{"id":134641,"date":"2017-09-11T09:19:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T15:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=134641"},"modified":"2017-09-11T12:05:52","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T18:05:52","slug":"need-moar-money-political-campaigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/11\/need-moar-money-political-campaigns.html","title":{"rendered":"Because we need MOAR MONEY in political campaigns!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Various House GOP members are adding in little bits and bobs of campaign finance deregulation into different budget bills, because clearly they think that finding more ways (and more hidden ways) to let people spend their way to political success will <del>favor their party<\/del> make us all More Free!<\/p>\n<p>Among the featured ideas:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[C]hurches may be able to contribute to candidates without fear of losing their tax-exempt status, furthering President Donald Trump\u2019s promise to \u201cget rid of and totally destroy\u201d a law that forbids such activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, what could <i>possibly go wrong<\/i> with letting churches <del>launder<\/del> pass on tax-exempt donation directly to political campaigns and candidates. How could that possibly corrupt the political process, or make blur the bounds of church and state (to the detriment of both)?<\/p>\n<p>Remember the reason that churches are tax-exempt because they serve a socially beneficial purpose, in terms of charitable services, and because the power to tax churches could be used to persecute them. The reason is <i>not<\/i> to let churches as an organization (vs. individual church-goers) donate directly into the political process.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Corporations would be able to ask their employees to donate to unlimited numbers of trade associations\u2019 political action groups instead of limiting employee solicitations to one group per year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Because companies never, <i>ever<\/i> strong-arm employees into donating to political causes, and if they solicit for trade association PACs on a regular basis, well, that will just make it harder to detect such shenanigans (with <i>never<\/i> take place).<\/p>\n<p>Other proposals on the table?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Prohibiting the IRS and SEC from regulating corporate political spending. Because since it&#8217;s no problem, why have anyone regulating it?<\/li>\n<li>Prohibiting the federal government from requiring federal contractors to disclose their political activities and contributions. Because how could federal contractor political donations <i>possibly<\/i> lead to corruption in how federal contracts are awarded?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Remember, these are the folk who keep saying they are here to &#8220;drain the swamp.&#8221; From everything I can see here, they simply want to make it deeper.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"sm2wp\"><p><a style=\"display: inline;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/republicans-tuck-further-deregulation-of-campaign-financing-into-house-spending-bills-2017-09-09\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"max-width: 650px;\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/proxy\/-mKN2K43ao-V-DDrkmrwM_Y7OLP-jlpHIpCRTss81OC3wY6wqDUJVX5d4GnY5w7AyQZh75MeF7_NjBrQE8wl5HwRb2mn-i_rlHLtFcaTblacKwYxu0da7K45UJw_nmxJifHl7u2IcNI=w506-h910\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: large;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/republicans-tuck-further-deregulation-of-campaign-financing-into-house-spending-bills-2017-09-09\">Republicans tuck new deregulation of campaign financing into House spending bills &#8211; MarketWatch<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/+DaveHill47\/posts\/2hctb2xkM9K\">View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Various House GOP members are adding in little bits and bobs of campaign finance deregulation into different budget bills, because clearly they think that finding more ways (and more hidden ways) to let people spend their way to political success will favor their party make us all More Free! Among the featured ideas: [C]hurches may &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/11\/need-moar-money-political-campaigns.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Because we need MOAR MONEY in political campaigns!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,109,374],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts","category-church-state","category-money-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Paul-Ryan-speaker-of-the-house.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":46212,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/03\/political-pulpits.html","url_meta":{"origin":134641,"position":0},"title":"Political pulpits","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Nov-14 2:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the bottom line: churches get tax exemption on money donated to them and on their assets. To then use those donations and assets for explicit political purposes gives such donations a favored status over ordinary political donations (which are not tax deductible) and church a favored status over other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132739,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/02\/coming-soon-to-a-pulpit-near-you.html","url_meta":{"origin":134641,"position":1},"title":"Coming Soon to a Pulpit Near You","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Feb-17 6:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Trump's vow to \"destroy\" the Johnson Amendment -- which prevents churches from preaching about specific candidates or else potentially lose their tax-exempt status ...... is actually probably a good thing.Which sounds like a weird thing for me to say, since I find church-state entanglement to be almost always to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30323,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/24\/preaching-political-candidates.html","url_meta":{"origin":134641,"position":2},"title":"Preaching political candidates","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 24-Sep-12 1:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Maybe it's time to simply do away with tax exemptions for churches. Because it leads to tangles like this.The purpose of such tax exemptions (which are statutory law, not Constitutional right) is that churches ostensibly perform charitable work for the community, and, secondarily, to avoid taxation from being used as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135269,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/02\/coming-soon-pulpit-near-vote-guy.html","url_meta":{"origin":134641,"position":3},"title":"Coming soon to a pulpit near you: &#8220;Vote for This Guy&#8221;","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Nov-17 11:04pm","format":false,"excerpt":"While it didn't make a big splash in the initial analysis of the House tax reform bill, one provision in there is interesting and disappointing in both small and large ways. The GOP bill will repeal the Johnson Amendment which, back in the 1950s, basically said that a church (or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"Trump and Bible","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Trump-and-Bible.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":31390,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/16\/partisan-preaching-for-particular-people.html","url_meta":{"origin":134641,"position":4},"title":"Partisan Preaching for Particular People","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 16-Nov-12 3:23pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm glad the FFRF is bringing this suit, since it's clear that IRS enforcement of the 1954 Johnson Amendment (banning 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations from campaigning for or against particular candidates -- more http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Johnson_Amendment) has been spotty at best, and non-existent of late.Honestly, though, as church-state-separatist as I am, I'm of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5446,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/10\/money_finds_a_w.html","url_meta":{"origin":134641,"position":5},"title":"Money finds a way","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 10-Mar-04 8:14am","format":false,"excerpt":"Because, remember: campaign finance law will make politics more transparent, more accountable, and less costly. Riiiiight. Led by veterans of presidential and congressional campaigns, a coalition of Democratic Party interest...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Politics &amp; Law&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Politics &amp; Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134644,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134641\/revisions\/134644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}