Centerfield

I would use Franklin's quote about giving up essential liberty in exchange for temporary security here, but the liberals have so over- and mis-used it in regards to all things Bush that it has lost its potentcy.

Free speech means nothing without free assembly and the ability to work together with others to spread your message to a larger audience. By forbidding any group larger than 2 or 3 people (the necessary consequence of treating any issue ad or blog post as evil electioneering) from speaking together (because larger than that and it takes money to come together and publish your thoughts), Congress is in fact abridging the freedom of speech.

If the FEC succeeds in their Pew-inspired mission to regulate free speech even on the internet, then I will start a blog with a few others, spend a couple of thousand on bandwidth, and tell the FEC to bring it on. There are few issues facing us today more pressing than throwing out McCain-Feingold and restoring the fundamental right of Americans to speak about politics.

Posted by: PatHMV at January 25, 2006 10:30 AM

And to those who think I'm just using scare tactics, you should all be sure and read the following excerpt from OpinionJournal article:

If you think such fretting is silly, says Bradley Smith, consider the case of Bill Liles, who faced an FEC inquiry when Smith was commissioner. In 2000, a businessman in the little Texas town of Muleshoe, Harvey Bass, painted "Save our nation: Vote Democrat Al Gore for President" on a beat-up box and plunked it on his furniture store's porch. Sick of looking at it, Mr. Liles and a friend pasted a "bigger and better" poster praising George W. Bush on a trailer and parked it right across from Mr. Bass's store. This was too much for another local, Don Dyer, who complained to the FEC that Mr. Liles's sign lacked mandated disclosures about who paid for it and whether Mr. Bush had signed off on it.

Though the FEC in the end let Mr. Liles and his fellow activists off, the men had in fact broken not just disclosure rules but any number of other regulations, too, recalls Mr. Smith. They had clearly spent a bit more than $250 on their makeshift sign, for example, but hadn't reported it, as required, to the FEC. "Total statutory penalties could have easily exceeded $25,000," Mr. Smith observes. How different is Liles's praiseworthy activism from that of many political bloggers? The medium differs, but Mr. Liles, like a blogger, is simply voicing his opinion. And this was pre-McCain-Feingold.

They're not coming for you tomorrow, they're coming for you NOW.

Posted by: PatHMV at January 25, 2006 10:52 AM

For me intervention into speech should be to assure competition and accuracy.
No one should be allowed to monopolize a means of expression.
No one should be allowed to libel or slander.

Let a group spend as much as they want to influence opinion but they can't use their resources to cut off the expression of others.

Anyone interested should be able to easily find alternate points of view.

However, You can lead a horse to water...

Posted by: Paul at January 25, 2006 02:33 PM

Let a group spend as much as they want to influence opinion but they can't use their resources to cut off the expression of others.

Could you give some examples? For example, obviously you'd oppose any kind of regulation of the blogosphere under this rubric - but what if Technorati and Google got together one day and decided that they simply weren't going to include liberal viewpoints in their searches. This is undoubtedly "us[ing] their resources to cut off the expression of others," if we assume that the answer to the question "if I blogs when no-one can find my site to read it, did I still blog?" is "no," a reasonable conclusion I think (after all, it isn't technically violating the freedom of the press to let the New York Times print as many copies as they want, but it would still be a first amendment violation to prohibit distribution of the printed material). What's the remedy? Surely you're not suggesting that government can compell a private entity to promote multiple viewpoints, in the process, abrogating the right to free association to promote a bizarre abstraction of the right to free speech? Posted by: Simon at January 25, 2006 04:33 PM

My concern is preventing the monopolizing of all "means" of expression. eg Murdoch owning all of the TV and radio Stations in a region, or Hearst all of the newspapers, or ATT owning all of the internet backbone, Or Earthlink the only ISP, or Google the only search engine.

Is there always an alternate way to exchange opinion?

What would we have to do to make sure opinion was not controlled like it is in oppressed societies?

Posted by: Paul at January 25, 2006 06:38 PM

The free market has been working just fine so far, Paul. Even if Murdoch owns all the TV stations (and FCC rules still don't allow that), he's not going to own the papers. And if Hearst owns the papers, he's not going to own the radio. And nobody is going to own the internet. Not to mention national news magazines and papers with nationwide circulation.

If ATT suddenly owned all the internet backbone (it's too big, it can't happen), then there would be (1) an anti-trust prosecution and (2) powerful incentives for new, innovative competitors to crop up, be they P2P, low-power radio, or just a new TV station because people get tired of watching the same old stupid whatever that the monopoly is providing.

In other words, we keep doing the same things that have worked very well for the last 216 years.

Posted by: PatHMV at January 25, 2006 07:09 PM

Paul,
I think I either agree or slightly disagree with what Pat just added, depending on if I'm reading his comment right. I'm actually an enthusiastic advocate of antritrust laws, because I don't believe the free market can operate without government action to curb monopolies (yes! A Republican who supports some form of regulation of commerce! Shocking, isn't it... Worse yet, I listen to NPR, too...); I'm in favor of a vigorous free market in both commodities and ideas, but - as I think Pat advocated - I would deal with media monopolies through antitrust rather than the First Amendment.

