Shorter Chris: "What have you done for me lately?"

Chris is right. They can't control us, and we can't "prove" that we bring them a specific, monetarily valuable benefit. OTOH, $300 million isn't a drop in the bucket, and without that there wouldn't be the Congress there is today. I think that's a lowball number as well- how can one quantify all the activism, awareness and media exposure blogs brought to fore during the last three election cycles? That's worth hundreds of millions to be sure.

There is only one answer to the "Maria Leavy" problem.

Unioninze.

When bloggers get serious about this, and give each other and their communities what they deserve for their efforts, we won't have to, as Chris puts it, "ironically" pay the consulting class that is the very embodiment of the problem we're trying to fix. Democratic leaders will always listen to money first, followed closely by media. We say we are the "new" media, it's time to act like it. Particularly because we have the potential to be the money and the media.