Freedom Line Blog

The Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) this week submitted comments to the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) in response to a petition requesting the FEC establish a new rule requiring corporations and other organizations – specifically 501(c)(4) not-for-profit groups – that contribute to independent-expenditure-only committees (Super PACs) to do so through a separate segregated account subject to burdensome disclosure requirements.

CFIF opposes the proposed rule on grounds that it contradicts the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress and thereby exceeds the FEC’s statutory authority, that it would not serve the purposes ostensibly advanced by the petition, and that it would burden core First Amendment speech.

The petition for rulemaking was filed by Make Your Laws PAC, Inc. and Make Your Laws Advocacy, Inc.  CFIF’s comments were prepared by Wiley Rein, LLP.

Read CFIF’s comments here.

Roll Call reports that former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has been ordered by the Federal Election Commission to repay nearly $2.3 million in misused matching funds.

The FEC’s order follows a legally required audit of Edwards’ campaign after the candidate took taxpayer money in return for capping his expenditures.  It turns out Edwards exceeded the cap and violated the law.  (For those familiar with Edwards’ post-2008 history, it’s no surprise his fiscal excess rose to the level of his personal excess.)

What does this have to do with campaign finance law?  Plenty.

To supporters, one of the goals of campaign finance laws is to increase the amount of transparency in who funds a candidate.  That goal is much easier to achieve when the hook of federal auditing is swallowed along with matching funds.  Like most liberals, John Edwards is relentlessly supportive of increasing government oversight on just about everything.  Now, the very transparency and oversight he championed for others is unearthing all kinds of sordid details he would surely prefer stay out of view.

Maybe Edwards’ inner libertarian will awaken and he’ll become an advocate for less government and more privacy.  If nothing else, he would be well advised in the future to practice a lot more discretion.

Yesterday’s United States Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a welcome victory for free speech and the First Amendment.

By overturning byzantine prohibitions against the very type of fundamental electioneering speech most valued by our Founding Fathers when they drafted the First Amendment itself, the Court reclaimed enormous territory in freedom’s war against incumbent-protecting censorship.

While welcome, however, the decision also carries political implications about which conservatives must remain alert.  Liberals, predictably, hysterically focus upon the sinister prospect of free speech for those big, bad, evil corporations that actually employ people and produce things.  For instance, resident MSNBC village idiot Keith Olbermann rendered himself not only the world’s worst person, but also the most idiotic, when he suggested the decision was even worse than the infamous Dred Scott slavery decision of 1857.

But apart from the Olbermann crowd’s inanity, one negative prospect is Big Labor’s new ability to engage in direct electioneering communications.

Don’t get us wrong – union bosses should be just as free as other groups to exercise their free speech rights, so long as the dollars used to fund that speech aren’t forcibly wrenched from reluctant members’ wages.  As long as Big Labor isn’t afforded particularized protected status, fair is fair.

Nevertheless, expect new union efforts to not only flood the airwaves, but also to increase the amount of members’ dues used to fund those efforts, as well as even more pressure to enact legislative agenda items.  In particular, we can anticipate all new efforts to enact card-check, which would literally eliminate the secret ballot in union elections, and empower federal bureaucrats to dictate wages and working conditions via mandatory arbitration. In 2008 alone, two unions (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the infamous Service Employees International Union) spent $58 million of their hard-working members’ wages on political campaigns.

They’ll only scheme to increase that amount now.

Card-check legislation appeared all but dead, but this device to increase Big Labor’s membership rolls, and consequently the amount of money it can spend electing liberals across the country, will receive even more push now.

We applaud the Supreme Court’s decision, but we conservatives must remain wary of Big Labor’s upcoming campaign.