AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Need for the Legislature to Deal with the Issue
Legislative delays on drug bill put lives at risk
by Dr. Thomas M. Sherman, seacoastonline.com, November 15, 2015
This past weekend I attended the New Hampshire Medical Society Annual Scientific Conference on addiction. This timely gathering of physicians and other providers reviewed opiates and the full spectrum of addiction. The take-home message was clear and not news to anyone who has been paying attention to the media recently. We have in the short-term a crisis of opiate misuse that is killing our children, our friends and our neighbors and we have a longer-term problem in New Hampshire of addiction, to opiates, to cocaine, to meth and most of all to alcohol.
I took away some critical points from the conference.
First is that the earliest exposure to opiates in our teenage and young adult population almost universally comes from the free and readily available supply of prescription opiates kept in their parents’ and friends’ parents sock drawers or medicine cabinets. While providers need to change how they prescribe opiates for acute and chronic pain, parents need to ensure that unused opiates are either destroyed or secured in a locked cabinet.
Second is that drug courts do not let violent felons go free. The prosecutor always has veto power over any drug court decision. For the carefully selected individual who has plead guilty to their drug related crime, the drug courts represent the most cost-effective solution both to avoid incarceration and for long-term rehabilitation. With a year in prison costing New Hampshire residents as much as $41,000, the much lower price tag of a comprehensive drug court program is a win-win for the residents of New Hampshire.
When you consider that even one dose of heroin or street fentanyl will likely result in addiction and that its continued use permanently alters the chemistry and molecular structure of the brain, the only model for understanding this addiction is recognizing it as a medical illness. While the actions of an addict may be criminal in nature, addiction itself needs treatment. Our commitment to funding these treatment programs has been woefully inadequate.
While there is much interest in starting new programs, much of this is on hold because the legislature has not taken action to re-authorize Medicaid expansion in the form of the New Hampshire Health Protection Program. Since Medicaid expansion includes substance use disorders and behavioral health in its ten essential benefits and over the last year represents an infusion of more than $200 million federal dollars, it represents the only significant source of new funding for our opiate crisis. Without it, the burden of generating needed revenue will fall squarely on the state budget.
Finally, the long-term success of dealing with both the opiate crisis and addiction in the state of New Hampshire requires effective prevention programs. Speakers this past weekend pointed out that starting programs in junior high school is just too late. The conversation about addiction needs to start in our elementary schools and continue through the years of exposure in junior and senior high schools and beyond. Our young students need to understand addiction to change this culture of experimentation and dependence.
Wearing both hats, as a physician and as a legislator, I am ready to help both in my practice and in Concord. We know what we need to do in the short-term. The governor and the Democratic leadership of both houses have a comprehensive bill ready for introduction, debate and passage at the special session that would address many of the critical issues regarding this crisis. This bill dovetails in a bipartisan way with the priorities outlined by the Republican leadership.
It is intensely frustrating that the Republican leadership of the House and Senate intend to delay the possibility for early intervention by creating a task force. The direct result of creating a task force over passing a bill that addresses our opiate crisis is a 2- to 3-month delay in implementation. In those few months of delay, at the current rate, 56 to 84 more New Hampshire residents will die of opiate related deaths. At such a high price, we cannot allow politics to slow the path to legislative intervention. The citizens of New Hampshire deserve better.
Thomas M. Sherman, MD, is a New Hampshire state representative in Rockingham District 24, representing Rye and New Castle.
Legislature must act now in opiate addiction fight
Editorial, seacoastonline.com, November 13, 2015
The Republican leadership in the New Hampshire House and Senate seem to be badly misreading the mood of the public regarding the state’s opioid abuse crisis, which killed 325 Granite Staters in 2014 and is on track to kill even greater numbers in 2015.
Renee Plummer, a prominent local Republican, received strong support Tuesday for a post on her Facebook page expressing outrage at GOP leaders’ plan to simply form a task force and block any action beyond that to address the opioid-abuse epidemic.
“I am furious!” Plummer wrote. “I want every one of you that has anything to do with this to be thrown out! OUT! Do you hear me? What is wrong with you?”
We all know — or know of — young men and women who have died before they even truly began to live, victims of a deadly addiction to opiates such as heroin, fentanyl and any number of opiate based prescription pills. We have heard the heartbreak of parents mourning their children and the pain of parents who are slowly losing their children to addiction. We listen as they share stories of failed attempts at treatment and rehabilitation, of petty crime, of jail and of feeling that their beloved child is heading toward death and there is nothing they can do about it.
So when the Legislature meets in special session Nov. 18 it has to do more than simply form a task force to make recommendations in January. This is a matter of life and death and more talk and more study is not enough. We accept that some of the measures that will be required to address the crisis are complicated and will need more in-depth study, but there are low-risk, high-reward actions the Legislature and governor can take immediately that would make a real difference.
The governor and Legislature proved they could move quickly when they made it much easier for first responders and private citizens to obtain and administer Narcan, a drug that neutralizes the effect of opioids, credited with saving 1,900 lives in 2014. That’s a good example of low-risk, high-reward action.
Local police departments have adjusted their mindset about drug addicts, seeing them as people suffering from physical and mental health issues rather than simply as petty criminals.
The courts are ready to expand diversion programs and special drug courts to steer non-violent drug offenders into treatment and recovery programs rather than simply throwing them in jail.
We urge the Legislature to take action on less complicated items immediately. The public will understand if they need to set aside for further study more complicated suggestions that could have unintended negative consequences, but the public will not forgive excuses about inaction.
One proven treatment is the drug Suboxone, but most doctors have waiting lists of patients needing treatment. Certifying additional doctors to prescribe and treat with Suboxone and changing regulations to allow doctors who are willing to treat a higher number of patients, would immediately make a difference.
Dr. David Schopick, who treats roughly 70 patients with Suboxone, wrote an excellent op-ed in Seacoast Sunday on Nov. 8. He said Suboxone “can help a patient get through those first critical days and weeks of withdrawal, and then allow them to maintain abstinence from opiates long term.”
We have heard many other doctors extol Suboxone as an effective tool in the fight against addiction. These comments are made by clear-eyed pragmatists who understand that once a person becomes addicted to opiates it is extremely difficult for them to fully recover. Suboxone, the doctors say, quells the craving for opiates and allows addicts to return to their jobs, to caring for their families and to being productive members of society rather than dangers.
We urge the Legislature to take fast action where it can to stem the tide of death and then to tackle the more complex issues. The Legislature needs to do first things first.
2. Transparency Problems
New Hampshire lacks the infrastructure for integrity
Editorial, sentinelsource.com, November 15, 2015
“Trust me … I’m a politician.”
OK, maybe that’s not a line most of us would be likely to buy, given the general image of politicians today. But oddly enough, it’s basically New Hampshire’s official policy on matters of ethics and campaign finance.
That’s not a good thing, according to the Center for Public Integrity and the group Global Integrity. The two open-government watchdogs issued a joint report last week ranking each state on the strength of its campaign finance and right-to-know laws.
In the case of the Granite State, what they determined was our laws are set up in favor of those in government, not the public.
State campaign finance laws rely on self reporting by candidates and contain little oversight if they’re not followed. The language of the law is so vague, one Attorney General’s Office staffer told the center, that campaigns can pretty much use funds for anything.
Pair that with the fact there’s no accountability built into the elections system and you have a government essentially operating on the honor system. New Hampshire may have a long history of elected officials keeping each other in check based on reputation, but considering the stakes, both in partisan furor and in the amount of cash being thrown into state-level races, those days are gone.
The report tackled a dozen areas of public accountability, and found almost all lacking in the Granite State. The worst area, the center found, was in public access to information, where New Hampshire ranked 49th of 50 states. That’s in part due to foot-dragging in getting public records up online. But it’s a financially driven dynamic and we believe the state is moving in the right direction in this area.
