[Fascist] Pelosi Targets Grassroots Freedom of Speech

House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) has pledged to take up a lobbying reform proposal that would impose new regulations on speech by grassroots organizations, while providing a loophole in the rules for large corporations and labor unions.

The legislation would make changes to the legal definition of “grassroots lobbying” and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.

The report would include identifying the organization’s expenditures, the issues focused on and the members of Congress and other federal officials who are the subject of the advocacy efforts. A separate report would be required for each policy issue the group is active on.

“Right now, grassroots groups don’t have to report at all if they are communicating with the public,” said Dick Dingman of the Free Speech Coalition, Inc. “This is an effort that would become a major attack on the 1st Amendment.”

Under the bill, communications aimed at an organization’s members, employees, officers or shareholders would be exempt from the reporting requirement. That would effectively exempt most corporations, trade associations and unions from the reporting requirements—but not most conservative grassroots groups, which frequently are less formally organized.

Larger, well-funded organizations are also currently eligible for a “low-dollar lobbyist exemption” that Pelosi’s bill does not give to grassroots organizations. If an organization retains a lobbyist to contact lawmakers directly at a cost of $2,500 per quarter or less, or employs a full-time lobbyist at a cost of $10,000 per quarter or less, the organization does not have to report to the government.

Public Citizen, a liberal “government watchdog,” is taking credit for helping Pelosi craft the legislation and expects the final draft of the bill to closely resemble Pelosi’s Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2006, which contains these provisions.

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, said the changes would help “streamline” how grassroots organizations are regulated by the IRS and other laws. Public Citizen would like Congress to adopt the IRS’s definition of “lobbying,” which includes communication that encourages the general public to contact a member of Congress on pending legislation or public policy.

“The IRS has a definition that requires all organizations, including non-profits, to file as a part of our tax returns,” Holman said. “When it comes to the election code and the lobbying disclosure act, they have no definition of grassroots lobbying. It’s excluded from everything. The IRS has a definition of grassroots lobbying, but their information is not publicly reported. It’s just our tax returns to the IRS.”

Suzanne Coffman, director of communication for Guidestar.org, which makes IRS 990 forms available on the Internet, said any secular, non-profit organization that has more than $25,000 in income per year is required by law to make the last three years worth of tax forms available upon request. “We get them directly from the IRS, and we have more than two million 990s online” said Coffman. “For non-charitable organizations, like private charities or private foundations, we have fewer because the IRS began scanning those only in April 2005. They focused on charitable organizations, which make up the bulk of exempt organizations, because those are the ones that accept tax-deductible contributions. The need for accountability is much higher with them than with other types of organizations which are sort of subsidized by the taxpayer because they federally are tax exempt, but not like a charity is.”

Public Citizen’s public IRS 990 disclosure forms show that it raised more than $3 million in 2005. That year, the group spent $297, 431 on mail and $178,182 on consulting and professional fees.

A coalition of grassroots organizers, including David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America and Terrence Scanlon of the Capitol Research Center, have written an open letter calling on Public Citizen to renounce its efforts, which they called “flawed to the point of hypocrisy.”

“This bill would apply to those who have no Washington-based lobbyists, who provide no money or gifts to members of Congress, and who merely seek to speak, associate and petition the government,” it said. “Regulating the speech, publishing, association and petitioning rights of citizens is not targeted at corruption in Washington, as Public Citizen and its supporters would believe. Instead, it is targeted directly at the 1st-Amendment rights of citizens and their voluntary associations.”

The Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act, which made some of these changes, was actually approved by both the House and the Senate in the 109th Congress, but failed to make it through a conference committee.

To help dramatize the bill this time around, Pelosi is planning to assign sponsorship of various amendments to incoming freshman, which they will promote in their maiden House floor speeches.

Current law prevents former members of Congress and senior staff as well as senior executive staff from lobbying for one year. Pelosi’s proposal would extend that to two years and completely ban members and staff from accepting gifts, meals and privately sponsored travel.

