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Campaign Financing Cyber Loophole
goombah99 writes "The Washington Post is criticizing a little-noticed bill wending it's way through congress that would allow unlimited and unreported campaign contributions by corporations and individuals as long as it was confined to internet advertising and publicity buys. While internet spending was only $14 million last year it is growing at a rate of 30 fold over four years poising it to overtake conventional media spending."
It's a waste of money to advertise to the public. It's not like the public gets to vote, as evidenced by the 2000 election.
And a 30 fold increase over four years? That's not so astounding. Virtually everything which has an initial state and a larger end state, grows 30 fold over some arbitrary period of time. I mean it would be one thing if you could say it would grow 30 fold indefinitely.
The number of MP3s I bought grew 30 fold over the last year. Once I took a sip of orange mountain dew, I liked it, so my spending on it grew 30 fold (I bought a whole can). My spending on duck grew 30 fold over the last 2 weeks. (2 weeks ago I spent $10 on duck at a chinese restaurant, just last night I spent $300 on duck for a dinner). Compared to last year, the number of box office films I've watched quadrupled!
It's amazing how long we can go on with phenomenal sounding statistics.
does exist, in the US even... http://www.nota.org/statebystate.htm
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
American Liberalism is entirely different to the classical form of liberalism, it's difficult for non-Americans to understand. Classical liberalism is a great deal closer to what is referred to in the US as "libertarianism". It's confusing because the two meanings of the term are so far apart that it makes very little sense.
Fun wikipedia links if you're really bored:
Now all of Europe's going to be completely overwhelmed with advertisements for political parties they cannot even vote for.
Actually, if you think the porn industry is a driver for technological advances, that's nothing compared to campaigning, at least when it comes to demo/geo-graphics. Have you bumped into any porn/dating-system ads that appear to pretty effectively map your ip address to your locality ("Find someone in Smallville to sleep with tonight!")? I believe that political campaigns will use everything at their disposal to make sure that their banners are being displayed where (and to whom) they think it will make the most sense.
Those gratuitous "Do you think John Kerry was lying?" or "Do you trust George Bush?" banners as seen on Drudge or elsewhere have nothing to do with real campaigns, and are entirely bait to get people to visit some cheesy "survey" site that attempts to purchase your soul for permission-based adware installs and other shenanigans. They just know that "Is global warming real? Vote!" is a tease that many people cannot resist.
Yes, I know that most AOL users will appear to be coming from Virginia, but most broadband users are reasonably easy to pin down in terms of state. Certainly it's pretty easy to tell when a visitor is from Europe, and to just rotate in an ad for a Vespa or something.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is why Rumsfeld standing up pontificating about how America is a symbol of democracy to the rest of the world is such a joke.... except we don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Political adverts all over TV, billboards, etc; corporations buying their own politicians; elections being won by the PR machines; legislation going to the highest bidder... I'm not saying the system here in the UK is wonderful, but at least those things aren't big problems here.
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