Posted on 04/30/2021 7:19:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
They know it is wrong. You have told them it is wrong. But our kids do it anyway, don’t they? Of course, we know once caught, they promise they will never do it again. Ever. They promise they get it, but you walk away from the conversation thinking, “They don’t get it.”
That was the feeling one got from the state of California after hearing oral arguments this week in two significant First Amendment cases before the United States Supreme Court: Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta and Thomas More Law Center v. Bonta.
The cases challenge California’s effort to force all non-profits that solicit support in the state to disclose to the government sensitive information about their major donors.
Although the state recognizes the glaring constitutional burdens on individual rights to freedom of speech and association, it still claims it needs the private information to guard against fraud. Besides, the state promises to keep the information super confidential.
Only they haven’t. As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out during oral arguments, the district court that heard the evidence in this case found that “there was a pervasive, recurring pattern of inadvertent disclosure by California.” In other words, they promise to keep the donor information private, but they don’t. They leak them intentionally or by error, ensuring, as the court also found, that “donors would likely be subject to threats and harassment.”
So, what do you do when your child has a pervasive and recurring pattern of misbehavior that endangers others? Do you just need them to promise you (one more time) that they will never do it again?
That’s what California argues should satisfy the U.S. Supreme Court. To the finding of a pervasive and recurring pattern of illegally disclosing confidential information,
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The only reason that I see for these donations to be reported is for tax purposes. If the donors want them secret, then do it for them. If they want them to be used for tax purposes, thus business, then they will have to be reported. Make the reporting voluntary and you might get two things: more donations and better use of the tax system. That is until the state decides to decrease the tax level or stop the write offs. Put it in the hands of the market and keep the state out of it unless volunteered. Example, the federal income tax wasn’t enacted until 1913. 125 years after the ratifying of the Constitution.
Math: When I go to a restaurant, and I plan to use plastic, I always carry cash for a tip. I refuse to accept a short term loan that carries interest so the server that deserved it gets screwed and I don’t get my money sent to a government fund I don’t wish. If I have to, I cut down the tip to protect myself. So it is not the deserved amount.
If I donate to charities, I want to whole amount going to them I feel they deserve. Not cut by faceless bureaucrats getting a piece of the action. Wasn’t that the operating tactic of the mafia?
wy69
RE: If I donate to charities, I want to whole amount going to them I feel they deserve
Do you want your donation and name to be leaked to the press? This is what’s happening now.
Several years ago, Brandon Eich, the genius who invented the web scripting language JavaScript and CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, donated a few thousand dollars to the Traditional Marriage Initiative in California ( the referendum actually succeeded in preventing gay marriage from being legal in the referendum before the SCOTUS made it NATIONAL ). It was just a quiet donation to a cause he believed in.
Somebody LEAKED his donation to the public and it resulted in a huge brouhaha from the woke employees in Mozilla itself making it impossible for him to perform his duties as CEO. He eventually resigned.
Like I said, make it voluntary for tax purposes. Otherwise, it is not to be released and the privacy of the donor can be protected.
wy69
Communist Party, in Turn, Attempts to Obtain F.B.I. Files
The Federal Government is trying to force the Communist Party, U.S.A., to disclose the names of contributors to its 1976 Presidential campaign. The party, in turn, has subpoenaed files that the Federal Bureau of Investigation says world cost it $36 million to search out.
Gus Hall, the party’s general secretary and two‐time candidate for President, said yesterday it had cited a Jan. 30,1976, Supreme Court decision in which James L. Buckley, then Republican-Conservative Senator from New York, was principal plaintiff against the Federal Election Commission.
The decision, Buckley v. Valeo, said minor party could win exemption from disclosure rules if it showed “reasonable probability that the compelled disclosure of a party’s contributors’ names will subject them to threats, harassment or reprisals from either government officials or private parties.”
The Election Commission started Federal Court civil suit against the Communist campaign committee last August. It now seeks to quash the subpoena for F.B.I. documents through which the party seeks to show harassment against it since 1936.
‘Could Paralyze Functions
An F.B.I. affidavit filed with that motion says the subpoena would require search of six million volumes with more than 60 million cards, including 26.5 million pages on security matters at Washington headquarters alone, as well as 9,674,000 more pages in its New York office. The result, it said, “could virtually paralyze existing F.B.I. functions.”
Mr. Hall called the party’s first news conference at a headquarters it has occupied for more than a year, in former Family Court offices at 235 West 23d Street. He said his group was the only leftist party on which Federal surveillance had been continued under a stillclassified 1976 order by former Attorney General Edward Levi.
The Federal election law, Mr. Hall said, requires the party to report contributors of more than $100 and to keep records of those giving more than $50. Mr. Hall said that his committee had publicly promised its campaign donors that it would not disclose their names, and that it did not keep records of most of them.
There were more contributors, he said, than members of the party, whose membership he put at between 13,000 and 20,000. Mr. Hall’s 1976 Presidential bid polled 58,992 votes in 19 states.
$500,000 Spent in Campaign
John J. Abt, party counsel, said about $500,000 had been collected and spent in the campaign. Some contributors gave money by check and others were willing to disclose names so that a commission audit, he said, reckoned that about onethird of the $100-and-up givers had been identified.
Mr. Hall said the party proposed to show, among other things, that some corporations ask job applicants to say if they had ever been members of the Communist Party.
The Federal motion to quash the Communist subpoena, submitted by Assistant Attorney General Barbara Allen Babcock, called the subpoena “sweeping in its requests,” of “questionable relevance,” “a fishing expedition” and “unreasonable and oppressive.”
In Washington, the Federal Election Commission refrained from commenting on the Communist Party’s case, which is recorded in court files in both the District of Columbia and the Southern District offices here.
The commission said it had agreed earlier this month on a consent decree with the Socialist Workers Party, allowing that Trotskyist Communist group to keep contributors’ names secret, at least through the 1984 election, but requiring it to keep certain records available.
The Trotskyist group has a separate $10 million damage suit against the Department of Justice for alleged past invasions of members’ constitutional rights.
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