King had earlier released a statement regarding his endorsement, saying:

“Governor Romney has the leadership qualities, experience, and credentials to make him best suited for carrying the conservative Republican banner into the November Presidential election, defeat Barack Obama, and put this great nation back on the path to prosperity and strength. We have a country to save, and Mitt Romney is the candidate best able to lead us in doing that.”

About 350 people were on hand to hear Gov. Romney at the standing room only rally at the Country Inn in Grand Junction. Another 200 or so stood listening outside on speakers set up for those people who were turned away at the door by Grand Junction fire marshals.

Most in the crowd were Romney supporters; a few, however, remained undecided and had stopped by simply to hear from one of the candidates in hopes of gathering enough information to make an informed decision come caucus time the following night. Some of these seemed to come away from the rally impressed by what they saw and heard.

Harry Benjamin, of Grand Junction, said he was not a Romney supporter before attending the event. But after hearing the former Massachusetts Governor speak, said he liked what he had heard.

“He is a successful manager, and that is what we need” Benjamin said.

Some attendees had been to Rick Santorum’s event in nearby Montrose two days earlier, and drew comparisons between the two candidates. Matt Soper, a Delta resident and recent law school graduate, attended both events and said that to him, “the difference between Santorum and Romney was the difference between someone running for governor, and one running for President”, saying that Romney’s speech, attitude and demeanor seemed to be more professional and ”presidential”. In terms of substance, Soper said that he was gratified to hear Romney honor the U.S. military in his speech, and speak on foreign policy, noting that “Santorum only spoke of the military when prompted by a question, and I found that rather disappointing”.

Followers of Romney’s rivals were present as well. Judy O’Dwyer, also of Grand Junction, said that she was a Rick Santorum supporter, but had come to hear what Romney had to say, and to see if she could concider him trustworthy. “I have my doubts about him; I don’t know if he is conservative enough for me” she said prior to the event. She did, however, go on to state that she would support Romney fully if he became the candidate.

Other opponents were not so accommodating. About a dozen Ron Paul supporters were on hand to protest the candidate at the event. Local Palisade peach farmer David Cox, a prominent supporter of the Texas Congressman, said that they were there to raise awareness of Romney’s support for TARP and the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), in particular the controversial provision that allows for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens found to be enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the U.S., thereby, according to Cox, “eliminating the right of due process and habeas corpus”. Asked whether or not he would support Romney in the event that he won the nomination, Cox replied no, saying that he “cannot support any candidate that is in favor of presidential or military authority to arrest and detain civilians not engaged in a battlefield situtation under the law of war rather than the due process requirements spelled out in the US Constitution”. Cox told PPC that he was thrown out of the event; “I began raising my voice and informing people and that’s when the staff had me ejected”. No other incidents were reported.

Overall, however, the reception from the west slope to Mitt Romney seemed generally approving, and crossed demographic lines. Kristina Kelly, a young Grand Junction resident in her early 20’s, and Sheryl Wilson, a retiree, both touted Romney’s values and business experience as essential for leading America out of her current troubles. Fruita Iraq Veteran Sean Otto said Romney was the “only one who has a record for turning things around”, citing his history in Massachusetts, the Olympics, and in the business world.

For West Slope voters, Romneys biggest applause line came when he spoke of energy, an issue critical to the economy of the region rich in natural gas, coal, and oil shale. In a speech that mostly stuck to the script of his last several appearances, Romney criticized Obama’s record on energy policy, noting that the current President has kept hundreds of acres off limits for production, while subsidizing so-called “green energy” boondoggles – contrary to his call in the State of the Union speech for an “all of the above” policy.

Romney’s promises to reign in the EPA and to help facilitate domestic production of “energy secure and independent from foreign cartels” met with approval from West Slope residents. Harry Benjamin, when asked if Romney’s message appealed to the average west slope voter, replied “Yes, especially based on what he said about energy.”

Norm Franke, President of Alpine Bank in Grand Junction agreed. “Romney does appeal to people on the Western Slope when he talks of energy development” he said. “Romney told the audience the right things. It will be nice if he will do them.”

Are you ready for 2012, digitally speaking? People’s Press Collective announces “Digital Fundamentals” classes and seminars. ***Detailed Registration Information below***

What: PPC Digital Fundamentals training course
Where: New offices of Independence Institute
When: January 21 and January 28, 2012 from 9am-12noon (and more to come)
Cost: FREE
MUST RSVP by email to: services-at-peoplespresscollective-dot-org (Facebook RSVP does not count)

PPC is kicking off the year with an entirely new set of training classes and seminars–we’ve updated and retooled our presentations to bring you up-to-speed on the latest online tactics for liberty-minded digital activists.

