Reddit is a rapidly growing social news website with over 20 million active users. It does not have the aesthetic design of Digg, although it tends to generate more quality discussions and is far more versatile. Reddit is now the traffic king of the social news sites and an excellent place for advocates of real reform and progress to gather.

The concept is simple: democracy of the internet. Reddit users (called Redditors) post links to articles in various topical sections and ideally the best content rises to the top. The very best content can make it to the Reddit front page where thousands of people will see key articles, videos, or pictures. Reddit already has a strong activist community, and Redditors have been behind such things as Jon Stewart’s Rally To Restore Sanity, anti-SOPA campaigns, and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities like Doctors Without Borders. A good visual primer can be found here.

General Strategies
There is no place to write a short bio or upload an avatar on your profile page, so you will be known strictly by your username, submissions, and comments. Whereas getting stories off the ground on Digg depends on having a strong base of loyal and active friends because votes are visible, the rise and fall of content on Reddit is largely organic. Good fresh content from solid and/or original sources tends to float to the top and the Reddit community is merciless in downvoting bad articles and spammy websites. Images tend to do very well, try to use Imgur which was developed by a Redditor or the original picture source.

To begin with, familiarize yourself with the interface and Reddit subsections (subreddits described below). Try to submit ~5 articles/pics per day from a variety of sources, read the comments, browse various sections, and throw in a few good comments elsewhere on the site. Submit from any good source as quality blogs have as much of a chance at getting traction as well established sites.  Upvote the submits and comments you like or that contribute to the overall quality of Reddit.

After about a month when you are familiar with how the site works, you can start to submit more content (try to not exceed 25/day), engage in more discussions, and begin to message other Redditors for more personal conversations. Your New-User badge will soon disappear, and it is time to verify your email address to get the ‘verified user’ badge (it demonstrates you’re not some type of troll). At this stage, you should know the best subreddits to post material in and how to customize the titles to get better traction. Another thing to note is that Reddit is one of the social media sites that allow multiple accounts (as does Twitter), so long as you do not use them to ghost vote (aka vote pad) submissions or comments.

Be sure to give an honest effort to truly participate in the Reddit community. Not only is it worth it, but if you just use the site as a link dump, you will be sent to Report The Spammers and possibly hellbanned.  It takes a while to learn the ropes, establish a strong presence, and acquire a good group of friends on Reddit, but it is the key social news site to share important progressive articles. Be patient, eventually, 10-20% of the articles you submit should get decent penetration, generate some excellent discussion, and help to inform win over some hearts and minds to real change and reform.

External Websites
While there aren’t many useful external websites to make Reddit an easier experience, it is a MUST to install the Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES).  RES makes Reddit far more functional and user-friendly. Note that this will require using the GreaseMonkey extension for your browser. There is an official Reddit App for your mobile device, but a far more useful one is Alien Blue (freeware works well or use the Pro version for $2). You can also upgrade to Reddit Gold if you send them a little bit of cash or a postcard.

If you are posting an image, check to see if it has been previously posted on Reddit at KarmaDecay. For those who want to create and customize their own subreddit, find tips and tricks at RedditHax.  You can quickly post content you find by using the Shareaholic browser extension, but never vote on previously submitted content using it. The #1 reason folks get hellbanned on Reddit is for being in voting cliques, and Shareaholic cannot distinguish between active and banned/spam-filter submits already on the site. If you like an article and want to give it some love on Reddit, best to just take the extra time to manually search for it directly on the site.

SubReddits
Instead of being required to make the submit title exactly what was on the article, properly editorialized titles or strong excerpts tend to get far more traction as long as it accurately reflects the article (except in places like r/politics). Reddit submits titles are limited to 300 characters, so for particularly long excerpts use a character counter to see how much you need to trim down. One can also repost the same article as many times as they wish, provided each time it is to a different Reddit community (also referred to as sections or subreddits). Reposting multiple times can be considered bad Reddiquette, so cross post sparingly.

