It’s been almost ten years since a watershed moment for money in politics. On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, allowing corporations and unions to spend money in politics in an unprecedented way.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), in the decade since the decision, non-party outside groups have spent $4.5 billion in campaigns, including almost a billion dollars from groups that don’t have to disclose their donors.
Since the Citizens United decision, there have been more cases and regulatory rollbacks that make it harder for the average person to figure out who’s funding candidates, parties and issue groups.
This has created a more prominent role for groups like CRP. It’s probably the best-known outfit in the small world of campaign finance investigations. Data from CRP’s online news outlet, Open Secrets, shows up in news reports, research papers, campaign ads, and even on comedy shows, usually delivered by Shelia Krumholz, the group’s executive director.
Sheila Krumholz is regularly featured on cable news and C-SPAN, but also once featured in a Comedy Central skit about campaign finance.
“Sheila’s just a rock star in this field. She is somebody that I think everyone who writes about this, and researches in this field, looks to as an authoritative voice,” said Ellen Weintraub, chair of the Federal Election Commission.
The FEC is one of the sources for the data CRP uses to create its charts and graphs and tables unveiling hidden money moving through the political system. Staffers also comb through tax records, business licenses and legal documents.
Shelia Krumholz in the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Center for Responsive Politics. (Kimberly Adams/Marketplace)
“I feel pretty evangelical about the need for transparency in politics,” said Krumholz, who joined CRP back in 1989 as an executive assistant. At that point, she recalled, what’s now the Open Secrets website was a book.
That book, said Krumholz, was “a huge tome,” 1,500 pages long, cost more than one hundred dollars, and took a lot of legwork to compile.
“We often would have to physically go to the Federal Election Commission to literally look in dusty filing cabinets to get information,” Krumholz said.
Now most of that data is online and free, but hard for most people to understand. So Krumholz and her staff spend most of their time organizing, labeling and tagging information.
CRP’s critics argue that while simplifying campaign finance data can be helpful, at times, some of the organization’s breakdowns can be too broad.
Brad Smith, a former FEC chair who runs the Institute for Free Speech, which works to ease some campaign finance restrictions, said at times “this effort to find the route to the donor becomes more misleading to the public that it does become informative.”
CRP over-emphasizes certain types of political money since the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates, Smith argues.
“For example, things like dark money,” Smith said, “if you read sort of how the information is presented, you would think we were just become had become awash with this kind of spending.”
That kind of money, where donors can stay secret , is just a small part of campaign funding. But Smith is right — it does get a lot of attention.
Which is fine with Krumholz, who makes the point that the money hardest to trace probably deserves a bit more scrutiny. She said one of the reasons CRP has become more prominent is because the broader public is increasingly interested in campaign finance.
“I think people get that money is hugely influential,” Krumholz said. “It’s not everything … and yet, for the vast majority of races, about 90% of the races, the candidate who spends the most wins on election day.”
And, she argues, the source of the money that gets them there matters.
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OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
