Author: Spocko

 The People Who Love Dark Money And the Corp. Persons Who Give It To Them  

“People in media and politics love dark money, especially if they are gettin’ some.” – Spocko

On Fresh Air yesterday they talked to campaign expert Neil Oxman about making political ads. He talks about how much money congressional campaigns spend on TV and how much it costs today.

Even beyond the cost of the way college in tuition have gone up. I mean, the cost of American television has exceeded every year the cost of inflation by many times.

He talks about the new role in social media but explains why it’s still not as important as reaching voters, whom he points out are older people.

And older people watch TV. They’re much more passive about how they get their information. They sit in front of the television. They don’t flick away from commercials. They watch TV. Kids today don’t watch TV on TV. They watch it on every other thing they can get. They watch it on their phones. They watch on their iPads. They watch it on computers.

So his premise, and I’m sure he has data to back it up, is that this expensive medium is the best way to reach the target voter. For conservatives this is great, especially if they don’t care about reaching the “kids today.” If you are progressive, and also convinced that your voters are olds, you join the TV arms race.

This process lines the pockets of the ad makers, media buyers, radio and TV stations. It’s a Win/Win/Win! This isn’t news to most people, but the part that really struck me was the size of the dark money pool and how it will be used.

DAVIES: So the people that are hiring you to make ads aren’t candidates? 

OXMAN: No, they’re independent committees because the reporting rules are a lot different. And you can have – it’s not about personal money. You can give corporate money. And so if somebody goes to a friend and says, hey, give me a $100,000 from your corporation – if it’s a privately held corporation – instead of $2,500 from you and this $100,000 is never going to be reported, that’s why so much of this independent money is being raised. 

DAVIES: And so if the court decisions now mean there are these independent groups who have a lot of money to put into political advertising, does the character of the advertising itself change? If it’s not the candidate putting their name to it, doesn’t mean it’s…

OXMAN: It’s become much more negative. The ratio of negative to positive has gotten much higher.

We know negative advertising works, and we know why candidates don’t want to be associated with it. Especially when they are now required to say, “I’m Nicey McNicely and I approve this message.”

• The money trail will lead to someone doing something illegal
• Campaign finance laws that still exist have been violated
• The penalty for violating the law is criminal and substantial
• The people doing the financing are stupid
• Journalists covering politics care about any of this 
• The public will do something after getting the information

I wondered, after Citizens United made almost everything legal, why would anyone still feel the need to use dark money? Habit?

And this is the easy to follow diagram!

Who or what are they afraid of?  (And I, of course, like to add, “How can we make their fears come true?“)

To understand the reasons they want to hide you would have to ask them. Some like Sheldon Aldeson don’t care who knows, “I’m old, rich and I bought these ads with my own money. It’s all legal and you can’t hurt me, piss off.”

But donors must have reasons to stay dark, some more serious than others:

• They don’t want to be forced to report their giving to shareholders
• They don’t want their own employees and customers to know
• They do not want to be publicly associated with an issue or candidate that is controversial in any direction. 
• They are a foreign entity, like Burger King wants to be, but still want to influence elections
• They are afraid of public disapproval 
  —Do not discount this last one. As we know, the rich have really thin skins. Also, private corporations are not immune to disapproval, especially from people on the inside who disagree with how the money is spent.

The new reality is that with social media we have all new ways to express our disapproval to people and companies.

Later in the Fresh Air piece, Davies laments how distorted and unfair the ads are, and asks Oxman,”- do you ever feel like, gosh, this is just – we’re not doing a very good job of informing our electorate?”  Oxman agrees and says, 

Nixon Wouldn’t have Authorized Torture, Suggests John Dean
by Spocko

I asked John Dean a few questions about his new book, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It, during a Book Salon at Firedoglake.

1) After listening to hundreds hours of all conversations did President “Sock it to me” Nixon tell any good jokes? Were they dirty? Racist or sexist? His answer was, “Bottom line: Richard Nixon had almost no sense of humor whatsoever.” My suspicion, confirmed!