More concerning are the multiple scores of zero in such matters as responding to freedom of information requests and the cost and ease of appealing right-to-know issues. Under New Hampshire law, the only recourse for any violation of this law is to go to court, a process that’s both cumbersome and costly.
Overall, New Hampshire received a score of 61 and a grade of D-. If that sounds bad, it’s actually worse than the state fared in the same report three years ago, when it garnered a 66 — a solid D! This year’s grade puts New Hampshire in the bottom third of states, although no state fared better than a grade of C+.
The report is meant to get at the idea of institutional integrity. Its approach seems as good as any, although if asked to define integrity we might defer to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous comment on obscenity: We know it when we see it.
And while we might not point fingers at anyone specific in state or local government as lacking integrity, it’s clear the state has little infrastructure to support that quality. What the state sorely lacks is accountability. It needs it both for alleged ethical or financial wrongdoing by those in or seeking elected office, and for those instances where state (or local) officials fail to live up to the N.H. Constitution’s promise that government in New Hampshire will be conducted transparently.
Such efforts in the past have too often fallen victim to lawmakers’ refusal to put any teeth into laws that could someday come back to bite them. Instead they pretend the “honor system” has served the public’s needs and ask: “What, don’t you trust us?”
To which the only answer is: “Why should we?”
3. NH's Housing Market
Housing Market Begins To Slow For This Year, Remains Stronger Than Last Year
by Brady Carlson, nhpr.org, November 16, 2015
The latest monthly report from the Northern New England Real Estate Network suggests the housing market is beginning to slow down for the year.
But the data also appears to show the market remains stronger than it was at this time a year ago.
There were 1,470 single family homes sold in New Hampshire last month, up 11 percent from October 2014.
Median home prices increased 5.8 percent during the same period.
Condominium sales and prices both went up as well.
4. Funny-Money-Frank Losing His Sugar Daddies?
by William Tucker, miscellanyblue.com, November 15, 2015
A DC-area consulting firm backed by the Koch brothers network is helping Republican state Rep. Pam Tucker raise money for her exploratory campaign to challenge Congressman Frank Guinta in the state’s 1st congressional district.
Tucker is one of five potential candidates for the U.S. House featured on the AegisPAC website, a political action committee affiliated with Aegis Strategic, which has deep ties to the Koch brothers. The group lauds Tucker as a “fresh, conservative voice” and a “leading voice for liberty.”
Mother Jones reported Aegis Strategic was formed in 2013 after donors and activists in the Koch network expressed widespread frustration over the quality of Republican Party candidates in 2012. Aegis is led by Jeff Crank, who ran the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity and served as the AFP’s chief operating officer. Karl Crow, the group’s lead strategist, was a project coordinator for the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.
Tucker met with Aegis in September, Politico reports, and was introduced to Koch-affiliated groups including Mercatus Center, the libertarian think tank at George Mason University. Tucker acknowledged meeting with Aegis but told Politico she has not hired them to manage her campaign and will not base her decision on the group’s connections to the Koch network.
Tucker is a conservative four-term representative from Greenland. She served as deputy House speaker under Bill O’Brien 2010-2012 and has co-chaired the conservative House Republican Alliance, serving with O’Brien 2009-2010. She earned an A rating from Americans for Prosperity for her votes in the last House session.
AegisPAC describes Tucker’s potential primary opponent, Guinta, as “scandal-tainted.” Whether the Koch network is abandoning Guinta or merely covering its bet is an open question.
Guinta was the darling of the Kochs when he was first elected in 2010. Americans for Prosperity, the Koch’s advocacy arm, made over $74,000 in independent expenditures supporting Guinta in his first campaign, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
The day he was sworn in for his first term, ThinkProgress’ Lee Fang captured a conversation between Guinta and David Koch, the billionaire businessman who has bankrolled much of the modern conservative movement, in which Guinta confirmed his attendance at Koch’s reception for Republican lawmakers.
5. Protecting and Expanding NH Manufacturing
Why we must support U.S. manufacturing
There are many things policymakers can do to help innovative companies grow
by U.S. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, nhbr.com, November 13, 2015
Since taking office, my number one priority has been to help our local businesses create more jobs and grow economic opportunity for Granite State workers. One of the most promising and effective ways we can help generate high-paying, sustainable jobs for the future is to accelerate the revival of manufacturing.
Recently, I visited Airmar in Milford, which is a family-owned producer of advanced sonar technology that is expanding and creating jobs in their community. I was inspired by Airmar’s innovation and success in international exports, which can serve as a model for companies in New Hampshire and across the country.
My goal is to implement policies that help other manufactures replicate this success. There are so many things policymakers can do to help innovative companies like Airmar to grow, like promoting a common sense regulatory and tax environment, helping train workers in the skills they need, and giving businesses assistance to access global markets.
I’ve been proud to support and contribute to the “Make It In America Agenda,” a comprehensive collection of ideas and legislation to help advance U.S. manufacturing. And I was so proud to have Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who has led House Democrats’ efforts to advance this agenda, visit the Granite State recently to hear directly from our manufacturers and other stakeholders about what Congress needs to be doing to help them grow.
A critical part of the Make It In America Agenda is reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. The Ex-Im Bank has been key in promoting manufacturing exports through direct loans and loan guarantees to foreign buyers of U.S.-made goods. The bank has directly supported $314 million in export sales for New Hampshire companies over the last five years, which is a huge impact in a small state like ours.
Companies like The Mountain in Marlborough, which exports products to Europe and China, rely on the bank to help expand their businesses. On top of that, the Ex-Im Bank generates net revenue for the U.S. Treasury, over $7 billion during the last two decades.
Unfortunately, like many issues in Washington these days, the Bank has been needlessly politicized by ideologues putting their radical conservative agenda ahead of the needs of businesses and families. As a result, its authorization expired earlier this summer, meaning that it can no longer make new loans, putting our economy at a competitive disadvantage. We’ve already seen the negative impacts of the Bank’s expiration as companies like General Electric, which employs hundreds of New Hampshire workers at their Hooksett facility, are placing hundreds of new jobs in countries that are continuing export financing, rather than in the U.S.
Despite the temporary lapse in authority, I was proud to join with my House colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank to ensure that American business can successfully compete in today’s global economy. I am hopeful that my colleagues in the Senate will join me in supporting the bank’s reauthorization so that we can better support the efforts of companies in New Hampshire and across the country, and in turn foster vital job creation for American workers.
Of course, there are many other things we can do to spur development of high-tech manufacturing in New Hampshire. As I talk to manufacturers across the state, a constant refrain I hear is that they simply can’t find workers with the skills they need. At the same time, we have experienced workers that can’t find jobs. This phenomenon is largely the result of how rapidly manufacturing techniques can change and the need to have effective training and retraining to make sure workers have the most relevant skills.
To help accomplish this, I recently reintroduced the Workforce Development Investment Act to provide a tax credit to employers who partner with community colleges and technical schools. This credit would create joint apprenticeships and other training opportunities to tailor workforce training to more closely align with the skills that are in demand.
Another important aspect of workforce development is changing the perception of manufacturing away from the dated industrial model of 20th century manufacturing to the modern version of advanced, high-skill manufacturing.
The New England Council has made fantastic strides in this area by talking to manufacturers across the region and focusing on a rebranding of manufacturing as the “Maker Movement.” The NH Manufacturing Extension Partnership has led the effort here in the Granite State. I look forward to continuing to work with stakeholders on how we can better encourage bright young people to contribute their skills toward changing the world through advanced manufacturing.
Democratic Congresswoman Ann McLane Kuster represents New Hampshire’s 2nd District.
