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Digital Campaign Ethics — Theory and Practice
Jul 10 2020
Organizer: Project on Ethics in Political Communication
Digital and tech entrepreneur and best-selling author Cheryl Contee, digital campaign veteran Bradley Engle, and political communication professor at Emerson College and Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières Vincent Raynauld join Project director Peter Loge to talk about digital and online campaign ethics. Contee and Raynauld co-authored chapters in the forthcoming "Political Communication Ethics: Theory and Practice."
Location: Webinar
Book Launch for "Political Communication Ethics: Theory and Practice"
Jul 10 2020
Organizer: Project on Ethics in Political Communication
Emmy Award winning journalist and former CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno interviews Project director and School of Media and Public Affairs professor Peter Loge and SMPA student Anthony Thomas about Loge's new edited book "Political Communication Ethics: Theory and Practice."
From the publisher: "'Political Communication Ethics: Theory and Practice' brings together scholars and practitioners to introduce students to what, if any, ethical responsibilities political professionals have. Chapter authors range from a Trump advisor to an Obama appointee, from leading academics to top digital strategists, and more.
"As a collection of diverse perspectives covering speechwriting and political communication, advocacy, political campaigns, online politics, and American civil religion, this book serves as an essential resource for students and scholars across many disciplines."
Location: Webinar
Antoniooo/Getty Images
Lying to congressional ethics investigators isn't illegal, appeals court says
Jul 02 2020
Cracking down on the financial and personal transgressions of lawmakers is often labeled a prerequisite to making Capitol Hill, and with it all of democracy, work better. The cause got set back at the federal courthouse this week.
People may not be prosecuted for lying to the Office of Congressional Ethics, which the House created a dozen years ago to do much of the heavy lifting in policing member behavior, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Tuesday.
The ruling is a setback that could hobble the pace of inquiries that often increase in election years, when political opponents and the media are paying heightened attention to what House members are doing away from the office. But the judges said the situation could be fixed by adding a few words to the federal law against obstruction of justice.
<p>The Office of Congressional Ethics is an independent, bipartisan panel of six people charged with investigating allegations of misconduct by both members and their aides and then referring the most serious and solid cases to the House Ethics Committee, which has the power to sanction its colleagues but does so relatively rarely. </p><p>But while the office may initiate inquiries, it is powerless to issue subpoenas or make the House continue the work it has started — limitations that critics say make it mostly toothless for doing the politically sensitive work it's assigned. (In the first three months of the year, the office says, it opened 15 inquiries and sent six to the Hill.)</p><p>The court's ruling takes away more teeth. </p><p>The appeal involved abuse of federal funds by David Bowser, when he was chief of staff in the first half of the decade to a since-departed GOP House member from Georgia, Paul Broun, and used money from the congressional office account to pay for his boss's reelection debate preparations. </p><p>He was convicted of several felonies, but the trial judge threw out the charge of obstruction of Congress. The appeals court backed the reasoning: The law as written applied to "congressional offices" but not entities created to help Congress but separate from it.</p><p>"Congress knows how to refer to legislative offices when it chooses, and we must give effect to the statute's tailored language," Judge Thomas Griffith wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. "If Congress wishes to extend liability to those who obstruct the work of the Office, it may do so, and it has model language for such an amendment in the False Statements Act."</p>
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Unbreaking America: Justice for Sale
New film argues political corruption prevents criminal justice reform
Jun 19 2020
Griffiths is the editor of Independent Voter News.
Current events have turned everyone's attention to the nation's criminal justice system. Most Americans agree that the system is broken. Yet, in a new "Unbreaking America" film, RepresentUs makes the case that the criminal justice system remains broken because the broken U.S. political system keeps it that way.
"Even though crime rates across the U.S. are going down, America locks up seven times more people now than we did in 1970," actor and RepresentUs Cultural Council member Omar Epps says in the opening. "We, as Americans, put more people behind bars than any other nation in the world — both as a percentage of population and in total numbers."
