Redstate

In Olderthangandolf's (OTG's) comments we see all the muddled thinking of unlimited disclosure on display. OTG wants to know when we "are dealing with a grass roots organization and when you are dealing with a fake astroturf organization, law firm, or public relations firm busy hiding that they are working for paying clients?"

Grassroots lobbying can mean one of two things. It can refer to lobbying the grassroots - that is, to communicating with real voters, who are most emphatically not "fake," - or it can refer to getting those real voters to contact members of congress. (And of course, it is often both). Either way, the people who are making the decisions - to be upset by an issue, to ignore an issue, to call their congressional representative - are real people, not "fake" people or "astroturf" people. However these people were informed of an issue, they are real people with real views. They are the electorate. They are the "grassroots" of democracy.

Does it matter that they were informed via a paid ad campaign? I don't know - is that really different than if they were informed by a newspaper or TV or radio show, all of which are trying to make a profit, and supported by advertisers who are trying to make a profit? Would it be different if they were informed by neighbors or friends? Are they less likely to vote? More likely? Should we keep track of the books people read, so we know where and how their opinions were shaped?

There is no reason that members of Congress or the U.S. government need to know where citizens get their news, under the force of law, any more than they need to know who we talk to and what we talk about during the day. There is no anti-corruption interest to be served. What OTG seems to believe is that it is somehow corrupting to present voters with ideas - a rather ludicrous proposal that nonetheless has substantial currency with portions of the political left (and right, to a lesser extent) and is very popular with congressmen, who can use such information to threaten, bully, or retaliate. Disclosure is to inform the people about the government - not to inform government about the people.

OTG doesn't, of course, really believe what he adds in the last two paragraphs. We know that, because he tells us nothing about himself, apparently thinking that his ideas ought to stand or fall on their own merit. For all we know, he is a lobbyist for one of the "ethics" groups pushing this bill. And what does his wife do? Or kids? Or parents? Or friends? Who knows what interests he has. If he really believed what he claims to believe, he would reveal this. But he doesn't. And that's it exactly. If you've got a good argument, it doesn't really matter who's paying for it. OTG doesn't have a good argument - just an ad hominem attack.

One of the sadder developments of modern politics - one that, I dare say, has its roots in proposals such as S. 1 - is that we are losing our ability to debate issues. Instead, as with OTG, everything is ad hominem - as if the merits of an argument could be determined by the identity of a speaker.

Of course, anybody who actually bothers to research me knows that my intellectual interest in these issues long predates my joining a firm or founding CCP. Presumably, OTG knows that, since he obviously did some research on me, but chose not to include that in his post. But if it will make OTG happy, to my knowledge my firm, Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, has no interest one way or the other in this legislation (I have consulted no one in the firm on this legislation or this post); and yes, the Center for Competitive Politics is my creation, and yes, it does great work. I'm sure now everyone's view of the original post is quite different, and OTG "feels better."

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

Your post is wildly disengenous. The bill doesn't require require citizens to tell Congress where they get their news. The bill requires people communicating with citizens to disclose whether they are who they say they are, or are instead just a bunch of paid shills.

Me, I would like to know that. I discount, as most people do, advertising. (You can look it up - there are plenty of studies that show that people approach advertising and editorial content differently). Because I tkae advertising with an extra grain of salt, I prefer to know when I am receiving advertising.

Other branches of the government have adopted the philosophy that it's good for people to know what kind of content they are receiving. For example, go to Google. Search for, let's say, "best web hosting." You will notice results to the top and right that bear little labels that say, "Sponsored Links." The "Sponsored Link" label is there because the FTC requires it, and the FTC requires it because it recognizes that people ought to know whether what the search engine presents to them is an ad or not.

More fundamentally, the FTC recognizes that putting more information in the hands of consumers is a good thing. I might still click on sponsored ads. The point is, because I know what they are, I'm in a better position to make an informed decision.

The statute you are so viscerally opposed to does the same kind of thing - it doesn't tell people what to read, and it doesn't tell them whom to support, but it gives them the additional information of knowing what kind of communication they are receiving by putting the bona fides about those sending the information into the public domain.

