Make "The Establishment" Obsolete
Donation protected
Make “The Establishment” Obsolete
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Summary: Conservative news outlets just proved they can level the playing field in a presidential election. However, down-ballot races -- from Congress to local municipalities -- were still dominated by "Establishment"-compromised candidates.
Those races just don't draw the readership necessary for the business model of first-generation conservative outlets to cover them.
But we want the "Establishment" gone everywhere.
So we've developed a business plan for a next-generation conservative media outlet with the potential to bring sunlight to every race -- big or small -- profitably!
It's 2017: The tools and technology to make the Donor Class obsolete are here, and an America free from the reviled Establishment is a real possibility.
Please read on, and donate! We hope you're as excited about this opportunity as we are.
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Donald Trump’s victory may have been sealed by his frequent late-campaign pledges to “Drain the Swamp.”
His winning slogan was not a novel theme for American political campaigns, however. Variations on “Drain the Swamp” have always been popular, as everyone -- from James Madison via his prescient warnings within The Federalist papers, to Bernie Sanders and his anti-American campaign of socialist class warfare -- wants to remove “cronyism” from politics.
For conservatives, this battle is not about the wealthy exercising their free speech. It’s about the favors.
The problem with money in politics arises when private wealth gravitates towards political power not to support an ideology, but to seek post-election favors in exchange for financially supporting certain candidates for public office.
As the world just witnessed, all those favors create an insulated, self-protecting, taxpayer-digesting leviathan: an “Establishment.” The citizens demand a Trump, a Cruz, even a Bernie -- yet since campaigning for office is much simpler with large donations, the Establishment monster cannot help but burp up Hillary and Jeb.
The solution, however, is not simply “getting money out of politics.”
That prescription misses the mark entirely, because America, and American politics in particular, is certainly not afflicted with too much free speech.
We’re blessed with free speech, in fact.
Our current problem can only be solved with a fundamentally American answer. You can’t change the people to better serve the needs of your idea. Instead, you come up with an idea that better serves the needs of the people.
Think of the buggy whip, the VCR, the newspaper: Like any other tool that temporarily makes an activity easier, “The Establishment” will only disappear when “The Establishment” becomes obsolete.
We need real innovation: an idea that makes the activity of campaigning for public office easier without “The Establishment” than with it.
And we believe we have such an innovative, next-generation idea.
On this historic Inauguration Day of 2017, we’re pleased to share it with you.
Please read below -- then please be kind enough to contribute. With a little help, we can bring this idea to life just a few short weeks from now!
------------------------------------------------------------------
On November 7, 2016, non-mainstream media outlets, in concert with social media, proved they can successfully help an underfunded outsider make “The Establishment” seem obsolete.
However, Trump v. Clinton was a national election with tremendous interest.
These outlets were able to report the truth about the primaries and the general election only because there was enough readership to do so profitably -- or at least sustainably.
Even in the year of Trump, there weren’t too many Dave Brat-type outsider candidates for Congressional, state-level, or local races able to get the fair attention they needed to compete without owing their success to several large donors.
Even in the year of Trump, local Establishment candidates everywhere were able to brush aside unconnected -- and uncompromised -- candidates.
This is because the current business model for non-mainstream media simply doesn’t have the resources to uncover cronyism and corruption in, say, Iowa’s Third Congressional District. It’s simply not profitable.
If you’ve ever been involved with local politics, you know the most outrageous corruption is often found when the stakes are smaller: bad actors recognize that fewer eyes are watching there. Local newspapers still control the process, and small editorial boards are generally subservient to the local political establishment.
But in just the past 18 months, two interesting developments in media consumption have occurred. When taken together, the two developments present an ideal opportunity to upgrade this dated process:
1. The “clickbait” model of news content has proven itself to be a far more profitable and sustainable media business model than the more traditional – though only a decade old – model of the established online media outlets. These newer outlets -- with zero overhead wasted on branding and traditional PR, and with virtually all of their traffic arriving via Facebook or other social media -- are running circles around their first-generation competitors in terms of profitability.
2. Hard-working parents and grandparents who never have much time to consume media – those hard-to-reach people political candidates call “The Base” – finally became the last possible adopters of social media.
They primarily joined in to see pictures of the grandkids. But in a wonderful coincidence for our purposes, these late adopters are mostly conservative, and they have been absolutely thrilled to finally discover all the non-establishment media – both the first-generation sites and the newer low-cost outlets. And they especially respond to headlines that expose corruption and stand up for the outsider.
