How to Scare Stupid Liberals: The Awful Specter of Halliburton Blogs!

[stickdog]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5483344.html

Election officials examine blogs' role in campaigns
Eric Black, Star Tribune

Is the Internet breathing new life into democracy by empowering citizens to air political opinions, or will it morph into a zillion-gigabyte loophole that unravels campaign finance reform? The Federal Election Commission (FEC) confronted those questions at hearings that concluded Wednesday. A judge has ordered the FEC to consider how the Internet should be treated under the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

(snip)

The McCain-Feingold law was written without understanding how big e-mail and Internet politicking might become. In 2004, the first presidential election under the new campaign-finance law, the FEC took a hands-off approach as the Internet emerged as a major force in politics -- and political fund-raising. The law was designed to limit corporations, labor unions or millionaires from overwhelming elections with their wealth. One exception to those rules: a news media corporation. A newspaper, television or radio network can spend as much as it wants on political coverage and broadcast or publish whatever they wish about politics.

(snip)

Suppose Halliburton, a corporation with close ties to the Bush-Cheney ticket, set up a blog to help their ticket win. If the blogger had journalistic status, there would be no limit on what the corporation could pay the blogger or spend bankrolling the blog's activities. There would be no restriction on coordination between the blog and the Bush-Cheney campaign.

The blog could solicit campaign contributions, steer traffic to the Bush-Cheney campaign website, amplify an attack strategy against their opponents, and directly advocate a vote for or against. The blog also would not have to disclose where it was getting its funding and would not have to publish any disclaimer alerting readers that it was a virtual extension of the Bush-Cheney campaign.

*****

Could our concerned corporatist election "reformers" be any more transparent? Yeah, we're all quaking in our boots about that new Halliburton blog presence! How on earth can regular old bloggers ever even hope to compete with the unbridled creativity of a defense contracting giant?

Yep. We all know that Halliburton could take over the entire independent blogosphere whenever they wanted to, simply by directing their own team of well-funded bloggers. Of course, the only reason they haven't tried this yet is quite obvious: They simply have too much integrity to compromise the democratic process this way!

No, it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the fact that the blogosphere is a creative meritocracy where Halliburton's monopolistic bribe and pillage syndicate of scale would be helplessly overmatched. Nope.

Nor does it have anything to do with the fact that Halliburton can simply buy as much time as it wants on corporate media in the form of issue campaigns or direct corporate advertising. Nope. And it's certainly not the fact that Halliburton's billions are better spent buying military officers and politicians who can and do make unlimited television appearances -- all the way up to the current Vice President and President. Not at all.

The awful specter of a political blogosphere wholly dominated by Halliburton is right around the corner if we don't find some way to rein in shoestring budget independent and community funded internet commentary immediately!

[iconoclastic cat]

1. Phhhhht.

[DBoon]

2. As if they don't already do this

Covert blogs were a factor in the South Dakota race that Thune won, correct?

[stickdog]

3. Of course they already are doing this as much as possible. It's just that

compared to the top down mediocrity of corporate media, the bottom up meritocracy of the blogosphere is far more difficult to tame, control and finally fully co-opt. That's why our corporate masters are screaming like stuck pigs about bloggers while pretending to "save" us from nonexistent Halliburton blogeymen. The internet is supposed to be about Big Brother watching you, not your rabble-rousing commentary on Big Brother.