Bloggers Exempted From Campaign Laws

MaceyHW writes "The Federal Election Commission ruled today that the only online political activity subject to Campaign Finance Laws are paid advertisements on a third party site. Today's ruling extended the regulations to paid advertising as required by a 2004 Federal Court ruling, but explicitly exempted all other forms of online activity: 'For example, the rule says individuals can use union or corporate computers or other electronic devices for political activity, as long they do it on their own time and are not coerced to engage in such activity by the union or corporation. Bloggers would be entitled to the same exemption from the campaign finance law that newspapers and other traditional forms of media receive. "There will be no second class citizens among members of the media," [FEC Chairman Michael T.] Toner said.'"

Comments

Thanks for the small favors

[jmorris42]

Of course the problem is that the question had to be settled by the FEC in the first place. It should be a no brainer, since after all; "Congress shall make no law...."

I await the day when we get enough strict constructionists on the Supreme Court to reverse their previous bad decisions, sweeping away McCain Fiengold and most other 'Campaign Finance Laws' that aren't limited to mandatory disclosure requirements. And even those have to go eventually, after all why can't someone donate anonymously? Yes we voters should normally be highly suspiscous of a candidate funded anonymously but I can theorize situations where it might be acceptable.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[LordKazan]

You do not have a first ammendment right to give money to your candidate for the very reason that Money IS speech. The person with the most money has more of a voice, violating the right to equal representation of the other people in the district.

Not all exercises of a right are protected exercises: if that exercise infringes upon the rights of others then it is NOT protected - and SHOULD NOT BE.

The only way to remove the corporate-whore money culture from washington is to REMOVE ALL INDIVIDUAL FUNDING of Candidates. All money for an election should go into one pool, then all the candidates on the ballot should get an equal proportion. Want your candidate to be heard more? ok, but all the others have to be too - if your so convinced of the merits of your candidate than this shouldn't bother you at all.

At the same time we should switch to instant-runoff voting, and completely open sourced Evoting machines with strict auditing of code, and voter-confirmed paper audit.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[exi1ed0ne]

. . .the consititution does not forbid congress from making laws that say who can donate what to a political campaign.

Just to be nit-picky. . . The Constitution is a document of enumerated powers. That means that unless it is in there, Congress can't do it. Nothing in Article I says anything about campaign financing, although it does list the trivial job of showing up one day a year. Coupled with Amendments 9 and 10, Congress just doesn't have the authority:

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[wannabe-retiree]

"The person with the most money has more of a voice, violating the right to equal representation of the other people in the district."

That's quite a stretch. When person A has more of something than person B, YES, there is inequality, but NO it does not mean that person B's rights are being violated. There's a difference.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the specific reason you do get protection for campaign contributions is because the court has ruled that contributions are a form of expression (i.e. money = speech). While I think you're right that money is really the power to amplify speech rather than expression in itself, and therefore should be subject to regulation, the law does not agree.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[vux984]

All money for an election should go into one pool, then all the candidates on the ballot should get an equal proportion. Want your candidate to be heard more? ok, but all the others have to be too - if your so convinced of the merits of your candidate than this shouldn't bother you at all.

What makes you think campaign contributors are convinced of the merits of their candidates? Quite the opposite is true really, most campaign contributors know full well that what they want from their candidate is in their own best interests, and not in the best interests of the people in general.

Corporations in particular don't give a crap about whats best for the electorate. Their millions in donations are, first to convince a candidate to turn his back on the people, and second to win that candidate the election.

They likely wouldn't contribute any money at all in your system... which might very well be a positive side-effect. But its important to realize that probably the vast majority of all contributions are to support a candidate who will represent the contributors private agenda -- not because they are convinced that if the public could be made aware of his merits that they would select him.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[Jeffrey Baker]

Here's the thing. On television and radio, you can buy advertising time to the exclusion of the other party. This makes television and radio unlike "speech". No matter how much you speak, you can't keep the other guy from speaking. And no matter how much bandwidth you buy for your website, you can hardly expect to keep the next guy from opening his website.

Conclusion: Internet like speech. Television, radio unlike speech. Hence the reason the FEC regulates certain things and not others.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[spiritraveller]

I await the day when we get enough strict constructionists on the Supreme Court ...

