Private lunar lander is closing in on the first US touchdown on the moon in a half-century
- February 22, 2024
By MARCIA DUNN | AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private lunar lander circled the moon while aiming for a touchdown Thursday that would put the U.S. back on the surface for the first time since NASA’s famed Apollo moonwalkers.
Intuitive Machines was striving to become the first private business to successfully pull off a lunar landing, a feat achieved by only five countries. A rival company’s lander missed the moon last month.
The newest lander, named Odysseus, reached the moon Wednesday, six days after rocketing from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lander maneuvered into a low lunar orbit in preparation for an early evening touchdown.
Flight controllers monitored the action unfolding some 250,000 miles away from a command center at company headquarters in Houston.
FILE – This photo provided by Intuitive Machines shows the company’s IM-1 Nova-C lunar lander in Houston in October 2023. The private U.S. lunar lander reached the moon and eased into a low orbit Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024, a day before it will attempt an even greater feat _ landing on the gray, dusty surface. (Intuitive Machines via AP, File)
The six-footed carbon fiber and titanium lander — towering 14 feet — carried six experiments for NASA. The space agency gave the company $118 million to build and fly the lander, part of its effort to commercialize lunar deliveries ahead of the planned return of astronauts in a few years.
Intuitive Machines’ entry is the latest in a series of landing attempts by countries and private outfits looking to explore the moon and, if possible, capitalize on it. Japan scored a lunar landing last month, joining earlier triumphs by Russia, U.S., China and India.
The U.S. bowed out of the lunar landscape in 1972 after NASA’s Apollo program put 12 astronauts on the surface . A Pittsburgh company, Astrobotic Technology, gave it a shot last month, but was derailed by a fuel leak that resulted in the lander plunging back through Earth’s atmosphere and burning up.
This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander with the Earth in the background on Feb. 16, 2024. The image was captured shortly after separation from SpaceX’s second stage on Intuitive Machines’ first journey to the moon. (Intuitive Machines via AP)
Intuitive Machines’ target was 186 miles shy of the south pole, around 80 degrees latitude and closer to the pole than any other spacecraft has come. The site is relatively flat, but surrounded by boulders, hills, cliffs and craters that could hold frozen water, a big part of the allure. The lander was programmed to pick, in real time, the safest spot near the so-called Malapert A crater.
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The solar-powered lander was intended to operate for a week, until the long lunar night.
Besides NASA’s tech and navigation experiments, Intuitive Machines sold space on the lander to Columbia Sportswear to fly its newest insulating jacket fabric; sculptor Jeff Koons for 125 mini moon figurines; and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a set of cameras to capture pictures of the descending lander.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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The outrageous persecution of Julian Assange
- February 22, 2024
Wednesday marked the second and final day in what could very well be Julian Assange’s last extradition trial in front of the British High Court. For almost five years now, the United States government has been working to get the Wikileaks founder extradited to the US to face charges that he violated the Espionage Act.
Inspired by Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers back in 1971, Julian Assange founded Wikileaks in 2006. Assange’s vision was to develop an online portal where whistleblowers could submit evidence of corporate or government wrongdoing without needing to identify themselves or risk exposure. Once submitted, teams of volunteers and journalists would parse the documents to determine legitimacy. And, if it was determined to be authentic, publish the material straight to the internet so the public could see for itself.
For the last decade and a half, Wikileaks has broken a number of major stories. Many of the biggest came from the Afghanistan and Iraq War Logs, along with the so-called Diplomatic Cables leak, all published in 2010. The leaked documents revealed that not only had the US government committed numerous war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the war on terror, but there had been official efforts to cover them up.
The Iraq War Logs also brought many details to light about the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) use of torture. And, as journalist Keven Gosztola writes in his excellent book about Assange’s current case, after President Barack Obama famously refused to prosecute anyone involved or compensate survivors of the program, the Diplomatic Cables revealed that American officials “had meddled in the justice systems of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain to shield CIA agents, US military officers, and Bush administration officials from prosecution” related to the torture program.
In 2016, tens of thousands of emails of senior Democratic officials and higher-ups at the Democratic National Committee were leaked to Wikileaks. The emails contained politically damaging revelations for the Hillary Clinton campaign—such as details about a series of private speeches the candidate gave to Wall Street executives—and even some evidence of outright corruption, like the fact that the Democratic National Committee had been sharing upcoming questions with Clinton before primary debates.
