DAMN IT DEMS… RUN THIS AD!

Open letter to the DNC…

I have to be honest. I don’t have any respect for the Democratic Party. After all, you continually stand in the way of the electoral reforms like proportional representation thus depriving Progressive such as myself of any representation in Washington. And it's so easy to blame Katharine Harris and the USSC for giving us Bush in 2000 when the REAL problem was the Electoral College. Yet, Democrats refuse to even talk about abolishing this anti-democratic abomination.

Nonetheless, Bush and the GOP have been an unmitigated disaster for the US and the world. Right about now, as in ‘04, I’ll settle for the lesser of the evils.

So DNC, I know you’d like to THINK you’re headed for some victories next Tuesday. If you’re lucky you’ll take back the House and Senate. I'm not so sure.

THE PROBLEM: I’m sure you don’t underestimate Carl Rove’s ability to pull this election out of the fire. We can see his fingerprints with the constant on-message harping about national security and possible tax hikes. Then there’s his massive database of personal information he’ll use to micro-target voters. But, perhaps your biggest problem is that True Believers of the GOP can easily rationalize away all of Bush’s disasters and fiscal irresponsibility. I’ve debated such right-wingers for years and I understand the extent to which they have sabotaged their own intelligence to believe the Party line. These voters need to be shocked out of their complacency. You need an effective wedge issue… and soon.

Though the Right’s strategy to sabotage government with massive deficits and growing debt is now 25 years old the Democrats STILL seem incapable of launching an effective counterstrategy. Worst, Bush is even today telling cheering crowds that it’s the Democrats that would piss away their money. These lies are beyond Orwellian. Yet it’s not rocket science to deflate these lies. The Right’s propaganda machine has been predictable in its approach. They tell the faithful “it’s your money” and tax cuts are a free lunch essential for economic growth. They then downplay the deficit numbers THEY created.

Those who believe the Right’s big lies do so because they have never been educated in the following:

1: If We The People are in debt… then ALL tax cuts are paid for with borrowing.
2: The Right is stealing money from our children to buy votes today, allowing us to party today at our children’s expense. How god damn noble!
3: That tax cuts are essential for economic growth argument is laughable and without empirical data. The Right has misrepresented the so-called JFK tax cut, the economic boom of the 80’s was classic demand-side not supply side, and Clinton proved that there can be a boom after a tax hike.

That things have come to this point is because Democrats never did their job to educate the public. But it’s not too late to strike a blow in the next week.

What makes the Right’s Big Lies appealing is the average person really has no idea what budget numbers we’re taking about. Sadly, most can’t tell the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion. It’s just too abstract.

THE SOLUTION? You need a quick wedge issue that will peel away or discourage some GOP voters, and serve some future education process. A new approach is needed, preferably one that kills two or three birds with one stone:
1: It’s essential to counteract the Right’s long-term strategy of “starving the beast” since the entire Democratic agenda depends on it.
2: It’s essential to educate GOP and wavering Democratic voters and shock them to the senses.
3: It’s essential to brand all GOP members of Congress/Senate as dangerously irresponsible to counteract the tendency to believe one’s own incumbent is not part of the problem in Washington.

Here’s what I propose…

The public MUST be educated on the amount of the debt Bush has run up. Make the abstract painfully concrete. What’s needed is some sense of scale. And that’s what this site does: www.crunchweb.net/87billion. Unfortunately, they stopped at the $315 Billion spent on Bush’s wars.

According to the Bureau of Public Debt Bush's debt from January 22, 2001 to October 27, 2006 is now $2837.816643835 BILLION. What does that represent?

If stacked atop over a football field (100’x300’) it would make a tower of cash 4,136’ Feet tall.

If stacked over a baseball diamond (90’x90’) it would make a tower of cash 15,321 Feet Tall

You get the "picture". Right?

For cost reasons I’d suggest one generic ad. To hit a key demographic I’d take these ads out during football games this weekend so not to give the Right much time to respond t that same group. The use of a football field for scale is one sports fans can easily relate to. You can begin showing a single dollar bill on the field, then show the income of the average worker or family. Pull back to show Bush’s FY01 through FY06 deficits piling up giving a running total of the height of the stack of cash. It’s essential to use ON-BUDGET deficit numbers since unified budget numbers are dishonest and will never equal the final Bush debt. In the end, the total Bush debt numbers will result in that tower growing to some 4136’ tall atop that football field… less if you use the sidelines and end zones. Depending on what you're willing to spend you can toss in some extras; the Goodyear blimp banking hard to get out of the way of the rising tower; glimpses of the crowd standing up to stare in disbelief. Keep pulling back to show the tower of cash’s full size in relation to whatever stadium you use.

For possible tag lines…

“Bush says only the Republicans can wisely watch over taxpayer money. The Debt the Republicans have run up tell a different story.”

Or…

“Tax cuts for the rich were never a free lunch. This is the bill the Bush Republicans are handing to our children.”

Or...

“The Bush Republicans are building a monument. But it’s a monument to fiscal irresponsibility we and our children just can’t afford.”

Or...

“The Bush Republicans have been so fiscally irresponsible we can no longer even fund our Defense Department without loans from Red (sic) China.”

See the possibilities? Of course it would help Democratic credibility immensely if you stopped playing your own on- / off-budget games concealing hundreds of billions in loans from the federal trust funds as Kerry did in '04 in his so-called “balanced budget plan”. If you are ever to become the Party of TRUE fiscal responsibility you have to tell it straight... not just to educate the public but to forever inoculate them against the Right’s propaganda.

THE MATH: As for the math I used which I urge you to double check:

I’ve recalculated Crunchweb’s numbers and according to my measurements a US dollar bill is 6.125" x 2.625" x .0047"

That means...

$1.00 bill = .0755671875 cubic inches.

Since a cubic foot is 1,728 cubic inches

$22,867 in $1.00 bills can theoretically fit into a cubic foot.

$1 Billion... 1,000,000,000 / 22,867 = 43,731 cubic feet of $1.00 tightly packed bills

According to the Bureau of Public Debt Bush's debt from January 22, 2001 to October 27, 2006 is now $2837.816643835 BILLION.

That amounts to 124,100,559 CUBIC FEET of tightly packed $1.00 bills. This can be divided in any way… for a football field… divide 124,100,559 by 100 then 300. The result will be the height of the cash.

(revised 11-01-06)

ulTRAX