Your Views for March 27

Crowd-funded speech

Professor Noelie Rodriquez’s March 20 letter to the editor makes a number of emotional, but false, claims about corporations and political donations, in general, and the NRA, specifically.

She claims the Citizens United ruling allows corporations to give unlimited contributions to politicians.

Here’s what is true.

Individuals who want to support a particular policy or promote a certain governing philosophy can join other individuals to pool their money to support their cause. This allows them to amplify their speech because the pooled money allows them to buy media and gain greater attention for their cause. In terms millennials will understand, it’s the crowdfunding of political speech, a right enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Public organizations are the only effective way for most individual members of the public to amplify their effect on public policy. Donors to the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, Friends of the Earth, the National Rifle Association and many other nonprofits understand this and use it to great effect.

Neither standing on a soapbox at Kalakaua Park nor writing letters to the editor have as significant an impact on public perception or government policy as a well-funded publicity/advertising campaign funded by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of individual donors.

Tax law, in turn, dictates that, in order for these crowdfunded organizations to not have to pay income tax on all donations, they must become nonprofit corporations.

Hence, the evil “corporation” moniker that gets applied by those such as Rodriguez who would prefer their policies prevail with as little competition as possible.

As for Rodriguez’s claim that “corporations … give unlimited contributions to politicians,” federal and state campaign finance laws ban all direct corporate and union contributions to candidates for political office. Issue advocacy campaigns can receive corporate donations, in order for those groups to advocate against bad public policy or promote good public policy.

There are more than 5 million people just like me, and it is that collective voice that those who would violate our rights fear the most — those millions of voices joined together as the National Rifle Association of America.

James O’Keefe

Hilo