Follow the Money

AP photograph  (no photographer listed) accompanied Politico's October 19 story, "Ginni Thomas seeks Anita Hill apology."



Ginni Thomas crossed our collective radar screen this week, when Charlie Savage reported she viewed herself as holding out an "olive branch" on October 9 when she left a voice mail for Anita Hill demanding an apology, an explanation and perhaps prayer. On the very morning she had called Hill, the New York Times page A1 featured Jackie Calmes reporting "Activism of Thomas’s Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues."

Ginni Thomas married to Justice Clarence Thomas 23 years ago. According to a February 18 interview with Hot Air's Ed Morrissey, Ms. Thomas--a long-time conservative advocate associated with the Chamber of Commerce and the Heritage Foundation--founded Liberty Central in November 2009 to roll back Obama’s left-leaning ways.

We cannot see into the mind of Ginni Thomas as she called Hill, but I found myself asking if Ms. Thomas were motivated by more than a desire to stand by her man?  

It's hard to follow Deep Throat advice to Woodward and Bernstein to "follow the money."


Poring over LC’s sole form 990 filed for FY2009, I wondered who would give $500,000 and $50,000 since Liberty Central is organized as  a non-profit under IRS Code Section 501(c)4 and can't offer donors tax deductions. I also wondered how much Ms. Thomas will receive as CEO, since she (conveniently?) collected no salary during the period covered by the tax form.

Next I looked at Liberty Central's website and noticed that the organization claims to be "non-partisan," its scorecard for my state graded all the Democrats "F" except one "D" and all Republicans "A."

The IRS shields (c)4 donors from scrutiny

 Any (c) 4 group gets the protection for its donors established under NAACP v. Alabama. And, under current law, (c)4’s do not have to report electioneering-types of advertising more than 60 days before a general election or 30 days before a primary. They do not have to report non-broadcast communication--mail, Internet, telephone---nor candidate-specific issue ads that fall outside the legal definition of political speech.

We do know Justice Thomas "sole outlier" on disclosure in Citizens United

In January 2010, Justice Thomas, voted in a 5-4 majority in the landmark Citizen's United decision , to equate corporate and union donations with free speech, thus allowing unlimited campaign donations. Justice Thomas went further.

NYU Law School’s Adam Scaggs wrote me in an email interview,

All eight of Justice Thomas's colleagues upheld the disclosure rules, on the grounds that the public has a real interest in knowing who spends in political races. Thomas was the sole outlier in voting against disclosure.

Scaggs emphasized,

it's important that Ms. Thomas doesn't lose any of her First Amendment rights just because her husband is a judge…The concern is that Justice Thomas would face a conflict of interest if...ever asked to hear a case involving the groups that have given major contributions to his wife's group. Judges — including Supreme Court justices — are ethically obligated to step aside from any cases in which they have a financial stake, and they must also step aside when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned……The public would not know that there is a conflict if the identity of the donors has not been disclosed.

We do know that Koch Industries rallies the right twice a year to plan on how to sway public policy and that former guests include Justice Clarence Thomas. 

Non-disclosure should not be germane to all (c)4's

The non-disclosure precedent of NAACP v. Alabama is only germane to (c)4’s, Campaign Legal Center's Trevor Potter wrote me,

IF the groups can make the arguments made by the NAACP--that their donors would be killed or beaten or their houses burned down if their identities were known.

We do know that during this election cycle, record donations are flowing into the (c)4’s.

For instance, Doyle McManus reports that one new such group, CrossroadsGPS, advised by Karl Rove,

 says it's going to spend $65 million this year — much of it to try to defeat [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

If corporations have free speech, let's at least know who’s talking. 

Supreme Court reporter Lyle Denniston has suggested we could increase transparency

by more rigorous disclosure legislation, in hopes of exposing more vividly who is in fact benefiting and, perhaps, by embarrassing the beneficiaries.

In Congress, the House passed the DISCLOSE Act, (H.R. 5175). Republicans in the Senate blocked a vote, most recently on September 24.

 It's time for Congress to let us "follow the money."

Republican Renzi to run again in Arizona despite indictment

As long ago as April 29, 2007, the conservative East Valley Tribune was calling for Rick Renzi's resignation:

Renzi will be hounded by political opportunists looking to further
undermine his status, and his constituents will receive less than they deserve
while he rallies to protect himself.

The better choice, the honorable choice, would be for Renzi to step aside and let someone else come forward to represent his district and our state in Congress.

Although initially indicating that he might do so and he was indicted February 23 on 35 counts, Ben Pershing of The Washington Post reported that Renzi's office announced yesterday that he intended to run for re-election, although no press release showed up on his website, as of today.

*

Today, I attended a luncheon and panel discussion at the National Press Club on the unitary executive sponsored by the Constitution Project. See my post of February 18 for the details. I had the opportunity to talk to Charlie Savage and Louis Fisher, two men whose writing and research I admire greatly.

Mr. Unitary Executive's FY 2009 Budget Bypasses Congress

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle at the daily political cartoon section on his website.

Charlie Savage (email) of the Boston Globe won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Bush Administration's efforts to concentrate power for the executive branch and went on to write the book, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.

The president embraces the theory of the "unitary executive" which according to "Rethinking Presidential Power—The Unitary Executive and the George W. Bush Presidency" a 2005 paper by Dr. Christopher S. Kelley (email) from the Department of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, OH, has been used for unilateral action since Nixon's time when

modern presidents have had a difficult time relying upon the traditional powers of bargaining and persuading

While Kelley relied on the use of signing statements, executive orders, and the OIRA to advance the administration’s objectives, it appears that he has added a new tool: the budget.

Bush's FY 2009 Budget, which he submitted February 4 for the year starting this October is the topic of the WaPo's Stephen Barr, who in "Growing the Workforce but not the Payroll," writes,

Another item in the budget likely to stir controversy on Capitol Hill is the proposal to repeal parts of last year's consolidated appropriations bill, signed by Bush, that makes it more difficult for agencies to contract out jobs held by federal employees.

The legislation requires that private-sector bids show a savings of $10 million or 10 percent beyond the cost of keeping the work in agencies, prevents contractors from gaining an advantage by offering less generous health and retirement benefits to their workers, and extends to federal employees the same rights to appeal agency decisions as those that are available to contractors.

This is an example of solid, factual reporting citing sources on all sides of the issue. Although the hook is the lower % raises for civilians than for non-combat military and the reaction of legislators in the DC area, where a lot of federal employees reside, it contains the broader picture of how the Administration tries to reverse legislation passed by the bi-partisan agreement of Congress in trying to put limits n private-sector outsourcing and the repeal of better retirement benefits for customs and border patrol officers in the Department of homeland security, as well as reducing eligibility for loan forgiveness in last year's College Cost Reduction Act for individuals with current loans who have opted to work in public service and nonprofit jobs. At the same time as claiming fiscal responsibility, he has put war spending off the books.

I would have liked some links to the legislation in question which Bush has reversed through his budget. Also, for balance, there could have been something from the rebuttal by the Republicans of the Democratats' analysis. For additional information, see OMB Watch's The Bush Budget Legacy: Misleading Claims and Misguided Priorities.