Friday, December 29, 2006, 7:01:55 PM, J. Rhett Aultman wrote: > Another interesting question to pose has to do with the regulation of > money going to political ads. Does this even extend to the Internet? Can > political candidates exploit lapses in campaign expenditure regulation to > pay video bloggers for time on their blogs? What about advertisement > storms on YouTube and the like?
I guess if you live in the USA it's sometimes easy to forget, but the modern economy is global. As US politics moves into modern media and the internet, then the rest of the world gets a say. If it's OK for the USA to intervene in Iraqi politics, is it OK for people outside the USA to intervene in US politics, too? Sure, non-US-citizens don't actually get a vote, but US presidential elections have been becoming less and less about individual votes for years. It's all about how much money and media each faction can wield, and how it is used to shape the voters into voting one way or another. In the past, this was mainly a domestic thing. Pretty much the only people who cared who occupied the White House were the people of the USA. But that's all changed. The USA is now such a a big player on the world stage that everyone on the planet is affected by what the USA does. US Politics used to be the playground of American business lobbies and corporate interests. They have worked tirelessly for years to ensure that they can manipulate the political process just by spending money. Spend more money, get more influsnce. But think about it. How much money could (for example) China or a coalition of Moslem oil states put into political campaigning for the upcoming US election? Would they care at all about the FCC or campaign contributions, impartiality, journalistic ethics or traditions of political integrity? As a US voter, you have NO WAY of telling who or what domestic or foreign interests are funding, producing or editing anything that you read, hear, or view. Whatever rules used to pretend that there was any sort of impartiality are worthless. Scary? -- Frank Carver http://www.makevideo.org.uk