Incorporating the latest developments in new and social media, while relying on our firm grasp of proven online strategies, we’ve rebuilt the digital curriculum to target both beginners just exploring the world of digital activism and those—like our own PPC alumni—who are ready to click their way to the next step online. We strongly encourage our PPC camp alumni to attend again–things have changed since 2009 (heck, they changed on us in the past couple weeks with Facebook’s new ‘Timeline’ feature!).

Partnering with the Independence Institute and American Majority, we are able to offer the trainings at no cost to you through our “digital scholarships”!

Our first two dates for the “Digital Fundamentals” classes have been announced: Saturday, January 21 and Saturday, January 28, both from 9am – 12pm, at the new offices of the Independence Institute in Denver. In this class we’ll take a look at the basics of blogging/citizen journalism, and focus on the biggest tools in the social media arsenal, Facebook and Twitter. The class will be the same each day; sign up for the date convenient to you!

Registration/check-in begins at 8:30. Please arrive promptly. Coffee and light refreshments will be provided prior to the beginning of each session.

In addition to these initial sessions, we will also be adding topic-specific seminars designed to go beyond the digital basics in several key areas, including video blogging, online legal considerations, research and writing methods, digital strategy, and more. We will announce those shorter one-hour weeknight sessions as we are able to schedule them. Stay tuned in the next few weeks for more details.

There’s more.

If you are located outside the Denver area, we may be able to bring the training to you and your group! Please email Michael at services-at-gmail-dot-com for more details. Travel/locations, class size, and availability are negotiable, and certain restrictions may apply.

***MUST READ–FINE PRINT***:
Though the Digital Fundamentals courses and topical seminars are free, we REQUIRE advanced RSVPs for each class, in order to provide for materials and refreshments.
Please RSVP with your name, date of session, preferred email address, and links to your website or Twitter feeds where applicable, no later than 24 hours prior to the start of each session. Campaign staff are welcome, but disclosure of affiliation is also required (thank you campaign finance). Late RSVPs will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Should you wish to bring friends–all are welcome–we do need the same information for all attendees in advance.

RSVP to: services-at-peoplespresscollective-dot-org

Space is limited–we like to keep the class size manageable to ensure quality contact between our students and ourselves and maximize available time for question and answer periods.

***DETAILS–DIRECTIONS AND WHAT TO BRING***:

DIRECTIONS: We are proud to welcome our students to the brand new Independence Institute offices located “Uptown” in Denver, at the corner of Clarkson and 16th Avenue, just a few blocks east of the Capitol. There is a small amount of free, on-site parking next to the building. We do not recommend parking on the street due to class length; there is, however, inexpensive paid parking available just two blocks west on Pearl Street.

727 E. 16th Ave.
Denver, CO 80218

INTERACTIVE MAP: http://www.i2i.org/contact.php

WHAT TO BRING: The Independence Institute has WiFi, so we strongly encourage you to bring your laptop, iPad, or Internet-enabled phone. Be prepared to generate story ideas or present an area of interest that you would like to pursue with your digital activism.

Given the Colorado Model and the mixed results of what should have been a great year in the 2010 midterms, nothing should be taken for granted in this state.

Probable defeat by dougle-digits? Make it a cool 27 percent. Run up the score. Motivate folks to mail in their ballots. Tax increases, like other left-wing incrementalism, are similar to Hollywood villains. They keep coming back. You don’t win until the ballots are counted on election, and even places like Denver turn their back on billions in tax hikes.

If you’ve got extra ammo left over after an election, even if you win, you didn’t do your job.

Even when it comes to the expected defeat of a proposed tax increase that, let’s just say, no one had the appetite for outside of State Sen. Rollie Heath’s home turf of Boulder, as election results demonstrated.

You probably heard that one, right? It was not me, however, estimating Coloradan’s appetite for such a ballot measure, but the newly-elected Governor of the state of Colorado, former Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, back in January:

“All of our legislature can tell you they – we have our work cut out for us in terms of just balancing the budget. There’s no extra money anywhere. Pretty much everything is pretty significantly funded, and yet there’s no appetite for taxes anywhere, all over the state. Well, maybe a couple neighborhoods in Boulder. Just a joke. Turn that camera off.”

Sorry, Gov. Hickenlooper. The cameras were rolling, and I managed to catch you in that moment of honest reflection after the election scrutiny had passed, in a post at WhoSaidYouSaid:

The video was cited by Compass Colorado in an ad attacking Sen. Evie Hudak for her support of Prop 103, in one of the few TV ads to appear during the 2011 cycle, and the only one featuring content by a conservative blogger in Colorado:

The power of video.

