Thursday, 25 March, 2004

MoveOn gets told to move along. Like suburban police coming across a gaggle of scruffy teens, MoveOn.org has come under the sights of those with 'to serve and protect' freshly painted on their doors. I read a Boston Globe article Bid to curb groups' political ads may dim a Kerry bright spot Boston.com, a few weeks ago on rumblings concerning certain §527 political action committees. MoveOn.org and American's Coming Together in particular. The Republican Party is challenging the activities of these groups under the restrictions of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Law. It wasn't entirely clear whether this was the Republican National Committee preparing for some legal action, or congressional republicans trying to use the control they have in Congress to press advantage. The bar being far lower for the latter. The Atlantic has a piece by William Schneider Loophole Advocacy reprinted from the National Journal which rehearses the Republican argument. The timing for this Republican alarm can be adduced from this article from 2 March on the launch of a high profile MoveOn television advertising campaign MoveOn.org to Counter Bush's Ad Blitz. There is of course an entire other side to this issue. one that Jerry Landay and Media Transparency.org detail The Apparat -- George Bush's Back-Door Political Machine on their web site (from a metafilter thread ca 16 Mar). The issue is the large number of organizations on the right doing precisely the same thing. So many that they can specialize bettter and seem to individualy be simply and interest advocacy organizations, but behind this the money and coordination are highly centralized. MoveOn in contrast to this array of funding and organizing seems to have gotten its back up against a wall, by simply being one organization and trying to do to much by itself. This was going to lead to a situation where its raison d'etre would appear to merge with not only the democratic party, which to a degree it does, but also with whoever emerged to be the parties candidate for president. That would make it seem problematic under the rules governing the §527s. All silliness aside the real story here is one side of the political spectrum attacking the other sides funding to keep them from even getting their message out. When Media companies themselves are part of this matrix the leverage potential can be extreme. I heard on Democracy Now's daily radio show (a rather fiercely left wing and occasionally dubious group of folk) today that Clear Channel the radio station and billboard owning company has given twenty four times as much to the Bush Campaign and RNC than to democratic interests. That is a differential that makes its position clear. And Yet its is a measurable portion of the nations media outlets. FCC chair Michael Powell would have us believe that we have choice in the media - presumably and ideally between Clear Channels AM stations, their FM stations, their billboards, or maybe Roger Ailes' news division over at Fox. 11:50:09 PM    comment [];trackback [];

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