Campaign Finance

On February 10, 2008, Bobby Jindal, the newly elected governor of Louisiana, said in a big speech:

Today, we take the first step towards building a better Louisiana where our ethics laws are the gold standard - letting the rest of the world know that corruption will no longer find a home here. The actions that we will take over the coming days will have a lasting impact on generations to come and help erase Louisiana’s image created by generations past.

It's nice to see conflicts of interest being opposed by political party leaders, but not when they're taken out of context. The opposition this week has been limited to public sector unions. The conflict involves public sector unions making contributions to candidates who will be in a position to deal with union compensation.

Local governments cannot afford to do the level of due diligence that corporate compliance offices do on a regular basis. But it is worth looking at how corporate compliance offices and corporate executives deal with other entities that are found to be involved in unethical activities.

In a Pay to Play Law Blog response to my recent blog post on a discussion that had appeared in the Pay to Play Law Blog, the argument is made that pay-to-play laws that go beyond disclosure, such as prohibiting campaign contributions from government contractors, set up a slippery slope toward the undermining of constitutional rights and toward higher compliance costs by law-abiding companies. This argument turns out to be a logical fallacy, which allows me to get bac

After being convicted of money laundering for the purpose of illegally giving corporate money to Texas legislative candidates last week, Tom Delay said, "This is an abuse of power. It’s a miscarriage of justice. I still maintain my innocence. The criminalization of politics undermines our very system and I’m very disappointed in the outcome."

I too have, on several occasions, criticized the criminalization of government ethics. But are Delay and I talking about the same thing?

Former House majority leader Tom DeLay is currently on trial for laundering $200,000 in PAC contributions from corporate lobbyists through the Republican National Committee to Texas candidates. In Texas, corporate money cannot be used for political campaigns.

U. S. Senate candidate for Connecticut Linda McMahon was, until she announced her candidacy, the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and her management of that company has been her principal argument for electing her. WWE announced yesterday that it will be "giving away WWE merchandise near select Connecticut poll locations on Election Day."

According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, business organizations are arguing that government employee unions have a conflict of interest that should prevent them from supporting candidates for office. "Public-sector unions have a guaranteed source of revenue—you and me as taxpayers," the executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Workforce Freedom Initiative is quoted as saying.

It's always nice to see clever, simple, effective forms of disclosure that convey the most important information in the most readable, quickly understandable way. Such a form of disclosure is suggested in a paper published a month ago by Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, and summarized in an Election Law Blog post that ran yesterday.