Quote of the Day

The always inimitable George Will:

"This year we are told to be horrified by the fact that by November 2008 the presidential contest will have cost $1 billion. Which means that the two-year process will cost half as much as Americans spend every year on Easter candy."

Exactly.

Public Funding for Judicial Elections

I missed last week's lawyer's chapter event on money in judicial elections, but yesterday's Seattle Times had a piece by Bruce Ramsey discussing it - and the topic at large.

Seattle attorney Jenny Durkan spoke for the bill at a recent meeting of the Federalist Society, arguing that all the mudslinging undermines the public image of an impartial court.

Ah, yes. "Mudslinging." Yet another way to say "mudslinging" is "stuff that may be true and relevant but makes my guy look bad." And still another way to pronounce "mudslinging" is "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."

Up for discussion was a pending proposal in the state legislature to allow public funding for those elections, supposedly because they would then be more high minded, less "political," and would allow each side to look "impartial." Whatever that means. According to Ramsey:

Under this proposed system, if you were an unknown figure challenging a sitting justice, you would essentially be forced to file as a private-sector candidate. You would raise your own money. When your spending topped $84,836, for every additional dollar you spent, the government would cut your publicly funded rival (or rivals) a check for the same amount. If you spent $50,000 on a fundraiser that grossed you $60,000, it would be a gain of $10,000 for you, but your opponent would bank a $50,000 check, because that is what you spent.

If a group friendly to you spent $100,000 to slime your government-financed opponent, your opponent would get a check for $100,000. If a group friendly to him did that to you, you would get nothing.

The government would match the spending on your side up to $678,691 in the primary and the same in the general election, if there remained a contest. Your opponent could continue collecting beyond $678,691 if there were any money left, and if there weren't, he would be freed to solicit his private donors. By that time, your private donors might be tapped out.

This, of course, solves none of the "problems" that are being complained about. Mud would still be slung, sides would be taken, "private money" and "special interest groups" (i.e., politically astute and engaged citizens exercising their Constitutional rights) would still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Washington Supreme Court Justices would still be linked to the people and groups who endorsed, supported, and funded their campaigns.

That's democracy. And democracy isn't a "problem" I want to "solve."

What this is really about, of course, is that liberal members of our liberal court actually had to fight for their seats last November, and there were real discussions about issues of judicial activism, the role of the high court, and the extraordinary power of the Justices. And liberals like Durkan and state Senator Oemig (sponsor of the "reform") don't for a second want their hold over the judiciary to be even threatened to be threatened by some moron redneck out in Moses Lake who doesn't even listen to NPR. The concern over the horrors of actually allowing campaigns to influence voters has nothing to do with methodology and everything to do with content of political speech and ideology.

Personally, this is why I think judges should be appointed by the Governor. No judge who must stand for election and re-election can truly look "impartial." The way to insulate the judiciary from political influence is to not let them be politicians. Otherwise, we simply elect a redundant Super-Legislature increasingly signaling their willingness to use their power to mandate their personal policy agendas.

So long as we vote for judges, the state judiciary will be a political (even if remaining officially non-partisan) branch of the government. For better or worse, the people of this state have chosen a political method for checking the power of the judiciary. Until we amend the state Constitution, we need to accept that method of accountability, with all the warts that go with it - including all those dirty, biased, and very partial exercises of our First Amendment rights.

Money in Judicial Elections - Lawyer's Chapter Event

THE PUGET SOUND LAWYERS’ CHAPTER

of the FEDERALIST SOCIETY

cordially invites you to a panel on:

Money and Politics in Washington

Judicial Elections

Moderated by:

The Honorable Richard Sanders – Justice, Washington State Supreme Court

Featuring a distinguished panel:

John Groen – Former Candidate for the Washington State Supreme Court and Partner, Groen, Stephens, and Klinge, LLP

Charlie Wiggins – Partner, Wiggins & Masters, President of the Washington Chapter of the American Judicature Society, and former Court of Appeals, Division II Judge

William Maurer – Executive Director, Institute for Justice Washington Chapter

Jenny Durkan – Office of Jenny A. Durkan, Co-Chair of Citizens to Uphold Constitution

Monday, February 12, 2007

6:30 p.m. to 8:30 pm

The Washington Athletic Club

1325 6^th Avenue

Seattle, WA 98101

$25.00 (includes hors d’oeuvres and hosted bar)

*CLE Credits Pending

RSVP

Diana Kirchheim at 425.453.6206 or dianak@gsklegal.pro

Who Will Protect Free Speech?

