More Bush, More Republicans, Same Crappy Media Enivronment. But Good for Real Independent Media?

I have no amazing analysis as to why Bush won, or why the Republicans managed to firm up their domination in both houses of Congress. It sucks, but we’ll live. We may even be able to galvanize more opposition. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that four years of the corrupt Bush administration has been good for oppositional and independent media.

That said, when it comes to issues like low-power FM and media ownership reform it’s the Congress that has much more effect than the Executive, and we can expect any and all progress in Congress to grind to a halt. John McCain, one of the strongest advocates of both these issues and a Republican, is leaving the chairship of the Senate Commerce Committee to be replaced by the much more reliably conservative and industry-friendly Ted Stevens of Alaska. That, combined with even less support in the Senate as a whole will probably put up a big blockade against further motion on media reform issues.

With Denny Hastert at the helm the House has never been cooperative in moving on media reform issues, and I don’t expect that to change.

So, I think it’s safe to say that the expansion of low-power FM is all but a dead issue now, and for the forseeable future. But, there is still unlicensed broadcasting, which I think is only growing, not shrinking.

And while the FCC has stepped up enforcement against prominent stations like Freak Radio Santa Cruz, we have to remember that FCC funding is always under threat. As John at DIYmedia notes, it appears that the FCC office in Denver has run out of travel funds for the year, at least partially due to chasing Boulder Free Radio, and so is very limited to how much it can chase pirates that aren’t in the city proper.

Republicans have always had a mixed relationship with the FCC — they like using regulation to keep the field safe for the NAB, but they love deregulation. They have a history of attacking the FCC’s budget, especially when it looks like the agency is making life tough for the communications industry.

The combination of no more LPFM licenses and a shrinking FCC budget should mean good things for unlicensed radio. No doubt the FCC will continue to go after the most prominent and public broadcasters, but will probably have to conserve resources to do so. That should leave things clearer for more clandestine broadcasters.

I’m not cheering, but, then again, a Kerry administration wouldn’t give me much reason to cheer, either.

Bizzarro Illinois Political Ad Smears Candidate as “Weird Al Impersonator”

I’m not making this up. When I first saw it I thought it was some kind of strange joke, but several viewings leads only to the conclusion that it’s a real ad, taking down a political opponent for having been previously a Weird Al Yankovic impersonator. The ad features the subject, Scot England, with Weird Al hair, glasses and hawaiian shirt superimposed over his pictures.

Then, the ad continues on to say the guy would raise taxes, and that sort of typical local polital mudslinging. The candidates are actually running for the Illinois House. But what’s most disturbing is how poor Weird Al is getting dragged through the mud for nothing.

Luckily the ad appeared during a program I recorded on my PVR, so I could capture it into a quicktime to share with the world.

Download Quicktime video (3.7 MB)

Louisiana’s Corporate Whore To Leave Committee & Congress

Republican Rep. Bill Tauzin of Louisiana is set to step down from his chairship of the House Engergy and Commerce Committee, which oversees telecommunications issues and the FCC, on Feb. 16, and leave the House altogether at the end of his term.

Tauzin was a tireless friend to the corporate media and the entertainment cartel, with such efforts as leading the good fight against evil technologies like low-power FM radio.

A testament to his whoring prowess is found in the jobs lined up for him as soon as he quits Congress. He’s already turned down succeeding Jack Valenti as head of the Motion Picture Association of America, but looks to have lined up a sweet gig as head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade group that represents drug giants such as Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. It pays to scratch a LOT of backs!

Whether it’s Television, Drug of a Nation, or the Prozac Nation, Tauzin has been and will continue to be there to keep us doped up, stupid and hemmed in from all sides.