These two developments present us with the opportunity to create an innovative news outlet that perfectly addresses the cronyism problem.
We want to take the low-overhead, profitable business model of second-generation conservative media, and to partner that with the best available online media advertising/monetization firm. (See below for more on who we are partnering with.)
With this approach, we can create a media outlet that can profitably investigate even small-market local races by targeting our content precisely to the formerly hard-to-reach voters most interested in it.
Like any other business, we can grow on the margins: as long as we are averaging a profit on each article we publish, we’re incentivized to hire one more writer to cover one more campaign. And we won’t stop trying to grow until every crooked school board administrator and corrupt small town GOP chapter gets pulled out in the sunlight.
Recall, we talked earlier about obsolescence. Suppose you wish to run for office, and are presented with two options for reaching those necessary, hard-to-reach voters:
-- Would you rather beg the local Establishment for funding, knowing you’ll be sacrificing your principles to clear that debt at some later date?
-- Or would you rather send a single email to a single news outlet, letting us -- and by extension, the voters/readers we must serve with accurate, quality content to thrive -- know there’s a race we may be interested in covering?
Sounds like an easier way to do things, with better outcomes for everyone involved.
On this day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, we want you to realize it can actually be done. It’s 2017, and we really do have the tools to finally eliminate the Establishment from our political process!
What We Need To Launch
As far as startup media outlets go, very little.
After a lengthy interview process, we’ve selected a fundraiser with substantial experience raising capital for center-right media outlets. We’ve tasked them with identifying investors and securing enough capital to cover what we have budgeted for two years of operation, and we have set a deadline for the end of March.
The bulk of the project is on track and in the right hands.
However -- this process would be greatly facilitated if we can:
1. Immediately hire our already-selected site designer ($9k), so we have a product ready to present to potential investors; and
2. Cover the expenses of criss-crossing the country to meet with potential investors (approx. $25k).
So we’ve set this GoFundMe goal at $35k – but feel free to help us get this outlet live much sooner by taking us far beyond that target!
Who We Are
Founding Partners:
Barbara Ledeen
David Steinberg
Shonda Werry
Publir, LLC (For advertising/monetization, we have a partnership agreement with Publir. For background, please visit www.publir.com.)
We are long-time journalists, editors, and think-tankers with a lifetime of accomplishments for the conservative movement.
Most relevant to this project, we were all instrumental to the most historic "outsider defeats establishment” victory this nation has seen. (Ask him!) We convinced Dave Brat to run at his kitchen table, after which we performed the style of investigative journalism on Eric Cantor’s corruption that we will replicate with this project. All of it worked – we know the “Defeat the Establishment” playbook because we had a hand in writing it.
(And if we can bring sunlight to a sitting Majority Leader for the first time in history, we can handle the small-time cronies!)
Initially, we took this idea to Publir, the advertising firm that deserves significant credit for developing the economics of the online news industry, with an eye towards becoming a client. Instead, Publir offered to provide access to their industry-leading monetization data and services in exchange for a partnership agreement.
We hope this information alone carries significant weight with you in terms of our potential to thrive.
What You Get Out of Your Donation:
First of all, we’re starting a business that requires loyal customers. We need you more than you need us.
We need fans. Customers who believe in this idea with the same enthusiasm as we do, because we need you spreading our content on social media, we need you posting on our message boards and comment sections, we need you talking us up wherever conservatives meet and communicate in your hometown. We need customers who are already politically active locally, or — even better — who are inspired by this idea to become politically active locally. We need customers who will send us tips and leads, thus expanding our network of sources to help us find and create new content.
We need you. So every donation we get up front now will be personally answered with a note, a phone call, a tweet or Facebook or other social media post, whatever it takes to convince you that you’ve made a wise decision to get behind us, to become an active member of this community of conservatives looking to put the days of corruption and party-anointed elites in the country’s past.
You will go straight to the front of the line with us -- we promise to find the time for you.
Maybe you have a personal story about your experiences with local politics that you wish to share -- if it’s right for sharing, we want to publish it. Maybe you have a story about you or a loved one’s service to this country — those are always right for publishing; we will. Maybe you are a small business owner yourself, or know of one – let’s talk, we want to help advertise your product, and we know all of you love to buy American, especially when the proprietor is a fellow conservative patriot.
So let’s forge a new path for American media and political process together. Let’s get started together today -- the historic date of January 20, 2017!