A year later, the organization obliterated any resulting goodwill it might have enjoyed from the Donald Trump White House when it published the so-called Vault 7 documents. The leaks detailed aspects of the CIA’s cyber warfare capabilities—most notably the agency’s ability to monitor and remotely control newer cars, smart TVs, personal computers, web browsers, and most smartphones.
The leaks infuriated CIA director Mike Pompeo. In response, he turned the agency’s sights on Assange, who had been granted asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London five years earlier. The CIA got UC Global, the Spanish company in charge of the embassy’s security, to secretly record Assange, including while he met with his lawyers, and to send the recordings back to the CIA—a scheme the head of the company would later be charged for in Spanish court.
And according to a stunning Yahoo News report by Zach Dorfman, Sean Naylor, and Michael Isikoff, Pompeo’s CIA then “plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder” by getting UC Global employees to “accidentally” leave the embassy door open. And further, “some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request ‘sketches’ or ‘options’ for how to assassinate him.” According to depositions from UC Global employees, the preferred plan was to poison the Wikileaks founder.
Evidently, a different approach was chosen. In 2018, the US indicted Assange for conspiring to obtain classified material all the way back in 2010. A year later, Ecuador revoked Assange’s asylum, leading to his April 2019 arrest by London police. The following month, the US requested extradition and added seventeen espionage charges against Assange.
The extradition process has dragged on for almost five years, in large part because of concerns over Assange’s safety in US custody. And based on Dorfman, Naylor, and Isikoff’s reporting, that’s a very reasonable concern.
There are so many absurd and outrageous aspects of what the US government has done, is doing, and aims to do to Julian Assange. Chief among them is the fact that everything federal prosecutors want to charge him with under the Espionage Act is composed of entirely legal, and common, components of journalism. The fact that journalists often seek out, obtain, and publish classified material is the reason the US government has been reluctant to prosecute the Wikileaks founder. If Assange’s journalism is a crime, so is much of the journalism at the New York Times, the Associated Press, and every other major outlet in the country.
Bizarrely, the lead US prosecutor in the case has tried to dodge that inconvenient fact by suggesting Assange is not entitled to First Amendment rights because he is Australian. But remember, they are charging him with violations of the Espionage Act, a US law. So, in other words, US prosecutors believe that a foreign journalist operating outside of the United States must abide by US law, but that at the same time, the US government is not constrained by its own laws because that journalist is a foreigner operating outside of the United States.
Julian Assange is not a spy. Nor is he a terrorist or some Democratic or Republican operative. He is a journalist who foresaw the internet’s potential to empower and protect whistleblowers (the anonymous submission system that Assange and his peers envisioned is now standard across the news industry).
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The reason Assange has been in various forms of custody for almost twelve years is not because he committed any real crimes but because he has embarrassed the political establishment.
Today, that same political establishment is feigning outrage over the alleged murder of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, as well as the ongoing imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Moscow, all while it maneuvers to throw a Western journalist into solitary confinement for the rest of his life for daring to break truly incriminating stories.
It’s up to those of us who do actually care about the truth and who oppose not only the misdeeds of the foreign regimes that our governments want to overthrow but, more urgently, the authoritarianism already at work in our own countries to demand that those in charge of the United Kingdom and US governments abide by the principles they have so far only pretended to embody. And that starts with dropping the charges against Julian Assange.
If they refuse to do so, that will reveal more about them than any dissident journalist could.
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Larry Elder: Even after Musk takeover, conservatives are still suppressed on Twitter
- February 22, 2024
The New York Times raised questions about President Joe Biden’s mental fitness after the bombshell special report explaining why there would be no criminal charges against Biden for unlawful possession of documents. Special counsel Robert Hur wrote, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
This Times coverage about Biden’s mental fitness prompted former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan to write:
“Is there no one at these major outlets who is capable of taking a step back and exercising some judgment?
“How about a note from New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger to two key people who report to him directly — the opinion editor and the top newsroom editor — that goes something like this: ‘Katie and Joe, I’m concerned that we’re going overboard with both coverage and commentary about Biden’s age. Let’s keep this in better perspective and tone it down.’ Believe me, those two sentences would make a world of difference.”
In other words, note to the legacy media, particularly to the influential New York Times, “Back off! Circle the wagons!”
