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Manipulation, deceit, and H.R. 984

April 19th, 2007

On April 16, I received the following email from Focus on the Family Action:

Dear Joshua,

I have warned you for weeks that the U.S. House would attempt to gag our ability to keep you informed about the mischief in Congress and thus, hinder your ability to let your voice be heard by elected officials.

Well, the day is upon us! In fact, if the U.S. House is successful, future communications from us to you such as this e-mail will be difficult.

You may remember that the tremendous outpouring of opposition by people such as yourself forced the Senate to stop it when they tried the same thing earlier this year.

This week the U.S. House may begin fast-tracking its version of the same bill and all indications are that the provisions to gag grassroots communications will be included.

We can’t sit idly by and allow Congress to silence our voices!

Rumors are that this terrible bill will be hustled along to a full House vote 24 hours after the bill is introduced. These are back-room practices at their worst and we must move fast. To date, this bill has been seen only by radically liberal groups funded by George Soros. I faxed a letter to House Judiciary Committee members today detailing more about this bill. Click here to see my letter.

Why do they want the bill passed? Because they want to keep groups like us from telling you what’s happening in the back rooms, where the deals are cut.

Here is what you need to do.

• First, please forward this e-mail to your friends and family if they haven’t yet signed the Freedom of Speech petition.
• Next, please visit our Action Center and send your representative an e-mail urging him or her to oppose the forthcoming “Grassroots Gag Order Bill” and reject any restrictions on grassroots communications with Congress or Executive Branch officials.
• Finally, please call your representative’s district and Washington offices with the same message; the phone numbers are available in the Action Center.

It is time to stand strong for our right to be informed and be heard. 

Sincerely,

Tom Minnery
Senior Vice President

The message looked like one worth paying attention to. Something was a bit fishy, though. For one thing, the whole premise of keeping a political action group from communicating with citizens (”silencing our voices!”) seemed so ridiculous and un-American that I had a hard time believing our government was actually considering it. Then there was the line about the “radically liberal groups” (because all things liberal are evil) and George Soros (second to Satan himself). Generalizations and guilt by association – it looked manipulative to me.

So I dug a little deeper to find out more information about H.R. 984: Executive Branch Reform Act of 2007. If you actually read the bill, you won’t find anything that prohibits political action organizations from communicating with citizens. In fact, the purpose of the bill is to require transparency in government, to stop the very “back-room practices” that Minnery cites. (And yes, we are talking about the same bill – Minnery referred to H.R. 984 in his letter.)

Other helpful pages about this bill were WashingtonWatch.com (the comments at the bottom are telling) and this article from the National Right to Life Committee, another conservative group whose interpretation of H.R. 984 seems to line up a lot better with the facts compared to Minnery’s.

With all that in mind, I don’t think this is a very good law. It looks like something that will hinder communication between citizens and the federal government (although only the executive branch) while tying up government agencies in a lot of red tape. There has got to be a better way to stop shady back-room practices.

I am, however, dismayed with Focus on the Family Action for sending me this email. Being manipulative is one thing; that seems to be how political organizations often get things done. I don’t like it – I think it insults my intelligence – but I can accept it as a reality of the system. Being flat-out wrong is another. I can’t say that they were trying to be deliberately deceptive, but it’s sad that the basic premise of this message could be completely debunked in about two minutes with a simple Google search. I wonder if they think most people won’t even bother to find out what they’re forwarding emails and contacting their representatives about?

The lesson here is don’t believe anything you read so easily, even if it comes from a Christian organization. Scary.

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