2) What did he think Cheney and Rumsfeld learned from the Watergate Scandal? His reply:

Rumsfeld and Cheney volunteered to help Nixon when he was sinking, but Nixon did not trust Rumsfeld (he didn’t know Cheney). Needless to say, it is pure speculation as to what Rummy and Dick “learned” from Watergate. I gave my views on the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld presidency in “Worse Than Watergate,” explaining how they imposed secrecy way beyond Nixon. This was how they got away with blatant violations of law that make Watergate look like little league. I am not sure that Richard Nixon in one of his darkest moods would have authorized torture!

That last sentence surprised me. So I asked for more insight.

What would Nixon’s reasons have been for not torturing people? Was he close enough to WWII and the Nuremberg trials to remember war crimes? Was it about American ideals? Religious ideals? Did he not have a John Yoo writing legal memos for him?

John Dean August 30th, 2014 at 4:58 pm

In response to spocko @ 114 (show text)
Nixon served in the South Pacific during WWII, and was familiar with the horrors of Japanese torture, so I cannot believe he would have lowered the USA to tolerate such horrific behavior. With foreign policy, Nixon seemed to understand what today we call “blow-back” and that by our engaging in torture he would expose Americans soldiers (if not all Americans) to torture, just as we are seeing with Americans being captured by ISIL. Bush/Cheney have subjected any and every American kidnapped or captured to torture by the likes of ISIL. It is a decision that is going to haunt us and the world for untold decades.

Had the Book Salon not ended, my next question to Dean would have been, “How did we go from Nixon’s views on torture and why he understood it was wrong, to Cheney being proud of ‘enhanced interrogation‘ techniques? Also, why won’t Obama’s admission, ‘We tortured some folks.’ lead to prosecution?” Maybe another interviewer will ask Dean this or Digby’s friend Rick Perlstein can take a crack at answering the question.

The answer to this question could probably fill several books, luckily I just happened to read a great one that helps explain part of it. Rebecca Gordon has a new book out called Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post – 9/11 United States. Gordon walks the reader through the problem, how we think and talk about torture and how institutionalized state torture is carried out by the United States.

I tend to get very worked up when talking about torture, so much so that it gets in the way of my conversation at parties. “Look out, Spocko wants to talk about torture accountability and the Taguba report again, hide!” Fortunately for me, Mrs. Spocko knows I have this interest, and she bought me Gordon’s book for my birthday. She also knows that understanding isn’t enough for me, I want to do something about the problem.

Fortunately, unlike a number of books that are great at describing the problem, this book has some suggestions on what to do about it in the short, medium and long term. She also emphasizes the personal importance of individuals doing something about torture. In my case I started pushing back at the torture supporters on right wing radio.

If we look at why Nixon, one of our nastier Presidents, didn’t authorize overt torture, but other Presidents did, we might see how it was made acceptable and then develop and reestablish the ethical, intellectual, legal and practical reasons to stop it.

“I have often thought that the entire content of this book could be expressed in five words: Torture is wrong. Stop it.” –Rebecca Gordon, Mainstreaming Torture

How Many Tanks Can We Take Back Before The Next Ferguson? 

by Spocko
 
I recently suggested that we noodle on some methods to de-militarize the police. I wanted to figure out methods that would actually have people look at publicly available communities’ inventory of equipment and demand they get rid of unnecessary items and equipment that is not designed for a police force, but an occupying army.

D.C. national politicians finally weighed in on the topic and before you can say, “Rocket launchers for cops” the national media talked to all the usual players to explain why any effort for change will be blocked, shouted down, ignored or tabled-until the next event.

The New York Times’ piece, In Washington, Second Thoughts on Arming Police, points out the problem and the standard D.C. “solution” in one paragraph.

Though violent crime is at its lowest level in a generation and terrorism, despite fears and continuing global threats, remains exceedingly rare on American soil, any effort to significantly cut police funding would be met with sharp opposition from local and state officials and many in Congress. Even if the political will to review the policies exists now, it is not clear whether it will remain when lawmakers return from vacation next month and see the midterm elections on the horizon.

Of course state and local officials will complain about losing government funding. (Maybe we should tell Republicans it’s for ObamaCare so they reject it.) But since in many cases they aren’t spending their own money, the Federal government has control over what they offer and the strings attached to the gear it gives them. The locals might complain, but if their level of funding for gear stays the same, they are likely to grouse less even if they don’t get that tank they had their eye on.

