Posted by Juan Non-Volokh:
The Campaign Finance Conspiracy:
Ryan Sager [1]makes some explosive charges about the campaign-finance
reform "movement" in the New York Post. Specifically, Sager alleges
"campaign-finance reform has been an immense scam perpetrated on the
American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a
'mass movement.'"
Sager's charge rests largely on a video tape of remarks by Sean
Treglia, a former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts,
explaining the role of Pew and other foundations in the
campaign-finance reform effort. According to Sager:
Charged with promoting campaign-finance reform when he joined Pew
in the mid-1990s, Treglia came up with a three-pronged strategy: 1)
pursue an expansive agenda through incremental reforms, 2) pay for
a handful of "experts" all over the country with foundation money
and 3) create fake business, minority and religious groups to pound
the table for reform.
Portions of the tape transcript are on-line [2]here.
In addition, Sager cites a report by [3]Political Money Line on the
"campaign finance lobby." According to this report, some $140 million
was spent on reform efforts from 1994-2004. Of that total, $123
million (88 percent) came from eight foundations, including Pew. This
money, Sager maintains, helped create various pro-reform groups and
funded efforts to increase coverage of reform efforts. Specifically,
Sager alleges the following:
* In September of 2000, less than two years before the passage of
McCain-Feingold, the liberal magazine The American Prospect put out
a special issue devoted to campaign-finance reform. . . . the
"Checkbook Democracy" issue was paid for with a $132,000 check from
the Carnegie Corporation � which . . . has spent $14 million
promoting the regulation of political speech in the last decade.
* Since 1994, National Public Radio has accepted more than $1.2
million from liberal foundations promoting campaign-finance reform
for items such as (to quote the official disclosure statements)
"news coverage of financial influence in political
decision-making." About $400,000 of that directly funded a program
called, "Money, Power and Influence."
NPR claims that there has never been any contact between the
funders and the reporters. NPR also claims that some of the $1.2
million went to non-campaign-finance-related coverage. But at least
$860,000 can be tied directly to coverage of money in politics.
* Lastly, the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation
accepted $935,000 between 1995 and 2001 from liberal foundations
promoting campaign-finance reform for things like a "training
initiative to help television, radio and print journalists provide
better news coverage of the influence of private money on
electoral, legislative and regulatory processes."
The president of RTNDF, Barbara Cochran, assured me that "We did
not receive money to promote campaign-finance reform." Cochran also
made clear that RTNDF does not provide news coverage, it only
trains journalists. But she wouldn't provide The Post with any of
the training materials it produced with the foundation money.
Sager's final charge is against the media, which was "either too
ill-informed or too unconcerned to figure out the fraud." On the tape,
Treglia recounts a "scare" that Pew's efforts would be reported in the
press, but it never happened; "journalists didn't care."
Sager's charges, if true, have disturbing implications: A handful of
foundations with a specific political agenda implemented a successful
campaign to change federal law under the guise of adopting "populist"
political reforms, and the press never caught on (or, worse, never
bothered to report it).
References
1. http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/22480.htm
2. http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/transcript0.htm
3. http://www.fecinfo.com/
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