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Archive for the ‘Campaign Finance’ Category

Big Oil Astroturf rally in Houston more company picnic than grassroots campaign

Posted in Campaign Finance, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2009 |

Your intrepid friends at Public Citizen tried to attend the astroturf “Energy Citizens” rally yesterday in Houston.  We’re busy pulling together our bloggings and all the footage we shot, but keep checking back here for updates throughout the day.

We were not allowed in the meeting, as we did not work for an energy company, but we managed to sneak some great footage before being escorted out and being told to leave the premises.

We have:

Footage of the 34 busses used to bring people into the rally from different energy companies.

Normal Citizens who weren”t good enough to be “Energy Citizens”– people who weren’t allowed in the meeting, as this was for energy company employees only!  Interviews include lots of crazy conservative teabaggers who hate cap and trade (I understand why Public Citizen and Sierra Club might not be allowed in– why weren’t even they allowed?), nice ladies who were escorted out of the building because they dared to bring American flags to the rally (why does Big Oil hate America?), and lots of people angry at oil companies because they’re hiding this from the public.

“Energy Company Employees Say the Darndest Things” — watch as your friends in the oil and gas industry display ignorance as to the salient details of the ACES bill and spout misinformation about it, or, the people who do know a lot about the bill talk about how it’s a bad piece of legislation because of corporate giveaways to the coal industry!  Here’s one quick tidbit:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEXFt8fwh_0]

Want more?  Read my full press statement after the jump:

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UPDATED: Grassroots vs Astroturf- the difference in citizen activism

Posted in Campaign Finance, Global Warming, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 13, 2009 |

UPDATE:  Greenpeace has just obtained an internal API memo detailing their astroturf plans.  You can read the memo and Greenpeace’s reply here.  Job “whale” done, Greenpeace!

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Most people have a good general conception of what a real grassroots movement looks like: citizens get outraged over some injustice or inequity and get organized and get active.  These campaigns are built from the bottom up.

Astroturfing a Texas Highway

Astroturfing a Texas Highway

And what happens when you don’t have a grassroots movement but want to make it look like you do?  Well, then you Astro-turf a movement in, paying hired guns to pretend to be “activists” who then show up to townhall meetings and other public forums. Fake grass- sent from top down, rather than something grown naturally from the ground up.  A lot of these protesters have been either astroturfed in or given specific instructions on how to disrupt these townhalls in an attempt to shout down opinions other than their own.

We in Texas know a thing about Astroturf, the name having originated as the name of the artificial turf used in the Houston Astrodome.  (Coincidentally, the first ever Super Bowl played on astroturf was also in Houston at SuperBowl VIII in 1974.)

Many have criticized recent astroturf campaigns on healthcare, climate change, and the infamous tea-baggers because of their coordination by Washington lobbyists and special interests.  In fact, Senator Dick Durbin (IL), the #2 Democrat in the Senate, Sunday told CNN’s John King,

“We have these screaming groups on either side. That isn’t helpful. Let’s be honest about this. . . this is clearly being orchestrated, and these folks have instructions. They come down from a Texas lobbyist in Washington.”

So what’s the difference between what Public Citizen does (educate, activate and organize citizens) and what the astroturfers do (hired guns, fomenting support based on misinformation for the purpose of financial gain)?  Many groups engage in grassroots organizing, from Public Citizen to the League of Conservation Voters to the NRA, and use their membership to engage in activism, and some of this leadership comes from our paid staff in DC or Austin, etc.  However, Public Citizen has a long history of never accepting donations from corporations or government grants, meaning we can always clearly represent only the interests of our membership without any conflicts of interest.

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, these atroturf campaigns are actually schilling for major corporate interests who have a financial stake in climate change, health insurance, etc.  The most glaring example is ACCCE, the coal industry group that represents 48 of the largest coal electricty utilities in the US with a combined net revenues last year of nearly $200 billion.    ACCCE’s mission is to sell their false claims of clean coal technology.  Haven’t heard of ACCCE?  Well, maybe it’s because they used to be called “Americans for Balanced Energy Choices” but decided to “rebrand” since it became obvious that “balanced” energy choices meant all coal all the time.

Their ads became so ridiculous they became parodied like this, in this commercial from Oscar Winners Joel and Ethan Coen:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-_U1Z0vezw]

Anyway, they’re up to their old Orwellian tricks again.

