OPINION
March 31, 2011
The Supreme Court seems poised to overturn a modest effort by the state of Arizona to increase the candidate choices placed before voters and reduce the corruption associated with large special-interest campaign contributions. The conservative justices who were skeptical of the law and its rationale at Monday's oral arguments should think again. Upholding the law would not violate their convictions about campaign finance. The Arizona law provides a lump sum to candidates who agree to accept public financing and to abide by restrictions on fundraising and limits on how much they can give to their own campaigns.
OPINION
March 28, 2011 | By Costas Panagopoulos
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in McComish vs. Bennett, a high-stakes case about public financing in American political campaigns. The court's ruling could affect public financing systems in numerous states and municipalities across the country, including programs in Los Angeles and several other California jurisdictions. At issue is a provision in Arizona's clean elections law that triggers matching funds for candidates participating in the public financing program when their privately financed opponents (or independent groups backing them)
NATIONAL
March 26, 2011 | By David G. Savage and Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times
Following a wave of corruption scandals, Arizona's voters in 1998 embarked on an ambitious experiment in campaign funding aimed at diminishing the influence of special interests. The voters passed the Citizens Clean Elections Act, which allowed candidates to fund campaigns with money from the state ? so long as they forswore contributions from private sources. The act created a level playing field for rich and not-so-rich candidates, but it also unleashed a flood of complaints that it was a waste of government money and unfair to savvy fundraisers.
WORLD
February 16, 2011 | By Timothy M. Phelps, Los Angeles Times
The Muslim Brotherhood announced Tuesday that it would form a political party to run candidates for Egypt's parliament, while a committee of judges and legal scholars started work on amending the nation's constitution. But the country's military rulers ordered the committee to complete work in less than two weeks, suggesting that constitutional changes in the short term would not be as extensive as many critics of the old system had hoped. The Brotherhood, one of the oldest Islamic movements in the Middle East, has long been officially banned from Egyptian politics, though members have been allowed to run for parliament as independent candidates.
NATIONAL
October 7, 2010 | By Kim Geiger, Tribune Washington Bureau
Democrats and their allies, moving to counter millions of dollars flowing to Republican campaigns from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have accused the international business organization of using foreign money to influence American elections. The effort to paint conservative political groups as fronts for multinational corporations and foreign billionaires gathered steam this week after an affiliate of the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress charged that the chamber was using funds from foreign corporations to finance its political operations in Washington.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 2, 2010 | By Hector Becerra
FBI agents arrested a Commerce councilman early Thursday after a grand jury indicted him and two family members for allegedly trying to hide illegal campaign contributions. Robert Fierro, 39, the mayor pro tem of the industrial suburb, is also charged with telling a friend to lie to the FBI. Fierro's sister-in-law and campaign treasurer, Ana Perez, was charged with lying to the grand jury. Along with the politician's wife, Linda Fierro, 36, she was charged with witness tampering.