Today I got a note from the Blue America PAC who told the story of how five weeks ago Alan Grayson tried to get an amendment passed to stop funding the extreme militarization of local police department. It told the sad story of how “45 Democrats voted with the GOP against a bill that would halt using federal taxpayer dollars to arm local police with rocket launchers, tanks, guided missiles, mines, torpedoes, ballistic missiles, toxicological agents, grenade launchers and even nuclear weapons!”

Now Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson is trying to put out a new bill to demilitarize local police in September. It will be watered down or forgotten, especially if the lobbyists spread the money around to Democrats and Republicans evenly. Plus, last time there was no pressure from the people “below” just pressure from the lobbyists “above.” (I use the quotes to remind me that “the money” always believes their needs are above the people’s. )

The right wants to slow things down and “get all the facts in” not because they want all the facts. They are happy to rush to judgement with fact-like rumors like the “orbital eye socket fracture” of the police officer. They need time to get the lobbyists in place while the fire in the community dies down. (BTW, when that is proved false can I call up the MSM and get the names of the two anonymous sources who lied to them? Don’t you burn sources that lie to you?)

Between now and when the Johnson bill comes up in September what can we do?

1. Identifying which current military “assets” are potentially toxic liabilities, will bring bad PR and are lawsuits waiting to happen. (Start here at Muckrock)
2. Get that information to the congress people. Remind them, “Your city could be the next Ferguson. Maybe ask for different gear this time or a trade for less military equipment.”

I had relatives who were in the business of selling heavy equipment to police departments. The whole process was filled with huge egos and politics but at the time they bought what they felt was needed to serve the community. That changed after 9/11. From the same NY Times article:

But the rush to arm America’s police departments made oversight difficult. Grant programs overlapped. Money often flowed to state governments first before arriving in local police departments, making it hard to track. In 2009, auditors cited examples of state governments that could not verify what equipment local authorities had bought.

This was “free” money! It was a race to the government trough to get the coolest equipment. I know these people and their attitudes, especially those in the Midwest. They wanted their fair share of the terrorist fighting gear. Otherwise they felt cheated. “Why should the people in states that have actual terrorist threats get all the gear? We have needs too!”

What they won’t admit is it was also about not wanting to tax their own community, especially since their tax base might have been hit by loss of manufacturing jobs or tax giveaways to big box stores.

They didn’t want to “leave money on the table” so they made up crazy requests from the military equipment buffet list. When I was a child piling food on my plate my aunt would say, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” Nobody told them just because they could get a tank didn’t mean they should.  The also knew that if they got crazy military toys the government wasn’t going to repossess them.

We will find we can’t just take their tanks and rocket launchers away, even if we find the silliest of reasons they got them in the first place. But we should try, if only to hear the overreaching justifications and excuses.  By questioning them and forcing them to justify their gear, they will know the easy ride is over.

If the people start questioning the needs and the military stops offering the tanks for free, the days of asking for a tank when, you really need a truck are over.

These police forces won’t want to lose face on losing equipment, so we suggest they trade them in for items to protect and serve the people, not to project force and shoot the people.

With pressure from the people “below” and a reworking of what is available from “above” we might get some change.

Train Train Train, Train the Fools

The federal government also did not typically insist that local authorities be trained on how and when to use its new equipment. In recent days, retired military officers have bristled at the sight of police officers in Missouri walking the streets with guns drawn, pointed at protesters.

Training is something everyone usually agrees on, so we use that as a common starting point. But I don’t want tanks at all, doesn’t having well trained cops with tanks make it seem okay? The problem is existing gear is still out there to deal with that we link the ability to get new gear to training for existing gear.

If they worry about losing an old toy or, getting a cut in funding for an old toy or not getting any new toys at all they will at submit to training. A huge part of that training is best practices like, “Don’t use your tanks to run over protesters.”

In the short term here is what I want them them to say, “We are happy to get trained on this, especially since the Federal government is paying. We don’t want to be the next Ferguson or Oakland. Send us to class! Bring someone out to teach us!”

Finally, we demand policing training from people who know how to control crowds of citizens, not people used to suppressing potential terrorists.

