Followups

Yianni asked a great question about ambassadors and the revolving door. Dan Coats, currently the Director of National Intelligence, is an illustrative example.  From a 2017 AP story about his appointment:

Former Senator Dan Coats, in line to be national intelligence director, has swung back and forth between government service and lobbying, the type of Washington career that Donald Trump has mocked.

The Indiana Republican, 73, has made four spins through the capital’s revolving door and become wealthy in the process. Since the early 1980s, Coats has either served in government or earned money as a lobbyist and board director. His most recently available Senate financial disclosure, from 2014, shows he had a net worth of more than $12m.

In and out of government, Coats dealt with intelligence, which he would oversee for the Trump administration if confirmed by the Senate. Announcing his selection on Saturday, Trump cited Coats’ “deep subject matter expertise and sound judgment” and government service but did not mention his lobbying.

When Coats first left the Senate in 1999, he abided by the legally required year-long cooling off period before joining a firm that lobbied his former colleagues on behalf of foreign clients.

He resumed government service in 2001 as ambassador to Germany under President George W Bush. In 2005, Coats returned to the US as a lobbyist on behalf of some of the country’s biggest companies, including the defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Five years later, he successfully ran for his old Senate seat.

“This is exactly how people outside of Washington think Washington works,” said Meredith McGehee, a chief at the government watchdog group Issue One.

For those of you writing your last paper on the DiSalvo book, this piece on the Janus decision might be helpful.

The key holding of Janus—deeming the activities of public-sector unions to be inherently political—has momentous consequences under well-established caselaw. First Amendment precedents prohibiting compelled speech are broad and may invalidate any coerced payments to public-sector unions or similar groups.

With Abood overruled as a precedent, what’s next? If the compelled payment of agency fees violates the free speech rights of government employees, taxpayer subsidies of public sector unions should likewise be unconstitutional. In Janus, the Court compared public sector unions to a political party, and indicated that the First Amendment would not permit a state law requiring all residents to sign a document expressing support for a political party’s platform. Compelled financial support is equally problematic, the Court held in Janus, echoing prior holdings in Knox and Ellis v. Railway Clerks: [5]

Mike Spies at Mother Jones:

The National Rifle Association spent $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—more than any other independent conservative group. Most of that sum went toward television advertising, but a political message loses its power if it fails to reach the right audience at the right time. For the complex and consequential task of placing ads in key markets across the nation in 2016, the NRA turned to a media strategy firm called Red Eagle Media.
One element of Red Eagle’s work for the NRA involved purchasing a slate of 52 ad slots on WVEC, the ABC affiliate in Norfolk, Virginia, in late October 2016. The ads targeted adults aged 35 to 64 and aired on local news programs and syndicated shows like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. In paperwork filed with the Federal Communications Commission, Red Eagle described them as “anti-Hillary” and “pro-Trump.”

The Trump campaign pursued a strikingly similar advertising strategy. Shortly after the Red Eagle purchase, as Election Day loomed, it bought 33 ads on the same station, set to air during the same week. The ads, which the campaign purchased through a firm called American Media & Advocacy Group (AMAG), were aimed at precisely the same demographic as the NRA spots, and often ran during the same shows, bombarding Norfolk viewers with complementary messages.“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where illegal coordination seems more obvious,” says a former chair of the Federal Election Commission.

The two purchases may have looked coincidental; Red Eagle and AMAG appear at first glance to be separate firms. But each is closely connected to a major conservative media-consulting firm called National Media Research, Planning and Placement. In fact, the three outfits are so intertwined that both the NRA’s and the Trump campaign’s ad buys were authorized by the same person: National Media’s chief financial officer, Jon Ferrell.
“This is very strong evidence, if not proof, of illegal coordination,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission. “This is the heat of the general election, and the same person is acting as an agent for the NRA and the Trump campaign.”