Political Reform, Politics

For the People or the Elite? -The Trojan Horse of Internet Contributions

Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness.

Theodore Roosevelt

Several years ago, my computer was hacked at the Denver International Airport. Shortly afterwards, I started receiving emails addressed to “Ricot Claude” (not anywhere near my name or nickname) from Democratic party campaigns and affiliated groups hounding me for contributions.  Many of them came through a super-PAC called ActBlue.   The experience exposed a major problem in campaign finance regulation that could be a source of the same kind of “dark money” targeted elsewhere in the For the People Act.

The fundamental flaw of the current system is that it brands the contributors, not politicians, as the culprits who need regulation. At the same time, the Federal Election Commission has almost no resources to chase down and enforce violations by errant contributors.  Campaigns and PACs need only use their “best efforts” to determine whether a contribution is legal, which is defined as only requesting the basic identifying information required by disclosure reporting. See 11 CFR 104.7.  The committee can rely solely on the representations by the contributor and no independent verification of the source of the contribution is required. The only exception is the presidential campaign matching fund program. See 11 CFR 9034.2. Candidates may only receive matching federal funds for contributions evidenced by a “written instrument”.  This is specifically defined as a check, a credit card accompanied by a signed transaction slip or, in the case of an Internet contribution, an electronic record transmitted by the cardholder with a copy of the credit card number and the name of the cardholder. Thus, the candidate automatically has sufficient independent information to verify the identity of the contributor.

In 1995, the FEC ruled in Advisory Opinion 1995-9 that contributions via the Internet were subject to the lax reporting standards applicable to most committees and did not need to be independently verified (see the answer to Question No. 4).  This may explain why so few presidential candidates use matching funds anymore and rely so heavily on Internet contributions instead. This opinion also authorized the use of outside financial contractors to solicit and manage the contribution process.  Since then, a cottage industry of third party vendors unregulated by the FEC has arisen to solicit, raise and manage contributions on behalf of political committees (see this example of Paypal’s service). Only these vendors have the information about the credit card or other source of a contribution.  They have no obligation to cross-reference the name on the credit card or Paypal account or other source against the name reported to the committee or report any discrepancies to the committee.  

Thus, I could have used the system to make illegal contributions under the name “Ricot” with very little likelihood of consequences.  A corporation or foreign national could have done the same.  The potential for abuse was documented in a forensic audit of ActBlue’s contributions by former Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline, who reported that fully 48% of ActBlue’s contributions came from the unemployed while its Republican counterpart WinRed had only 4%.  It also showed how gift cards can be used to game the system. 

This loophole needs to be plugged before it becomes a floodgate of foreign and other dark money into political campaigns.  One way would be to impose on all political committees the documentation and verification rules required under the presidential matching funds program.  In the alternative, the FEC should have the power to regulate outside vendors that manage contributions for committees and impose the same kind of verification rules applicable to the private sector.  A model for such a program can be found in the Federal Trade Commission’s Identity Theft Prevention Rules, which require certain creditors to check transactions against red flags of identity theft.  In the absence of congressional legislation, the FEC should require political committees to use such mechanisms to verify the source of the contribution or require their vendors to have such a system and actively audit the vendor to insure it is enforcing the program.

Internet contributions have been hailed as the average American’s answer to the influence of corporate contributions and dark money.  As Theodore Roosevelt said, we should not let that optimism cause us to repeat the mistakes of the Trojans in the Iliad and unwittingly unleash the same kind of abuses we want to prevent.  The For the People Act or any similar campaign finance reform should be amended to control against this threat.  Otherwise, we may find that the plugging of one dark money loophole will simply cause it to spring up in a more corrosive and damaging form.     

Uncategorized

Theodore Roosevelt on Fatherhood

This tender photo of TR with baby Quentin and the quotation shows how important fatherhood was to him. He often talked about the sanctity of families, but also just loved playing with his children. Indeed, he ended his New Nationalism speech otherwise full of pronouncements on governmental policy with this statement:

In the last analysis, the most important element in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character – character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, a good husband – that makes a man a good neighbor.

His example of courage and service to his country led all of his children into military service, two of whom died. Quentin was one of them as well as his namesake Theodore Roosevelt III, who commanded troops on Utah Beach on D-Day and later died in France. TR’s words and example of fatherhood will always be an inspiration to all fathers everywhere.