This elevates the importance of outlets like the Elon Musk-owned X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk uncovered the extent to which Twitter suppressed posts of conservatives, suppressed posts questioning the then-conventional wisdom of the COVID vaccine, masking and shutdowns, and even briefly shut down the New York Post’s account for its reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story.
When Musk bought Twitter, things changed immediately. Conservatives saw a quick and substantial uptick in followers. But, since then, many conservatives say they experience pre-Musk sluggish growth. So, I recently posted on X the following:
“Dear @elonmusk,
“I can’t be the only one? I believe conservatives are STILL being suppressed — and that new followers are only painstakingly added — because of the anti-conservative, anti-Trump hostility of your deep state Twitter employees. This is a shout out to other conservatives/libertarians on your platform, please tell me if you’ve ALSO experienced the same sluggish growth in new followers, a stark contrast from what happened when Musk first took over when I — and many other conservatives — had an explosion of new followers. Please comment!”
The comments were fast and furious:
— “I think people are afraid Big Brother is watching.”
— “Larry is correct, @elonmusk. #throttled.”
— ” I agree, my new followers have slowed down. I was sent a message that my tweets would be made less visible because of the content I was posting. Twitter felt I was trying to manipulate others. I asked for a review, but no response — nothing has changed.”
— “I agree. Mine have slowed down, lost followers, etc.”
— “Yeah, I assume that there is a slew of typical San Franciscans still working at X and doing what they can to sabotage conservatives every way they can.”
— “I’ve had a surge in followers, but they’ve suspended me from following back 3 days and some limitations on what I can like. I got tired of this during the last election and closed my account and came back thinking things were fixed. They said it’s an algorithm issue.”
— “Looks like Mr. Musk needs to clean house again!”
— “Dead right. Elon still has some house cleaning to do — and it won’t happen with the current commie CEO.” (This refers to the hiring of former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino.)
— “Yep. As soon as he put that liberal woman in charge, it went almost right back to what it was pre-Elon.”
— “Been saying this for quite a while now… it’s pretty obvious at times…”
— “I feel the same way. Can’t tell if anyone even sees my posts most of the time.”
— “I’m still constantly being told that other people wouldn’t say what I have to say. I thought Elon was for free speech. Free speech tends to be things that other people wouldn’t say.”
— “Yep! VERY SLOW GROW, if any at all.”
— “My numbers never change.”
— “I was banned under old regime and reinstated but definitely receive zero feedback on posts. Still shadow banned for sure.”
Bottom line, Mr. Musk, a lot of conservatives still detect a serious deep state problem at X, a platform we need now more than ever.
Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on Twitter @larryelder.
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Pacific Symphony’s 2024-25 season will honor conductor Carl St.Clair
- February 22, 2024
The Pacific Symphony’s 2024-25 season, announced today, Feb. 22, will honor the 35-year tenure of conductor Carl St.Clair while the orchestra continues its search for an eventual successor.
St.Clair, 71, took over the podium in February 1990 after a two-year search. In September 2022, he announced that his contract had been extended for at least two more seasons but that he had also asked the orchestra to begin the search for his replacement. Various guest conductors seen as contenders for the role have led the orchestra since then, and more are on tap to conduct the Pacific Symphony next season, but no further succession plans or a timeline have been announced. St.Clair’s stint as music director is the longest for an American conductor at a major U.S. orchestra.
Highlights of the upcoming season include a semi-staged performance of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” (the first opera of the composer’s Ring Cycle), a collaboration with Pacific Chorale on Orff’s “Carmina Burana” and Verdi’s “Requiem” and the world premieres of a new piano concerto by Adolphus Hailstork and an orchestral work by composer-in-residence Viet Cuong.
“It’s not just a celebration of the music we’ve cherished over the years, but a heartfelt homage to the enduring relationship I’ve shared with Pacific Symphony,” St.Clair said of the 2024 season in a statement released by the symphony. “This landmark 35th anniversary season is a testament to our collective journey — a tapestry of our shared experiences, our growth and our unyielding commitment to excellence.”
The season kicks off Sept. 26-28 with St.Clair leading the Pacific in a program that will include Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” featuring pianist Claire Huangci, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.
On Oct. 17-19, the orchestra will perform “Classical Spooktacular,” a Halloween-themed program that will include Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” and Pacific Symphony’s first performance of Bunch’s “The Devil’s Box.”
St.Clair will return to the podium Jan. 9-11 for “Nature in Music,” which will include Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” and Richard Strauss’ “Alpine Symphony” accompanied by visuals of majestic mountains.
