Wrapup 2020

Interest group politics is inevitable.

Madison again:

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves.

 ...

Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government. 

And the First Amendment specifically protects the right to petition government:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Summing up

Everybody has interests, both economic and cultural.

The ubiquity of business (Cigler 285) and the dominance of the top tier

• "Privileged position" of business

Much of interest-group influence is far upstream from high-profile votes and executive actions (Cigler 285-288)

Influence is not just "lobbying" campaign finance

• Influencing ideas and mass communication
• Mobilizing civil society
• Litigating

Three faces of power

• Decision
• Agenda
• Ideas about what constitutes an issue

Personnel

 From Politico:

BIDEN’S NATIONAL SECURITY TEAM: President-elect Joe Biden announced his first slate of Cabinet picks today, officially tapping his longtime aide (and WestExec Advisors co-founder) Tony Blinken for secretary of State. Avril Haines, who was a founding principal at WestExec, has been nominated for director of national intelligence. Biden also announced that Alejandro Mayorkas, a partner at the law firm WilmerHale and Obama-era deputy Department of Homeland Security secretary, will be nominated to lead DHS. Former Secretary of State John Kerry will bring his fight against climate change to the National Security Council, serving as Biden’s special envoy for climate. More on the picks, which include Jake Sullivan for national security adviser and Linda Thomas-Greenfield for UN ambassador here and here.

— Flashback, via the NYT: “[WestExec Advisors] does not name its clients. It has worked with the philanthropy started by Eric Schmidt, the former Google chairman, and with Google’s in-house incubation unit, Jigsaw. On its website, WestExec says its clients include a leading American pharmaceutical company and a multibillion-dollar American technology company that it helped with ‘safeguarding against trade tensions between the U.S. and China.’

— “‘Those kinds of consulting shops take advantage of weaknesses in current laws, so there is no transparency in their clients and how they are trying to influence public policy for them,’ said Danielle Brian, the executive director of the nonprofit watchdog group the Project on Government Oversight. ‘That’s exactly the kind of people who should not be in an administration.’”

Charles Koch: I Screwed Up

  Mike Allen at Axios:

In his first on-camera interview in four years, Charles Koch told "Axios on HBO" that he "screwed up by being partisan," rather than approaching his network's big-spending political action in a more nonpartisan way.

Why it matters: Koch — chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, which Forbes yesterday designated as America's largest private company — has been the left's favorite face of big-spending political action.

Koch, 85, told me at his home in Wichita that he's disillusioned with his political results, but is optimistic about what he believes will be a less divisive strategy.

• Koch said he wants to elect people "who are going to be champions for ... policies that empower people so they can realize their potential and succeed by helping others succeed."

The mea culpa began with the publication last week of a new book, "Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World," written by Koch with Brian Hooks, who has worked with Koch for 20 years, and is chairman and CEO of Stand Together, founded by Koch as a philanthropic umbrella.

• "Boy, did we screw up. What a mess!" Koch writes. "[P]artisan politics prevented us from achieving the thing that motivated us to get involved in politics in the first place — helping people by removing barriers."
• Koch admits: "I was slow to react to this fact, letting us head down the wrong road for the better part of a decade."

I asked Koch: In business, it would never have taken you so long to course-correct, so why the lag in the public square?

• "I have made many mistakes in business," he said. "But business is a lot easier because the basic nature of it is not conflict. It's not divisive. ... Politics is win/lose."

Hooks told me the Koch network's new emphasis is on "social entrepreneurs":

• "Teachers who are finding new and better ways to help turn their students on" ... people in "business who are empowering their employees to find their gifts ... "social entrepreneurs in communities."

Third member of the Cincinnati City Council this year to be arrested for corruption

 Starting with the first and February and two this month, three members of the nine-person City Council in Cincinnati have been arrested for accepting bribes in return for favorable votes related to development projects in the city. Two were Democrats, and one was a Republican. The recent arrest of Alexander Sittenfeld has upended city politics as he was seen as a Democratic rising star widely expected to be elected mayor in 2021.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/us/politics/cincinnati-city-council-bribes.html

The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by the UAE Embassy in Washington, DC

Following up on yesterday's class when I asked about why the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates would be contributing to a DC Public Schools program, here is today's morning report (mostly an overview of various articles with links) from The Hill, "presented by the UAE Embassy in Washington, DC."

https://thehill.com/homenews/morning-report/526830-the-hills-morning-report 

There were also two ads embedded in the article that were placed very similarly to the actual news-related pictures.

