See thread at Philly Future on filing Freedom of Information Act requests.

And yes.. I’m spamming myself. Pretty pathetic ehh? One twist is I’m going to document how to do this locally.

Here’s the deal: a little known TV pundit was paid a quarter million dollars in your taxpayer money to sell the Bush administration agenda. So far you won’t find this on mainstream TV news shows. The right wing blogger pundit clique is spinning the story on Williams being a sell out. Clearly it’s to avoid discussion that this administration illegally used your money to push its propaganda. Hypocrites.

Well, I shouldn’t say all bloggers on the right are being so weak, pstupidnonymous breaks the mold.

My prediction: Some stupid stiff at the Department of Education will be the fall guy and Williams will become famous.

Jeff Jarvis warns bloggers not to sell their credibility like Williams. Full disclosure of business arrangements is the only way for pundits and journalists alike. Agreed. But lets cast the light both ways. The administration paid off a pundit. A person people go to for trusted opinion. And while Williams might have lost a job – he just got a ton of free exposure. We all know what they say about “bad press” right? (Update: Jeff’s follow up post agrees with me and he’s actually doing something about it – a FOIA request.)

Garret points to Rafe’s great follow up question. I’ll take that even futher….

I didn’t know who Williams was before this story started to break.

If they were willing to pay a pundit with such a small audience (I know that’s an assumption on my part, but among friends and family, no one knows this guy either) who else have they paid? Which bloggers? Which pundits? Not just on Social Security, but the Iraq war and more. And lets get beyond money… how about other benefits this administration has bestowed on its media (including blogger) lackeys. How deep does this rabbit hole go?

BTW – Thanks to Oliver Willis for the poster.

…My inner dialog was comparing the current situation to that of Darfur, where tens of thousands have died and hundreds of thousands displaced during a civil war, an ongoing disaster in which Western attention, aid and intervention could halt further additions to the numbers affected.

Yet not only has there been no public campaign for humanitarian aid donations, the rest of the world has done little but talk at the warring sides and gotten in turn what appears to be little but words. I’m not pointing the finger at America, or the Bush Crew, in particular, because I don’t see any government really driving this issue. Kristof has a point, that public and private giving in America is far lower than any other nation to which it can reasonably be compared.

Here we stand: an outpouring of generosity rarely seen on an international scale for one problem with many other problems undiminished. Humanity, as a whole, has a command over global resources of a level that could cure all the world’s ailments traceable to historical scarcity. Hunger, lack of modern shelter, diseases for which there are known cures could be resolved if the richer nations made a decision to do it.

This can be achieved with minimized ecological impact and positive economic growth if, and only if, our tendency towards greed and selfishness are able to be forced aside…

William Lazar: 1/5/05

A very good point.

Could even my success happen in this day and age? If I was in the same boat I was in during the early nineties, now, could do the same thing? According to this Economist article, it’s probably nowhere near as likely.

The most vivid evidence of social sclerosis comes from politics. A country where every child is supposed to be able to dream of becoming president is beginning to produce a self-perpetuating political elite. George Bush is the son of a president, the grandson of a senator, and the sprig of America’s business aristocracy. John Kerry, thanks to a rich wife, is the richest man in a Senate full of plutocrats. He is also a Boston brahmin, educated at St Paul’s, a posh private school, and Yale?where, like the Bushes, he belonged to the ultra-select Skull and Bones society.

Mr Kerry’s predecessor as the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Al Gore, was the son of a senator. Mr Gore, too, was educated at a posh private school, St Albans, and then at Harvard. And Mr Kerry’s main challenger from the left of his party? Howard Brush Dean was the product of the same blue-blooded world of private schools and unchanging middle names as Mr Bush (one of Mr Bush’s grandmothers was even a bridesmaid to one of Mr Dean’s). Mr Dean grew up in the Hamptons and on New York’s Park Avenue.

The most remarkable feature of the continuing power of America’s elite?and its growing grip on the political system?is how little comment it arouses. Britain would be in high dudgeon if its party leaders all came from Eton and Harrow. Perhaps one reason why the rise of caste politics raises so little comment is that something similar is happening throughout American society. Everywhere you look in modern America?in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts?you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.

The Economist: Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend: 12/29/04

via dangerousmeta.