Two new works commissioned by the Pacific Symphony will make their world premieres Feb. 6-8. Performances of Hailstork’s piano concerto and Cuong’s orchestral work, both still unnamed, will be preceded by “Slava!” by Leonard Bernstein and followed by “Pines of Rome” by Respighi.
The Pacific Chorale, under the direction of Robert Istad, and the Southern California Children’s Choir, led by Lori Loftus, will team up with the Pacific Symphony from Feb. 27 through March 1, 2025, for a program topped by “Carmina Burana” and also featuring Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D Minor and Lauridsen’s “O Magnum Mysterium.” Pacific Chorale will return June 5-7 to join the Pacific Symphony for Verdi’s “Requiem.”
“Curse of the Ring,” which will include Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” will be presented April 10, 12 and 15, 2025.
The Norbertine Fathers of St. Michael’s Abbey will join St.Clair and the Pacific on May 8-10, 2025 for “Cathedrals of Sound,” a program that will include Gregorian chant, Bach’s Sinfonia in D Minor, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 and the orchestra’s first performance of Guilmont’s Symphony No. 1.
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Guest conductors will also have the baton for a number of performances in the 2024-25 season. Valentina Peleggi will conduct Brahms’ Violin Concerto and other works Nov. 14-16, Rune Bergmann will be at the podium for the Art of the Spanish Guitar program Dec. 5-7, Paolo Bortolameolli will lead the symphony and violinist Jennifer Koh in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 on March 20-22, 2025, and Eduardo Strausser will have the baton as the symphony plays a program of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”). The appearances by these guest conductors, and others last season and this one, are in effect auditions for the role of music director, said Eileen Jeanette, the symphony’s senior vice president of artistic planning and production.
“My understanding is that everyone who is a guest on our podium is being considered for the position of Music Director,” Jeanette in a statement issued by the symphony.
Subscriptions for the 2024-25 season are currently available and tickets for special concerts are currently accessible only with a subscription. More information is available through Pacific Symphony Patron Services at 714-755-5799 or by going to PacificSymphony.org.
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CIF: Season of sport alignment is ‘largest obstacle’ for state championships in water polo
- February 22, 2024
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The normal grumblings in water polo circles about the CIF Southern California Regional surfaced before the girls tournament began earlier this week.
Some coaches don’t see the purpose for an event that for the sixth consecutive occasion won’t crown a state champion.
This season, two of the Southern Section’s best girls teams — Division 1 champion Corona del Mar and Division 1 runner-up JSerra — opted out of the regional for various reasons.
Two replacement teams were quickly found, including San Clemente that has reached the semifinals Friday at Mt. SAC in Walnut.
So what’s the main barrier for hosting state championships for boys and girls water polo?
“The largest obstacle is the Southern, Los Angeles and San Diego sections play girls water polo in the winter,” said Rebecca Brutlag, spokesperson for the CIF State in Sacramento. “We will not have a state championship in either boys or girls water polo until all genders in all sections play in the same season of sport.”
In sections in Central and Northern California, girls and boys play water polo in the fall.
In SoCal, the boys play water polo in the fall while the girls compete in the winter.
In state aquatics, only swimming and diving align in the spring for a state championship.
The SoCal regional for girls water polo continues Friday and Saturday at Mt. SAC.
Players and coaches will find motivation to claim titles. An Orange County team will win the Division 1 title for a sixth consecutive time.
Here’s the weekend schedule at Mt. SAC for the divisions involving O.C. teams:
Division 1
Friday: Foothill-Mater Dei, 5; Orange Lutheran-Newport Harbor, 6:15
Saturday final: 2 p.m.
Division 2
Friday: San Clemente-Centennial of Corona, 2:30; Alta Loma-Clairemont, 3:45
Saturday final: 12:30 p.m.
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Ducks erase 4-goal deficit before losing to Blue Jackets
- February 22, 2024
ANAHEIM — Trailing by four goals 23 minutes into their game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Ducks had the visitors right where they wanted them.
Or so they might have thought before ultimately falling short, 7-4.
No team in the NHL has engineered more comeback wins than the Ducks this season, and for one period they leaned into that mojo on Wednesday night at the Honda Center.
Booed off the ice following a meandering, sloppy first period, the Ducks turned the tables and exuberant cheers greeted them leading into the next intermission, after a 4-0 deficit had been wiped away thanks to a quartet of Ducks goals during an 11-minute stretch of the second period.
