Posted on 12/27/2006 10:33:26 AM PST by girlangler
November 16, 2006
FEC fines Sierra Club By Jim Snyder
A Federal Election Commission settlement with the Sierra Club will likely put new limits on how explicit outside groups may be when trying to influence voters.
The environmental group agreed to pay a $28,000 fine to settle charges that it had paid for a brochure that expressly advocated the election or defeat of candidates in the 2004 presidential and Senate races from its corporate treasury.
Because the Sierra Club brochure was found to contain express advocacy, it was determined to be an independent expenditure.
Campaign finance laws prohibit money from a corporate treasury to pay for independent expenditures.
FEC Chairman Michael Toner described the settlement as “one of the most important express advocacy cases the commission has resolved in recent years.”
The settlement provides a bit more clarity to a Supreme Court decision, McConnell v. FEC, that found that the definition of what constitutes express advocacy goes beyond so-called “magic words,” such as “vote for” or “vote against.” That had been the previous standard used.
Ping
$28,000! That's chump change to these bozos. It should have been 28 million!
SCS
28 million might have gotten their attention.
CFR is a direct violation of the framer's intent in the First Amendment. If we're not allowed to question our government, openly advocate or criticize candidates based on their positions, then the Second Amendment comes into play.
For the greatest campaign finance fraud in history and conciliation agreement acknowledging 721K not declared, Hillary's campaign was fined 35K. Then, she filed her fourth false FEC report in January 2006.
Why?
Because you don't agree with them?
Be careful of what you wish on others because it's just a matter of time before the precedent will be used on YOU?
It would be better for all of us if you'd reserve your outrage for the fact that a government agency was able to fine someone for free speech. That's the outrage.
Either you defend the Constitution or we soon won't have one!
Every time the feckless FEC issues its findings and levies a fine, it is long, long after the fact and too late and the fine too laughingly small to have any effect so far as serving the cause of fairness and justice is concerned.
Speaking of Liberal baloney, Boston news this am...CBS (channel 4), mentioned that Governor Elect Lavall Patrick's 'idea' committee had come up with more than one hundred new ways to spend taxes...Support for the Arts right at the top of the list. He's already rescinded the abolishment of tolls on the Turnpike. God forbid a dem turn his back on that goldmine! A few other delirious ideas were discussed, and it seemed clear that Boston is to be the East Coast San Francisco. The cops are not happy. We are in big trouble.
Do you think the FEC will go this easy on the conservative groups they are going after for the same thing? We'll see but I don't think so.
This better make it into the 2008 commercials along with Nancy Pelosi's FEC fines and all the other Dem law breaking.
I have mixed emotions about this since, yes in view of the law the Sierra Club Deserved to be fined, yet the law the inspired the Fine is an infringement on the freedom of speech! Something we were supposed to be garented.
League of Conservation Voters 527 and 527II -- $180,000
MoveOn.org Voter Fund -- $ 150,000
Swiftboat Veterans and POWs for Truth -- $ 299,500
I respectfully disagree. No government agency has any business or right to tell people what they can say in the context of political speech. I hope this goes to the courts. Since this is a liberal advocacy group maybe the foolish liberal judges will be fooled into ruling in their favor. Of course the liberal judges will probably rule that environmental groups are exempt from CFR, and CFR will continue to apply to everyone else.
P.S. The Sierra Club is still a bunch of leftist morons. A bunch of rich leftist elitists who believe that the wilderness belongs to them and their "snowy owls" and the rest of us should keep out.
A good start.
Nice to see it, but I agree that it's meaningless. :(
actually its was taken over by a bunch of rich liberal lawyers .they took over the club in order to sue, sue , sue
everyone and to obtain great wealth, power, and peddle there leftist politics.
the original founder now openly lectures against them and takes them to court on occasion.
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