websense

Heh, you’d think the SEC had enough bad publicity shot at it lately, what with the allegations that SEC staffers have been caught watching and searching for uh, ahem.. adult content on the web, during work hours, on government computers. But, that’s not the only interesting development at the SEC this week.

If you weren’t aware, the SEC is bringing a securities fraud action case against Goldman Sachs. Not entirely sure of the ins and outs (here’s a link to a guy who does), but it has made for an interesting week on the web!

A branch of the Obama campaign with a website linked to the White House – went to Google, purchased PPC for term Goldman Sachs SEC . On April 20th, the New York Post stated: “Internet surfers who entered ‘Goldman Sachs SEC’” as a search term, Goldman Sachs, Securities Exchange Commission, “were directed to the president’s campaign website via a sponsored link titled ‘Help Change Wall Street.’ The White House’s political arm paid for the keywords — but would not say how much.” Interesting to note that a guy who claimed to be from Google called in to Rush Limbaugh’s show and said that while he had to speak anonymously. He wanted to tell Rush’s listeners that the PPC term ‘Goldman Sachs SEC’ had indeed been purchased and that it held a certain budget and he was sure that if Rush could get his listeners to go and click the term, the budget for the term would be used up and the sponsored link to the Obama site would come down. He was right, the sponsored link was down by 2pm that afternoon. Of course it was back up later, but so was one right above it, purchased by Goldman Sachs. Note the screen shot I have included below:

I find it interesting to note that there is another sponsored link jumping on the bandwagon as of this weekend, making the most of the brewhaha – it’s for a book by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal.

Of course, the Obama Administration denies any sort of knowledge or cooperation with this whole PPC campaign, even though the link goes straight to an Obama Campaign site. Rush had lots to say about it on his show the other day, but just going on gut instinct, I’d say they knew exactly what they were doing, and folks, it’s illegal. Using propaganda to sway the American people is supposed to be against the law. You may disagree with me, you may think it’s perfectly okay for a campaign website connected to the White House to buy links so that the Americans using the web find more information on a particular subject get the Prez’s spin on it first. And maybe we should be grateful it’s a sponsored link – that way you know that what you are getting is spin. Politics, politicians and lawyers using the web to their own advantage is nothing new, and is only going to get worse.
What do you think? Is it okay for campaign funds, and a campaign website for the president to use PPC and other means to propagandize the American people? What’s your take?