---------------------------------------------------------------
Summary: Conservative news outlets just proved they can level the playing field in a presidential election. However, down-ballot races -- from Congress to local municipalities -- were still dominated by "Establishment"-compromised candidates.
Those races just don't draw the readership necessary for the business model of first-generation conservative outlets to cover them.
But we want the "Establishment" gone everywhere.
So we've developed a business plan for a next-generation conservative media outlet with the potential to bring sunlight to every race -- big or small -- profitably!
It's 2017: The tools and technology to make the Donor Class obsolete are here, and an America free from the reviled Establishment is a real possibility.
Please read on, and donate! We hope you're as excited about this opportunity as we are.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Donald Trump’s victory may have been sealed by his frequent late-campaign pledges to “Drain the Swamp.”
His winning slogan was not a novel theme for American political campaigns, however. Variations on “Drain the Swamp” have always been popular, as everyone -- from James Madison via his prescient warnings within The Federalist papers, to Bernie Sanders and his anti-American campaign of socialist class warfare -- wants to remove “cronyism” from politics.
For conservatives, this battle is not about the wealthy exercising their free speech. It’s about the favors.
The problem with money in politics arises when private wealth gravitates towards political power not to support an ideology, but to seek post-election favors in exchange for financially supporting certain candidates for public office.
As the world just witnessed, all those favors create an insulated, self-protecting, taxpayer-digesting leviathan: an “Establishment.” The citizens demand a Trump, a Cruz, even a Bernie -- yet since campaigning for office is much simpler with large donations, the Establishment monster cannot help but burp up Hillary and Jeb.
The solution, however, is not simply “getting money out of politics.”
That prescription misses the mark entirely, because America, and American politics in particular, is certainly not afflicted with too much free speech.
We’re blessed with free speech, in fact.
Our current problem can only be solved with a fundamentally American answer. You can’t change the people to better serve the needs of your idea. Instead, you come up with an idea that better serves the needs of the people.
Think of the buggy whip, the VCR, the newspaper: Like any other tool that temporarily makes an activity easier, “The Establishment” will only disappear when “The Establishment” becomes obsolete.
We need real innovation: an idea that makes the activity of campaigning for public office easier without “The Establishment” than with it.
And we believe we have such an innovative, next-generation idea.
On this historic Inauguration Day of 2017, we’re pleased to share it with you.
Please read below -- then please be kind enough to contribute. With a little help, we can bring this idea to life just a few short weeks from now!
------------------------------------------------------------------
On November 7, 2016, non-mainstream media outlets, in concert with social media, proved they can successfully help an underfunded outsider make “The Establishment” seem obsolete.
However, Trump v. Clinton was a national election with tremendous interest.
These outlets were able to report the truth about the primaries and the general election only because there was enough readership to do so profitably -- or at least sustainably.
Even in the year of Trump, there weren’t too many Dave Brat-type outsider candidates for Congressional, state-level, or local races able to get the fair attention they needed to compete without owing their success to several large donors.
Even in the year of Trump, local Establishment candidates everywhere were able to brush aside unconnected -- and uncompromised -- candidates.
This is because the current business model for non-mainstream media simply doesn’t have the resources to uncover cronyism and corruption in, say, Iowa’s Third Congressional District. It’s simply not profitable.
If you’ve ever been involved with local politics, you know the most outrageous corruption is often found when the stakes are smaller: bad actors recognize that fewer eyes are watching there. Local newspapers still control the process, and small editorial boards are generally subservient to the local political establishment.
But in just the past 18 months, two interesting developments in media consumption have occurred. When taken together, the two developments present an ideal opportunity to upgrade this dated process:
1. The “clickbait” model of news content has proven itself to be a far more profitable and sustainable media business model than the more traditional – though only a decade old – model of the established online media outlets. These newer outlets -- with zero overhead wasted on branding and traditional PR, and with virtually all of their traffic arriving via Facebook or other social media -- are running circles around their first-generation competitors in terms of profitability.
2. Hard-working parents and grandparents who never have much time to consume media – those hard-to-reach people political candidates call “The Base” – finally became the last possible adopters of social media.
They primarily joined in to see pictures of the grandkids. But in a wonderful coincidence for our purposes, these late adopters are mostly conservative, and they have been absolutely thrilled to finally discover all the non-establishment media – both the first-generation sites and the newer low-cost outlets. And they especially respond to headlines that expose corruption and stand up for the outsider.