Photo by enigmabadger Creative Commons license
Photo by Dane Erland Creative Commons license

Help the CDC Fight Big Chicken before the Next Salmonella Outbreak

by Spocko

For all their power, at least the telcos usually aren’t making people ill, hospitalizing them or killing them when they use the phone or internet (The President’s Analyst was a fictional movie)

One of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country, if not the world, is Big Chicken (and its brother Big Beef). Remember, they sued Oprah! They are the ones funding the ag-gag rules around the country. They are setting up China to send us chicken and toxic seafood from the Pacific Rim.

In addition to filing lawsuits on “food defamation,” giving money to legislators and capturing the USDA, they have another, bigger power. Telling and teaching the media and the public what is “acceptable” and possible when it comes to the safety of its food.

They do this using multiple methods including word choice, pathogen definition and selective reporting of critical numbers. I don’t have time now to tell you how Big Chicken convinced the USDA that no level of salmonella contamination was considered high enough for a recall of chicken parts but it is a fascinating story.

The long process where they convinced the media and the public that if you get sick from eating the contaminated chicken it is YOUR fault, is worthy of an Upton Sinclair novel. I mean the sheer brilliance of that move STILL astounds me. Kudos to you National Chicken Council. Your clients should be thrilled.

You see, unless a cluster of adorable children of powerful people in a media corridor get sick and die from a commercial source, it’s just a sad local story. That is how powerful their story has become. But that can change, and you can help.

When I was covering the death of puppies and kittens from pet food contaminated with melamine one of the biggest problems the six bloggers whose efforts I coordinated was the inability of the media to understand the scope of the problem.

Part of the problem is there is no CDC for pets. Because of this the media had no ‘official’ numbers, from an authority to report. This worked to the advantage of the pet food company and the pet food lobbyists. They were reporting 16 dead when the database the folks at Pet Connection put together listed 3,168 dead and over 8,000 sick. Since it was self reported no one in the mainstream media would use it and there was no CDC putting out data to update them.

My task in our blogger working group was to contact the media and tell them about this discrepancy. Then to tell Dick Durbin’s office about this number and pose other questions before he grilled the people from the pet food industry.

 I really wanted to help the media get this story right, because even a dozen pets dead is unacceptable, but thousands dead is a goddamn emergency. And if you don’t believe me, ask someone who had a pet die, especially if they found out they were feeding them poisoned pet food.

I would like to think that human lives are even more precious than the lives of our furry friends, but apparently not.

We know what the media likes. It’s not just “if it bleeds it leads” it’s also novelty, personal stories, gossip, death of celebrities, cute kids and cats. Your story won’t get covered if it’s “Man eats chicken and gets sick.” Someone needs to find and promote the news or novelty.

Ebola was novel. It got covered even though the odds of it happening here are tiny. Yet in this CDC report they tracked 3,037 deaths from foodborne illness. Over one million people will get sick from Salmonella in the US. Every year.

One of the ways that these cases get down played is how they are reported in the media. I noticed some appropriate pooh-poohing of the alarmist reporting on ebola in the US. But would it be inappropriate if these were the numbers?

 Sickened: 1,027,561
 Hospitalized: 19,336 were
Total Dead: 378*
*from Salmonella in the US

*Those are the CDC numbers on Salmonella, nontyphoidal, cases in their 2011 report. 

Who controls how these food poisoning outbreaks are reported on? Big Chicken. They influence the USDA, who assert influence over the CDC in both subtle and not so subtle ways–starting with which number are reported.

 Example: Many of you heard of the Foster Farms Salmonella Heidelberg contamination. If you followed closely you might have heard 634 were reported sick. You really had to read close to noticed that the contaminated chicken wasn’t recalled last year. But, and this is the kicker, the USDA said the public was safe as long as they cooked the chicken thoroughly and handled it correctly. (Again, BRILLIANT work blaming the victim Big Chicken!)

Multipliers or Never Tell A Journalist, “You can do the math.” They Won’t.

What the media didn’t tell you is that based on the 634 reported cases of Salmonella Heidelberg the CDC estimates that 18,576 people were also sick but remain uncounted.

The CDC knows that for every person who goes to a hospital there are many others who do not. And for each pathogen, Norovirus, Salmonella–nontyphoidal, Clostridium perfringens, Campylobacter spp. and Staphylococcus aureus they create a number, called a multiplier, to figure out sick but not reported.

The multipler for Salmonella is 29.3

Let’s Remove “unnecessary military equipment” from Ferguson-like Police Departments by Spocko @spockosbrain

 I love it when our comedy-media-industrial complex comes to the same conclusions right after I do.