Although there are hundreds of different Reddit sections, the most important for the progressive internet activist is probably /r/politics.  There are a million subscribers, so when you find some powerful articles, this is the place to post it. A smaller community where you might want to get more familiar with the process and find some solid folks would be /r/progressive, which has over 10,000 members. You can find a complete list of reddits sorted by number of subscribers and a list of reddits by general category.  Other communities you might be interested in could include:

Large Subreddits (with approx. subscribers):
/r/politics 1,000,000
/r/news 115,000
/r/worldnews 1,000,000
/r/worldPolitics 45,000

Left-leaning Subreddits:
/r/occupywallstreet 29,000
/r/progressive/ 13,000
/r/liberal 3700
/r/democrats 2700
/r/obama 17,500
/r/2012elections 600
/r/AmericanPolitics/ 2500
/r/rpac/ 2300
/r/neoprogs/ 1000
/r/alltheleft/ 1300
/r/demsocialist/ 1400
/r/labor/ 800
/r/greenparty/ 600
/r/americanpirateparty 2700
/r/sopa 18,000

Various Subreddits:
/r/science 560,000
/r/atheism 170,000
/r/skeptic 32,000
/r/education 11,000
/r/environment 66,000
/r/energy 29,000
/r/green 9000
/r/trees 113,000
/r/Marijuana 41,000
/r/drugs/ 43,000
/r/health 41,000
/r/vegan 7100
/r/Economics 81,000
/r/Equality/ 8000
/r/women/ 13,000
/r/TwoXChromosomes 50,000
/r/feminisms 10,000
/r/lgbt 31,000
/r/gay 1000
/r/wikileaks 12,000
/r/anonymous 2000
/r/Anarchism 20,000
/r/Anarchistnews 1000
/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut 17,000

Content
Although the design has no aesthetic appeal, Reddit has a versatile interface on finding quality content. For instance, you can just go to the front page for all topics (sort by Hot, New, Controversial, or Top), check the various sections (like /r/politics), browse by site (like the NYT), or keep up with what your friends are submitting.  Do not blind upvote. Check out the content you support and make sure the Reddit sub is active (in the /new section or front page). The best way to keep a good community with quality content is by having a community that supports only quality content.

Since Reddit consistently has the best content that also goes popular the quickest, this is also an excellent source to find bold progressive articles that can be reshared on other social media sites. Submit quality content yourself, contribute to the awesomeness that is Reddit.

Comments
You can easily see who has responded to you and also who has sent you a private message at your Inbox.  As with every social media website, comments are an excellent way to connect with like minded people, but can be a tremendous investment of time.

While there are some trolls, getting banned for comments is very rare, and the quality of discussion at Reddit is often exceptionally good. Witty and intelligent comments do well regardless of political orientation, and the caliber of discussions for social news is only exceeded by the tiny site MetaFilter. “Republicans are corporate whores” may be fun to say, but that type of comment will not be well received on Reddit. Citing direct Republican actions that are selling America down the river for corporate profits and control will work much better.

Top Progressive Redditors
Below are some of the top progressively-oriented users on Reddit.  While the community is far too large and diverse to list everyone, this representative sample should get you started.  Some of these folks are in the top 20 list of karma accumulation of all time.

Big Redditors
maxwellhill
wang-banger
SarahLee
backpackwayne
GenJonesMom
PhilPerspective
rmuser
Anomaly100
Lola77
nirad
Maddoktor2
reeds1999
redcolumbine
SpinningHead
smartasswhiteboy
Designthing
dangercollie

Strong Submitters
jasonleopold
btrfly
shihtzuman
stephencwebster
headovmetal
shallah
aravosis
amprather
joshuastarlight
rondobbs

Bold Commenters
pintomp3
nblsavage
CaptOblivious
IrishJoe
Disgod
seltaeb4
homercles337
shoguntux
Zomgondo
Atario
mithrasinvictus
Crimeodial
RentalCanoe
falconear
trolleyfan
gloomdoom

Notable Users
Cosmic-Surfer
wuggaslady
johnnr2
tbhurst
NihiloZero
jcm267
jerryjamesstone
FredFredrickson
JJFFMM
goldiedust
neurn2
cyberdyno2

Social Media is going to be one of the central battlegrounds in the 2012 election cycle in the US. The corporate right understands this very well, and they have invested mass sums from their war chest to send in legions of mindless astroturfers to try to control content aggregation and spin. It is essential for genuine grassroots supporters of real change and reform to take an active role on this front to fight back. If you believe that all men and women are created equal, that every person deserves to start out on a level playing field in life to succeed or fail on their own merits, if you believe that science, reason, education, and truth are valuable in this world, and that freedom requires ordinary people to stand up and fight, then these guides are for you.

It is more important than ever for progressives to take an active role across the social media spectrum. The internet in general and all tech-savvy folks are far more likely to tilt left, and that has been used with great success since 2004 to spread center-left issues and debunk right wing lies. Starting in December 2008, right wing corporate front groups began invading social media en masse. Their methods have grown more sophisticated since then, like using automated software to handle hundreds of sock puppet accounts. There is a massive amount of astroturfing from the Tea Party, anti-science groups, “patriot” groups, the the military-industrial complex, federal security contractors, and anti-environmental groups. This is all meant to create the illusion of popular support for theocratic, corporate, or imperial forces that are actually not supported by a majority. Anti-authoritarian progressives like us need to redouble our efforts to counter this manipulation.