Rep. Joe Barton is the man most likely to replace Tauzin as chair of the Engery and Commerce Committee, and it seems like he gets a fair amount of his bread buttered by telecomm and media industry (though not as much as from the auto and energy industries, bein’ that he’s from Texas). According to OpenSecrets.org, amongst Barton’s biggest campaign contributors in the 2002 election were:

National Cable & Telecommunications Assn, $11,851
General Electric, $6,000
BellSouth Corp, $5,000
Viacom Inc, $3,000
National Assn of Broadcasters, $2,500
Motion Picture Assn of America, $1,000

Looks like ol’ Joe is going to be able to raise his prices substantially if he gets that chairship.

A Free Corporate Media… Free To Serve Inverted Totalitarianism

Sheldon Wolin writes convincingly in the Nation that the Republican Bushist regime is effecting an “Inverted Totalitarianism”:

“By inverted I mean that while the current system and its operatives share with Nazism the aspiration toward unlimited power and aggressive expansionism, their methods and actions seem upside down. For example, in Weimar Germany, before the Nazis took power, the ‘streets’ were dominated by totalitarian-oriented gangs of toughs, and whatever there was of democracy was confined to the government. In the United States, however, it is the streets where democracy is most alive–while the real danger lies with an increasingly unbridled government.

Or another example of the inversion: Under Nazi rule there was never any doubt about ‘big business’ being subordinated to the political regime. In the United States, however, it has been apparent for decades that corporate power has become so predominant in the political establishment, particularly in the Republican Party, and so dominant in its influence over policy, as to suggest a role inversion the exact opposite of the Nazis’. At the same time, it is corporate power, as the representative of the dynamic of capitalism and of the ever-expanding power made available by the integration of science and technology with the structure of capitalism, that produces the totalizing drive that, under the Nazis, was supplied by ideological notions such as Lebensraum. “

And the media is their tool to ram it home. From the right-wing demoagogues of FOX News and Clear Channel, to the government-source lapdogs of CNN and ABC, and to the embedded military contractors at GE/NBC, they all do the bidding of those in power, unwilling to ask real questions of power and its expression. Their bread is buttered too thick to even think of flipping over.

The corporate media don’t need to be threatened by government censorship and direct suppression. The sweet honey of profit and favor are far stronger incentive to toe the line, whilst giving the appearance of freedom. Sure, the media may be free to ask questions of power (and occasionally they do), but what good is it if it’s mostly not expressed?

So now Mikey Powell and the FCC are ready to hand them their next mouthful of reward, in the form of ownership deregulation, for their service to the cause of his daddy Colin and his Texas cowboy pals. Hey, Clear Channel, keep throwing those Pro-America Rallies and maybe you’ll get to own 2400 radio stations and a few hundred more TV!

FCC Gets Detention

The full slate of FCC Commissioners will be making another rare appearance at the House, this time at Billy Tauzin’s Energy and Commerce Committee. Tauzin and many other Reps are pissed that the FCC went the compromise route on deregulating the mandatory sharing of local telephone networks by the regional Bell operators. And they’re especially livid that the FCC decided to delegate to the states the authority to decide whether or not a particular Bell operator, like SBC, has to open its network to competitors.

Topping it off, the FCC made this decision with a slim 3 to 2 vote where Chairman Powell was on the losing side, as more moderate Republican commissioner Kevin Martin sided with the Commission’s Democrats. Now Tauzin, a strong advocate of handing over the store to the big Baby Bell monopolies, is calling in the Commissioners for detention and a good spanking.

Tauzin has even gone so far as to label Martin a “renegade Republican.” It will be interesting to see whether this will reign Martin in or if it will only strengthen his resolve to go his own way, even if that means bucking Powell and some powerful Republican legislators.

The full FCC made its last appearance in front of Congress just a month ago in front of Sen. McCain’s Senate Commerce Committee. It’s a very rare occasion that the full FCC is summoned to Congress, thus the fact that it’s happened twice in two months is a strong indicator of how telecommunications and media ownership issues are being moved to the front burner of domestic policy. Unfotunately, the mainstream press still treats this as a business story, not national news.

