my future cause

i ran across a couple great links dealing with my soon-to-be employer. one is a commentary on the Republican party and the Internet. it has three distinct pieces to it: the first discusses the Democratic party's fundraising success using small donors organized over the Internet, and advocates a Republican adoption of a similar model; the second is an argument for why Republicans should support net neutrality; and the third is an observation that rural Americans, who are disproportionately Republican, also have disproportionately less access to broadband Internet, and perhaps the Republican party should care more about that. the authors are taking a neat angle by acknowledging that the market for internet services isn't a functioning free market at all, and asking what can be done, under that assumption, to promote core Republican values: "freedom, independence and empowering the majority of Americans who want to be protected from abuses of power, be they from Big Government or Big Business." good stuff...

GOP should get serious about cyberspace - Politico.com

the second article is from the other side of the political spectrum - it is a terrific, very liberal piece about media and democracy and the Internet. it emphasizes the value of information, complete and unrestricted, and it expresses concern that an overly concentrated, overly corporate media landscape does not promote the value of information above the value of a share of stock. it weaves this with talk about "new media", the Internet, and how the ideal media landscape that it presents is under attack by the same forces as those driving concentration of ownership of TV stations and newspapers across the country. the rhetoric is a tad heavy handed (complete with obligatory George Orwell reference) and the article degenerates into a mini-rant against the Iraq war partway through, but the first part of it is a spectacular description of the what and the why for many of the things i stand for. [also, if anybody else is curious, Wikipedia describes the "fifth column" concept.]

Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column? - In These Times