End Of The 'Tell President Obama' Ads?

[trailmonkee]

Source: WGBH

"Tell President Obama ... "

Remember that command from TV ads through the spring and summer? "Tell President Obama" to stop spending, or increase oil production, or whatever.

Even as the presidential campaign over the battleground states airwaves continues unabated — some $30 million every week — those three little words are largely gone, for the same reason they were ever used in the first place: so the groups running the ads can keep their donors secret.

IRS rules for tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations allow them to keep their donors' names secret. That secrecy is crucial to many donors who want to influence an election but do not want their businesses to suffer a backlash from customers and clients.

-snip-

But starting 30 days prior to the presidential nominating conventions, groups that run issue ads are required to disclose to the Federal Election Commission every donor who gives more than $1,000. That law has been on the books for a decade, but it was widely ignored until this spring, when federal courts made the FEC enforce it.

-snip-

"It's actually kind of perverse," said Joseph Birkenstock, a Washington, D.C., elections lawyer who used to work at the Democratic National Committee. "I don't think there's anybody who would think this is an appropriate way to line up the disclosure rules."

Read more: http://www.wgbhnews.org/post/end-tell-president-obama-ads

[truedelphi]

1. Those ads might also be disappearing, because after one million of us anti-GM

Anti-Monsanto activists tried to use the power of the petition process to have Obama's FDA consider some real independent science and to stop Gm crops till that science is in place, we activists were told that the petition would count as only one signature. (The reason offered is that the petition originated with only one website or organization.)

So why would anyone bother telling the Oval Office anything? We don't have the power as a citizenry any more. It is a banana republic all the way.

[emulatorloo]

2. Those ads were promoting right wing issues and were paid for by Koch Bro types.

You wanna see a Banana Republic? Put the Republicans in charge.

[truedelphi]

3. Some of us have noticed that the Big Issues are

Missing in Action in terms of the debates now underway.

Under a re-elected President Obama, Ben Bernanke will still be at the Federal Reserve, dishing out the trillions of dollars he likes to offer his friends. Nothing changed there. The Big Finance people will continue to get 49 cents out of every dollar of profit created in the USA, even though these Big Financial people don't do a thing that is productive.

I doubt that re-elected Obama will be happy to rein in the DOJ and IRS who over the last ten months have so ardently, passionately torn up the medical marijuana clinics here in California.

Also, the endless wars will continue. As will the surveillance society. Trillions for war and surveillance, while the states continue to lay off citizens who actually produce things and have jobs that matter. (Teachers, fire fighters, social workers, project managers, et al.)

One of the most important issues at hand, the continuation of poiices letting the Big GM firms put their products out there - that will also continue under re-elected Obama.
(GM referring to the genetically modified foods and not to the car company.)

So then, looking at the other side of the aisle --
Under President Rmoney, same thing of course.

Where do they differ? On women's health issues and abortion.

One side provides us with a friendlier, much smilier, less robotic fascism with birth control, while the other side will simply be fascist.

How has it come to this?

[emulatorloo]

4. Most people are not single issue voters.

Nor are they foolish enough to buy that Romney and Obama are "the same"

I am not crazy about GM foods, but there is no FUCKING WAY I am going to work against Obama and enable Romney to win.

There is a world of difference between Romney and Obama. Romney's advisors are bush-co neocons and bush-co economic gurus.

Peddling that "just the same" bullshit if you wish, but the more we see of Romney the more clear that it is bullshit.

[truedelphi]

5. Look, after a medical bankruptcy, which totally wiped out

My retirement, and the fact that my small business gets by due to people in China buying the product, as Americans can't afford it, all I have left is the truth.

I just re-read my post. Nowhere in the post do I say that no one should support Obama. After all, would Rmoney be better?

I am pointing out is that our democracy is gone. All I have left is truth. I will not let it go.

Maybe at some point enough other people will want to get our democracy back. But under the current Citizens United, Big Corporations system of elections, with the Big Corporate Executives being the only people that matter to the political class and its members, I am not holding my breath.