more on Democrats HELP defeat Online Freedom of Speech Act in House [fs]

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Cliff Bamford <bamford () oz net>
Date: November 5, 2005 9:24:50 PM EST
To: 'David Farber' <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: Democrats HELP defeat Online Freedom of Speech Act in  
House [fs]
Reply-To: bamford () oz net


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 () well com>
Date: November 4, 2005 2:16:11 AM EST
To: politech () politechbot com
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...]
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