Without Television

Corporate Manipulation Part 342,012

2006-01-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

If, like me, you pay attention to what you put into your body, accept the premise that pesticides, heavy metals, offal as fertilizer, cannibalistic feeding practices, etc. are not good for the body, then you have a stake in removing the psychopathic "person by law," the corporation, from influencing government to ignore its primary mandate--protect the citizenry (human beings, not chartered organizations):

"Lobbying by large food companies to weaken organic rules started when the U.S. Department of Agriculture fully implemented organic labeling standards in October 2002. Food producers immediately fought the new rules. A Georgia chicken producer was ultimately able to persuade one of his state’s congressional representatives to slip through a federal legislative amendment in a 2003 appropriations bill to cut its costs. The amendment stated that if the price of organic feed was more than twice the cost of regular feed--which can contain heavy metals, pesticides, and animal byproducts--then livestock producers could feed their animals less costly, nonorganic feed but still label their products organic." -- from a Consumer Reports report

(the red font is my emphasis)

The law was ultimately repealed in April of 2003, but corporations continue to spend money in order to weaken organic standards.

Full Article (CR is a non-soliciting organization that depends on subscriptions to pay for research so this article might become unavailable after a time)

2006-01-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

"The proposed changes, which require congressional approval, would exempt companies from disclosing their toxic pollution if they claim to release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical — the current limit is 500 pounds — or if they store it onsite but claim to release ''zero'' amounts of the worst pollutants.

The chemicals involved include mercury, DDT, PCBs and other chemicals that persist in the environment and work up the food chain. Companies must report any storage of dioxin or dioxin-like compounds, even if none are released."

Poison the world and make a buck. That's what corporations do best. These sorts of things, pollution, health, resource recovery are called "externalities." Someone else pays and so the bottom line increases. In this case, all of us pay through less healthy environment, which in turn increases health costs.

This hasn't gone before the congress. Let your reps know it's not acceptable.

The Whole Article

Gold Mountain, River of Waste

2005-12-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

"With a few taps on a keyboard, satellite images quickly reveal the deepening spiral that Freeport has bored out of its Grasberg mine as it pursues a virtually bottomless store of gold hidden inside. They also show a spreading soot-colored bruise of almost a billion tons of mine waste that the New Orleans-based company has dumped directly into a jungle river of what had been one of the world's last untouched landscapes."

Capitalism on the March!

Profane Purchase

2005-12-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

"I believe in Christ, and I don't like the use of 'xmas' or the use of 'happy holidays,"' said Steven Van Noy, 39, as he left the store loaded down with packages. "The bottom line is that they had what I needed at Wal-Mart, so I went to Wal-Mart to buy it." -- Walmart Shopper and self-proclaimed Christian, Steven Van Noy, from AP article by Tom Chorneau, "Group Fights Wal-Mart on 'Happy Holidays"

The demonstrators adamantly insist they believe in Christ, but to believe demands one strive to live like Christ, to adhere to His teachings. Where in Christ's teachings can one find a call to ravenous consumerism? Where is there an admonishment to ignore the treatment of the less fortunate when it conflicts with the ease of shopping or the low price of purchases?

Demonstrating against entities that have completely eviserated the spiritual celebration of Christ's birth and replaced it with gluttony and avarice merely because these entities aren't using "Merry Christmas" in their advertising is indicative of spiritual bankruptcy. As long as Wal-Mart (or any other purveyor) has what one "needs," Christmas will remain uncelebrated regardless of what the famous greeter says when one enters his new temple.

High Above

2005-12-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

Been invited to ski into a hut at 8400 ft for New Years Eve. It's about 14 miles into the mountains, and I am not sure I have the stamina necessary to make the trip, but the thought of being that far up and that far away sounds exciting so I'll probably accept.

In other news:

Globalization not the answer to poverty? WP Story

Duped Again

2005-11-30T08:19:00.000-07:00

According to a poll taken in 2002 by Wirthlin Worldwide, ostensibly commissioned by the American Medical Assoc., revealed that "71 percent of Americans agree that a main reason health care costs are rising is because of medical liability lawsuits."

Obviously, the serfs are being duped yet again.

What the serfs don't know is that, according to John Hopkins University,

“There is a popular misconception that we pay much more for health care in the United States compared to European and other industrialized countries because malpractice claims drive up costs and there are waiting lists in most other countries,” said Gerard Anderson, who led the study.