Reform and Reconsideration II

DARK MONEY UPDATE

For Tuesday:

• Berry, ch. 10.
• Cigler, ch. 16

Lobbying, Influence, and the states

• FRENCH LAUNDRY UPDATE
•  Lobbying regulation in the states (Cigler p. 240)
• Isolated state capitals (e.g., Sacramento)
• In most states, secretaries of state are in charge of regulating lobbies and campaign finance.  They are elected officials.
• Other elected officials:
• Treasurers (i.e., chief investment officer)
• Insurance commissioners
• Ag commissioners

FEC 

• Structure
• It has lacked a quorum for most of the year

Campaign Finance

• Brennan Center: "In fact, the idea of a tax credit to encourage political participation is nothing new. Between 1972 and 1986, millions of Americans claimed a federal tax credit to subsidize hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions.13 And over the last few decades, several states have allowed their residents to do the same."
• State tax incentives
• Yang and Democracy Dollars (h/t Eric)
• Counterintuitive idea:  raising hard-money limits (Schatzinger 164-166)
• Super PAC insurance

Recusal and conflicts of interest

• State regulations
• Congressional conflict of interest rules
• STOCK Act and Chris Collins

Government  Capacity (see Drutman 232-234)

• Decline in capacity
• Brain Drain on the Hill
• Oversight capacity

Interest Groups and the Election Outcome

REVERSE LOBBYING! Natasha Korecki and Christopher Cadelago at Politico:

Joe Biden’s transition team has tried to project calm as President Donald Trump refuses to concede and many Republicans — and even one key part of the federal government — continue to have his back.

But behind the scenes, Biden’s advisers are in the midst of a fierce lobbying blitz to get Trump’s allies to crack. They're dispatching emissaries from past administrations — Republican and Democrat — along with a wide array of business and interest group leaders to intercede on Biden’s behalf.

Mike Allen at Axios:

Tom Donohue — CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and longtime confidant of Republican presidents — tells Axios that Joe Biden is president-elect, and President Trump "should not delay the transition a moment longer."

What he's saying: "President-elect Biden and the team around him have a wealth of executive branch experience that should allow them to hit the ground running," Donohue said in a statement.

• "[W]hile the Trump administration can continue litigating to confirm election outcomes, for the sake of Americans' safety and well-being, it should not delay the transition a moment longer."

Why it matters: Even business leaders who held back at first are now saying Trump needs to move on.

• Believe it or not, this is the 16th morning since Election Day — and Biden's victory has looked surer on every one of them.

Business leaders are speaking with one voice:

• National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO Jay Timmons, and other NAM leaders, said the GSA should sign the letter opening transition resources to Biden: "Further, we call on the Trump administration to work cooperatively with President-elect Biden and his team."
• JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon told Andrew Ross Sorkin at the N.Y. Times' Dealbook conference: "We need a peaceful transition. We had an election. We have a new president. You should support that whether you like it or not because it’s based on a system of faith and trust."
• The Business Roundtable, representing top CEOs, on Nov. 7 congratulated "President-elect Biden, Vice President-elect Harris."

The big picture: This is another case of CEOs filling the D.C. leadership vacuum.

Defense and the GOP

Felix Salmon and Hans Nichols at Axios. (Hans attended CMC as a first-year and took Gov 20 with me.)

America's defense contractors aren't celebrating Joe Biden's victory. They haven't accepted defeat yet, but they are digging in for budgetary battles.

Why it matters: The biggest companies in the military-industrial complex tend to see increasing revenues only under Republican presidents.

By the numbers: Axios looked at the total revenues for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics — the heart of America's defense industry. (We didn't include Boeing because so much of its business is civilian aircraft.)