Finally, even though I’m not crazy about the decision made by the FCC last week, especially since it still hands over more power to the crooked likes of SBC, I still have to enjoy the political theater of it all. As it is, consumers like you and me are already getting pretty screwed by our local Bell companies who enjoy de facto monopolies in most cities, regardless of competitors. Since as citizens and consumers we have little or no say in how the FCC or a Senate committee runs its business, sometimes the healthiest response is to sit back and watch the coyotes fight over the scraps.

Economist Fawns Over Mikey Powell

The Economist conducts a brief, but fawning profile of FCC Chair Michael Powell. Their loves stems from the estimation that

“Unusually for a regulator, Mr Powell seems to want, gradually, to write the FCC out of the game. For that, he deserves more respect than Americans usually shower on their benighted government officials.”

All I can say is that I’ve tackled the illogic of this notion, and the double-speak term of “de-regulation” in general, before:

The communications industry is scared of nothing more than a free market. A free market would decimate the local bell monopolies, would kill cable companies, and would decimate the broadcast industry. Every single one of these industries absolutely relies on the federal government to stake out boundaries and territories, allowing only a few to have such prizes as broadcast licenses, while keeping the millions of would-be competitors out. The last thing any commercial FM wants is for the FM band to double or triple in size letting a hundred more competitors onto the airwaves. Man, they need regulation to keep raking in those monopoly profits.

Real Citizens at the FCC? OK, let’s count 1… er, 1….

The LA Times reports on “Citizens Knocking on FCC’s Door” and actually getting face time with FCC Commissioners “to discuss the arcane rules of national telecommunications policy.”

Just seeing the headline made me think, “Yes, this is the way it oughtta be.” But then reading it raised some suspicions.

The only real citizen the article cites is a self-described housewife who is lobbying the FCC on behalf of mega-telecomm SBC so that her husband won’t lose his job with the company.

See, her husband might be laid off because those pesky competitors expect SBC to make good on the requirement of the 1996 Telecomm Act that the company open acces to its monopoly-built-and-protected-lines to those competitors. SBC claims it will lose profits and have to lay off workers as a result.

It seems a little disingenuous all around, doesn’t it? Especially to anyone who is unlucky to have SBC as a phone company and see first hand how the bastards have decimated Ameritech and generally botched up customer service and broadband Internet in the name of profit.

Even putting that aside, where are the other citizens getting face time with FCC Commissioners? How many former local radio employees fired by Clear Channel? How many citizens pissed off at losing local news from their Sinclair-owned TV channel in St. Louis? None are cited by this article.

So, here we have a case of a journalist turning one example into a trend. It’s a hook in search of an actual story — a case of “let’s make news that’ll make us all feel better.”

Turning up the cynicism up a notch, Tribune Company, owner of the LA Times, would love for the public to believe that the FCC is listening to citizen’s actual concerns. Especially because Tribune’s been pushing the FCC to charge ahead on its media ownership rules review and to shunt every possible opportunity for public input. A story like this one let’s Tribune claim, “See, you don’t need extended comment deadlines or public forums. The public is getting their licks in to.”

Yeah, when they’re bankrolled by SBC or some other conglomerate (or “a retired SBC manager”).

Now don’t you feel better about the FCC?

Predicting What the Election Means for Tech and Media

CNet’s Declan McCullagh gives a rundown of what the election results might mean for Tech in the US. Obviously, the biggest difference will be Republican leadership of all committees, which is a mixed bag, since some tech issues don’t break cleanly along party lines. For instance, Democratic Sen. Fritz Hollings of S.C. has been a strong cheerleader for copy protection technology. According to McCullagh, he’s likely to be replaced as chair of the Commerce Committee by Sen. John McCain, who is much more hostile to it. However, persecuting P2P file-sharing networks and their users finds support on both sides of the aisle. Thus the impact on file-sharing freedom is little hard to judge at the moment.

In terms of other on-line freedom, the Patriot Act was cooked up by the Republican administration, but still garnered vast bi-partisan support. I’d venture to say that the Republicans, in general, are a little more hostile to civil liberties, while the Democrats as a group have themselves done little to distinguish themselves as defenders of civil liberties, especially on-line.

