Dear Marshall, When it rains it pours! First, the IRS demanded sensitive donor information from Campaign for Liberty. Now the State of South Carolina wants it too. A bill set for passage Tuesday would require that Campaign for Liberty turn over certain sensitive donor information to the state just for mailing you the results of our very successful candidate survey program or for mailing you the voting history of your legislator. And Governor Haley has declared she will sign it. We can't depend on her veto, so we have to stop it now! H3945 is misnamed the "Ethics Reform" bill. Truthfully, it is an "Unethical Reform" bill! It not only targets Campaign for Liberty, but any non-profit organization that informs you of the positions of candidates on issues that are important to you. That violates free speech. In fact, the number one reason the founders protected our right to free speech was so we could discuss political issues freely, without restrictions. Now, South Carolina wants to restrict what we can mail you sixty days before an election, unless we are willing to hand over sensitive donor information. This bill is designed to protect incumbents . . . . . . and to shut down our voter education program. If we don't stop this bill before it becomes law, we'll either have to turn over donor information, stop our voter education program, or get dragged into an expensive court battle to defend our right to free speech. So please, RIGHT NOW, contact your state Senator and tell him or her you oppose H3945, the Unethical Reform Bill. You can find your state Senator's contact information at this link. Tell your state Senator to support a filibuster to stop H3945. Don't delay. Call or email TODAY! I don't want to bore you with strategic details, but this is important, so I'll be brief. Thursday, June 5th, was the last day of the regular session of the General Assembly. The House and Senate had two different versions of H3945, so they appointed a conference committee to come up with a compromise version. The conference committee version was given to the House literally minutes before they voted 101 - 12 to pass it on the last day of the session. No one had time to read and comprehend the 34-page bill before they voted on it. If the Senate had passed it on Thursday, it would have gone to Governor Haley, and she had already declared she would sign it. I don't think she had time to read it, either! In the Senate, Senator Lee Bright filibustered the bill for the rest of the day, preventing the Senate from passing a bill that they did not have the time to read and understand. We finally got a copy of the conference committee version of H3945. We've studied it and it's much worse than we imagined! It has a lot of flaws and loopholes. In fact, H3945 will do exactly the opposite of what the political class claims it will do. So what now? The fat cat politicians are set to pass it. They claim it will fix our ethics laws. Our ethics laws ARE really bad! They need to be fixed. But this Unethical Reform Bill will simply make them worse! The General Assembly comes back into special session this week for a couple of days to vote on Governor Haley's budget vetoes and on this conference committee version of H3945. Our only chance at preventing this bill, which will chill free speech and require the disclosure of our donors' sensitive information, is to filibuster it during this special session. If we can prevent the Senate from voting to pass the Unethical Reform Bill for the next couple of days, they will go home for the year, and this bill will die. When you contact your state Senator, tell him or her to support a filibuster of the Unethical Reform Bill, H3945. Our only chance at stopping this bill is for it to be filibustered until the Senate goes home for the year. So please contact your state Senator TODAY. Tell him or her to support the filibuster of H3945. In Liberty, Talbert Black, Jr. State Coordinator South Carolina Campaign for Liberty P.S. H3945, the Unethical Reform Bill, will require Campaign for Liberty and all other non-profits to give sensitive donor information to the state of South Carolina jus t for mailing candidate survey results or legislators' voting history to you within sixty days of an election. Contact your state Senator today and tell him or her you don't support H3945 because it violates the right to free speech. Demand your Senator support the filibuster to stop H3945! You can find your state Senator and his or her contact information by following this link. |
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