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Yankee Austerity
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Yankee Austerity
In Vermont today even George Washington's first campaign would be illegal.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, August 21, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
It's a good thing George Washington got his political start in 18th century Virginia. If he lived in Vermont today, he'd find his campaign expenditures illegal. That's because in 1997 the state passed Act 64 limiting the amount a candidate for a seat in the state's lower house can spend to 70 cents per registered voter.
Perhaps the Green Mountain boys didn't realize that 240 years earlier, Washington spent about $2.20 (in current dollars) per eligible voter to win a seat in the House of Burgesses. Perhaps this fact also escaped the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled Act 64 constitutional recently.
Act 64 doesn't stop with the lower house. Limits vary per office a candidate is running for, but they're all very low and will require strict regulation and enforcement. Candidates for governor will be limited to spending about $300,000. For lieutenant governor, candidates can spend about $100,000 or 23 cents per voter. For state Senate candidates the limit will be about 20 cents per voter.
This law is expansive, so a few things should've jumped out at the court, like the First Amendment, the unanimous 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring campaign spending limits unconstitutional (Buckley v. Valeo) and common sense.
The First Amendment is very clear about the constitutional right to free speech: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." So was the Supreme Court in Buckley: "The First Amendment denies government the power to determine that speech to promote one's political views is wasteful, excessive, or unwise."
None of this slowed down the Second Circuit however. The court held that the state of Vermont has shown that "absent expenditure limits, fundraising will continue to impair the accessibility which is essential to any democratic political system." That means the majority believes regulating campaigns down to the nanosecond and penny is constitutional, the Constitution and Supreme Court not withstanding.
This law doesn't just limit speech. It also creates a Byzantine set of rules that will have political operates from all camps peering over everyone's shoulder, in search of anything that can be counted as an expense. An army of regulators saying show me the money will be the only way to ensure that every candidate adheres to the extreme spending limits. Every campaign will have to be scrutinized down to the nanosecond an ad runs, the minutes a volunteer gives a candidate or the value of a borrowed car to make a campaign trip.
"If a citizen uses his or her residence as a place at which a candidate and the candidate's supporters sometimes meet to plan campaign efforts, buy stamps for invitations to the gatherings, and provide snacks and soft drinks for those who attend, then the value of the rooms and the items purchased"--like pencils and paper, Pepsis and chips--must be counted towards the spending limit, Judge Winter said in his dissent. So must "the value of the mileage driven by the candidate and other supporters to the meetings." So must the value of the use of the residence's phone to make a local call, and the proportionate time spent sending an e-mail from a home computer, however that will be calculated.
And since all these costs count against spending limits, candidates must keep meticulous records for years or risk being stricken from the ballot for breaking the law.
You and I cannot take an interest in someone's campaign, talk over the phone about it, send letter to some friends, and have coffee and donuts for 20 people to talk about a campaign. To do so would count against a candidate's limit. Therefore, the candidate must have a firm hand in controlling every single event that could be construed to help his campaign. From phone calls to a short drive to mail a campaign letter, there'll be no room for spontaneous citizen participation. Of course, this amounts to suppressing political activity and silencing the "regular people" Vermont supposedly cares so much about.
But the most delicious aspect of Act 64 is that it applies to the media. McCain-Feingold and other federal suppressions of free speech were always very careful to exempt the media from any regulatory supervision. That wasn't good enough for the Vermont purists. Whenever a Vermont candidate meets with an editorial board or reporter or a columnist, seeking an endorsement, that is campaign expenditure--certainly by the candidate and perhaps by the newspaper. A full page ad in the Burlington Free Press costs $6,447; surely an endorsement is worth several of those. But wait--the newspaper itself is limited to a contribution of $400 for a statewide candidate, so wouldn't printing an endorsing editorial be a violation of the campaign law?
