After critically examining Lawrence Lessig’s “dependence corruption” theory, Bruce Cain concludes with a few of his own suggestions. Bruce Cain, Is Dependence Corruption the Solution to America's Campaign Finance Problems? (May 19, 2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2267187. One of these is meant to address the disclosure issues he sees presented by 501(c)(4) advertising to influence elections. As he has done before, Cain explores the grounds for compromise between those committed to disclosure and those who are afraid, and spirited in expressing their fear, that it invites political harassment and reprisal. His proposal is for full reporting but “semi-disclosure”: regulators would collect the information, reserving its use for enforcement purposes, and would provide the public only with data in the aggregate that is useful in identifying in broad terms the sources of candidate support and, perhaps, future officeholder indebtedness. Bruce Cain, Shade from the Glare: The Case for Semi-Disclosure, Cato Unbound (Nov. 8, 2010), http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/11/08/bruce-cain/shade-glare-case-semi-disclosure.

The Campaign Legal Center has alerted its readers to a “flood” of challenges to campaign finance laws, and its message is that the reform advocates must remain at their battle stations. It is certainly true that interests hostile to any campaign finance regulation are hard at work; they might well believe that in this time, with this Supreme Court, their moment has come and no time should be wasted. But not all of these challenges are fairly lumped together and described as one indiscriminate assault against any and all reasonable regulation. A few raise questions that even those favoring reasonable limits on campaign finance should take—and address—seriously.

Organizations required to register and report under New York’s new lobbying disclosure laws have begun to seek exemptions to protect their donors from anticipated reprisal or harassment. This concern for donor privacy was once most prevalent among conservative critics of political regulation, more on the “right” than on the “left,” or at least its articulation there has been most prominent. It was also once primarily an issue in campaign finance disclosure. See, e.g., Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 71, 74; Brown v. Socialist Workers, 459 U.S. 87 (1982). It seems, however, that the argument is finding favor across the political spectrum and has spread to the regulation of lobbying. Putting aside particular cases and their merits, it is a development with much to suggest about the confused state of mandatory disclosure policy.

DOJ is taking an exceptional action in suing for large fines against an "habitual" violator of the federal lobbying disclosure laws. United States of America v. Biassi Business Services, Inc., No. 13-0853 (D.D.C., filed June 7, 2013). The delinquencies alleged in the Complaint, for late or unfiled reports, are sobering: 28 quarterly reports and 98 semi-annual reports since 2009. Even the remedial actions taken, the Complaint alleges, lagged behind the statutory requirement, indifferent to the 60 day deadlines for correcting problems once the filer is officially notified of them. The U.S. Attorney’s arrival on the scene to issue additional warnings apparently had little effect: the defendant “ignored or failed to respond to numerous letters sent by the U.S. Attorney’s Office…” Id at 11. Assuming the facts as alleged, this first enforcement action hardly qualifies as an overreaction or a trial run of an innovative enforcement theory. And yet it is a “first.” So it is an occasion for considering the relative weights assigned as a matter of federal law and policy to the two disclosure regimes of campaign finance and lobbying.