And I had no idea it would be so, all the way back in January. At the time, it seemed like just another of Hickenlooper’s folksy, off-the-cuff forthrightness that has made him a popular Colorado politician.

As an added bonus and a quick lesson for our side, earned media that can be captured on video is campaign gold. The Independence Institute decided to highlight the work of some studies that showed more than 5000 jobs would be lost as a result of Prop 103′s passage by toppling, you guessed it, more than 5000 dominoes.

Effective. Earned media. New media gold.

Turning briefly from straight-out investigative reporting or blogging, one of the highlights of my year was working with the fabulous Tabitha Hale, formerly New Media director at FreedomWorks, to put together a panel on ‘Building a State Blog Network’ for the group’s BlogCon11 conference held fortuitously in Denver in November.

Simply being listed among the star-studded speakers list on the conference agenda was an honor. I was joined by fellow People’s Press Collective cofounder T.L. James, the implacable Ari Armstrong, my former internship mentor and news guru Todd Shepherd of Complete Colorado and the Independence Institute, and my former coworker and video partner-in-crime at the state Capitol, Kelly Maher of WhoSaidYouSaid.

Our panel was extremely well-received by our blogging peers, and that was a great compliment:

@ChargerJeff: “Ahh. This is the panel I’ve been waiting for – setting up a State Blog Network and implementing the Colorado Model. #blogcon11 rolls on.”

@maggie82: “Enjoying infö from the Colorado group on building a state blogging network…there are things @SOBAlliance could learn/apply #blogcon11″

‎@orrinjohnson: “Really, really, impressed with the Colorado righty blog networks, aggregation. #jealous #inspiration #BlogCon11″

@jasonahart: “Panel of #Colorado bloggers from @peoplespress provide great discussion on how to work together writing for the web #blogcon11″

MIC CHECK!!!

Little did any of us know that it would be the thwarted attempt by Occupy Denver to disrupt BlogCon11 that would become not only local, but national news.

This well-distributed and well-trafficked PPC short video captured just a small portion of the, um, encounter with a cadre of Occupy Denver folks. A quick search of YouTube of BlogCon11-related videos reveals dozens of similar videos.

My friend Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit had some great recaps, as did Ed Morrissey of Hot Air.

Kurt Schlichter, an attendee at BlogCon11 and contributor at Big Government, summed up the encounter and offered advice on how to deal with the Occupods:

The big lesson of the Battle of BlogCon? When the Occupiers encounter resistance – real resistance that attacks their cherished premises with mockery and contempt – they will fold. This is a generation of special snowflakes, of kids instilled with self-esteem instead of a drive to achieve. No one has ever called them idiots before and treated them accordingly.

And they can’t take it. They’ve never had to defend their views against people who think they’re stupid. They simply don’t know how. The Occupy movement is performance art, not political science. It is an information operation, not an authentic, organic expression of beliefs.

They have not earned respect and they don’t deserve it. Don’t “engage” them, don’t “reason” with them, don’t try to “understand” their views.

Mock them. Treat them like the buffoons they are. And win.

How do we know we “won”?

Colorado blogger Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom managed to capture on video the appearance of a local Denver-area private school teacher who decided that attending an Occupy rally amounted to a great civics lesson. Unfortunately, the teacher could not withstand the scrutiny brought by the public appearance, including a couple media reports, and managed to convince YouTube to pull the video for violating privacy.

Here’s a lesson for the teacher–if you’re in public, you have very little expectation of privacy, and can be recorded at will according to Colorado law. How’s that for a civics lesson?

The beauty of the Internet is that the video, though pulled from YouTube, has been cached elsewhere several times over. We’ll add a tech lesson to the young progeny’s exposure to the real world.

MIC CHECK!!!

There have been some doozies, which would be an understatement.

Nominees include the two most obvious stories, redistricting and reapportionment. The decennial battle to redraw district lines in Colorado had its fair share of partisan acrimony and alleged political subterfuge. The battle over so-called “Amycare” and SB 200? Check. The momentous Lobato decision? Yep. Green jobs failures? Certainly. Rep. Sal Pace’s, um, “leaks”? Heh. Those too.

We did a bit of crowdsourcing on Facebook to establish a consensus on nominees, but unlike the climate change-mongers, the rankings aren’t “settled.”

We’ve compiled 27 different stories, or storylines, for your perusal. Some, like Occupy Denver, have a long narrative track, extending over many months, with several facets and players and interpretations. Others stories are more one-dimensional, but were also quite notable. Whether the stories could have been anticipated to develop in 2011 (redistricting and reapportionment occur every 10 years), or were spontaneous outgrowths that could not have been foreseen even by those with “conventional wisdom” in the political arena, these stories are what made the past year in politics in Colorado so damned interesting.

