The FEC and Mikey

I went around and around on this one trying to find a way to incororate David Hardy’s email to me into a post that made sense.  Nothing worked.  Then I realized..."uhh...Jim?  Post Hardy’s email, dummy.  Then walk away.”

So, yeah.  Here’s David Hardy’s email.  :)

Got a call from a reporter saying the FEC had turned down the Moore complaint. Look at FEC’s webpage, I think he got the recent FEC complaint confused with one I filed in the spring, focusing on fact that McCain-Feingold Act prohibits buying airtime to mention a candidate’s name, and that with focus of F 9/11 it was probable that they would be making promient mention of one G. W. Bush. FEC never sent me notice on that, and I’d long forgotten about it.

But in that inquiry I found that FEC and Moore’s companies had generated a load of paperwork. You can get pdf versions by going to http://eqs.sdrdc.com/eqs/searcheqs and searching for “Michael Moore.”

The company’s lawyers argued that they had voluntarily foregone any mention of Bush or of any other candidate within 60 days of the election (altho curiously they *had* been mentioning Bush at the date of the complaint and why one would make a business decision so nicely coincide with the law is unstated), and the FEC accordingly declined the complaint. It may have spooked the distributors into knocking it off, who knows, but one letter certain generated a ton of paperwork!

What’s hilarious—go to the “ Response from Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Cablevision Systems Corp., Rainbow Media Holdings LLC, The Independent Film Channel LLC, Fellowship Adventure Group LLC, Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein” and look at what a convoluted chain of corporations and limited liability companies the anti-corporate Moore is using! There must be two dozen of them, owning each other or contracted to each other. Lion’s Gate is owned by another Lion’s Gate, which is owned by a Canadian Lion’s Gate, which is owned by another Canadian Lion’s Gate.

Concurring opinion of two commissioners highlights the interesting legal issues posed. Apparently there was pending a petition for rulemaking to exempt advertising of documentaries. But as they note, how do you do this without creating an exemption that lets anyone use a documentary as an excuse for campaign ads? On the other hand, if the “media exemption” of McCain-Fiengold doesn’t apply here, then the general election law media exemption, phrased in almost the same language, also doesn’t apply:

“Were this case to proceed, a fundamental, substantive legal issue likely to be raised by the respondents would be whether or not the exemption fiom the electioneering communications rovisions for the press applies to movie distributors. See 2 U.S.C. §A7434(f)(3)(B)(l). whether or not the respondents could run advertisements for the film that would otherwise constitute “electioneering communications.” For one thing, if the press exemption does not apply to movies in the electioneering communications context, it almost certainly would not apply in other parts of the Act. Thus, a substantive finding that advertisements for the film are not protected by the press exemption of 2 U.S.C. §A7434(f) would suggest that the film and its advertising and distribution are also not protected by the general press exemption of 2 U.S.C.443 1(9)(B)(i), which uses substantially identical language. In that case, if the film were deemed to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a federal candidate, its production and distribution would seem to entail numerous violations of the law, including the ban on corporate expenditures, 2 U.S.C. §A7441b, the ban on contributions by foreign nationals, §A7441e, the disclosure provisions o f 2 U.S. 434, and perhaps various organizational and registration requirements, §A7 433.”

They go on to note this might mean that books that advocate one candidate or another would be covered by these general election laws (and treated as contributions, and forbidden to corporations) .... which (they don’t note) would pose some huge First Amendment problems.