Free Speech/Grassroots Lobbying Under Threat

The Democrats wanted to end the excesses of the Republican administration. Hey, we don’t need to keep terrorists and suspected terrorists in Gitmo. We should always wait and get a warrant when suspicious calls are made to suspected foreign terrorists. And their library records should be off limits too…

OK, I may believe that the anti-terror efforts of the administration need a closer examination, and probably some tweaking, but I was never a fan of the “divided government” strategy with regards to voting in last Novembers elections. I was in a Republican safe area, so my choices ran from voting for the shoe-in candidate, or voting Libertarian. By and large, I voted Libertarian. I knew that voting for Democrats (even if the reason was to punish the Republicans) wasn’t going to result in a reduction of governments excesses, just a shifting of the target of those excesses.

Well, if I’m to believe the American Center for Law & Justice, (which I’m inclined to do at this time,) in addition to Democrats wanting to raise our taxes, they also want to limit free speech even further then McCain/Feingold did already.

Nancy Pelosi hasn’t been Speaker of the House for two weeks yet and there is already proposed legislation which would be the most significant encroachment ever into the affairs and ability of churches and other organizations to communicate. Under the guise of lobbying reform, Speaker Pelosi and others have proposed legislation greatly expanding the scope of lobbying regulation which would have a significant impact on churches, pastors, religious denominations, public interest organizations, civic organizations and other nonprofit groups. Even private individuals who voluntarily pay for media to distribute important messages to the general public on political matters would be impacted.

So draconian is the proposed Lobbying Reform Bill that it would actually impose registration and reporting requirements on churches and other nonprofit organizations. This is because the definition of “lobbyist” and “lobbying firms” includes specifically grassroots-organizing efforts.

While they are mostly talking about large churches, I have to wonder how blogs and other freely organized groups are going to fair under this new law (if enacted.)

Under the House version of the Bill, a church or organization would be considered a “grassroots lobbying firm” subject to this law if the group attempted to influence the general public to voluntarily contact federal officials in order to express their own views on a federal issue. Furthermore, many large churches and ministries utilize mass media to communicate their message. Under this House Bill by Nancy Pelosi, these communications, as long as they are directed to at least one person who is not a member of the church, would fall under this new Bill. Finally, if the church spends an aggregate of only $50,000 or more for such efforts in a quarterly period, they are now required to register as lobbyists. Many ministries spend $50,000 or more a month for air time.

Well, phew, a little blog like ours shouldn’t have anything to worry about, but this is certainly a slippery slop to be pursuing. And what might this legislation have done in the past?

Nancy Pelosi’s proposed legislation would have stopped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from gathering support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In fact, as he addressed the social issues from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA, he might well have had to register as a lobbyist.

I do have to wonder what some libertarians were thinking when they advocated voting for Democrats. I certainly expected attacks on gun ownership, our anti-terrorist efforts, our efforts in Iraq, national security, tax increases, and an increase in onerous legislation and regulations. Why, because that is what they’ve done in the past when they had the power to do so. I was certainly in agreement with those urging caution in this past election.

Senators Bennett and McConnell have proposed an amendment to the Senate bill which would eliminate some of the provisions relating to churches and grass-roots lobbying efforts. You can digitally sign-on to a petition supporting the amendment here. We will need to keep an eye on this bill and it’s progress. Something tells me that by the end of the legislative process, we’ll need to have many more eyes on many more bills and some truly odious legislation is going to slip past everyone.

Updated:

McQ over at QandO has a post on another possible threat to free speech, the return of the “Fairness Doctrine.” The effect of which would more likely be the muzzling of conservative/republican/libertarian viewpoints in the radio and tv spectrum.