The Social Media Solar System
There are generally two tiers of social media: the larger websites with more traffic (Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+) and the smaller, more personal websites (Newsvine, Slashdot, Fark, Chime, MetaFilter, etc.). Within the realm of social media, there are also different types of sites:

Social News
Social Bookmarking
Social Networking
Misc.
Social Blogging

Social news sites like Reddit, Digg, Newsvine, Slashdot, Fark, Chime, and MetaFilter are places to post and discuss the latest headlines. They the primary focal point for activism. Social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Delicious, Diigo, etc. are places where longer news has a role, but longer term topics do better. They are also not very social. Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and Linkedin are the most social but not the best aggregators of good content. Miscellaneous sites like Disqus, YouTube, Quora, etc. combine various aspects in an original way. Social blogging sites like Tumblr, Blogger, Posterous, Care2, the Daily Kos, etc. provide a unique method to add your own input and focus your message.

The chart above reflects the overall user base of the main social media sites discussed in this series. The 2-dimensional values are based on various sources, run through a magic algorithm, adjusted by my whims, and not meant to be taken as literal figures. There is exponential growth in communication technologies in the world, including social media communities. Facebook projects 1 billion users this year (up from 6 million in 2006) and other sites are rapidly expanding as well. This means social media will play an increasing role in activism for the foreseeable future, and is an essential vehicle to get onboard.

The key to any social media activist is to invest a large amount of time initially to build a strong, loyal network on the big sites. The larger the following base you have, the greater impact your work will have. Eventually, anything you share will generate hundreds to tens of thousands of page views and hopefully shape and focus the larger debate. Consider everything you have done prior to this moment as prelude. This is your starting point.

Before You Begin
Start by creating a simple but catchy username. While you can certainly use your real name and in fact will get more respect if you do, most activists wish to protect their personal identity. While you may think that using your real birth name is fine since you have nothing to hide, remember that our opponents are not kind, rational, respectful people. They thrive on fear, anger, hate, and conflict, and if you are really bold in confronting their disinformation, propaganda, and lies, they will stalk, harass, and even threaten you. That is their nature.

Think of a username that demonstrates your core beliefs with a humorous twist like FreedomDonkey, Johnalicious, SirSpeaksAlot, ScienceMonkey, peacetronaut, etc. Something short, sweet, and easily recognizable. Google search your preferred username first to make sure there is not already someone using it. Avoid underscores and symbols at all costs, although a number that looks like a letter embedded in the text can work (for instance eth3real or 5ecularist). There is nothing more annoying than someone with a confusing username like 111111rogerdg7241, diepalatidescapesinMB, yNgREdIL, or Pl#bius_Harrring_9.

Then chose a visually appealing avatar. Search around a bit for it. It should be something memorable with a strong contrast that looks great when it is tiny, as most Social Media websites only allow for ~150×150 pixel avatars or less (sometimes as small as 20x20px). It should be something that stands out, a uniform expression of your identity that people will be able to recognize the instant they see it. After you sign up for your email address, put your avatar on Gravatar to save time from having to upload it on every site you register for.

To keep your activities more anonymous, you can use a proxy like Hide My *ss one. You can also install TOR (free) or pay a small monthly sum to have a professional service do it. Just be forewarned that this will slow down your activity and some snoopy sites like Facebook may force you to log back in and sometimes verify your identity by various means if they see different IP addresses being used.

It should be noted at this point that if you would like separate your activism from your personal accounts, rather than constantly logging out and back in, just use a different browser. You can set up all of your activist accounts on Firefox, then use Chrome for everything personal or vice versa (Safari, IE, and other browsers can also be used, but are more cumbersome). Some social sites strictly prohibit multiple accounts however (Digg, SU, FB, and G+) while others do not (Reddit and Twitter), so check with each site first so you do not violate any rules.

Next you should set up your primary activism email account through any free email service on the internet. Gmail is preferable for compatibility. Also consider opening identical email addresses at Yahoo! and other free email hosts. Then go sign up at Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, using the exact same username and avatar. Fill in some personal details on your profile page. Link and list all of your accounts to each other so folks can know where you are active and can follow you everywhere.

The final thing to do before you get started is download and install the Shareaholic add-on/extension for your browser. This gives you a button in your url bar that makes it easy to share content on Reddit, Digg, SU, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and many more social media sites. Also essential is the SU toolbar or add-on which takes up a bit more real-estate on your browser, but will ultimately be well worth it.

