Tactical Proposal

Dear Get Money Out: October 10, 2011

Since I received your letter earlier this week, both the occupy movement and your petition drive have gained tremendous support; the rage for positive change has grown quickly. In fact, the rage for change has grown enough that its not too early to begin to debate on ways and means on how exactly we will harness this energy to direct our attention at the government.

We may have only a very small window of opportunity to translate this into political influence without diluting the movement by reducing it to just another special interest group in the realm of electoral politics. Even in a best case scenario, the amendment would not get passed until at least 2013 at the earliest. I seriously dont think we can wait that long. How do we get from here to there?

Most of the money is raised for TV advertising. Conventional Wisdom dictates TV ads are an absolute necessity if one is to have any chance winning an election. The current price for a congressional seat is set by a cartel of the major media networks and the large corporate donors. The politician is almost inevitably a pawn in this transaction between corporate donor and media outlet. Like The New York Yankees, The Koch Brothers (and others) set the price, and if any other team wishes to compete on their field they have to up the ante---and in this sense the Koch Brothers win, even if they lose, if only by depleting the coffers of their opponent; as long as Meg Whitman forced Jerry Brown to spend more money, more of our money, Meg Whitman didnt really lose. But when was the last time a movement, grounded in economic populism, actually tried to test this wisdom, and undercut Big Moneys field out from under them?

In this sense, GET MONEY OUT means GET TV ADS OUTNOW. Since passing a law to ban political advertising on TV is as unlikely in this post-Citizens United era as passing a Public Finance of Election amendment, we propose, for immediate discussion and debate, an Adopt-A-Politician Plan as we gear up for the 2012 election. Simply put:

Get Money Out will use all the resources at our disposal to support any candidate, in the 2012 Election (on Federal, State and Local) levels, on the condition that this candidate, in addition to endorsing the central tenants of the Occupy Wall Street statement and Get Money Out, refuses to take out any Television advertising.

You may call it what you want. We certainly would not object if you lent your high-visibility position and announced Dylan Ratigans Adopt-A-Politician Plan on your MSNBC program (with the Get Money Out logo highly visible) to put out an open call to politicians running for national, local, and state offices in 2012. Surely some quality candidates (even disaffected existing ones such as Weiner, Grayson, and Spitzer) will step up to refuse TV advertising with all of the human resources at our disposal. But if theyre not already high profile, together, we can help make them!

Let me put it another way: imagine a successful congressional campaign that could be run at 1% of the current market value a congressional seat goes for. The best way to lower the cost, the market value, of the congressional seat, is to buy (work for) a version that is higher quality for exactly the same reason she or he is cheaper! Ideally, such a plan would also help liberate these politicians to vote their conscience, as Randi Rhodes repeatedly says There are many currently elected officials who are as disgusted with the necessity of dialing for dollars and how this prevents them from voting their conscience. This is an opportunity for us to make them accountable, and let them know we have their back.

If we can prevent political ads on TV, wouldnt that go much further than simply trying to get it out of politics? Such a plan may not render legislation superfluous, but it could be done without requiring donations, and could actually have a positive effect on the economy in the meantime.

If Get Money Out is to have any chance as a positive force beyond the petition drive, it is absolutely crucial that Get Money Out does not itself turn into an issue-oriented organization like Move On.Org, whose emails are often nothing but a thinly veiled appeal to Bring Money In; our money. Money we dont even have, and which can never win against Big Money. The fact that you didnt place a donate button alongisde your petition drive attracted many us, and not because were cheap, or uncommitted, but because we have resources that can be greater than money.

For example, during the 2010 mid-term elections, when progressive democrats were going up against corporate sponsored blue dog democrats in primaries and corporate sponsored Tea-Party candidates in the general election, Move On would repeatedly send emails that were variations on conventional political wisdom that has grown increasingly cancerous during the last 30 years:

Despite being outspent (at least 5X) by Wallmart Democrat, the candidate we support has moved within 2 percentage points, but we need money for the final push. Can you help?

