You will NOT criticize the Great Leader!
March 30, 2004 1:14 PM Subscribe
The Republican National Committee is demanding that the Federal Election Commission issue
new rules that would
shut down groups that are in any way critical of President Bush or members of Congress. Under the
proposed rules, nonprofit organizations that advocate for cancer research, gun and abortion restrictions or rights, fiscal discipline, tax reform, poverty issues, immigration reform, the environment, or civil rights or liberties -
all these organizations could be transformed into political committees if they criticize or commend members of Congress or the President based on their official actions or policy positions.
posted by dejah420 (20 comments total)
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-These rules would shut down the legitimate activities of nonprofit organizations of all kinds that the FEC has no authority at all to regulate.
- Nothing in the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law or the Supreme Court’s decision upholding it provides any basis for these rules.
- In the McConnell opinion upholding McCain-Feingold, the U.S. Supreme Court clearly stated that the law's limits on unregulated corporate, union and large individual contributions apply to political parties and not interest groups. Congress specifically considered regulating 527 organization three times in the last several years - twice through the Internal Revenue Code and once during the BCRA debate - and did not subject them to McCain-Feingold.
- The FEC should not, in a few weeks, tear up the fabric of tax-exempt law that has existed for decades and under which thousands of nonprofit groups have structured their activities and their governance. The Internal Revenue Code already prohibits 501(c)(3) charities from intervening in political candidate campaigns, and IRS rules for other 501(c) groups prohibit them from ever having a primary purpose to influence any candidate elections -- federal, state, or local.
- Under the most draconian proposal, the FEC would "look back" at a nonprofit group's activities over the past four years - before McCain-Feingold was ever passed and the FEC ever proposed these rules - to determine whether a group's activities qualify it as a federal political committee. If so, the FEC would require a group to raise hard money to repay prior expenses that are now subject to the new rules. Further work would be halted until debts to the "old" organization were repaid. This rule would jeopardize the survival of many groups.
- The 4 year "look back" rule would cause a nonprofit group that criticized or praised the policies of Bush, Cheney, McCain, or Gore in 2000, or any Congressional incumbent candidate in 2000 or 2002, to be classified as a political committee now, even though the group has not done so since then. This severely violates our constitutional guarantees of due process.
- These changes would impoverish political debate and could act as a de facto "gag rule" on public policy advocacy. They would insulate public officials from substantive criticism for their positions on policy issues. They would actually diminish civic participation in government rather than strengthen it. This would be exactly the opposite result intended by most supporters of campaign finance reform.
- Any kind of nonprofit -- conservative, liberal, labor, religious, secular, social service, charitable, educational, civic participation, issue-oriented, large, and small -- could be affected by these rules. A vast number would be essentially silenced on the issues that define them, whether they are organized as 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), or 527 organizations.
posted by dejah420 at 1:21 PM on March 30, 2004