Some thought 2011 would be a quiet year in contrast to 2010′s clusterf**k or 2012′s media circus. Looking back on the past several years, this political observer can only say that he agrees with our state’s border welcome signs–welcome to colorful Colorado!

There is, however, no intent to judge the merits of the particular stories themselves; i.e., to re-litigate, debate, critique or reassess the stories. We’re just concerned with what the readers found most memorable or most newsworthy compared to the other stories that emerged in 2011. Some might base their ranking on the sensationalism of the story, or perhaps their personal involvement in the narrative (like defeating Prop 103). Others may eschew the flashier but not all that impactful stories in favor of the more wonky stories that will have a meaningful influence on Colorado politics for years to come. Any method you, our readers, use is ok by us.

Just let us know what you think! The voting will close Thursday, December 29 at 5pm MST. We’ll post the rankings on New Years’ Eve eve, with links to relevant news outlets and blogs who played key roles in uncovering, reporting, and detailing the stories that come out on top. No comprehensive recaps, just a quick flashback to PPC’s favorite political moments in 2011.

Thank you.

**A special thanks to Ben DeGrow and Mary Ila MacFarlane for beta testing the survey. Any faults are solely that of the author, and formatting, well, blame SurveyMonkey. Cheers.

I will start by sharing some of my thoughts on the alleged intellectual majesty and mystery of the shenanigans currently gripping America.  One thing I must give the OWS monkeys right off the bat is that they have nicely demonstrated that irate protest may thrive in the total absence of coherent motives.

However, Eric Hoffer long ago noted that mass movements don’t need a God but they absolutely must have a Devil.  Did you catch what I was doing there?  That’s right, kids; I was being intellectual.  I have proved that I read books, and understand at least some of them.  If my bet, that most people accept what they see in print and don’t do their own research, is correct (and it is), I could just as easily have claimed that Hoffer’s real assertion was that politically confused naifs will sell out their cause for Starbucks on a chilly day.

Such blather makes up the article I am keen to lambaste.  Author Dan Berrett basically noticed that pseudo-Marxist polemicists have decamped from faculty lounges and alternative book stores to preen and squawk over a walking, talking, sign-waving sociology dissertation.  Wherever two or more petulant lefties of average intellect are gathered, so also is an academic leftie with dreams of being first author.  (When right-wingers congregate in similar numbers, the academy maintains a healthy distance and remotely diagnoses psychological maladies.)  

Berrett’s giddiness over all the academic celebrities flocking around OWS is not, as he maintains, a purely abstract meditation on what it all means.  It is an entirely predictable market function.  Academics live on what is called “Publish or Perish”.  By nature and by need they are always looking for something interesting enough to make it past peer review and get a few citations.  The attendance of the Ivory Tower set at a prolonged anti-Capitalist screed event betrays the market realities of everything humans do far more than the titular ‘intellectual roots’.

However, I did not read through Barrett’s entire piece in order to agree with myself about how pompous most intellectuals are, or how they are endlessly pretending it’s all about knowledge and not at all about ego or paycheck.  Though Berrett tosses in some ideas about OWS properly being a grassroots phenomenon, he spends most of his effort of crediting professional intellectuals for the spread of the protests.  Berrett favorably cites the ethnography of one David Graeber, who spent time in the jungles of Madagascar studying the Betafo people.  Graeber noticed that, without a strong, central government, the Betafo were still capable of cooperating and completing projects.  It took him 20 months to figure this out and he trumpeted it to the world as a watershed idea, the entire millenia old body of libertarian though having apparently escaped him.

The Betafo are descendants of slaves left behind on Madagascar when the state bugged out, having more of less decided it had better things to do then pester humans.  This, I would like to tell Mssrs. Berrett and Graeber, is not a vindication of far-left anarchy.  It is a libertarian fantasy come true.  The success of the Betafo also testifies to the validity of many small-government, market-dominated ideas.  According to Graeber, it never occured to the Betafo to seek out or create a top heavy state, nor did it occur to them they were somehow deprived without such an apparatus.  They just figured out what they needed and took care of it.  That humans are capable of such spontaneous order, self-direction, and granular level planning is a key free market argument.

What Graeber calls “consensus decision making” is really just Spontaneous Order with a new name.  No self-respecting wonk could, of course, use such a term as it implies the ghastly idea that people can do plenty without intellectuals thinking it up first.  Much of Berrett’s article is, in fact, just that – an attempt to find direct academic ancestors to the OWS protests.  Why it would be so awful to admit that people took to the streets for some reason other than the dense prose of Ivy League luminaries is beyond me.  These are angry people with some legitimate complaints who are pursuing a remedy to a felt need.

