The Drum Major Institute, a non-partisan, progressive think tank, has launched a Google AdWords campaign that takes advantage of the search engine’s ad results to educate voters.

Here’s how it works: Do a search for your congressman and check the list of “Sponsored Links” to the right. You’ll find your congressman with a letter grade representing his/her DMI score.

Here’s a few examples:

• Berman Earns An “A”
• Herseth Earns A “C”
• Feingold Earns An “A”
• Santorum Earns An “F”

The DMI gets points for originality. This campaign alerts net users to DMI’s congressional scoring whenever anyone does a search for a member and provides a link to more details of the member’s scorecard. This makes it easy to learn about the voting record of your representative whether you were looking for it or not.

Will this campaign produce a more informed electorate? Probably not. But it does inspire one to imagine other ways to exploit new media for the public good.

After a decade of Republicans soaking up corporate largesse in the form of donations, vacations and other assorted perks and bribes, Democrats are starting to catch the eye of these deep-pocketed givers. The Wall Street Journal’s story notes that traditional Republican backers like the insurance, pharmaceuticals and tobacco industries, are flipping their allegiances in order to sustain their sway over Congress.

“The reality is beginning to set in here,” says Greg Casey, the head of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC), an organization of businesses dedicated to electing pro-industry candidates. Even if Republicans maintain control of Congress after the November election, their majorities in both chambers are expected to shrink. “What you couldn’t get done in 2006 will be much more difficult in 2007,” Mr. Casey says.

Considering how little has been done in 2006, it’s easy to understand why the business community is worried. Their fear has propelled them to take drastic measures – Concede that Democrats exist. In the 2004-2005 election cycle, the BIPAC gave 3.5% of its campaign contributions to Democrats. So far in 2006, that’s up to 24%.

Donations to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this year have exceeded those to the Republican Committee for the first time in more than a decade. Since corporations are the largest slice of the campaign finance pie, this demonstrates a clear shift in party loyalty.

The industries that provide these funds claim that there is no partisan motivation to their generosity and that speculation about future legislative majorities is unfounded. Their explanations for the charitable flip-flop range from an interest to donate to those who will listen, to “coincidence.”

Somehow, coincidence doesn’t seem to tell the whole story. The Journal also cites a shift in hiring at K Street firms. The Tom DeLay era featured some of the most aggressive arm-twisting DC has ever seen in order to assure that lobbyists hire only Republicans. But recently, The Federalist Group, who had never hired a Democrat in its eight year existence, added four of them to its staff, including a former aide to Ted Kennedy.

On the one hand, this news appears to shed a positive light on the prospects of congressional leadership after November’s elections. After all, in our free market system, the flow of dollars is a pretty accurate predictor of events. And the corporations of America are the high rollers in this game. If they are betting on blue, there is a fairly good chance that blue is going to prevail. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the corporations that have besotted the Republican party, and to no small degree led to their decline through scandal and corruption, are now wining and dining Democrats. All that the corporations and lobbyists care about is that they have an ever-available stable of fresh whores that they can use up and discard when they’re no longer pretty. Will the Dems just become the next flurry of drunken sluts seduced by money and the power it brings?

To cynics like myself, that question doesn’t really need to be asked. But, what the hell, let’s ask it anyway. Maybe by staking out a preemptive position we can forestall what we all sadly believe is inevitable anyway.

Update (8/17/06): A new WaPo article is confirming the shift in hiring on K Street: “In what lobbyists are calling a harbinger of possible upheaval on Capitol Hill, many who make a living influencing government have gone from mostly shunning Democrats to aggressively recruiting them as lobbyists over the past six months or so.”

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist. Not surprisingly, the Journal’s Brian Carney projected a befuddled confusion as to why this electronic phenomemon doesn’t properly exploit it’s revenue potential. Wall Street’s mouthpiece can’t understand why a profitable organization that more than satisfies its customers doesn’t wring out every spare nickel it can spot. The Journal, it seems, cannot be introduced to a Golden Goose without reaching for a hatchet.

Buckmaster does a great job of spurring Carney to wonder if he is a communist. As the head of one of the first entrepreneurial successes of the Internet era, Buckmaster would have been justified to laugh uproariously in Carney’s face.

But, instead, Buckmaster defended the Craigslist model, pointing out its longevity in a field sown with failure. He went on to address some broader issues that touch on the future of conventional publishers:

“In Mr. Buckmaster’s view, newspapers would be better off being a little more Craigslist-like: Go private, eschew Wall Street’s demands for continually “goosing profitability” and give your readers what they want.”

