lobbyists – Overlawyered

Free speech roundup, campaign and political speech edition

Walter Olson — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 11:02:04 +0000

“New legislation aimed at curbing foreign influence in U.S. elections also appears to be aimed at curbing Americans’ influence in U.S. elections.” [Cato Daily Podcast with Caleb Brown and Scott Blackburn of the Institute for Free Speech on SHIELD Act]
“Everyone always talks about how much money there is in politics. This is the wrong framing. The right framing is… why is there so little money in politics?” [Scott Alexander]
Free speech advances other freedoms: “Frederick Douglass’s “Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston”” [Law and Liberty, Kurt Lash introduction] The very idea of a gay rights organization once seemed unthinkable in America, and might have remained so “in the absence of a strong and particularly libertarian First Amendment.” [Dale Carpenter, SSRN and Volokh Conspiracy summary]
“That unlimited right to lobby the lawmakers who make decisions that affect your life, your family, and your fortune is one that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) thinks American businesses should not have.” [Peter Suderman; Bradley Smith and Luke Wachob, NRO] A federal appeals court says an independent Missouri activist doesn’t have to register as a lobbyist to talk to lawmakers [Cato Daily Podcast with Caleb Brown and Zac Morgan of the Institute for Free Speech]
“Every Democrat in the Senate Supports a Constitutional Amendment That Would Radically Curtail Freedom of Speech” [Jacob Sullum] Same bunch “Still Fundraising Off Citizens United, Still Wrong About What It Means” [Elizabeth Nolan Brown]
“Essentially, L.A. has passed a law saying people with one interest in a decision by the council can support candidates, but the other side can’t.” [Christian Britschgi, Reason on city’s ban on contributions by developer but not anti-development interests]

Tags: campaign regulation, First Amendment, free speech, lobbyists, Los Angeles

Free speech roundup, campaign and political speech edition is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Pssst! Lobbying is speech. Pass it on.

Walter Olson — Sat, 03 Aug 2019 15:59:30 +0000

My new Cato post tells of New York regulators’ threat to impose large fines and penalties on a woman who they claim spent more than $5,000 to advocate for legislation without registering as a lobbyist. In particular, she purchased billboards and hired a plane to drag a banner as part of a one-woman crusade to ease New York laws on filing claims of sexual abuse.

Tags: free speech, lobbyists, New York state

Pssst! Lobbying is speech. Pass it on. is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 11:01:43 +0000

Fourth Circuit rejects gag order on parties and potential witnesses in North Carolina hog farm litigation [Eugene Volokh]
Eighth Circuit, interpreting Missouri law’s obligation to register as “lobbyist,” leaves open possibility that requirement extends to unpaid lobbyists, also known as concerned citizens [Jason Hancock, Kansas City Star; Institute for Free Speech on Calzone v. Missouri Ethics Commission]
“9 Months in Prison for Forging Court Orders Aimed at Vanishing Online Material” [Volokh] Per one account at least 75 fake court documents have been sent to Google as part of takedown efforts, including an order purporting to come from the UK Supreme Court [same]
The accused pipe bomber had made online death threats against Ilya Somin, libertarian lawprof and friend of this site. Lessons to draw? [Cato Daily Podcast, more]
Entanglement of press and state leads nowhere good: Canadian government to allocate C$600 million in subsidies to newspapers and legacy media [Stuart Thomson, National Post; earlier on press subsidies here, here; some Canadian background from 1983]
Court: First Amendment doesn’t protect Comcast from bias charge over its decision not to carry block of black-owned TV channels [Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica]

Tags: broadcasters, Canada, Eighth Circuit, First Amendment, free speech, Google, lobbyists, Missouri, newspapers

Free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Court rejects claim of liability for lobbying

Walter Olson — Sun, 14 Jan 2018 17:05:52 +0000

A Florida appeals court has rejected a car-crash victim’s lawsuit against a retailer for allegedly lobbying county lawmakers for bad roadway design [Eugene Volokh]

Tags: lobbyists, roads and streets

Court rejects claim of liability for lobbying is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Arizona governor cuts off many public sector lobbyists

Walter Olson — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 04:15:06 +0000

“Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order [last month] that effectively ended all government contracts with lobbyists in Arizona. The order terminated contracts with professional lobbyists at all state agencies, boards and commissions.” In future, state agencies other than the judiciary and independently elected officials will need permission from the governor to hire lobbyists, and Ducey’s office said requests would be “heavily scrutinized” and require documentation that the hiring would be important for the “public health, safety and welfare of the state and the taxpayers.” [Miranda Leo, KTAR; Gov. Doug Ducey order; Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Arizona Republic] A gubernatorial spokesman says outside lobbyists hired by professional licensing and other boards have often “pushed for burdensome regulations, and that these agencies lack sufficient reporting practices.” The move “comes nearly a decade after the Goldwater Institute — a conservative think-tank — recommended it.” [Stina Sieg, KJZZ]

Tags: Arizona, lobbyists, occupational licensure

Arizona governor cuts off many public sector lobbyists is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

EPA’s lobbying on “Waters of the United States”: no big deal?