<p>
According to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research's
<a href="https://www.prisonstudies.org/" target="_blank">World Prison Brief</a>, the incarceration rate in the US is .67 percent, followed by El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Thailand, Palau, Rwanda, and Cuba.<br>
</p><p>
The United States also has a prison population of 2.3 million, which is substantially higher than China's 1.6 million, and China has a total population of approximately 1.4 billion people. Epps says if nothing changes oOne in 17 white men will be incarcerated in their lifetime along with one in six Latinos and one in four Black men.
</p><p>
"And we're putting women in jail even faster than we're locking up men," Epps points out.
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It's important to remember that as incarceration increases, crime rates are dropping. In fact, according to the
<a href="https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245" target="_blank">Bureau of Justice Statistics</a>, violent crime dropped a staggering 71 percent from 1993 to 2018.
</p><p>
Epps says that while the nation is divided on many things, nearly all Americans agree that the system needs to be fixed. Yet, there is one thing standing in the way of substantive reform: the U.S. political system.<br>
</p><p>
As pointed out in a previous "Unbreaking America"
<a data-linked-post="2641554135" href="https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/representus-anti-corruption-video" target="_blank">film featuring actor Michael Douglas</a>, no matter how much support something has there is a near zero percent chance that action will be taken by policymakers. Why? Because the incentive structure is skewed. <br>
</p><p>
Members of Congress are not incentivized to address the will of the people, Douglas argues. In fact, according to Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, there is <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/competitiveness/Documents/why-competition-in-the-politics-industry-is-failing-america.pdf" target="_blank">virtually zero correlation</a> between acting on the will of voters and politicians getting re-elected. This is because the political system is controlled by private, gain-seeking organizations and entities that act out of their own self-interest. </p><p>
The latest film, which also features prominent voting rights activist Desmond Meade, points to a number of incentives that are outweighing the interests of voters:<br>
</p><ul class="ee-ul">
<li>The private, for-profit prison industry, which incarcerates 10 percent of U.S. prisoners and nearly three-quarters of immigrant detainees, spent $64 million in the last 10 years lobbying Congress for stricter laws, longer sentences and stronger enforcement policies, while they make $6 billion in revenue annually.</li>
<li>Many judges are elected by voters, and have been shown to give harsher sentences around election time. In areas that use partisan primaries to elect judges, the incentive structure is even worse because to keep their seat they have to appeal to a small partisan base.</li>
<li>As much as 60 percent of political donations for key judicial positions come from "lawyers, lobbyists, and business interests."</li>
<li>Corporations use inmates as practically free labor instead of hiring paid workers. After the BP oil spill, for instance, inmates were used to clean up the mess. They paid inmates pennies on the dollar and qualified for a $2,400 tax kickback for every inmate used.</li>
</ul><p>
(RepresentUs sources all of this information in the video.)<br>
</p><p>
"It's going to be hard to fix the problems," Meade explains, "unless we first fix America's corrupt political system."
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</p><p>
Meade, who rose to prominence in the democracy reform movement by leading efforts to restore felons' voting rights in Florida, says this means "banning lobbyist gifts to politicians, closing the revolving door between Congress and industry," and enfranchising more voters "so politicians actually represent us." He says all of these ideas are part of one proposed that RepresentUs is encouraging, primarily at the state and local levels.<br>
</p><p>
The
<a href="https://anticorruptionact.org/whats-in-the-act/" target="_blank">American Anti-Corruption Act</a> not only has broad support across the political spectrum, but it has policy proposals to stop political bribery, end secret money, change the elections systems (its proposals include open primaries, vote-at-home options, term limits. and ranked-choice voting), and strengthen enforcement of anti-corruption laws already on the books.<br>
</p><p>"Let's be honest, America is facing a crisis and we need to act with an urgency commensurate to the severity of the problem," says Epps. "That's on you, it's on me, it's on all of us." <br></p><p>
Epps breaks down the choice before voters as he closes out the video:
<br>
</p><p>
"Here's the bottom line: Nearly every issue that matters to you, or that matters to the next generation of Americans, is blocked by our corrupt political system, and if you do nothing or if I do nothing, nothing is going to change. But if each of us does something, we can win. Together."
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</p><p>
<em>Visit </em><a href="https://ivn.us/" target="_blank"><em>IVN.us</em></a><em> for more coverage from Independent Voter News.</em>
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