My comedian friend Jimmy Dore @jimmy_dore also addressed the same issue on his very funny radio show and podcast on Friday.

(BTW his show is like the Daily Show on radio, only funnier with more progressive insight from folks like Frank Conniff, @FrankConniff;  Ben Mankiewicz, @BenMank77; Robert Yasumura, @teamyasumura; stef zamorano,
@stefanezamorano and Mike MacRae, @MikeMacRaeMike)

 Last night I asked this question to Cliff Schecter and Avedon Carol on Virtually Speaking hosted by Jay Ackroyd. (My question is at about 23 minutes in. )

 I’ve suggested this on twitter to my few followers and got some ideas.

@spockosbrain could lobby local commissions to require funds allocated to PDs first be spent on community policing efforts before surplus.
— Jim Langendorf (@jplang43) August 17, 2014

 In my post earlier I suggested looking what worked with Occupy or other protests. Cory Doctrow and my friends at Boing Boing found a group called Muckrock that did FOIA requests on who has what military surplus but it’s only for the last two years. (You might want to donate to this group so they can file more and get more info.)

 So we have some the tools, but we also need a strategy, both public and in the media. I’ve worked with municipalities in their purchase of big safety equipment. I’ve worked with city governments to attempt to prevent spending “free money” on projects that are unsafe for the public.

But I’ve never worked on a project that is designed to take away equipment, especially when they got it cheap or free.

In this process we need to think about who are our allies and who has leverage. Who are our opponents and what leverage do they have?

Saturday I said.

Once people have power, and powerful tools, it takes other kinds of power and powerful tools to remove them.

We can anticipate the responses from the organizations that have the equipment, what is our response to that? Can we see anticipate the RW media response? Do we have an answer for that?

This kind of action needs to come from inside the communities, but with support and expertise from outside.

The cities and police depts are very good at hanging onto money and equipment with, ‘What if” scenarios.  They will fight any equipment being taken away, “We need it if…” and we can point to Ferguson or other events and say, “So this can happen?”

They will claim they are better trained, “Really? Where is that in your training budget? Why is it ‘para-military’ training and not community crowd control from experts like the DC police?”

We can propose if they want access to big guns they have to first fund training from community policing people. Who pays? Taxpayers? “No, it comes out of your equipment and maintenance budget first.  Or you can sell your tank to some larger city that really needs one.”

The Right and RW Media. Opponents or Allies?

The RW media often line up with the police and authorities, but they don’t have to. One of the reasons they say that citizens need superweapons is to defend themselves from the government.

We point out to them that their local police now have tanks and M16s. Are they okay with that? They aren’t gearing up for the dirty hippies with no guns, they need that tank to come for you. Maybe you should force ’em to bring in those black helicopters from else where.

The fight over equipment being taken away can be an interesting media story in cities around the country. Police will need to justify the cost of maintaining and use of equipment but also address their mindset and lack of training.

And I REALLY want to get rid of all unnecessary equipment!  However after we fight hard we might settle for no tanks and mandatory training for local departments and neighboring departments.


Who Pays?

Can someone please calculate the PR and eventual financial damage the city will incur if they use the equipment wrong with untrained people?

Tweet
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+’://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, ‘script’, ‘twitter-wjs’);

Citizens, Use that Mobile TV Studio In Your Pocket For Fun and Profit!  by Spocko

Things have really changed now that we have gotten beyond using stone knives and bearskins to make mnemonic memory circuits.

But some things haven’t.

Even though it’s totally legal to record the police there are still things to remember, like this 1963 quote from Houston vice squad captain, J.F. Willis “You may beat the rap, but you won’t beat the ride.”

What Willis knew then was that the power dynamic is always in play over time. We need to be prepared for this before during and after clashes. It helps to understand the media, your opponent, the law and your technology tools in order to come out on top, even if you are in the back of a cop car.

 Eventually the Ferguron story will drop off the twitter. Just like the Bundy Ranch story. But there will be another event.

We can get stuck in the same cycle or learn from past events. After the smoke bombs have been swept up and sonic cannons are parked let’s do some thinking and acting.

 Lately I’ve been talking to people about making their own news worthy actions, flipping someone else’s media event, inserting a different narrative in a breaking media event or revising a previous event for a new angle.

