Political Speech Not as Free as You Think
Campaign finance laws are necessary to keep really rich people from “buying” candidates and controlling our government, right? And any limitations on free speech that might be necessary are just collateral damage — unfortunate but unavoidable, aren’t they? At least that is the prevailing view of the reform community and probably the general public. However, these laws regulate and restrict political speech, political association, and the ability to lobby the government on important issues and have a reach way beyond what most of us realize.
Ordinary Americans justifiably think they can express their political opinions without concern over government regulations or intrusive investigations into their activity by a federal law enforcement agency. We do have the First Amendment, after all. But the overreach of these laws is illustrated by some cases pursued by the Federal Election Commission, which enforces the campaign laws. In the FEC, you have six commissioners and a staff of 350 career civil servants making decisions on fundamental constitutional rights, deciding what political speech and activity is allowed — political speech and activity that is engaged in not just by candidates running for office, but also by citizens who have associated together to represent their interests and even by individual Americans.
For example, in 2000, FEC investigators descended on Muleshoe, Texas, a small farming town of just under 5,000 inhabitants west of Lubbock. They were looking into a complaint filed against local citizens who made the horrible mistake of putting up competing signs alternately supporting Al Gore or George Bush. This political rivalry started when Harvey Bass, the owner of the local furniture store, took an empty refrigerator box, painted “Save Our Nation, Vote Democrat, Al Gore for President” on the side, and placed the box on the porch of his store.
Two other local citizens, Bill Liles and Mark Morton, got tired of looking at this sign. With the help of some of their friends, they had a bigger sign painted that read, in part, “Vote for George W. Bush for President … Not Al Gore Socialism.” They hung it on a borrowed cotton trailer and parked it across the street so that Bass “would have to look at it every time he walked out the front door of his business.”
There are 350 civil servants working at the FEC? No wonder there are problems for them to solve. They have to justify their jobs. And what kind of degrees to you get to become a civil servant at the FEC? A masters in Stalinism?
So you’ve become an agent of the FEC helping to propogate fear and uncertainty? Anyone who reads this will be a little less likely to express themselves in a spontaneous way.
But you could have written it differently. You could have provided the names of the FEC investigators and staff who promulgated this ruling. Better yet you may have provided their e-mail addresses or their home addresses so that we could send letters to their neighbors shaming them into ignominy for their egregious abuse of the First Amendment. Their parents and children should be shamed by their actions.
Those are the kinds of blogs we need on this story.
Name names.
TO: Hans A. von Spakovsky
RE: You Betcha!
“Don’t be surprised if it gets even worse in the future.” — Hans A. von Spakovsky
As some sage politician put it….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution. - Ulysses Grant]
P.S. Maybe that’s the proper course of action to deal with this onerous set of laws…..
“Reformers argue that these rules and others are needed to prevent “corruption” in our political process.”
The corruption horse left the barn decades ago. It’s a little late to be trying to “prevent” it.
These rules actually (attempt to) prevent our citizenry from expressing displeasure with the corrupt cabals running our country. Ironic, ain’t it?
I’ve got an idea for the “third party” to run against Democrats and Republicans… let’s call it “No Lawayers” and require term limits. Whatever else the party does, it will be 1000 times better than what we’ve got. Anybody want to join?
This is a flat-out violation of Freedom of Speech, and we need more Supreme Court justices who would see it that way.
Fantastic article– I wish more people were aware of this.
A small coterie of political appointees monitoring and policing the political speech of ordinary Americans is a direct attack on our liberties. Combine this with the politically motivated IRS audits during the Clinton years, or the talk of reviving the Orwellian “Fairness” doctrine. The implications for our generation are probably only marginal. The implications for the next generation are frightening.
It’s even more scary when you realize that the party which stands against these attacks on our liberty has nominated a candidate who helped champion this, and currently has a president who signed it into law. Like any bureaucracy, the FEC is probably unkillable now. “Where do we go from here?” is a very good question. Where can we go?
Let’s remember to thank McCain for restricting our fundamental right of free speach during election time.
What can happen come January just sickens me.
In DC, every street vendor sells unofficial Obama t-shirts and all of the touristy “Americana” stores in the malls and at the airports sell unofficial Obama stuff (although they, at least, have some McCain stuff tucked away). The first thing you see when you leave the gate at Regan National is a bunch of Obama shirts. These stores and vendors would certainly fall under this law if people on their lawns do, no? If the FEC can track down some rural Texans, they can surely do something about their own sidewalks. I’ve wondered about this for a while now.
So what happened to Bass, the one who originally put up the pro-Gore sign?
I wholeheartedly disagree with this law about curbing free expressions and opinions about matters upon which we are supposed to render a decision via an election. I’m surprised that these folks in the community let the FEC run roughshod over them. Seems like the citizens would have castrated the bureaucrats and served the spoils up at the Spudnut Cafe, ala Rocky Mountain Oysters.
The solution here is to go with the opponent, not against him. What we need is a very large number of people putting up home made signs, and then complaining about each others signs to the FEC, inundating the FEC with complaints, forcing them to send lawyers all over the U.S. to investigate trivial issues. Death by a thousand cuts. The problem is how to organize such a campaign of widespread civil disobedience.
Ronin, I like your idea.
I sure hope “aloysiusmiller” is a troll: “You could have provided the names of the FEC investigators and staff… Better yet… their home addresses so that we could send letters to their neighbors shaming them into ignominy for their egregious abuse of the First Amendment.”
That’s even scarier than the FEC actions, which are shameful enough. Guess there’s no right to privacy in your version of the Constitution.
