I haven’t managed to get anyone mad at me this week, so let me toss some fuel out there and let’s see what burns. I’m following with some interest the FEC “What do we do about the political Internet” set of issues.
So let me ask a dumb-a**s question.
If bloggers (or other website owners) are acting as auxiliaries to campaigns, or are heavily involved in raising significant funds for campaigns, why shouldn’t there be some requirements for disclosure, and why shouldn’t the funds raised fit under the same rules as any other money raised for a campaign?In some ways, this strikes me as a kind of Skype issue; on one hand we have a genuinely interesting technology -in this case mixture of social and technical engineering. It has genuine value, which should be preserved. On the other we have a regulatory arbitrage based on new technology and the simple fact that no one who wrote the old regulations knew enough to map the existing regulations to the technical means to evade them.
I’ll go in the kitchen and look for some matches now…
A simple answer to start from in a debate might be:
“If you are going to regulate some funding then you should regulate all of it equally.”
Which allows for the defaults to be regulating everything or nothing. It would seem to me that the most speculative position would be to regulate some, but not all.
The term “blogger” is freighted with unspoken assumptions. Its denotation describes people who upload information online in a particular format (posts in reverse chronological order that, more often than not, include some original material and some derivative material and hyperlinks to the derivative material and other online sources). The connotation of the term, though, is very much dependant on individual assumptions.
The one thing that bloggers have in common, though, is that they are undermining or even destroying the means of third parties to limit or mediate communication with a large number of people. This is happening in famous contexts (bloggers are destroying the ability of the editors of the MSM to shape the profile of the news), and in very prosaic ones (my son’s middle school does not post 8th grade homework on its web site because it believes that students should learn to keep track of their own homework — the exhausted parents have created a blog to “route around” the school’s desire to distribute homework assignments in a particular way).
In all such cases, there have always been low-efficiency means for bypassing the third party information regulators, such as individual correspondance, telephone calls, samizdat mimeographs, email or even the “lonely pamphleteers” of old. None of these methods were very efficient and they were generally (with a few famous examples) not very threatening to the information regulators. Blogs are efficient, and therefore are threatening.
Because blogs are so threatening to the third party regulators (be they school principals, parents, politicians, MSM editors, healthcare providers, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the national political parties, the Federal Election Commission, or anybody else that wants to control the flow of information), they are forcing us to decide whether these third party regulator of information have any special status, or not. For example, blogs are finally forcing us to decide whether employment by a newspaper or television network confers some sort of legal status under the First Amendment. If we are going to protect people under shield laws from legal penalty for not disclosing a “source,” what good is compulsory process if the shield law protects anybody with a blog? If we are going to regulate speech in connection with political campaigns but exempt the “press,” who is “the press” for these purposes?
The question is not, therefore, really about bloggers and blogging. Bloggers and blogging by their very existence reveal that the sun is setting on the era of regulation of information by third party intermediaries. The question is, what will replace that regulation?
Yes,if the blogger accepts cash,no if he doesn’t.
Excellent comment, Tigerhawk. And on A.L.’s direct question, I’m with Patrick (but modified to “accepts cash for or provides a donation link to a campaign”).
All of these campaign finance and advertising regulations, internet or otherwise, are utter &*^&@.
I’m not going to abide by any of it, and neither should you.
The screws are tightening, people. It’s getting time to wake up and do something about it.
Simply put, yes, they should all be subject to the same regulation. NONE. “Congress shall make no law…” means NO law.
Regulation of American political speech is simply Treason, of a type so obviously evil that the founders didn’t even define it in the Constitution.
Hmm, some interesting points made by Hugh Hewitt, who “says the whole thing is basically moot”:http://hughhewitt.com/#postid1428 and offers some links.
“why shouldn’t the funds raised fit under the same rules as any other money raised for a campaign?”
because it’s impossible to enforce, among other reasons.
Your point is well taken, rules regulating speech in a political campaign are less than effective if they are limited to certain media. Blogs are one means by which the campaign finance laws can be routed around. Therefore, it is natural and expected that supporters of campaign finance laws would like to regulate and muzzle free political speech where ever it occurs.
Campaign finance laws violate the First Ammendment.
*Amendment I*
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.
Unfortunately, the surpreme court hasn’t yet scene fit to enforce this provision of the Bill of Rights.
I think it is time for a concerted effort by both left liberals (ACLU) and libertarian conservatives (CATO) to fight this pernicious violation of our rights. What could be more important? Both sides have a dog in the fight; moveon.org or SBVFT both have an interest in getting their message out.
I am posting here because WoC represents the best of both Left Liberals and Cato conservatives. I call for a blogstorm of massive proportions to protect our our first amendment rights.
Freddo411
Sure, Fred, but our damned Supreme Court (and I write this as one who believes there actually is such a thing as damnation) not only has failed to enforce this provision, it’s actually upheld stuff like McCain-Feingold that any 6-year-old can see is exactly the sort of restriction that the First Amendment was meant meant to prohibit.
Fred gave my answer, A.L.
Little thing called the First Amendment.
So you folks are inalterably opposed to any campaign finance regulation,including disclosure requirements?
C’mon…I don’t much like McCain – feingold, but it is more difficult for Joe Kennedy to buy elections for his kids these days…
A.L.
A.L., let’s look at the limit case of campaign finance reform.
Imagine the total amount of money a candidate could spend on advertising was reduced to near zero. What would the incumbency rate go to?
Right.
The goal of campaign finance reform is to ensure that challengers can’t scrape together enough money to overcome the huge advantages that incumbents have, including the ability to divert federal pork to their districts, free mail, free news coverage, name recognition, etc.
Without campaign finance reform, Congress is accountable to whoever has the most money. “One dollar, one vote.” With sufficient campaign finance “reform”, Congress isn’t really accountable to anyone.
You know, I’m sympathetic to the 1st A argument (on spending restrictions, not on disclosure), but that’s not the question. The Supreme Court isn’t going to back us up here and the people who disagree with us will use that as an argument that we’re wrong.
So the goal is to create a viable political argument that separates blogs form other forms of political speech to preserve our freedom. And can we do it in a way that the MSM (which, remember, loves CFR and hates blogs, because the one increases and the other decreases their relative power) will be able to understand and report clearly?
Crying “Constitution” is satisfying but not useful. Other suggestions?
My preferred course is to classify blogs as “media,” thus bringing them within the media exception to the current law. This 1) puts the NYT on your side in opposing regulation (if they have to accept the same regulations they impose on you, they’ll fight to keep you from being regulated), and 2) effectively guts the law completely by allowing anyone, anywhere to evade it easily. We’ll hardly need to bother with trying to repeal it because it will soon be obsolete. Think about it: want to run a TV ad damaging a candidate without violating the law? Just say “Check out my blog for daily updates on the perfidity of liberal politicians” or some such. Not quite as effective as a direct ad, but good enough to make the law a laughingstock.
Blogs-as-media also has other effects which I consider desirable, such as weakening journalists’ shield laws and encouraging the trend of accrediting bloggers at major media events. It also makes MSM out to be the big corporate bad guys trying to crush the little people, which will play well with even non-blog-readers.
I have no problem with disclosure requirements. Those don’t prevent people from engaging in speech.