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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."
It's as if a 100 million free-speech loving liberals cried out and were suddenly silenced.
(Actually, they were silenced when their heads exploded like Dantooine when they found out that it was Republicans who blocked the bill.)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I freaked when I heard about the bill. Then I learned it was more about the astroturfing.
I hate fake campaigns. I think we are smart enough to learn and I LOVE the freedom to be told (about such things including hotchickonyoutube).
Now, can we get back some of our other freedoms, even if the government (or people) don't like them.
I promise I'll shutup about abortion if I can carry a gun and smoke in a bar.
Politicians are almost uniformly "technology stupid." (tube joke redacted) Their opinions of different technologies (and everything else) are based entirely on what lobbyists and the party platform tell them to support. Why would anyone think the two parties differ in this regard?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
The Second Amendment guarantees the First.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Ok, but that's a non-unique argument. If government search standards are as low as you describe, there are dozens, if not hundreds of laws or regulations law enforcement could already use as an excuse to harass you. The issue in your scenario is the lax requirements for warrants, not the lobbyist law.
What your missing is that the bill was never about making bloggers register as lobbyists - that was all spin, and slashdot nicely bought it hook, line and sinker.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Yeah the grassroots protests against this are probably from political lobyists who get paid to write stuff in their blog. Interesting how well it works.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
So, you bring up the Republicans' slang terms for the Democratic party, and yet you throw around "neo-GOP" like we're a bunch of Neo-Nazis. Smart, prove to the world that Democrats are truly hypocritical, in more ways than one. ("Oh, we can have numerous campaign sites and astroturfing sites, but you can't run Littlegreenfootballs.com because you disagree with us!" Smart, Dems.)
I'm out of mod points. Somebody wanna rate the parent post as a flamebait?
Can anyone explain why there are _any_ limits on political speech? Isn't that the most important kind of speech to protect? Why do you need to "register" as a PAC?
Isn't there already a law that limits how much political speech can happen leading up to an election and who can say it?
We can all find the bad in pretty much every law on the books. What i can't find is the "good" about any political-speech-restriction laws.
There are lots of voices out there that i'd just as soon not have to hear, but silencing them via government intervention seems pretty unAmerican (for historical values of "American").
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Actually it sounds more like treating lobbyists as the liars and scoundrels they are. They should not be able to pretend they are normal, well behaved people on the net or in any other public forum. Perhaps tattoos on the forehead and cheeks (both ends) would be appropriate a big L in red to denote a lying lobbyist whose opinions are for sale to the highest bidder.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Who wants to jail abortion protestors?
Who bombs clinics, shoots doctors, and wants to jail anyone involved in abortions?
Who wants to stop churches from speaking out against lifestyles they find destructive?
Who wants to jail people for HAVING lifestyles they find destructive?
Who wants to limit the freedom of pastors? Of street preachers ?
Who wants to limit the freedom of the press? Who keeps insisting that one particular religion is innately tied in with government? Who wants to search every package, luggage, monitor your calls? Who wants to hold US citizens in secret, deny them access to a lawyer, deny them the right to a trial by jury? Deny them access to the evidence against them?
Hmmm......
"Our" side? They are rich American politicians. You are posting on slashdot. They are not on your side.
It is a mistake to think of "us vs them" as "democrats vs republicans", whichever way around you think of it. Everybody in congress is on the same side, and it's not your one.
Please, read the actual bill. It says you must reach 500 people AND make $100,000 working as a paid shill. Not OR!!!
Please don't link to a propaganda piece by a professional conservative lobbyist and claim it to be equal evidence to the above cited UCLA law professor and the above cited Orginal Bill. Payment and Reach were considered separately in the bill. Why don't you read the actual bill, and see if that alleviates your concerns.
I did read it. Here's what it says:
(19) GRASSROOTS LOBBYING FIRM- The term `grassroots lobbying firm' means a person or entity that--
`(A) is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and
`(B) receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period.'
$100,000 is an extrapolation of $25,000 over a whole year. The bill said simply that a person who makes $25,000 a quarter for political astroturfing ($100,000 a year salary) or is given the same amount to spend on astroturfing is a lobbyist. It's straightforward, true, and doesn't affect bloggers at all.
You're asking the wrong question. Why? Because here we're talking about laws that put restrictions on speech that is both political and commercial. Commercial speech, as I sure hope you already know, is not protected by the First Amendment in the USA. So the real question is whether we should restrict commercially produced political speech.
In both the case of PACs and the case of this proposed law, the idea is that such speech is restricted in a particular way: such speech is allowed, but it must disclose its commercial nature, i.e., the fact that somebody is paying to produce it. Why? In order to hold actors in the political field honest, and to enable the public to better judge political information that it receives.
Are you adequate?
Who wants to limit the freedom of the press?
