Looking Behind the Wrong Door

While "libertarians" are moaning about government-run health care and nationalizing the banks and other fantasies, they're missing one of the real problems we're facing from bloated bureaucracy:

In new guidelines (PDF) released Oct. 5, the FTC put bloggers on notice that they could incur an $11,000 fine if they receive free goods, free services, or money and write about the goods or services without conspicuously disclosing their "material connection" to the provider. The FTC guidelines extend even to Facebook and Twitter posters. If you received a gratis novel from the publicity department of a publisher and posted a tweet about it without disclosing that the book was a freebie, you become an "endorser" in the FTC's view. It could—in the name of consumer protection—hit you with a fine. The 81-page guidelines, which also mandate stringent celebrity endorsements rules, will take effect Dec. 1.

Read the article. It's pretty scary, and a good illustration of a process that reached its full flower (I had thought) under Bush II. He wasn't the first president to push the government into every aspect of American life, just the most blatant. This whole thing is way beyond what's necessary. And there's an even more disturbing aspect to it:

Because of a pesky thing called the First Amendment, the guidelines don't apply to news organizations, which receive thousands of free books, CDs, and DVDs each day from media companies hoping for reviews. But if the guidelines don't apply to established media like the New York Review of Books, which also happens to publish reviews on the Web, why should they apply to Joe Blow's blog? Regulating bloggers via the FTC while exempting establishment reporters looks like a back-door means of licensing journalists and policing speech.

And just why should the guidelines not apply to corporate media? Is it because, perhaps, of the "corporate" part? As in, the government knows which side the butter is on?

Write the FTC. Write your congresscritter. Write your senators. Kill these guidelines.

(And you will note that this blog now contains a disclaimer in the sidebar.)