Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Foreign contributions for ballot initiatives (in CA) complicate the campaign finance debate; the partisan pressures to "take sides" and "join up"
The concerns over campaign finance reform and
political contributions, even indirect, has resurfaced this week, in a USA
Today story by Fredreka Schouten Tuesday, “Condoms-in-porn initiative spurs
concern about foreign money in elections”, link here.
The Federal Election Commission says that the ban on
foreign campaign contributions applies only to candidate elections, not to
ballot initiatives. The issue concerned a 2012 ballot initiative requiring
actors in “adult” films to use condoms during filming (even if not actually
having “sex”). Some of the
contributions had come from Manwin, a porn distributor in Luxembourg. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation had objected to
the practice, and some (especially in the state GOP) say that California law
alone would have banned the foreign contributions.
But the influence of “money” on elections and
initiatives, and the Supreme Court’s view of contributions as “speech” in most
cases, is troubling. In Washington DC, a
lot of the jobs are in lobbying groups – I once worked for a company that
generated analytical reports for healthcare lobbying groups. I actually learned a lot from the experience,
setting up how I would handle my own book “business” later.
Heavy lobbying, however, tends to polarize people into
partisan camps, often driven by emotion and social loyalties that trump
critical thinking. (See my review of
William Gairdner’s book “The Great Divide” May 15.) I find people pressuring me to “join”
something and pimp someone else’s cause rather than continue “gratuitous
publication” about “everything”. I plead
“Cloud Atlas” – everything is connected.
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