Walter Olson — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 18:30:43 +0000

My local paper, the Frederick News-Post, ran an editorial on Monday that 1) saw nothing especially wrong in the Environmental Protection Agency’s illegally expending tax money to stir up pressure on Congress to support a wider interpretation of EPA power; 2) claimed that the fuss over tax-paid lobbying was for lack of any substantive critique of EPA’s “WOTUS” (Waters of the United States) rule, although a majority of states have challenged that rule, the farm and rural landowner communities have been up in arms against it all year, and a federal appeals court has agreed to stay it.

So I wrote this letter in response, which ran today. There wasn’t space for me to dispute the FNP’s peculiar notion that to oppose the water rule as exceeding the EPA’s statutory authority is to encourage the “anti-science, climate change denial crowd,” which tends to reinforce my sense that “anti-science” and “climate denial” are turning into all-purpose epithets increasingly unhooked from any particular relationship to science or climate. (cross-posted at Free State Notes)

Tags: advocacy funding, climate change, climate deniers to the wall, Environmental Protection Agency, lobbyists, Maryland, science and scientists, WO writings

EPA’s lobbying on “Waters of the United States”: no big deal? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Using RICO against climate change skeptics an attack on free speech”

Walter Olson — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 04:15:29 +0000

I’m interviewed at Vermont Watchdog about the truly terrible idea of aiming a civil RICO/racketeering action or investigation against the forces of “climate denial” over wrongful advocacy. The notion seems to have some well organized friends, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and, more recently, twenty scientists who recently signed a letter calling for such a probe. “I have no idea how it affects the First Amendment” says one of the letter’s signers, a Vermont scientist, according to a companion report. I should note that when I speak of RICO in the interview transcript, I am referring to the civil-litigation side of the law (“civil RICO”) as distinct from the law’s other wing, “criminal RICO.”

I note, and reject, the idea that the First Amendment protects only truthful speech and thus has no application here because climate skepticism is false. (As Cato and many others argued in last year’s Supreme Court case of Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, controversial speech need not be true to be protected, and in practice an “only truth has rights” rule would give the state a stifling power to punish advocacy in debates that it considers settled.) In substantial part, I note, debate in Washington (and not just in Washington) proceeds by way of advocates’ deployment of half-truths, selectively marshaled data, scientific studies with agendas, and so forth. It is common for both sides to use these techniques. The same techniques are also accepted as standard currency within the adversary process itself, in which the law takes such pride, which makes it particularly absurd to propose defining it as unlawful racketeering to “use dubious information to advance a cause.”

Among those promoting this bad idea: BoingBoing, often regarded as a pro-free-speech site.

P.S. Adapted together with an earlier post into one at Cato at Liberty.

Tags: climate deniers to the wall, First Amendment, lobbyists, racketeering and RICO, tobacco

“Using RICO against climate change skeptics an attack on free speech” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Because only Truth has rights

Walter Olson — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 09:57:19 +0000

Scientists’ “Letter To President Obama: Investigate Deniers Under RICO” is exactly what it sounds like [Greg Laden, ScienceBlogs] We earlier noted, as a step toward attaching legal consequences to unwanted advocacy, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) op-ed “urg[ing] the U.S. Department of Justice to consider filing a racketeering suit against the oil and coal industries for having promoted wrongful thinking on climate change, with the activities of ‘conservative policy’ groups an apparent target of the investigation as well,” as well as Gawker’s call to “arrest climate change deniers.”

P.S. For more on the widely publicized book Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, which condemns various scientists said to be too skeptical of the factual basis for regulation, see links gathered by Judith Curry, including this Reiner Grundmann review. Yet more: “I have no idea how it affects the First Amendment” says Vermont scientist who backs probe of wrongful advocacy [Bruce Parker/Watchdog, quotes me]

Tags: climate deniers to the wall, First Amendment, free speech, lobbyists, oil industry, racketeering and RICO, science and scientists, Vermont

Because only Truth has rights is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Pork promotion’s perpetual payments

Walter Olson — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 13:39:34 +0000

It’s wrong for the law to coerce businesses into paying for lobbying, but that can be hard to prevent from happening in the world of government-mandated agricultural marketing checkoffs [Danny Vinik, Politico via Alex Tabarrok]

Tags: agriculture and farming, First Amendment, lobbyists

Pork promotion’s perpetual payments is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Politics roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 04:05:57 +0000

Prohibition triple threat: Sen. Marco Rubio would “crack down on marijuana if elected President,” cites “damage” alcohol is doing America and is foe of online gambling too;
An ever-so-sympathetic take on invading/disrupting other people’s political events, and don’t even ask what the press coverage would be like if Tea Partiers were doing this to anyone;
Hey, I didn’t meet with a lobbyist! It was a…strategic consultant, yeah, that’s it [Crain’s New York last year]
Ideology matters: Democrats still more likely than Republicans to support rural subsidies even though they now represent few rural areas [David Henderson]
Wisconsin John Doe investigator: “No one is going to know what you and I talk about today.” Uh-huh [Right Wisconsin]
Jack Shafer on Trump’s appeal [Politico] “Trump Lawyer Bragged: I ‘Destroyed’ a Beauty Queen’s Life” [Tim Mak/The Daily Beast, earlier, more]
Harry Reid raises $1 million from trial lawyers after flying to fundraiser on one of their private jets [Politico]

Tags: are you feeling protected?, Donald Trump, Harry Reid, lobbyists, Wisconsin

Politics roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system