So if USA Today reprints a column of mine endorsing Vermont's governor for re-election, and copies of the paper are sold in Vermont, it counts as a contribution to the candidate. I suppose if it is reprinted in some local Vermont paper the value to the candidate goes up. One wonders what they were smoking in the Vermont legislature when they voted for such an utterly unconstitutional idea. Or what the Second Circuit judges could have been thinking when they ruled it constitutional.
Act 64 is full of mischief and silliness. A candidate with a primary is limited to the same spending limits as a candidate without one. Since Vermont primaries are open to voters of both parties, there is an opportunity for real political chicanery. House incumbents may spend only 90% of what challengers may spend, but nowhere does the law say what acts by incumbents are campaign acts. As the dissent points out, "If a particular activity by an incumbent legislator is deemed an expenditure rather than performance of an official duty, that legislator may be barred from climbing into the family automobile and driving to the local town green to give a speech. If the activity is not [deemed an expenditure], the incumbent may engage freely in very helpful elective activities that are denied to his or her opponent." And to protect against the evil influence of earned interest, all candidates must keep their campaign funds in non-interest-bearing accounts.
All of this is obviously going to entail some wrangling by political operatives. Deciding what should be a campaign expenditure and if a candidate's reports are detailed enough falls to the secretary of state--itself an elected position. So Deborah Markowitz will decide whether to charge a candidate's campaign for something I might write in a column. Or whether a lawyer volunteering his or her legal services to the campaign after business hours must be charged at the same hourly rate time is billed to clients. Then there's the 11 a.m. phone call by that lawyer to campaign headquarters, is that an individual or law firm contribution (or both)? This quickly descends into the ridiculousness. How much of a citizen's monthly Internet access fee should be charged to a candidate's campaign?
Thus Act 64 will come to mean what the secretary of state says it means, and that cannot be squared with the First Amendment either, for that delegation of power to an individual official is blatantly unconstitutional.
So there you have it; a legislative act suppressing political activity and speech is now, according to the Second Circuit, wholly constitutional. Not a lot of us care what happens in Vermont, but we care a lot about an U.S. Court Appeals Court trying to nullify the First Amendment to our Constitution, which is supposed to protect us against a national extension of Vermont's foolishness.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110002159
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
In Vermont today even George Washington's first campaign would be illegal.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, August 21, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
It's a good thing George Washington got his political start in 18th century Virginia. If he lived in Vermont today, he'd find his campaign expenditures illegal. That's because in 1997 the state passed Act 64 limiting the amount a candidate for a seat in the state's lower house can spend to 70 cents per registered voter.
Perhaps the Green Mountain boys didn't realize that 240 years earlier, Washington spent about $2.20 (in current dollars) per eligible voter to win a seat in the House of Burgesses. Perhaps this fact also escaped the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled Act 64 constitutional recently.
Act 64 doesn't stop with the lower house. Limits vary per office a candidate is running for, but they're all very low and will require strict regulation and enforcement. Candidates for governor will be limited to spending about $300,000. For lieutenant governor, candidates can spend about $100,000 or 23 cents per voter. For state Senate candidates the limit will be about 20 cents per voter.
This law is expansive, so a few things should've jumped out at the court, like the First Amendment, the unanimous 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring campaign spending limits unconstitutional (Buckley v. Valeo) and common sense.
The First Amendment is very clear about the constitutional right to free speech: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." So was the Supreme Court in Buckley: "The First Amendment denies government the power to determine that speech to promote one's political views is wasteful, excessive, or unwise."
None of this slowed down the Second Circuit however. The court held that the state of Vermont has shown that "absent expenditure limits, fundraising will continue to impair the accessibility which is essential to any democratic political system." That means the majority believes regulating campaigns down to the nanosecond and penny is constitutional, the Constitution and Supreme Court not withstanding.
This law doesn't just limit speech. It also creates a Byzantine set of rules that will have political operates from all camps peering over everyone's shoulder, in search of anything that can be counted as an expense. An army of regulators saying show me the money will be the only way to ensure that every candidate adheres to the extreme spending limits. Every campaign will have to be scrutinized down to the nanosecond an ad runs, the minutes a volunteer gives a candidate or the value of a borrowed car to make a campaign trip.