These two developments present us with the opportunity to create an innovative news outlet that perfectly addresses the cronyism problem.
We want to take the low-overhead, profitable business model of second-generation conservative media, and to partner that with the best available online media advertising/monetization firm. (See below for more on who we are partnering with.)
With this approach, we can create a media outlet that can profitably investigate even small-market local races by targeting our content precisely to the formerly hard-to-reach voters most interested in it.
Like any other business, we can grow on the margins: as long as we are averaging a profit on each article we publish, we’re incentivized to hire one more writer to cover one more campaign. And we won’t stop trying to grow until every crooked school board administrator and corrupt small town GOP chapter gets pulled out in the sunlight.
Recall, we talked earlier about obsolescence. Suppose you wish to run for office, and are presented with two options for reaching those necessary, hard-to-reach voters:
-- Would you rather beg the local Establishment for funding, knowing you’ll be sacrificing your principles to clear that debt at some later date?
-- Or would you rather send a single email to a single news outlet, letting us -- and by extension, the voters/readers we must serve with accurate, quality content to thrive -- know there’s a race we may be interested in covering?
Sounds like an easier way to do things, with better outcomes for everyone involved.
On this day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, we want you to realize it can actually be done. It’s 2017, and we really do have the tools to finally eliminate the Establishment from our political process!
What We Need To Launch
As far as startup media outlets go, very little.
After a lengthy interview process, we’ve selected a fundraiser with substantial experience raising capital for center-right media outlets. We’ve tasked them with identifying investors and securing enough capital to cover what we have budgeted for two years of operation, and we have set a deadline for the end of March.
The bulk of the project is on track and in the right hands.
However -- this process would be greatly facilitated if we can:
1. Immediately hire our already-selected site designer ($9k), so we have a product ready to present to potential investors; and
2. Cover the expenses of criss-crossing the country to meet with potential investors (approx. $25k).
So we’ve set this GoFundMe goal at $35k – but feel free to help us get this outlet live much sooner by taking us far beyond that target!
Who We Are
Founding Partners:
Barbara Ledeen
David Steinberg
Shonda Werry
Publir, LLC (For advertising/monetization, we have a partnership agreement with Publir. For background, please visit www.publir.com.)
We are long-time journalists, editors, and think-tankers with a lifetime of accomplishments for the conservative movement.
Most relevant to this project, we were all instrumental to the most historic "outsider defeats establishment” victory this nation has seen. (Ask him!) We convinced Dave Brat to run at his kitchen table, after which we performed the style of investigative journalism on Eric Cantor’s corruption that we will replicate with this project. All of it worked – we know the “Defeat the Establishment” playbook because we had a hand in writing it.
(And if we can bring sunlight to a sitting Majority Leader for the first time in history, we can handle the small-time cronies!)
Initially, we took this idea to Publir, the advertising firm that deserves significant credit for developing the economics of the online news industry, with an eye towards becoming a client. Instead, Publir offered to provide access to their industry-leading monetization data and services in exchange for a partnership agreement.
We hope this information alone carries significant weight with you in terms of our potential to thrive.
What You Get Out of Your Donation:
First of all, we’re starting a business that requires loyal customers. We need you more than you need us.
We need fans. Customers who believe in this idea with the same enthusiasm as we do, because we need you spreading our content on social media, we need you posting on our message boards and comment sections, we need you talking us up wherever conservatives meet and communicate in your hometown. We need customers who are already politically active locally, or — even better — who are inspired by this idea to become politically active locally. We need customers who will send us tips and leads, thus expanding our network of sources to help us find and create new content.
We need you. So every donation we get up front now will be personally answered with a note, a phone call, a tweet or Facebook or other social media post, whatever it takes to convince you that you’ve made a wise decision to get behind us, to become an active member of this community of conservatives looking to put the days of corruption and party-anointed elites in the country’s past.
You will go straight to the front of the line with us -- we promise to find the time for you.
Maybe you have a personal story about your experiences with local politics that you wish to share -- if it’s right for sharing, we want to publish it. Maybe you have a story about you or a loved one’s service to this country — those are always right for publishing; we will. Maybe you are a small business owner yourself, or know of one – let’s talk, we want to help advertise your product, and we know all of you love to buy American, especially when the proprietor is a fellow conservative patriot.
So let’s forge a new path for American media and political process together. Let’s get started together today -- the historic date of January 20, 2017!
Organiser
David Steinberg
Organiser
Washington D.C., DC
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