We were warned; if we voted for Mitt Romney, free speech would evaporate.
And they were right; Obama’s FEC is moving to regulate online political speech, including this blog.
Late Friday, Ann M. Ravel, the Democratic vice chair of the Federal Elections Commission, said the FEC would begin the process to regulate Internet-based campaigns and videos which are currently free from oversight by the federal government. The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard said one Republican FEC chairman, Lee E. Goodman, warned that anyone who writes a political blog, a politically active news site or even a chat room, could be regulated….Earlier in the year, Bedard noted, Goodman warned that Democrats on the panel were gunning for conservative websites like the extremely popular Drudge Report, a site that typically sees some 30 million visits per day.
The beef is ostensibly about political groups disseminating videos via blogs and social media that would be regulated on television.
But then, they’d manage that by regulating everyone who links or carries the content. Which, in plain English, means regulating political content in all social media, including here on Shot In The Dark.
Not only is it imperative that the Democrats lose and lose big next month – it’s even more imperative that the GOP actually provide a meaningful alternative.
The intellectual basis for regulating radio and television is because the electromagnetic spectrum is used by all but limited in carrying capacity leading to a possible tragedy of commons; therefore, the government must exercise its power to regulate interstate commerce taking place over the airwaves by licensing radio and television use.
There is no similar size limit on the internet so no justification for government regulatory action.
So what basically the fairness doctrine for the Internet.?
It’s the FEC, not the FCC.
Like most Fed agencies these days, the dems on the governors board mean to turn it to partisan purposes.
I wonder how many rounds of .40 cal the FEC and FCC bought last year, as well as Mossberg Persuaders?
The only answer is less centralized government doing less so there is less to commandeer with politics.
There is a lot at stake. Too much. http://bit.ly/1waD1TJ
It is worth noting that no one should be shocked that, if we do a third of our nation’s business from Washington DC and another fifth from states and municipalities, as it appears we do (including at least part of the cost of regulation), no one ought to be surprised that politics becomes a point of contention.
Now we can put barriers to the corruption, but it is like damming Noah’s flood when everyone has an incentive to cross that barrier.