In the weeks before the House voted on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES),  ACCCE’s lobbyists forged letters to Congress, claiming to be representatives of minority and environmental justice groups such as NAACP.  (A huge tip of the hat to to Kate Sheppard at Grist who has been following this very closely– also follow Kate on Twitter for the best enviro updates this side of @ClimateHaiku)

Even more amazing was that these letters claimed that enacting climate legislation would hurt low-income communities, even though the national NAACP (and many, many other social justice groups) had come down in support of ACES.  No word yet how many fake letters they sent to members of Congress pretending to be average constituents, rather than important community members who could be easily verified, and we will probably never know the extent of the fraud they have perpetrated.

That is Astroturfing, my friends.

Another egregious example, coming soon to the theater near you, is that the American Petroleum Institute and National Association of Manufacturers along with other flat-earth anti-climate change legislation groups are teaming up to host townhall-style meetings in 20 key states to attempt to influence the passage of the climate bill in the Senate (see articles here and here).  So, the deep, deep pockets of big oil and big business are trying to buy themselves a grassroots movement.  Will they have any luck?

And then, as a corollary to astroturfing, we have the local example of Austin’s Congressman Lloyd Doggett, who has gained a lot of media attention because of the angry throngs showing up to mob him and yell “Just Say No!” to health care reform.

Depending on your view of Doggett, doggett supermanDoggett Devilyou may have shown up to his previous townhalls to lambaste, lampoon, or lavish praise on him.  I have been to these neighborhood office hours before to speak with Congressman Doggett (he is, after all, my Representative in Washington) and I have never seen anything like what happened two weeks ago.  Most people show up to politely engage the Congressman about a (more…)

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Public Citizen Urges Supreme Court to Uphold Campaign Finance Reform Law

Posted in Campaign Finance, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2009 |

Overturning Campaign Finance Restrictions Would Allow Corporations to Dominate Elections

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Public Citizen joined a team of other attorneys in submitting a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court today, urging the court to adhere to its precedents and reaffirm the longstanding principle that corporations may not engage in unfettered campaign spending.

The brief filed in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission argues that if the Supreme Court overrules past decisions and strikes down portions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), corporations would be free to mobilize their vast assets as political “war chests” and could soon come to dominate electoral discourse.

Ruling against BCRA would not only condemn its electioneering provisions, but also the decades-old requirement that corporations make campaign expenditures only through political action committees (PACs) funded by individual donations, not from their corporate treasuries.

“This has become one of the most important campaign finance cases of our generation,” said Public Citizen attorney Scott Nelson, who coauthored the brief with former U.S. Solicitor General Seth Waxman and his partners Randy Moss and Roger Witten of the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP, as well as former Public Citizen Litigation Group Director Alan Morrison, currently on the faculty of the George Washington University Law School.

The case involves the abortive plan of a right-wing group, Citizens United, to broadcast Hillary: The Movie, which a lower court found to be electioneering subject to BCRA. Among other things, BCRA prevents corporations from funding broadcasts containing candidate advocacy except through segregated funds, or PACs, with all money donated by individuals. Citizens United admittedly did not comply with those restrictions.

After hearing argument in the case in March, the Supreme Court announced that it wanted to hear additional argument on whether two of its key precedents allowing limitations on for-profit corporations’ ability to use corporate funds for electoral purposes should be overruled. The brief filed today on behalf of the principal congressional sponsors of BCRA (Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold and former Reps. Chris Shays and Marty Meehan) strongly urges the court to uphold BCRA’s constitutionality.

Now at issue in the case is whether the court should overrule Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which held that the government can limit for-profit corporations to the use of PACs to fund express electoral advocacy, and McConnell v. FEC, which applied that principle to uphold the constitutionality of BCRA’s “electioneering communications” provisions, which restrict corporate funding of election-eve broadcasts that mention candidates and convey unmistakable electoral messages.

The brief submitted on behalf of the BCRA sponsors urges that “[o]verruling Austin or McConnell in this case would be unwarranted and unseemly” and that the principle of respect for the court’s precedents requires a “special justification” – which is absent here – before the court may take such a drastic step. The decisions, the brief contends, “are vital cornerstones of modern campaign finance”and “[o]verruling them would severely jolt our political system.”

The case will be reargued on Sept. 9. A copy of the complete brief is available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/CitizensUnitedSuppAmicus.pdf.

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Austin Congressman Lloyd Doggett supports Fair Elections Now!