Posted by: Simon at January 25, 2006 09:18 PM

Yes, that was one of my points, Simon. I was more focused on the basic idea that we've been doing just fine for a long time, and we've got the freeest political speech in the world pretty much, so there's no real problem to "fix". We don't need to hurry up and do something (except repeal McCain-Feingold).

I support anti-trust laws too and they can and should be readily used to fix any local problems that do arise in the manner Paul suggests. But even if the government didn't prosecute anti-trust violations, my other point is that there are a sufficient number of alternative sources that there is no real possibility of one company gaining control of all of them.

Posted by: PatHMV at January 25, 2006 11:30 PM

My comments were in response to the original articles which is subtitled: "The left's regulatory war against free speech." It argues against a movement to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine" which requires media to present all sides of an issue.

I think we are all mostly agreed that it is not necessary to regulate content if there is sufficient competition among distribution methods.

Posted by: Paul at January 26, 2006 09:10 AM

In the article, Anderson is either oblivious or incredibly obtuse ahd dishonest. I venture to say it's more the latter.

Financial clout of big donors doesn't yield influence on Congress???? Who is kidding?

There's little proof that it does have an influence?? COME ON!!

So I suppose the enormous lobbying infrastructure and extra representation and cohersion by the people that these lobbies represent is insignificant in shaping policy.

Anderson is simply rationalizing a case for the corrupt status quo by disguising it as a plea for the defense of free speech.

how shameless!

Posted by: john at January 26, 2006 04:47 PM

As a follow up to this influence I offer this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/politics/23leases.html?ex=1295672400&en=22a969024cf0367e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

As Profits Soar, Companies Pay U.S. Less for Gas Rights
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 - At a time when energy prices and industry profits are soaring, the federal government collected little more money last year than it did five years ago from the companies that extracted more than $60 billion in oil and gas from publicly owned lands and coastal waters.

If royalty payments in fiscal 2005 for natural gas had risen in step with market prices, the government would have received about $700 million more than it actually did, a three-month investigation by The New York Times has found.

But an often byzantine set of federal regulations, largely shaped and fiercely defended by the energy industry itself, allowed companies producing natural gas to provide the Interior Department with much lower sale prices - the crucial determinant for calculating government royalties - than they reported to their shareholders.

As a result, the nation's taxpayers, collectively, the biggest owner of American oil and gas reserves, have missed much of the recent energy bonanza.

Posted by: john at January 26, 2006 05:02 PM

John, don't you suppose it is just possible that the campaign contributions help elect people who are philosophically and ideologically inclined to vote that way no matter what? That is the conclusion reached by the studies Anderson cites.

If someone runs for office on a platform supporting gun rights, and the NRA then gives him money, is that buying his vote? Of course not. That's the NRA supporting candidates who share its views. If the AFL-CIO's PAC gives money to John Kerry, have they bought him? No, John Kerry supports Big Labor already, and so Big Labor contributes to him because he shares views they want to see enacted.

Posted by: PatHMV at January 26, 2006 05:53 PM

PatHMV,

Of course I understand that. However, Congress has a knack for passing certain pieces that have little to do with the ideology of their contributors and more to do with FAVORS for campaign money.

Much of the "big money" policy I've seen come thru over the past few years wouldn't jive, IMO, with the vast majority of rank and file voters who donated a few bucks.

For example, the Bankruptcy Bill beyond its noble face on Page 1 was full of favors to credit card companies and Big Business, since it rejected an amendment to cap interest rates or make apply those bankruptcy rules to corporations. The Bill passed primarily on party lines with a few Dems like Biden voting "yes". My conservative friends liked Page 1 but the rest was a sell-out to Big Money. My conservative friends don't like the huge subsidies given to energy companies...again a seel-out. And that prespecrition drug benefit seemed to please NOBODY excpept the those companies that stand to benefit from this mess.

These are the kinds of ugly bills that get passed into law that most people are made aware of and IMO wouldn't approve to see their Reps and Sens pass them into law. Money talks, our votes let them walk (all over us).

Posted by: John at January 26, 2006 07:50 PM

Well, I was opposed to most of the bankruptcy bill myself, as it didn't hold companies responsible for their irresponsible offering of credit to everybody and their dog. In fact, I posted my thoughts that it might even be an unconstitutional impairment of existing contracts.

But I don't think the prescription drug bill was pandering to corporate donors, I think that was pandering to the AARP and the left-middle of the political spectrum who wanted to "do something" about the problem.

Posted by: PatHMV at January 26, 2006 11:05 PM

This article made me re-think the notion of campaign finance reform. On the surface, it looks like a good thing, fighting corruption and undue influence, but the nitty-gritty appears to be a bit different. In short, I've been persuaded. (Not that I would have ever wanted the government to regulate speech on the internet. That's just plain nuts.)

Posted by: WHQ at January 27, 2006 02:14 PM

The Devil is, as always, in the details...

Posted by: PatHMV at January 27, 2006 03:49 PM

"But I don't think the prescription drug bill was pandering to corporate donors,"

Pat, the Prescription drug bill was essentially written BY the drug companies. Why do you think there's no allowing for competitive bidding?

Posted by: Marcus at January 28, 2006 06:50 PM