Although the right to free political speech is expansive according to the laws of the United States, it has never been interpreted to be unlimited. Lobbyists aginst proposed legislation reforming health care and pollution from energy industries -- legislation which is supported by strong majorities of citizens -- have abused their freedom of speech, violating the rights of their opponents in at least two distinct ways.
First, lying about representing civil rights groups and other advocacy groups has the effect of nullifying the will of each member of each group who disagrees with the forgers, depriving the members of the practical value and purpose of their right to free speech. This is distinct from the despicable practice known as "astroturfing," which just means nondisclosure or non-obvious disclosure of corporate sponsorship in order to appear to be a "grass roots" organization. Astroturfing is despicable, but not, to my knowledge illegal per se. But forging letters purporting to be from an activist group and advocating in those letters for policies abhorrent to members of that group is criminal. In addition to mail fraud, it deprives those group members of their right to free political speech, thereby
violating Civil Rights Law, Section 241 of Title 18. Second,
threatening violence to those who exercise this right, or organize to peaceably assemble to exercise their right to free speech as a community is intended to deprive SEIU and other health care reform advocates of the right to free political speech altogether.
With this petition, we exercise our right to petition our fairly elected government for regress of grievances suffered from lobbyists, including but not limited to former member of Congress Dick Armey, and lobbyists Betsy McCaughey, Rick Scott, Tim Philips and
Donald Palmisano, who have conspired with many others to intimidate and lie, in order to deprive the majority of Americans to achieve legislative reforms we have voted, organized, petitioned and donated generously to achieve.