• At the end of the Clinton administration, the four companies collectively generated just under $70 billion over the previous 12 months.
• George W Bush then launched two costly wars in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. By the end of his term, those four companies' revenue had risen 136% to $165 billion.
• The Obama years saw effectively no change, with total 12-month revenues dipping slightly to $163 billion after eight years.
• Then Trump arrived. For all his determination to pull American troops out of foreign conflicts, he also promised to replenish stockpiles that were depleted by the Budget Control Act. Annual revenues of the four defense contractors rose 30% in his first three years in office, hitting a peak of $211 billion.

 

 

Reform and Reconsideration I

 For Thursday:

• Schatzinger, ch. 7

Hamilton argues against representation by occupational category:

It is notorious that there are often as great rivalships between different branches of the mechanic or manufacturing arts as there are between any of the departments of labor and industry; so that, unless the representative body were to be far more numerous than would be consistent with any idea of regularity or wisdom in its deliberations, it is impossible that what seems to be the spirit of the objection we have been considering should ever be realized in practice.

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN DID LOBBYING.

And the First Amendment specifically protects the right to petition government:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Ethics Code for Lobbyists

Jack Abramoff and a partner charged Indian tribes about $85 million. They overbilled the tribes and split the proceeds. CNN summary:

• Starting in 2001, Abramoff persuaded a Louisiana tribe to pay nearly $30.5 million for "grassroots work" to a Scanlon company, which, in turn, kicked back nearly $11.4 million to Abramoff.
• In 2001 Abramoff also persuaded a Mississippi tribe to give nearly $14.8 million to Scanlon, who funneled nearly $6.3 to Abramoff.
• A Michigan tribe gave $3.5 million to Scanlon's firm in 2002; $540,000 ended up in Abramoff's pocket.
• Also in 2002, a Texas tribe gave $4.2 million to Scanlon, and nearly $1.9 million found its way to Abramoff
• According to e-mail obtained by a Senate committee, Abramoff made a fortune from the tribes while privately mocking tribal leaders as "monkeys" and "morons."
• In one instance, [Assistant Attorney General Alice] Fisher.Fisher told reporters, Abramoff took fees from one client, then worked for another client with competing interests. She did not identify the clients.

After Abramoff came reforms (Drutman 226) with loopholes, as National Journal reports:

The 2007 rules pre­vent a lob­by­ist for a cor­por­ate cli­ent from plan­ning or pay­ing for a law­maker’s trip. But the same rules al­low such a trip if it’s paid for by a for­eign gov­ern­ment. So while it does re­main il­leg­al for, say, a Google lob­by­ist to plan and ac­com­pany a law­maker on a free trip abroad, if that same lob­by­ist does so on be­half of Tur­key, it’s per­fectly leg­al. And if that lob­by­ist hap­pens to have both cor­por­ate and for­eign-gov­ern­ment cli­ents (as most do), they can still go abroad so long as it’s a coun­try and not a com­pany foot­ing the bill.

And that’s only one of the loop­holes the in­flu­ence in­dustry has ex­ploited to help law­makers score free travel. Today, a wide net­work of non­profits — many with a clear agenda and some with ex­cru­ci­at­ingly tight ties to Wash­ing­ton’s biggest lob­by­ing op­er­a­tions — are put­ting to­geth­er in­ter­na­tion­al con­gres­sion­al ex­cur­sions. Some of these pa­per non­profits have no staff or space of their own; they simply share with a sis­ter or­gan­iz­a­tion that lob­bies. Yet eth­ics of­fi­cials in Con­gress have deemed them to be in­de­pend­ent enough. In one in­stance, a lob­by­ist lit­er­ally re­gistered a new non­profit — in his own of­fice — that went on to pay for con­gres­sion­al travel abroad.

Big cor­por­a­tions bank­roll some non­profits, whose trips, in turn, can fea­ture stops at the busi­nesses of their cor­por­ate fun­ders. As a bo­nus, the grow­ing use of 501(c)(3) non­profits, which oc­cupy the same char­it­able rung of the tax code as soup kit­chens and the Amer­ic­an Red Cross, means that the wealthy and cor­por­ate donors un­der­writ­ing con­gres­sion­al travel can do so in secret and get a tax write-off along the way.