Miss Carpenter is Assistant Editor for HUMAN EVENTS. She is the author of "The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Rodham Clinton," published by Regnery (a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

"I notice there is no refutation... just snide remarks. Which is no more than I have learned to expect from someone who loves to beat up non-pubbie conservatives, then DEMANDS they vote for the candidates of YOUR choice..." ~ dcwusmc

Ignorant and uninformed people "feel" the way you do. Wise up.

"Why Party Trumps Person". [excerpted]

A time-honored cliche heard every election year goes something like this: "I'm an independent thinker; I vote the person, not the party." This pronouncement is supposed to demonstrate open-mindedness and political sophistication on the part of the pronouncer. It's your vote, cast it any way you like - or not at all.

But idealism and naivete about the way our electoral process and system of government works shouldn't be mistaken for wisdom or savvy.

For better or worse, we have a two-party system. And party trumps person. Either a Republican or a Democrat is going to be elected... No one else has a chance.

..not the Libertarian candidate, nor the Communist, nor the Green. Minor party candidates are sometimes spoilers .. but they don't win.. elections. Ross Perot got 20 million popular votes in 1992, and exactly zero Electoral College votes.

In Europe's multiparty, parliamentary democracies, governing coalitions are formed after an election.

In our constitutional republic, the coalitions are formed first.

The Republican coalition includes, for the most part, middle- and upper-income taxpayers (but not leftist Hollywood millionaires and George Soros), individualists who prefer limited government, pro-market and pro-business forces, believers in American exceptionalism and a strong national defense, social-issues conservatives and supporters of traditional American values.

The Democratic coalition is an alliance of collectivists, labor unions (especially the teachers' unions), government workers, academics, plaintiffs-lawyers, lower- and middle-income net tax-receivers, most minorities, feminists, gays, enviros, and activists for various anti-capitalist, anti-business, anti-military, anti-gun, one-world causes.

...party trumps person because [regardless of the individual who wins an election] the coalition will be served.

.. After the individual members of a new Congress have been seated, a figurative nose count is taken and the party with the most noses wins. That victory carries with it control of all committee and subcommittee chairmanships, the locus of legislative power.

Now, let's say you're a registered Republican voter who clearly prefers the Republican philosophy of governance. And you're a good-natured, well-intentioned person who happens to like an individual Democrat, a Senate candidate, who's somewhat conservative. You decide to cross party lines and vote for him.

As it turns out, he wins, beating a Republican and giving the Democrats a one-vote majority, 51-49, in the U.S. Senate.

Congratulations! You just got Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton as key committee chairs, and a guarantee that your Republican legislative agenda will be stymied.

That's the way the process works.

Does this mean that in a two-party system like ours it comes down to choosing between the lesser of two evils?

You bet it does.

That's not to say that either party is really "evil," that's just an expression.

If we had [300] million custom-tailored minor parties, everyone could find his perfect match.

But that's not practical.

You can be a purist and cast your vote symbolically with a boutique party, or be a player and settle for the least imperfect of the Republican or Democrat alternatives.

Your vote, your choice. ~ Mike Rosen http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1728426/posts

"Good thing those morons who claim to be conservatives but wanted to 'teach the Republican party a lesson' have to suffer along with the rest of us. Maybe THEY will learn a few lessons." ~ MEGoody

The ignorant and uniformed don't get that way by learning any lessons of importance. The only thing dumb brutes understand is what Cal Thomas recommended before the election. His remedy wasn't applied, so fools did what comes naturally.

November 02, 2006

The 2006 Choice
By Cal Thomas
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/11/the_2006_choice.html

Conservatives who are upset that Republicans haven't done enough during their 12 years in control of the House and Senate and nearly six years in control of the White House need a slap in the face.

Republicans may have controlled all three branches of government, but conservatives haven't.

If conservatives believe enough has not been done to advance their agenda, let them work to elect more conservatives, not hand control of Congress over to a party controlled by far-left liberals who have no intention of moderating their tone or watering down their beliefs after the election.

One issue should trump all others for conservatives: judges.