If it's a lobbying group, and that information is in the public domain, the internet and the blogs can get that information out, and let people know that Citizens for Really Fabulous Discounted Web Hosting is just a front for a couple of domain hosting companies. If, after absorbing all the info that's in the public domain, they choose to support that group, pare dinkum. It's their choice. Empowered with the information, they can still act as they choose.

Who does it serve to keep such information secret and to encourage practices that are deceptive in their nature? Not the public in a democracy, I'd say.

My post does not say that this bill requires citizens to tell congress where they get their news. It does say that Congress is trying to find out where citizens get their news - at least some of it, if it is paid for by what will be defined as "grassroots lobbying firms." But regardless of where we get it, it is none of Congress's business.

The rest of your response makes the same error I see over and over - the assumption that disclosure of this sort will help voters make a decision. How? How will the fact that the group that has just contacted a voter will file reports with the federal government help that voter realized that the message he just heard was advertising? The statute I criticize does not give the recipients any of the information you think it does in any way that would matter at the time. Citizens, it may surprise you, do not peruse the disclosure databases of the IRS and the FEC, but even if they did, they wouldn't get this information soon enough to matter in these cases.

Moreover, there is an important question here - why should we assume that a paid message is less important or less accurate? Are there any unpaid messages in politics? Any organization that runs a grassroots campaign - defined in this bill as contacting just 500 or more citizens - will be spending money. In that respect, all political advertising is paid advertising.

Your lack of concern for privacy - except your own, apparently (please, OlderthanGandalf, we are still waiting for you to disclose your name, your various affiliations, your past voting record, etc.) - is remarkable. Let me ask you this, though, my shy friend: do you believe that your vote should be public? Why not? Assuming that you do not, then you do recognize some reason for privacy. As Steve Hoersting notes in the linked article, disclosure laws could have destroyed the civil rights movement, which is why the Supreme Court struck down Alabama's disclosure law in NAACP v. Alabama. Imagine that you want to finance a campaign to build public support to amend the constitution to allow term limits on members of congress? You would have no fear of retaliation? Imagine if you wanted to build public support to oppose policies favored by John Kerry - do you recall Senator Kerry threatening Sinclair Broadcasting that if Kerry won after they aired an anti-Kerry documentary, Sinclair would be in big trouble?

So what we have here is a law that is of no use to the public in learning identities within the time frame needed - even assuming that that is an unadulterated good, as you seem to - but providing politicians the means to retaliate against unpopular positions, and burdening small organizations with added regulation. Not terribly conservative.

Anyway, we can't really take you seriously, OlderthanGandalf, given that you haven't disclosed anything about yourself. I presume you must be a lobbyist for one of the groups hoping to increase your political power through this law. Any reason not to think that? Why should you be allowed to post here or anywhere on the web anonymously, without the public having that information?

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

Disclosure is more powerful than you think. It's especially useful in quelling fake grassroots marketing, regardless of whether it's political or for products, because the whole astroturf marketing gambit depends on maintaining deception.

Case in point: just a few weeks ago Sony paid some folks to launch some blogs promoting the Sony Playstation. Nowhere did these blogs reveal that they were the product of a Sony marketing campaign. Instead, they pretended to be blogs of enthusiasts who wanted one for Christmas in the worst way.

Using publicly disclosed information that 99.9 % of internet users neither look at nor know how to look up, various bloggers were able to link the blog to Sony. Net result: lots of publicity outing Sony for engaging in underhanded marketing tactics, causing them to pull the fake blogs, and undercutting their other marketing for the product. Net net result: I don't think Sony is going to run a fake blog for a while.

In an age of blogs, exactly the same kind of thing can and will happen with fake grassroots political organizations. This very site has been involved in some of the flexing of blog muscles in the past, and even if this site on a good day has less reach than CNN news during a three minute commercial break, it has been shown to play a very important role in getting information out that might not see the light of day otherwise.