Party lines are much clearer when it comes to media issues. Despite being a copy-protection-monger, Sen. Hollings has also been a staunch opponent of media consolidation, and has used his Commerce Committee chairship to push that agenda. Sen. McCain, by comparison, has generally supported and been well supported by the broadcast lobby. But after his 2000 presidential bid, he became a little more unpredictable, like when he attempted to aid the cause of low-power FM. At least on the surface, McCain doesn’t seem to be quite so friendly to media mergers as he once was, though I’d be surprised if he took as hard a line as Hollings.

Otherwise, Republicans are typically much more hostile to media ownership limits and support so-called media deregulation. Having a Republican-controlled Congress likely means little resistance to FCC Chairman Powell’s plan to loosen or eliminate ownership restrictions.

One of the cloud’s few silver linings may be that the gridlock over presidential nominations in the Senate might be broken, finally allowing the appointment of Democrat Jonathan Adelstein to the FCC. Adelstein, who would be the 2nd Democrat on the FCC and is likely to be oppositional towards more consolidation, has had his appointment held up for months by Senate Republicans in retribution for the Democrats holding up Bush’s judicial nominees. Of course, Adelstein’s appointment is precepted on these judicial nominees going through — which is not a good thing. I guess it’s all about little (very little) victories.

Disgusted with Democrats

Nationwide, the Democrats blew it in yesterday’s election. That’s clear to anyone who gives a shit, and is quickly being parroted across the mainstream press this morning. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to challenge it. Only here in Illinois, after one of the most corrupt state governments in recent memory, were Democrats able to take a secure win in state politics — arguably because they went for the jugular, relentlessly reminding voters of the consistent corruption and wrongdoing executed by the last Republican administration.

Nationally, the Democrats aren’t so smart, I guess.

I don’t even consider myself a Democrat in the first place. I tend to vote Democratic because they tend offer candidates that I agree with more than Republicans. But, by and large, the Democratic Party has done nothing in the last 20 years to earn my allegiance or loyalty. I’d rather lose as an independent than win as a “centrist” lap dog, begging for crumbs from the mercurial privileged class.

As it stands, I’m barely given much reason to vote in the first place. Only fear of a Republican planet gets my ass into the polls — and even that increasingly seems like a useless endeavor. Why bother voting when most of the opposition isn’t really opposing the strategies and goals of the regime in power?

I’m disgusted that the Democrats continue to fight on Republican terms, spending shitloads of money and blotting us out every night on TV. What happened to good old fashioned campaigning? I live in a pretty dense little city, it’s safe easy to walk the streets across town, yet not one goddamned candidate came to my door. Sure, they make public appearances at the farmers market and such. But what happened to actually meeting the people where they live? You can say a lot more to a voter face-to-face at her doorstep than you’ll ever get across in 30 seconds of expensive commercial time. Or are these candidates frightened of actually having to acknowledge and talk with real, actual citizens?

Democrats are not the party of the people. In most places, at best, they’re the party of privileged white, liberal guilt. In more Urban, multicultural places (read: not majority white)–like Chicago–they might still lay claim to representing the actual concerns of real working people. But nationwide — they’re the party of the increasingly shrinking pool of the affluently liberal. Fuck that.

Really, it confounds me why the Democrats won’t go on the attack against Bush, against the egregious corporate crime of the last year, against the exploitation of war and violence. My only guess is that they’ve become so fucking addicted to corporate campaign money that they can’t bear the thought of alienating their sugar daddies. They’re so shit scared to try and strike out on their own, campaiging on strong ideas and ideals, that they’re willing to trot along on a short corporate leash — even if that means conceding power.

And how damn relevant is that concession, anyway, when the likes of Dick Gephardt, House Minority Leader, falls in line with the Republicans on most issues, only dissenting on details, not principles.

I’d say the Democratic National Committe’s concession happened long before this election. Fuck them and their slave mentality.