roundtable: Fiddling with 501(c)3

roundtable: Fiddling with 501(c)3

Fiddling with 501(c)3

natlwtrgrp@aol.com
Tue, 29 Mar 94 15:19:31 EST 

From: natlwtrgrp@aol.com
Message-Id: <9403291519.tn229712@aol.com>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 94 15:19:31 EST
Subject: Fiddling with 501(c)3

I've a serious problem with the idea of restricting special  information
highway rates to 501(c)3 non-profits. The most important of all forms of 
free speech is that once termed seditious libel, the right to criticize 
the king and his counselors. I agree with whoever it was who said that a 
country that doesn't have seditious libel laws has free speech, the 
country that has them lacks free speech.

Congress has made it clear that organizations with 501(c)3 status can't 
spend much time or money actively targeting specific politicians by name 
and, since they'd be the ones getting criticized, that standard is not 
likely to change. Giving special benefits to organizations that steer 
away from the very concrete reality that many of our political and social 
woes have their roots in who is in public office, does not seem to me the 
best way to encourage lively, free and effective public debate. It's nice 
to be able to call Hitler a racist in 1994 America, but it is far more 
valuable to be able to call him one in 1932 Germany when he was merely 
an up and coming young politician.

The real key, I believe, lies in creating a system so inexpensive that 
the costs of distribution are virtually irrelevant. (Just high enough to 
keep the country from being flooded with electronic junk mail.)  Get the 
government into subsidizing communication either directly or the rough 
mandates, and the government will dictate at least some of the content. 
The one who pays the fiddler calls the tune. I'd rather make my own music
even if it's on my own nickel.

Mike Perry, Discovery Institute, Seattle
<natlwtrgrp@aol.com>

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