6. Ayotte's Double-Faced Record
VIDEO: Planned Parenthood Wants New Hampshire to #AskAyotte About Her Record on Women’s Health
by NH Labor News, nhlabornews.com, October 30, 2015
Ayotte Pinkwashes Record on Women’s Health in New Op-Ed
Concord, NH — Planned Parenthood Action Fund today responded to an op-ed posted by Kelly Ayotte today, calling out Ayotte’s tenuous claims about her record on women’s health and her recent votes to defund Planned Parenthood.
Statement from Jennifer Frizzell, Vice President of Public Policy at Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund:
“It’s clear that when Ayotte talks about making ‘women’s health a priority’ she only means “some” women.Kelly Ayotte seems to forget that access to lifesaving breast cancer screenings and mammography go hand in hand with access to health insurance. This is clear in her unapologetic crusade against the Affordable Care Act — which has allowed thousands of New Hampshire women the ability to afford health care for the first time — and her efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides thousands of breast exams in our state.Protecting women’s health takes more than a commemorative coin. If Kelly Ayotte were serious about saving lives and making women’s health a priority, she would stop insulting New Hampshire women by pink-washing her record and support meaningful policies to improve health care in the Granite State.”
Let’s look at the facts:
FACT: Kelly Ayotte has actively tried to undermine improvements to breast cancer detection after she voted multiple times to defund Planned Parenthood. Defunding the nonprofit would have cut access to breast cancer screenings and affordable birth control for thousands of New Hampshire women. In 2014, Planned Parenthood provided over 1,900 New Hampshire women with breast exams and over 11 thousand with birth control.
- Kelly Ayotte voted three times to defund Planned Parenthood [Roll Call Vote 36, H.R. 1, 3/9/11; Roll Call Vote 60, H. Con. Res. 36, 4/14/11; Roll Call Vote 262, S. 1881, 8/3/15]
FACT: Kelly Ayotte is not doing more for women’s health. Kelly Ayotte has an extensive record of voting against policies that would expand women’s access to the full range of health care services, which include votes to defund Planned Parenthood, which in New Hampshire — in addition to providing thousands of breast exams and thousands with birth control — administered over 13,000 STI tests, nearly 2,000 Pap tests, and engaged in sex education and outreach to nearly 2,000 individuals in 2013.
- Senator Ayotte voted for a bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks nationwide. [H.R. 36, Roll Call Vote 268, 9/22/15]
- Senator Ayotte voted against an amendment to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (S. 178), which would create a Domestic Trafficking Victims’ Fund to provide additional resources to existing grant programs that assist survivors of human trafficking. The amendment would strike the Hyde Amendment from the fund, which would prohibit federal dollars from being used to pay for access to abortion care. [S. Amdt. 301 to S. 178, Roll Call Vote 156, 4/22/15]
- Senator Ayotte voted against an amendment to the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (H.R. 2), that would have extended enhanced Medicaid reimbursement for primary care physicians,expanding it to include OB/GYN’s. It would have provided $500 million for the Title X family planning program and support training programs for women’s health nurse practitioners. Additionally, the “Women’s Access to Quality Health Care” amendment would have removed a reference to a harmful provision commonly referred to as the Hyde Amendment. [S. Amdt. 1117 to H.R. 2, Roll Call Vote 140, 4/14/15]
- Senator Ayotte voted against the “Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act,” which was a legislative fix to the June 2014 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. [S. 2578, Roll Call Vote 228, 7/16/14]
- Senator Ayotte voted against an amendment to the FY2014 Senate budget resolution, sponsored by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), that would “establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to protect women’s access to health care, including primary and preventative health care, family planning and birth control, and employer-provided contraceptive coverage, such as was provided under the Affordable Care Act.” The amendment passed 56-43.[Roll Call Vote 64, S.Amdt. 438 to S.Con.Res. 8, 3/22/13]
- Senator Ayotte voted in favor of an amendment to, “create a point of order against any legislation that would provide taxpayer funds to the United Nations while any member nation forces citizens or residents of that nation to undergo involuntary abortions.” [Roll Call 86, S.Amdt. 702 to S.Con.Res. 8, 3/23/13]
- Senator Ayotte voted for an amendment that would criminalize doctors and close family members who help young people access a safe and legal abortion. [S. Amdt. 292 to S. Con. Res. 8, Roll Call Vote 64, 3/22/13]
What people are saying about Ayotte’s record:
Boston Globe: This Senate Race Ground Zero For Women Issues
“…Democrats, meanwhile, called into question the seriousness of Ayotte’s legislative efforts. New Hampshire Democratic National Committeewoman Kathy Sullivan described them as “a sham.”
“And if there’s one issue that each campaign plans to use against the other, it’s government funding for Planned Parenthood. Ayotte has voted three times to not have any government funds go to Planned Parenthood.”
Bustle: Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s Women’s Rights Record Has Been Placed Under Heavy Scrutiny. Should It Be?
“Earlier this month, Ayotte told Foster’s Daily Democrat that working parents shouldn’t be “so hard” on themselves — a suggestion that some feminists find ironic, because in 2013, Ayotte sponsored a bill that would have taken benefits away from working parents. The failed Working Families Flexibility Act, which The New York Times referred to as the “Family Unfriendly Act,” would have given workers, including low-wage workers, leave time that could be used with their families — at the expense of their overtime pay grade. Private-sector employees who worked overtime or more than 40 hours each week would be able to choose to have leave time, but they would be paid their regular rates when working overtime, rather than overtime pay rates.
“Ayotte’s other actions on women’s rights are similarly dismal, if not surprising. Ayotte has expressed her support for defunding Planned Parenthood in the past, but she also criticized her fellow Republicans last month for attempting to pass a bill that was destined to fail and could have caused a government shutdown. Ayotte also co-sponsored the failed Blunt Amendment, which would have allowed corporations to refuse to provide birth control health coverage for their employees. Still, Ayotte hasn’t done anything for women’s issues that most other Republicans wouldn’t have done — Carly Fiorina, a GOP presidential hopeful, is also anti-choice.”
What New Hampshire is saying:
Concord Monitor: Letter: Seeing through Ayotte
“Fellow Granite Staters, please do not be fooled by Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s recent tactics with this latest GOP effort to defund Planned Parenthood and possibly shut down the government.
“Make no mistake. A look at Ayotte’s record opens a window that shows a much different image than the one she’s trying to create for herself now that her re-election is fast approaching. Facts don’t change, and once you get beyond her recent sleight of hand, the simple facts are that Ayotte has repeatedly voted to shut down the government and defund Planned Parenthood. The reason for her most recent stunt of a vote is to fool the masses and achieve her goal, which is to get re-elected – something that she’s clearly worried about.”
Read the full letter here
Concord Monitor: Letter: Weighing Hassan vs. Ayotte
“She has also voted several times to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides critical health services to women, and wants to end traditional Medicare by turning it into a voucher program. She also would take health care away from 100,000 Granite Staters by overturning the ACA. All of this on top of protecting billions of dollars in special tax breaks for big oil companies and companies outsourcing jobs that support her.”
Read the full letter here.
Concord Monitor: Letter: Ayotte has poor record on women’s health care:
“While Ayotte claims to be a big defender of women’s health, her record demonstrates otherwise. Ayotte has voted right along with her Republican colleagues as they continue, what some have termed, their “war on women.”
“Let’s look at the facts. Ayotte supported the misguided Hobby Lobby decision. She voted multiple times to allow employers to deny women access to contraception. She introduced a sham birth control bill that increased costs for women which, by the way, was opposed by the American Congress of OB-GYNs.
“Ayotte voted repeatedly to defund Planned Parenthood and other family planning centers. These centers provide critical health services including breast and cervical cancer screenings.