There are no strict constructionists on the Supreme Court and there never will be, because there is no such thing as a strict constructionist. When a judge thinks the text is ambiguous he makes a decision based on what he thinks is right. Sometimes, they will even do this when people disagree on whether the text is ambiguous.

Scalia has done this. Thomas has done this. Rhenquist did it. Every single one of them has done it.

So have fun waiting on your strict constructionists. You might as well wait for Godot.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[jmorris42]

> You do not have a first ammendment right to give money to your candidate for the very
> reason that Money IS speech.

Wow, that is doublethink of a quality not seen (other than as deliberate satire) outside of Daily Kos. You admit that money IS speech yet somehow in the same breath claim that makes it speech NOT protected by the 1st Amendment. Sorry, if it is speech then "Congress shall make NO law...."

Yes, some people, some causes, will have more money than other people or causes. Some political movements will have more wealthy donors within it, some will have more rabid volunteers, others will have famous people who can act as effective spokesmen for their causes. Yet so long as all are men[1] are equal before the law, all have but one vote and all may speak freely without fear of government reprisal then we have a free and fair political process.

[1] The word 'men' as used here isn't meant to imply women don't have the same rights, just refusing to bow to political correctness and use tortured language constructs to get around English's historical artifacts.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[Jeffrey Baker]

Your neat little worldview doesn't match reality. Neither side was "in power" when the regulations where passed. The latest and most significant restrictions were passed by a Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate, signed by a Democratic President, and approved by a split Supreme Court.

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[gfxguy]

In practice you'll find that my fundamental assertion is correct for the overwhelming majority of cases.

I can't think of any good examples of where someone's rights were infringed upon because someone else was, for whatever reason, able to excercise that same right more. Can you give me any real, relevent examples?

Re:Thanks for the small favors

[RexRhino]

And you need to learn what the definitions of totalitarianism and fascism are my very ingorant foe.

Totalitarianism is a government that controls or regulates nearly everything in society. Most people think totalitarian means "bad", and that "I am not totalitarian, because I am not bad". But the term Totalitarian doesn't include any moral judgements. If you believe in a society where nearly everything is controlled or regulated by the government, you are totalitarian... you may percieve that the government regulation is going to make things more "safe" or more "fair", or bring about "social justice"... but those who want a highly regulated society are totalitarians, plain and simple. You can explain why your form of totalitarianism is "good", but please don't pretend not to be totalitarian.

You might not be "Facist" in the strict sense of the word "Facist", because true Facism in the strict sense of the word died after WWII. But in general speech, Facism is used to describe authoritarians, totalitarians, or other people with views of extreme state control. So, technically you are not a Facist according to the strict dictionary definition, but you agree with facists that we should trust the government implicitly to regulate political speech and support.

You do not have the right to buy the favor of your representatives and thereby disenfranchize your fellow man

I have every right to support any candidate I want, in any way I want, so long as the resources I am using are mine. If I want to endorse a politician in my blog, or give a politician my own personal money, that is absolutly my right, without question. The government has no right to tell me what causes I am and not allowed to donate my time, voice, or money to, and which ones I am not.

The thing that will disenfranchize my fellow man is when the government has total control over what resources candidates recieve, as you advocate. For your vision to work, the government would have to be absolutly impartial and uncorrupt in how it distributes candidate resources. Do you trust G. W. Bush, and a Republican Congress, and a Republican Senate, to have the sole responsibility for deciding who gets what campaign resources? Are you telling me that a party, if it was in power, could be trusted to fairly distribute financial support to it's rivals? Come on man. Government control of campaign resources is a one way ticket to dictatorship.

Intrusive vs non-intrusive

[bagsc]

If you choose to go to a website, that's your choice. If they have a beowulf cluster with more bandwidth than God, with 100 live video feeds 24/7 for one candidate - you're choosing to go there, and it's not intruding on you. I don't care how they raised the money for it. IMHO, it's like visiting a campaign headquarters. That's public information.

And if I see one damned ad on TV, I want tougher regulations. That's intrusive. Like all this damned political spam. One deserves to be unregulated and one deserves to be banned.

