{"id":185784,"date":"2014-08-15T18:40:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T23:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/15\/i-sure-picked-the-wrong-week-to-stop-sniffing-glue-constitutional-right-to-bribe-edition\/"},"modified":"2014-08-15T18:40:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T23:40:00","slug":"i-sure-picked-the-wrong-week-to-stop-sniffing-glue-constitutional-right-to-bribe-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/15\/i-sure-picked-the-wrong-week-to-stop-sniffing-glue-constitutional-right-to-bribe-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"I Sure Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Constitutional Right to Bribe Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, once again, the &#8216;Phants are looking at a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2014\/08\/14\/gop_lawsuit_wall_street_has_a_constitutional_right_to_corrupt_politicians_partner\/\">1<sup>st<\/sup> amendment challenge to anti-pay to play regulations<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Wall Street is one of the biggest sources of funding for presidential campaigns, and many of the Republican Party\u2019s potential 2016 contenders are governors, from Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Perry of Texas to Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin. And so, last week, the GOP filed a federal lawsuit aimed at overturning the pay-to-play law that bars those governors from raising campaign money from Wall Street executives who manage their states\u2019 pension funds.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">With the $3 trillion public pension system controlled by elected officials now generating billions of dollars worth of annual management fees for Wall Street, Securities and Exchange Commission regulators originally passed the rule to make sure retirees\u2019 money wasn\u2019t being handed out based on politicians\u2019 desire to pay back their campaign donors.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In the complaint aiming to overturn that rule, the GOP plaintiffs argue that the SEC does not have the campaign finance expertise to properly enforce the rule. The complaint further argues that the rule itself creates an \u201cimpermissible choice\u201d between \u201cexercising a First Amendment right and retaining the ability to engage in professional activities.\u201d The existing rule could limit governors\u2019 ability to raise money from Wall Street in any presidential race.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, a spokesman for one of the Republican plaintiffs suggested that in order to compete for campaign resources, his party\u2019s elected officials need to be able to raise money from the Wall Street managers who receive contracts from those officials.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cWe see (the current SEC rule) as something that has been a great detriment to our ability to help out candidates,\u201d said Jason Weingarten of the Republican Party of New York \u2014 the state whose pay-to-play pension scandal in 2010 originally prompted the SEC rule.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Because bribery is protected speech, I guess.<\/p>\n<p>No, this is not <i>The Onion<\/i>, but I wish it were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, once again, the &#8216;Phants are looking at a 1st amendment challenge to anti-pay to play regulations: Wall Street is one of the biggest sources of funding for presidential campaigns, and many of the Republican Party\u2019s potential 2016 contenders are governors, from Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Perry of Texas to Bobby Jindal &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1094,970,1000,969,985,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-finance","category-corruption","category-elections","category-evil","category-regulation","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}