Everyone. There have always been people who have wanted to silence "the other side". Not just politics, but religion and science and pretty much every other field of human endeavour where people disagree.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
What's so frickin' hard about this? Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. No law means no law.
As it stands now doesnt it still target talk radio?
Whether or not you agree with the Rush and Hannitty's of the world, considering them under this bill is still a first amendment violation.
There is no spoon
While I don't know if they should register as lobbyists, I definitely agree that some sort of proper disclosure should be required. Otherwise, this is a way for corporations to sell their lies to the public without them knowing it. Just as political ads must tell you who funded it (even if it's a corporate front group, you can still look them up), so should paid bloggers.
My new blog
Please stop saying $100,000 a year. That is not accurate and paints a different picture of "the rich" or, at least, the well paid.
For example, someone could dump a contract on a blogger to get paid $28,091 in a single quarter for some political blogging. They are now classified as a lobbyist and never made $100,000.
I think you're absolutely right to help educate Slashdotters on the realities of the bill. I applaud your effort to do so, by countering the FUD with facts. But, you'll need to get this one straight, too.
I must have missed the memo too.
/. people automatically think everybody agrees with them. You find this in other forums, but it is most prevalent here for some reason. I really equate the /. editors to The View cast. However there is no Elizabeth Haselbeck among them to give a conservative view of the world.
I find it really funny that
How odd, that's exactly the opposite of what I was told:
"If you want your children to live like Republicans, you'd better vote like a Democrat."
So the Democrats position was to shut down a majority of people that critisize them?
Yes, because K Street lobbying has certainly been "shut down" by registration. You also think that "a majority" of Democratic critics are getting paid +$25,000/quarter? Where do I sign up?
What in the world does this have to do with the question of who controls economic resources? Nothing at all. It has fsck-all to do with the socialist/capitalist axis.
Democrats have been in favor of a slightly more regulated market, but that's not socialism either; market socialism and planned economy capitalism are both possible. (The former existed briefly during the Spanish Civil War, the later in the U.S. during WWII.) Outside their fringes, both the Democratic and Republican parties are firmly capitalist.
So can we stop using "socialist" as a McCarthyist scare word already?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
at a time when the Democrats should be consolidating their power and trying to show some unity.
Hmmm... that's what I want my government to do "consolidate their power".
Just remember that for every power a Democrat (or Republican) consolidates now, in a few years, a Republican (or Democrat) is going to use it against you. Whenever you grant new powers to "your side", you must understand that "the other side" will use them in similar or worse ways in no time at all. The only solution is to strip them of power.
I think you are being blinded by intent; It's not an issue of what it is supposed to mean, but rather one of everything it could be interpreted to mean.
Let's say I run a popular website to stimulate a grass-roots election effort (thus 19 applies). The site gets millions of hits before an election, and my hosting is expensive (I never expected that kind of bandwidth usage!), so I have to pay $25k (this meets part B). I'm running out of money, and politician Bill McGreedy pays me $1 to "keep up the good work" (this meets part A). Oops. Now, this might get shot down at trial if the judge is a nice guy, since the case doesn't match the true intent of the law. However, you can bet your ass I'll need a good lawyer, and will have to go through a trial. Given the speed of the legal system, it won't be resolved until after the election, either. I think another poster had a more likely form of misuse however, which is that the bill can be used to assert hidden payment of bloggers and thus launch an investigation of them. That will either shut the blogger up or slow them down.
We don't need this law to "protect" us; We only need to tell people that random bloggers, just like people you meet on the street, might be lying. Don't trust random people you don't know -- It's that simple. A lying blog can always be countered with another blog which digs up the truth, and that is the appropriate way to respond.
Finally, I don't see the difference between one blogger paid 50k per quarter and 10 bloggers paid $5k per quarter. The latter is a yet more sinister approximation of a "grass-roots" effort, and would be completely legal under this (now defunct) part of the law.
So to recap, this law can be used for nuisance attacks, is based on the fundamentally bad assumption that you should be able to trust random people on the internet, and has a large loophole for exactly the type of shillery it is supposed to stop. Well intentioned as it may have been, I say good riddance.
Because it was an anagram of "One"?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Actually, there was a third issue that didn't get talked about very much this week, and was being pushed by the Democrats. I think it might have gotten passed, too. (No surprise there; it's not like the Republicans really have any backbone, or scruples, either.)
The issue is about the definition of a "lobbyist." The Democrats started off from a good premise -- something needs to be done about lobbying and the corporate/big-money influence on politics. Fair enough. However, where you should probably start getting skeptical is when you hear a bunch of people who were just elected due to the help of said corporate cash seemingly railing against it. Something just ain't kosher there.
