Michele Bachmann has
three staffers responsible for communications and press. Most representatives only have one, a few have two, but Bachmann has three. I’m not saying she doesn’t need them, I’m just saying that this means there are fewer staffers responsible for, let’s say, constituent services.
As she has three people in communications, at least one should really brush up on the Rules of the House of Representatives, read the “Involvement With Outside Activities and Entities” section from the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, browse the “Red Book,” or what’s otherwise known as the Regulations on the Use of the Congressional Frank by Members of the House of Representatives and lastly read the Member’s Handbook from the Committee on House Administration. If they read just one of those documents, they would have realized they’ve been making some huge errors — some of which may put Michele Bachmann in trouble.
1. Bachmann is helping and endorsing outside organizations using taxpayer communications. Here’s an excerpt from an email from Bachmann.Bulletin@mail.house.gov, Tue, May 26, 2009, sent to constituents:
My staff and I have been in close contact with the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), which represents auto dealers’ interests in Washington. NADA has hired a firm to represent the legal interests of those auto dealers that have been chosen by the Task Force to close. Any such auto dealer should call 703-821-7000 for more information.
Michele Bachmann’s office violated House Franking Rules by using taxpayer resources to tell constituents to call the National Automobile Dealer’s Association. House offices can’t even encourage people to donate blood, let alone ask them to call a national organization to get legal representation. Unsurprisingly, Bachmann has received $13,000 from that very same organization in 2006 and 2008.
Regulations on the use of the Congressional Frank prohibits the helping or endorsing an outside organization with official communications (see the bottom of page 16).
2. Bachmann is improperly linking from her federally-funded house.gov site to the highly-partisan Townhall.com.
It’s taxpayer dollars pushing people to a right-wing propaganda portal run by the Salem Web Network. It is deceptive as it is integrated as part of the navigation of the page and with the use of the RSS icon — a symbol used to indicate a feed related to the page you’re currently on.
3. Bachmann’s house.gov site deceives visitors when they are leaving the official government website and entering a third-party site. From the Committee on House Administration, a House website will:
…display an exit notice stating that users are leaving the House of Representatives prior to linking to a non-House of Representatives Web site. The exit notice will include a disclaimer that neither Members nor the House are responsible for the content of linked sites. Member offices maintaining their sites on the Public web server are required to incorporate the exit notice into their external links.
Sure, it’s legal for Bachmann to have a blog on a partisan site but she is not allowed to seamlessly integrate it with her non-campaign, taxpayer-funded site. Especially for constituents that are less familiar with the Internet, this is incredibly dishonest and misleading for them.
From the Committee on House Administration’s rule on this as of October 2008:
The official content of any material posted by the Member on any Web site must be in compliance with Federal law and House Rules and Regulations applicable to official communications and germane to the conduct of the Member’s official and representational duties.
When a link to a Web site outside the Member’s official cite is imbedded on the Member’s official site, the Member’s site must include an exit notice advising the visitor when they are leaving the House. This exit notice must also include a disclaimer that neither the Member nor the House is responsible for the content of the linked site(s).
This is extremely important, and easy for their webmaster to implement (see page 113). So why did they not do this? One thing is certain: it diminishes the line between what is government, taxpayer-funded and what in this case, is incredibly partisan and certainly not government-sponsored.
(Note to SEO nerds: in addition, do you know what kind of impact you get when you’re direct linked from a dot gov? Yeah. Uh hum.)
Maybe handling situations like this is why she has three press people.
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