As for disclosing my identity, how about I do it the way you want it done. I'm the Chairman of Really Good Friends of Professor Brad Smith. We've put together a small fund with savings from our paper routes (plus a little more from sources we don't want to disclose), and we are going to make sure that everyone knows exactly what the True Views of Professor Smith really are, or should be. It doesn't matter who we really are; all that matters is who we say we are. Anonymity is one thing, since people know they don't know who you are and discount accordingly, but being able to claim at high volume to be something we most definitely are not is another, and we thank Professor Smith for helping to bring that opportunity to us.

So here is what we learn:
1) "Disclosure is... especially useful in quelling fake grassroots marketing." That's good to know. So is the goal to prevent citizens from gaining information if it comes from certain sources?
2) Even when "99.9%" don't know where to learn the identity of the speaker, others do; so mandatory disclosure isn't really necessary. That is to say, markets and private, voluntary cooperation work. Look, personally I'd rather have the info than have government try in advance to quelch it.
3) You continue not to really believe what you say, because you continue to refuse to disclose anything about yourself; and don't seem to think it is bad politics, or bad for your message, not to make these disclosures. I assume there is a reason you feel the need to hide your identity, and it is interesting that you want that freedom for yourself, but not for others.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

>>You continue not to really believe what you say, because you continue to refuse to disclose anything about yourself; and don't seem to think it is bad politics, or bad for your message, not to make these disclosures.

It is what is called, in economics, a 'revealed preference'. The person who insists that celebrities have a right to privacy, and then buys all the magazines which publish intrusive and salacious articles about celebrities has a revealed preference for invading a celebrity's privacy.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

International Editor of

"So is the goal to prevent citizens from gaining information if it comes from certain sources??

Who is quelling information? The idea is to add to the amount of information in the public domain.

"Even when "99.9%" don't know where to learn the identity of the speaker, others do; so mandatory disclosure isn't really necessary."

What makes you say that the information is in the public domain? If you can identify who is behind, just to make one up, Citizens For Better Astroturf, you have tools I don't have. As it now stands, a group like this can be set up as, say, a Nevada corporation with the ownership undisclosed, registering its websites at Go Daddy so the Whois information is not released, and go to town with George Soros's money behind them with no one able to pierce through who they really are. It seems to bother you that you don't know who I am, even though I'm not important and I'm not spending any money. Why shouldn't it bother people that they don't know who is behind groups that do become important and do spend money? Why are you so vested in empowering people to be deceptive?

"I assume there is a reason you feel the need to hide your identity"

It's mainly the outstanding federal warrants for my arrest. It's not really an ideological thing.

"[W]hy should we assume that a paid message is less important or less accurate?"

Why ask why? The point is, people do discount commercial speech. Whether you prefer to believe the academics or the folks who do marketing for a living, the answer is beyond dispute - people put more trust in peer speech than in commercial speech. I think there are good reasons to withhold trust from someone whose interest in you stops at what they can get you to buy, but that's ultimately beside the point. The point is, we know that people do value the speech differently, and do want to know what kind of speech is being presented to them. Ethical marketers don't hide when they are engaging in paid speech.

I would rather trust the invidual citizens, and let them have the information about the nature of the speaker so they can make their own decisions. Your approach is rife with what I would consider Democratic, big government disrespect for the individual citizens - they are too dumb or lazy too look at government records, and government can better decide for them that they have no legitimate interest in knowing what kind of speech they are hearing. Taking information off the table on the theory that citizens don't need it and can't use it wisely is way too nanny state for my tastes.

Nice try, OTG, but no dice. So it is now "Democratic, big government" to oppose a government mandate requiring citizens to report certain of their political activity to the government? Nice Try.

So it is now disrespect for voters as "too dumb or too lazy" to believe that they are capable of hearing arguments and deciding if they are good or bad without a government regulatory system? Nice Try.

So it now the "nanny state" to oppose government regulation of political activity? Nice Try.