Damn Commie! Catering to customer’s wants and needs? Who does he think he is? The real brilliance in that clip is the idea that newspapers have much to gain by divorcing themselves from their corporate parents so that they can focus on producing superior journalism rather than short-term quarterly earnings results. Superior journalism would, in the end, give them what they really want – more readers, advertisers, and profits.

We all know how these megaliths are consumed with greed. The question now is, are they greedy enough to do what is truly in their best interest?

Lawbreakers who are considering cussing or flashing a breast on TV may not be getting the most value for their money. The FCC’s recently escalated fines for these heinous crimes is $325,000 per incident. Lost Remote has done the public service of identifying some relative bargains for the thrifty ne’er-do-well.

• Killing someone by accident: $250,000.
• Commit Second Degree Murder in Florida: $10,000.
• Kidnap a child in California: $10,000.
• Do drugs in Iowa: $10,000.
• Violate someone’s civil rights: $10,000.

Some of these crimes also come with prison terms, but from a financial perspective, the benefits are clear. This is an excellent example of the free market at work.

It’s interesting to observe what American media considers to be good news these days. This morning a statement was released by Karl Rove’s attorney stating that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald does not expect to seek charges against Rove. Much of the media’s characterization of this announcement plays as if Rove had received an award.

The New York Times said that the decision:
“lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove,” and that it, “removes a potential political stumbling block for a White House that is heading into a long and difficult election season for Republicans,” and that it, “should help the White House in what has been an unsuccessful effort to put the leak case behind it.”

The ABC News/Associated Press reports that the news is:
lifting a heavy burden from one of President Bush’s most trusted advisers,” and that it, “cheered Republicans and a White House beleaguered by war and low approval ratings.”

Reuters says that the news gave:
“a much-needed boost for President George W. Bush, who has been battered by bad news ahead of November’s congressional elections.”

MSNBC hails that:
“Now with the cloud of indictment lifted, Rove is liberated.”

On NPR they noted that:
The news about Rove triggered what was described as elation at the White House.

What they are not saying is that Rove’s evasion of culpability may be temporary. Fitzpatrick’s notice stated that, “he does not expect to seek charges…” That is hardly an unequivocal exoneration. And let’s not forget that Scooter Libby is still under indictment and others, including Dick Cheney, are still being investigated.

I think it’s funny (not ha ha funny) that the media, and even much of the blogiverse, thinks it is positive for Rove that he hasn’t been indicted. Since when is “not being indicted” an affirmation of good character? As if that is the penultimate honor in our society – to be suspected of dishonesty, corruption and treason, but not get indicted for it. Isn’t that the dream we all have for our children?

I started News Corpse as a direct result of my experience at dailyKos. I didn’t set out to seek attention or to promulgate my views. I was just drawn to the idea of being able to express myself. It was more cathartic than anything else. But absent the stir of inspiration, I might never have made this site manifest.

Now I’m getting about 2,500 visitors a day. I know that’s small in Kosian terms, but it’s 2,485 more people than I’ll run into at the coffee house I hang out at. And if just 100 Kossacks (out of 70,000) build sites like mine, that’s almost another dailyKos in terms of reach. The exponential growth of this message machine is mind boggling. And that’s where I see the most value emerging from this community.

Markos has set the stage for an experiment in communications that I call paramedia. It is not just an addendum to the conventional media. It resides on a seperate plane but can move in concert with it. Paramedia uses the same components as the conventional model, but uses them much more efficiently. In advertising, reach and frequency are the keys to a campaign’s effectiveness in influencing consumer behavior. By expanding reach, a message gains exposure. And for messages to take root in the public mind they must be repeated with reliable frequnecy. Frequency also places the message in close proximty to a consumer’s decision. These same concepts hold true for politics, journalism and citizen media. Therefore, it is important for those who have an interest in promoting the goals of progressive leadership, liberal ideology, and media reform, to participate in the discussion. You may not think that your role is significant, but it’s a cumulative formula and every contribution adds mass to the whole.

In a pre-conference post, Markos said,“Technology allows each and every one of us to be a leader.” But it does more than allow it – it invites it. It savors and rewards it, and spreads it like an infection, the likes of which the world’s body has never seen.

If you have something to say, say it. Don’t fret about who hears you. The reverberations of our cumulative voices extend out like waves and can inspire whomever they touch. Your signal in this wave pattern may not touch many people, but what if it touches one person who sends out more powerful signals? That’s your progeny. Some of us may touch 200, others 200,000. That’s really not the point. It’s like bands that never really got very famous themselves (i.e. Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Pixies) but got tens of thousands of teenagers to pick up instruments and take up residence in their garages and start their own bands, many of whom went on to superstardom.

As an artist, I would rather have that kind of legacy than being the next Warhol.