{"id":20058,"date":"2013-08-07T20:27:32","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T00:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=20058"},"modified":"2013-08-07T20:27:32","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T00:27:32","slug":"about-that-free-speech-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=20058","title":{"rendered":"About That Free Speech Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424127887324783204578624014097139822.html?mod=wsj_review_&amp;_outlook\">Wall Street Journal<\/a> posted an article about a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Democratic Party (United States)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.democrats.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Democrat<\/a> effort to limit political donations by businesses after those donations were allowed by the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Supreme Court of the United States\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8907083333,-77.0043444444&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8907083333,-77.0043444444 (Supreme%20Court%20of%20the%20United%20States)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">Supreme Court&#8217;s<\/a> <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Citizen&#8217;s United<\/a> decision.<\/p>\n<p>The <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_House_Committee_on_Oversight_and_Government_Reform\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">House Oversight Committee<\/a> is investigating events that occurred under the previous chairman of the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sec.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Securities and Exchange Commission<\/a>. Events similar to those at the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Internal Revenue Service\" href=\"http:\/\/www.irs.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Internal Revenue Service<\/a>&#8211;senior officials rolling over career staff to politicize the agency&#8211;evidently also occurred at the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n<p>The article reports:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Last year politicians like then-Rep. <a href=\"http:\/\/topics.wsj.com\/person\/F\/Barney-Frank\/6833\" data-ls-seen=\"1\">Barney Frank<\/a> and liberal tax-exempt groups like Public Citizen were encouraging the SEC to demand more disclosure from public companies about the organizations they support. Staff for Mr. Frank specifically told the SEC that, &#8220;There is particular interest in what the authority is for disclosure of 501(c)(4) contributions (political contributions).&#8221; Mr. Frank&#8217;s staff also noted that the interest was coming from the House Democratic leadership.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>A former Democratic Congressman gave the political motive away while lobbying the SEC&#8217;s then-chairman <a href=\"http:\/\/topics.wsj.com\/person\/S\/Mary-L-Schapiro\/692\" data-ls-seen=\"1\">Mary Schapiro<\/a>. The former lawmaker, unnamed in a memorandum accompanying the Issa letter, was asked by Ms. Schapiro why this wasn&#8217;t a job for the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Federal Election Commission\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fec.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">Federal Election Commission<\/a> (FEC). The former pol responded, &#8220;because the FEC is even more broken than you,&#8221; according to a May 2012 email sent by the deputy director of the SEC&#8217;s division of corporation finance. Democrats couldn&#8217;t get what they wanted out of the Congress or the FEC. So they went to the SEC.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This sort of behavior is unacceptable. Hopefully the House Oversight Committee will be able to hold the people who initiated this sort of illegal political activity accountable.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=db833954-581c-4cc7-b350-a43e883542c7\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Wall Street Journal posted an article about a Democrat effort to limit political donations by businesses after those donations were allowed by the Supreme Court&#8217;s Citizen&#8217;s United decision. The House Oversight Committee is investigating events that occurred under the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=20058\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1406,219,6033,5598,284,6070,189,238],"class_list":["post-20058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barney-frank","tag-democratic","tag-fec","tag-federal-election-commission","tag-internal-revenue-service","tag-mary-schapiro","tag-united-states-house-committee-on-oversight-and-government-reform","tag-wall-street-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20059,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20058\/revisions\/20059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}