Yes, the sort of real brains who define entire eras and movements develop truly new ideas or effect a near miracle by capturing something amorphous and nascent already in a lot of peoples’ heads.  But a great many of the scribbling class are actually analyzing, synthesizing, explaining, and cataloging.  I believe all that has benefit, but it is reactionary stuff; it comes after people (some of whom don’t even have one advanced degree) are already engaged in something.  I will also concede that there are feedback loops; as much as intellectuals get grist for the mill from observing, so people are influenced by what they read.

What has me ticked off is Berrett’s assertion that OWS must somehow be consciously acting on some scholar’s brilliant words and his subsequent mission to figure out who that might be.  Obviously, he likes Graeber, who returned from Madagascar to organize some of the first anti-globalization stunts in London.  This, Berrett holds, is sufficient to credit Graeber as something of an academic sperm donor to OWS.

Who else, though, he wonders.  It surprises Berrett to find a growing ‘Peoples’ Library‘ at the Zuccotti Park protest site in New York.  People have contributed their own titles and someone has taken the initiative to keep the books in boxes with plastic sheeting to block water, a verified instance of organic cooperation that could only ever surprise a socialist.  OWS even has a librarian, who delivers a vicious backhanded compliment when he purrs, “I really am amazed for the respect they have for the word”, as if it should be expected that the protesters are all bumpkins.  He adds, “There’s a real reverence for what has been written that has surprised me, since they eschew whatever came before, all the thought that came before.”

No, you blustering twit.  OWS members are not contemptuous of all that came before.  They are perfectly happy to recreate all sorts of mayhem that fizzled out long before they were born, and more than a few of them get off on that execrable 19th century German economic rat.  Hearing such a pandering quote from someone who, I think it’s fair to say, supports the protests, was a bit surprising.  Then again, it does indicate that same intellectual haughtiness, the blithe certainty that the little people don’t read and must be given their ideas.  Why someone like Berrett, hell-bent as he is on assigning academic ownership of OWS, quotes this befuddled librarian, who seems shocked that average people still like books, is the real oddity.

One can’t conceive of unwashed souls, souls without tenure, kickstarting something.  The other marvels to see them seek out ideas.  I say OWS could stand to clarify whatever ideas it has a bit more.

Such a disconnect does still encapsulate something I’ve noticed in the rapidly growing body of commentary on OWS.  Observers praise the natural, grassroots flavor, the welcoming and participation by all comers, the lack of an obvious leader.  And, with the next breath, they trot out the old argument about central planning being so bloody crucial.

If anything, it seems that OWS’ problem is that the people camping out don’t really have a fully developed message, but that plenty of self-congratulatory men with unhealthy power lust have fully crystallized ideas about what to do with the great huddled masses.

And he illustrated it with a Venn Diagram.  Which I kind of loved.  (Venns are basically infographics for people who understand basic statistics but not graphic design.)

Could both sides have a valid point?  Capitalism is groovy.  Corrupt business practices, rent seeking, protectionism, and deliberately distorting the market to block competition are not capitalistic.  Just because men in business suits are doing it doesn’t make it true capitalism or good business.  Hell, it’s possible for registered Republicans to be bad people.

We all seize on quotes when an avowed lefty admits the government may have gone too far as proof that we really were right.  Is it maybe time to admit that an obsessive and all-encompassing defense of large corporations isn’t so smart a strategy?  I don’t see a problem in reconciling this with being an aggressively free-market type.  Governments protecting existing businesses isn’t capitalism, and I think it’s a little disingenuous to pretend that isn’t going on.

As Sinclair points out, the real threat to entrenched whores-in-power-suspenders* would arrive if these two groups considered what they have in common.  Of course, this means OWS needs to lose the romantic Marxist baloney and the Tea Party needs to spend some time apart from those beloved hardcore social values.  But hell, if those two annoyances were removed from political discourse, it would be a big improvement all by itself.

Eileen McGuire-Mahony still reminds you to spellcheck your protest signs, factcheck your soundbites, and make time for a shower with hot water at least once every 24 hours.  Hygiene isn’t bourgeois; it’s polite.  The world is a screwed up place and there will still be plenty to howl about when you rejoin the group.

* Actually, I somewhat like the look of suspenders, very ‘soaring-blue-chip-index’ without all the nasty S&L crisis associations.  Still, have cliche…will travel.

The world is full of willing people;  some willing to work, the rest willing to to let them.

~ Robert Frost

Yesterday, I was having a fit because big name groups, groups whose senior staff have probably not set foot outside of Washington DC proper in years, are raising more money than ever and still expecting the grassroots to toil for free.