 One of the things I’ve found is that on the left many groups don’t have the right “personality” to do this kind of work. Sure my friends at New York Communities for Change do, but there is so much more aggressive work challenging powerful groups that people could be doing.

I’ve developed ideas groups love, but they get nervous during the implementation. So sometimes people have to pick up the ball themselves, and when they do I want them to know the rules, tips and tricks. I want to teach them how to anticipate responses and next steps.  Luckily on the video rules side I’ve got guidelines for you.

• My friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation put together an updated guide for people in the US who want to use their phones to record police and other actions at a protest.
• The ACLU has a guide,  Know Your Rights: Photographers. I’ll direct you to the “special considerations when videotaping” section. Different states have different laws about consent when it comes to the audio portion of video.
• The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have a state by state guideline about audio taping  if your state is a single or multiple party consent state, criminal penalties rules about hidden cameras and penalties for publishing or disclosing information.

Finally, my friends at Boing Boing have a podcast on what gadgets to use to gather your photos, video and audio.

This is all good in helping people going to current protests, but I also want people to look at previous protests to see both what we can learn and how we can use them for change at a deeper level. Plus prepare for future actions.

Let’s look at history and then predict the future.

How can video be used to make changes in police actions and policies? 

Did you see this? Occupy protester wounded by Oakland police gets $4.5 million

I noted what this story didn’t say. The officer who shot the bean bag was never identified. Why not? Does the city know, but just not say? Was there no video or just no one to look at all the video and say, “There’s the guy who shot the beanbag point blank at Olsen!” Was the officer following procedure? If not, what actions should be taken?  Maybe the procedure should be changed. Has it been?

Interestingly the officer who lobbed the tear-gas canister into the crowd trying to help the wounded protester was identified as Oakland police Officer Robert Roche.

Although Henry Lee of the Chronicle reported the footage was caught by a “TV news camera.” I’m pretty sure that my friend Matt Kresling’s reviewing the video and then highlighting the event was critical.

I watched the KTVU footage when it first ran, they didn’t point out the blatant disconnect between what the police told them and what they had on the footage.

The media today don’t want to get “in the middle” of a conflict even when they are. It is our review, analysis and action based on the information that leads to change.

What is important to remember is that even though the city suffered “international embarrassment” it is follow up actions like the lawsuits that can lead to leadership and legislation change. And that change can be the gift for citizens that keeps on giving. 


You want to de-escalate the violence? De-militarize the police? Great! How are you going to do that?

Take away our tanks and big guns? You and what army?

 Let’s think about the tools we have to help change things. Video. Photos. Blog posts and social media. Let’s not forget good ol’ telephone, email and search engine optimization!

And spreadsheets! Numbers people, help us out here! What is the ROI on those tanks? Sure it is “free” but what is the cost of upkeep? Wouldn’t you rather have some hazmat suits for when the oil pipeline spills or the ebola pandemic?

I’ll bet the city’s insurance carrier would be happier with fewer “attractive nuances” and lawsuits just waiting to happen. What is the insurance cost for keeping these military weapons?

What’s the PR cost for bad news?

Once people have power, and powerful tools, it takes other kinds of power and powerful tools to remove them.

Look to the tools we have for change.  One tool is a different perspective.

What the city and the police think are assets are really liabilities. Help them see it.

The whole world isn’t watching this part of the process, but it needs to be done. And you are just the people to do it.

LLAP
Spocko

 Of course some predicting is easy.  When ProPublica did a story on Move America Forward I said this:

Bookmark my words, they will circle the wagons because of the “hit piece” by the liberal media and then they will use it to raise money. All accusations will be denied, and they look forward to their, “day in court” where they will be proved right. 

Sure enough Red State runs Move America Forward Responds to ProPublica Allegations filled with denials as well as some serious name calling and accusations of defamation.  I contacted ProPublica to see if Red State called them to respond to MAFs comment.  Red State didn’t but ProPublica responded to MAFs comments and accusations anyway.

In my piece I pointed out how incredibly smart MAF’s people were to not respond to ProPublica’s request for comments.   This enabled them to later go to their own media and explain everything and classify it all as a liberal ‘hit piece.’

Their one mistake was not responding quickly enough to their own media who wondered if the allegations might be true.

