Just go ahead and read it. I'll explain the context at the end.
. . .Serious dangers of actual and apparent quid pro quo corruption attend the transactions Section 304 regulates—again, the use of post-election contributions to repay a candidate’s personal loans. Consider a simple comparison.
When a campaign uses a donation to fund routine electoral activities (including speech), the money marginally aids the candidate’s electoral odds, but in no way adds to his personal wealth. By contrast, when a campaign uses a donation to repay the candidate’s loan, every dollar given goes straight into the candidate’s pocket. With each such contribution, his assets increase; he can now buy a car or make tuition payments or join a country club—all with his donors’ dollars. So contributions going to loan repayment have exceptional value to the candidate which his donors of course realize. And when the contributions occur after the election, their corrupting potential further increases. At that time, a campaign can use donations only to repay loans, of which some 97% come from candidates. See 11 CFR 110.1(b)(3)(i) (2017); A. Ovtchinnikov & P. Valta, SelfFunding of Political Campaigns, Management Science, Articles in Advance 5 (Apr. 7, 2022) (Ovtchinnikov, Self-Funding). So post-election donors can be confident their money will enrich a candidate personally. And those donors have of course learned which candidate won. When they give money to repay the victor’s loan, they know—not merely hope—he will be in a position to perform official favors. The recipe for quid pro quo corruption is thus in place: a donation to enhance the candidate’s own wealth (the quid), made when he has become able to use the power of public office to the donor’s advantage (the quo). The heightened threat of corruption—and, even more, of its appearance—is self-evident (except, it seems, to observers allergic to all campaign finance regulation).
In addressing that special danger, Section 304 is anything but a “prophylaxis-upon prophylaxis,” as the majority labels it. Ante, at 14. The idea behind that fancy-sounding epithet is just that the statute is a needless precaution: The $2,900 contribution ceiling, the majority asserts, already provides generous protection against the corrupting potential of donations, so the loan repayment provision is unnecessary. See ibid. But that claim ignores that Section 304 targets only a subset of contributions, which raise (as just described) unique corruption risks. When an added protection addresses an added danger, the existence of a basic protection (however ordinarily ample) fails to show the supplement’s pointlessness. Regular seatbelts might suffice to protect drivers on the interstate, but special belts—and roll cages to boot—are essential measures on the racetrack. So too, a $2,900 cap might suffice to prevent corruption from normal campaign contributions—but not from post-election contributions to repay a candidate’s loan, and thus to enrich him personally. When Congress, as here, responds to a heightened threat with a heightened safeguard, the majority has no call to “greet” it “with a measure of skepticism. . . .”
So here, in favor of Ted Cruz's open, knowing and willful violation of federal statutes regulating using direct bribes to handle post election day unpaid personal loans to a campaign from a candidate. . . the majority (not this able three Justice dissent I've quoted above) finds it a burden on speech, too great to be borne, and rewrites a Congressional statute specifically against paying quid pro quo bribes. For this court majority. . . direct bribes are. . . just speech.
The conservative Justices want direct bribery to be the norm in national elections. There can be no other understanding of the line by line "rewriting" of what Congress decided was "conduct" -- a crime -- (not speech).
Just. . . damn.
नमस्ते
No comments:
Post a Comment