General Strategies
Phase I.  The initial strategy at this point is to invest a lot of time into building up your profile on every network. Don’t submit much, but generally try to vote up at least 100 articles per day on social news/bookmarking sites like Digg and SU. Share 5-10 links per day on social networking sites like Twitter , Facebook, and G+. Don’t worry about following/followers or generating traction at this stage, you need to spend at least a month just clicking buttons on stories you like to build up your profile before there is potential to link up with other progressively oriented activists. Explore and become familiar with all of the functionality on every social media website you use.

Phase II. While future articles will describe how to proceed on each specific social media website in detail, in general after about a month, you can start to focus on making connections. At this point you should have noticed other like-minded individuals on each site. Begin to send a few friend requests with a personal message (if that option is available). For the next month or so while in Phase II, you don’t need to read/vote on as many articles across the social media spectrum as you did on Phase I, but still engage in this process. Stay active.

To help yourself get noticed, craft a good brief comment that you can copy and paste on every social media site for a particular article. For instance, you’ve found a good story on corporate tax dodgers on Think Progress. Write a reply on TP (most sites use Disqus, so link that to your Twitter and/or Facebook account), then you can copy/paste that same reply to Reddit, Digg, Facebook, G+, etc. Comments get you noticed, but don’t get lured into long debates yet. That is the biggest time suck on social media, and you still have work to do.

Phase III. While keeping your activism diversified across a wide range of social media sites is extremely important both for message impact and to hedge your bets, this is the stage where you should pick one or two sites to focus on more heavily. Rather than being a mid-level user across the board, be a rockstar on one or two social media sites and a mid-level user everywhere else. You can now start to engage in longer discussions on the comment streams, both to get a deeper understanding of various issues and to hone your messaging skills. Also bookmark important citations for future discussions. All of the hard work you put in during the first two phases should now start to pay off, but be mindful that this is a long path towards the horizon. There are no shortcuts to being a genuinely organic grassroots activist.

Avoid Pitfalls
There are different strategies to social media activism, but the methods outlined in these manuals are the quickest paths to become an influencer who can have a strong impact. This requires having a presence on multiple sites, connecting with a large network of friends who actually listen, broadcasting a clear message on a diverse set of issues, and building up a respected reputation.

Many progressive social media activists fall into a few common traps that prohibit them from becoming more influential. For instance the numerous content sharers that submit everything they find to every social media site. While aggregation is essential to retaining a responsive network, if you share everything under the sun, it drowns out the key messages and people will stop paying attention. Worse still, important news stories and analysis articles shared this way will usually get absolutely no traction what so ever. This is usually wasted effort, and in the case of Digg can actually be counter-productive as it prevents those who can actually get traction from doing so on that article.

Another trap is to get sucked too deep into debates. Understand that about 20% of the population does nothing other than spew talking points from the corporate right. They will deliberately waste your time, try to bait you into saying something foolish to try to get you banned, and never be convinced of anything reasonable or factually based no matter how clearly you explain things and how good your citations are. For all intents and purposes you can just block/ban these trolls and save your time, or just severely limit the amount of time you spend.

A third trap is to focus on only one social media site. While we all have time constraints, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Sites wax and wane, and you might find that the site where you have devoted all of your time and energy suddenly suddenly declines, goes bankrupt, or disappears (e.g. MySpace, Propeller, Orkut, Mixx). Work on a variety of sites and be adaptable.

Conclusion
This series of guides will not spell out the basic functionality of each social media site. There are plenty of instructions either on the website itself or on previously written tech articles to learn the basic steps. This series is intended to be used by progressive activists who seek the most effectiveness for the least amount of required effort.

It should be noted that internet activism is important, but it also cannot replace real-world activism. In order to have an impact on your community, state, and nation, you need to make connections in real life, go to meetings, support reform minded candidates, and participate outside your castle. That being said, for progressive Americans and liberal people around the world who wish to fight for expanded freedom, human rights, equal rights for women, LGBT folks, and people of every color and creed, campaign finance reform, science, a separation of church and state, education, worker’s rights, unions, peace, economic freedom, legalization, medical marijuana, health, social justice, justice, and real reforms for humanity, these guides should help you immensely.

There are some things in this world that are worth fighting for, and the internet is an important battleground. The Progressives Guide to Social Media series will give you the tools to get started.

