Top U.S. human rights groups fare poorly on openness about funds, watchdog says

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Top U.S. human rights groups fare poorly on openness about funds, watchdog says

By Sebastien Malo
June 29, 2016

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Three top U.S. human rights groups scored at the bottom among think tanks as to their openness about the sources of their funding, a watchdog group said on Wednesday.

Human Rights Watch, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) were graded among 200 advocacy groups and think tanks worldwide, about half of which were deemed "opaque" about their funding, said Transparify, a Georgian-based non-profit.

Disclosing the origins of funds gives think tanks credibility and shields them from potentially slanted, lobby-funded or agenda-driven research, the group said. The results have improved from 2014, when four out of five think tanks were rated "opaque," the group said.

"The number of organizations who still consider it acceptable to take money from hidden hands behind closed doors is rapidly dwindling. They are running out of excuses," said Hans Gutbrod, who runs Transparify.


Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-u-human-rights-groups-fare-poorly-openness-221357210.html?nhp=1

[merrily]

2. Why should human rights advocates be lumped together with political PACs and super PACs?

This post originally read incorrectly. Please see Replies 5 (Recursion) and 9 (mine). I have deleted the incorrect info that was originally in this post so that it does not create confusion.

[Recursion]

3. PACs have to disclose donors fully; think tanks don't

Most of them are 501(c)(3)'s, which means other than having to report to their board and allow the IRS to audit them, they don't really have to tell anybody anything about who gives them money.

[Recursion]

5. Super PACs also have to disclose all donors; that's why Thomas didn't fully join the opinion

He wrote a concurrence arguing PACs should not be required to disclose their funding.

Here's OpenSecrets' page on SuperPACs, which includes who donated how much to them:

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php

So, for example, here are all the donors to JEB!'s PAC:

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave2.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00571372

[merrily]

7. I'm going to recheck the majority opinion because it reference NAACP v. Button, which was all about

disclosure.

[Recursion]

8. Button was the acknowledgment that corporations have some speech and assembly rights

protected by the Constitution, so it was important to Citizens United in that sense. But at any rate the NAACP is not a PAC, but a 501(c)(3) corporation, so its disclosure rules are different.

Super PACs have to disclose everyone who donates over a certain amount (I think like $250) in a given year.

[merrily]

9. No, I just re-checked the opinion and it's more complicated than that.

First, Button held squarely that the NAACP did not have to disclose the names of its members. That holding did not rest on whether the NAACP was 501(c)(3) or (c)(4). The First Amendment is always a balancing of the interests of the "individual" in speech against the interests of the government in regulation--and Citizens' included corporations as individuals (the worst and biggest news about that wretched case, IMO). The Citizens decision did not expressly overrule or modify either Button or McConnell. It simply said the Citizens' organization did not provide evidence of harm, which evidence was present in the Button case. (I have not read McConnell.)

From the majority opinion in Citizens'.

In McConnell , the Court recognized that §201 would be unconstitutional as applied to an organization if there were a reasonable probability that the group’s members would face threats, harassment, or reprisals if their names were disclosed. 540 U. S., at 198. The examples cited by amici are cause for concern. Citizens United, however, has offered no evidence that its members may face similar threats or reprisals. To the contrary, Citizens United has been disclosing its donors for years and has identified no instance of harassment or retaliation.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZO.html

So, the majority left open the possibility that, if an organization did show harm, it could keep the names of donors secret. IOW, in Citizens, there was a failure of evidence issue not a change in First Amendment law. However, you are correct about the statute, so I will edit my prior posts accordingly, acknowledging that.

[Recursion]

10. The relevant law is 26 U.S.C. § 527

Again, NAACP is not a PAC and so does not have the same legal requirements as a PAC.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/527

Other than Thomas's concurrence, the disclosure requirements for 527 organizations (including all PACs) were never in question.

[merrily]

11. My Reply 9 is correct. You cite a relevant statute. The First Amendment is the superior and relevant

law that governs that statute (and all other regulations of speech), which is what the Citizens organization was doing in the Supreme Court in the first instance.

My Reply 9 quoted language from the Citizens majority opinion that showed that the Citizens organization ' did indeed raise the disclosure issue of disclosure, and raising it in the Supreme Court does put that issue in question. So, it seems that you are using that term incorrectly. As already stated, the Citizens Court did not overrule Button.

[Recursion]

12. PACs and Super PACs all report all of their donors to the FEC. Right now. Today.

I even linked you to OpenSecrets' aggregation of those donor lists.

Button does not apply to PACs, which have a stricter statutory regime.

[merrily]

13. Again, my Reply 9 is correct. Your statement about Button is not.

According to the majority opinion in the Citizens case that my Reply 9 quoted, the difference between Button and Citizens was evidence about danger, not a difference or change in law. The evidence was present in the Button case, but no in the Citizens case. The Citizens decision did not change First Amendment law on that point.

[Recursion]

14. Look, you're just wrong: PACs and Super PACs report all donors

I don't see why you keep bringing up Button, which doesn't address them (the law hadn't even been written when Button was decided; for that matter Citizens United wasn't even about a PAC but about a film production company; the case that allowed Super PACs was Speechnow.org).

Here is every FEC registered Super PAC:

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php

You can click through to their donors. Can we at least agree on that?

[merrily]

15. For the last time, my Reply 9 is correct. So are my Replies 11 and 13.

I don't think you are understanding what those replies say.

What was wrong in my early replies I changed or deleted, as I told you I would. See Reply 2.