Slashdot Mirror
Bill to Treat Bloggers as Lobbyists Defeated
Lawrence Person writes "The attempt to require political bloggers to register as lobbyists previously reported by Slashdot has been stripped out of the lobbying reform bill. The vote was 55 to 43 to defeat the provision. All 48 Republicans, as well as 7 Democrats, voted against requiring bloggers to register; all 43 votes in favor of keeping the registration provision were by Democrats."
If anyone had bothered to read the text instead of buying the PR piece by a professional lobbyiest that went up yesterday as news, they would have seen that the provision in question only applied to blogging for pay by a client. Not getting money for your ads or anything else. This was aimed at astroturfing, not bloggers. And paid political speach, which is what we are talking about here, IS regulated already. This wasn't the evil to end all evils and an attack on blogs, it was an attack on lobbyists and it would have likely as not been a good thing if it had gone through.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
This is not a freedom of the press issue. This would have required bloggers who receive money from causes to file as lobbyists. As CNet puts it:
certain political bloggers who make or spend $25,000 per quarter and who encourage readers to contact their elected representatives would be forced to register as lobbyists.
A blogger who gets money from coroporations, parties, or organizations to blog for them is a lobbyist and an astroturfer. This doesn't cover Billy Blogger who talks about the local sports team, or even unsponsored political blogs. It isn't a way to surpress dissent, any more than requiring the same of lobbyists is. "But it's on the Internet" does not change the fact that politically active bloggers with $100,000 salaries or budgets are lobbyists and should be treated like the normal K Street type.
MoveOn.org is a PAC -- they're already very much "registered".
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Perhaps you should actually read the bill*. Note that the part labelled "definitions", a "grassroots lobbying firm" is defined as someone who "is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period."
The "500 person" rule you're concerned about describes the action of influencing, not the influencer. Specifically: "The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public."
To be affected, you must be all three of these:
So if you're a regular blogger, you likely are safe.
*=if that doesn't work, search for S.1 on thomas.loc.gov
The phrase "paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying" is not specifically defined in the bill; however, it is specifically defined that the bill does not affect blogs with less than 500 readers. This means you simply have to be a blog with 500 or more readers. Contrary to your little list, there is no minimum defined payment amount in the bill.
No. It's defined in Section 220 as "any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public or segments thereof to contact one or more covered legislative or executive branch officials (or Congress as a whole) to urge such officials (or Congress) to take specific action with respect to a matter described in section 3(8)(A), except that such term does not include any communications by an entity directed to its members, employees, officers, or shareholders.". It's in Definitions 18-A, which is right at the top of Section 220.
The payment part is in the definition of a grassroots lobbying firm, which is also in the Definitions section (right below the previous definition).
The LOC links, by the way, only seem to work for 5 minutes.
Here's a permanent link to the bill in question.
No, actually it was 25,000 a quarter and it required that you be retained by a client. Pretty clear. The 500 thing was totally different than the payment. Read the actual bill and not the crap spin that was spouted by a lobbyist on PR Wire and picked up here yesterday.
And I don't think it was dems not wanting competition. MoveOn.org is equal to anything the right has going in this area, and I can promise you the Dems sure don't want it to have to fall under K street kinda rules.
Ah, but you are a troll posting anonymously...
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Where the submission writeup says "previously reported by Slashdot," it should say "previously misreported by Slashdot." And presupposing that the way Slashdot "reported" it is right, as it happens, is a major piece of spin in this context. Because it's used to set up the rest of the blurb as an insinuation that Democrats were endorsing a bill that restricts freedom of political speech for bloggers (when in fact it's a bill that restricts commercial speech by people paid specifically to pretend they are unpaid advocates.)
Are you adequate?
Close, it's $25,000 per quarter, which comes-out to $100,000 per year. Even cheap astroturfing would be allowed.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain