You’re not paranoid, Dems actually do want FEC to silence internet speech
“Democrats want to regulate online political sites and even news media like the Drudge Report.”
This is just another case of Democrats doing something they would be outraged about if Republicans tried it.
In this instance, they want to use the power of government to silence opposition.
Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner reports:
Dems on FEC move to regulate Internet campaigns, blogs, Drudge
In a surprise move late Friday, a key Democrat on the Federal Election Commission called for burdensome new rules on Internet-based campaigning, prompting the Republican chairman to warn that Democrats want to regulate online political sites and even news media like the Drudge Report.
Democratic FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel announced plans to begin the process to win regulations on Internet-based campaigns and videos, currently free from most of the FEC’s rules. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due,” she said.
The power play followed a deadlocked 3-3 vote on whether an Ohio anti-President Obama Internet campaign featuring two videos violated FEC rules when it did not report its finances or offer a disclosure on the ads. The ads were placed for free on YouTube and were not paid advertising.
This is all about the accumulation and retention of power.
As John Hinderaker of Powerline recently noted, that’s just how the left rolls:
A Lefty Explains What the Election Is All About
Rob Stein is the founder of the Democracy Alliance, an umbrella a group that organizes the funding of left-wing causes by rich liberals and interest groups. In The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado by Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer, at page 7, Stein explains candidly what politics is all about for the Left:
“The reason it is so important to control government is because government is the source of enormous power,” Stein continued. “One president in this country, when he or she takes office, appoints…5,000 people to run a bureaucracy, nonmilitary nonpostal service of 2 million people, who hire 10 million outside outsource contractors–a workforce of 12 million people–that spends $3 trillion a year. That number is larger than the gross domestic product of all but four countries on the face of the earth.”
“So the reason we’re doing what we’re doing…and the way we get progressive change, is to control government,” Stein said. “That’s what this is about.”
This will to power explains why the Left, a clear minority among Americans, consistently punches above its weight, politically.
They want what they want when they want it. Silencing the free speech of others is just a casualty of war.
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Comments
Yes, it IS all about the accumulation and retention of power.
That is really all ObamaDoggle is about, and it has very little to do with “health care”.
That is why we’ve seen the weaponization of the Federal bureaucracies, and their flagrantly illegal use to suppress anything conservative.
That is why you’ve seen the same tactics at the state levels in Texas and Wisconsin, and the corruption of the ballot in Colorado.
These people are not Americans in any normal sense. They are Collectivists, and that excludes American values.
Absolutely. Those American values, so the liberals espouse, are themselves antiquated and need to eliminated.
Abolishing affordable insurance and pushing people into begging the government for a subsidy (out of what it takes from our pockets first) in order to get insurance is absolutely 100 percent about power, not health.
Free Speech is under attack almost everywhere I look. Political Correctness is a malignancy that attempts to make people censor themselves in order to not “offend”. If that doesn’t work, then the powers that be attempt to regulate speech through how much a person can donate towards an advertisement or a campaign contribution (George Will has an interesting video on this on the Prager University series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5-4jW5dLSI )
It now gets to regulating the internet which seems to be the last bastion of unregulated speech anywhere.
These statists are beginning to irritate me beyond my normal tolerance. If any such regulations are passed, I would start being civilly disobedient, and continue to exercise my 1st Amendment rights.
The exercising of rights is still the best defense to keeping those rights valued and strong.
Political Correctness, “hate speech” laws and statutes and multiculturalism are all attacks on individual liberty and individual expression. All have one intent: creating a collective where the population all thinks alike, acts alike and turns on anyone outside the government-established “norm”.
Socialism is nothing but a modern-day version of Feudalism. First, they have to relegate us to serfdom, which is well underway, courtesy of 0bama and the elitists running Washington.
So is it possable for congress to impeach these appointed morons?
One word:
Tor
tor won’t protect the server owners.
they don’t (yet) want to punish those who read something but want to punish the site/server owners.
this is a BFD
Why, oh why, oh WHY doesn’t the Republican-controlled House use their Constitutional powers to defund these bureaucracies? Either fight the battle there or in the courts, where the Democratic Black Robes are likely to throw out 200+ years of court rulings and all or part of The Bill of Rights.
Is there any plan by Republicans to fight the upcoming obama onslaught of fiat executive actions? I fear that we have no champion, unless it is Ted Cruz, who is already the subject of liberal and media Palinization. We need a Nigel Farage.
Hum. Dems are just like radical Islam in their desire to silence – behead- bloggers.
Only one sentence is attributed to Ann Ravel, and it does not indicate she “called for burdensome new rules” as the article claims:
“A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due.”
If you understand Liberal Speak it’s obvious that is her intent !
Reading is fundamental: “Ravel plans to hold meetings next year to discuss regulating the internet. She charged that groups placing paid TV ads use the FEC exemption to disseminate similar messages on the internet, regulation free.”
Yes, but to conclude Ravel is arguing for some bad remedy, I’d need to know she has actually proposed a bad remedy. It just seems that hunches about her plans are being misreported as facts. It’s okay to be worried, but let’s be honest.
We really need to stomp this one to dust so bad they never try it again. And every single one of them behind it.
This is war.
Before I oppose the coming feudal socialist government, what would my social ranking be? Peasant? Lord? Land Owner? Serf? Slave? What?
Varlet. Perhaps villain.
The lowest of the low.
They would probably use a more recent term for your social ranking…like “teabagger”.
‘If Republicans tried it?’ How about, ‘Republicans tried FIGHTING it.’ What a pathetic bunch of corrupt losers.
Start saving for your “we won the election, and all we got is this lousy Squeaker” John Boehner t-shirt.