Below the surface of the "lobbying reform" was a pretty obvious goal: it was all about chiseling away at the Republican power base -- big, ideologically driven social organizations, churches in particular -- while leaving Democratic ones (smaller PACs, unions) intact. The new law puts the same limits on a volunteer- and donation-driven organizations, which represent people with a certain set of beliefs, as K Street lobbying firms for corporations.
Now, I don't necessarily agree with their agenda, but there is a vast difference between a Tobacco-Industry lobbyist, and the Southern Baptist Convention. The former doesn't represent the views of any actual people, only a corporation -- an entity which, for good reason, doesn't vote and shouldn't have any direct involvement in the political process -- while the latter is simply a group of interested persons attempting to influence policy in the manner they see fit.
By painting both groups with the same brush, the Democrats completely missed the boat, and have probably created more harm than good. They had an opportunity to push corporations out of politics, while allowing regular people to stay in, but they ignored it. Rather than calling both groups "lobbyists," it would have been just as easy to create a distinction between a "lobbyist" who works for hire and can take funding from anywhere, and a "Political Action Committee," who is funded by donations from private individuals and exists for the sole purpose of furthering their views. This would have the effect of regulating corporate cash and campaign contributions, but also not impinging on people's rights to pool their resources in order to have a say in government.
Instead, the Democrats used their new-found power as an opportunity to gerrymander on a grand scale, and proved that they are no better than the Republicans; the only reason they seemed like it over the past few years, is because they weren't in position to do as much damage.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This is blatantly untrue. Most (nearly all) liberals think that religious people have the right to free speech. Every dunderheaded political thing that Pat Robertson has said on television is protected speech. Liberals would oppose the government trying to stop Pat Robertson from saying political things.
However, at the end of the day, a 'church' is only a tax-exempt organization if it constrains itself to conducting religious affairs. If an organization chooses to become either political or commercial, then it risks losing the special tax-exemption that exists for religious organizations.
If liberals weren't interested in fostering religion, they would point out that any attempt by the government to even decide which organizations are churches, is a violation of the separation of church and state. They would get rid of the tax-exempt status altogether, which would remove the government interference that bothers you so.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
"There is no "global warming consensus", there are facts and stupid fringe scientists who disagree to make a name for themselves."
Yes, of course. It's always the fools and idiots who challenge the conventions and consensus of the day. How many of our great scientists in human history have been persecuted and ridiculed for going against the group think? Two that even you would recognize, Galileo and Edison are great examples. One was persecuted and the other was ridiculed. Good thing they learned to shut the fuck up, huh?
Look, I don't care if you think these people are crazy, lots of people thought that the round-earthers were fools, but is it necessary for the government to silence them? Let them say what they want, let them deny it. If they are wrong, who should really care?
What if they are right, though. Is the possibility of that truth so damaging to your psyche that can't even stand to hear their rebuttal? Why is it such human nature to wish to crush those who disagree with you instead of honestly debating them and their ideas?
"I find it funny how few people I talk to are true Republicans or Democrats"
I find it sad that so many people are sheep and look for the easy way out and compromise their true believes/feelings to fit one of the two most popular parties. Certainly there isn't a "perfect" party out their for everyone, but most times there is a better "fit".
"old adage that if you vote third party you are throwing your vote away."
It's not clear from your post how you feel, but never fall for that line of thinking. If you show up at the polls and vote, doesn't matter for who or what, you have not thrown away your vote, the people that don't bother to show up are the ones throwing away their vote.
Remember this the next time you step into the voting booth!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
No, Bill McGreedy can't just pay you $1. They have to hire you. Making a donation and retaining your services are two different things, and the language is making a distinction about that.
Except that the Government doesn't generally decide which organizations are churches. Yes, they have set some VERY basic criterion, but only for the purpose of definition. Just about anyone can form a church and apply for tax-exempt status. The government just checks your church, and as long as you meet the simple criteria, you get the status. NOWHERE in the criteria is the requirement that your church, both it's individuals AND the corporate entity, be divorced from political involvement.
Again, you are incorrect when you say:
A church is in NO WAY required to constrain itself to religious affairs only. As a corporate entity it may legally and Consitutionally involve itself in political affairs without losing it's tax exempt status. Attempting to stop that is suppressing free speech. Churches are even allowed to enter into commercial enterprises as well. The commercial aspect of the enterprise is legally somewhat different than the church aspect, and so tax law does affect that part of it differently, but it is not legally constrained to not be involved.
You keep making my points for me. You say that Liberals don't want to suppress free speech, and then in the very next breath you try to make the case for the suppression of free speech for certain groups of people. Nice hypocrisy there!