However when someone on their side asked for facts, their true loyalties were questioned. In between the, “All charities are rackets” and “I do my research before giving.” Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is accused of working for George Soros. (The ultimate insult!) Even after he runs the full MAF reply later that day. But he gets the message and backs off.

When people talk about “getting money out of politics” it becomes this abstract discussion about how it will be done. There aren’t lot of “on the ground” stories about how the people who are GETTING this money will react to any attempts to slow down or stop the money.

My work alerting the advertisers of right wing radio shows showed me how people and organizations react when you get between them and their revenue stream.  In that case the advertisers were being hurt. Their brands were tainted by the close association with the vicious, horrific comments of the hosts.

In this case I wondered, “Who is being hurt by the actions of Move America Forward?”  The troops were getting care packages, maybe not a many or as big as they could be because of all the overhead, but so what?

The people being hurt are all the charities of any strip who DO follow the rules.  If people see that only suckers follow the rules, why follow them at all?

To be honorable? Honor is important in the military and for many people on the right and left.

I also said these groups are extremely savvy legally, financially, politically and in the media and that opinion or reports from anyone except their own investigators would be discounted.

What I didn’t understand is that even thoughtful people on the right who understand the benefit of investigations from their own side to “see the facts resolved” offer little hope of anything happening.

As “Ace of Spades” says

The right-leaning media has a weakness, which is that it is tiny, and furthermore, that the actual reportorial arm of that media is disproportionately small, even within the small universe of the right-wing media. We’re very heavy with commentators, and very light with reporters. 

So reportorial resources are very limited, and any right-leaning paper has to choose, for example, whether to put one of its few reporters on this story for a couple of weeks, or keep that reporter on a story more likely to produce well-received stories on Obama’s scandals. 

The net result is often that exposés like this are never proven, nor disproven, to the satisfaction of anyone on the right.

Now while I’d debate how small the “right-leaning media” is I agree with the point that reportorial resources from a right-leaning paper will go to producing Obama scandal stories rather than in a case like this.

What is to be done?

The Government is hamstrung by successful mau-mauing from the right (btw did you know that there is a moratorium on all IRS investigations?) and no media is to be trusted, what are the people who were harmed to do? What about the people who were mislead?

Organizations like Charity Navigator, that do look into compliance in various areas, build on information from the IRS as well as some of their own suggested guidelines.  (BTW, Move America Forward got zero stars.) But Charity Navigator has  no compelling authority for any change, people are free to ignore them.

A few solutions.

1) Suggest to the organizations harmed they request compensation from the group that didn’t follow the rules.  There is no legal compulsion for the offending organization to comply, but it is the honorable thing to do.

2) Look into legal remedies, copyright law comes to mind when it comes to the use of photos without permission.

3) The donors who feel they were misled, and don’t fell the explanations given are enough could ask for their money back and give it to a group they have more confidence in.

4) People who don’t like to confront, prosecute or require anyone to follow any rules can find better groups and give them money with the hope that the good groups will drive out the bad.

So specifically on this topic I suggest that the people at Operation Gratitude, Adopt a Platoon, and Operation Oreo, a project of Alpharetta Methodist Church in Georgia look to Move America Forward for compensation. I doubt they will tell you how much they took in, but they will tell you how strapped they are and why they had to use your photos for free.)

I would like them to keep in mind when MAF talks about how broke they are their Administrative and Fundraising expenses are 46.6%. Compare to Operation Gratitude’s Administrative and fundraising expenses of only 1.34% of their budget:  98.16% of all donations are devoted to Program Services.

Everyone should check things out for themselves, especially if you don’t trust anyone, but when all means of oversight are destroyed or devalued we are all harmed.

8-16-2014 UPDATED HEADLINE, named Hot Air writer as Ed Morrissey

What’s the Media Strategy of #Ferguson Protesters? The Police Have One. 
by Spocko

Does it seem strange I want to know the “media strategy” of the protesters in Ferguson?  I mean, they’re just a bunch of random people, catalyzed by an event, right? What are the protesters on the ground thinking? Do they know how they look to the world via the media? Who’s in charge? Is it the father?

 “I just want justice for my son, I really do … I need everybody to come together so we can do this right, so we can get something done about this. No violence.”

– Michael Brown Senior 

Aren’t they listening?