And who was the first person to go to prison?  JACK ABRAMOFF HIMSELF

Nathaniel Popper at NYT (6/25/20):

Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist whose corruption became a symbol of the excesses of Washington influence peddling, is set to return to jail for violating the law that was amended in response to his earlier crimes, law enforcement officials said on Thursday.

Prosecutors said Mr. Abramoff, 62, is the first person charged with flouting the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which was amended in 2007 after details of his earlier scheme, one of the biggest corruption scandals in modern times, emerged. He pleaded guilty to the lobbying violations and to criminal conspiracy for secretive and misleading work he did on behalf of cryptocurrency and marijuana projects, according to court documents.

Prosecutors in San Francisco said that in 2017, Mr. Abramoff secretly agreed to seek changes in federal law — and met with members of Congress — on behalf of the marijuana industry without registering as a lobbyist.

“Abramoff was aware of the obligations to register as a lobbyist in part because Congress amended provisions of the Lobbying Disclosure Act in 2007 in part as a reaction to Abramoff’s past conduct as a lobbyist,” court documents said. 

Revolving door loopholes

Transparency loopholes

Reform:  a low-priority issue for the public

Last Assignment, Fall 2020

 Pick one of the items below.

• Berry and Wilcox (p. 239) write that government "should ensure that disadvantaged sectors of society that are inadequately represented by interest groups receive support to improve their representation in the political process."  Identify an example (not including campaign finance) of a program to do so. (See here for ideas. Also see here and here.)   Appraise and explain how it fared.
• Appraise any of the reform proposals in Schatzinger, ch. 7 or Drutman, ch. 10.. Going beyond what either book describes, identify arguments for and against the proposal.  Would you support it?  Does it have a chance in the next two years?  (Note that "Super PAC Insurance" is an idea by CMC alum Nick Warshaw.)
• Pick any topic related to the course readings, subject to my approval.

Instructions:

• Document your claims. Do not write from the top of your head. 
• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. Please submit papers as Word documents, not pdfs. 
• Cite your sources with endnotes in Chicago/Turabian style. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. 
• Turn in essays to the class Sakai dropbox by 11:59 PM, Friday, December 4. I reserve the right to dock late essays a gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that. 

Abramoff Story 2011

 

RealClearPolitics and Right-Wing Funding

This excerpt offers good examples of how to use public records to connect the dots.

Jeremy W. Peters at NY Times:

From 2016 to 2017, donations to the Real Clear Foundation more than quadrupled to $1.7 million, with nearly all of that coming from two entities that conservatives use to shield their giving from public disclosure requirements, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. In 2018, the Real Clear Foundation had its best year yet, reporting more than $3 million in donations. One donor whose identity is disclosed on tax filings is Andrew Puzder, who was briefly Mr. Trump’s nominee for labor secretary and writes opinion pieces for Real Clear.

Public records from those years and interviews show how the leadership and donor base of Real Clear and The Federalist overlapped.

One of The Federalist’s major financial backers is the conservative, pro-Trump businessman Richard Uihlein, according to two people with knowledge of the website’s finances. Mr. Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, who runs their family’s multibillion-dollar packaging business, have been known to steer money toward hard-right candidates that many other Republicans have avoided, like Roy S. Moore, the former Alabama judge whose Senate campaign unraveled after women accused him of pursuing them and fondling them when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers.

Ms. Uihlein was also known for her outspokenness against public health lockdowns and revealed last week that she and her husband had contracted the coronavirus.

Together the couple have become one of the biggest sources of investment in conservative politics in recent years. They have given $250,000 to the Real Clear Foundation through their family nonprofit, tax records from 2017 and 2018 show.

The Federalist’s funding remains opaque, but its ties to Real Clear are detailed in public documents. Two top executives at Real Clear Politics were named in disclosures filed by Federalist entities. Mr. [John] McIntyre, the Real Clear co-founder, is listed as a director of The Federalist’s umbrella corporation on a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that also bears his signature.

