Bill to Treat Bloggers as Lobbyists Defeated 537
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."
I feel a great distubance (Score:5, Insightful)
(Actually, they were silenced when their heads exploded like Dantooine when they found out that it was Republicans who blocked the bill.)
Re:I feel a great distubance (Score:5, Insightful)
Astroturfing. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
Goes to show... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Second Amendment guarantees the First.
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can't resist... Agreeing with republicans... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I smell a rat (Score:0, Insightful)
I'm out of mod points. Somebody wanna rate the parent post as a flamebait?
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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").
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:are you that naive? (Score:2, Insightful)
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......
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Can't resist... Agreeing with republicans... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't link to a propaganda piece by a professional conservative lobbyist [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
(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.
Re:Astroturfing. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's just consider a simple scenario, a very simple scenario that doesn't deal with many of the issues facing this problem. You are a voter who has decided to vote based on the opinions of 10 random people. You believe that this is a good representation of the public and want to vote the way the public does. If there are no lobbyists, then your vote will be based on the majority oppinion of the 10 people you talk to. If we add lobbyists to the scenario, then you can no longer say that about your vote. If one of your 10 people is a lobbyist, then you have essentially lost an opinion and have handicapped the other candidate. This obviously scales as you get more than one lobbyist. Now consider two cases: you don't know who the lobbyist is or you know who the lobbyist is. If you don't know which person is a lobbyist (or don't even know that you picked a lobbyist), then your vote is skewed in favor of the lobbyist. If you know which person is the lobbyist, then you can take that into consideration when forming your vote by discarding that opinion or getting a new one. If you then knew who paid that lobbyist, you might treat that vote differently by giving it more importance than the other votes if you agree with the organization or by counting against the candidate if you strongly disagree with the organization.
I think that part of what you were talking about is that more political speech means more information, which I agree is a good thing. But to get the most information, you need to know who is talking, along with why they are talking and whether or not they are paid to say the things they say. In another example that isn't completely related, consider being sued for something you do while working at a company. The company provides you with a lawyer. It would be in your best interest to know whether the company hired the lawyer for you or whether they gave you a lawyer that is on their payroll who might be acting in the company's best interest instead of yours (not that this is always the case by any means). Again, knowing who a person works for can give you insight into their motivation. This isn't about silencing voices, its about informing the people who are listening to the voices (not the ones in their heads).
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
1. We have important laws against lying about someone and presenting it as factual information. I cannot start a blog about bmajik or run commercials about you in which I call you a child molester, unless of course this is true. If you are a candidate for office, I still cannot create a blog or run commercials about you in which I call you a child molester, unless it is true. The Supreme Court has ruled that such things do not count as free speech, unless reasonable people believe it to be a parody.
2. We have serious problems with freedom of speech when corporations monopolize the process of distributing information. If enough corporations choose to unfairly favor one candidate or political viewpoint to the exclusion of other political viewpoints, then the freedom of speech of citizens is actually reduced in favor of the bias of the majority corporate viewpoint, which is in the hands of a select few individuals. This problem is present because the average citizen is financially unable to start a television station or cable news network, even if strongly motivated to do so. (There are also a limited number of broadcast slots available, and a limited number of cable lines which can be run in any one area without excessive disruption of life.) Thus, laws which ensure the fairness of the limited number of major gateways for political speech can actually increase freedom of speech. We may hope that the internet may eliminate this problem in the future, but for now it has only reduced it.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about money, not speech. You can say anything you want. But you can't get paid for doing anything you want. I think speech should be free - you don't need money to speak. If receiving money changes what you will say - then what's that all about? it's amazing how many people confuse money and speech, although I suspect the confusion is deliberate in many cases.
You're asking the wrong question. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:are you that naive? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
First Amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Goes to show... (Score:3, Insightful)
Talk Radio (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it really funny that
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
And democracy is about 1 man = 1 vote.
That principle is under thread from groups (possibly under the guise of bloggers) that have large sums of corporate/interest groups money to spend. The idea of registering those that get paid to influence political decisions, be it through politicians or voters, might be good for traceability and avoid undemocratic behaviour.
Re:Democrats (Score:1, Insightful)
"If you want your children to live like Republicans, you'd better vote like a Democrat."
Re:Not typical democrat behavior? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:First Amendment (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I smell a rat (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it was an anagram of "One"?
That's not all they've done. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:I feel a great distubance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:are you that naive? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Democrats (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:Democrats (Score:3, Insightful)
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! (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember this the next time you step into the voting booth!
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:are you that naive? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: Democrats v Ted Stevens (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Ethical=Making it harder to criticize politicia (Score:3, Insightful)
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
misinformation is rampant here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I feel a great distubance-Well Duh!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ethical=Making it harder to criticize politicia (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:are you that naive? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)