"If a citizen uses his or her residence as a place at which a candidate and the candidate's supporters sometimes meet to plan campaign efforts, buy stamps for invitations to the gatherings, and provide snacks and soft drinks for those who attend, then the value of the rooms and the items purchased"--like pencils and paper, Pepsis and chips--must be counted towards the spending limit, Judge Winter said in his dissent. So must "the value of the mileage driven by the candidate and other supporters to the meetings." So must the value of the use of the residence's phone to make a local call, and the proportionate time spent sending an e-mail from a home computer, however that will be calculated.
And since all these costs count against spending limits, candidates must keep meticulous records for years or risk being stricken from the ballot for breaking the law.
You and I cannot take an interest in someone's campaign, talk over the phone about it, send letter to some friends, and have coffee and donuts for 20 people to talk about a campaign. To do so would count against a candidate's limit. Therefore, the candidate must have a firm hand in controlling every single event that could be construed to help his campaign. From phone calls to a short drive to mail a campaign letter, there'll be no room for spontaneous citizen participation. Of course, this amounts to suppressing political activity and silencing the "regular people" Vermont supposedly cares so much about.
But the most delicious aspect of Act 64 is that it applies to the media. McCain-Feingold and other federal suppressions of free speech were always very careful to exempt the media from any regulatory supervision. That wasn't good enough for the Vermont purists. Whenever a Vermont candidate meets with an editorial board or reporter or a columnist, seeking an endorsement, that is campaign expenditure--certainly by the candidate and perhaps by the newspaper. A full page ad in the Burlington Free Press costs $6,447; surely an endorsement is worth several of those. But wait--the newspaper itself is limited to a contribution of $400 for a statewide candidate, so wouldn't printing an endorsing editorial be a violation of the campaign law?
So if USA Today reprints a column of mine endorsing Vermont's governor for re-election, and copies of the paper are sold in Vermont, it counts as a contribution to the candidate. I suppose if it is reprinted in some local Vermont paper the value to the candidate goes up. One wonders what they were smoking in the Vermont legislature when they voted for such an utterly unconstitutional idea. Or what the Second Circuit judges could have been thinking when they ruled it constitutional.
Act 64 is full of mischief and silliness. A candidate with a primary is limited to the same spending limits as a candidate without one. Since Vermont primaries are open to voters of both parties, there is an opportunity for real political chicanery. House incumbents may spend only 90% of what challengers may spend, but nowhere does the law say what acts by incumbents are campaign acts. As the dissent points out, "If a particular activity by an incumbent legislator is deemed an expenditure rather than performance of an official duty, that legislator may be barred from climbing into the family automobile and driving to the local town green to give a speech. If the activity is not [deemed an expenditure], the incumbent may engage freely in very helpful elective activities that are denied to his or her opponent." And to protect against the evil influence of earned interest, all candidates must keep their campaign funds in non-interest-bearing accounts.
All of this is obviously going to entail some wrangling by political operatives. Deciding what should be a campaign expenditure and if a candidate's reports are detailed enough falls to the secretary of state--itself an elected position. So Deborah Markowitz will decide whether to charge a candidate's campaign for something I might write in a column. Or whether a lawyer volunteering his or her legal services to the campaign after business hours must be charged at the same hourly rate time is billed to clients. Then there's the 11 a.m. phone call by that lawyer to campaign headquarters, is that an individual or law firm contribution (or both)? This quickly descends into the ridiculousness. How much of a citizen's monthly Internet access fee should be charged to a candidate's campaign?
Thus Act 64 will come to mean what the secretary of state says it means, and that cannot be squared with the First Amendment either, for that delegation of power to an individual official is blatantly unconstitutional.
