How do we fight the corporate money?

[drm604]

That's the question we need to answer. How do we fight the massively funded propaganda and the willful ignorance it feeds? That funding is not the only thing that caused what happened last night, but the other problems will be difficult to overcome if we can't overcome that.

How do we fight that money? We NEED to find the answer to that question.

[OneGrassRoot]

1. I hope Mr. Grayson returns and is more involved here...

and can provide suggestions about such things.

Corporate media has co-opted the concept of a free press. It's harmful in so many ways....

:(

[madmax]

2. What a night

Grayson, Feingold, Sestak. :hug:

[OneGrassRoot]

6. Indeed....

:hug:

[drm604]

3. One thing for sure,

we NEED to protect the internet somehow. We NEED net neutrality. If we lose control of this platform, what's left?

[OneGrassRoot]

7. Absolutely...

Not only protecting the Internet, but using it to connect more directly in the real world, too (in case connections are ever interrupted, for any number of reasons). True grassroots networks.

I hear ya.

:hi:

[drm604]

14. Time to start using meetup.com again!

Excellent suggestion about getting together in the real world.

Use meetup.com, but once you start a meetup, be sure that there are non-net ways to keep the group connected.

Make real world connections. Build cell networks. Somehow find and create other mediums. Maybe somehow use technology to piggyback (legally of course) on the cell networks. Maybe even go back to the days of pamphlets and underground magazines.

Build active email lists. Email content is difficult for corporations to control.

Hell, go back to the days of dailup and FidoNet.

The younger generation is much more progressive and very comfortable with technology. Maybe they'll find ways. Maybe we can help them find ways.

We need to keep the net but we also need to get off the net and find ways to depend on it less.

We need ways to disseminate real reliable information that is not filtered through corporate controlled media.

[groundloop]

4. DING DING DING DING DING - That's the million dollar question

A law forcing disclosure of who's paying for election ads would be a start, but even that's a long-shot now.

[BootinUp]

5. Right now on Morning Joe

they are talking about how the "center" always corrects when a party goes too far one way. When the truth is, the ruling class (billionaires) always correct when a party "goes too far one way". They feed the peeps the correct flavor of doo doo to achieve the goal.

We just have to keep on fighting.

[NightWatcher]

8. Think outside the box. They've got the dollars, we've got the numbers

Until we DO something, nothing will change.

We can have the truth, they'll beat that with PAC money and lie on tv.
We can have righteousness, they'll beat that with bottomless campaign chests.

[Capitalocracy]

11. It's got to be about persistence and innovation.

We need to find new ways to be active politically and really change things, and not give up.

As for the question of money, we have to be smarter. Look at Grayson's race. It was probably impossible due to sheer volume, but if there were more people like him in Congress to start with, it would be harder to concentrate so much money against just one candidate. And it might not have changed anything, but he shouldn't have used the clever edit in his campaign ad... wasn't necessary and took away from a very valid message.

On the other hand, look at the ad calling out Meg Whitman for saying she came to California to run her business because of the business-friendly environment... under a Democratic government! That was a KO right there. We need to look for those opportunities to point out what's really essentially wrong with the Republican party -- that they're a bunch of hypocrites -- and never pull a punch.

[drm604]

37. Concentrated money.

Maybe we need to make them spread that money as thin as possible. We need to all get involved in our local Democratic committees and then run candidates like Grayson, LOTS and LOTS of candidates like Grayson. Make them spread their money thin trying to attack all of the Graysons.

Maybe we can also give them other things to fight and spend money on. Sort of play wackamole with them. They knock down one damned bunch of irritating hippie liberals and another one pops up.

Give them so many things to fight that it divides their attention and strains their resources. It wouldn't even necessarily require a large number of people. Small dedicated groups could repeatedly cause them to waste all kinds of resources trying to suppress the truth. They get knocked down and pop back up in a completely different form. Do that repeatedly. I'm not suggesting doing anything illegal, just doing legal things which get the public's attention and TPTB have to use time and resources to respond to.

[Capitalocracy]

39. That's kind of what they've done with the Tea Party

While we're focusing on Rand Paul and Christine O'Donnel and Jan Brewer and Sharron Angle and... the list of crazy just goes on and on, and meanwhile, they filled the House with nondescript Republican soldiers ready to further the corporate agenda

[drm604]

40. You're right.

:wow: That's exactly what they did.

Maybe we need a bunch of people to run as "fascist communist atheist muslims" or something. They'd never get past the primaries but people would waste a lot of time, resources, and emotion on fighting them.

[snappyturtle]

13. Do we really have the numbers? When the ignorant voter joins

and panders to the big money group, we're too small. imho

[deacon]

9. With an independent news network. But how do you do that? Obviously the general public is horribly

misinformed. The only way you can beat money is with votes, and i find it hard to swallow that the results last night would be what they were if voters actually knew what they were voting for.

[Erose999]

10. If we're able to find out what corporations are behind the money, we can boycott them and send them

angry letters. Needless to say we start with Koch products. I know they are in the paper business, among other things. We can have a sort of network to help people find alternatives to Koch's products.

For example, I have stopped buying Angel Soft (a Koch product) and switched to the store brand. But I don't really know if the store brand is also Koch or not. We could have a forum dedicated to helping people identify which products are/aren't from Koch.

[guitar man]

12. With a guillotine!!!

:grr: :grr:

[PATRICK]

15. Recognize that corporate media

is a perpetual money ad campaign for their interests. There is no competition currently with that. Only solid action gives punch to the few pitiful incursions of "annoying" ads and rare honest press. That means baldly when the economy is good in generic Dem hands the party prospers and when bad they have a fighting chance against the predominant propaganda if they are in the minority. The corporations own this imbalanced see saw and only their own greed guarantees the necessity of a two party system to keep the suckers distracted, the vote shifting evils perpetuated.