The Real Clear publisher David DesRosiers was listed as a director with The Federalist’s nonprofit foundation. And as reported by BuzzFeed and others, The Federalist has used the same address that Real Clear Politics uses as the location of its Chicago office.

Biden, Interest Groups, and the Transition

 From Politico Transition Playbook:

JUST HOW ANTI-FACEBOOK IS BIDEN? Biden told The New York Times’ editorial board in January that he’s “never been a fan of Facebook,” but he doesn’t seem to mind hiring Facebook alumni to staff his transition team. Zients, one of the transition’s co-chairmen, is a former Facebook board member. The transition’s general counsel, JESSICA HERTZ, was previously a lawyer for Facebook and helped the company navigate the FTC’s investigation on data privacy and Cambridge Analytica. Former Facebook lobbyist LOUISA TERRELL is heading up the transition’s congressional relations. AUSTIN LIN, a program manager at Facebook from 2017 to 2018, is on the four-person agency review team tasked with the Executive Office of the President. And ERSKINE BOWLES — who spent eight years on Facebook’s board — has been advising the transition team.

From Politico Influence:

BIDEN MEETS WITH CEOs, LABOR LEADERS ON ECONOMY: President-elect Joe Biden is meeting today with more than half a dozen business and union leaders in the latest sign that the country’s industries are not waiting for President Donald Trump’s concession or his longshot legal challenges to Biden’s victory earlier this month. The incoming commander in chief will meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Target CEO Brian Cornell and Gap GEO Sonia Syngal as well as the heads of the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union, United Autoworkers, United Food and Commercial Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, according to the transition team.

A LOOK AT THE BIDEN AIDES ON K STREET: Biden’s “ambitious Democratic agenda—including raising corporate taxes—faces formidable opposition from a power center he knows well: former aides who are now lobbyists or advisers to companies and industries at odds with his goals,” The Wall Street Journal’s Julie Bykowicz and Brody Mullins report. “Mr. Biden, unlike the four most recent presidents, has deep ties to the Washington establishment from his 44 years in the Senate and as vice president. He named at least 40 current and former registered lobbyists to his transition team. For much of his career, Mr. Biden has advocated policies that he said would reduce the influence of lobbyists and special interests, including pushing for expanded government financing of political campaigns. His campaign platform included seeking legislation that would require lawmakers to publicly disclose meetings and communications with any lobbyist or special interest trying to influence the passage or defeat of a specific bill.”

 

 

Biden and Lobbyists

 Eric Lipton and Kenneth P. Vogel at NYT:

The alarm bells sounded immediately among some progressives when President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. released the list of advisers this week who will help him with the transition at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the $5 trillion federal budget and shapes regulations on everything from labor standards to air pollution.

Mr. Biden’s team included executives from Amazon Web Services, Lyft, Airbnb and a vice president of WestExec Advisors, a Washington consulting firm whose secretive list of clients includes financial services, technology and pharmaceutical companies.

“This puts us at a state of high alarm,” said Jeff Hauser, who runs a liberal group called the Revolving Door Project, which has been pressuring the Biden administration to stay away from not only lobbyists but also individuals coming out of the business world whom Mr. Hauser and other activists call “corporatists.”

His concerns are an early manifestation of a percolating and broader clash between the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the more establishment members of Mr. Biden’s core team over the role of corporate executives, lobbyists and consultants in the incoming administration.

CEOs Talk About Threats to Democracy

Tom Krisher and Paul Wiseman at AP: 

 Only a few of America’s CEOs have made public statements about President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his election loss, but in private, many are alarmed and talking about what collective action would be necessay if they see an imminent threat to democracy.

On Nov. 6, more than two dozen CEOs of major U.S. corporations took part in a video conference to discuss what to do if Trump refuses to leave office or takes other steps to stay in power beyond the scheduled Jan. 20 inauguration of former Vice President Joe Biden. On Saturday Biden was declared the election winner by The Associated Press and other news organizations.

During the conference, which lasted more than an hour, the CEOs agreed Trump had the right to pursue legal challenges alleging voter fraud.