I’d like to expand on that.  Really, I want to explore how much front line activists do, how much expertise they often possess, how much they pay for out of hand, and how little they get – both in pay and in gratitude.

Let’s paint a picture of what real grassroots work means.

Knocking doors means trudging around a strange neighborhood repeating the same introduction and pitch hundreds of times, each time as enthusiastically as ever.  People will slam doors on your, swear at you, and tell you you’re bad person for supporting the candidate or issue at hand.  Given the timing of America’s elections, this is going on during the height of the summer and the fall.  If you don’t think September and October are hot months in Colorado, you try 16 hours of nonstop movement, on concrete, in jeans and a polyester t-shirt.

Also, dogs will chase you.  Sometimes of their own volition and sometimes on orders.

Oh, yeah, about that concrete.  In 2006, in a desperate attempt to send a decent man to to Congress, I spent 65 of the final 72 hours before the election working, mostly sprinting around with doorhangers.  Despite wearing terrific cross trainers, the soles of my feet were in such agony I could not comfortably bear my own weight for a week.  My candidate lost.  I got half a glass of flat champagne.

Phone banking is just as bad.  Yes, you can sit down.  But you’re still cold calling people , often in the middle of their dinner or on their Holy Day.  Also, if you never saw the studies or just figured it out on your own, people find it easier to be rude when they don’t need to see the person they’re belittling.  I’ve been insulted plenty of times, but the first time I ever got called an emissary of Satan by a man who obviously meant it was when I was calling through a list of unregistered voters, urging them to take advantage of their Constitutional right.

I will tell you something else that just stinks about phone banking.  It’s nothing but push polling.  No one ever gets good data out of it.  Nor do campaigns pretend otherwise.  The fresh meat will take it seriously, carefully noting things down about the people they talk to, using their own phones when the cheap bricks provided by the campaign give out, sincerely trying to offer helpful ideas to the higher-ups, who are usually conducting bullshit sessions in their offices.

Once, I had been so thoroughly chewed out by one man that I made a point of explicitly telling the actual staff to scratch him of the list.  He clearly didn’t want to hear from anyone and he was so rude I didn’t think anyone else deserved to listen to him.  Days later, I came by to do my bit for liberty and was handed a list of people to call, including that guy.  Years later, I have a theory that phone banking is an elaborate game whereby salaried campaign staffers bet on how long any given volunteer will take it.

What else do the unpaid and unsung minions do?  They set new land speed records to appear at six caucuses on the same night and rouse the troops at each stop.  They show up to a frozen parking lot at 2 am on a miserable February morning to meticulously prepare for a nominating convention.   They stuff envelopes and assemble lawn signs at the rate of a couple thou’ a night.  They create elaborate deserts for 150 on their own time and with their own money when the campaign can’t afford a caterer.  They do the set-up, the management, and the clean-up for every event every time.  They get deliberately splashed and drive-by insulted as they hover on corners, waving poorly conceived signs.

If your own political activism was in left-leaning causes and you can’t believe that right wing campaigns won’t even spring for parking and gas for those who really drive the day-to-day success of a race, now you know.   It’s one thing to expect that people trying to break in to the world put in their dues.  But the extent to which center-right campaigns expect people to work without any compensation is excessive.  Even worse is the lack of gratitude.  Center-right political work in America is functioning on borrowed time.  The entire game plan assumes the same people will happily be doormats for now and always.

When you’re young and politics is exciting and new, you have reserves of energy and commitment that will boggle you years later, as you recall how much you once cared.  However, enthusiasm is not a self-renewing resource.  In fact, once it falls below some critical level, it’s just gone.  The glorified monkeys at the top of America’s right could not be doing more to annihilate the enthusiasm of their grassroots if they tried.

Another thing about the young and naive is that they may be great labor pools for stuff that requires no special expertise.  However, the way they get treated often ensures that once those energetic undergrads are old enough to have some serious experience and know-how, they are burnt out.  The right’s problem with how it solicits professional level work will be my next post.

Clearly, the milk of human kindness has curdled in Eileen McGuire-Mahony’s veins.  You can help out with insightful comments, oodles and oodles of money, and muffin baskets.

Frankly, I think they’re spot on.

These groups are hauling it in like never before in the wake of the 2009-2010 Tea Party phenom…something they can’t legitimately claim to have sparked.  Local activists, and a lot of people who’d never been “political” before, were fed up and did something about it.  The usual major groups out of DC, doing things the usual way, had more to do with the 2006 and 2008 debacles than with the belated pushback.  However, it’s the usual Potomac Crowd making mad bank from this surge of patriotic indignation.

