According to yesterday’s Post, the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid Rand Corp. $400,000 to study the “brand failure” of the U.S. presence in Iraq. The study was titled “Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation,” and its gist, as the Post sums it up, is that the “key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves ‘shaping’ both the product and the marketplace, and then establishing a brand identity that places what you are selling in a positive light.” 

The rest of the study is chock-full of helpful, cutting-edge military-marketing research.

After reading Slate, I found an article reporting that the American Center for Voting Rights has suddenly disappeared into oblivion. Perhaps the GOP has given up on the idea of intimidating poor, immigrant, and elderly voters? (Probably not) The ACVR, despite the nice Orwellian title, wanted to push the idea of a vast voter fraud conspiracy onto the American people, even though no such fraud exists. The point was to complicate the voting process as much as possible in order to discourage the above noted peoples from voting. 

Although the Orwellian comparison used against the Republicans and their many efforts is almost in a stage of sterility, it unrelentingly applies. The ACVR is just a small example of this kind of false marketing.

Even worse are PR corporations like the Dolphin Group which have been a scorn on practically all progressive issues. The Dolphin Group is undemocratic, and its legality ought be questionable. Take a look at their mission statement, located on their first page, it's awfully to the point.