| Because of the money you put in, every Senate Democratic challenger signed off on net neutrality. Here's how you helped this happen. When you put money into this site, we used it to hire a researcher, Karl Blumenthal. Karl's awesome, and he's dug up info on more than just the telecom guys (we'll be coming out with cool info soon on various groups). It took a few weeks for us to figure out how to integrate research into our operation, but eventually, we got there. Karl was dogged about finding and following up on these statements, and generally helping to organize the campaign.
Now, here's why this is important. Telecom companies have a 'friendly incumbent policy', which means they will give to incumbents as a matter of routine. Usually, this is a very risk-averse strategy, since incumbents tend to win. In environments like this one, however, it's a very risky strategy, because they are funding the people that are likely to lose and setting themselves up for retribution. Now, usually this isn't that big a deal, they can just throw fundraisers for the (new) incumbents they tried to defeat immediately after those people get to DC, to pay off campaign debts or help them with reelection in two or six years. And once that starts, our leverage is gone.
In other words, the moment we have to get Democratic members on our side is now, when they see no reason to care what the telecoms say and every reason to care about what we think. And so your funding, and our ability to hire Karl, meant that we could do the extra work to organize these candidates. They are now on the record, and the telecoms will probably be stuck with a bunch of stubborn incoming members who associate getting elected with supporting internet freedom explicitly against telecom interests. And the FCC was watching what we did on this site, and the commissioners, who are politicians in their own right, got that their vote on Comcast traffic shaping this week could have adverse or beneficial consequences.
In other words, we helped pretty much end the first stage of the net neutrality fight. Was it us alone? Of course not. But the work we did generated press and validation from influentials all over the place, from Wired to TPM to Larry Lessig to Broadband Census to Digg. The telecom guys are terrified; the US Telecom Assocation even pulled a blog post attacking me (here it is cached, here's the empty space on their site).
The work you funded got immediate support and validation from FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, Speaker Pelosi, Google's Alan Davidson, Senator Byron Dorgan, Tim Wu, and Writer's Guild President Patric Verrone, among many others. And the FCC is now poised to make significant decisions on the future of the internet and media secure in the knowledge that we are paying attention.
That's what you funded.
Who did we beat in this fight? Well, for starters, Tommy Boggs, the superlobbyist and his firm, which has billed a quarter of a billion dollars in the last decade for their services. That's a pretty good return on our investment, $10k versus the millions the telecoms have thrown at destroying the internet. And the best part? They are afraid.
By all rights, the King of K Street should be strutting his stuff. When asked for an interview, though, he demurred.
"He really doesn't do media anymore," his spokeswoman said.
And why not? Heritage Foundation lobbying expert Michael Franc gives his rationale.
"They're scared of the netroots."
It used to be that lobbyists and think tank experts were the only ones with the institutional memory to make policy and run campaigns, and much of their power was (and is still) based on knowing when to ask politicians to come out on their issues. But now, because of the internet, we are paralleling what they do, and in some instances, we can beat them. We can even chase them away from the press.
There are really good reasons to be cynical in politics. Really really good reasons. But if you are looking at the basic economics of this little episode, with a ridiculous differential between the amount the other guys spend versus us and the extremely limited payback they get versus the bang for the buck and time and energy we get, you'll see that the question of whether what we do works is much less important than the question of how we bring what we are doing that is working to scale.
And 210 of you (so far) had your hands in this little experiment, and more of you are welcome to join up now that you've seen the kinds of ways we're using this money. So thank you. And onward! |
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