Disclosure

In the nearly two years since the Citizens United decision, the progressive movement has used every avenue it can find to adapt anti-corruption regulation into a force for intimidating corporations out of engaging in independent expenditures.

One of the outcomes of this tactic has been a rise in activist investing.  Taking advantage of SEC regulation, activist shareholders buy the requisite value of stock needed to introduce shareholder proposals and propose burdensome disclosure rules targeting political expenditures.

Reform groups can hem and haw all day about the merits of various disclosure regimes, but at the end of the day, it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that these proposals are in the service of cultivating political power and control.

So, it’s Christmas weekend, and perhaps you need a change of pace from It’s a Wonderful Life and George C. Scott in a Christmas Carol. If so, have we got a treat for you.

This is a panel on the proper role of disclosure in campaign finance, from the Federalist Society National Lawyers Conference in 2010. It features CCP Founder and Chairman Bradley Smith and several more distinguished speakers.

David Primo, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester and a member of CCP’s Board of Academic Advisors, has published an interesting report on the failure of disclosure laws to live up to their performance. The study, “Full Disclosure: How Campaign Finance Disclosure Laws Fail to Inform Voters and Stifle Public Debate,” is available at the website of our friends at the Institute for Justice, here.

We’ve noted in past posts that comedian Stephen Colbert’s efforts to skewer campaign finance have tended to demonstrate, at least to the careful observer, something quite different from what Colbert hopes to show. Colbert seems to think he is proving that deregulation of political campaigns helps the rich and powerful, when in fact he is demonstrating how regulation helps the rich and powerful.

Now Rick Hasen links to Colbert’s most recent bit, featuring Trevor Potter, a high priced Washington lawyer whom Colbert has enrolled to be his straight man. Colbert first asks Potter why corporations aren’t giving to his PAC. Potter answers that that is because the corporations want to remain anonymous. Now, granting comedic license, this is, of course, absurd. Corporations don’t give to Colbert’s PAC because, well, why the hell would any corporation give to a joke PAC that does not share its views?

Although Citizens United struck a blow against the government’s ability to moderate political speech, the “reform” community quickly decided their new tack would be to exploit the decision’s section on disclosure requirements to limit their opponents.  The decision, as the New York Times put it: 

…actually upheld disclosure requirements,  saying that “transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

Disclosure regimes play an important role in determining whether there is a corrupting interest at play.  However, there is a line at which point the legitimate role of disclosure is hijacked for the benefit of political opposition. 

The St. Louis Chronicle published an irresponsibly inaccurate editorial with an offensive cartoon today calling on President Obama to sign the contractor-disclosure draft executive order. 

The article misleads the reader by insinuating that the primary intent of the executive order is to have company officers disclose to the public donations to federal candidates and parties, while noting only at the very end that this information has been readily available for years.

In a desperate stab to make a “Koch connection” rather than a real argument, the editorial glosses over the primary purpose of this draft executive order, which is to force contractors to reveal donations to charitable organizations.  No doubt, the St. Louis Chronicle found it easier to justify using a graphic representing donors to politicians as members of the KKK rather than people who donate to environmental groups or Planned Parenthood. In fact, the point about disclosing non-profit donations received all of one sentence in the article.  Obtaining donation lists to non-profit charitable organizations has been the primary objective of the “reform” movement since the failure of the DISCLOSE Act. 

While we’re on the topic, the editorial cartoon is in very poor taste.  It is interesting that the Chronicle would suggest that those seeking to speak through co-called SuperPACs represent the Ku Klux Klan, because in fact the right to speak anonymously has served this country as valuable protection against the predations of the KKK.