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Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
Shadowy group says it will spend millions on Connecticut elections
Published on August 14, 2010
Category: Other, Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
"Shadowy group says it will spend millions on Connecticut elections" Hartford Courant Aug. 14, 2010 With Connecticut's gubernatorial and state legislative elections less than three months away, a shadowy group is promising to spend millions of dollars from undisclosed contributors this fall in an effort to influence the state's elections. The shady group, which calls itself "The State of Connecticut," has pledged to spend as much as $46 million this cycle. "This is a flagrant, outr
Lawmakers stick it to the poor in return for campaign funds
Published on August 13, 2010 04:28 PM
Category: Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
Licking their chops at the prospects of reaping millions in campaign dollars, Connecticut lawmakers today overrode Governor Jodi Rell's veto of the state's revised "clean elections" law, despite calls to spend the money on social services.
MoveOn.org “reformers” mask legal requirement as virtue
Published on August 10, 2010 11:50 AM
Category: Contributions & Limits, Political Committees & 527s, Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
Today I learned via e-mail that there will be a "rally" in Albany, New York to urge Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to "Fight Corporate Corruption of Washington" (curious italicization choices in the original). The message appears to be part of a nationwide campaign led by MoveOn (formerly MoveOn.org, of course) to push for a handful of campaign finance and ethics "reform" measures. Other organizations supporting today's "rallies" (you'll see why I'm using quotation marks around
Tax financing program challenged in Maine
Published on August 6, 2010 02:59 PM
Category: Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
Yesterday, CCP detailed developments across the country affecting tax financed campaign programs. Challenges to these systems are proceeding in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida and Wisconsin (where CCP is challenging the judicial program). Today, the James Madison Center for Free Speech, run by campaign finance lawyer James Bopp, Jr., sends word that it's representing a group of plaintiffs challenging Maine's system. As in the other state's, Maine provides additional government funding to p
Nominee for the 2010 Inigo Montoya Award, “Campaign Finance Reform” division
Published on July 16, 2010 03:15 PM
Category: Contributions & Limits, Faulty Assumptions, Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
The Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) recently released a report on so-called campaign finance "reform" in Los Angeles, Money and Power in the City of Angels. The report is a look at the "effectiveness of Los Angeles municipal campaign finance reforms" and the authors also "suggest additional reforms to strengthen existing campaign finance laws." Los Angeles already has many of the features of campaign finance "reform" that advocates claim are necessary to ward off corrupti
‘Reformers’ to spend up to $15 million flacking FENA
Published on July 8, 2010
Category: Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
Public Campaign and Common Cause recently announced a $15 million lobbying campaign to push legislation implementing a system of taxpayer financed congressional campaigns. The lobbying groups, jointly called the noxiously-sounding Campaign for Fair Elections, released a TV ad today, which they plan to run in Denver, Seattle and Tallahassee (targeting Democrats who haven't signed on to their proposal). The Washington Post was even-handed in noting criticism of this recent lobbying effort:
California’s Prop 15 and the myth of “big money” buying elections go down in flames
Published on June 9, 2010 12:25 PM
Category: Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
The self-anointed campaign finance "reform" community has been hoping that California would pass Proposition 15, which would establish a pilot project for so-called "clean elections" in the 2014 Secretary of State race. Heedless of the fact that "clean elections" schemes don't deliver on their promises, campaign finance "reform" advocates continue to push these welfare for politicians programs such as the Fair Elections Now Act, which would funnel billions of taxpayer doll
The False Promise of Tax-Funding in Political Campaigns
Published on June 9, 2010 10:30 AM
Category: Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
In May 2010, the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, released its follow-up report on taxpayer funding for political campaigns. This report supplemented GAO's initial study from 2003, which found that the two states with full tax funding - Maine and Arizona - enjoyed none of the promised benefits from those programs. Section 310 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 mandated that GAO study and report on these laws. Since the first tax-funded legislative races
Stay Issued in Rescue Funds Challenge
Published on June 8, 2010 11:30 AM
Category: Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
Justice Kennedy, as Circuit Justice for the Ninth Circuit, has issued a stay in McComish v. Bennett, the challenge to the Arizona Clean Elections law and its provision of rescue funds to tax-funded candidates. Which is "bad news for supporters of reasonable campaign finance reform" we're told. Because its reasonable to attribute third party spending to a candidate who may not want it, and thus give his or her opponent ye more tax funds? Sorry, that doesn't seem reasonable, or even v
Campaign Contributions and Influence...
Published on June 7, 2010 04:10 AM
Category: Taxpayer Financed Campaigns
It's understandable that many people think that campaign contributions are a pernicious weapon of private influence on policy. A recent prominent report on OpenSecrets described the "mashup" of campaign contributions and earmarks. In fact, you might even believe that eradicating private funding of campaigns would reduce the influence of special interests and their lobbyists. But according to real, live candidates in jurisdictions where tax funding is available, that
