What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

Most political campaign staffers are overworked and underpaid, and the prevalence of unpaid internships in Congressional offices leaves few opportunities for people who are not independently wealthy. Now two veterans of Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign have come under fire for launching what looks like “a ‘pay to play’ system for would-be campaign staff.” Participants pay $5,000 for five days of intensive training, followed by five weeks of unpaid work on a campaign. Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird claim their consulting firm is just looking to recoup costs through this program, which is “focused on an international audience” rather than American progressives. They also deny they are charging people to volunteer. Rather, they say they are training participants in “organizing, data analytics, digital, and communications strategy and tactics coupled with immersion on a campaign.”

Doesn’t sound like “change we can believe in” to me. If Stewart and Bird hope “to equip grassroots advocates with the key skills and best practices,” they should seek donations from wealthy progressives to cover costs, rather than charging a fee few aspiring activists could afford.

As selling out goes, though, Stewart and Bird’s gambit bothers me less than Obama’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina advising the Tory party in Britain, or another group of 2012 Obama campaign wizards applying their marketing talents to lure more suckers to a Las Vegas casino.

On a related note, the Ready for Hillary super-PAC has somehow convinced 90,000 people to give them money. Most of these donors probably feel they are doing something tangible to help Hillary Clinton become president. The reality is, they are just helping a small group of insiders build a list that will later be sold to a Clinton campaign.

If you can afford to give money to political causes, it’s better to donate directly to a worthy candidate’s campaign, or to non-profits that are committed to a mission besides enriching the founders.

Which is not to say there’s any shame in talented people getting rich. Case in point: Weird Al Yankovic. His new album deserved to hit number one on the charts. The lyrics for “Tacky” and “Word Crimes” are hysterical. They inspired me to go back and listen to some of Weird Al’s classics. My favorites include “Six Words Long” (a parody of George Harrison’s “I Got My Mind Set On You”) and “The Saga Begins” (a Star Wars-themed version of Don McLean’s song “American Pie”). I don’t know whether he plans to tour in support of his new album, but if he does, I hope he comes through central Iowa. I was fortunate to see him play Des Moines as the opening act for a Monkees reunion tour during the 1980s. Hilarious.