“While Kelly Ayotte and her backers are desperately trying to rewrite history, they can’t alter the facts. Ayotte has repeatedly voted to block women’s access to health care. She has supported efforts to allow employers to deny women coverage for birth control and other preventative screenings. One would hope that in 2015 a woman no less could do better than that.”
Read the full letter here.
7. TinFoil Hatter Mkes It Up
by William Tucker, miscellanyblue.com, October 29, 2015
Republicans repeating made-up quotes from the Founding Fathers has become so commonplace that it is a “dog bites man” story. Today, however, state Rep. Al Baldasaro (R-Londonderry) raised the bar by posting a raredouble-spurious-quotation
The meme features a quote from the Des Moines Register in which Hillary Clinton purportedly declared she will shut down the NRA and ban handguns if she is elected president.
Snopes uncovered the original version of that Clinton meme on a Tumblrpage dedicated to fake Hillary Clinton quotes. “The ‘Shocking Hillary Clinton Quotes …’ Tumblr page claims that all of their quotes are 100% sourced and even provides links to make it appear as if the quotes have been verified,” Snopes explained. “But the link included with the above-displayed meme didn’t lead to a page containing Clinton’s purported quote.”
“Additionally, a search of the Des Moines Register’s archives yielded no results for the phrase in question,” Snopes continued. “In fact, this utterance was absent from all major news publications.”
The meme Baldasaro posted paired the fake Clinton quote with a purported quote from George Washington supporting individual gun rights. “When government takes away citizens’ right to bear arms it becomes citizens’ duty to take away government’s right to govern,“ it read.
Politifact shot that one down. “We contacted Edward Lengel, editor in chief of the Papers of George Washington project at the University of Virginia. He said ‘there is no evidence that Washington ever wrote or said these words, or any like them,’ “ they wrote. “Lengel cautioned that it’s impossible to prove a negative, but he added that he’s ‘as certain as he can be’ that the quote did not originate from George Washington.”
Steve Benen has addressed Republicans’ rampant use of fake quotes. ”[R]epeating made-up quotes isn’t terribly important,” he wrote, “but it is important that the far-right is under a mistaken impression – that they’re the rightful heirs of the framers’ great legacy.”
“It’s today’s conservatives, the argument goes, that are the direct descendants of the likes of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison,” Benen continued. “It’s nonsense, of course, but it helps explain why Republican fall for bogus quotes in the first place.”
AND NATIONALLY
8. More than a Candidacy?
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Bernie Sanders, Loud and Clear
by John Cassidy, newyorker.com, November 15, 2015
From the beginning of Saturday night’s Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders was very clear on what he wanted to talk about. He began with two sentences about the terrorist attacks in Paris, expressing his horror and disgust, then he moved onto his main message: “I’m running for President, because as I go around this nation, I talk to a lot of people. And what I hear is people’s concern that the economy we have is a rigged economy.”
It was an awkward transition, and not one most politicians would have made. Rather they would have devoted, as Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley did, their entire opening statements to the attacks, seeking to come across as empathetic, resolute, and ready to take over as Commander-in-Chief. But Sanders isn’t like most politicians, and he sometimes doesn’t abide by the often stultifying conventions of modern Presidential elections.
Congenitally averse to political theatrics, he reportedly didn’t practice much before the first debate, and it showed. This time, according to a Times article published on Friday, he agreed to do some real prep work, taking part in serious and lengthy rehearsals, with a staff member playing the role of Hillary Clinton. Perhaps as a result, he looked sharper. His answers were more direct and, unlike in the first debate, he didn’t make any off-the-cuff remarks that risked diverting attention from his message that America’s economic and political systems are broken. In a debate that was inevitably somewhat overshadowed by the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, what he was saying came through loud and clear.
The first question put to him on domestic issues was about taxation and how far he would go in raising the top rate of income tax on well-to-do Americans. “In the last thirty years, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth,” Sanders said. “And I know that term gets my Republican friends nervous. The problem is, this redistribution has gone in the wrong direction. Trillions of dollars have gone from the middle class and working families to the top one-tenth of one per cent who have doubled the percentage of wealth they now own.”
It was a timely history lesson, but it didn’t answer the question. Nancy Cordes, CBS News’s congressional correspondent, pressed Sanders, saying, “Let’s get specific. How high would you go?” Sanders paused for a moment and replied, “We haven’t come up with an exact number yet, but it will not be as high as the number under Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was ninety per cent.” Laughter and applause rang out around the arena. “I’m not that much of a socialist compared to Eisenhower,” Sanders went on.
Perhaps the seventy-four-year-old Larry David look-alike from Vermont had prepared this answer; perhaps he hadn’t. In any case, it was a brilliant response, and it also had the virtue of being true, or almost true. (Actually, the top rate under Eisenhower was ninety-two per cent, even higher than Sanders said.) In addition to serving up a timely reminder of what the tax system looked like during a period now widely regarded as a golden one for America’s economy, Sanders threw into sharp relief Clinton’s tax proposals, which would eliminate tax breaks and loopholes for people earning more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, but wouldn’t raise the top rate.
The next topic of discussion was health care. Clinton said she wanted to “build on and improve the Affordable Care Act,” a position she described as “a significant difference that I have with Senator Sanders.” Sanders, who supports a single-payer system modelled along Canadian or European lines, agreed that the A.C.A. was a step forward, saying, “We have made some good progress.” Then he added, “I believe we’ve got to go further. I want to end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege.” Under the private-insurance system, he went on, “We end up spending—and I think the secretary knows this—far more per capita on health care than any other major country, and our outcomes, health-care outcomes are not necessarily that good.”
This was another strong answer, which combined an appeal to fairness and egalitarianism with a practical point. Defending his proposal to raise the federal minimum wage from seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour to fifteen dollars, Sanders repeated the trick. Making the moral case for a living wage, he said, “It is not a radical idea to say that if somebody works forty hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty.” Then, seeking to counter the claim that setting a much higher minimum wage could cost a lot of jobs, he pivoted to a macroeconomic argument that harks back to Henry Ford. “When we put money into the hands of working people, they’re going to go out and buy goods, they’re going to buy services, and they’re going to create jobs in doing that,” he said. “That is the kind of economy I believe in. Put money in the hands of working people. Raise the minimum wage to fifteen bucks an hour.”
All across the country, Sanders supporters, and many others, I suspect, were surely saying, “Go Bernie!” Even O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, who also had a pretty good night, seemed impressed. Backing up Sanders’s point about tax rates, he pointed out that the top rate at the start of the Reagan Administration was seventy per cent. And seizing on Sanders’s argument about introducing a living wage, he referred to Maryland under his governorship. “We did it, and it worked, and nobody headed for the hills or left the state because of it,” he said.
As the debate moved on to Wall Street regulation, Sanders sought to exploit what has always been one of Clinton’s biggest vulnerabilities: her ties to the financial industry. Asked by the moderator, John Dickerson, why he had described some of the donations to Clinton’s campaign as compromising, Sanders said: “Let’s not be naive about it. … Why, over her political career, has Wall Street been a major—the major—campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? You know, maybe they’re dumb and they don’t know what they’re going to get, but I don’t think so.”
After Sanders repeated the insinuation in response to a follow-up question, Clinton made a slip: she cited her work rebuilding Ground Zero as a senator from New York, appearing to invoke the 9/11 attack on Lower Manhattan as a justification for accepting campaign donations from Wall Street. Or, at least, that was how a viewer who sent in a tweet (and Reince Preibus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee) interpreted her statement.
