Free Republic

San Diego Councilwoman Donna Frye and former Police Chief Jerry Sanders will face questioners under the sponsorship of California Common Cause in a two-hour forum on September 30 hosted by the University of California, San Diego. Co-sponsor of the event is the League of Women Voters of San Diego and the entire proceeding will be televised by UCSD-TV in a production to be repeated numerous times right up to election day, November 8. The debate at UCSD marks the first major engagement between the two candidates of the final election season. A focus of the forum will be the reform...

WASHINGTON (AP) - When California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nabbed an endorsement from Common Cause for his plan to redraw political district lines, some Democrats and open-government activists were dismayed. How could the respected good government group sign on with a governor who's been criticized for his supercharged fund-raising? Why was Common Cause embracing a plan that's picked up little or no backing from other nonprofit groups? "Common Cause is star-struck and so they're lending the governor their brand," said Jamie Court, president of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a Santa Monica-based consumer group that's among Schwarzenegger's chief critics....

WASHINGTON (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will visit Common Cause in Washington Thursday to seek support for his plan to redraw political district lines. A vice president of the nonpartisan good government group said an endorsement was planned. The meeting comes as the Republican governor faces skepticism - including from GOP leaders - over his proposal to let a panel of retired judges redraw congressional and state legislative district boundaries in California as early as next year. That job is currently done by state lawmakers, and under the normal timeline it wouldn't happen until after the 2010 census. Schwarzenegger's press...

The Shadow Party: Part I By David Horowitz and Richard Poe FrontPageMagazine.com | October 6, 2004 Part 1: Origins "My family is more important to me than my party," declared Senator Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, as he spoke from the podium of the Republican National Convention on September 1. "There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush." [1] Many Democrats howled in outrage at Miller's "betrayal" - former President Jimmy Carter in particular. In an angry personal letter to the Georgia senator, Carter accused Miller of...

Advocacy groups challenge Fox News slogan By JAKE COYLE The Associated Press 7/19/2004, 8:05 p.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News' use of the slogan "Fair and Balanced" constitutes deceptive advertising, two political advocacy groups claimed Monday in a petition filed with the Federal Trade Commission. Liberal MoveOn.org and historically nonpartisan Common Cause assert that Fox News' reports are "deliberately and consistently distorted and twisted to promote the Republican Party of the U.S. and an extreme right-wing viewpoint." Alleging consumer fraud, the complaint calls for the FTC to order Fox News, consistently the highest-rated cable news network, to cease...

<p>SACRAMENTO - After refusing money from single-interest trade associations, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted donations from members of a building group who combined their individual contributions and sent them in as one.</p> <p>While the tactic is legal, critics said it flew in the face of the Republican governor's stated policy of not taking money from single-issue lobbying organizations.</p>

Madison - Wisconsin unions and businesses gave $1.3 million to a national Democratic Party committee, which then returned much of it to an organization prosecutors say Sen. Chuck Chvala illegally ran to skirt state campaign-finance laws, a new report released Thursday charged. Using new Internal Revenue Service data, the non-partisan group Common Cause in Wisconsin was able for the first time to list donations from Wisconsin - including $430,000 from the state's largest teachers union - to the Democratic Leadership Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C., before state elections in 2000 and 2002. Wisconsin contributors gave more to the national committee...

<p>ASHINGTON -- The president of Common Cause is facing allegations that she violated federal election laws in her Democratic race for the US Senate last year, causing embarrassment for the nonprofit lobbying group that is a leading advocate for campaign finance reform.</p>

The loony left has decided to drag out its favorite bogeyman in an effort to defeat a decades-old regulation whose days are - and ought to be - numbered. The bogeyman is a former owner of this newspaper - one Rupert Murdoch. And the regulation is the so-called cross-ownership rule, which has long prohibited the ownership of a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same city (except for those grandfathered in, and 50 cities where a waiver allows the major newspaper to own a TV station as well). The Federal Communications Commission, under the leadership of Chairman Michael Powell,...

Campaign fundraising reports for Chellie Pingree, a former Democratic Senate candidate form Maine who now heads Common Cause, contain numerous infractions that may prompt an audit by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), The Hill has learned. The prospect of an election commission audit of Pingree has raised eyebrows among campaign finance experts and lawyers because the well-known government watchdog group spearheaded the passage of the landmark Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act last year. In fact, campaign finance regulation has become Common Cause's signature issue in recent years. Pingree, who last year lost her bid to oust Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), became...

<p>Common Cause issued a report Wednesday that said cigarette manufacturers were one of the big winners in California's last legislative session.</p> <p>The report prepared by the campaign finance reform group's Education Fund in Washington, D.C., said tobacco companies dramatically increased the amount of money they spent on lobbying at the Capitol and escaped an increase in the cigarette tax toward the end of the legislative session while the state's budget deficit was being debated.</p>

Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau AUSTIN -- The Texas chapter of Common Cause, a nationwide citizens lobbying group, has less than two months to raise $30,000 or face shutting down its office here. Suzy Woodford, Common Cause Texas executive director, said the state office ended the last fiscal year on Dec. 31 with a $30,000 deficit. Since then, the national office has being paying operating costs for the Texas office and Woodford's salary. The nonprofit group is funded by dues and contributions from members and supporters. "The bottom line is that the National office of Common Cause has informed...