Pelosi spits on the First Amendment

Just like a typical rich leftist from San Francisco. One thing that is common. With few exceptions (Sometimes Feingold, but he can't be counted on), the democrats (as well as John McCain) can always be counted on when it comes to putting the iron heel down against grassroots efforts from we the people.

Remember McCain and the dems yapping about "lobbying reform"? Well guess what, it's not K street that they have in mind. It is telling us grass roots activists to sit down and shut up.

Human Events gives us the devil, which is in the details

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.

(snip)

Under this scenario, unless you're a beltway man, you're nothing. This piece of leftist big government trash needs to be smashed into pieces.