Progressive Guides to Social Media articles:
1. Intro
2. Reddit
3. Digg
4. StumbleUpon
5. Twitter
6. Facebook
7. Google+
8. Other sites
9. Advanced Strategies

In the historical recall elections in the Wisconsin state senate, two seats held by Republicans turned blue on Tuesday.  While not enough to place a bipartisan check on ALEC‘s corporate agenda favored by Gov. Walker and the conservatives, the elections were mired in dirty tricks that included election fraud and flooding of out of state money from hidden donors.

Turnout was very high in the Wisconsin recall.  Many polling places reported long lines at the 8pm closing time for polls. In some areas, voting levels neared what they were for a presidential election.  Turnout in the April state Supreme Court election was 35% while the 2008 presidential election that saw Obama sweep the state was 71%.  The low point appeared to be the 2nd district where the Republican Rob Cowles held his seat with a 45% turnout.

By the time most of the votes were counted hours later, it was clear that Democrats had picked up 2 of the 6 Republican seats in the contest.  While this was insufficient to give state senate control back to the Democrats, it was still something that has never been done before in the history of the United States.  The results as of publishing time are:

_{District 100% reporting} 
Robert Cowles R    27543/60%
Nancy Nusbaum D 18039/40%

_{District 8 84% reporting}
Alberta Darling R   34840/54%
Sandra Pasch D    29821/46%

_{District 10 100% reporting}
Sheila Harsdorf R   37099/58%
Shelly Moore D        27250/42%

_{District 14 100% reporting}
Luther Olson R     26554/54%
Fred Clark D          24365/46%

_{District 18 100% reporting}
Randy Hopper R   26937/49%
Jessica King D      28188/51%

_{District 32 98% reporting}
Dan Kapanke R        26160/45%
Jennifer Shilling D   32330/55%

Wisconsin will hold 2 more recall elections where Democrats will be defending their seats soon.  Polls indicate the seats should be safe.  The previous recall election saw another Democrat successfully defend his seat in July.  There was also a special election in New Hampshire that saw Democrat Bob Perry pick up a seat.

“Bob Perry’s victory tonight is a complete and total rejection of Republican House Speaker Bill O’Brien’s reckless job-killing agenda,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley. “In a historically Republican district, New Hampshire voters turned out in the middle of summer to send a loud and clear message to the out-of-control Republican majority. Its relentless attempts to make cigarettes cheaper but college more expensive, slash women’s health care, and kill jobs by taxing hospitals must stop immediately. “

State Sen. Tim Cullen (D-Janesville) told The Huffington Post that losing two seats would be a “wake-up call to Republicans.”

WI Senate District 2 showing conservative areas in red, swing areas in purple, and progressive areas in blue

While only winning victory of 2 seats was not enough to flip the state senate, it was a huge uphill battle from the start.  Every district in yesterday’s recall except one were conservative areas where Gov. Scott Walker has strong support.  An excellent district by district breakdown with maps and historical voting tables can be found here.

DIRTY POOL IN RECALL PRIMARIES

The entire recall process has seen a lot of dirty tricks being played.  This started early when conservatives tried to flood the recall process with fake candidates to force Democrats to devote time and energy to getting real candidates on the recall ballot, give more time to ram through the anti-worker, far-right agenda by the corporate front group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and allow more time for GOP incumbents to distance themselves from controversy.  The entire corporate agenda of ALEC can be found on ALECexposed.  Their contributions are also tracked by ProPublica.

The state Republican Party orchestrated the placement of the fake Democrats on Tuesday’s ballot, thereby delaying the general election for a month. That gave the Republican incumbents more time to campaign and distance themselves from the turmoil over the union law that they voted to support in March, spurring the recall efforts.

ELECTION FRAUD

Republicans up for recall have been antsy and rightfully so. Dan Kapanke stated a secretly recorded conversation with La Crosse County Republicans on May 25th, that he is hoping that all the public employees in his district “are sleeping” on election day. -FreakOut Nation

While Dan Kepanke did not get his wish, and was defeated by Jennifer Shilling by 10 points in Senate District 32, shady conservative groups did their best to keep Democrats away from the polls on Tuesday.  A corporate front group called “United Sportsmen of Wisconsin” appeared recently and along with the David Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity began mailing out fliers to Democrats misleading them to think that the election was on the 11th instead of the 9th.

It turns out the USW was literally created by John W. Connors, the national director of Kochs AFP.  The fliers contained fake voter absentee ballot requests and instructed the recipients to return them to county clerks by Aug. 11th.

The P.O. Box for the group in the mailings is described as the “Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center”, at an address belonging to a Rightwing family group tied to the anti-abortion movement according to The Bradblog.

