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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.'"
This is not really about giving cash to candidates. Even under your scenario: suppose all candidates are funded equally from a public pool. I, a private citizen, wish to dedicate my time and my checking account to persuading as many people as possible that candidate X is the best choice. Under your proposed system, is this permissible? Does it change if I encourage others to join me? If I encourage others to help me by volunteering? Help me with cash donations? What if I voluntarily do the bidding of the campaign manager? What if I try to guess what the campaign manager wants, and do it? What if I take money from the campaign?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Wow, what a terrible idea. Like most attempts at regulating this, it won't change anything, just slightly alter the way its done. Under this system, expect to see ads like this:
"Hi, my name is so and so, I personally enjoy extolling the virtues of candidate X.....virtue virtue virtue.... if you enjoy hearing me speak, please give me money.
I think, however, it would be a good idea to clasify corporate campaign donations as 'commerical speech' since they have obvious commercial intents. Such speech can be regulated heavily.
For example, Vermont has a cap on spending in local government races. Part of that cap includes a mileage reimbursement rate for driving your own car. Therefore, candidates in statewide or even countywide elections can blow their spending cap simply by driving from town to town to meet the voters.
Finally, money is not speech. Speech is speech. Money is money. By limiting how much money individuals can give to candidates you invite corruption instead of hindering it. In any case, political speech in support of a candidate is exactly the type of speech that should be most free. If I want to spend 10 million dollars to put ad in the media nationwide about how Presidential Candidate X slept with my sister, or shot my dog, or redirected money from a trust fund into his own company, HookersAndBlow Inc., I should be able.
I see a lot of triumphalism around the "blogosphere" about this... talk of the "netroots" and all those wonderful keywords, and how they changed the world.
This went through because to turn it down made absolutely no freaking sense. That's it.
I just don't get how they ALL can be drinking the kool-aid at once. You raise money for candidates. Woo! So does the phone, and dinners, and direct mail. But this is faster? Okay, it's more efficient and well-targetted. Does that give you political power? Maybe?
No, it doesn't. Your audience is far too diverse, and while you may come together to raise money for someone, that doesn't mean you can even get a coherent message together to send that person, just that he's some kind of internet darling. Maybe a consultant job for the blogger, but what did the blogger do, really? Rant a bit, host a website, and find the right words to get people pissed off enough, usually. Difficult? Undoubtedly. But politically savvy? No. Just smart business sense and a dash of rancor.
I keep seeing all these wonderful, starry-eyed monologues about how the internet will forever change the way politics is run, how it'll cure all ills and eventually (of course), those bastards that disagree with you will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. That isn't the sound of politics, because these people aren't politicians. It's the sound of religion- except now the religion is political invective.
So, bloggers, great job. You succeeded in being the beneficiaries of the obvious and poking around a confused media because you're both shooting so hard from each side it has no idea what it can do. You've become gatekeepers to an enormous cash cow, but don't have the real clout to keep the floodgates closed, because there're enough important blogs that it doesn't take any sort of agreement or platform between them to give a candidate exposure. But, above all, you're creating little bubbles filled to the brim with a kind of group-mind, perfectly separated from true opposing viewpoints with a powerfully whispered "troll." Very soon the political blogs will either fall into two groups: shrill hive-like structures and unknown policy wonks, on both sides. You can't create a shining future when you're using all your might to run towards the inoperative, rotten present.
I agree partially but mostly disagree with you.
You do not have a first ammendment right to give money to your candidate for the very reason that Money IS speech
Actually, money is time -- you get money when you save someone time in doing a service or providing them a product. The money they give you their time saved -- they received in doing the same thing for someone else. Rothbard's (free e-)book available here offers a simple explanation of what money is.
Because money is my time saved, I should be free to use my time (or time saved) as I want as long as I don't directly use that time to harm someone's person or property. If I want to use my time saved ("money") to promote something, I should be free to.
The difficulty I have with campaign finance laws is that they were written specifically to prevent me from using that time saved in the way I want to. They were written to keep both parties more powerful than the individual, and to also block any third party from using a smaller crowd of individuals to finance their elections.
The biggest problem with government today is that it is too powerful, taking over rights left to the individual. When a government gets powerful, it attracts the time-saved ("money") from powerful individuals. It uses this over-broad power to harm the masses at the profit of the few.
If you want to fix the system, you need to remove the powers they've taken against their Constitutional and ethical limits. Ridding Congress and the Executive Branch of their excessive powers will remove most people's desires to finance the elections in order to get favoritism-treatment (ie, cronyism).
The idea of public funding is bad because there are other laws preventing most people from getting on a ballot. The problem is not the funding, the problem is the power given to the elected.
> For example, confiscating land for "public use" is quite clear and is vastly different
> than "private use that might ultimately provide some public good." It didn't take much for
> 95% of the population to agree on that after the travesty that was the Kelo ruling.
Actually Kelo was a good example of strict constructionism at work. The 'good guys', as opposed to the nimrods who yank new laws fully formed from their asses, on the court ruled against an outcome they clearly would have preferred and stuck to the law as written. The state constituition in question clearly permitted the action and the US Consitituition as a general rule only limits what the US Government can do. So they upheld the taking and noted that if the state laws were different they would have ruled differently, whereupon the outraged folks in the various states looked at their local laws and are in the process of making changes where needed.
Democrat delenda est
The state constituition in question clearly permitted the action and the US Consitituition as a general rule only limits what the US Government can do. So they upheld the taking and noted that if the state laws were different they would have ruled differently ...
The US Constitution is a "baseline" as far as rights go. State constitutions can provide more protection for individual liberties, but they cannot reduce the protections that the Federal constitution provides.
For over a hundred years, the 14th Amendment has been interpreted to apply almost all of the first ten amendments to the states. The Supreme Court would not have even decided the case if it were based entirely on state law. Kelo is a case where the Court interprets the Fifth Amendment as it applies to and limits a city government (a unit of the state).
You ought to read the case before speculating on the Court's rationale.