Blog 2.1

Wednesday’s post regarding a controversial bill in the US Senate got me more comments this week than I usually get in a month. Today there is more news about this bill: the bit requiring “grassroots” political bloggers to register and report to Congress as lobbyists has been struck from the bill.

Worth noting, however, is that I discovered more detail about how the bill defines “grassroots lobbying firm”:

(19) GRASSROOTS LOBBYING FIRM- The term `grassroots lobbying firm’ means a person or entity that–

(A) is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and

(B) receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period.’.

As such, it appears the bill was targeted at such things as radio talk shows funded by advertisers (thus the Republican opposition) and other “astroturfers” (think fake grassroots). It would not, however, target media funded by contributors like MoveOn.org.

Would this section of the bill been a positive element if it had been retained? I still think it’s hard to say. Personally, if the bill was supposed to target “astroturfing” then I think it should have done so more clearly. As it was written, however, the bill seemed to target the activities of one party and not the other (which explains the partisan split on the vote).

For anyone from Missouri who’s counting, Kit Bond (and the rest of the Senate Republicans) voted to remove the controversial section of the bill. Newly elected Senator Claire McCaskill (and all but seven Democrats) voted to keep the section in.