Such Washington heavies and their favored establishment kiddies don’t share.  Worse, they aren’t interested in spending money wisely.  Donations go into huge salaries for those at the top, into a perpetual series of invitation only soirees, into honorariums for political celebrities that are twice what most local activists could expect to earn in a year, into endorsements of nebulous value, into feeding overpriced but well-connected vendors who peddle ‘consulting’ and ‘event planning’ for eyewatering sums…in short, into everything but funding work on the ground level.  Politico has some numbers likely to raise eyebrows.  I don’t doubt it.  And, lest it weren’t clear already, I don’t believe those expenditures are having an effect at all commensurate with the cost.

Says American Majority leader Ned Ryun, “There isn’t an unlimited pool of cash in the conservative movement, and my concern is that some of these big national groups are sucking up money that could otherwise go to the local tea party leaders who are the ones really making things happen on the ground.”

Damn straight, Ned.  We’d buy you a drink but, like most activists on the actual front lines, we can’t even afford enough lipstick to look pretty these days.

National groups are honey tongued enough when asking for contact lists and briefing on business models.  The very sad truth is that a lot of good groups quickly find their calls aren’t returned and the promised land of funding and support never materializes.  Entrenched outfits, overwhelmingly based in Washington, are far more apt to take whatever work product and data they can and run.

At the same time, national operatives just don’t give much back.  Many won’t do so much as make introductions or share contact information, so intense is the fear of losing a donor or no longer being the lone gatekeeper to some major player.

Small groups are, as the article surmises, “cannibalized.”  It’s hardly new for a weary grassroots type to see his idea making waves on all the network shows without his name ever coming up.  Often, a lifted idea is handed off to some favored insider, a good many of whom run those ideas into the ground.

Unfortunately, the same people do manage to secure funding over and over, with questionable tactics and vague results never really holding them back.  I have seen the scope of what does and does not get funded, and I have seen the class of people who will always have a backer, no matter how lackluster their performance was the last time around.

Honestly, fundraising is a nightmare for smaller groups.  It is indescribably difficult to get that first major backer when you’re still a minor league outfit.  I think that the mindset of many donors is to trust huge groups with DC offices, assuming those are the ones who know how to distribute money and that worthy activists will receive a share.  Worse, I think that outlook is encouraged by the same major organizations.

Adam Brandon, a talking head with FreedomWorks and one of my new least favorite people, fairly oozes patronizing offal on this point.  ”If you want to get a bunch of people together to go walk neighborhoods, do you really need a legal structure? You get lawyers involved, it gets expensive. So, a lot of groups rely on us to take care of the backbone infrastructure, so they can focus in on the activism.”

What a champ!  I can stomp around in 90 degrees heat for 14 hours and maybe have a slice of cold pizza with congealed pseudo-cheese waiting for me back at HQ! Meanwhile, you’ll do all that hard work of schmoozing and taking meetings! Because I’m obviously not cut out for such a challenge!  Hot damn, you brilliant boy!  Say, Adam, are you single?!?!

Adam freely admits he “counsels” local groups not to incorporate, likely with fire and brimstone pictures of the headaches caused by paperwork and legal compliance.  Of course, an unincorporated group isn’t often able to even seek donations, but I’m sure the solicitous Mr. Brandon has a line for that, too.

Here’s the bottom line.  The executives and consultants who occupy the top of the center-right’s food pyramid are used to getting an insane amount of work for free.  To date, they’ve been able to whine about how hard up for funds they are and toss off the “If you loved liberty, you’d do it for free” line.  If that sounds to you like it’s better suited to picking up a whore at a political convention than for recruiting experienced professionals, you’re starting to grasp it.

What could be activism infrastructure and an impressive new media machine are in such a sorry state, especially relative to the left, because they are comprised of activists who can only do what they can in their free time.  At the height of the election, grossly underpaid and hideously overworked staffers might be briefly flung at some project.  But, in the mind of right-wing Washington, there is no need to pay for any of that, let alone, to keep it going.  Whatever survives from one cycle to the next to be resurrected owes to suburbanites running things from their living room.

In that the ‘little people’ ought to be involved, that’s great.  In that they aren’t at the table and that they aren’t getting the rewards of their work, it’s a shame.

Obviously, pretending people can be had indefinitely is not a viable business model.  I think limited government interests will suffer in 2012 if this funding nightmare abides.  Nor am I hopeful things will improve.  Certain people have benefited from the current arrangement for too long to welcome change.  Once you’ve made that first mistake of working for someone for free, it’s damn hard to convince them you need to be paid for what you contribute.  Activists would also need to be willing to walk away in large enough numbers to send a convincing message.

