[IP] more on Democrats HELP defeat Online Freedom of Speech Act in House [fs]
Begin forwarded message:
From: Cliff Bamford <bamford@xxxxxx>
Date: November 5, 2005 9:24:50 PM EST
To: 'David Farber' <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Democrats HELP defeat Online Freedom of Speech Act in
House [fs]
Reply-To: bamford@xxxxxx
Here's how we got here. Whether you're liberal or conservative, if this
doesn't make your blood boil, you're missing something. There's a
surprise
at the end (no fair peeking).
==================
The story of the Online Freedom of Speech Act started with McCain-
Feingold
Campaign Finance reform act, in my estimation the most contemptible
legislation in all of US history. (The American Civil Liberties Union
criticized the Supreme Court’s decision upholding major provisions of
the
McCain-Feingold campaign finance law as an unprecedented restriction
on core
political speech that is inconsistent with basic First Amendment
values).
The whole campaign finance reform movement has been, from the
beginning, an
immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of
foundations
disguised as a "mass movement." One of the chief scammers, Sean
Treglia, a
former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, reveals it all
in an
astonishing videotape made on March 12, 2004. That story in brief:
-------------------
Charged with promoting campaign-finance reform when he joined Pew in the
mid-1990s, Treglia came up with a three-pronged strategy: 1) pursue an
expansive agenda through incremental reforms, 2) pay for a handful of
"experts" all over the country with foundation money and 3) create fake
business, minority and religious groups to pound the table for reform.
"The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in
Washington,"
Treglia says — 100 in the Senate, 435 in the House. "The idea was to
create
an impression that a mass movement was afoot — that everywhere they
looked,
in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious
groups, in
ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform."
The vast majority of this money — $123 million, 88 percent of the
total —
came from just eight liberal foundations.
These foundations were: the Pew Charitable Trusts ($40.1 million), the
Schumann Center for Media and Democracy ($17.6 million), the Carnegie
Corporation of New York ($14.1 million), the Joyce Foundation ($13.5
million), George Soros' Open Society Institute ($12.6 million), the
Jerome
Kohlberg Trust ($11.3 million), the Ford Foundation ($8.8 million)
and the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($5.2 million).
Quote (Treglia): "If you look at the Supreme Court decision, you will
see
that almost half of the footnotes relied on by the Supreme Court in
upholding the law are research funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts."
Perversely, the goal of this great hypocritical scam was to remove the
influence of money from politics, and the result was the crushing of the
first Amendment by McCain-Feingold, and the further dilution of the
Constitution as a meaningful document.
-------------------
In particular, McCain-Feingold (now known as the Bipartisan Campaign
Reform
Act of 2002 -- a more accurate name might be Bipartisan Incumbency
Protection and Oh By The Way Repeal of the First Amendment Act)
sought to
limit the alleged corrupting effects of soft money on campaigns. Soft
money—as opposed to hard money which is donated directly to the
campaign of
an individual—is most often used in supporting issue ads that praise, or
more likely vilify, a candidate for their politics. The BCRA
regulates how
such donations effect "public communications," including television,
radio,
and print media, but not the Internet, at least not until last year
when a
Federal judge decided otherwise. The Federal Election Commission was
then
required to begin the Byzantine process of deciding exactly how that
would
work, which brings us to Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and his
cliché
to "Let Freedom Click!" --- which became a simple "hands off free
speech on
the Internet, thou dastardly FEC and anyone else who might be
thinking along
the same lines" --- which became HR. 1606, the Online Freedom of
Speech Act,
which was defeated by a vote that went very much along partisan
lines. Use
the weasel word HELP if you want, but the fact is that (mainly)
Democrats
killed this bill, because (according to the right) they are
comfortable that
the mainstream media will continue to manifest a strong leftish bias, so
they don't want no stinking unfettered free and unregulated (but
sponsored)
speech on nasty little blogs.
Just so nobody thinks I'm being overly partisan about this, I'll mention
Republican moron Christopher Shays of Connecticut, who was worried
that HR
1606 would lead to tons of political banner ads being purchased by
corporations, unions, and George Soros. He therefore introduced his own
bill, which applies the BCRA rules to the Internet, but exempts blogs
therefrom. He did not provide clear guidance as to how the two were
to be
distinguished (that may have something to do with the fact that they
can't
be). His net contribution: zero beyond confusing an already insane
situation -- in other words, he gets a B+ by Foggy Bottom standards.
But now for my surprise: Our big problem is not the fact that HR.
1606 was
defeated (although Democrats should be ashamed that it was). The
problem is
the monstrosity known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ---
which trades in large chunks of the First Amendment in exchange for
small
protections that Just Happen to align perfectly with the interests of
incumbent (as opposed to challenging) politicians. If you're angry
about
HR. 1606, please vent your anger on repeal of BCRA 2002 and hanging the
crooks that passed it.
Thanks ... Cliff
Most of the above material was lifted from stuff written by Charles
Jade and
Ryan Sager (in separate pieces)
---------------------
Begin forwarded message:
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
Date: November 4, 2005 2:16:11 AM EST
To: politech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Politech] Democrats defeat Online Freedom of Speech Act in
House
[fs]
Vote tally:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll559.xml
Text of bill:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.01606:
---
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5929587.html
Democrats defeat election-law aid for bloggers November 2, 2005, 7:55
PM PST
Democrats on Wednesday managed to defeat a bill aimed at amending U.S.
election laws to immunize bloggers from hundreds of pages of federal
regulations.
In an acrimonious debate that broke largely along party lines, more than
three-quarters of congressional Democrats voted to oppose the reform
bill,
which had enjoyed wide support from online activists and Web
commentators
worried about having to comply with a tangled skein of rules.
[...remainder snipped...]
_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/