FEC Internet Regulation Due for 3/16 Vote: Don't be Deceived by Soothing Reformer Rhetoric
By Brad Smith Posted in User Blogs — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The Problem With the Campaign Finance Reform Community is that you can't trust 'em.
The Federal Election Commission has announced that it will hold a final vote on internet regulation on March 16. For lots of background, visit fec.redstate.com,.
Ever since this issue blew up in reformers' faces last spring, they've tried to argue that all they want to do is regulate "paid ads" on the internet. And they're saying that again today, and it's no more true than it was last March. Head below the fold for more. According to Roll Call(subscription required), "Fred Wertheimer, president of campaign finance watchdog group Democracy 21, said his group also believes bloggers should be able to express their views on the Internet free of the restraint of campaign finance laws. But, he said, candidates, parties, corporations and labor unions that are paying for Internet advertising should fall under campaign finance laws."
This poses several problems for the so-called reform community, however.
First, most people think paid internet ads are already regulated - certainly that was always the majority view at the FEC, when it tried exempt most unpaid internet activity from regulation, just as paid newspaper ads or paid television ads are not exempt under the law's "press exemption."
Second, the lawsuit brought by the reformers to require the FEC to regulate the internet was in no way limited to paid ads.
Third, Judge Kollar-Kotelly's opinion, siding with the reformers, is in no way limited to paid ads.
Fourth, the reformers have written lots of stuff arguing that more than paid ads on the net need to be regulated.
For links and page cites to all the above, see here.
No, the reformers have never liked the internet. In their brief to the Court - you can link to a pdf version through the above link, and see pgs. 23-28 of the brief- they referred to (or approvingly quoted others referring to) a deregulated internet as "a step backwards," "anti-reform," and "a huge loophole."
And they fought tooth, nail, and misleading statement after misleading statement against H.R. 1606 lost fall, which would have exempted much unpaid internet activity from regulation.
McCain-Feingold is the tip of the spear. Just as moslem terrorists used innocuous Danish cartoons(and lied by using made up cartoons) to suppress the western tradition of freedom of expression, so is McCain-Feingold being used by anti-liberty forces in the US to squelch freedom of political expression. Be clear on both M-F and the moslem terrorists: they will not stop until they totally crush freedom or are defeated. It is the nature of what they do. They will not compromise, they will not moderate, they will not reconsider.
One of the two worst things Bush did so far in his Presidency is to sign M-F.
is such a terrible thing. After all, it is resposible for the Great Satan, us. No, we need to look to emulate the great model nations in the world: China, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea.
I'd love Wertheimer to give a list of what he wouldn't regulate.