But if Trump tries to undo the legal process or disrupts a peaceful transition to Biden, the CEOs discussed making public statements and pressuring GOP legislators in their states who may try to redirect Electoral College votes from Biden to Trump, said Yale Management Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who convened the meeting.

“They’re all fine with him taking an appeal to the court, to a judicial process. They didn’t want to deny him that. But that doesn’t stop the transition,” said Sonnenfeld. “They said if that makes people feel better, it doesn’t hurt anything to let that grind through.”

On Saturday, the day after the video meeting, the Business Roundtable, a group that represents the most powerful companies in America, including Walmart, Apple, Starbucks and General Electric, put out a statement congratulating Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris. It largely reflected the conversation from Friday’s video meeting, saying the group respects Trump’s right to seek recounts and call for investigations where evidence exists.

Litigation and Religion

 For Tuesday:

• Cigler, ch. 13, 15
• Drutman, ch. 10.

Citizen Suits

• Clean Water Act
• Safe Drinking Water Act
• Clean Air Act 1970
• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

 POLICY CAUSES POLITICS

• The Environmental Bar
• The targets of regulation hire lawyers, too

Litigation

• The Cost of Litigation & the Contingent Fee System
• Test Cases
• The Becket Fund and Sympathetic Plaintiffs

America and religion:  comparative data

The connection between religion and political advocacy dates back to the start, with the fight against slavery

• Slave revolts: Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner
• John Brown
• Stephen A. Douglas objected: "It is true that they describe themselves as ministers of the gospel, but they claim to speak in the name of the Almighty on a political question pending in the Congress of the United States. It is an attempt to establish in this country the doctrine that a body of men, organized and known among the people as clergymen, have a peculiar right to determine the will of God in relation to legislative action. It is an attempt to establish a theocracy to take charge of our politics and our legislation. It is an attempt to make the legislative power of this country subordinate to the Church."

The Civil War left US religion even more decentralized:  some Protestant denominations (e.g., Baptists) broke into Northern and Southern wings.

The Social Gospel Movement and ... The American Economics Association

Prohibition, Evangelicals, and the Scopes Case

The Civil Rights Movement and SCLC

"I have observed with profound sorrow the role that many religious leaders have played in urging passage of this bill, because I cannot make their activities jibe with my concept of the proper place of religious leaders in our national life … This is the second time in my lifetime an effort has been made by the clergy to make a moral question of a political issue. The other was prohibition.  We know something of the results of that." -- Senator Richard Russell, arguing against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Congressional Record, June 10, 1964, p. 13309.

The Religious Right in the 1980s and The Johnson Amendment

Current status

• Major religious groups
• Non-Catholic Christian denominations

Documentary on The Federalist Society

 

Nonprofits, Ideology and Litigation

 For Thursday, Cigler, ch. 5

Researching Nonprofits

• Limitations of public information
• Candid
• Guidestar and Form 990
• SourceWatch (liberals investigating conservatives) and Capital Research Center (conservatives investigating liberals)

Think Tanks and Foundations on the Right

• A local tank and: Birthright citizenship
• Heritage
• The Bradley Foundation  and its 2016 Form 990 ... COVID Activities

Think Tanks and Foundations on the Left

• Progressive Infrastructure Map (we also discussed on 10/13)
• Center for American Progress

Legal Groups

• Networking
• Analysis
• Litigation

The Legal Network of the Right

• The Federalist Society
• FedSoc and SCOTUS
• Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast “Our opponents of judicial nominees frequently claim the president has outsourced his selection of judges,” McGahn said at a Federalist Society event last year. “That is completely false. I’ve been a member of the Federalist Society since law school, still am, so frankly it seems like it’s been in-sourced.”
• FEDERALIST SOCIETY FUNDING 
• JCN
• Becket Fu
• ACLJ and Jay Sekuilow

On the Left

• Constitutional Accountability Ctr
• ACLU
• Alliance for Justice network

Citizen Suits

• Clean Water Act
• Safe Drinking Water Act
• Clean Air Act 1970
• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

 POLICY CAUSES POLITICS

• The Environmental Bar
• The targets of regulation hire lawyers, too

Litigation

• The Cost of Litigation & the Contingent Fee System
• Test Cases
• Sympathetic Plaintiffs

Pro-Trump Super PACs in 2020

At Politico, Natasha Korecki and colleagues have a long piece on the 2020 campaign.  This excerpt deals with super PACs.

