Manipulators
This had me kind of freaked out, but then it seemed I may want a better source for news then ‘cdfreaks.com’ so I did a Google NEWS search on the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2004 and was amazed. Amongst all this darkness there’s a light, just a spark really, but this is so much more positive then what I expected to find.
The spark my miraculously still-living unique brand of pessimistic optimism sees is that McCain-Fiengold may have some meaningful effect on campaign finance. That is, it may de-emphasize (at least a little) the importance of corporate/industry lobbies… Senators and the like are realizing they’d rather have $100 in clean campaign money they can use any way they need from the several thousand constituents passionate about issues like these then the lobbies’ $2000 to $4000 total in clean money and the dangers of trying to use all the other money (and perks) without it becoming a PR nightmare.
Notice the pessimistic optimism(TM) — they aren’t doing it because they believe in consumer protection or because their constituents asked, they’re doing it because they can get more $$$ from constituents and large groups of private activists then corporations and their lobbies.