"It seems to bother you that you don't know who I am, even though I'm not important and I'm not spending any money." Not at all. If you've read my posts, I assume it is clear to you that I couldn't give a damn who you are; I have repeated noted, however, that you simply want a double standard - you hide your identity, but demand that all others reveal theirs; you argue that you cannot make a judgment without knowing the speaker's background, but you don't reveal yours. What this shows is that you don't really believe your own argument. You don't really think people need to know your identity, and you do appreciate that people have reasons to speak anonymously. Apparently, The question is, why do you support this bill? The answer seems to be, from your earlier post, that you wish to "quell" certain speech - that was your description, your words, not mine - the law is "useful in quelling" certain speech that you don't like. OK. But don't try to get us buy that this is about anything other than quelling speech that you don't like, seeing as how you are unwilling to live by the principles you otherwise put forth. Nice Try.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

I never actually said I was for this law. In fact, if you read my first post, I expressly reserved my opinion.

It is true that I'm extremely unimpressed by your arguments, which seem to me to be both naively doctrinaire and dodgy, and that I'm concerned about the harm to honest political discussion done by well-funded astroturf groups that practice to deceive about who they are and whom they represent, but that does not net out to my supporting the law. There are many, many bad situations in this world that are made worse by passing a law intended to make them better.

In line with that, there may be arguments that would move me to oppose this law, either as written or as conceived. These arguments would be more pragmatic, less absolutist, more willing to recognize that there were multiple sides to the issue, less stridently doctrinaire. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for you, of all people, to issue a nuanced, sensitive, balanced opinion on any issue, much less this one. I will continue to read and watch, and form my opinion in due time, not that anyone other myself will care one bit.

I'm glad your mind is open on the law, although you've got precious little time to decide.

As for the ad hominem attacks, I couldn't return them if I wanted to, because we know nothing about you. Of course, that's one of the good things about anonymity - we have to actually address each other's arguments. If I were speaking anonymously here, you'd have to address my arguments on the merit, rather than attack me.

So you've been a good example of one problem with this law. Thanks.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

You have every right to ignore my statements on the merits, repeating the same talking points in each post, but please don't pretend that my comments in this thread amount to some kind of ad hominem thread. The arguments are there, if you are capable of responding to them on their merits, which so far you have not.

As for my taking advantage of the opportunity to be anonymous, you should, as a law professor, understand that in the absence of an affirmative legal duty, one can argue that a new legal duty that applies to all might be a good thing without feeling compelled to unilaterally apply that duty to oneself. That you have repeated uncritically throughout this post that my choosing to take advantage for now of the rules as they exist must mean that I cannot be in favor of different rules reflects either sophistry, or worse, a less than rigorous analytical approach to issues. I trust you do better when unpacking the rule of law for your students.

Others can judge who has considered the merits, and who has argued such things as, e.g. "I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for you, of all people, to issue a nuanced, sensitive, balanced opinion on any issue." Part of my point is that the entire argument that "we must know the speaker's identity" fosters and is based on the notion that arguments should be judged ad hominem, rather than on their merits.

As to your argument that you are not under a legal duty now to disclose, but that shouldn't preclude from arguing for mandatory disclosure, I would agree. But I will also note that that is not the standard you would have me live by - you began your very first post in this thread by demanding that I - though under no legal duty to do so - disclose not only my name (which obviously makes a great deal of info about me readily available) but also the law firm with which I work; whether it stands to gain from the defeat of the bill; and that I disclose my role as a board member for the organization for which the person who wrote the article I linked to works.

Do we know each other? Are you Paul Ryan?

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

Couldn't you have at least guessed Trevor Potter?

I'm not nearly as far from you ideologically as who you seem to think I might be. I admired your sending out the alarm on McCain-Feingold affecting bloggers, and some of your general positions on the perversity of campaign finance law are dead on.

Here, I don't think you are addressing or even acknowledging the reasons people might find fake grassroots organizations problematical, which cripples the rest of your analysis, but that's only today's issue.

to make these arguments? I think we should be told.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

International Editor of

No one is paying me to make these or any arguments. In fact, at this stage of my life, setting aside dividends and other asset based returns, no one is paying me to do anything.

Feel better?

I don't feel better about it. It has no bearing on the weight of your argument.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

International Editor of

So is an argument that is perfectly sensible and rational when put to you for free, suddenly bad if the person who puts it to you has been paid?

This seems to run into some serious problems. It implies that a client representing himself in either PR or legal terms is more likely to be honest than one with a paid professional advisor governed by a series of ethical constraints. That seems unlikely to me.

