I have been coming to DailyKOS for a number of months now. I have found the site to be very informative and generally about 2 or 3 days ahead of the rest of the world. As Stephen Colbert would say, "Reality has a well known liberal bias."
Today I was reading a front page piece and I saw an ad saying: "Americans are going Green with Alternative Fuel Autos. Auto Alliance. Driving Innovation." After ignoring the ads on DailyKOS since I have been coming here I thought that I would finally show some love to KOS and click on the ad.
Upon linking to the Alliance website I was disgusted to see the distortions presented by this organization that is advertising on DailyKOS. I offer this Dairy as an expose to show who this organization is representing and why I will not click on any more ads on DailyKOS.
Upon clicking on the ad I was directed to this
website. Friendly enough. Video of people going green and driving alternative energy vehicles. Sounds good so far right? They also claim that vehicle emissions have dropped 99% since the 70's and CAFE standards have about doubled since the 70's. This is all good, right?
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which is paying money to DailyKOS, represents GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler on Capital Hill (in addition to other manufacturers such as Toyota and VW).
The Alliance is against raising CAFE standards and lobbied actively to keep them from going up. CAFE Standards Tradeoff Did you know that the Total Fleet MPG numbers dropped over 6% from 1987 to 2004. From 26.2 MPG in 1987 to 24.6 MPG in 2004. NHTSA - Dept. of Transportation - WARNING PDF The Alliance is instrumental in making sure that manufacturers are not required to increase MPG in the US.
The head of this organization is Frederick Webber. Fred has a distinguished career as a lobbyist. He has previously worked at the:American Chemistry Council (the people lobbying for the people that brought us Bopol), US League of Savings Institutions (1988-92)No Longer Around After S&L Crisis(He was at the helm during the S&L Crisis!), National Soft Drink Association (Something tells me they don't want a National Bottle Bill), Edison Electric Institute, and the National Forest Products Association(Now the American Forest and Paper Association. He also worked for 5 years for the Nixon and Ford Administrations, including a stint as the Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs.
I think this record speaks for itself. This is a known Republican that is getting paid by major polluters and now is advertising on DailyKOS.
I am saddened to see this advertisement on DailyKOS. I thought this was a Democratic Blog. I thought that we were all here to work together to advance the Democratic cause. What is the deal with this ad?
I just want to say that I will not be looking at any of the ads on this site anymore.
UPDATE: 5pm 6/19/06 I posted this originally quickly and was really thinking that I wanted to show the Alliance for who they really are. After reading all the comments and thinking more on this issue I have changed my thoughts some. I think that DailyKOS should not post any ads at all. It is a clear conflict of interest to receive money from organizations and then to also be promoting policy and candidates for election. If there were no ads on the site we wouldn't even be having this discussion about how much of a conflict of interest KOS has.