The aggregate voting is hugely blind(ed) when people are angry and afraid for solid reasons. Changing that truth gutted system becomes a theoretical unlikelihood. Reaching rock bottom can still lead to blind reaction and absolute dictatorship on behalf of the usual suspects.

Maybe sending Dem staff offices easy to read literature on the media, German Social Democrats of the 1930's, and other reflective aids might get some action to actually counteract the exploitation of ignorance, the game of impoverishment, the death of democracy. As long as they have power they might as well use it to actual direct political purpose instead of gaming the rigged Foggy Bottom circus, but then the mad system has produced mad Dem "leaders" to support it.

[The_Commonist]

16. It's VERY simple, and nobody wants to acknowledge it.

You fight corporate money by NOT BEING THEIR CUSTOMER!!!

Where do you think they get all that money to throw around?
It's profit on shit that WE buy from them.
If we stop buying their crap, no profits!

We don't need a political revolution.
We need a consumer revolution.
That is the ONLY thing that is going to fix this.
People need to understand what they are buying and where the profits are going.

It's not rocket science...

[drm604]

19. You make it sound simple but...

It's not really that simple. You have to get that message out to enough people, and convince enough people that it's necessary and then convince them to actually act and continue to act long term.

It's a worthwhile effort but not all that simple, IMHO.

[BootinUp]

21. Interesting comment, but I must point out

That something like you are proposing could not possibly happen unless there is a total collapse, an actual second depression.

[Deep13]

23. How are we going to convince enough people not to be their customers...

...to make any difference when they control what people think.

[HughBeaumont]

17. There is a way.

It involves regular nothing-to-lose people sitting in corporate boardrooms.

It involves people demanding that we sit our fucking corporate leaders down and telling them "Listen. Our country is in terrible trouble, our futures are compromised, our wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living, higher education is getting more and more expensive and exclusive, people are hurting . . . and what are you guys doing about that? You have more money than God, you're sitting on 1.8 trillion in cash, you pretty much own everything there is to own - Is your legacy going to be that of a Robber Baron, or that of a LEADER? When the hell are you going to own up to your responsibility to your community and your country and START PLAYING BALL???"

[Lost4words]

18. your plan was to support BO without a negative word, How did that work for you

and the rest of us that you spent so much time criticizing? On word, lame

[drm604]

20. How about judging his ideas objectively rather than dismissing

everything he says based on his past mistakes?

I'm not saying that I think his plan has much chance of working, but if we dismiss it we should do so based on it's merits (or lack of same), and not on his past ideas.

[Lost4words]

30. oh please,....

[Deep13]

22. We don't.. ...

We let the fascists take over and let it get so bad that it eventually collapses.

[lpbk2713]

24. Corporate Money and Hatemonger Radio

Those are the two things that won them so many victories last night.
We should have done something with the Fairness Doctrine while we had
the chance. Now it's too damn late.

[whathehell]

26. Media Reform...Yes,

I agree with you re: the Fariness Doctrine....It's "too late" for this election...but in general?

Your thoughts.:-)

[snot]

28. YES!

[snot]

29. Agreed!

[The2ndWheel]

25. Probably with more money

http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC07/Schmoklr.htm

"The new human freedom made striving for expansion and power possible. Such freedom, when multiplied, creates anarchy. The anarchy among civilized societies meant that the play of power in the system was uncontrollable. In an anarchic situation like that, no one can choose that the struggle for power shall cease. But there is one more element in the picture: no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes.

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.

I have just outlined four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes: destruction, absorption and transformation, withdrawal, and imitation. In every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes."

[mmonk]

27. Other than somehow getting Fox off the air, we can't.

Maybe we can create free zones inside the United States or something.

[snot]

31. We need to focus on 3 issues:

1. Election reform (both electronic voting and campaign finance; and maybe succeed with something like Move to Amend {see http://movetoamend.org/ })

2. Media reform (restore restrictions on consolidated ownership and the Fairness Doctrine, and ensure 'net neutrality)

3. Restore public education.

Without those, no other progress is secure or even possible; with those, I have to think we'll see better progress on most other issues.

I've been pushing these issues since 2004, but get v. little response from DU'er's -- maybe they're not "juicy" enough. But from a logical point of view, they are crucial.

[whathehell]

33. Agreed, agreed, agreed. n/t

[snot]

35. Thanks!

Pls go K&R this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9461424

Also, anyone know if Maurice Hinchey won last nite? He was the Congressional Rep. who proposed the last media reform bill I'm aware of.

Also, MovetoAmend.org is pushing to eliminate corporate "personhood."

[TransitJohn]

32. America's over.

I don't think it possible to effect change on a national level in Congress anymore. It's going to be all about community building with like minded individuals and effecting change on community scale from now on. Holistic community change, energy generation, farming, the lot. That's the way to beat corporate money.

[MadHound]

34. Very simple, you do things for people

You pass the public option, you create a massive WPA style job creation program, you repeal DADT. Instead the Dems backed off from those fights time and again. You do what is right by the people, and money won't matter. You don't do what is right for the people and no amount of money can help you.

[librechik]

36. We need our own funding, media and think tanks. And they're 40 years ahead of us. n/t

[Barack_America]

38. Step 1: Realize that the Dem party does not have our back on this.

Step 2: Turn off cable news

Step 3: Read, think and educate ourselves

Step 4: Act locally; engage fellow citizens in conversation, don't support the worst corporate offenders with your dollars, embrace and promote education, identify and support true Democrats who value citizens over corporations

Step 5: Network with individuals in other communities who are doing the same


It's not going to be easy and it very well may be too late, but building critical mass from the bottom up really is the only chance we've got.