Rumor has it that the people who want to take away your free speech are at it again.
Of course this doesn’t apply to you if you want to stand idly by while the ruling class decides how you should live your life and who gets a piece of the pork paid for by the money they take from your paycheck. It’s true, that includes most of us. But just in case you think your Senators and Congressmen( Congressperson’s?) want to hear from you, you might want to consider Congress’s plan to make it more difficult for you to tell them what you think.
Unfortunately, Congress won’t tell you what their plan is.
Earlier this year Senate Bill 1 was stripped of provisions that would have regulated so-called grassroots lobbying. S1 -The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007, would have imposed regulations on small organizations engaged in political outreach and activism while leaving large lobbyists such as big corporations, unions and organizations like the NRA or AARP unscathed. Let me see, Archer Daniels Midland can give huge campaign contributions in return for increased farm subsidies but you and I can’t send an e-mail to our friends encouraging them to email their Senator telling them to stop it? Good plan.
Okay it’s a little more complicated than that. The defeated grassroots provisions would have applied to paid lobbying, but not to organizations communicating with shareholders, members, etc. So the NRA or Halliburton can engage in paid lobbying for their members or shareholders. But apparently if a few friends get together and pay an intern $25,000 a year to send political e-mails we are to be subject to grassroots lobbying regulation. So what?
Well – our costs go up – and our time spent on productive activity goes down. Who has time these days to stay on top of the reams of legislation coming out of Washington? Not me – and apparently not our Senators and Congressman – because they don’t read the laws the force on us either.
So Congress wants to make it way more expensive for me to “hire” the lobbyist/s of my choosing by joining an organization like DownsizeDC.org.
These provisions were defeated before and the corporate welfare queens learned from their mistake. This time they won’t tell us what they are plotting. There is a big profit in lobbying for the corporate welfare queens who, according to Mark Fitzgibbons of grassrootsfreedom.com, are actually writing the bill. But I am just trying to hold on to what’s left of my paycheck.
Why should my elected representatives want to put me at a disadvantage compared to the corporate welfare queens? Ok that’s a stupid question and the answer is pretty obvious. This trick is as old as civilization itself. First conquer your subjects either by sword or by ballot box – and if the ballot box approach looks a little iffy – control political communication to make sure only your side of the story gets out. Then tax everyone enough to keep them working so hard they have no time to fight back. Then make it impossible for them to combine resources.Â
Choose your weapon – you get the pea-shooter and Halliburton gets the assault rifle. And that’s exactly the way Congress – and the corporate welfare queens want it.