The New York Sun is declaring that Sen. McCain has finally seen the light on free speech:

Mr. McCain's epiphany came during debate on the new "ethics" bill the Senate passed earlier this month. Mr. McCain and the Republicans,— joined by seven Democrats for free speech, voted down a provision that would have redefined the word "lobbyist" to include groups like politically active churches, direct mail companies, small nonprofit organizations, and even bloggers.

Under the provision, known as Section 220 of the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007, these "paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying" would have been considered lobbying, meaning that organizations that asked the public to contact their elected representatives would have been regulated like multimillion dollar K Street firms.

As much as I do like John McCain, his poor understanding of the First Amendment is troublesome to me. And I'm not going to hold my breath that he's suddenly become a free speech libertarian. But what's far worse is the fact that the party in power - the one supposedly swept in by people indignant over Bush's imperial and fascist presidency - overwhelmingly voted for the measure.

And it gets worse. Led by Dennis Kucinich, the head of the newly created "Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee" (which is apparently more interested in ferreting out subversives than in addressing out-and-out corruption), the Democrats are once again pursuing a return to the ironically named FCC "Fairness Doctrine." This intrusive balancing requirement would kill an entire medium of overt (and usually conservative) political speech - talk radio - but would leave in tact left leaning but putatively un-political "news" like NPR (where you can't even call in to challenge the speaker). Serious attempts have even been made by Congress to expand this concept to the internet - the ultimate expression of a free press surpassing the wildest dreams of by the Founding Fathers.

Meanwhile, one of those Senators who voted for the measure is, of course, rejecting any public funds for support of her Presidential campaign (as ar most of the candidates) , in order to avoid government control of that money. Good for her, but she ironically argues that her choice to opt out of government control is actually proof of why we need even MORE government control of free speech. Government control of speech is good for you, but not for her.

Political contributions, which fund both political speech and are necessary to petition the government for redress of our variougrievanceses through the political process, are at the heart of what should be protected by the First Amendment. Attempts at "reform" through additional regulation only serve (consciously or not) to suppress and control political speech.

The rich always have had an access advantage to political power, and they always will. Nothing will ever change that. In this country, that's not even always a bad thing - it usually takes hard work, vision, ambition, and leadership to become wealthy. But another big part of that advantage comes from their ability to use their wealth to bypass government control by hiring better lawyers, or even creating a completely independent media outlet (think George Soros).

Logically, then, the more regulation that exists, the harder it will be for the non-wealthy to get their views out, run for office, oachieveve their political ends.

So why are liberals (and too many conservatives) so intent on pushing such regulation? The simple answer is that they don't trust us little people to sift through all that speech out there, and make decisions based on it. That's it. And that attitude is flatly un-democratic and un-American.

The only regulation we should see on political speech is transparency and reporting. Let's keep the marketplace of ideas free. I believe deeply in the wisdom of the American people when we get together and determine the direction of our destiny, more than I have faith in politicians to give me the right answers. Our leaders need to harness this wisdom by opening the floodgates - not trying to restrict and control the information flow. That - far more than Jesus in a jar of urine - is what the First Amendment is really all about.

Death of taxpayer financing of Presidential elections

Great article on taxpayer financing of elections by George Will. I wish I had a dime for every time I've been told that the singular problem of American politics is the sordid money grubbing, at which the sinister Republicans are so much more adept than their intellectually superior but less-Machiavellian Democratic opponents. This inherent unclean-ness and ugliness of American politics could be made to vanish instantaneously by having government finance all campaigns, and disallowing the expenditure of "obscene" sums raised privately. Only then would American politics attain the heightened and rarified plane inhabited by continental European politics. Only then would we avoid the terrible embarassment of electing dummies like Bush, when we have much more intellectually nimble and sophisticated alternatives, like Nader.

I'm glad that taxpayers are overwhelmingly rejecting taxpayer financing of elections ...