Sanders isn’t really cut out for the role of attack dog, though. Later on, when Cordes read out the accusatory tweet and Clinton sought to defend herself, Sanders rallied to her side, saying, “She worked—and many of us supported you—in trying to rebuild that devastation.” Unlike in the first debate, however, when Sanders came to Clinton’s aid on the issue of her State Department e-mails, he did, on this occasion, combine his friendly gesture with a statement distancing himself from her on policy. “But at the end of the day, Wall Street today has enormous economic and political power,” he said. “Their business model is greed and fraud. And for the sake of our economy … the major banks must be broken up.”
Just how effective was Sanders? We’ll have to wait a few days to see whether his performance makes much difference in the opinion polls, which show himtrailing Clinton by more than twenty points. What can’t be disputed, regardless of how the horse race evolves, is that he is now making the case for progressive policies in a manner that the United States hasn’t seen in decades. Rather than apologizing for liberal economic policies or seeking to make them more palatable to moderates and independents, he trumpets them at every opportunity.
One of Sanders’s strengths is that he represents a movement and not just a political campaign. As I’ve noted before, his campaign is giving voice to a populist insurgency that emerged from decades of wage stagnation and rising inequality, and that was given form by the 2008–09 financial crisis and the Great Recession. In many ways, this movement represents a more coherent, left-wing counterpart to the Tea Party, but there is also something reassuringly old-fashioned about Sanders himself. In responding to Republican efforts to denigrate him as a European-style socialist, or even as a Communist, he stresses the American roots of his platform—correctly pointing out how many of his proposals have roots in the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the period of postwar prosperity. He did this when he brought up Eisenhower, and he did it again when he was talking about the big banks. “If Teddy Roosevelt, a good Republican, were alive today, you know what he’d say?” Sanders said. “ ‘Break them up. Re-establish Glass-Steagall.’ And Teddy Roosevelt is right.”
Can Sanders defy the skeptics and go further? The betting and prediction markets are saying probably not. On Sunday morning, the online British bookmakers were showing Clinton as the one-to-ten favorite to get the nomination (to win a dollar, you have to bet ten), with Sanders a five-to-one or six-to-one outsider. PredictWise, an online site that combines data from the bookies and the opinion polls, estimates the probability of a Clinton victory at ninety-one per cent.
The Iowa caucus is more than two months away, and these numbers might change. Clinton has stumbled before; she could stumble again. But even if she doesn’t, Sanders’s contribution shouldn’t be underestimated. “In order to bring about the changes that we need, we need a political revolution,” he said in his closing statement. “Millions of people are going to have to stand up, turn off the TV, get involved in the political process, and tell the big-money interests that we are taking back our country. Please go to berniesanders.com. Please become part of the political revolution.”
When Sanders uses words like “revolution,” he isn’t talking about deposing a dictator or storming Congress. He is talking growing a mass, democratic movement that can reverse the direction that the American polity has taken over the past few decades. From the days of Chartism and Progressivism to the civil-rights era, such movements have rarely triumphed in national elections. But when the history books came to be written, that turned out not to matter so much. The movements changed the terms of the political debate. Sanders, in his own irascible way, is trying to do the same thing.
9. Where Ignorance is Bliss
GOP and the Rise of Anti-Knowledge
by Mike Lofgren, consortiumnews.com, October 29, 2015
Ben Carson’s rise to the top of the Republican presidential field shows that many Republicans, especially Christian fundamentalists, have decoupled from the real world — and are proud of it. The more that GOP candidates embrace “anti-knowledge” the more popular they become, as Mike Lofgren explains.
By Mike Lofgren
In the realm of physics, the opposite of matter is not nothingness, but antimatter. In the realm of practical epistemology, the opposite of knowledge is not ignorance but anti-knowledge. This seldom recognized fact is one of the prime forces behind the decay of political and civic culture in America.
Some common-sense philosophers have observed this point over the years. “Genuine ignorance is . . . profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas,” observed psychologist John Dewey.
Or, as humorist Josh Billings put it, “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that ain’t so.”
Fifty years ago, if a person did not know who the prime minister of Great Britain was, what the conflict in Vietnam was about, or the barest rudiments of how a nuclear reaction worked, he would shrug his shoulders and move on. And if he didn’t bother to know those things, he was in all likelihood politically apathetic and confined his passionate arguing to topics like sports or the attributes of the opposite sex.
There were exceptions, like the Birchers’ theory that fluoridation was a monstrous communist conspiracy, but they were mostly confined to the fringes. Certainly, political candidates with national aspirations steered clear of such balderdash.
At present, however, a person can be blissfully ignorant of how to locate Kenya on a map, but know to a metaphysical certitude that Barack Obama was born there, because he learned it from Fox News. Likewise, he can be unable to differentiate a species from a phylum but be confident from viewing the 700 Club that evolution is “politically correct” hooey and that the earth is 6,000 years old.
And he may never have read the Constitution and have no clue about the Commerce Clause, but believe with an angry righteousness that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.
This brings us inevitably to celebrity presidential candidate Ben Carson. The man is anti-knowledge incarnated, a walking compendium of every imbecility ever uttered during the last three decades. Obamacare is worse than chattel slavery. Women who have abortions are like slave owners. If Jews had firearms they could have stopped the Holocaust (author’s note: they obtained at least some weapons during the Warsaw Ghetto rising, and no, it didn’t). Victims of a mass shooting in Oregon enabled their own deaths by their behavior. And so on, ad nauseam.
It is highly revealing that, according to a Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll of likely Republican caucus attendees, the stolid Iowa burghers liked Carson all the more for such moronic utterances. And sure enough, the New York Times tells us that Carson has pulled ahead of Donald Trump in a national poll of Republican voters. Apparently, Trump was just not crazy enough for their tastes.
Why the Ignorance?
Journalist Michael Tomasky has attempted to answer the question as to what Ben Carson’s popularity tells us about the American people after making a detour into asking a question about the man himself: why is an accomplished neurosurgeon such a nincompoop in another field? “Because usually, if a man (or woman) is a good and knowledgeable and sure-footed doctor, or lawyer or department chair or any other position that could have been attained only through repeated displays of excellence and probity, then that person will also be a pretty solid human being across the board.”
Well, not necessarily. English unfortunately doesn’t have a precise word for the German “Fachidiot,” a narrowly specialized person accomplished in his own field but a blithering idiot outside it. In any case, a surgeon is basically a skilled auto mechanic who is not bothered by the sight of blood and palpitating organs (and an owner of a high-dollar ride like a Porsche knows that a specialized mechanic commands labor rates roughly comparable to a doctor).
We need the surgeon’s skills on pain of agonizing death, and reward him commensurately, but that does not make him a Voltaire. Still, it makes one wonder: if Carson the surgeon believes evolution is a hoax, where does he think the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that plague hospitals come from?
Tomasky expresses astonishment that Carson’s jaw-dropping comments make him more popular among Republican voters, but he concludes without fully answering the question he posed. It is an important question: what has happened to the American people, or at least a significant portion of them?
Anti-knowledge is a subset of anti-intellectualism, and as Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, anti-intellectualism has been a recurrent feature in American life, generally rising and receding in synchronism with fundamentalist revivalism.
The current wave, which now threatens to swamp our political culture, began in a similar fashion with the rise to prominence in the 1970s of fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But to a far greater degree than previous outbreaks, fundamentalism has merged its personnel, its policies, its tactics and its fate with a major American political party, the Republicans.
An Infrastructure of Know-Nothing-ism
Buttressing this merger is a vast support structure of media, foundations, pressure groups and even a thriving cottage industry of fake historians and phony scientists. From Fox News to theDiscovery Institute (which exists solely to “disprove” evolution), and from the Heritage Foundation (which propagandizes that tax cuts increase revenue despite massive empirical evidence to the contrary) to bogus “historians” like David Barton (who confected a fraudulent biography of a piously devout Thomas Jefferson that had to be withdrawn by the publisher), the anti-knowledge crowd has created an immense ecosystem of political disinformation.