So there you have it; a legislative act suppressing political activity and speech is now, according to the Second Circuit, wholly constitutional. Not a lot of us care what happens in Vermont, but we care a lot about an U.S. Court Appeals Court trying to nullify the First Amendment to our Constitution, which is supposed to protect us against a national extension of Vermont's foolishness.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110002159
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
By Wallace Honley - Toogood Reports
We Californians are being suffocated by our own generosity. We must act now to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Although a great lover of poetry, I am tired of having the following lines from the poem by Emma Lazarus, which are displayed at the Statue of Liberty, hurled at me as justification for unlimited immigration: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free . . . "
There was a time when these beautiful lines were appropriate, when we could pay this bounty from the overflowing coffers of a young, vigorous country. But now we have become those "tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Yet we continue to give away the birth-rights of our children.
Each election we are asked to vote large sums of money to support programs no longer defensible. Imagine for a moment, how many of these programs would be affected in a positive manner by the halting of illegal immigration.
By decreasing enrollment in our schools, we would require fewer teachers and classrooms. These savings could be funneled back into our educational system. Every court case that we are not required to prosecute, and every criminal that we are not required to confine, pumps huge amounts of monies back into our judicial and law enforcement systems. These saved monies can be used to keep convicted criminals off the streets, expedite our judicial process, and to deport Illegals. Shortened welfare and unemployment lines would be another bonus. Compile your own list of savings, the benefits are virtually endless.
I do not suggest that California citizens do not contribute to all of the problems listed above, nor do I lack sympathy for those less-fortunates living south of our border. I do not blame them for seeking a better way of life. Given similar circumstances, I would probably head for the border myself. But, I do blame us for not trying to stop them. If the only way we can improve their lifestyle is by destroying our own, then I say we must protect our own!
Our Border Patrol is so intimidated by the Media and militant minority groups that they are afraid to do their job. Cooperation between them and other law enforcement agencies in California is virtually nonexistent. The Border Patrol is so fearful here in the San Joaquin Valley that it recently issued a statement reassuring the illegal populace "that they are not concentrating on deporting undocumented residents in this area."
Why waste our money on an agency of this size if we are not going to let them do their job? And how paranoid must they feel when they go on to say that, "they have a policy against targeting areas where it is likely immigrants congregate, such as churches, community organizations, and swap meets." Notice how they attempt to blur the line between immigrants and illegal immigrants. This is a favorite tactic of the media and other organizations in their attempt to broaden the base of support against secure borders.
I wonder if the rest of Toogood Reports readership has the same problem with these statements that I do. It is like issuing them a fishing license with the provision that they may only fish in swimming pools and bathtubs. Seeking them in their natural habitat is forbidden. How ludicrous!
Unlike immigrants from other countries, far too many of those from Mexico have no desire to blend in. They seem more inclined to colonize. Instead of ice-cubes in our melting pot, they choose to remain stones. And I resent fervently all attempts to impose the Mexican language and culture upon us. I have no doubt that there are many among them who would like to change the name of our state to "Alta Mexico." In retaliation I guess, for "Baja California." And, do you know what? They just might do it. The two major political parties are more concerned with self-perpetuation than maintaining our borders. Too afraid of losing the Mexican vote to oppose the radicals among them on any proposal. How sad!
We must not support any candidate for public office who is not for "Zero Illegal Immigration." It may seem harsh to deny citizenship to American-born babies of illegal immigrants, but when they deliberately use their baby's birth certificates as foots-in-the-door for entire families, drastic measures are required. Former Governor Pete Wilson stated that "Two-thirds of all babies born in Los Angeles' public hospitals are the children of illegal immigrants," This should reveal the magnitude of our problem.
Hispanic citizens form a vital, emerging part of our beautiful state, and have invested heavily in it's future. They stand to lose as much by a diminished lifestyle as anyone else. I urge every citizen to lobby their elected representatives to staunch the flow of illegal immigrants not only into California, but into all of our sovereign states. If you do not have the courage to speak up now, you may have to voice your protests in another language!
Wallace Honley is a regular Toogood Reports Reader and a great American.
Copyright 1999, 2000 by Toogood Reports. All rights reserved.
http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=3685
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878