaign donations should be secret

There is a real cost to making campaign donations public.  Take an example from this week: 

Mozilla -- most famous for its Firefox browser -- patted itself on the back for standing up for equal rights when it forced out CEO Brendan Eich Thursday after only a week on the job.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based organization infuriated many employees and users last week by promoting Eich. The hullabaloo centered on Eich’s $1,000 donation in 2008 to support Prop 8, the California initiative that barred same-sex marriage in the state.
The dating website OkCupid, which says 8 percent of its users are gay or lesbian, boycotted Firefox earlier this week, telling its users not to use Mozilla's software to access the site in light of Eich's promotion. . . .

Imagine the impact that public information on donors could have on the willingness of people to make donations against powerful politicians. 

While Democrats are outraged about the Koch brothers spending $30 million so far on campaigns, Tom Steyer pledges $100 million to back Democrats on Global Warming

While Harry Reid keeps going to the floor of the Senate to denounce the Koch brothers, the Kochs were notable donors to Democrats up to 2012, and in 2011, the DSCC asked the Kochs to donate them. But now the Senate Democrats are claiming the Kochs are evil giving $ to Republicans. From Politico:

Those donations from Koch Industries Inc. Political Action Committee, or KochPAC, include nearly $200,000 to Democratic candidates and committees as recently as 2010 — including a $30,000 donation to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. . . . 

But Reid’s fellow Democrats collected KochPAC money as recently as 2012.
Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas took $10,000 from KochPAC in 2012. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana has taken $55,000 in Koch money since the 2000 cycle. Former Senate Democrats Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson took Koch cash in 2010. And Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York got $1,000 in the same year. 

Since 2000, KochPAC has given more than $1.4 million to Democratic candidates, leadership PACs and party committees, according to numbers compiled by Congressional Quarterly’s Moneyline. 

The DSCC even asked the Kochs to donate in 2011 . . .

Harry Reid and others don't seem to ever bother to mention the money that the Steyer brothers, Michael Bloomberg or George Soros are spending to support Democrats.  Just one of the Steyer brothers alone is planning on spending $100 million.

Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned environmental activist, made waves when he announced in February that he would funnel at least $100 million to make climate change the top issue in the 2014 midterms – a sum that includes $50 million of his own money and $50 million from donors. . . .

Steyer spent almost $8 million in the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial race.  If Tom Steyer is going to be consistent, he isn't going to be able to support some of the Democrats in tough races.

Twenty-eight Democrats and two left-leaning Independents, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his top lieutenants, are scheduled to speak in shifts until about 9 a.m. Tuesday. The event is not a filibuster, nor is it related to any legislation. The intent is to urge a divided Congress and nation to “wake up” on this issue.  Some notable Democrats, however, are no-shows: Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. . . . 

But that was six days ago.  In the last day or so, it appears that Kay Hagan's position may be somewhat confused.  From the Washington Examiner:

Sen. Kay Hagan took to the Senate floor Thursday to call for congressional action on climate change. 

"This is a pressing problem that needs to be addressed and too often gets pushed to the backburner," the North Carolina Democrat said.

The overture was of note because Hagan is in a tight re-election contest in a red-leaning state. She and other Democrats in a similar situation were absent from an all-night climate event involving more than two dozen Democrats speaking on the Senate floor earlier this week.

"This current path is unsustainable, and we must take steps now to slow and stop the effects of climate change," Hagan said. "This is a challenge that will need to be addressed from many different directions." . . . 

Tom Steyer won't be spend money against Democrats, even those who oppose his position on climate change.

Begich is a top energy Democrat, who sides with his Republican colleague from Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, more often than his party on energy issues. (His support for the Keystone XL pipeline is one example.) Still, AFP wants Begich ousted along with other vulnerable Democrats.
Steyer, for his part, won't back Begich — but he won't hurt him either.
According to Lehane, the same goes for the vulnerable pro-energy Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.), who has come out in favor of Keystone XL, crude oil exports, and offshore energy revenue sharing. . . .

Of course, Bloomberg has given $2.5 million to Harry Reid's Senate Majority PAC, but Reid isn't going to give back his money.