Thanks to publishing houses like Regnery and the conservative boutique imprints of more respectable houses like Simon & Schuster (a division of CBS), America has been flooded with cut-and-paste rants by Michelle Malkin and Mark Levin, Parson Weems-style ghosted biographies allegedly by Bill O’Reilly, and the inimitable stream of consciousness hallucinating of Glenn Beck.
Whether retail customers actually buy all these screeds, or whether foundations and rich conservative donors buy them in bulk and give them out as door prizes at right-wing clambakes, anti-knowledge infects the political bloodstream in the United States.
Thanks to these overlapping and mutually reinforcing segments of the right-wing media-entertainment-“
The latter group begins with the core belief that truth is revealed in a subjective process involving the will to believe (“faith”) rather than discovered by objectively corroberable means. Likewise, there is a baseline opposition to the prevailing secular culture, and adherents are frequently warned by church authority figures against succumbing to the snares and temptations of “the world.” Consequently, they retreat into the echo chamber of their own counterculture: if they didn’t hear it on Fox News or from a televangelist, it never happened.
For these culture warriors, belief in demonstrably false propositions is no longer a stigma of ignorance, but a defiantly worn badge of political resistance.
We saw this mindset on display during the Republican debate in Boulder, Colorado, on Wednesday night. Even though it was moderated by Wall Street-friendly CNBC, which exists solely to talk up the stock market, the candidates were uniformly upset that the moderators would presume to ask difficult questions of people aspiring to be president. They were clearly outside their comfort zone of the Fox News studio.
The candidates drew cheers from the hard-core believers in the audience, however, by attacking the media, as if moderators Lawrence Kudlow and Rick Santelli, both notorious shills for Wall Street, were I.F. Stone and Noam Chomsky. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus nearly had an aneurism over the candidates’ alleged harsh treatment.
State-Sponsored Stupidity
It is when these forces of anti-knowledge seize the power of government that the real damage gets done. Under Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia government harassed with subpoenas a University of Virginia professor whose academic views contradicted Cuccinelli’s political agenda.
Numerous states like Louisiana now mandate that public schools teach the wholly imaginary “controversy” about evolution. A school textbook in Texas, whose state school board has long been infested with reactionary kooks, referred to chattel slaves as “workers” (the implication was obvious: neo-Confederate elements in the South have been trying to minimize slavery for a century and a half, to the point of insinuating it had nothing to do with the Civil War).
This brings us back to Ben Carson. He now suggests that, rather than abolishing the Department of Education, a perennial Republican goal, the department should be used toinvestigate professors who say something he doesn’t agree with. The mechanism to bring these heretics to the government’s attention should be denunciations from students, a technique once in vogue in the old Soviet Union.
It is not surprising that Carson, himself a Seventh Day Adventist, should receive his core support from Republicans who identify as fundamentalists. Among the rest of the GOP pack, it is noteworthy that it is precisely those seeking the fundamentalist vote, like Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who are also notorious for making inflammatory and unhinged comments that sound like little more than deliberate trolling to those who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid (Donald Trump is sui generis).
In all probability, Carson will flame out like Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and all the other former panjandrums of a theological movement conservatism that revels in anti-knowledge. But he will have left his mark, as they did, on a Republican Party that inexorably moves further to the right, and the eventual nominee will have to tailor his campaign to a base that gets ever more intransigent as each new messiah of the month promises to lead them into a New Jerusalem unmoored to a stubborn and profane thing called facts.
10. The Buying of Free Speech
Jim Hightower: How Much "Free Speech" Can You Buy?
by Jim Hightower, truth-out.org, October 29, 2015
In today's so-called "democratic" election process, Big Money doesn't talk, it roars — usually drowning out the people's voice.
Bizarrely, the Supreme Court decreed in its 2010Citizens United ruling that money is a form of "free speech." Thus, declared the learned justices, people and corporations are henceforth allowed to spend unlimited sums of their money to "speak" in election campaigns. But wait — if political speech is measured by money then by definition speech is not free. It can be bought, thereby giving the most speech to the few with the most money. That's plutocracy, not democracy.
Sure enough, in the first six months of this presidential election cycle, more than half of the record-setting $300 million given to the various candidates came from only 358 mega-rich families and the corporations they control. The top 158 of them totaled $176 million in political spending, meaning that, on average, each one of them bought more than a million dollars' worth of "free" speech.
Nearly all of their money is backing Republican presidential hopefuls who promise: (1) to cut taxes on the rich; (2) cut regulations that protect us from corporate pollution and other abuses of the common good; and (3) to cut Social Security, food stamps and other safety-net programs that we un-rich people need. The great majority of Americans adamantly oppose all of those cuts — but none of us has a million bucks to buy an equivalent amount of political "free" speech.
It's not just cuts to taxes, regulations and some good public programs that are endangered by the Court's ridiculous ruling, but democracy itself. That's why a new poll by Bloomberg Politics found that 78 percent of the American people — including 80 percent of Republicans — want to overturn Citizens United. But those 358 families, corporations and Big Money politicos will have none of it. In fact, America's inane, Big Money politics have become so prevalent in this election cycle that — believe it or not — candidates have found a need for yet another campaign consultant.
Already, candidates are walled off from people, reality and any honesty about themselves by a battalion of highly specialized consultants controlling everything from stances to hairstyle.
But now comes a whole new category of staff to add to the menagerie: "donor maintenance manager."
The Supreme Court's malevolent Citizens United decision has produced an insidious platinum class of mega-donors and corporate super PACs, each pumping $500,000, $5 million, $50 million — or even more — into campaigns. These elites are not silent donors, but boisterous, very special interests who are playing in the new, Court-created political money game for their own gain. Having paid to play, they feel entitled to tell candidates what to say and do, what to support and oppose. A Jeb Bush insider confirms that mega-donors have this attitude: "Donors consider a contribution like, 'Well, wait, I just invested in you. Now I need to have my say; you need to answer to me.'"
Thus, campaigns are assigning donor maintenance managers to be personal concierges to meet every need and whim of these special ones. This subservience institutionalizes the plutocratic corruption of our democratic elections, allowing a handful of super-rich interests to buy positions of overbearing influence directly inside campaigns.
Donors at the million-dollar-and-up level are expecting much more than a tote bag for their "generous gifts" of "free speech." Of course, candidates piously proclaim, "I'm not for sale." But politicians are just the delivery service. The actual products being bought through the Supreme Court's Money-O-Rama political bazaar are our government's policies, tax breaks and other goodies — as well as the integrity of America's democratic process. To help fight the injustice of the Supreme Court's Citizen United ruling and get Big Money out of our political system, go to www.FreeSpeechForPeople.org..
11. Reducing the Power of Big Money in Elections
Is There a Silver Lining to Citizens United?
by Thomas B. Edsall, nytimes.com, October 28, 2015
The five-member conservative majority of the Supreme Court did Democrats and reformers a favor when it released its decision in Citizens United in 2010.
The ruling and its progeny, much reviled by the left, effectively banned limitson political contributions and opened the door to direct corporate financing of campaigns. In doing so, Citizens United inadvertently rescued progressive crusaders from their futile, century-long struggle to control the flow of money into politics.
In the absence of caps on contribution amounts — and with loosened restrictions on sources of political cash — reformers have been forced to look toward innovative legislation at the city and state level. Those local experiments have led to the development of alternative strategies for financing federal elections that focus on large, publicly funded incentives for the solicitation of small donors.
Over time, reformers have often failed to anticipate the consequences of their proposals. For example, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and the post- Watergate 1974 amendments institutionalized and legally sanctioned political action committees, still the primary vehicle used by special interests to influence candidates today.