With the game up for grabs, the Ducks were unable to complete what would have been an outstanding start to a stretch of nine consecutive games in California.
But a day after getting thumped, 5-1, by the Kings, the last-place team in the Metropolitan Division stormed out of the gates in the third period, scoring three again to close its last Golden State trip of the season with a topsy-turvy 7-4 victory.
“We gave pucks away in the third period, and it ended up costing us the game,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “Their last two goals (came off) turnovers, both of them. At least four of their goals came directly off our sticks.”
Blue Jackets forward Johnny Gaudreau had a goal disallowed against the Kings on Tuesday. The following night, he contributed early, assisting on defenseman Zach Werenski’s opener at 3:32 before delivering the Blue Jackets’ second goal six minutes later on a simple deke to the left of Ducks goaltender John Gibson. (He added one more assist as Columbus ran away with it in the third.)
Werenski tapped in another at 18:30 for his fourth goal of the season, forcing the Ducks to chase down what felt like a hopeless cause.
The disappointment in the building deepened when Ducks goalie John Gibson mishandled the puck behind his own net early in the second period, giving Blue Jackets forward Alex Texier an opportunity to sling it to the front where Sean Kuraly tapped in his eighth goal of the season.
Off the resumption of play at center ice, forwards mixed it up as the Ducks’ Ross Johnston tussled with Columbus’ Mathieu Olivier. Neither landed a decisive blow, but the dustup was celebrated by both benches and lifted the energy in the stands.
Troy Terry broke the seal for the Ducks at 9:07 when he carried the puck into the Columbus zone and zipped a wrist shot over goalie Daniil Tarasov’s right shoulder.
“The game in general is a game of momentum shifts, maybe not that extreme,” Terry said. “I thought as a team we had good legs. I thought we skated. Just little mental mistakes got us down 4-0. I was proud of how we battled to come back.”
Mason McTavish made it 4-2 at 16:05, shoving defenseman Adam Boqvist out of the way while assists from Terry and Pavel Mintyukov set him up from point blank.
The Blue Jackets (18-27-10, 46 points) replaced Tarasov in the second period when teammate Adam Boqvist accidentally hit the goalie in the face with his stick blade. Elvis Merzlikins, who allowed a handful of goals to the Kings the night before, didn’t stem the Ducks’ tide.
McTavish soon netted his second of the night, again from Mintyukov and Terry, beating Merzlikins between the legs at 18:49 to give him 17 goals.
Less than a minute later, Alex Killhorn, back after missing nine games following arthroscopic knee surgery, sent the arena into a frenzy when his seventh goal of the season leveled the score at 4-all thanks to Mintyukov’s career-high third assist of the game (giving the defenseman 20 for the season) combined with a well-placed pass for Leo Carlsson’s 14th helper.
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“I thought it was a good compete level from us in the second period,” McTavish said. “Any time you’re down four goals in a game and you come back to tie it, you kind of expect to at least get a point in the game. I feel like we kind of let this one slip away.”
Columbus did not concede again and the Ducks’ rally fell shy of a league-best 11th comeback.
With Tarasov back in net for the Blue Jackets (he finished the game with 27 saves against 29 shots) a chippy, high-intensity final frame yielded three more goals for the visitors – almost shocking considering they had the worst third-period goal differential in the NHL coming in at minus-37.
Yegor Chinakhov’s 15th goal of the season preceded Kurlay’s second of the night, and a short-handed empty-net goal by Boone Jenner, his 18th, ended the Ducks’ five-game win streak against Columbus, part of a stretch that included nine wins in 10 games against them.
The Ducks (20-34-2, 42 points) face the Kings on Saturday at Crypto.com Arena, and return to Honda Center on Sunday against Nashville.
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Police vehicles rammed during stolen vehicle pursuit, suspect arrested in Costa Mesa
- February 22, 2024
A woman was arrested on Wednesday, Feb. 21, on suspicion of fleeing officers in a stolen vehicle and ramming police vehicles during the pursuit, Costa Mesa authorities said.
Around 12:45 p.m., Costa Mesa police officers were called to assist another agency in pulling over a stolen vehicle, according to a Costa Mesa Police Department statement.
“The female suspect driver had rammed into law enforcement vehicles when she began to flee from them,” said the statement.
Information on what city the pursuit started in was not immediately available.