Although they don’t know it, the Ferguson protest and protesters do have a media strategy and a narrative. It was provided to them free of charge by the police and the media. It might change if you help.

You see, if a group or organization doesn’t have a media strategy or narrative someone will give it to them.  Often the very group they have an issue with, like the police. Other times by the “impartial” media. Definitely and vigorously by the RW media. Occasionally and timorously by the LW media.

So what if you are part of a group getting an assigned narrative you feel is biased? What if you are part of a “leaderless group” who isn’t in the loop but are on the ground? Can you do anything?

Yes! Methods can range from the easy to the complex. For some easy ones Kara Brown at Jezebelle has a nice piece about how people on Twitter can help journalists and amplify certain stories and viewpoints. For example I liked this tweet because it showed it was a story about black and white people standing together. I retweeted it.

white lady in the middle. this pic is LOUD! pic.twitter.com/JNE5ljvzGx
— Say Less. (@MVPGO) August 14, 2014

In 2011 I wrote some posts suggesting what people at home could do to change the assigned narrative using all the footage available from Occupy Oakland live streams and media coverage.

What to Do When the Media Says a Protester Attacked a Cop

I anticipated an action, how the media would cover it, and also what could flip the official narrative.

I listened to Jay Nixon’s press conference today and read some stories about the reason the police needed to launch tear gas. I read stories that stated protesters threw Molotov cocktails. I looked at the photos. I found a photo that looked like someone throwing a famous cocktail.  My mind shifted, “hmm that’s not good.” But then on twitter someone talks about this same photo.

It’s important for people to understand that the man is this photo was throwing it BACK at police who shot it at him. pic.twitter.com/DtZuxfIYbm
— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 13, 2014

It turns out it was a smoke bomb thrown BACK at the police. But by then the narrative is set, the damage is done. Or is it?

In 2011 KTVU Fox Channel 2, ran an Occupy Oakland story about how the protesters were “throwing bottles at the police.” The TV coverage took the word of the police officials as truth.  This is SOP because they work with them all the time and there were no Occupy leaders to dispute the narrative. Plus deadlines!

The media need people who can define actions and reactions, often the police provide it, with no counter.  But in this case Matt Kresling, a citizen, just like you or me, found that KTVU actually ran video footage that proved that the POLICE were the ones throwing a flash bang at an unarmed crowd.

That footage got 1.5 million views and turned the narrative around, using the MSMs very own footage. No doubt it lead to consequences for the the officers who acted and their future tactics (Hopefully beyond, “Bad boy, don’t get caught!’) It also leads to monetary settlements which is real leverage for change these days.

The thing is there often are no “narrative professionals” challenging a story. It is important for people to understand how stories get created, focused and directed and how to challenge them.  You hear people always talk about how the RW controls “the narrative” and framing and it can make you feel helpless. But you aren’t. It’s 2014 now and most of you have a mobile TV studio in your pocket.

We have computing horsepower to create the worlds best cat videos and a place to show it. The media know this, as do the police. That is why they hate to be recorded.

But raw footage doesn’t tell a story.

The police have a media strategy and a default narrative to use. “He was resisting. He drew an object that looked to be a weapon. I felt in danger for my life. He was coming right at me.”

The media LOVE the Ferguson story even without an accurate narrative. It’s flying peacocks, costumed super heroes and exploding bombs in a Michael Bay movie.  “Just look at the photos Bob! Award winning, all of ’em!’

We can do four things. 

1. Create our own media 
2. Work with the main stream media to bolster the view point they are ignoring or skating over
3. Bitch at the MSM for not getting the whole story 
4. Share stories, images, videos that are better

The RW has spent decades browbeating the mainstream media until they got their own media. They haven’t stopped attacking the MSM, it’s just internalized now. The MSM is still cowering in a world of “he said, she said, both sides do it, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, we’ll leave it there.”

But the media don’t always have to default to presenting a standard authority figure, especially when alternatives are available.

In this case the media is not “embedded” in the authority figure’s world, so they are more open to seeing things with their own two eyes, let’s encourage them when they do, and help them see it when they don’t.

The eventual pay off can be action in areas we see problems in now. Like figuring out how to deescalate a dangerous showdown. Getting the whole story out and justice being served.

.
LLAP
Spocko