This is blatant election fraud and has already resulted in a lawsuit by a North Hudson man.  It is also not the first time Republicans have used this tactic to discourage turnout by their opponents.  In fact this type of election fraud dates all the way back to 2004.

•2004: Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out And Vote On Nov. 3.
•2008: Phony Election Flier In Virginia Tells Democrats To Vote On Nov. 5
•2008: Anonymous Call Tells Pennsylvania Dems To Vote Wednesday
•2010: L.A. Latinos Told to Vote on Nov. 3; Watchdogs Cite Trouble Nationally
•2010: GOP-Linked ‘Latinos For Reform’ Airs Nevada Ads Urging Hispanics Not To Vote
•2010: In Woodland Park, Colorado, a town north of Colorado Springs, someone had posted a sign saying that Democrats vote on Wednesday. Election protection notified officials, and the sign has now been taken down.

FLOOD OF OUTSTATE MONEY

The Club For Growth poured in at least $400,000 into just one race in this recall contest.  RightWingWatch has more on this shady group.  That is just the tip of the iceberg however. Many more curiously named right wing groups including Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Federation For Children, and Faith Family Freedom have been dumping truckloads of cash into these recalls.  That is on top of the right wing corporate groups including Alec and Americans for Prosperity.

So far more than $35 million has been spent on the recall races, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks political money. The spending on the nine races dwarfs the $19.3 million spent in last year’s 115 legislative races, and approaches the $37.4 million spent in the race for governor. -Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“FINDING” VOTES IN WAUKESHA

The Washington Post is reporting that more foul play might be going on: “The Wisconsin Democratic Party is accusing Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus of tampering with the election results.“  This would not be the first time, she “found” either 7000 or 11,000 votes after the Wisconsin Supreme Court election was completed earlier this year.  It took her 29 hours to report these votes.  Prior to that the results were razor thin, and the number of votes “found” just surpassed the 0.5% mark needed to trigger an automatic recount.

The conservative Republican County Clerk tried to pass it off by saying that errors are common in tabulating election results, a claim which Politifact rated as Mostly False.  Nickolaus has a long history of finding votes and other shady tactics.

Despite dirty tricks like telling Democrats to vote on Wednesday, and against the odds, Tuesday’s elections saw the Republican majority in the Wisconsin state senate fall from 19-14 to 17-16.  While this will not prevent more far-right bills from being rammed down the throats of the state, it will make it more difficult, and should serve as warning shot off the bow of the corporations that are corrupting our democracy.

The Koch founded corporate astroturf front group Americans For Prosperity recently sent out absentee ballots to folks in two Wisconsin state districts with recall elections next week that instruct voters to return them after election day.  This blatant election fraud is part of a pattern of dirty tricks by conservatives that date back to at least 2004, is part of a broader pattern of anti-democracy schemes, and has just resulted in a lawsuit.

Politico first reported on the latest episode of election fraud by the AFP Tea Party group, and it was soon picked up by FreakOut Nation and Boing Boing.

Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date.  The fliers ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk before Aug. 11.  A Democrat on the ground in Wisconsin said the fliers were discovered to be hitting doors in District 2 and District 10 over the weekend.

Shortly after the mailings were sent, a North Hudson, WI man in one of the targeted districts filed a voter suppression complaint.

The AFP mailer clearly states that he should return the absentee ballot application by Aug. 11, but the 10th Senate District recall election between challenger Shelly Moore (D) and Sen. Sheila Harsdorf (R) takes place on Aug. 9. On Saturday, after consulting with We Are Wisconsin workers based in Hudson and St. Croix County Clerk Cindy Campbell, Shultz officially filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB).

It should be noted that the pro-recall We Are Wisconsin offices just mysteriously burnt to the ground, and there was unconfirmed speculation that “voter records were stolen from that location so the AFP could have the addresses to send out phony ballots to the democratic supporters“, as it appears to match a similar tactic done in Ohio in 2004.  These things come on the heels of a recall election process that has been mired in controversy.  The Washington Post reported:

Wisconsin GOP state officials have hatched a scheme to run fake Democrats in Dem primary elections against the Democratic recall candidates, in order to delay the general recall election between Dems and the GOP state senators they’re targeting. As the labor-backed We Are Wisconsin warned recently, this could have major ramifications: Because Wisconsin law allows cross-party voting, Republican voters can vote in Dem primaries and vote for the fake Dem candidate in order to keep the real Dem out of the general election.  Now there’s been a new twist to this tale.  Allies of one of the top GOP targets in the recalls, state senator Randy Hopper, are circulating flyers in his district trying to get out the vote for the fake Dem in the Democratic primary against his Dem opponent.