A Costa Mesa motor sergeant following the stolen vehicle was involved in a separate crash with another vehicle at Harbor Boulevard and Nutmeg Place, next to the Costa Mesa Shopping Square, police said. The officer suffered minor injuries.
The wanted driver was eventually located in the shopping center. Destiny Sherer, 29, was arrested there.
Sherer, whose residence was not known, was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and driving a stolen vehicle.
The investigation is ongoing and authorities say the stolen vehicle is suspected in burglaries in a neighboring city.
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The endless flood of PAC spending shows the need to reform campaign financing laws
- February 22, 2024
As Election Day March 5 marches toward us, voters will get even more mail flyers than already. Video ads also will flood TV shows and social media posts.
But look carefully to see where they’re from. Here’s one I got in Irvine: “Republican Dr. Steven Choi Fights Taxes.” The former assemblyman is running for state Senate in the 37th District. The flyer is paid for by Uber Innovation Political Action Add Committee’s Top Funder.
Another flyer boasts, “Planned Parenthood Endorses Josh Newman for State Senate,” also for the 37th District. He’s the incumbent Democrat currently in the 29th District. Except the ad was paid for by Uber Innovation. Notice the different issues: taxes for Republicans, abortion for Democrats.
The key here is Assembly Bill 5 from 2019, which made many part-time “gig” workers, including Uber drivers, full-time employees, a terrible law. Choi voted against it. Newman briefly was out of the Senate because he was recalled for supporting Senate Bill 1 in 2017, which raised gas taxes $5 billion a year. He was elected again in 2020.
Uber and Lyft spent $193 million in 2020 passing Proposition 22, which exempted themselves from AB 5. Now, Uber wants to cover both parties in the Nov. 5 runoff in the 37th.
How did we get here? Blame OC native son Richard Nixon. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 mandated disclosing campaign contributions. Then, as the Watergate scandal drove him from office in 1974, the Democratic Congress amended the act. The changes set up the Federal Election Commission and limited campaign contributions by individuals, political parties and political action committees.
In the 1976 Buckley decision, on First Amendment grounds, the U.S. Supreme Court exempted from the law individual contributions to one’s own campaign – giving a big advantage to rich, self-financed candidates.
The 2010 Citizens United decision threw out any limits on independent expenditures by corporations, unions and their political action committees – PACs. Hence the Uber and many other PACs.
Today in California, the Fair Political Practices Commission lists limits that include $5,500 for the Assembly, state Senate and local offices; and $36,400 for governor. But political parties and PACs “may receive contributions in excess of the limits.” The Federal Elections Commission says contributions to U.S. House, Senate and presidential candidates are limited to $3,300 per election.
I’ve known dozens of candidates, and except for the self-funded ones, they all have to spend many hours begging for small contributions. Then they face not only an opponent’s onslaught, but that of the often better-funded PACs. It’s supposed to be “democratic” because financial support allegedly comes from the grassroots, but is the opposite.
Because campaign laws are so complex, and fundraising so daunting, campaigning also has become a highly specialized profession run by a few experts. If you’re a small-time candidate, forget it.
This system is anti-democratic and gives vast advantages to millionaires, incumbents, and the special interests. Wonder no more why the federal government is $34 trillion in debt and California is running a deficit this year of at least $38 billion. They call it “pay to play.” You pay the candidates, and they let you play with the taxpayers’ dollars.
What’s needed is a reform of the reform. First, keep the good part: contribution disclosure. Let us know who’s paying whom.
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Second, throw out all the other laws. Although the courts have upheld the contribution limits, all limits actually violate the First Amendment guarantee against abridging “freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
If I like Candidate A better than Candidate B, why can’t I give $10,000 to A? Why instead can Millionaire X, Union Y or Corporation Z form a PAC to spend $1 million backing Candidate B?
Under this reform, most of the PAC and other independent schemes would vanish, as candidates would gather most or all of the money to themselves, with full disclosure. The candidates, mano a mano, again would control the tenor and tempo of campaigns. That’s real democracy.
John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board and blogs at johnseiler.substack.com
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- Hermosa Beach Open: Chase Budinger settling into rhythm with Olympics in mind
- Yankees lose 10th-inning head-slapper to Red Sox, 6-5
- Dodgers remain committed to Dustin May returning as starter
- Mets win with circus walk-off in 10th inning on Keith Hernandez Day
- Mission Viejo football storms to title in the Battle at the Beach passing tournament