educating eric

Just came across an article about Matthew Lesko ( Marked Man - washingtonpost.com ). The guy knows his niche -- and does the "get rich quick" sale really well. But my favorite part of the article? To create his first infomercials, Lesko spent a lot of money hiring Hollywood professionals. Now, he hires eager young kids who shoot cheap and edit on laptops. "They're terrific," he says. "They work for dirt and they're excited and they have good ideas." Lesko found Fleg, his latest director, by putting an ad on Craigslist. Fleg answered it and agreed to produce ads for $1,500 apiece. At that price, Lesko can afford to shoot an ad, then test it on cheap rural cable stations, and toss it out if it doesn't sell. It's in the same vein as "crowd-sourcing" work -- the fact that, depending on your standards, a lot of work can be done a lot less expensively than it could be done a dozen (or even a couple) years ago.

Here's the text of the message that I just sent through the whitehouse.gov comment form; I think it speaks for itself: Hello, dedicated staffer or intern! :) Just a quick head's up that there really are thousands of us out here who are deeply concerned about the Airyn Bell case; she's the wife of Art Bell who was denied citizenship because the USCIS seems to have lost (or is choosing to ignore) the paperwork that the USPS has proven that USCIS received. (USCIS case WAC0900851515; details at Mr. Bell's website: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/art-bell-s-wife-denied-u-s-visa ) Yes, there are much (MUCH!) bigger problems in the world today. President Obama has "more important" things to focus on. Far bigger travesties of justice happen every minute. But this case strikes me as noteworthy; how can we trust a "reformed" government that holds people's lives in its hands but ignores Constitutional concepts of due process... and whose employee