Does the GOP Pay Friendly Bloggers? 759
jamie writes "According to the conservative political journalism site Daily Caller: '"It's standard operating procedure" to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative. A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that "at least half the bloggers that are out there" on the Republican side "are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales." Or in some cases, it's the ads themselves: ads at ten times the going rate are one of the ways conservative bloggers apparently get paid by the politicians they write about. In usual he-said she-said fashion, Daily Caller finds a couple of obscure liberal bloggers to mention too, but they fully disclosed payment and one of them even shut down his blog while doing consulting work, unlike Robert Stacy McCain and Dan Riehl."
Re:conservatives (Score:2, Informative)
Democrats are just crazy right-wingers. Republicans are damn crazy right-wingers. That's the difference.
Re:Never understood the problem with this (Score:5, Informative)
The article is making the case that conservative bloggers aren't just paid by conservatives in general to blog about conservative things, but that further they're paid by specific candidates (in Republican primaries, for example) to blog in favor of that candidate and bash opposing candidates.
If correct, that's a little different than the situation you're describing.
Re:Probably but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:conservatives (Score:5, Informative)
Do you even own a television? Have you watched any of these so-called liberal media outlets? They all supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spoke about taxes on the top 5% of the income distribution as hurting public school teachers, and never pointed out that "death panels" and other bullshit lies about the health insurance reform were bullshit lies. They also seem to believe that Republicans just happened to develop all sorts of principled objections to middle-of-the-road policies around January of 2009.
You're thinking of liberalism, not conservatism. (Score:2, Informative)
There's no fixed definition for the term "conservative". It all depends on the current situation in the given frame of reference.
If we're talking about America today, "conservatism" is all about protecting the status quo, where the government is run by corporations.
The ideology you've incorrectly associated with "conservatism" is actually called liberalism [wikipedia.org]. It makes sense why you don't know that, of course. Western, corporate-controlled media and corporate-controlled government have gone out of their way to make most people think of anything with the word "liberal" in it as being a horrible thing.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Informative)
No offense, but who takes the Black Panthers seriously?
Before the rise of the 24 hour news cycle, that wouldn't have even qualified as a story. You seriously can't even put that on the level of warrantless wiretapping.
A better analogy is comparing warrantless wiretapping that's going on now to warrantless wiretapping that was going on before, and there you DO have a story that's largely fallen out of the news and shouldn't.
Re:Yes...this will end well (Score:5, Informative)
The whole affair was a whirlwind media circus trial orchestrated by conservatives who didn't think poor people had a right to fight back against the banking industry.
Democrats may have their own skeletons, but ACORN isn't one of them.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Informative)
You mean the ones the Bush DoJ declined to prosecute? Yeah, that's quite a scandal. W should really have his feet held to the fire for not doing anything in that case.
Which was passed years ago and signed by Republican George HW Bush. Curse those wily Democrats for getting the opposing party to do their heavy lifting!!!
Re:conservatives (Score:5, Informative)
Less than what was donated by Richard Mellon Scafie and his ilk.
I swear, Soros is held up as some kind of boogeyman while conservatives seem to ignore the numerous benefactors they have. And all you can name is Soros? Sheesh.
Then again, by just watching Fox, you're funding terrorists [thedailyshow.com].
Thanks, really.
Re:conservatives (Score:1, Informative)
So, how much are you being paid by the RNC? For example, are *any* of the Waltons of Walmart Democrats? How 'bout Rupert Murdoch?
Lie: when you represent something you know is false to be true.
mark
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:i don't know that link domain (Score:2, Informative)
Re:conservatives (Score:4, Informative)
municipal bonds are an easy one
structuring payments to be capital gains rather than income--you need enough assets to start a company and enough personal capital to be taken seriously on your own.
use of a charitable foundation to provide access to power and a small wage to friends/progeny
There are others but those are easy to see and common ones.
Finally, incomes are highly correllated with high land value areas so costs of living are usually much higher (with most of the real benefit (economic profits) flowing to the well established land owners surrounding those high land value cities. Most of these land owners are high asset but low income folks again.
Re:It's about voter intimidation, jackass (Score:3, Informative)
... except the DoJ did prosecute the dude with the nightstick. They just gave up on the other gomers hanging around with him.
This is a non-story blown up by people who want you to be afraid so you'll keep watching their news coverage, nothing more.
Re:conservatives (Score:1, Informative)
And just to continue the statistical landslide, I pulled these numbers from a link (to MarketWatch, IIRC) on the Yahoo! Finance page:
1. 30,000 Americans -- that's about 1/100 of one percent of the population -- now pull down 6% of all income. The gap between the richest of the rich and everybody else wasn't that egregious even at the end of the "Roaring 20's."
2. At the Federal Level, there are three times as many lobbyists representing the financial sector alone, as there are elected representatives in Congress.
3. Only Singapore and Hong Kong have a greater gap between rich and poor than the United States.
4. Twenty-one percent of American children are now living in poverty. That's now. Today. That's here, not in some third-world country.
The kind of clout that goes with these income disparities erases any notion of rule of law or democracy. Whatever party label they choose to adopt (and it usually is Republican) the folks at the top constitute a plutocracy... or, given what we've seen the past few years on Wall Street, a "lootocracy". Even plutocrats want to perpetuate the system. Lootocrats, like locusts, just move on to other markets, other exploitable labor forces.
Re:Ah Yes (Score:3, Informative)
Note that the Democrat (not plural) in question was thrown out by other Democrats for his fraudulent tactics. Republicans? Hell, they'd probably have made the guy chairman.
There's a medication out there that kill 1% of the people that take it, and another that kill 99% of the people that take it. Both undeniably kill people, so they're both the same, and there's no point in making a distinction on which is the lesser evil...
