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By krempasky Posted in FEC — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

What follows is a transcript of the introductory portion, of the Internet Advisory Caucus' panel on the FEC's rulemaking process. McCain-Feingold in Cyberspace.

This transcript portion includes the opening remarks of yours truly. A full index of panel transcripts is available here.

Mike Krempasky, RedState.org: Well, first thank you to the Internet Advisory Caucus for, not only holding this panel, but certainly, inviting me to participate. And thank you to my co-panelists for not objecting to allowing a “rabble-rouser” who doesn’t really hold a lot of official standing to be here.

I guess I would like to start with a disclaimer, since they seem pretty popular uh, Washington. That is that I’m here to represent RedState.org, and the Online Coalition, which is a bipartisan group of bloggers and online professionals concerned about this rulemaking, and certainly not my employer. My second disclaimer is that I am not an attorney, and so I hope that gives me the opportunity to share, at least just a little bit, about what it’s like to really explore, and attempt to explore, this rulemaking process and these regulations. And it really hopefully informs, my position my position that I hope that no blogger ever has to do that again. And let me say that I understand that the FEC is in a tough spot. They’re obligated to comply with a court order, and while my personal preference would have been for the Commission to appeal that court order, that time has certainly passed, and the real question is, “where do we go from here?” and how do we produce something that works?

I don’t think that the rules are necessarily as clear as Chairman Thomas laid out, in terms of who would be protected and who would be exempted. I believe it does present some significant challenges and problems for people that want to be active online, as well as people that are, simply consider themselves online journalists. And I really don’t think it’s unfair to raise the, the notion that part of the problem with this rulemaking process is that there isn’t a real good understanding of how politics and the internet works at the Federal Election Commission. And that’s not to say that they’re, ignoring anything...or, I mean, that’s not what they do. And if you need any evidence, I think two examples, one being at the public hearing last week, Commissioner Danny McDonald almost boasting to the crowd in the room that quote “...no one in this room knows less about the internet than I do...” end quote. And these sorts of comments are the kind of things that give bloggers a lot of pause, because these are the folks that are charged with regulating us.

And secondly, and I sort of hate to bring this up, Chairman Thomas himself, on March 10th, or 11th rather, at a conference called Politics Online, decided to describe the broad cross-section of bloggers as quote, “Billy Blogger in his basement wearing a Lyndon LaRouche t-shirt” end quote. And, with all due respect, I don’t think that’s the case, I’ve certainly never met anyone that supported Lyndon LaRouche, [laughter], and I certainly don’t own any of his t-shirts. [ed note: I mis-quoted the Chairman. He actually said, “‘Billy Blogger,’ wearing his Lyndon LaRouche volunteer badge and toiling for hours late at night in his basement”]

I think the truth here is that bloggers really represent a broad and deep cross-section of America. They’re experts, they’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re mechanics, they’re scientists, they’re artists, they’re musicians, they’re schoolteachers. And blogging is simply their hobby -- but collectively, when you put them together, they really represent something that’s truly extraordinary. And in fact, I would even go a little farther to say that bloggers are really no different than the pamphleteers that were present around the founding of this country. People using their own time, and their own money, and what meager means of communication they had, to get their opinions out there. Largely to question authority.

I really do look forward to discussing the, the specifics of this rule, and how I think that the FEC can improve them, but I was advised that whenever you speak, you should try to find some sort of historical example or story to try to illustrate your point.

And so I’d like to just close my opening remarks with this, and that is that, I believe the FEC is really poised to repeat a mistake that’s almost 350 years old. Which sounds a bit odd, but in July of 1665, about a thousand people had died from the bubonic plague in London. And in responding to rumors that the plague was carried by cats and dogs, the Lord Mayor of London ordered them all destroyed. 200,000 cats and 50,000 dogs later, well, we know what happened. We know that the Lord Mayor was wrong, that it was not cats and dogs that were the problem, it was rats. And the only thing that the Lord Mayor did in his attempt to fix the problem was to remove all of the natural predators for the rat population. So we can wonder – how much damage did the Lord Mayor do?

And the reason I think it’s relevant is that if your concern is the undue influence of big money, or special interests, or misleading or sham ads and communications, then frankly bloggers are your best friends. They’re not the enemy, they’re not part of the problem. The blogosphere is fiercely independent, it’s suspicious of authority, it’s suspicious of money, and frankly, it’s more effective than any regulation could be at exposing these connections and fact-checking the so-called authorities that try to buy, or throw their influence around on the internet. Certainly, they delight in fact checking. I think that would be fair to say. In just hours, bloggers – unpaid bloggers, volunteer bloggers, very-motivated bloggers unraveled a major broadcast news story that, you know, took five years to put together. After one of the presidential debates, bloggers on the opposite side of the political aisle in about fifteen minutes, debunked something that the Vice President said.

This is a good thing. And I would plead with not only the Commission, but those that support this rulemaking in general, and those that will be weighing in on this rulemaking in general: Please, don’t kill the dogs nor the cats.