I suppose they could have just gone to their signs with a fat Sharpie and wrote their names on the signs and the disclaimer that they haven’t been endorsed by the candidates they represented. I’d encourage something more along those lines than a hate and harrassment campaign directed at some bureaucrat’s neighbors.
If it were me, I’d have gotten some constitutional lawyer to take on this case. I would have put up a new sign every day, and dared the FEC to come take it down or throw me in prison for it.
There’s no way that would have gotten off the ground if it were me.
Harry
“In the FEC, you have six commissioners and a staff of 350 career civil servants making decisions on fundamental constitutional rights, deciding what political speech and activity is allowed…”
Excuse me, but that decision is not theirs’ to make.
“[I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution. - Ulysses Grant]”
It is so unlike the not-normally loquacious General to run on his sentences. I suspect someone may have added some words. It probably read:
“I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as execution.”
The worst thing about this is that it creates what is commonly called a “Chilling Effect” on Free Speech.
Basically, if a person has to be seriously concerned that placing a yard sign or bumper sticker may cause lawyers from the FEC to descend upon them, what intelligent person will EVER bother doing that?
It’s bad enough that in some areas one has to worry about VANDALISM if you display a Republican or Conservative oriented sign or bumper sticker. but to now have to worry about the FEC suing you? This is unacceptable.
Although I have to admit, displaying an “unofficial” McCain yard sign and then getting charged by the FEC for violating a law that McCain himself created, does have a certain satisfying irony to it. Too bad I can’t afford to fight off a stupidly frivolous charge like that.
But if I was independently wealthy, you can bet your sweet bippy that I would be violating this law right and left, if only for the chance to take to the SCOTUS and get it smashed.
Hans – thank you for a good column.
However since the Democrat/Liberal Party has
absolutely no sense of humor..its wasted on them.
I just hope that many many people will
ask the OBAMA campaign to release the
documents on OBAMA and Willima Ayers and
THE ACORN movement. If we can get that
released the American Public would learn
some things that would ‘..frighten them..’
Keep up the good work.
The Shelmerdine case is silly. The space didn’t sell, so it’s value is zero. This is like my ex-wife coming home with a dress she bought on clearance for $9.57 saying “look at this $200.00 dress i got for $9.57″ She was less than amused when i told her it was a $9.57 dress.
There is absolutely no reason why lobbyists should not be able to lobby politicians to get across their point of view. The problem comes when they lobby with cash in hand. That’s payola and bribery. It’s not the illegal bribery that is the problem, it is the legal contributions that are the problem. That must stop.
If politicians are to be beholden to their funders, I want those funders to be the taxpayers. And at $10 per taxpayer per year it would be a bargain. It would eliminate $3000 per taxpayer per year in government giveaways and reduce taxes in the process.
And it’s constitutional because it is voluntary (see http://tinyurl.com/5aadhf ) and actually increases speech and debate by providing all candidates with sufficient funds to run a campaign.
Jack Lohman
http://moneyedpoliticians.net
The more ‘Campaign spending reform’ laws are passed, the worse the candidates become. If the message or messenger stinks, no amount of money will make a difference. Somehow all these ‘reforms’ always seem to work for the incumbents favors. Abolish the FEC and let any citizen with in full possession of their civil rights contribute any amount they wish to any candidate they wish to publicly. No anonymous PAC or 527 veils. List each donor by name,profession and city and state. No coerced contributions from union members. The more elaborate the ‘reform’, the more likely the corruption and subterfuge.
I don’t want transparency. I don’t want to “know” who’s bribing my politician, I don’t want him bribed at all. Full public funding of campaigns are working beautifully in Arizona and Maine. And in Arizona they don’t even have the taxpayers pay the bill, they add a surcharge to criminal fines.
It works. Taxpayer money is no longer spent for special interest benefit, it’s spent on public need. And the politicians didn’t implement it to protect their job, they voters forced it through binding referendum.
See http://www.wicleanelections.org
Let’s not forget how our venerated leader had the Secret Service arrest and toss out his opponent’s supporters from his campaign rallies.
“Guess there’s no right to privacy in your version of the Constitution.
”
Paul in NJ, perhaps you could point me to that clause in the Constitution – I can’t seem to find it either.
If the FEC is interested in stuff like that, how about the casino industry being in the tank for Obama?
I was in Las Vegas recently and every Casino I went into had signs and even people wearing vest emblazoned with “Change”.
An obvious attempt to subvert election laws.
Paul in NJ,
I am no troll. But you must be a bureaucrat. Your moniker “in NJ” says it all.
You want to be able to make and enforce policy but with no responsibility or consequences. The shield of anonymity that the press extends to the bureaucracy keeps them in business violating our rights. What would you rather have: no first amendment rights or an exposed and shamed bureaucracy?
Nina,
You’re absolutely correct. But there is a right to freedom of speech. Funny that Paul in NJ prefers the right they don’t have to the right we do have.
Free speech is a right which no dictatorship (left or right) can tolerate; hence Nazi book burnings, Sharia law, disruptions and threats to disrupt by leftist thugs on campuses, et al.
And it’s also interesting how blithely Republican leaders treat this right – as in HW Bush’s refusal to provide protection for booksellers of Rushdie’s novel, or in McCain-Feingold.
McCain’s principal argument for his grotesque censorship bill was that we need to prevent the buying of politicians. But, like all steps toward dictatorship, that was just a smokescreen.
To get the money out of politics, get the politicians out of money-making. Completely separate the government from the economy and return to the limited constitutional republican form of government whose sole purpose is to protect individual rights.
Once minds and markets are free, politicians won’t be worth buying.