Furthermore, if the RNC wants to have its own cable TV station (*coughox*) that it pays for, and the DNC wants one too, I don't see a problem with any amount of spending on that. As long as you can block those channels to prevent your kids from watching that trash...

Re:Intrusive vs non-intrusive

[RexRhino]

And if I see one damned ad on TV, I want tougher regulations. That's intrusive. Like all this damned political spam. One deserves to be unregulated and one deserves to be banned.

TV ads are no more intrusive than web pages. You do not have to watch stations with commercial advertisments if you dont want to. You could watch cable stations without commercial advertisments (or, ones that don't accept political adverts)... you could watch DVDs, etc. Throwing out the Bill of Rights because you don't like TV ads is a little extreme (the Bill of Rights makes no exceptions for political advertisment, and while things like pornography might be debateable there is no debate whatsoever that the First Amendment was supposed to cover paid political advertising. Paid political advertisments are political speech and undebatably protected by the First Amendment.)

The real danger when it comes to political propoganda is public education, not TV commercials. It really is debatable if TV commercials are all that effective. But no-one can deny the effectiveness of the public school system in molding political thought and changing political beliefs... and in most places, public education is compulsary, unlike TV ads.

The real problem

[XanC]

Everybody's complaining about you being a Utopian-ist (ugh, sorry) for suggesting this, and that it would quickly degrade into simple bribery. Maybe they're right, but that doesn't change the fact that campaign finance laws are unconstitutional, plain and simple.

But the real problem is the federal government itself. The Founders didn't raise this issue because they set up a system where the states delegated a few, specific tasks to the federal government. It didn't (and shouldn't) matter who holds office, particularly, as long as he's competent to do the job.

Today, when the federal government takes power and treasure from us whenever it wants, recognizing no limits to its own authority, it does matter. And that's the problem.

Isn't it obvious why blogging is exempt?

[Mance Rayder]

Campaign finance laws were put into place to keep the playing field even. When the issue of others campaigning on candidates' behalfs arose, such as PACs, laws were put in place against "soft money" advertising, on the same principle -- no one candidate should be able to outshout the other by commandeering the limited number of media available.

But there's now an unlimited number of resources available for speech. Let one party open as many blogs as they want to open, it won't stop the other party from opening their own and letting their positions be heard. Unlike television or radio, the audience isn't bound to a limited number of channels, and thus can't be dominated by any single party.

This is a good move by the FCC. I'm torn on the issue of CFR over traditional mediums, but only because my inner libertarian can't stomach regulation of free speech and my inner citizen is sick of watching politicians elected by the size of their war chest than the quality of their performance. This isn't an issue on the Internet (yet... wait until election year banner ads), and in no way does regulation have any place there. Again, bravo, FCC. About time.

Re:Great Chance for Bill O'Reilly Being President

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One of the most popular choices for president, among the blogger community, is Bill O'Reilly. He has a populist mindset, not a conservative one.

With the easing of restrictions on blogging in support of candidates, the bloggers will be out in force in 2008. O'Reilly has a good chance of becoming president if the damned leprechaun would just join the damned race.

What would his party platform be?

A hand on every (yah-yah), a vibrator in every (woo-hoo) and a falafel in every (meow)?

Re:Sovereignty

[XanC]

It was ratified by the states, by a vote of each state's citizens. Citizens of several of the states later voted to leave. What's the problem?

I can accept that you and I disagree about this. But how do you justify coming down and trying to kill me over it?

Re:Great Chance for Bill O'Reilly Being President

[aichpvee]

I don't know, but the debates would be legendary. He'd probably turn all red in the face and start shouting, "cut his mic!"

You're missing the point

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The problem with McCain Feingold is that it puts a major crimp in the activity of voluntary grass-roots-funded political organizations while leaving billionaires (who can afford to set up the whole operation) and unions free to spend as much as they want. It cripples ad-hoc organizations, hobbles large ones, and puts the power of the mainstream advertising machine in the hands of a small elite.

Which is PRECICELY what it was intended to do.

The importance of this decision is that it blocks the law from doing this on the internet - preserving the disruptive influence of the net's transfer of power into the hands of individuals.