Squashing Speech at the State Level

We've paid a considerable amount of attention to attempts by left-wing foundations to shut down the political speech of people they don't like, and we'll continue to cover that story. But no one who's concerned about the federal government's efforts to reign in campaign speech should forget that similar efforts are underway on the state level, where they generally receive far less press (and blogger) coverage.

Ryan Sager of the New York Post, who broke the Sean Treglia story and has written extensively on BCRA, reminds us of this in his post column this morning. He reports that George Soros's Open Society Institute, along with the Joyce Foundation, have poured $3 million into efforts by organizations in Illinois to outlaw spending by corporations and unions on all elections in that state.

Most recently, under the innocuous-sounding moniker the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, they worked (unsuccessfully) to defeat a Republican candidate of the Illinois Supreme Court, Lloyd Karmeier. In a stunt not unlike what they've attempted with more success on the national level, the "cleanies," as Sager labels them, used contributions from the trial lawyers' lobby to set up ICPR, which was billed as a bi-partisan champion of clean government.

You'll want to read all of Ryan's column, because he nails the phony reformers for what they are: people who'd rather stop their opponents from speaking their minds than engage in debate on crucial issues. I'd add that, in that, they closely resemble their left-wing academic sympathizers, who've tried to squelch speech with which they disagreed since the 1960s. They, too, have had mixed results, but they remain a dangerous force for speech restrictions on scores of campuses nationwide.

Manufacturing phony grassroots campaigns, such as that orchestrated by Pew and other giant trusts over the past decade and more, isn't just a problem in national political debates. As the Illinois case demonstrates, all of us are susceptible to the soothing promises to promote "clean government" made by those who bill themselves as honest brokers in political debate. That they're anything but honest is a fact that the MSM has consistently ignored. This time round, it's time for the rest of us to do our own research and reporting, lest we allow our precious First Amendment rights to be further weakened by the intrigues of the political class.