Matt Stoller explains why we're so
hot and bothered over the fight for HR 1606:
Rather than removing money from politics, the internet changes what money can buy in politics. It allows people to organize themselves, and makes it much easier to communicate compelling messages among large numbers of people without a lot of capital. Now you'd think that the people who wanted campaign finance limits (known as 'reformers') would look at the internet and say 'Awesome, this helps solve our problem!' But they didn't. Instead, they have held tight to their bias against participation. They think that restricting the ability of Americans to participate in the political system is the only way to check the power of [non-]wealthy interests. Actually, they have it backwards. Regulation not only won't help, it once again raises the barrier to participation and thus recreates the worst aspects of a mass media 'limited bandwidth politics'. In reformer-land, in order to participate in internet politics you'd need to lawyer up and do things only rich people can afford. This is precisely what they should be fighting against, not promoting.
Exactly. By restricting access to "political communications" as regulated under the law, only those with the financial means to lawyer up will be able to participate in netroots organizing, as opposed to everyone right now. This issue isn't about Daily Kos, though it would certainly be affected by these proposed regulations (which could very well force this site to shut down), it's about the entire netroots -- bloggers, wikis, podcasters, vcasters, social networks, email lists, google and yahoo groups, and every other new emerging organizing and communications technologies.
But wouldn't HR 4900 protect bloggers? That's what the reformers and the CDT claim! Except that in today's Washington Internet Daily, an email newsletter, CDT staff counsel John Morris was quoted:
"Big political blogs with lots of outlays wouldn't necessarily come under the CDT bill's regulations, Morris said. Referring to the 2 most vocal -- RedState.org on the right, DailyKos.com on the left -- he said: "Both of those organizations could well end up deemed to be exempt under the media exemption" in the CDT bill. A similar network of partisan websites got the media exemption in a 2005 advisory opinion (WID Nov 21 p2). But large political blogs can handle any regulations they're stuck with, he said: CDT's goal was to "protect the vast majority of citizen speakers... I'm not that worried about DailyKos's ability to file a report with the FEC." HR-1606 "doesn't relieve [small blogs'] obligations to file reports," but the CDT bill does, he added."
This is the CDT's top lawyer, and he doesn't even know if or how his own frickin' bill would affect blogs (that's why we're asking for the proper hearings and committee process for the bill). HR 1606 absolutely relieves small blogs' obligations to file reports. It merely affirms the status quo, and unless I've missed something, there hasn't been a SINGLE REPORT FILED BY A SMALL BLOG the past four years.
CDT and the reformers want to limit not just what I can say, but what every single one of you on this site can say. If I have to police the diaries and comments based on who or what is being said, this site dies. Period.
If they succeed in shutting down any internet outlet that grows big enough to trigger their alarm bells, then truly, the only people who will have a voice are the well-connected, the wealthy, and the corrupt. Forget any new Paul Hacketts, Howard Deans, Wesley Clarks, Ciro Rodriguezes, or other leaders embraced by ordinary citizens.
The U.S. Constitution protects only a single profession by name -- the press. And it does so in the very first of the Amendments:
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.
The internet is the 21st century evolution of the press. The 1st Amendment doesn't say a "fair and balanced press", or a "non-partisan press". In fact, early American press was extremely partisan. It merely protects "the press".
That the "reformers" and the CDT have lost sight of this is quite startling. I suppose it should come as no surprise that institutional forces (like Nancy Pelosi, the NY Times, and others like them) who feel under siege from these citizen rabble rousers would seek to rein in the barbarians at the gate.
They've got the lobbyists. They've got the power. They've got the money.
But we have the U.S. Constitution and we have the numbers.
Nancy Pelosi
(415) 556-4862 (SF)
(202) 225-4965 (DC)