Democrats Vote On Wednesday

The most recent problems with the AFP fliers that instruct voters to miss their voting deadline actually is far from the first instance of this happening.   The first mention of this tactic is actually a satirical article that went viral by The Onion in 2004: Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out And Vote On Nov. 3.  However, following that copy cats started doing this for real to suppress minority turnout that very same election in 2004.

Then it came back in 2008 in two states:
•Phony Election Flier In Virginia Tells Democrats To Vote On Nov. 5
•Anonymous Call Tells Pennsylvania Dems To Vote Wednesday

In 2010 this tactic appears to have targeted primarily Latino voters:
•L.A. Latinos Told to Vote on Nov. 3; Watchdogs Cite Trouble Nationally
•GOP-Linked ‘Latinos For Reform’ Airs Nevada Ads Urging Hispanics Not To Vote
•In Woodland Park, Colorado, a town north of Colorado Springs, someone had posted a sign saying that Democrats vote on Wednesday. Election protection notified officials, and the sign has now been taken down.

There is clear and direct evidence of a pattern of election fraud here ranging over many years and in many states by shady conservative forces bent on stifling turnout.  Along with direct voter suppression techniques planned or being passed in Republican legislatures around the country, this trend is dangerous for democracy in America.

The Republican Tea Party is threatening to send shockwaves through the world economy by holding the debt ceiling hostage, hoping to extract even more painful concessions.  They play a good game, but any good strategist knows that they are bluffing.  The rich and corporate masters of the right stand to lose the most by a financial crash.  Progressive and centrist Democrats need to call their bluff for the sake of America.

I’ll give the authoritarian right some credit here: they play one hell of hand.  They have won every major battle from the public option to Wall Street reform with teeth to extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich by pretending they have two aces in the hole.  This time, just like every other time, they do not actually have the cards to support their lavish bets.

This tactic has turned out well for them in the past.  Democrats have consistently folded every single time the GOP has gone all-in.  Some claim this is due to the party being hindered by some of their own conservatives who work directly for the corporations, some say it is Obama’s pragmatic nature that seeks appeasement at any cost, and some just say the whole system of government has been hijacked by a theocratic plutarchy, and the only recourse is to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.

I’m not sure which it is honestly, but I can tell you this for a fact: the rich and powerful will in no way jeopardize the lavish profiteering scheme they have going on in the country.  They are literally making out like Robber Barons and have amassed wealth of epic proportions by shearing the working man ever closer to the skin.  If they are willing to spend billions debunking the well researched science behind climate change or send poor kids to die in a war for oil, what makes anyone think they would allow a default on the debt payments crash the system?

The right wing has always been in the back pocket of the rich and powerful, but for the last 30+ years there has been an unholy alliance of theocratic social conservatives, military/security complex authoritarians, and rich industrialists that has a lock on the system of power in America.

Add to this mix the election of a young black reformer as president in 2008.  That scared the daylights out of the unholy triad, and their think tanks quickly devised a grand scheme to derail change and reform in America: take over the grassroots libertarian Tea Party that had it’s grassroots quickly astroturfed over with Koch-seed.  Themes about legalizing all drugs, opening the borders, and ending all overseas military presence were quietly pushed aside, and purely economic themes were projected.  In time, the former libertarian stances became just as taboo as liberal though, and aggressively shouted down like Ron Paul in the 2008 GOP primary debates.

This blatant corporate astroturfing served its purpose well.  Despite a few token victories by progressives, real change and reform was sacrificed on multiple levels.  Instead of massive works projects on things like green energy and bridge repair, Washington D.C. opted to do everything the rich and corporate elite wanted.  For them, the Great Recession officially ended in 2009, even though it rages on for the rest of us.

Profits have never been greater for those at the top.  The top 1% own 42% of the financial wealth in the US.  The top 10% own 85% of the stock market, 85% of financial securities, and 90% of all business assets.  The US defaulting on its debt would send markets into a huge spiral, erasing literally trillions of dollars in wealth overnight.  While this could be devastating to any working person who has made the mistake of investing their life long nest egg in the stock market (401k, etc.), it would erase far more from the vaults of the rich, and this is something they will never allow to happen.

If Obama let it be known in no uncertain terms that he would veto any bill that cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid by one penny (as most Americans agree with), the Tea Party would capitulate.   If the fiscal conservatives really cared about paying the mortgage on the national debt that they are guilty of creating with their starve the beast policy, they would agree to generating more revenue by taxing the rich and corporations.  Now is precisely the time to take the fight to them.

