Carpe Medium.

That is, for those whose public education did not include Latin, Seize the Medium.

The web is a really great device for linking up like-minded folks.

And while Cargil might be able to buy vast swaths of 30-second spots on TV to pimp for the candidate who is going to give them the best deal at our expense, we do have a recourse.

Facebook now has 370 million members.  That’s a lot.

So the idea of getting 1 million like-minded folks together online is not out of the question. In fact, it’s probably pretty likely.

The web has been good at getting those 1 million people to send in $10 each, but even at those rates, they’re gonna be buried by Cargil and it’s ilk.

Instead, I think, the next step is simply to bypass the ad buys and the networks entirely.

If you had 1 million people with video cameras or flip cams, and of those 1 million people created their own 30 second video spots and then flooded the blogosphere with those videos and associated tweets to see them, you could create a tidal wave of media (with a specific point of view) that would effectively bury the Cargil ad campaign.

If 100 phone calls to NBC news made the newsroom go nuts, image what 1 million videos would do.

Upload all of them to iReport at CNN and see what happens.

A media tidal wave, all focused on one thing.

Or one candidate.

No one has harnessed the media in this way… yet.

No one has even come close.

But someone did something very similar about 200 years ago.

Before Napoleon, armies in Europe were professional affairs – well trained, well equipped. Like NBC or CBS News.

Or even Fox.

They were small, perhaps no more than 25,000, but they were professionals.

Napoleon instituted the idea of the Citizen Army.  And the draft.

He built an army of 3 million people.

The Grand Army, and he swept across Europe.

OK, they were ill trained and ill equipped – sometimes only pitchforks, but boy did they work out for him.

If only he hadn’t had that bad winter in Moscow.

I have been in a funk since I heard about this - but Michael has given me hope

Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. It is outrageous that corporations already attempt to influence or bribe our political candidates through their political action committees (PACs), which solicit employees and shareholders for donations. With this decision, corporations can now also draw on their corporate treasuries and pour vast amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars.

This corporatist, anti-voter decision is so extreme that it should galvanize a grassroots effort to enact a Constitutional Amendment to once and for all end corporate personhood and curtail the corrosive impact of big money on politics. It is indeed time for a Constitutional amendment to prevent corporate campaign contributions from commercializing our elections and drowning out the civic and political voices and values of citizens and voters. It is way overdue to overthrow “King Corporation” and restore the sovereignty of “We the People”!

 

Ralph Nader finds his voice - I like this idea that "Overreach" might stimulate a reaction - I hope!

“It will put on steroids the trend that outside groups are increasingly dominating campaigns,” Mr. Ginsberg said. “Candidates lose control of their message. Some of these guys lose control of their whole personalities.”

“Parties will sort of shrink in the relative importance of things,” he added, “and outside groups will take over more of the functions — advertising support, get out the vote — that parties do now.”

America has already been captured by corporate interests. Health care reform - it's all about Big Pharma. Defence - it's all about Pork. Flu - it's all about Big Pharma again. Banking - it's all about bankers. Food health - its all about Big Food. Innovation - it's all about GM. The list goes on and on.

The big corporate interests are opposed to the national and to the people's interests.

There are 2 major flaws that allow this.

That a corporation has the rights of a person.
That copyright is so broadly written to incude nature and to extend all but indefinitely

Now that these interests have had all limits removed on political spending, America is now a Kleptocracy.

Tragic