217
DeSantis ‘freedom fund’ Pac targets abortion and marijuana ballot initiatives
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
217 points (99.5% liked)
News
23311 readers
3606 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I can tell you one legit reason for a PAC. Public employees can not take campaign funds directly, so if a teacher wanted to run for local office, it's a campaign finance violation for them to accept money directly. That means they need a PAC to accept donations for them, and the candidates can use that money for campaign related things.
PACs at their core are not bad. How they are used to influence our elections by the wealthy is.
I don't think that's right. The main issue that PACs address is individual limits on campaign contributions. You, as an individual, can only legally give a candidate $X towards their campaign. X varies depending on the race. But you can give as much as you want to a PAC. They just have to disclose your name if you give more than $10K in a calendar year. The thing is, the FEC act used to make it illegal for a PAC to directly campaign for or against a federal candidate. The Citizens United decision overturned that clause and opened the doors to unlimited campaign contributions. Candidates aren't supposed to coordinate with a PAC, but there's a lot of nodding and winking going on.
I can confirm it is right because I am the chair of a small PAC for a public employee. They needed to form it to fund raise. It functions very differently than how national level PACs function. but it's a legitimate use for them.
Interesting. What state is this in? We don't have any restrictions like that in my state and I'm a little curious about what the justification is.
I guess I should rephrase slightly. Public employees are not allowed to take gifts / money from individuals in any capacity, this relates to bribe and corruption laws. As a result, this makes it so they can not accept campaign finance donations, which requires an entity to act on their behalf, a PAC. Sorry if my explanation was a bit unclear. This is due to blanket corruption laws and not specific campaign finance laws.
Ah, I think I understand. The potential problem here is that even a donation to a campaign fund could be seen as a bribe if the person running for office is a public official. "Sorry, I can't accept your generous gift, but you cold contribute to my campaign for mayor!" Interesting, I've honestly never run across that info, but it makes sense. Thanks!
Yep! You are spot on, sorry my original post was a bit vague.