“But what we found is that we pay more for health care for the simple reason that prices for health services are significantly higher in the United States than they are elsewhere,” he added in a statement.
Anderson also stated, “We have less access to most health services and higher costs associated with malpractice insurance have only a marginal effect on overall health spending.”

Also from the study:

- Americans spent $5,267 per capita for health care, $1,821 more than the next-highest spender, Switzerland.

- “Compared with other countries, the U.S. lags on such quality indicators as access to care, including waiting times for physician appointments. In the U.S., inequities persist between higher and lower income patients on almost every measure we look at, while other countries are able to assure access to care without creating disparities among patients according to income.”

- The study also found no evidence that U.S. citizens spend more for health care because they get more services.

- It found that Americans have less access to some services, such as hospital beds, time with doctors, nurses, magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, and computed tomography (CT) scans than citizens of other developed nations.

Reverse Robin Hood

2005-11-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

From the Springfield News:

We Can Cut Deficit Without Sticking It to Kids, Poor Folks

The federal government will borrow $4 million in the time it takes you to read this opinion piece. Congress and the president have proposed a 2006 budget, which will mean borrowing $1.4 billion a day.Until the last month, the White House and Republican-led Congress have shown little interest in this problem. In fact, Vice President Cheney famously said, “deficits don’t matter.”I think they do. We are saddling our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt, which averages to about $24,000 each, as of today.

This week the House will debate and vote on a “budget reconciliation bill” that purports to cut $53.9 billion in spending over 5 years — about 2 percent of the projected deficit. The cuts will fall heavily on low-income and middle-class families. The biggest cuts are in student loans ($14.3 billion) and Medicaid ($11.9 billion). It also mandates reductions in school lunch, foster care, long-term care and child-support enforcement, among other items.

Spending restraint is admirable, but the $50 billion in cuts proposed by the Republican Congress will be offset by a companion bill that extends tax cuts to heavily favor the top 1 percent (those who earn more than $300,000 annual income), at a cost of $70 billion over the same time period. The White House says the tax cuts will trickle down to create increased investment, job creation and eventually cut the deficit. But real-world experience shows that the spending cuts along with the tax cuts will actually add $20 billion to the federal deficit.

There are better and bigger cuts that can be made to the federal budget, but they would inevitably be opposed by the powerful special interests who seem to dominate Washington these days: cut corporate farm subsidies and subsidies to farmers with over $100,000-per-year income, saving $25 billion; cancel the fanciful and defective “Star Wars” system and the Cold War-era F-22 fighter jet, saving a total of $60 billion; cancel the manned return-to-the-moon mission, saving $50 billion; reduce corporate subsidies in the new Medicare prescription drug program, saving $10 billion; reduce the number of consultants employed by the federal government by 150,000, saving $33 billion; and a planned end to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, redeployment of some troops to Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden, and bringing the rest of the troops home, which would save at least $50 billion a year.

Spending cuts for those few programs total almost five times the cuts proposed in the Republican-proposed “budget reconciliation,” without hitting struggling families.

But even the deepest cuts will not get the budget back to balance. If we eliminated all federal programs — agriculture, education, centers for disease control, federal courts, prisons, the IRS, etc. — except some Homeland Security agencies and the Department of Defense, we would still have a deficit. We simply cannot continue to finance tax cuts for big corporations and the top 1 percent (those who earn over $300,000 a year in income) with borrowed money. It’s time they begin to shoulder some of the load carried by America’s working families and retirees.

Instead of extending new tax cuts for earners over $300,000, restore the rates they paid during the booming 1990s. That would reduce the projected deficit by $327 billion in five short years. If we restricted offshore tax shelters we could reduce the deficit at least another $33 billion. If we reinstated the superfund tax so polluters paid to clean up their own messes, we could drop it another $10 billion. Limiting the estate tax exemption to $6 million and progressively taxing larger estates could cut the deficit by $31 billion a year.

If my proposals were adopted we would reduce the projected deficit by more than half a trillion dollars over five years. It doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but it doesn’t complicate the problem like the “budget reconciliation” does by adding $20 billion to the deficit. Better yet, it wouldn’t cut a single student’s college loan, reduce school lunches for hungry kids nor burden states with more Medicaid costs.

Federal budgets are about priorities and tough choices. This week, the priorities of the White House and Republican leadership in the House of Representatives are clear for all to see as they try to ram through a bill that will hurt working families while protecting elite, wealthy special interests.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat and member of Congress, lives in the Thurston area of Springfield with his family and his famous Dodge Dart.

Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about Arland Williams.

He was the passenger aboard Air Florida Flight 90 that died helping others get out of the freezing water after the airliner crashed below the 14th St. bridge in Washington D.C.

Five times he passed the life line to another. Not once or twice. Five times. He didn't think, ok, I've helped two people, that's good enough.

None of the five said they knew him. They were strangers.

Why five? Because he drowned. By the time the chopper had returned to lower the line for the last survivor, Arland's turn, he had slipped under the water.

So, I'm thankful for people in the world like Arland D. Williams Jr.

Socked In

2005-11-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

Dense fog has smothered the valley for three days, now. The airports are closed. Thanksgiving flyers are grounded. Still, it's quite the winter wonderland, though one ought to wrap up in several layers before walking in it.

I would designate this frost as hoarfrost because of its texture, but the fog suggests rime.

"...this is working very well for them."

2005-11-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

Capitalism on the March:

"In José León Suárez, residents successfully lobbied the government to begin nightly train service from their community to the more salubrious neighborhoods of downtown Buenos Aires, where cartoneros—cardboard collectors—sort through the day's trash in search of recyclable material that can be exchanged for money."

Cartoneros Photo Essay

The NASCARati's Veneration of the Founding Fathers, Part 1

2005-11-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

The NASCARati wants a country more in line with the nation envisioned by T.J. and pals, a less secular country with values resembling the values of the 19th Century:

To Dr. Benjamin Rush Monticello, September 23, 1800

DEAR SIR,
-- I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of Aug. 22, and to congratulate you on the healthiness of your city. Still Baltimore, Norfolk & Providence admonish us that we are not clear of our new scourge. When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as that most evils are the means of producing some good. The yellow fever will discourage the growth of great cities in our nation, & I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts, but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue & freedom, would be my choice.

I agree with you entirely, in condemning the mania of giving names to objects of any kind after persons still living. Death alone can seal the title of any man to this honor, by putting it out of his power to forfeit it. There is one other mode of recording merit, which I have often thought might be introduced, so as to gratify the living by praising the dead. In giving, for instance, a commission of chief justice to Bushrod Washington, it should be in consideration of his integrity, and science in the laws, and of the services rendered to our country by his illustrious relation, &c. A commission to a descendant of Dr. Franklin, besides being in consideration of the proper qualifications of the person, should add that of the great services rendered by his illustrious ancestor, Bn Fr, by the advancement of science, by inventions useful to man, &c. I am not sure that we ought to change all our names. And during the regal government, sometimes, indeed, they were given through adulation; but often also as the reward of the merit of the times, sometimes for services rendered the colony. Perhaps, too, a name when given, should be deemed a sacred property.

I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten. On the contrary, it is because I have reflected on it, that I find much more time necessary for it than I can at present dispose of. I have a view of the subject which ought to displease neither the rational Christian nor Deists, and would reconcile many to a character they have too hastily rejected. I do not know that it would reconcile the _genus irritabile vatum_ who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened. The delusion into which the X. Y. Z. plot shewed it possible to push the people; the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause [1st Amendment] of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro' the U. S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians & Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: & enough too in their opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets against me, forging conversations for me with Mazzei, Bishop Madison, &c., which are absolute falsehoods without a circumstance of truth to rest on; falsehoods, too, of which I acquit Mazzei & Bishop Madison, for they are men of truth.

But enough of this: it is more than I have before committed to paper on the subject of all the lies that has been preached and printed against me. I have not seen the work of Sonnoni which you mention, but I have seen another work on Africa, (Parke's,) which I fear will throw cold water on the hopes of the friends of freedom. You will hear an account of an attempt at insurrection in this state. I am looking with anxiety to see what will be it's effect on our state. We are truly to be pitied. I fear we have little chance to see you at the Federal city or in Virginia, and as little at Philadelphia. It would be a great treat to receive you here. But nothing but sickness could effect that; so I do not wish it. For I wish you health and happiness, and think of you with affection.

Adieu.
Thomas Jefferson

We Regret to Inform You of Another Failure

2005-11-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

"Asked about beneficiaries' confusion, Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said: "Health care is complicated. We
acknowledge that. Lots of things in life are complicated: filling out a tax
return, registering your car, getting cable television. It is going to take time for seniors to become comfortable with the drug benefit."