Posted in Campaign Finance, tagged , , , , , , on June 11, 2009 |

We were ecstatic when we heard from Congressman Doggett’s office that he would be signing on as an original cosponsor of the Fair Elections Now Act, a bill which would create a public financing system for Congressional candidates.

Public financing means that instead of spending hours a day raising money on the phone, our elected leaders can instead take money allocated to them by the government for their campaigns.  No longer would any constituent have to worry that their leaders could be “bought” by their campaign donations, and no campaign donor could ever try to attach any strings, real or implied, to their donations.

Public Citizen has long been an advocate for getting money out of Washington. This is the biggest and best step we can take to make this happen.

Congressman Doggett is a leader on this issue, and will hopefully bring more attention to this issue as it moves along.  We’d like to thank him, and hope you will as well, by calling his Austin office 512-916-5921 or by writing a letter to the editor of the Austin American Statesman or your other local paper (I’m looking at you, Hays County — he’s your Rep too!)

We’re all incredibly lucky to have a Representative like Congressman Doggett.  He is joined in support of Fair Elections Now by Rep. Gene Green of Houston.  Silvestre Reyes of El Paso is also on the record for supporting public financing, but has not yet signed on to the bill.

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So You Want to be a Successful Lobbyist?

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 10, 2009 |

Here’s How!

Last week we had an intern training session, and many of the tips and tricks of lobbying we learned would be helpful for anyone who would like to get involved in activism. Here are a few things to remember when planning your future as a Successful Lobbyist. picture-16

First, always remember that lobbying is about strategy. Successful actions are rarely haphazard or random. When devising your strategy, be very clear about what it is you are trying to accomplish. Is it reasonable? Is it winnable? Is it focused? Your strategy will be the foundation for your tactics, so make sure you have it down.

Now, who can give you what you want? And to whom are they accountable? The best way to tackle this is through a strategy called Power Mapping, in which you consider the power relationships between your opposition and those who ultimately make the decisions. Once you narrow this down, you can begin to devise how you will reach those people, and how you can persuade them to take action towards your goal.

Because the point is to change or readjust the perspective of the opposing party, you must first begin to understand their motivations… (more…)

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Wall Street’s crisis shows need for Fair Elections

Posted in Campaign Finance, tagged , , , , , , , on September 24, 2008 |

Make no mistake about it, we face an economic crisis of enormous proportions. But the rush to bail out Wall Street firms with a “hair on fire” urgency rings so hollow when you consider how much the American people have already gone through. Millions of people have lost their homes to foreclosures. Many are being forced onto the streets, as tent cities are popping up in major cities. But nothing happened to fix the sub-prime mess, brewing for two years now, until Wall Street had a cash-flow problem.

The biggest problem seems to be that the government is now moving, not because they are inclined to make public policy for the good of the American people, but because their campaign donors have asked them to. You can see campaign finance’s fingers in the presidential race as well, as Wall Street donors dominate the upper echelons of each candidates’ major fundraisers and both candidates flounder and walk the thin line between offending their donors and offering real leadership.

As a seeming palliative to the financial crisis, the House introduced yesterday HR 7022, the Fair Elections Now Act, “To reform the financing of House elections, and for other purposes.” This bill would provide full optional public financing for congressional elections. It’s companion bill in the Senate has been mired in Congressional inaction. We can see how quickly Congress can act when it (more…)

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Who’s paying for the Hookers and Blow?, pt 2

Posted in Campaign Finance, Consumers, tagged , , on September 11, 2008 |

Our cohorts at Citizenvox had this to say about the recent scandal breaking at the Department of the Interior.  I think this follow up well what they wrote about the recent GOP and Dem conventions, asking “Who is paying for the Hookers and Blow?”

And these are the people who will be put in charge of the leases if we decide to expand offshore drilling? Insert your own “Drill, Baby, Drill” joke here.  ~~Citizen Andy

Federal officials literally in bed with big oil

September 11, 2008 by Rick Claypool

Charlie Savage of the New York Times reports today:

On one occasion in 2002, the report said, two of the officials who marketed taxpayers’ oil got so drunk at a daytime golfing event sponsored by Shell that they could not drive to their hotels and were put up in Shell-provided lodging. Two female employees “engaged in brief sexual relationships with industry contacts,” the reports’ cover memo said, adding that “sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms’ length.”

