Topic Related to my family because of Harvey
2 U.S.C. § 441d(a) and etc
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Campaign Finance Laws Violate the First Amendment:
A Couple of Horror Stories
Introduction
In the autumn of 2000, Harvey Bass, the owner of Harvey Bass Furniture and Appliance in the west Texas town of Muleshoe, painted ‘‘Save our Nation: vote Democrat; Al Gore for President’’ on the side of a leftover refrigerator shipping box. Bass left the homemade sign on the porch of his business on State Highway 214, to be seen by passersby. Soon another local resident, Bill Liles, ‘‘got tired of looking at it, especially the ‘Save our Nation’ part.’’ Liles and a friend, one Mark Morton, decided to make a sign supporting Gore’s rival, Texas Governor George W. Bush. The two decided that their sign ‘‘should be bigger and better.’’ They obtained a large plywood board, hired a professional sign painter, and mounted the finished product on the side of a cotton trailer obtained from another local resident, Don Bryant. They parked the trailer, with its sign, across the street from Mr. Bass’s store. ‘‘As word spread the sign became a topic of conversation at local gathering places. Mostly the Spudnut Shop on Main Street and the Dinner Bell Cafe´ on Highway 84. People started coming by and donating to help pay for the cost of the sign.’’ This spontaneous burst of political activity ended when another Muleshoe resident, Don Dyer, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Liles, Morton, Bryant, and one of their ‘‘contributors.’’ Though Dyer apparently had no difficulty uncovering who was behind the sign, he complained that the sign lacked disclaimers required by the Federal Election Campaign Act. In due course the Commission’s General Counsel dutifully recommended that the Commission find ‘‘reason to believe’’ that the Muleshoe Four, as we might call them, had violated 2 U.S.C. § 441d(a), by failing to include a disclaimer on the sign stating who had paid for it, and whether or not it was authorized by the candidate.1 However, many other potential violations were not considered at all. For example, if the group spent in excess of $250 (quite likely when one includes the cost of the wood, the in-kind value for the use of the cotton trailer, and the cost of hiring a professional sign painter) the group would also have violated 2 U.S.C. § 434(c)(1) by failing to file reports with the Federal Election Commission. If any of the men contributed in excess of $200 in cash or in-kind value, even if it was later repaid from donations, they might also have violated the reporting requirements of 2 U.S.C. § 434(c)(2). If the group spent more than $1,000 on the activity—unlikely in this case, but not at all impossible when one adds in the rental value of the trailer, inkind contributions of gas to haul the sign, and other costs, and certainly an amount that similar spontaneous activity might exceed—then it would have also violated 2 U.S.C. §§ 432(a)-(h), 433(a)-(b), and 434(a) and (b) by failing to register as a political committee, name a treasurer, and file more detailed reports. In this case, if any individual donated in excess of $50, it would have violated the limit on anonymous contributions, and if any individual had donated in excess of $1,000, it would have violated 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a). If Mr. Bryant’s cotton trailer was titled in the name of a corporation—perhaps his own Subchapter S corporation—lending it to the group would have violated the prohibition on corporate contributions of 2 U.S.C. § 441b. Total statutory penalties could have easily exceeded $25,000. The Commission eventually chose not to find ‘‘reason to believe,’’ but two of the six Commissioners dissented and even those voting to take no action on the complaint were forced to admit that the respondents had, in fact, violated the law
and
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Andf you think such fretting is silly, says Bradley Smith, consider the case of Bill Liles, who faced an FEC inquiry when Smith was commissioner. In 2000, a businessman in the little Texas town of Muleshoe, Harvey Bass, painted save our nation: vote democrat al gore for president on a beat-up box and plunked it on his furniture store’s porch. Sick of looking at it, Liles and a friend pasted a “bigger and better” poster praising W. on a trailer and parked it right across from Bass’s store. This was too much for another local, Don Dyer, who complained to the FEC that Liles’s sign lacked mandated disclosures about who paid for it and whether Bush had signed off on it.
Though the FEC in the end let Liles and his fellow activists off, the men had in fact broken not just disclosure rules but any number of other regulations, too, recalls Smith. They had clearly spent a bit more than $250 on their makeshift sign, for example, but hadn’t reported it, as required, to the FEC. “Total statutory penalties could have easily exceeded $25,000,” Smith observes. How different is Liles’s praiseworthy activism from that of many political bloggers? The medium differs, but Liles, like a blogger, is simply voicing his opinion. And this was pre-McCain-Feingold.
Even if the FEC starts by regulating only a little bit of Web politics, instead of the extensive oversight it had at first planned—and a laxer regime is likelier, thanks to the fierce outburst from political blogs, right and left, when they discovered their freedom of speech under fire—there’s no guarantee that the commission won’t steadily expand its reach later. “If the history of campaign finance regulation is any guide,” notes Commissioner Toner, “once the FEC exercises jurisdiction over the Internet, the Commission’s initial set of regulations, even if narrowly tailored, are likely to lead to broader regulation in the future.” Right after McCain-Feingold became law, co-sponsor Senator Russ Feingold opined: “It is only a beginning. It is a modest reform. . . . There will be other reforms.” Most campaign-finance reformers share that regulate-to-the-max outlook, aiming—swiftly or incrementally—to close all the loopholes.
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Ok, here's the ooopsieFor example, in 2000, FEC investigators descended on Muleshoe, Texas, a small farming town of just under 5,000 inhabitants west of Lubbock. They were looking into a complaint filed against local citizens who made the horrible mistake of putting up competing signs alternately supporting Al Gore or George Bush. This political rivalry started when Harvey Bass, the owner of the local furniture store, took an empty refrigerator box, painted “Save Our Nation, Vote Democrat, Al Gore for President” on the side, and placed the box on the porch of his store.
Watchdog Group Says Romney Super PAC Broke Election Law
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Restore Our Future, began rerunning an ad from 2008 about Romney’s effort to help find a missing 14-year-old girl in New York City. The only difference between the two ads is that in the old one, Romney says at the end, “I’m Mitt Romney, and I approved this message.” In the new one, a woman says, “Restore Our Future is responsible for the content of this message.”
The overlap is an example of the muddied rules that are supposed to govern super PACs, nominally independent groups that can spend and raise unlimited amounts of money for candidates. The FEC says that super PACs are forbidden from “coordinating” with campaigns over details on how to spend money for ads, but the regulation is difficult both to enforce and explain.
The Campaign Legal Center took the concrete step on Monday of claiming that the super PAC made “apparent illegal in-kind contributions” by paying for the ad to be shown again. “Such an action would constitute a violation of the law,” the group said.
Thanks Harvey“Restore Our Future’s expenditure to republish a Romney campaign ad is considered a contribution from the Super PAC to the Romney campaign under FEC regulations, but Super PACs are prohibited from contributing to candidates,” the group’s lawyer, Paul Ryan, said in a statement. “The airing of these ads constitutes a clear violation of federal law by the shadow campaign committee Restore Our Future.”
A purported violation of the law must be reported to the FEC by a third party because the commission has no policing branch to monitor super PACs or campaigns.
However, it’s unlikely that the FEC will act on the complaint in a significant way soon. The FEC can’t confirm that it’s investigating a case until an investigation is complete, and it could take up to two years. The Republican primaries for Michigan and Arizona, the states where the duplicated ad is running, are on Tuesday.
A spokeswoman for Restore Our Future had no response to the Campaign Legal Center’s complaint.
Harvey in 2005, now deceased
