[Coral-List] "Lobbying" defined
Jim Hendee
Jim.Hendee at noaa.gov
Thu Oct 7 20:23:41 EDT 2004
Okay, I'm going to crawfish into my hole on this lobbying question
with this quote from the Coral-List information page
([1]http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list):
Lobbying Prohibited - Internet services (such as e-mail list
subscription services) of Department of Commerce organizations shall
not be used for direct or indirect lobbying or posting of links to web
pages that engage in such activities. Direct lobbying is defined as
encouraging members of the public to contact Congress to support or
oppose any pending legislation. Indirect lobbying would be posting
links to any Web page that engages in lobbying or encourages such
activity, or that engages in lobbying or posting links directly to any
page that does.
~~~~~~~~~
The intent is to prohibit the use of federal resources (e.g., this
list) to influence Congress, as obviously this wouldn't be fair to use
your tax dollars to influence a lawmaker to agree with a position you
didn't agree with.. Beyond that, I don't see where you can have any
kind of open discussion without some politics when it comes to making
things better for the environment. Whether it's okay to use this list
to try to enfluence the U.N. seems to me, now, to be okay, but some
federal official out there may blast me on this. In other words, it
appears that I was wrong in chiding Sara Maxwell the other day (sorry
about that, Sara!). Also, this list was used, effectively it appears,
to influence legal action in the Dominican Republic earlier this year,
and nobody whupped me upside the head for that one. So, in
conclusion, unless someone tells me I'm wrong, I think we just have to
be careful about trying to lobby Congress or any other U.S. Government
legal authority with this list, but you can raise the public
consciousness for other areas (but be nice).
Cheers,
Jim
References
1. http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
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