And now come Messrs. McCain & Feingold
By krempasky Posted in FEC — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
To put ALL our fears to rest. The mighty reformers themselves have graced us with a statement on blogs and the FEC. It deserves - nay, demands a response, so here goes... Warning: this post demands a minimum ability to grasp sarcasm.
MCCAIN: The FEC will be looking at whether and how paid advertising on the Internet should be treated, i.e., should it be treated differently than paid advertising on television or radio.
ME: The scope of what is regulated may be limited to "paid advertising" or it may not. The judge's opinion sure doesn't offer any such limits. After this last week, it is less likely that the regulations will be broad, but that doesn't mean that sounding the alarm was unnecessary or unwise.
MCCAIN: This is an important issue -- since BCRA outlawed soft money, we need to make sure that the FEC doesn't try once again to subvert the law by creating loopholes.
ME: McCain this seems to say that the internet exemption we had was a "loophole."
MCCAIN: So far, the FEC has not even proposed new regulations. When it does so, there will be ample opportunity for comment and debate about whatever proposal the FEC makes.
ME: McCain seems to resent people getting out on this early, before he's had the chance to talk up his perspective with the NYT and Don Imus. Remember the remark about "loopholes."
MCCAIN: This issue has nothing to with private citizens communicating on the Internet. There is simply no reason - none - to think that the FEC should or intends to regulate blogs or other Internet communications by private citizens.
ME: "private citizens" as opposed to whom? Who does he think the original exemption applied to? Caesar? Ordinary people who want to talk about candidates on the internet are affected by the fact the itnernet exemption was vacated and the FEC is required to write a new rule that regulates internet communications in some fashion.
And who said this aspect of the controversy was the only topic of interest to blogs? It is the larger issue about the scope of the press exemption that blogs and internet journalists generally should be interested in. Because if private citizens talk about candidates using a blog funded by corporate money (maybe because the blog is incorporated) they are in real danger of violating federal law, without a clear exemption. And if they spend too much of their own pocket change pursuing their political activity, it may be reportable as an expenditure or a contribution. And if they get together with the purpose of, for example, tearing down Candidate X a notch or two, and spend too much pocket change doing it, they could be a political committee, with registration and reporting requirements, contribution limits, and a ban on taking corporate funds for their support. Now, the blogger who spend $300 on his site is not going to be the issue. The issue will come from the large sites, who have to worry about every damn post, and every damn contributor, and whether or not someone got something from some candidate or campaign staffer. That's the insideous chilling effect of the Threat of Regulation. McCain doesn't get that at all.
MCCAIN: Suggestions to the contrary are simply the latest attempt by opponents of reform to whip up baseless fears.
ME: Who you gonna trust, me or your own lyin' eyes . . .
MCCAIN: BCRA was intended to empower ordinary citizens, and it has been successful in doing so. We will continue to fight for that goal.
ME: If by "empower" you mean "make it harder to understand what I can do, and more frustrating to participate in politics" then sir you have a point.
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And now come Messrs. McCain & Feingold 5 Comments (0 topical, 5 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
The McCain Feingold Act is (and was intended to) suppress all political commentary outside of the control of those inside the beltway. Although in the last election the 527s figured out a way to allow non insiders to be involved, that was not the intent of the Act. If the creators of the Act had been successful in their efforts none of the 527s or anyone else for that matter would have had any input into the Federal Elections.
The Act even puts muzzles regular state and local party activity in the Federal Election. Although I am an attorney and am active in my local party it was not possible for me or for our local party to figure out all of the rules relating to activity in the last Presidential Election. We were forced to eliminate virtually all references to the election and any candidate for Federal Office for fear of violating the law. The only candidates we were able to effectively promote were our local and state candidates.
Our state party had to register under the Act in order for it to be involved in the Federal Election in any meaningful way. The state party had two attorneys who specialized in Federal Election Law on call to answer questions about the Act.
Getting ordinary people involved in the process is difficult. When it requires a lawyer before we can tell people to form a group and speak their mind, we have clearly gone over the edge.
As an attorney the ultimate outrage was when the Supreme Court went along with this anti democratic scheme. [End rant]
Suppose I print up 100,000 fliers that say: "George Bush is a great guy. Vote George Bush for President!" As I understand McCain-Feingold, that must be considered an in-kind contribution to Bush for President. I am explicitly calling for the election of a federal candidate, so I suppose that the time limits for such speech around election day would apply, too.
And certainly if I paid a radio station to run my voice delivering the same message in a time slot that would reach 100,000 people, that would be an in-kind contribution, too, and subject to all the applicable restrictions.
Is McCain seriously saying that his law would say that delivering the exact same message to 100,000 people via the internet instead of radio or print would not be subject to the same regulations?
The Supreme Court has made some horrendus decisions in recent years, but the one in which it failed to throw out McCain-Feingold as being in blatant violation of the First Amendment was one of the worst.
When BCRA was being debated, proponents made much of the uncontrolled, "corrupting" influence of interest groups, many of which are only associations of citizens concerned to promote specific approaches to certain issues. Unless I am mistaken, for example, McCain had some grievance with a pro-life group that challenged his bona fides with the movement.
Clearly, some pols want the power to redefine entire realms of public discourse: words will mean what they want them to mean, and those who disagree must be "empowered" to shut up. A thicket of regulations so dense that ordinary folks despair, and political parties curtail their efforts is precisely that at which they aimed.
the faint clicking of the marbles in the hands of Cap'n John McQueeg.
embraced by the sponsors and supporters of BCRA seems to be that the common people will be empowered by that act to regurgitate the propaganda belched forth by the press agents of pols like McCain. "Empowerment" seems to mean "seeing things as McCain sees them." All else is special-interest, corporate-lobbyist pandering.
Ahh, the glories of newspeak.