It also implies that people with time on their hands have more rights in the political and commercial marketplace than do people who are cash rich and time poor. The first group is allowed to influence people, but influence from the second group needs to be discounted.

You would be more convincing if you made your arguments openly, instead of simply slanting your descriptions of another party's activity with emotionally-loaded words and phrases like 'paid shills'.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

International Editor of

Notice two things:

1) it appears you never actually had any problem figuring out when letters and correspondence were being generated by an organized campaign. So what added benefit is there in knowing who is behind it? These are your constituents and you have to deal with them (or, as it sounds, they are not your constituents and you don't have to deal with them.) But either way, there is nothing in this "transparency" that helps you better represent your constituents, or prevents the corruption of your congressman. You say it would be "helpful" if you could differentiate between issues people care enough about to sit down and write a letter on, and those they just click - yet you have no difficulty actually telling the difference.

Look, I worked in government too - I headed a federal agency for crying out loud. We got over 100,000 comments in response to one rule making, and tens of thousands in response to another. It took me and my staff about 5 minutes - and that is not an exaggeration - to figure out which comments were mass mail generated. It is not hard.

Moreover, it is a mistake to think that those generated comments do not represent real opinion - albeit it may not be as strongly held as the carefully written, individual letters. They do reflect how real people feel based on what they know. So we recognized that these emails reflected the views of real people, we discounted for their mass generation, and we moved on. I understand your complaint. I've been there, done that. And it's not that hard.

2) None of the people who are sending you these form letters is going to stop doing it because reports are filed with the federal government. Heck, they couldn't even if they wanted to, because the calls would come before the disclosure.

It's post like these that discourage me about the conservative project - you claim to hate McCain-Feingold, but, well, here maybe we should expand it and make it broader. Good thinking.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

McCain-Feingold actually restricts certain organizations from participating in certain forms of political speech. That's a blatant First Amendment violation. I've always understood the conservative position to be eliminating campaign finance restrictions, coupled with full public disclosure of campaign donations. I.e., let people engage in political speech as much as they want to, and let the voters decide whether there's a problem with it.

In response to the question of how disclosure would help, I think of it mostly in terms of setting priorities. It's certainly not difficult to distinguish between the extremes -- form letters about some project outside of your district versus a personal letter from a grandmother who's having a problem with her Social Security -- but there are a lot of gradations in between. The ultimate question for me was, which letters do you take seriously and put time into researching the issue, and which ones do you dash off a two-sentence stock response or ignore altogether? That decision becomes a whole lot easier if you find out that the group generating the letters is overtly partisan.

Again, I don't think there are any issues of corruption involved here. And I'll acknowledge that congressional self-interest is the primary driver of this idea. I'm not even completely sure that I think it's a good idea. But I also agree with you that reporting requirements are not actually going to put a damper on grassroots lobbying activities, which leaves me wondering where the harm is.

on who is defined as a lobbyist.

If I write a blog urging a certain position on a certain bill, am I a lobbyist? Do I need to notify the government of my actions in blogging?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the bill in question would only require disclosure if you spend a certain amount of money in an effort to get people to contact their congressman (for instance, by running an ad on TV).

Under the bill, contacting 500 citizens - even by email - and urging them to contact congress makes you a grassroots "lobbyist" required to report to government. There is no minimum spending required. It applies even if you have no lobbyist in Washington and never make a campaign contribution. Arguably, this could hit almost every blogger, although in the end I doubt we would see that type of enforcement. But it will definitely suck up all types of small grassroots organizations.

See S. 1, Sec. 220. See this analysis by the Free Speech Coalition.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

It looks like Sec. 220 only refers to "paid attempts".

Right. Any "paid effort." So a small organization with say, 3 total employees, has a blog and pays one of the three employees, as a small part of his job duties, to blog. Covered. A blogger incorporates for liability and/or tax purposes. His site earns him $18,000 a year. He pays himself. Apparently covered.

