Fec Quotes

In 2013, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for violating federal disclosure laws. An FEC audit of the 2008 records of Obama for America found the group failed to disclose millions of dollars in contributions and delayed refunding millions more in excess contributions.8 Excess contributions—sound familiar? But the FEC, you see, is a bipartisan group with an equal number of Democratic and Republican commissioners. As a consequence of both parties having a say, FEC decisions tend to be more balanced. My case, you may remember, was deliberately not referred to the FEC, as such cases typically are. Rather, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York decided to go ahead and prosecute it. Unlike Obama, I did not benefit from a scheme involving millions of dollars in excess contributions; rather, I paid $20,000 in excess of the campaign finance limit. Yet I ended up in a confinement center, and Obama, for vastly more serious offenses, paid a token fine.

Democratic chairwoman Ann Ravel landed there in 2013, straight from a job running California’s FEC equivalent, the Fair Political Practices Commission. She arrived with a mission to turbocharge the FEC’s powers. She’s proposed greatly expanding disclosure rules. She wants to give the FEC power to regulate Internet content. Most disturbingly, she wants to get rid of one commissioner, to end tie votes, and allow one party (presumably hers) to steamroll the other. With

As has been the case far too often in the Obama administration, which may go down as the least transparent administration in history, the IRS refused to respond to our FOIA requests. Judicial Watch was forced to sue the IRS in federal court in October 2013, shortly after Lois Lerner had “retired” to avoid the consequences of her actions. Judicial Watch’s efforts through these FOIA requests and subsequent litigation led to the discovery that in addition to targeting conservatives at the IRS, Lois Lerner sent confidential taxpayer information to attorneys at the Federal Election Commission, which enforces federal campaign finance rules, in violation of federal law. Email communications revealed that Lerner, who formerly worked at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), sent extensive materials on conservative organizations—the American Issues Project and Citizens for the Republic—to the FEC, including detailed confidential information, after inquiries from the FEC attorneys. She disclosed this information in spite of Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, which bars the IRS from sending such information to anyone, including other federal agencies. It also turned out that the FEC attorneys were acting without authority to make such an inquiry, because the commissioners who run the agency had never approved an investigation. The emails discovered by Judicial Watch provided a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies, whose employees, because of their political bias, were trying to target conservative organizations.

Three days after the fire, Mr. Schatzman wakes me from sleep to tell me that he and Mrs. Schatzman have figured out a perfect solution (yes, he says “perfect,” parr-fec, in his German accent; I learn, in this instant, the terrible power of superlatives). They will take me to the Children’s Aid Society, a place staffed by friendly social workers who keep the children in their care warm and dry and fed. “I can’t go,” I say. “My mother will need me when she gets out of the hospital.” I know that my father and brothers are dead. I saw them in the hallway, covered with sheets. But Mam was taken away on a stretcher, and I saw Maisie moving, whimpering, as a man in a uniform carried her down the hall. He shakes his head. “She won’t be coming back.” “But Maisie, then—” “Your sister, Margaret, didn’t make it,” he says, turning away.

called for the repeal of all campaign-finance laws and the abolition of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). It also favored the abolition of all government health-care programs, including Medicaid and Medicare. It attacked Social Security as “virtually bankrupt” and called for its abolition, too. The Libertarians also opposed all income and corporate taxes, including capital gains taxes, and called for an end to the prosecution of tax evaders. Their platform called for the abolition too of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the CIA, among other government agencies.

Per­fec­tion is nearly al­ways im­possible, but it is never dif­fi­cult. Which is to say that if there is any dif­fi­culty to it, any lack of ease, then it has already failed of per­fec­tion. All per­fect things are easy. But they are not fre­quent. The mar­ried life of Charles Peis­son and Dotty was per­fect. From the mo­ment that Charles re­turned to town, everything was per­fect. The mark of per­fec­tion is its very sim­pli­city. Charles had a knack for un­ty­ing knots, for resolv­ing dif­fi­culties. The knack does not con­sist of ig­nor­ing the dif­fi­culties nor in skirt­ing them. It doesn’t even con­sist of fa­cing them and con­quer­ing them in the old copy-book fash­ion, though ap­par­ently they are faced and conquered in an­other fash­ion. Or some of them are never conquered at all. Part of the idea is just not to be dif­fi­cult about dif­fi­culties. If the rest of the idea were un­der­stood, then every­one would have per­fec­tion; and they do not.

Here’s what I think it should entail: First, we must overturn, through a constitutional amendment, the Citizens United decision, as well as the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo ruling, which introduced the absurd notion that spending money on behalf of a candidate or a political party is a form of protected speech. Moreover, we must fight to overturn the 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC decision, which struck down limits on how much an individual can contribute to a national party and to a candidate’s campaign