More commonly, corporate and ideological groups — and their lawyers — have found new ways to evade, circumnavigate, undermine and finally gut reform legislation.
Weak to non-existent enforcement by the two key regulatory agencies, the Federal Election Commission and the I.R.S. has, in turn, insured the failure of reforms. Democratic bills now pending before the House — The Government by the People Act, and the Senate, the Fair Elections Now Act – propose a grant of $6 in public money for every dollar raised from donors of $150 or less. These reform measures follow the pattern of state and local laws that provide a two-tier system of campaign finance.
On one hand, candidates may choose to stay within the privately funded campaign structure, raising money from individuals, political action committees and, where permitted, corporations, local businesses and unions.
On the other hand, candidates may opt into a voluntary system of public financing. (While current congressional proposals do not set limits on total expenditures, earlier limits on overall campaign spending doomed public funding at the presidential level.)
In an interview, Representative John Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland and lead sponsor of The Government by the People Act, described the current post- Citizens United reform strategy as “the empowerment approach” as opposed to a “rules based approach.”
“The thing about money is that it always seems to find a way around the rules,” Sarbanes said. A “power-based reform” seeks to “match power with power” instead.
Preliminary indications from states and cities that have matched-funding operations, including New York City, suggest that such programs have the potential to significantly alter politics and policy in three different ways.
The first is a shift away from candidate dependence on PACs and other special interest sources and an increase in the amount of money politicians raise from their own constituents.
The New York City Campaign Finance Board compared the sources of contributions to city council and mayoral candidates — most of whom accepted 6-1 taxpayer matching funds in the 2013 election — to the source of contributions to candidates seeking legislative and other New York state offices who had no access to public funding in the 2014 election. The Board found that PACs and other special interest organizations contributed 6 percent of city candidates’ campaign funds compared to 69 percent of state candidates’ funds.
The second effect cited by reformers is the increased likelihood of adoption of legislation generally opposed by business interests, including increases in minimum wage and liberalized family leave policies.
Supporters of public financing point to the enactment in Connecticut of a tax hike on the wealthy, a raised minimum wage, gun control legislation, ending the death penalty and unionization of day care workers as an illustration of the kinds of policies likely to follow publicly financed elections.
Kenneth R. Mayer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, warned against drawing firm conclusions from these preliminary examples in a paper, “Public Election Funding: An Assessment of What We Would Like to Know”:
While there are many anecdotal accounts of policy shifts occurring in the wake of clean elections programs, as yet there have not been rigorous studies that have demonstrated significant effects on legislative, regulatory, or other policy outcomes.
The third positive consequence cited by advocates of public financing is the election of more working class and moderate income men and women to state legislatures and city councils.
Angus King, a former governor of Maine and now an independent Senator who usually caucuses with the Democrats, recently wrote in the Portland Press Herald: I’ve watched as Maine’s Clean Elections system has transformed the state’s Legislature and opened the door for everyday people like plumbers, teachers, carpenters and firefighters to be able to run for office and compete against deep-pocketed or well-connected opponents.
The Sarbanes bill has the backing of the House Democratic leadership and 160 co-sponsors, one of whom is a Republican, Walter Jones of North Carolina. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and Senate minority whip, has introduced parallel legislation.
The Sarbanes proposal, like much campaign finance legislation at the city and state level, is complex.
A candidate for Congress choosing to accept matching money would first have to raise $50,000 from 1,000 small donors who give $150 or less and who live in the candidate’s state. The federal government would then match the $50,000 on a six to one basis.
That would make every $150 in private money worth $1,050 to the candidate. In return, the candidate would have to agree to refuse to accept PAC contributions and to limit the size of contributions from individuals to $1,000, in contrast to the $2,700 federal limit for candidates running without public funds.
A candidate who reached the $50,000 threshold would be able to start his or her campaign with a kitty of $350,000. Since the Sarbanes bill uses taxpayer money and raises the possibility of shifting legislative bodies to the left, it has zero chance of enactment as long as Republicans control either branch of Congress.
Nate Persily, a Stanford law professor and the editor of the recently published book, “Solutions to Political Polarization in America,” observed in an email, “I generally support most public funding programs and support this one as well.”
Persily raised the possibility, however, that legislation boosting the role of small donors could increase polarization because there is evidence that such donors are “more ideologically motivated” than others. To counter the potential of increased polarization, Persily said that public funding could be expanded to “cut very large checks to the political parties to spend as they wish,” since the parties tend to be moderating forces.
Steve Rosenthal, a political consultant who used to be political director of the AFL-CIO, is notably enthusiastic about the Sarbanes bill: “Anything that can be done to help level the playing field, so that more everyday Americans can run for office is a good thing,” he said, adding that the median net worth of members of the House and Senate is far above that of voters. “It’s gotten to the point where the only people who can run are those who have contact lists rich enough to raise millions.”
He warned that Congress has become the equivalent of the House of Lords.
Bob Bauer, perhaps the preeminent Democratic campaign-finance lawyer, was less enthusiastic. He wrote in an email that the “the requirement of accepting contributions lower than the lawful limit” serves to impose “in this way an effective spending limit, not characterizing it as such. But it has a ‘backdoor’ feel to it.”
In terms of winners and losers, Bauer argued that the Sarbanes bill is probably to the disadvantage of incumbents and it may also complicate the parties’ inclination to clear fields and subdue insurgencies.
Jan Baran, a Republican legal specialist in campaign finance, argued that the matching incentive in the Sarbanes bill amounts to public financing for the politicians. While taxpayers like tax credits for themselves, they don’t support welfare for political campaigns.
Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, has spoken extensively in support of the New York City law. In testimony to the New York state Moreland Commission in 2013, Malbin argued that increased small donor participation is a way to counter another kind of more systemic corruption: the corruption of representation that occurs when candidates spend so much of their time raising campaign money from rich contributors.
Malbin, a professor of political science at SUNY-Albany, told the commission: I have nothing against rich contributors, but the system needs broader participation. Surveys make it clear that those who can afford large contributions do not have the same policy interests or priorities as most citizens. When office holders spend so much time hearing from big donors, they get a slanted view of the public’s priorities.
The current system of financing federal campaigns is out of whack. The power of the rich – captured in the Oct. 10 Times story about “the 158 families that have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House” – defies even the very elastic boundaries of American democracy.
For reformers to have a chance requires post-2020 congressional redistricting with Democrats in control in such key states as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina, allowing the party to take control of the House in 2022.
The Roberts court has deregulated campaign finance on the premise that the only legitimate grounds for restricting money in politics is to prevent explicit corruption. In doing so, however, the court has sanctioned a pervasively corrupt regime.
In his forthcoming book on campaign finance, Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California-Irvine, writes: The more central problem of money in politics is something just as troubling but much harder to see: systems in which economic inequalities, inevitable in a free market economy, are transformed into political inequalities that affect both electoral and legislative outcomes. Without any politician taking a single bribe, wealth has an increasingly disproportionate influence on our politics. While we can call that a problem of “corruption,” this pushes the limits of the words too far (certainly far beyond what the Supreme Court is going to entertain as corruption) and obscures the fundamental unfairness of a political system moving toward plutocracy.
The long run solution, Hasen argues — with reasoning I find unimpeachable — is a Supreme Court “that will accept political equality as a compelling interest that justifies reasonable campaign regulations.”
The ruling and its progeny, much reviled by the left, effectively banned limitson political contributions and opened the door to direct corporate financing of campaigns. In doing so, Citizens United inadvertently rescued progressive crusaders from their futile, century-long struggle to control the flow of money into politics.
