At last week’s Personal Democracy Forum, one of the events I missed was the launch of a coalition called InternetforEveryone.org. I’m skeptical of the organization, and while I admit I’m not really sure what it’s all about, therein lies part of my skepticism. It’s very easy to agree that Internet access should be as widely available as possible. However, the policy details are not so easily agreed upon. But as a market-oriented thinker, I’m inclined to agree with Erick Erickson that this is in fact a bad idea.
Supporters at the press conference included Stanford professor Larry Lessig, former FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, environmental activist Van Jones, a venture capitalist from the firm which first funded Twitter, Google’s chief evangelist Vint Cerf and Josh Silver from Free Press. That’s the same Josh Silver I criticized back in May for claiming the only real news was his kind of news.
Also on the panel: Republican consultant David All, whom I count as a friend and whose work on Slatecard I admire but with whom I disagree on some matters of policy and partisanship. I’m not the first to note the incongruity of this panel; if you happened to check out the comments at All’s TechRepublican starting this weekend, Mike Turk initiated a very interesting debate with All on the merits of the group continuing through today.
David has called Internet for Everyone a “bipartisan” organization, which Turk has also called into question. All’s claim seems very hard to justify, based on the names above. For one thing, the only other reference to Internet for Everyone as “bi-partisan” comes from Brian Reich at Fast Company — who is, coincidentally, a former Gore campaign aide. Meanwhile Tim Karr of Free Press didn’t bother to include the word “bipartisan” in his announcement at Huffington Post.
But I was reminded of a tweet from @DavidAll the evening the conference ended:
And in a post on Saturday, All did concede that the bipartisanship of the group was tenuous:
As one of the only Republicans in the coalition (Vint Cerf of Google is a registered Republican), I believe it’s crucial for Republicans to embrace a national broadband strategy.
Curious about Vint Cerf’s Republican bona fides, I decided to punch his name into OpenSecrets.org. For the sake of column width, I’ve removed his employers (principally MCI, MCI Worldcom, Worldcom and Google). Here’s what I found:
Finally! Proof that Vint Cerf is a Republican. Well, maybe he was once a Republican. And so, David’s claim that the Internet was Republican from the beginning has a fighting chance. But Cerf is clearly not a Republican now, in fact he has been quite an active Democrat since approximately the Reagan administration.
There are certainly times when cross-ideological partnerships are a good idea, such as when Redstate’s Mike Krempasky, Adam Bonin and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos came together to fend off campaign finance restrictions on bloggers. But it concerns me that David All — one of the C&E-recognized rising stars of GOP Washington — is giving ideological cover to an organization which is not just non-conservative and not just un-conservative, but whose basic idea treats limited government and market-based solutions as beneath discussion.
P.S. I hope this doesn’t dissuade him from watching the rest of The Wire.
And it should be, especially considering that the first four articles listed are all generally pro-Obama in their tilt and three are explicitly framed as advice for candidate Obama. The other four articles cover minor issues such as Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and John McCain.
Evil Corporate Image Makeover/Lefty Blogosphere Co-Optation Nearing Completion?
What will the Kossacks make of the Chevron ad rotating with an in-house ad for “Crashing the Gates” at the top of Daily Kos tonight?
So far, I see no discontent. Is that an advancement or an abdication? Or an accident?
How arbitrary is it? That’s no casual “it’s just in the sidebar” BlogAd — that’s a fully integrated premium BlogAd for an international petrochemical conglomerate lording over the front page of the progressive blogosphere’s most-viewed URL.
And yet, I only found it earlier by typing dailykos.com alone into the address bar in Firefox for OS X, at say, 10:00 p.m. EDT. Otherwise, I’ve gotten this:
Can anyone duplicate the page with the Chevron media buy? As I reload, and reload, and reload, I continue to see the “Crashing the Gate” spot in the same place, over and over. Did Markos change his mind at the last moment? Did Chevron Corp. withdraw? Is it slated for release and for some reason I’m missing this will be completely non-controversial?
I guess we’ll see. Either way: Interesting agreement on Chevron’s part, and on Kos’ part as well.
Update: Apparently yes, this has already appeared and apparently was not completely ignored — but still doesn’t seem to have meant the ad’s removal from the Daily Kos ad rotation — though perhaps efforts have been made to have it be less-seen. Presumably the ad buy is just running out by this point, and that’s that. I sure hope not.
Updated again: Competing arguments from the 10/16 comment section:
It will be diaried another day.