The Ultimate IP Sleaze from Obama

The "people's" president is supposed to be on the side of the people. Everybody understands that Republican presidents cater to the 1% and those wingnuts who aspire to be the 1%. But for everybody else there is only one choice: the Democratic president.

Obama is pushing his "jobs" agenda, but with great irony, he wants creative graphic designers to labour for free to create him a poster. No job for them. Just the glory of knowing that "they did it for a good cause". Oh yeah...

Here is a bit from a post in Rolling Stone magazine:

The Obama campaign has more than $60 million cash on hand. In an economy this bad, you'd think a presidential campaign that flush would be happy to pay good money for a talented designer to create a campaign poster.

But the folks at Obama campaign have taken a page from the Arianna Huffington book of economic exploitation and called on "artists across the country" to create a poster ... for free.

And here's the kicker. It's a jobs poster.

Yes, the Obama campaign is soliciting unpaid labor to create a poster "illustrating why we support President Obama's plan to create jobs now, and why we'll re-elect him to continue fighting for jobs for the next four years."

If you win? You get: A framed copy of your own poster, signed by the president ("approximate retail value $195").

And if you don't win? Well, that's too bad. You've not only lost the contest, you've also surrendered your intellectual property. "All submissions will become the property of Obama for America," according to the fine print.

Just like the Obama presidency knows that his job #1 is to bailout banks and make sure billionaire bankers get their humungous bonuses, the Obama presidency knows that intellectual property rights (IP) goes to the sleazeball who can squeeze it out of the dumb proletariat who will sign up for work for free and give up all rights to their ideas. Wow. Isn't capitalism great, or what? Obama is a typical 1% type, you work, he gets the money, the glory, the top job, the babes, the media, the big retirement package. You get to hang on to your warm-and-fuzzy feeling that you "helped". That and $5 will help you buy a hamburger to split with your wife and 3 kids.

Obama wants to create jobs... he wants to create 4 more years for No. 1. For the 99%? This is just a slogan. He is going through the motions, crafting this as a "message with spin and a careful political game of partisanship". Whether you get a job or not? He could care less. That's your problem, not his. He is the president for the 1%.