Bloomberg keeps weighing in heavily for Democrats

Right now there is a case before the Supreme Court on whether the government can limit total donations that someone makes to federal political candidates.  The limit on the amount given to any one candidate has been upheld previously, but can the government also limit the total amount that you can give to all candidates at $25,000, thus limiting the number of candidates that you can help?  

Well, for Bloomberg these limits are already meaningless because he just goes in and buys million dollar ad campaigns himself.  He did it for Cory Booker a couple of weeks ago and now he is spending $1.1 million on ads for Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governors race.  Most of people who want to give over $25,000 to candidates during an election cycle at about $2,500 per candidate per race can't put together their own ad campaign.  Bloomberg is doing these donations big time to push candidates who support gun control.  This seems like a case where the current campaign finance regulations let very wealthy people such as Bloomberg play by a different set of rules from everyone else.

Corruption: Hillary Clinton's 2008 got secret $608,000 donation from man connected with another corruption case

Thompson is deeply involved in the same type of scandal in DC in which he funneled under the table large amounts of money to Vincent Gray's DC Mayor campaign.  From the Washington Post:

Thompson allegedly paid Troy White, a New York marketing executive, more than $608,000 to hire “street teams” to distribute posters, stickers and yard signs beginning in February 2008 to help raise Clinton’s profile during her primary battle with then-Sen. Barack Obama, according to the documents and interviews with several people familiar with the investigation. 

A search of federal campaign records found no evidence that Thompson or White disclosed the alleged expenditures or activities to the Federal Election Commission, as required by campaign finance laws. 

The new accusations came to light when White pleaded guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor tax charge, becoming the latest Thompson associate implicated in a far-reaching investigation that has explored the businessman’s alleged secret role in funding political campaigns. . . .

Another example for why campaign donations should be anonymous

With the flood of unidentified donations to the Obama campaign, it seems that a huge number of donations are de facto anonymous.  Indeed, anyone who followed the attacks on donors after California's Proposition 8 knows the problems they faced.  While this isn't strictly campaign related, this example shows the attacks people face when they reveal their personal opinions.

A family-owned Christian bakery, under investigation for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, has been forced to close its doors after a vicious boycott by militant homosexual activists.   

Sweet Cakes By Melissa posted a message on its Facebook page alerting customers that their Gresham, Ore. retail store would be shut down after months of harassment from pro-gay marriage forces.   

“Better is a poor man who walks in integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways,” read a posting from Proverbs on the bakery’s Facebook page.  

“It’s a sad day for Christian business owners and it’s a sad day for the First Amendment,” owner Aaron Klein told me. “The LGBT attacks are the reason we are shutting down the shop. They have killed our business through mob tactics.” . . .

No one minds people not shopping at a particular shop, but the attacks here have gone well beyond that and have been malicious.

Within days, militant homosexuals groups launched protests . . . . Klein told me he received messages threatening to kill his family. They hoped his children would die.   

The LGBT protestors then turned on other wedding vendors around the community. They threatened to boycott any florists, wedding planners or other vendors that did business with Sweet Cakes By Melissa. . . .

My question is whatever one's views on whether marriage should be between a man and a woman or between any set of consenting adults, why isn't this type of threats of violence and other actions condemned?

Why if you believe what Democrats say, they should support allowing anonymous donations.

With Democrats frequently scooping up over $156 million of Obama's donations can in donations of less than $200 in 2004 and more than half of his donations in 2012 that they don't collect information on (apparently many from foreign countries (see also here)), they apparently have no problems with anonymous donations as long as you break it down into many small payments.  But the claims from Democrats in a recent The Hill newspaper article provides an explanation why publishing the names of donors discourages races against incumbents.

Bevin’s biggest obstacle will be to raise money for his campaign, as many business groups and political action committees will steer clear of the race for fear of offending McConnell, one of the nation’s most powerful Republicans. 

Democrats have subtly tried to influence other Republican primaries, such as last year’s contest in Missouri. But strategists predict Democratic donors and groups will stay away from Bevin. 