Happy Fathers Day!

Domestic Policy, Government

Abolish the Police, not the Policeman

Theodore Roosevelt as New York City Police Commissioner

If the police power is used oppressively, or improperly, let us by all means put a stop to the practice and punish those responsible for it; but let us remember that a brute will be just as much of a brute whether he is inefficient or efficient. Either abolish the police, or keep them at the highest point of efficiency.

The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (1917.) Scribner’s Mem. Ed. XXI, pg.73; Nat. Ed. XIX, pg. 63

After the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin case, I am republishing this article from 2020 on how Theodore Roosevelt might have approached the modern policing crisis. Unfortunately, the lessons still ring true even after a year.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, this blunt observation of Theodore Roosevelt is particularly timely and provocative. As police commissioner of New York City, TR knew the difficulty of preserving the legitimacy of a police force in an ethnically diverse city.  Police corruption, whether in the form of bribery or brutishness, sapped that legitimacy and needed to be swiftly and certainly punished.  He also knew that such corruption often arose from systemic failures in society that were foisted on the average police officer to solve.  Whether the slogan is Roosevelt’s or today’s “defund the police” chant, any sustainable police reform movement must address these past policy failures.

The Militarization of Police Departments

After the 9/11 attacks, the federal government decided that every metropolitan police department needed to be prepared to deal with a terrorist attack. This ended a successful era of neighborhood policing based on increasing the number of police officers walking a beat or otherwise regularly connecting with city residents. Instead, cities stocked up on military-style equipment, which had the effect of separating the police from the public and glorified the use of force over early intervention. Hollywood then further glorified it through television shows like “SWAT” and a host of police buddy movies.  This resulted in a culture that ruled by fear instead of respect.  It is past time to reverse course and reinvent the policeman as a community problem solver and give him or her the necessary support and resources.  To do so, though, we must face another reality.

The Reduction in City Police Forces

The calls to abolish or reduce police forces are gratingly ironic in light of Bureau of Justice Statistics showing that two-thirds of the 50 major police departments reduced the number of officers per capita over the last two decades.  Smaller police forces were cheaper because of the lower personnel cost, as opposed to riot gear and other equipment that do not demand employee benefits. We cannot implement neighborhood policing without more policeman, which requires more funding, and soon.

It is equally ironic that the relevant model may be the “surge” in military force that temporarily pacified Afghanistan and Iraq.  The federal government should fund a similar surge in the number of city police over the next ten years subject to strict rules to insure it results in more and better-trained officers on the beat. Cities would then be expected to pick up the funding for this increase afterwards.  Accepting the higher federal and local taxes necessary to achieve this more humane and sustainable form of policing would be the most concrete way to show our commitment to remedying past police abuse of poor minority communities.  However, even this change will be insufficient if we neglect another crisis in law enforcement.

The Expansion of Criminal Law

Roosevelt’s police force was plagued by bribery caused by the attempt to enforce Sunday blue laws that were deeply unpopular among poor immigrants and which he personally opposed. Today’s police officers are asked to not only keep order, but also enforce a myriad of new financial and economic rules.  George Floyd was being arrested on suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, which is a federal, not local, crime.  Eric Garner of New York died while being arrested for failing to pay the state cigarette tax. If the police become identified with laws that have little legitimacy in their communities, they will inevitably face resistance and a lack of cooperation in enforcing other laws.  Many cities already refuse to assist in enforcing the federal immigration laws in order to encourage illegal immigrants to cooperate with police in preventing violent crime. 

The accretion of federal, state and local criminal laws over the years has placed all of law enforcement in an increasingly untenable position. All levels of government should conduct a thorough review of their criminal codes with the goal of either repealing minor criminal statutes, converting them to civil violations or developing new enforcement methods.  Local police could then return to enforcing laws that preserve neighborhoods rather than disrupt them.

Conclusion

For most of this year, our nation has been concentrating on breathing freely by avoiding the coronavirus.  Both the yearning to reopen and the George Floyd protests show that breathing freely is not enough for Americans. We must also be able to breathe free. Resisting arrest is never excusable, but resistance will occur more frequently if Americans believe they are not free.  Blaming the police without examining the policy failures that affect all of us regardless of color will only sow the seeds of more resistance and a less efficient police force.