Here's a post from DKos that bears repeating, it's something I've been saying for years. It's a modest proposal that works on several different levels at the same time.
Devilstower argues that the money being raised for the 2008 election, some $1 billion dollars is an early estimate for the presidential candidates, is not spent very efficiently. The law of dimishing returns and our experience tells us that the 7th phone call to vote for Bill Richardson, the nth repetition of the same commercial, the 49th flyer stuffed in the mail box and deposited directly into the recycling can have a marginal impact that belies their cost, and that a candidate would be smart to do something else with that money. And he's right, I've done phone banking, and people get tired of the repeat phone calls rather quickly, nobody reads the mail crap after a while, and the commercials lose their grip after a while.
So Devilstower suggests that the candidates give a tenth of their campaign contributions to charity. As a DEMONSTRATION OF THEIR VALUES, although he didn't say it that way, that's how I've been saying for years. Rather than give their money for endless and destructive teevee commercials that tell the voters nothing, give it to charity, and get free publicity for doing it, I mean, of course the teevee would cover John Edwards giving Katrina Reconstruction $5 million dollars, that would rebuild a couple of houses and roads in New Orleans, or Barack dumping $5 million into the coffers of the MLK Foundation, or whatever charity these people like.
And the best part of it? The Networks and Cable Companies get none of that money. The Networks and Cable Companies who have attacked and smeared and trivialized and denegrated and marginalized Democrats for the past 20 years or so, ever since the Big Corporations sold out to the tawdry lures of the GOP.
Yes, I think it's a grand idea, it doesn't need to be charity per se, it could be funding Yearly Kos, or a Blogger Conference on Ethics, or Air America, or to staff a Democratic Think Tank, or to Broadcast Al Gore's movie, whatever, the point being to DEMONSTRATE DEMOCRATIC VALUES without buying a bunch of air time from the same people trying to destroy our Constitution and freedom loving way of life.
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3 comments:
Or they could just not collect so much money to begin with. I think the reality is that the increasing use of the internet will tend to deflate the money needed anyway since it's effectively free communication. And that's a very good thing for the cause of democracy.
Here's an example of free communication:
www.ExpertVoter.org
gary
Using the internet to bypass the teevee networks? That's a big Thank You to Al Gore for leading the legislative effort that created the internet of today!
So, what you're suggesting is that a candidate be more creative and smart with their campaign cash, and that instead of the stinkin media annointing Hillary and Barack as the frontrunners because they have the most cash, someone who actually connects to the voters might be the real frontrunner?
There's a thought.
I say let Hillary invest it in cattle futures. She turned $1,000 into $100,000 almost overnight. Imagine what she could do with $1,000,000,000.
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