“It would be an absolute disaster for McConnell to lose in a primary instead of a general [election]. It would send the signal that McConnell is not conservative enough when the signal we need to send is that Kentucky voters don’t like obstruction,” said Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which launched a new television ad in Kentucky this week hitting McConnell on Social Security. . . .

Obama's fourth scandal: Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius using her position to force those she regulates to give money to Obama campaign

Using the threat of regulation to force those being regulated to give money to Obama sure sounds like thuggish behavior.  I suppose that Obama will again claim ignorance of this, but Sebelius has gotten in trouble before on these issues.  He might claim outrage, but he didn't publicly reprimand her earlier.  From The Hill newspaper:

House Republicans have widened their probe of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius by asking the country's largest health insurers for information on her fundraising for a nonprofit group promoting ObamaCare. 

Leaders on the Energy and Commerce Committee said Friday they have written to 15 insurance companies and other groups asking whether Sebelius had contacted them to solicit funds for ObamaCare's implementation.  

Companies should hand over any internal communications that document conversations with Sebelius or discussions about her request, including emails, lawmakers wrote.  

The Sebelius probe began when news broke that she was petitioning major healthcare players to contribute to Enroll America, a group tasked with educating the public about its new health coverage options under healthcare reform.  

Republicans have denounced the effort as a "shakedown" that will line the pockets of Obama supporters and former administration officials now working to promote the Affordable Care Act. . . .

Boy, that NRA sure makes a lot of donations, right?

The Washington Post has this set of graphics illustrating the NRA's corrupting influence on politics.  In 2011-2012 election cycle, the NRA gave almost $600,000 spread across 236 Republican candidates (an average of $2,473 per candidate) and $74,000 to 25 Democrats.

Pretty impressive numbers until you look at donations by other groups such as lawyers.  I would have liked to have found donations by just trial lawyers, but these donations are still lopsided towards Democrats by a huge amount that completely dwarfs donations by the NRA.  Still, I suspect that the Washington Post isn't going to run a similar spread on these numbers.  Just donations to Democratic Senator Killibrand dwarfs the NRA's donations by 3.2 times.

Are Democrats finding ways around campaign finance laws?

Suppose that Obama loses the election.  He obviously isn't going to run for any other office in the future.  So if his campaign gets a loan, it would seem fairly likely that the campaign would default on the loan.  The Free Beacon has this interesting information:

Obama For America took out a $15 million loan from Bank of America last month, according to the campaign’s October monthly FEC report. The loan was incurred on September 4 and is due November 14, eight days after the election. OFA received an interest rate of 2.5% plus the current Libor rate. 

Warren Buffett, Obama donor and namesake of the infamous “Buffett Rule,” invested $5 billion in Bank of America last year in an effort to help the ailing financial institution. . . .

Surely this is a fairly high risk loan and it doesn't seem like the interest rate on this loan comes anywhere near to close to covering that risk. To judge whether this loan is fair, it would be interesting to know what type of collateral has been offered to secure it.  This certainly seems like one way to get around the campaign finance rules.

Contrast this loan with a loan to the Democratic National Committee:

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) now owes $15 million to the union-owned Amalgamated Bank of New York,campaign finance records show.
The DNC received a $7 million loan from the bank in September, in addition to the $8 million loan it took out the previous month, neither of which has been paid back. The loans account for the majority of the committee’s $20 million in total debt.
The DNC paid Amalgamated Bank more than $18,000 in loan interest for the month of September, the records show.
Amalgamated Bank, often described as “America’s Labor Bank,” is a national entity, the majority of which is owned by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a large, politically active union with deep ties to the Democratic Party. . . .

The big difference is that the DNC will be around after the election.  Though even in that case, it would be useful to make sure that the entire loan is eventually paid off.