I wrote to Move On; has it ever occurred to you that the reason the progressive candidate has done so well is not despite being outspent, but actually because she was outspent? Move On did not write back in response to the Adopt-A-Politician Plan and instead took out the ads, and the candidate still lost. While Move.On could be a useful ally, they base their donation campaigns on a faulty assumption that dooms many of their efforts.

While we write this letter to you, Dylan, we perfectly understand if this particular tactical strategy is not something you want to be a part of, or cannot help with. But in the next several weeks, I am making it my top priority to utilize all my skills of persuasion to promote, investigate, and fine-tune this particular idea to begin a discussion with others who have other practical ideas (so-called crackpot ideas that buck conventional wisdom are especially welcome). Even if we are only able to convince 2 or 3% of the 99% that this idea is worthy of devoting our resources to, I see no better way, given the lack of money we have, of harnessing this energy in ways that could have positive results even before the 2012 election.

Sincerely,

Chris Stroffolino, Occupy Laney College; Occupy KUSF

On Sep 16, 2011, at 11:48 AM, Barrett Brown wrote:

Hi, Chris-

The candidate is Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, who was imprisoned by the old regime in the '60s and has otherwise been heavily involved in the pro-democracy movement for decades. Here's some basic info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Najib_Chebbi And here's his Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ahmed-Nejib-CHEBBI/30179433180

If you'd like to speak with my Tunisian counterpart who's handling our effort on the ground there, you can add him on Skype: jokoforlan1 He speaks good French and Arabic, passable English; I often use Google translate in addition to English and a few words of Arabic to communicate with him.

Haven't heard back from David yet, but at any rate there's no rush on this - the elections aren't until July, and I'm going to be busy with several other efforts in the meantime. So we have plenty of time for people to decide if they're interested in supporting this fellow and plan what sort of projects might be most helpful (as I mentioned earlier, a well-made YouTube video with solid info on him is the main thing we're interested in doing at the moment).

I'm heading to NYC tomorrow and will be in meetings from Monday to Wednesday, but I'd love to chat later in the week if you have a moment.

Thanks again for getting back to me on this; I appreciate your interest.

On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Chris Stroffolino <chris.stroffolino@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Barrett---

Yes, sounds great. Let me know when the Tunisian allies determine a candidate, and who that is, his platform, past history, etc.

Have you heard from David yet?

I could write him too---

I'm away from phone access this weekend, but we could talk monday if you want.
My number is 415-260-7535

Chris

On Sep 9, 2011, at 5:19 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:

Chris-

You may remember that Anonymous was heavily involved in the North African revolutions, particularly Tunisia. I'm still working with some of the Tunisians with whom we collaborated starting in early February, and they've proposed that we restart OpTunisia in an effort to help ensure that the winner of the presidential election next July will be someone without connections to the former regime. Anonymous itself can't support particular candidates, but my two-year old online group Project PM, which includes many Anons and former Anons, is going to be doing what we can to make the case for a particular candidate that our Tunisians believe to be the best bet.

I wanted to see if you might be interested in helping us a bit later on when we start making viral videos and that sort of thing in support of this candidate. If so, e-mail me back or give me a call at 512-560-2302. I just e-mailed Berman about this too, in case you two might want to collaborate on a little something.

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 6:11 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
We're still studying the intelligence contracting industry with the attention of bring more attention to the matter. A few weeks ago I released a report on Romas/COIN, a complex intelligence operations apparatus that is detailed in the HBGary e-mails; I've done several interviews on the subject and have two documentary crews coming by over the next two weeks to interview me on the subject. Our info is put up on our wiki: http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 12:50 AM, Chris Stroffolino <chris.stroffolino@gmail.com> wrote:

Alas, I figured as much.

What's your current project by the way?

Chris

On Jul 12, 2011, at 9:34 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:

I think it already has, although I don't see anything fundamental coming of any of this.

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 5:42 PM, Chris Stroffolino <chris.stroffolino@gmail.com> wrote:

Do you think some of the recent news about Murdoch may ripple over to the Fox Empire?

Perhaps a hopeful development?

Chris

--
Regards,

Barrett Brown
512-560-2302