Campaign Finance

There is a lot of disagreement over whether contingency fee
arrangements between client and lobbyist should be permitted. Many cities,
counties, and states prohibit arrangements where lobbyists are paid
only if they succeed. The principal reason is that this arrangement encourages ethical misconduct. It
encourages lobbyists to do everything they can to win, which may be good in a private adversary suit, but is not appropriate in a public context, where winning
involves changes in public policy or obtaining public contracts, grants, or

It amazes me how many ways elected officials misuse charitable
organizations to engage in ethical misconduct, especially to get
around gift rules. One would think that charities would be
sufficiently sacrosanct. But instead they are frequently used as an indirect form of pay to play, and they have played a major role in getting around campaign finance limitations.<br>
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The form of misuse of charitable organizations that this post will look at
involves a company that wants to get around restrictions on

There is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/us/lobbyists-bearing-gifts-pursue-att…; target="”_blank”">a
front-page article in the New York <i>Times</i> today</a> about
the recent increase in lobbying and entertaining state attorneys
general (AGs), as well as in campaign contributions from businesses
who have a financial interest in decisions that these AGs make,

I keep thinking about the recent line of U.S. Supreme Court campaign
finance cases that limit corruption to "quid pro quo" situations. A
few months ago, I wrote <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/mccutcheon-decision-and-local-governm…; target="”_blank”">a
blog post</a> explaining that the Court's picture of campaign
finance as about political beliefs is not how things work at the

<h4>Old soft money was associated with <i>access</i>, like a wad of
cash that you’d slip to a nightclub bouncer to get in the
door. The new soft money is more like a bulge in one’s jacket
pocket, an implied <em>threat</em> against those who refuse to
comply.</h4><br>
—Dan Tokaji and Renata Strause in <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=62486&quot; target="”_blank”">an Election Law Blog

In 2012, Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown signed a People's Pledge
in their U.S. senatorial race in Massachusetts. The candidates
agreed to donate to a charity of the other candidate's choice a sum
equal to 50% of any advertisement run by any outside group or PAC.
The goal was to let the candidates control their own race and to
prevent outside groups from changing the nature of the race,
especially by running negative ads, as they tend to do. The pledge was successful

You're a government official who has had an ethics complaint filed
against you. You want it go away. What do you do? According to <a href="http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/montana-senate-leader-see…; target="”_blank”">an
article in <i>The Missoulian</i> this weekend</a>, there may be a

"Wheeling" is a term I just discovered. The context is that NJ governor Chris Christie made a campaign
promise to deal with "wheeling," and
then failed to, according to <a href="http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/04/a_chris_christie_reversal_o…; target="”_blank”">a
South Jersey <i>Times</i> editorial yesterday</a>. Here's how the

The big news in the government ethics world this week is C.J.
Roberts' <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-536_e1pf.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">opinion

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unified_Theory&quot; target="”_blank”">According
to Wikipedia</a>, a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is "a model in
particle physics in which at high energy, the three gauge
interactions of the Standard Model which define the electromagnetic,
weak, and strong interactions, are merged into one single
interaction."<br>
<br>