It's true, as I noted, that the law is unlikely to reach most individual bloggers. We should not let that minimize its scope.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

First time, you said "Under the bill, contacting 500 citizens - even by email - and urging them to contact congress makes you a grassroots "lobbyist" required to report to government."

Well, that's clearly not the case; there has to be some form of payment. And even then, there needs to be some outside client who's paying you for the effort.

Adam,

As I read the bill, and those lawyers whom I respect read the bill, if anybody gives you money to blog, you have a "client." So if you have a small non-profit that takes contributions, and then you blog or email 500 people (one of the best ways for a small non-profit to get its message out), you've got a problem. It is less clear if that applies to commercial advertisers, but it clearly could - if I operate a blog and communicate with 500 voters, and if I take advertising to support my blog, it appears that I may have a client. This latter interpretation, I suspect, will not hold, but it is not obvious that it won't. The former - take a contribution, blog, you must report - seems to be exactly what the bill has in mind.

It is ironic that all the lefties at Daily Kos are supporting this bill, while Jay up above is arguing that it will hurt the liberals more than conservatives. Me, I don't really care who it hurts more - I'm opposed to government regulation of my speech and the speech of others; of regulation of my right to hear as well as my right to speak.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

None of this matters if you're not a grassroots lobbying firm (and thus required to disclose), and you can't be that unless you spend $25K/quarter on these activities.

I did not say that reporting requirements "are not actually going to put a damper on grassroots lobbying activities." Quite the opposite, my point, and the point of the Hoersting article to which I linked, is that they will do exactly that. What I said was, disclosure is of no use to the public recipients of campaigns, as they will not know of the reporting or the databases at the time they make their decisions. Moreover, even if they could have that information, it is not necessary - as this bill requires - that all the various vendors report to the government.

By the way, I have never understood the "conservative position" to be full public disclosure of everything. The question is, what needs to be disclosed. Grassroots lobbying does not. And disclosure here will in many cases have a chilling effect on political speech.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

Professor Smith, I was just reading a couple of your responses to olderthangandalf further up in the thread, and noted that one of your concerns is that members of Congress would retaliate against the groups that do grassroots lobbying. While I can honestly say that's not something my office would do, I do realize that there are plenty of members of Congress -- on both sides of the aisle -- who don't hesitate to engage in that kind of politics. Of course, the same is true of FEC reports today. Some members of Congress retaliate against organizations that donate money to the "wrong" candidates. But I do think that's an important consideration.

Once again, I am not convinced one way or another about this legislation, and I'm probably leaning more towards opposition now. I guess the thing that seems kind of surreal to me is that conservative groups have been so active in fighting it and talking as if this is part of some concerted liberal effort to destroy their influence. They're giving themselves way too much credit. Folks, the Left is *much* better organized on this front than the Right. My boss comes from a 2-1 Republican district, and I would estimate that 70-80% of the mail we got was generated by liberal or Democratic Party-affiliated groups. I can only imagine what Republican members from actual swing districts are getting. No, that's not a valid reason for restricting the activity, any more than it was for the awful "527" bill the GOP tried to push through last year. But having seen how grassroots lobbying actually works out in practice, the whole tone of this debate just strikes me as weird. I can only hope conservatives will have as much energy when the Democrats try to shut down areas where we actually do have an advantage, like with the so-called "Fairness Doctrine."

The problem would have been that King's organizations did spend money on grassroots lobbying. A march of thousands of people on Washington doesn't just happen - it is organized. In fact, the government did make various attempts to learn more about the identity of the funders of the civil rights movement, leading in large part to the Supreme Court decision in NAACP v. Alabama, upholding the right to anonymous speech. You appear to have a strong preference for regulating political speech, and this article doesn't fit your template. "Arrgh! Must be piece of crap." But maybe it is your assumptions regarding regulating speech that you should question. Is it possible to have a benign speech police?

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

The article is just plain wrong. It is asserting this law would have had an effect on the civil rights movement. I'm saying it wouldn't have made the least bit of difference. Still just an pathetic emotional appeal.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. - Douglas Adams

That explains why the NAACP went to the Supreme Court to keep its sources of funding secret - because forced disclosure would have had no effect on the civil rights movement. Please explain where the article is wrong.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website