In early July, [Sheldon] Adelson contacted Republican strategist and former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove. Adelson was Trump’s most generous giver, but he was uncomfortable with the existing pro-Trump super PACs. He wanted help in creating a new outfit he could feel confident in.

By that point, the pro-Trump America First Action super PAC had been raising money for two years. But there were widespread doubts about the group in the donor community. Big givers saw it as a dumping ground for ex-White House officials like former press secretary-turned-“Dancing with the Stars” contestant Sean Spicer.

That month, Steve Hantler, an adviser to Republican mega-donor Bernie Marcus, contacted veteran Republican strategist Chris LaCivita. Would he be interested in putting a super PAC together?

LaCivita, the architect of the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth takedown of John Kerry, signed on. Organizers had also spoken with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who had been eager for an alternative super PAC to emerge, though the talks quickly stalled and major donors would have strongly objected to his appointment.

Word of the nascent super PAC encouraged Trump advisers, who were longing for air cover. But as the summer wore on, the Trump campaign grew antsy. Where was this much-anticipated organization? It didn’t help that Trump had antagonized Adelson during an early August phone call in which he falsely accused the mega-donor of not doing enough to help him, possibly delaying matters further.

The outfit, Preserve America, would finally get off the ground in early September with millions of dollars in funding from Adelson and Marcus. By then, the Trump campaign had gone a full month getting clobbered by Biden on the airwaves.

The Trump team’s summer blackout may have been costly: Exit polls showed that more than 70 percent of voters decided on whom to vote for before September.

California Ballot Measures

 Jeremy B. White at Politico:

The myth of lockstep liberal California took a hit this election.

Voters in the deep-blue state rejected a progressive push to reinstate affirmative action, sided with technology companies over organized labor and rejected rent control. They are poised to reject a business tax that had been a decadeslong priority for labor unions and Democratic leaders.

President Donald Trump regularly portrays California as a land of complete liberal excess, and Democrat Joe Biden currently has 65 percent of California's vote. Yet decisions on ballot measures this week reflect a state that remains unpredictable, flashing a libertarian streak with a tinge of fiscal moderation within its Democratic moorings.

“We’re not going to go for everything that’s progressive," said Mindy Romero, head of the University of Southern California's Center for Inclusive Democracy. “We think of ourselves as such a progressive state, and I’ve always said we’re a blue state but really we’re many shades of blue."

Results as of Friday afternoon SUBJECT TO CHANGE!

Proposition Title			Yes Votes	%	No Votes	%
Yes	14	Bonds to Continue Stem Cell Research	6,216,139	51.0%	5,964,961	49.0%
No	15	Property Tax to Fund Schools, Government Services	5,979,003	48.3%	6,405,666	51.7%
No	16	Affirmative Action in Government Decisions	5,366,655	43.9%	6,854,393	56.1%
Yes	17	Restores Right to Vote After Prison Term	7,289,248	59.0%	5,059,072	41.0%
No	18	17-year-old Primary Voting Rights	5,549,073	44.8%	6,825,260	55.2%
Yes	19	Changes Certain Property Tax Rules	6,233,543	51.4%	5,896,647	48.6%
No	20	Parole Restrictions for Certain Offenses	4,556,754	37.7%	7,529,008	62.3%
No	21	Expands Governments’ Authority to Rent Control	4,922,437	40.3%	7,300,324	59.7%
Yes	22	App-Based Drivers and Employee Benefits	7,178,076	58.4%	5,116,019	41.6%
No	23	State Requirements for Kidney Dialysis Clinics	4,400,274	36.0%	7,812,042	64.0%
Yes	24	Amends Consumer Privacy Laws	6,778,632	56.0%	5,317,765	44.0%
No	25	Eliminates Money Bail System	5,349,338	44.4%	6,688,378	55.6%