Oh, and your last statement makes no sense at all. How would not having a special protective section of law around churches somehow improve the separation of Church and State? It wouldn't. Please re-read my last paragaph from above for the explanation of why the tax-exempt status is there in the first place.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I don't know why everyone is giving this guys such a hard time about the tubes analogy. While it was clearly harder to understand than he and his speech writer intended, it was not inaccurate. There is a common misconception among the non-tech savvy that the internet is this ocean of data where information goes in and magically comes out the other end. The Senator was using an analogy to illustrate that the internet was like tubes or pipes that big ISP's could restrict to serve their own political agenda. If a young Senator had used the same analogy, it would have never made the news. Because Ted Stevens is an old guy, it is more fun to mock him than it is to understand and acknowledge his analogy. I think that it is tragic that we let the opponents to Net Neutrality use this mockery of an ally to divert attention from the issue just so that we can have a good laugh. Way to go guys.
You're joking, right? As a Republican linux user, I haven't heard too many alternative definitions. Seems pretty clear to me...
Astroturfing: fake grass-roots activity. If you're trying to look like you're just a part of the "noisy populace" but you're being paid to maintain your position by the side you apparently agree with, then you're astroturfing.
That definition holds for Microsoft astroturfing, Republican, Democrat, whatever. This bill sets the bar pretty high. $25k/quarter from one client (not from ads) or better than $100k/year from one source, and it calls you a paid political hack. I guess I can see where they're going, since that makes the law more enforceable, but still seems like there will be a lot of two client blogs the next year.
Political speech, like all freedoms, brings with it additional responsibilities. One of the most important responsibilities of political speech (compared to your average public griping) is that it's critical that people know exactly who is saying what. If you're just spouting off your opinion, great! Someone being paid > $100k to put up a political blog probably has the time to submit a form explaining who is paying them for "their opinion". And that seems like an excellent balance of responsibility with freedom to me.
Regards,
Ross
i'd expect better of slashdot, this bill was specifically designed to kill astro turfing, you know, those blogs/websites of dubious repute which shill shit like microsoft/oil industry "studies" / anti global warming "studies" etc.. in exchange for monetary compensation, those sites(which promote massive amounts of mis-information) would have had to register as lobbysits, hardly something i'd cry about since it'd make identifying the bought mouthpieces easier. i'm not suprised that republicans voted against this bill, after all, mis-informing and pushing false information as true is an essential tool in their trade, it's sad to see the sheeple over here braying as if this is something strange when all they have to do is fucking READ.
As a citizen, I'd like that astroturfing labeled as such
As a person with a brain, I'm offended by the suggestion that I can't just evaluate speech on the merits. And as a lover of liberty, I'm extremely offended by the suggestion that liberty be infringed in this way.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Now that's an entirely different argument, and one that I'm very likely to have some sympathy for. Laws are at best, an approximation of "constraints upon immoral behavior", and the gaps between morality and legality are substantial.
Hm. I'm not familiar with the ACLU's website, but I just spent 15 minutes trying to find an ACLU position on this (search for "blog" or "blogging" or "bloggers" with "Free Speech" selected as a constraint) and I can't locate any mention of the bill or the issue. The "family advocacy groups" are religious right groups (the part of the Republican party that I detest, being non-religious myself) and it's supremely unsuprising that they want to hide who is saying what. Their very name is a deception, so why would their advocacy be any different?
Ross
I agree. Churches shouldn't be threated into feeling like they're walking on eggshells to avoid possibly political statements. Furthermore, the line between religious philosophy and politics isn't as clearcut as most people would like to think. Whether you believe it or not, religion (and being religious) is about more than just talking on Sundays about a big invisible man in the sky; it's a way of life (which is inextricable from politics). Provided that a church's rhetoric doesn't directly advocate violence or clearly illegal acts, I see no reason why their doctrine should be scrutinized any further.
That being said, I think you're being unfair when you say that liberals are the ones advocating censorship and conservatives are defenders of free speech. That may be true in the example you bring up, but not for many others. Conservatives are just as bad (if not worse) with regard to censorship when it doesn't suite them. Take, for instance, the issue of nudity in the mass media. Viewing of nudity by itself is not psychologically harmful. It's not. Psychological study after psychological study have shown this. And yet, conservatives fight very hard against keeping movies, images, and art containing nudity from being broadcast all in the name of "protecting the children," which is really just a cover for their real goal: protecting us from our own sinful bodies.
And art isn't the only place where conservatives let free speech die by the wayside of a political agenda. It's conservatives who see nothing wrong with the DMCA and other copyright laws being used to suppress embarrassing internal memos or letters. It's conservatives who want to pass laws making it illegal to "desecrate" an American flag.
The grim reality of American politics is that neither party, despite what they'd like to to believe, is a defender of the people's rights. The saddest thing of all is that because of this, the concept of individual rights has degraded from the philosophical view of human dignity and justice into an argument about what IS or ISN'T written on a piece of paper.
-Grym