In the absence of caps on contribution amounts — and with loosened restrictions on sources of political cash — reformers have been forced to look toward innovative legislation at the city and state level. Those local experiments have led to the development of alternative strategies for financing federal elections that focus on large, publicly funded incentives for the solicitation of small donors.
Over time, reformers have often failed to anticipate the consequences of their proposals. For example, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and the post- Watergate 1974 amendments institutionalized and legally sanctioned political action committees, still the primary vehicle used by special interests to influence candidates today.
More commonly, corporate and ideological groups — and their lawyers — have found new ways to evade, circumnavigate, undermine and finally gut reform legislation.
Weak to non-existent enforcement by the two key regulatory agencies, the Federal Election Commission and the I.R.S. has, in turn, insured the failure of reforms. Democratic bills now pending before the House — The Government by the People Act, and the Senate, the Fair Elections Now Act – propose a grant of $6 in public money for every dollar raised from donors of $150 or less. These reform measures follow the pattern of state and local laws that provide a two-tier system of campaign finance.
On one hand, candidates may choose to stay within the privately funded campaign structure, raising money from individuals, political action committees and, where permitted, corporations, local businesses and unions.
On the other hand, candidates may opt into a voluntary system of public financing. (While current congressional proposals do not set limits on total expenditures, earlier limits on overall campaign spending doomed public funding at the presidential level.)
In an interview, Representative John Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland and lead sponsor of The Government by the People Act, described the current post- Citizens United reform strategy as “the empowerment approach” as opposed to a “rules based approach.”
“The thing about money is that it always seems to find a way around the rules,” Sarbanes said. A “power-based reform” seeks to “match power with power” instead.
Preliminary indications from states and cities that have matched-funding operations, including New York City, suggest that such programs have the potential to significantly alter politics and policy in three different ways.
The first is a shift away from candidate dependence on PACs and other special interest sources and an increase in the amount of money politicians raise from their own constituents.
The New York City Campaign Finance Board compared the sources of contributions to city council and mayoral candidates — most of whom accepted 6-1 taxpayer matching funds in the 2013 election — to the source of contributions to candidates seeking legislative and other New York state offices who had no access to public funding in the 2014 election. The Board found that PACs and other special interest organizations contributed 6 percent of city candidates’ campaign funds compared to 69 percent of state candidates’ funds.
The second effect cited by reformers is the increased likelihood of adoption of legislation generally opposed by business interests, including increases in minimum wage and liberalized family leave policies.
Supporters of public financing point to the enactment in Connecticut of a tax hike on the wealthy, a raised minimum wage, gun control legislation, ending the death penalty and unionization of day care workers as an illustration of the kinds of policies likely to follow publicly financed elections.
Kenneth R. Mayer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, warned against drawing firm conclusions from these preliminary examples in a paper, “Public Election Funding: An Assessment of What We Would Like to Know”:
While there are many anecdotal accounts of policy shifts occurring in the wake of clean elections programs, as yet there have not been rigorous studies that have demonstrated significant effects on legislative, regulatory, or other policy outcomes.
The third positive consequence cited by advocates of public financing is the election of more working class and moderate income men and women to state legislatures and city councils.
Angus King, a former governor of Maine and now an independent Senator who usually caucuses with the Democrats, recently wrote in the Portland Press Herald: I’ve watched as Maine’s Clean Elections system has transformed the state’s Legislature and opened the door for everyday people like plumbers, teachers, carpenters and firefighters to be able to run for office and compete against deep-pocketed or well-connected opponents.
The Sarbanes bill has the backing of the House Democratic leadership and 160 co-sponsors, one of whom is a Republican, Walter Jones of North Carolina. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and Senate minority whip, has introduced parallel legislation.
The Sarbanes proposal, like much campaign finance legislation at the city and state level, is complex.
A candidate for Congress choosing to accept matching money would first have to raise $50,000 from 1,000 small donors who give $150 or less and who live in the candidate’s state. The federal government would then match the $50,000 on a six to one basis.
That would make every $150 in private money worth $1,050 to the candidate. In return, the candidate would have to agree to refuse to accept PAC contributions and to limit the size of contributions from individuals to $1,000, in contrast to the $2,700 federal limit for candidates running without public funds.
A candidate who reached the $50,000 threshold would be able to start his or her campaign with a kitty of $350,000. Since the Sarbanes bill uses taxpayer money and raises the possibility of shifting legislative bodies to the left, it has zero chance of enactment as long as Republicans control either branch of Congress.
Nate Persily, a Stanford law professor and the editor of the recently published book, “Solutions to Political Polarization in America,” observed in an email, “I generally support most public funding programs and support this one as well.”
Persily raised the possibility, however, that legislation boosting the role of small donors could increase polarization because there is evidence that such donors are “more ideologically motivated” than others. To counter the potential of increased polarization, Persily said that public funding could be expanded to “cut very large checks to the political parties to spend as they wish,” since the parties tend to be moderating forces.
Steve Rosenthal, a political consultant who used to be political director of the AFL-CIO, is notably enthusiastic about the Sarbanes bill: “Anything that can be done to help level the playing field, so that more everyday Americans can run for office is a good thing,” he said, adding that the median net worth of members of the House and Senate is far above that of voters. “It’s gotten to the point where the only people who can run are those who have contact lists rich enough to raise millions.”
He warned that Congress has become the equivalent of the House of Lords.
Bob Bauer, perhaps the preeminent Democratic campaign-finance lawyer, was less enthusiastic. He wrote in an email that the “the requirement of accepting contributions lower than the lawful limit” serves to impose “in this way an effective spending limit, not characterizing it as such. But it has a ‘backdoor’ feel to it.”
In terms of winners and losers, Bauer argued that the Sarbanes bill is probably to the disadvantage of incumbents and it may also complicate the parties’ inclination to clear fields and subdue insurgencies.
Jan Baran, a Republican legal specialist in campaign finance, argued that the matching incentive in the Sarbanes bill amounts to public financing for the politicians. While taxpayers like tax credits for themselves, they don’t support welfare for political campaigns.
Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, has spoken extensively in support of the New York City law. In testimony to the New York state Moreland Commission in 2013, Malbin argued that increased small donor participation is a way to counter another kind of more systemic corruption: the corruption of representation that occurs when candidates spend so much of their time raising campaign money from rich contributors.
Malbin, a professor of political science at SUNY-Albany, told the commission: I have nothing against rich contributors, but the system needs broader participation. Surveys make it clear that those who can afford large contributions do not have the same policy interests or priorities as most citizens. When office holders spend so much time hearing from big donors, they get a slanted view of the public’s priorities.
The current system of financing federal campaigns is out of whack. The power of the rich – captured in the Oct. 10 Times story about “the 158 families that have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House” – defies even the very elastic boundaries of American democracy.
For reformers to have a chance requires post-2020 congressional redistricting with Democrats in control in such key states as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina, allowing the party to take control of the House in 2022.
The Roberts court has deregulated campaign finance on the premise that the only legitimate grounds for restricting money in politics is to prevent explicit corruption. In doing so, however, the court has sanctioned a pervasively corrupt regime.
In his forthcoming book on campaign finance, Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California-Irvine, writes: The more central problem of money in politics is something just as troubling but much harder to see: systems in which economic inequalities, inevitable in a free market economy, are transformed into political inequalities that affect both electoral and legislative outcomes. Without any politician taking a single bribe, wealth has an increasingly disproportionate influence on our politics. While we can call that a problem of “corruption,” this pushes the limits of the words too far (certainly far beyond what the Supreme Court is going to entertain as corruption) and obscures the fundamental unfairness of a political system moving toward plutocracy.
The long run solution, Hasen argues — with reasoning I find unimpeachable — is a Supreme Court “that will accept political equality as a compelling interest that justifies reasonable campaign regulations.”
FINALLY
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