This is a News Junkie Post exclusive.

In the continuing backlash against the Murdoch Empire, a Firefox add-on has just been released that warns a user when they arrive at a website owned by NewsCorp or any subsidiaries, such as Fox News or the NY Post.

Murdoch Alert was just created on Mozilla today, and the designer gave News Junkie Post an exclusive first look at it. The initial release version is 0.2 and comes with greasemonkey script for people who want to tweak it.  From the Mozilla Add-on page:

MurdochAlert show a warning bar on Murdoch Family-controlled websites. This alerts users to the potential computer security risks of accessing Murdoch-controlled sites. Handy also for identifying the news sources controlled by the Murdoch Family.

This Firefox add-on is the kinder, gentler version of an extension for the Chrome browser released on Wednesday, July 20th called Murdoch Block.  With this installed, if a user happens upon any website owned by the vast international NewsCorp company, a warning screen will appear asking the user if they are sure they want to visit this site.  Less than 2 days old, there are 400 downloads of Murdoch Block.

Options are available on both Murdoch Alert and Murdoch Block to ignore the warning and enter anyways.  A complete list of the sites owned by the NewsCorp machine was compiled by Jason Easley at PoliticusUSA: *EDIT: the list was actually compiled by the Reddit user eobanb with some help from others here.  PoliticusUSA used it with permission when reporting about the Chrome extension.

foxnews.com
foxnewsinsider.com
fox.com
foxconnect.com
newscorp.com
foxinternational.com
foxbusiness.com
dowjones.com
fins.com
marketwatch.com
smartmoney.com
wsj.com
wsjclassroomedition.com
thedaily.com
4kids.tv
myspace.com
hulu.com
realestate.com
allthingsd.com
bigcharts.com
foxsports.com
foxsports.com.au
bigtennetwork.com
espnstar.com
fxnetworks.com
nationalgeographic.com
natgeotv.com
golfchannel.com
speedtv.com
tvguide.com
foxsportsradio.com
weeklystandard.com
nypost.com
newsinternational.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
thesun.co.uk
newsoftheworld.co.uk
thesundaytimes.co.uk
theaustralian.com.au
news.com.au
truelocal.com.au
heraldsun.com
adelaidenow.com.au
dailytelegraph.com.au
couriermail.com.au
weeklytimesnow.com.au
perthnow.com.au
mxnet.com.au
alphamagazine.com.au
newsspace.com.au
careerone.com.au
carsguide.com.au
sky.com
skysports.com
sky.de
sky.it
skytv.co.nz
thestreet.com
webmd.com
foxmovies.com
foxstudios.com
foxsearchlight.com
blueskystudios.com
foxinternationalchannels.com
canalfox.com
mundofox.com
biensimple.com
foxlife.tv
foxlife.com.br
vedomosti.ru
harpercollins.com
harpercollins.co.uk
harpercollinschildrens.com
harperteen.com
harpercollinscatalogs.com
avonromance.com
thegarden.com
msg.com
staplescenter.com
smartsource.com
myfoxny.com
my9tv.com
myfoxla.com
myfoxchicago.com
my50chicago.com
myfoxphilly.com
myfoxdfw.com
kdfi27.com
myfoxboston.com
myfoxatlanta.com
myfoxdc.com
my20dc.com
myfoxhouston.com
my20houston.com
myfoxdetroit.com
myfoxphoenix.com
my45.com
myfoxtampabay.com
myfox9.com
my29tv.com
myfoxorlando.com
my65orlando.com
my24wutb.com
myfoxaustin.com
myfoxmemphis.com
wogx.com

]]> http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/07/21/new-firefox-add-on-warns-you-about-the-dangers-of-the-murdoch-propaganda-machine/feed/ 39 http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/07/21/arizona-police-officer-executes-man-for-telling-him-a-warrant-is-needed/ http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/07/21/arizona-police-officer-executes-man-for-telling-him-a-warrant-is-needed/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:29:48 +0000 Ole Ole Olson http://newsjunkiepost.com/?p=37740 Phoenix Police Officer responds to a domestic, enters a home with the mother’s permission, son inside tells officer he needs a warrant.  The officer responds by putting a gun to the victim’s head, saying “I don’t need no warrant, motherfucker.”  Seconds later, the victims dog was shot and killed, then the victim himself.

Update: although this took place last year (timeline of events), it is still a compelling story.  It appears as if no criminal charges were ever filed, although the mother of the murdered victim is pressing ahead with a civil suit, and the officer was eventually fired.