On one occasion, the report said, the royalty-in-kind program allowed a Chevron representative who had won a bid to purchase some of the government’s oil to pay taxpayers a lower amount than his winning offer because he said he had made a mistake in his calculations. A report from Mr. Devaney’s office earlier this year found that the program had frequently allowed companies that purchased the oil and gas to revise their bids downward after they won contracts. It documented 118 such occasions that cost taxpayers about $4.4 million in all.

Outrage, anyone?

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Obama’s Mistake on Public Financing (and how McCain is skirting the law, too)

Posted in Campaign Finance, tagged , , , , , on September 9, 2008 |

Today’s New York Times reported that life is not all peaches and cream for the Obama campaign after they opted out of the presidential public financing system.  (See Article “Straining to Reach Goal, Obama Presses Donors“)

Pushing a fund-raiser later this month, a finance staff member sent a sharply worded note last week to Illinois members of its national finance committee, calling their recent efforts “extremely anemic.”

The signs of concern have become evident in recent weeks as early fund-raising totals have suggested that Mr. Obama’s decision to bypass public financing may not necessarily afford him the commanding financing advantage over Senator John McCain that many had originally predicted.

But the campaign is struggling to meet ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the campaign and the party. It collected in June and July far less from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors than originally projected. Moreover, Mr. McCain, unlike Mr. Obama, will have the luxury of concentrating almost entirely on campaigning instead of raising money, as Mr. Obama must do.

It is not yet clear whether the Obama campaign will be able to ratchet up its fund-raising enough in the final two months of the campaign to make up the difference.

Public financing is a boon to any politician who accepts it, as it allows her or him to run free from the strings attached to big-dollar-donations and to focus the campaign’s time on where it should be spent: connecting with voters.  This is why when I explained Public Financing to Congressman Nick Lampson, currently running in the most competitive House race in the country, he was exuberant to think of a time when he would no longer have to dial for dollars.  Considering the other two competitive House races in Texas, in CD 7 and 10, think of the race it would be if the campaigns were on equal footing moneywise and ideas, not dollars, affected the outcome of the race.

And, if you don’t think that money doesn’t change policy, think again.  Every issue, from the War in Iraq to Consumer Protection to Global Warming to Education has powerful monied interests who are willing to pour money into the debate to get what they want.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, McCain, once a champion of campaign finance reform, is still soliciting donations to his campaign, even though he has already accepted public financing money.  A loophole allows the campaign to get money for “compliance” issues, but really it’s a backdoor for the same kind of big money influence peddling we’ve seen so far, as recently as the last two weeks at the GOP and Dem Conventions.

Kate Kaye, the author of the blog who brought this to our attention, explained it best:

According to a disclaimer on the McCain campaign site, “Because the McCain-Palin Campaign is participating in the presidential public funding system, it may not receive contributions for the any candidate’s election. However, federal law allows the McCain-Palin Campaign’s Compliance Fund to defray legal and accounting compliance costs and preserve the Campaign’s public grant for media, mail, phones, and get-out-the-vote programs. Contributions to McCain-Palin Victory 2008 will go to the Compliance Fund, and to participating party committees for Victory 2008 programs.”

That Victory fund is operated by the compliance fund, the Republican National Committee, and the Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania GOPs.

Hmmm…I wonder what states are in the most contention this year….

The lesson is clear: we should support full, airtight public financing NOW and we should make our leaders accept it– a “Great divorce” of Money and Politics.

Obama originally opted out of public financing by citing that the presidential system was “broken” and that he had created a “parallel public financing system” via the netroots.  This, along with McCain’s continued fund-raising, is an argument to shore up the presidential system, not scrap it.

We can pass full public financing laws.  We can keep elections fair at the local, state, congressional, and federal level.  Currently, the Fair Elections Now Act sits idle in Congress with some serious inertial problems.  We should change that, and call our leaders and ask them to sign on to Fair Elections.  We can make it a priority of the next Congress, insuring that future elections are clean and fair.

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Update on Netroots Nation 08 Day 3: Gore, Doggett, Lessig, and Courage

Posted in Campaign Finance, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , on July 19, 2008 |

Public Citizen is a national sponsor of this year’s Netroots Nation conference, and as the Austin Texas office of Public Citizen is happy to play host. We’ve met so many great people and been in so many excellent meetings. We’re also proud that we launched this, our Texas blog, in concert with NN08. Today has been incredibly busy and wonderful, so let me fill all of you in who weren’t here.

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