The Interocitor

The Irony of McCain-Feingold

The McCain-Feingold campaign finance law was designed to prevent the "monied interests" from monopolizing political speech. As Justice Stevens so clearly stated in affirming an earlier campaign finance law:

Money is property; it is not speech.

But there were loopholes in those earlier laws. Money somehow was managing to get to politicians despite the limits. All you had to do was wink and nod and pretend it wasn't aimed at any particular campaign. In short, water runs downhill. So, Senators McCain and Feingold proposed limiting all money to candidates. Further, they began to count non-monetary contributions, too.

The Congress passed this rubbish after years of debate, the President signed it for no good reason, and the Supreme Court -- which still views pornography and flag-burning as inviolate speech -- accepted that these further limits were needed to save the nation for democracy. One Justice openly asked for more.

Yet, still, somehow, money keeps getting into campaigns from every possible source. Billionaires, filmmakers, veterans, crooked network anchors and ad hoc non-profits of all sorts -- all seemed to be able to fund the nastiest, dirtiest presidential campaign in recent history. All within the law as the FEC saw it (and as the Supreme Court reviewed it).

Now, the Good Senators (and you should be in awe of their Goodness) are pressing the FEC to ban all internet speech that could be construed as providing a monetary benefit to a political campaign.

Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Let's recap. We started out saying "money is not speech." But what do we do when we find that speech doesn't take money? Or worse, that speech makes money? Apparently, if a blogger gets an income from his blogging through ads, those same ads are used to value his speech. Further political speech that supports a candidate is then charged as a campaign contribution, and too much speech may be subject to fine.

So, in order to prevent the plutocrats and their minions from controlling what we see and hear, we are going to have to shut down the only method of free communication that exists. Creating a blog takes a few hours and very few dollars, possibly zero. Pure free speech as this nation has never seen. It's value is measured not by what it costs, but in how well it is accepted, so more popular speech is valued higher. And is most dangerous, according to the crusading Knights of Rightousness.

So, we arrive at the obvious conclusion. It is not the money that is the problem, it is the speech. Those who dare to speak out of turn will be silenced, and the official speakers will have a clear field.

And of course, it won't end there -- water still runs downhill. More here

Posted by Kevin Murphy at March 3, 2005 07:23 PM | TrackBack