The Money Game - who wins, who loses?

January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court's "Citizens United"  decision unleashed unlimited anonymous corporate money into our political process. Becoming my #1 issue, I warned that we People CANNOT compete with (tax-exempt?) Corporate and supra-rich financing. Since then I've watched "Fund Raising" expand exponentially.

Initially we People first discovered the awesome power of Internet Social Networking -- spreading information and efficiently multiplying small contributions by millions of contributors. It's an efficient and powerful new tool, mostly for good. However as expected, self-serving groups and scammers quickly adopted the tactics.

Overall, we've seen little progress by politicians reversing "Citizen's United." Why should they? Instead, in the political-arena the political industry professionals welcome the new influx of money from both "Fat-Cats" AND People. They're busy working both Left and Right sides of the streets.

They have extended the campaign season, now beyond one-year -- thereby increasing costs, (profits to themselves) which also favor the moneyed-elites vs people. And -- -- our own clueless or self-serving professionals serving us People simply try to compete on the uneven playing-field -- or are happy harvesting whatever they can get. Win or lose, they get paid.

Where do these new financial resources go? Follow the money. To the political, campaign, public-relations, advertising, and media professionals -- the political industry and their parasitic subcontractors. Being the information and communication industry, they control what the public "wants." So, there is no way the the media industry, will work to kill the new golden sow.

And what do we People get for this expense of national wealth? Typically, we get lies and misinformation -- contaminating the discourse and corrupting the political process. It serves us People no good.

And in parallel solicitations arenas, charities and even old activists-causes, we see a barrage of good and bad campaigns, aggressively soliciting internet-bucks. The Internet mother-lode is huge and recently discovered -- it's this decade's gold-rush.

So what to do? What to do, while Political and Social/Charitable groups must still serve their traditional tasks?

Politically we People must recognize that:

(1) Elections are still won with INFORMATION and VOTES -- (though that is under direct attack now). We must use our precious resources efficiently. Some recipient organizations are simply better than others.

(2) People's $-resources are limited vs Corporate resources. Competing with big-bucks is a losers-game. We get little of value from most (corporate) media advertising, and we don't communicate well ourselves. We gave the microphones away, to our opposition. We have volunteer labor, while they hire management professionals and media-resources.

(3) If we can't win the money-game, we must defeat their advantage. If we can't work harder; we gotta work smarter. We need to attack opposition weak-points, rather than strengths. We have to either level or get off the financial battle-ground -- that means Fundamental Finance Reform. In a few cases we can turn their wealth against them.

(4) Grass-roots volunteer efforts often get big results with small infusions of cash - that's leverage.  Large groups can have huge effects, when they harness and focus large memberships into focused actions. We see that more and more.

Meanwhile, political-groups, scoundrels or charities that have degenerated into self-serving solicitation efforts, simply consume and waste precious resources. I for one am supporting only a few individuals, campaigns and causes that demonstrate efficiency and effectiveness.