Democrats, like all politicians, pay off the press (Score:2, Informative)
Okay, you got me. But palestinian protests are also always in English. The last few Iranian "protests" were in English. Same goes for Iraqi and even (partly) Turkish ones.
And unless I'm very, very wrong your remark doesn't fly for all off these.
The subject of this thread is still a lie. There's a grain of truth to the accusation : obviously politicians pay for good press.
To get elected, Obama paid :
$244 million to broadcast media
$133 million to "miscellaneous media"
$26 million to internet media
$20 million to print media
$3 million to media consultants
How much of that went to bloggers. I don't know, but I'm betting at least a million or two.
source [opensecrets.org]
I seem to recall a little of that money going to a blogger in trade for not publishing a video of a certain extremely racist pastor. Seems stupid now, as it turns out no democrats care about "black" people being racist.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Informative)
The "black panther" case was investigated by the Bush DoJ, who determined there was no crime there. In addition, the incident occurred in 2008, before Obama was president.
The law to which the GPP referred was the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. HW Bush was president.
None of those statements are partisan. None of those statements are part of some left-wing 'echo chamber'. All of them are easily verifiable.
The fact that you refuse to believe anyone in a political debate and refuse to 'fact-check' anyone in a political debate is an extremely bad thing for the future. But I'm sure your cynicism will turn things around any day now.
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yes...this will end well (Score:4, Informative)
has found no evidence the association or related organizations mishandled the $40 million in federal money they received in recent years.
That's a very specific exoneration; that is, mishandling of funds.
In no ACORN office did employees file any paperwork or do anything illegal on the duo's behalf.
Also extremely specific.
They refer to "edited" and "misleading" ... and "deceptive" and "phony" - in that order - tapes. There is no citation for those claims, and the progression from edited->misleading->deceptive->phony is ... interesting. They're claims about the tapes progressively get worse while no actual information is cited; i.e., they appear to be building their case on their own previously presumed fact.
And the piece ends with this:
One of the activists, James O'Keefe recently pleaded guilty to charges of entering federal property under false pretenses when he attempted to embarrass Senator Mary Landrieu because of her support for national health care legislation.
An unrelated ad-hom attack on the activist; "he was guilty later, so why should we trust him in this one?.
Lastly, your link is old. It's from June. The case is still going on, and there is much more recent news [google.com], such as a Federal court ruling against ACORN [nytimes.com] (your link mentions the decision that has now been overturned, a former ACORN worker pleading guilty of voter fraud [jsonline.com] ("Maria Miles, 37, of Milwaukee, admitted to submitting multiple voter registration applications for some people and to scheming with other Association of Community Organization for Reform workers to sign people up several times in an effort to meet the organization's voter registration quotas."), etc.
Re:conservatives (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a Frenchman who is now living in China for business purposes, and whilst I'm "right of the aisle" in France (Sarkozy got my vote over Royal, for instance), I think US politics would see me quite comfortably in the blue corner.
<quote><p>
I would like to see payroll taxes like Social Security, unemployment, and medicare become optional. I think others would to a better job of recognizing they need to save their own money to cover situations those insurance programs cover if they realized they didn't have a safety net, and they could do a much better job of taking care of their own future needs than the government will. Since people would have more incentive to save, prices of thing I might want to buy now would probably drop, either leaving me more money to spend or save, and leaving all shoppers in a better position.
</p></quote>
Interesting, but I feel that if these taxes were made optional, two things would happen.
1 - All medium-to-low jobs would cut them. Overnight, there'd be a sizeable portion of the US population that would not have any unemployment, medicare or retirement savings being accrued. Now, in the short term, this would be OK-ish. People would probably see their salaries raise a little (but less than the amount that used to be paid into these taxes IMO), and would probably raise their spending a little, and save a little more (i.e. get -less- into debt). In the longer run it wouldn't be so rosy. People that are on McWages or whatever Wal-mart pays aren't really able to "live well", and it's normal they'll prefer to make choices in favour of a better life -now-, even if it means blindly hoping they don't fall sick or working until they're 80. When they -do- fall sick, or -do- end up unemployed, they'll either be posting for bankruptcy (medical costs), or getting the police/social services involved (eviction or theft or homelessness). I'd like to think people are able to make good financial choices on long-term risks, but the sub-prime crisis, the high amount of debt that individuals have and the number of individual bankruptcies each year in the US don't bode well.
2 - Prices wouldn't drop. Sorry, but I've worked in marketing for long enough to know that it's not the market that sets the price. I'm not talking about iPads either. Some basic commodities and certain services get efficient competition. But most fields aren't competitive. If half the people in the world suddenly stopped shaving, razor blade prices wouldn't drop. Even though Gilette and Wilkinson would be sitting on large stocks. Prices don't work just based on offer and demand, they're also hierarchy markers, gateway holders (even though everybody wants the iPhone, its price isn't significantly higher than other phones since the carrier knows it represents a longer-term benefit), market indicators and answer far more to the desires of investors and managers. If you've built 3 million toys, and you spent $1 on each of them (all costs included), you're not going to sell them for less than $2, no matter how badly they're selling. It's probably better to throw them into a landfill or recycle them and lose all $3M invested in that venture than drive down the prices of your other toys that -are- selling! You'd have a little bit more money, and there might be a very marginal drop in the prices of certain commodities, but I can assure you there wouldn't be a 5% (or however much the aforementioned taxes take from the median/average salary) drop in prices across the board. If anything, companies would be rushing to find ways to actually increase the cost, since -people have more available money- (Ford would have a "brand new" financing package for you that would be longer but take less in down payment so that you can "put money on one side" for your retirement/medicare/unemployment plan).
So IMO I'll keep unemployment, medicare and retirement plans as taxes. Sure, there can/will/might be