What can I say?  Cynicism is a smart worldview.  Overwhelmingly, I’m right.  When I’m not, it’s a pleasant surprise.

Eileen McGuire-Mahony is very crabby this morning, largely due to this article.  She has worked on campaigns and she has been to Washington.  It is her considered opinion that rank and file campaign staffers are paid and treated like dirt.  But she will say that the invitation only, open bar goings-on in DC are spec-bloody-tacular. She’d love to hear your thoughts on the hackneyed funding situation, unless you are Adam Brandon, in which case you may go get bent.

Simply put–we’re better than the competition. More advanced and thorough than similar digital training camps, yet at a better price.

That’s not to say that other training camps aren’t helpful or useful. We’ve been to some of them ourselves, and found them to be good in areas PPC doesn’t cover–campaign training, fundraising, etc.

But when it comes to the digital domain of blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, video, SEO, OIM, and legal issues–to name a few–we’ve got you more than covered.

How? We’re Colorado-based. Everyone will tell you that focusing on where you live, your niche, is where the future of digital activism resides. They’ll tell you local, local, local.

We are local. PPC’s founders and contributors are the longest-tenured convservative and libertarian bloggers and digital activists in the state. Veterans of political campaigns, policy debates, and students of Colorado’s unique political history, we know local. That was PPC’s primary founding objective–cover the 2008 Democratic National Convention from a local’s perspective, and with a Colorado voter’s interest in mind.

Everyone will tell you to develop a mission or goal (supporting or opposing ballot initiatives, working for a candidate, conducting investigative research on things like government spending). However, being unfamiliar with local stories, they won’t be able to tell you where to begin–there is no follow through.

We follow through. When it comes to SEO targeting for school board elections or ballot initiatives, we’ve taken over Google’s front page of search returns. When it comes to online identity management, yeah, we’ve done that too. And we know how to get folks started on CORA requests and other statewide databases to search for government largesse.

Everyone will tell you to make phone calls, send emails, and build relationships with other bloggers, receptive media outlets, and local activists.

We know the people. When you’re looking for ways to build your contacts, we know the folks that can help you achieve your goals.

When I visited Wyoming in May of this year, they asked if I knew about the Colorado Democracy Alliance, or The Blueprint. My response: we’ve been fighting CODA since its inception in 2004 and proliferation from 2006 to present. We knew about CODA before it was breaking news, and have developed strategies to combat the digital attack.

We saw The Blueprint develop in real time, and we wasted no time in responding.

While PPC might be content to pride itself on simply being the vanguard of the Colorado bloggertariat, we must also describe how our camps differ from our friendly competition:

1) Even at the fundamentals level, we don’t skimp on details. This is a fast-paced, bring you up-to-speed presentation on digital activism that goes beyond signing you up for Facebook and Twitter. Those platforms are just tools. We tell you how to make them useful.

2) We include presentations others don’t. The place of video in today’s political world is undeniable. We’ve shot the viral footage, and created viral videos (we’ll have more on the whole concept of “viral” too!). This camp will feature insights from an actual political videographer–someone who does this for a living. How can you make your activism more effective with video? We’ll show you how.

3) Legal issues–something almost no one else touches. What are your rights as a videographer or photographer? How does one negotiate a CORA request? What’s libel and slander? We’ve got a lawyer who can show you how to navigate Colorado’s wiretapping laws. You won’t find that in other presentations (not to mention, at $50 for each class, you wouldn’t get more than 15-20 minutes of a lawyer’s time at that price).

4) How does this digital stuff work? We not only know the code, we’ve written the code (or at least our resident computer programmer has). PPC has been at the cutting edge of technology since its inception. Live streaming online video from the field? We pioneered that in 2008, before anyone else at the national level, let alone Colorado. And online “traffic” is more than numbers. Targeting the right audience is more important than the size of your audience.

5) Did I mention we’ve got lawyers?

Just kidding.

So once again, we’ve got you covered on both the fundamentals and taking those skills to the next step. That’s why we’ve added a second class this time around, to build on what our previous camp alumni have learned, and to bring in additional resources and tactics to augment our program. And we haven’t forgotten the fundamentals, for those who wish to refresh their knowledge, and those who are just thinking about dipping into this exciting and exhausting but ultimately rewarding channel for political activism.

And we’ve got you covered after the camp is over. We live here–so we’re not off to DC once the day is done. We’ll be here the next day after the camp, and throughout the 2012 election, fighting side-by-side with you for free markets, limited government, and personal liberties against government corruption and attacks by the opposition.

We won’t go away, and supporting this camp will help us stick around for a while longer.

Win-win. Working together, collectively for freedom.

Click here to sign up and to view our camp agenda.