A new effort is underway in the House of Representatives to restore corrupting soft money to federal elections by allowing federal candidates and state political parties to spend soft money on campaign ads on the Internet to support and oppose federal candidates.
The effort is being undertaken by House Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney (R-OH) in the guise of exempting political communications on the Internet from the campaign finance laws in order to allow bloggers to engage in unregulated political communications.
But the reality is that bloggers can already engage in such communications under existing campaign finance laws. Meanwhile, the Ney led effort to create a blanket Internet exemption from the campaign finance laws, if successful, would open gaping new soft money loopholes in the laws and return Members of Congress to the corrupting world of soft money.
First, I disagree with the notion that the House committee was considering a blanket exemption for Internet activity. Such a statement is utterly false.
Second, let us assume that some sort of exemption would be given for internet activity in the campaign finance realm. Such an exemption would still have to fit within the confines of the Federal Election Campaign Act. The act prohibits express advocacy regarding candidates by corporations and labor unions. Any statement to the contrary is different. The arguments made by Mssrs. Black and Krempasky were that their organziations are more akin to the media and subjecting them to different rules than traditional newspapers or radio/TV would be discriminatory and have an adverse effect on independent bloggers. Similarly, Mike Krempasky argued that Congress needs to think not only of bloggers, but any other new form of communication that may come along that provides broad access in a cheap forum. (I am thinking podcasts, but other technologies may come along).
Democracy 21 makes this asinine statement:
The blanket Internet exemption, if enacted, would allow federal candidates to control the spending of soft money by corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals to pay for campaign ads run on the Internet to support their candidacies.
I am not sure what we are talking about, but let me take a few guesses. First, wealthy individuals. If they are spending their own money, it is not soft money but independent expenditures, which must be reported to the FEC under current law, regardless of the medium of distrubtion. Second, where the hell is the concept of control coming in? if by control you mean that candidates can by ad space, well they can do that and it must be reported to the FEC by the candidate--who are expressely forbidden from raising, spending or directing the spending of soft money by current law!! Third, if a corporation makes a communication regarding a candidate, under current law that communication must be made with hard money if made to the public or can be made to its PAC members and eligible class without limit because it is not public.
Yes, Mr. Wertheimer may be naive, and not only that, he clearly does not understand the law he consistently attacks.
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