As Manuel Miranda of Third Branch writes in Human Events, "If the GOP loses the Senate, precedent shows that more than 60 Bush judicial nominees will never get a Judiciary Committee hearing under the chairmanship of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

Republicans will be unable to stop a filibuster of a next Supreme Court nominee and countless circuit court picks. This will dwarf Democrats' past six years of obstruction."

Liberals have used the courts for decades to bypass the public will and impose a secular agenda on the country.

If they win control of the Senate, their current leadership will be emboldened to continue that practice.

Any judge who manages to make it onto the bench will most likely be of the judicial philosophy of Anthony Kennedy and David Souter. Republican presidents named both men because they thought it would be easier to win the approval of Senate Democrats. Neither turned out to be conservative, despite the White House sales job to conservative groups.

Then there is the war.

We live in a time when most people do not remember what a real war looks like.

Some are horrified that nearly 3,000 Americans have died in the Iraq War, but ignore that in World War II more than 407,000 Americans died. Sixty-two million were killed on all sides.

Some say this war is taking longer than that war.

That's because this war is different from that war in that it has no home state, unless we abandon Iraq. And the enemy accepts no rules for fighting it.

Democrats speak only of withdrawing American troops and of how our presence inflames the enemy, yet they have no explanation for what inflamed them before the war.

President Bush may have to change tactics, as he has said he is willing to do, but he understands the challenge. This isn't Vietnam.

This is a religious-philosophical war for control of the planet.

Anyone who thinks any objective other than the complete defeat and humiliation of these Islamofascists will deter them from their goal of world domination is self-delusional.

Last week over lunch, I asked Vice President Dick Cheney about conservative angst. He said in previous campaigns, "I would have given a lot to get an economy this good to be able to run on." Noting the recession that occurred right after he and the president took office in 2001, Cheney told me, "We (also) had 9/11. . We had Katrina, a war.

We had to spend a lot of money on the war and homeland security. And so a series of repeated shocks... to the economy and here we are, we've got 4.6 unemployment. We added 6.6 million new jobs in the last three years. Productivity is running at an all-time high. More Americans (are) working than ever before. Inflation is under control. . The stock market has hit all-time records.

What do you want? How much better do we have to make it before people say, 'yes, that's pretty good'?" It's a good question.

Is there anyone who believes government doesn't have enough of our money? Then vote for Democrats.

Is there anyone who thinks withdrawing from Iraq before the country can stand on its own against terrorism means there won't be more terrorism? Then vote for Democrats.

Do you prefer liberal judges reading their prejudices into the Constitution and increasingly depriving us of our right to decide our own future? Then vote for Democrats.

If not, conservatives should vote Republican and then work to continue advancing conservative goals. Those goals are more likely to be reached under Republicans than under Democrats.

That's the choice this year, a choice that will be made whether one votes, or cuts and runs out of a false notion that Republicans need to be punished for not doing more.

As the vice president said, "What do you want?"

Cal@CalThomas.com

I don't have blind loyalty, I do feel if you want to make a change you have to do it in the primaries and most people don't even bother to vote in primaries.

Look at what happened in Utah in the primary election between Cannon and Jacobs --

Freepers came out of the woodwork to trash other Freepers wantsing Cannon to lose because he is pro-open-borders... "How can you not support someone with his high ACU rating" they said... searched for anything to hold against Jacobs, who admitedly wasn't the greatest campaigner, but Cannon is certain not lilly white -- however, they didn't care as long as his ACU rating was high.

So only 20% voted in the primary, Cannon won and went on to be returned, again, to the congress and an opportunity for change in the GOP in DC was lost.

We the voters need to term-limit our representatives (IMO)... but what response would you have received if you'd broached the subject of replacing Rick in the primary? Probably labeled a troll and run off.

That said, once we are through the primary then we do need to support the party, the alternative is too horrific to ponder and we are about to see it first hand. My preference for 2008 is probably Newt at this point, but if the party elects Rudy, I will support Rudy... not Hillary or Obama.

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