One promise the current administration has kept was to be transparent. The Cato Institute recently published a policy report by John Samples on DISCLOSE. DISCLOSE was proposed to counter the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the recent decision that said, in terms of sound bites, Congress could not limit the free speech of corporations. DISCLOSE would require candidates to disclose sources of funding.
Now, that seems silly. After all, voters who have to get their cheat sheets to tell you for whom they voted the day after an election are surely going to pay attention to who gives candidates money. Well, that is, if a maven wants to hype some connected dots up about an evil corporation.
More seriously, DISCLOSE in its non-sound-bite verbiage would “prohibit speech by government contractors, TARP recipients, and companies managed by foreign nationals.” Well, that’s just fine. The federal government made banks take the TARP funds they didn’t want, didn’t need, and paid back with interest ASAP. In gratitude for their cooperation, the government is taking away their free speech. Secondly, “government contractors” is not clearly defined. However, one thing is for sure. “Agents of collective bargaining” are not considered government contractors. Oddly, the federal government just pushed for a requirement that state and local governments allow civil servants to collectively bargain. It was, at the time, deemed a harmless act that would increase choice. It is at this point unclear whether anybody who was aggressively snookered into accepting stimulus would be considered a government contractor. However, the exemption for agents of collective bargaining would apply to the state and local governments that did accept it.