UPDATE: "Obama campaign accepted foreign Web donation -- and may be hiding more"

The Obama re-election campaign has accepted at least one foreign donation in violation of the law — and does nothing to check on the provenance of millions of dollars in other contributions, a watchdog group alleges.
Chris Walker, a British citizen who lives outside London, told The Post he was able to make two $5 donations to President Obama’s campaign this month through its Web site while a similar attempt to give Mitt Romney cash was rejected. It is illegal to knowingly solicit or accept money from foreign citizens.
Walker said he used his actual street address in England but entered Arkansas as his state with the Schenectady, NY, ZIP code of 12345.
“When I did Romney’s, the payment got rejected on the grounds that the address on the card did not match the address that I entered,” he said. “Romney’s Web site wanted the code from the back of card. Barack Obama’s didn’t.”
In September, Obama’s campaign took in more than $2 million from donors who provided no ZIP code or incomplete ZIP codes, according to data posted on the Federal Election Commission Web site. . . .

UPDATE:  Here is another example of inkind donations: "Academic ‘Dream Team’ Helped Obama’s Effort"

In addition to Dr. Fox, the consortium included Susan T. Fiske of Princeton University; Samuel L. Popkin of the University of California, San Diego; Robert Cialdini, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University; Richard H. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s business school; and Michael Morris, a psychologist at Columbia. . . .

UPDATE: The benefits from these donations just seem to go on and on.  From the Washington Post:

If you voted this election season, President Obama almost certainly has a file on you. His vast campaign database includes information on voters’ magazine subscriptions, car registrations, housing values and hunting licenses, along with scores estimating how likely they were to cast ballots for his reelection. 

And although the election is over, Obama’s database is just getting started. 

Democrats are pressing to expand and redeploy the most sophisticated voter list in history, beginning with next year’s gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and extending to campaigns for years to come. The prospect already has some Republicans worried. 

“It’s always hard to play catch-up,” said Peter Pasi, a Republican direct marketer who worked on Rick Santorum’s presidential primary campaign. 

“It can be done by 2016. I’m much more doubtful it can happen by 2014.” 

The database consists of voting records and political donation histories bolstered by vast amounts of personal but publicly available consumer data, say campaign officials and others familiar with the operation. It could record hundreds of pieces of information for each voter. . . .

Democrats in Sacramento killing a bill making it easier to fire public school teachers who are sexual predators

This is a horrible situation where even when a public school teacher gets caught doing unbelievable acts the teacher gets paid to simply quit his job. While on net positive, there are problems with this CNN story, particularly its emphasis on campaign finance.  It almost seems like they did this story because of the campaign finance angle.  But rather than the donations altering how these politicians voted, it might simply be that the unions gave money to those politicians who agreed with them.  Rather than focusing so heavily on how teachers' union donations killed the bill, they should have focused just on the real story: how a majority of Democrats in the state legislature along with public teacher unions supported killing the bill.  How the unions got the legislators to go along is mere speculation (speculation that I think is wrong).  But CNN managed to turn a bad story for teacher unions into a call for what liberals want: campaign finance regulation.

Here is a related discussion about public school teachers in NYC.  From the WSJ:

. . . In the last five years in New York City, 97 tenured teachers or school employees have been charged by the Department of Education with sexual misconduct. Among the charges substantiated by the city's special commissioner of investigation—that is, found to have sufficient merit that an arbitrator's full examination was justified—in the 2011-12 school year:
• An assistant principal at a Brooklyn high school made explicit sexual remarks to three different girls, including asking one of them if she would perform oral sex on him.
• A teacher in Queens had a sexual relationship with a 13-year old girl and sent her inappropriate messages through email and Facebook.
If this kind of behavior were happening in any adult workplace in America, there would be zero tolerance. Yet our public school children are defenseless.
Here's why. Under current New York law, an accusation is first vetted by an independent investigator. (In New York City, that's the special commissioner of investigation; elsewhere in the state, it can be an independent law firm or the local school superintendent.) Then the case goes before an employment arbitrator. The local teachers union and school district together choose the arbitrators, who in turn are paid up to $1,400 per day. And therein lies the problem.
For many arbitrators, their livelihood depends on pleasing the unions (whether the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, or other local unions). And the unions—believing that they are helping the cause of teachers by being weak on sexual predators—prefer suspensions and fines, and not dismissal, for teachers charged with inappropriate sexual conduct. The effects of this policy are mounting. . . .