[ExI] public funding of election PR

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
> Subject: [ExI] public funding of election PR
> 
> At 01:37 PM 6/29/2009 -0700, spike wrote:
> 
> > ...Both sides agreed to it, 
> >but when one side saw how much potential money they were 
> giving up, they backed out.
> 
> I didn't follow this closely, but isn't the key point not the 
> abrogation of an agreement but that the agreement was 
> intended to minimize *huge special interest bribes*...

Ja that was the intent, but of course it doesn't solve the problem actually.
Illegal contributions can still be funneled thru citizens that need not even
know they donated to a candidate.  Millions of dollars went to Hillary
Clinton this way, and they didn't even make any dramatic effort to hide it.

I suspect this as the reason why Obama waited so long to say anything about
the Iranian elections, because the Iranians made illegal campaign donations,
more to him than to his rival.

On a quick unrelated note, did you know Britain had an embassy in Iran?  I
dropped my teeth when I heard that.  I assumed when the Iranians
demonstrated in 1979 that they do not respect the sanctity of a foreign
embassy, that at least England, Cananda and Australia would pack up and
leave.  Now I hear Iran is detaining British embassy employees.  Here we go
again.

> ...In Obama's case, the big 
> surprise was that the web created opportunities to bypass TV, 
> radio, newspapers and other old fashioned centralized vectors.
> 
> Damien Broderick

Two things there.  The web opens wide the opportunities to funnel illegal
campaign contributions, but the other thing is that Obama didn't bypass TV.
The TV news people were his best friends, they still are.  The coverage was
so one-sided, even casual observers in Russia could see it plainly.  All the
coverage was the two mainstream parties, never a word about libertarian or
any of the others, and of the two mainstream parties the press definitely
favored Obama.  Not just TV, but print media as well.

spike