Drug Plan Confusion Rife

And the winners?

Pharmcorp and Insurcorp.

Another payoff made to F.O.B.

Bedouin Justice

2005-11-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

Are we winning the war on terrorism or are we becoming Saudilite? This sounds an awful lot like desert law, and Las Vegas is technically in the middle of a desert.

Mayor Says "...Cut Off a Thumb."

The Mule

2005-11-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

This morning, in a light drizzle, a mule straggled across the grass below the picture window of my breakfast nook. I do not own a mule, I do not board mules on my property, yet there it plodded from left to right, nodding slightly, certainly unencumbered by the guilt of trespass.

I wasn't surprised. I don't know why I wasn't surprised, but in my mind, I merely noted that there indeed was a mule in my yard and that the presence of a mule in my yard warranted I put on boots, coat and gloves and go see about it, which I did.

Coming around the north side of the house I discovered that the mule had a companion. A chestnut gelding was standing in the tall grass at the northern fence line. The mule, which had been traveling south the last I'd seen it, had rejoined the horse, and both looked up at me when I came into view.

I walked toward the odd couple, flapped my arms slowly and inadvertently provoked them to canter toward me, which was the opposite direction I'd had in mind. In fact, they charged me, but having distinguished myself as a Lippizan trainer from 1899 until 1911 in the service of an Austrian Archduke, I did not give ground, and at not exactly the last second but a few seconds before the last second, both mule and horse veered toward the gate.

Actually, it's not a gate but an opening in the fence to accomodate the driveway. I think "gate" sounds better than "driveway opening." It gives the impression of a vaster spread of land, a hacienda, perhaps, and while there probably should be a gate across the opening to deny horse and mule access, it is a real pain in the neck to have to open and close the thing every time you leave or return.

Oh, yeah, and both animals trotted up the damp dirt road presumably toward home, where there is a gate, probably closed.

galvanic vestibular stimulation

2005-10-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

"It's a mesmerizing sensation similar to being drunk or melting into sleep under the influence of anesthesia. But it's more definitive, as though an invisible hand were reaching inside your brain." -- Yuri Kageyama

No, wait, really, it won't be used for nefarious purposes. Trust us.

Remote Controlled Humans

My New Hero

2005-10-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

Bunny Greenhouse

Joe Raedle / Getty
Images file

See It in Context

2005-10-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

They are not allowed to die.
It's simpler than it sounds.
Who do we have in Washington?
We can get this passed.
Steering committee?
Already meeting.
How does this work?
No death masks, cameras prohibited;
mortuary restrictions:
lots of flags--zero coffins.
Aren't they called caskets?
Eternal resting cubes?
Something milky.
Nevertheless and even though
they don't hug a shroud,
smell the flesh departing,
it's still too apparent.
What results can we measure?
We make them immortal.
Ownership.
But what do we achieve?
Terminate death, terminate questions.
Will they buy it?
They buy everything.

Al Gore blasts television. I know, I know, Al.

2005-10-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

I was going to post excerpts, but here's the whole thing. Read it, friends, and get rid of your television. It's killing you as surely as if you were smoking meth.

Remarks by Al Gore as preparedAssociated Press / The Media Center's We Media Conference

October 5, 2005

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?
On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"

The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

But whether you agree with his assessment or not, Senator Byrd's question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between war and peace?

Those of us who have served in the Senate and watched it change over time, could volunteer an answer to Senator Byrd's two questions: the Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much any more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special interests in order to buy 30-second TVcommercials for their next re-election campaign.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.

In fact there was a time when America's public discourse was consistently much more vivid, focused and clear. Our Founders, probably the most literate generation in all of history, used words with astonishing precision and believed in the Rule of Reason.

Their faith in the viability of Representative Democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry. But they placed particular emphasis on insuring that the public could be well-informed. And they took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas in order to ensure the free-flow of knowledge.

The values that Americans had brought from Europe to the New World had grown out of the sudden explosion of literacy and knowledge after Gutenberg's disruptive invention broke up the stagnant medieval information monopoly and triggered the Reformation, Humanism, and the Enlightenment and enshrined a new sovereign: the "Rule of Reason."
Indeed, the self-governing republic they had the audacity to establish was later named by the historian Henry Steele Commager as "the Empire of Reason."

Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others -- but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press.

Their world was dominated by the printed word. Just as the proverbial fish doesn't know it lives in water, the United States in its first half century knew nothing but the world of print: the Bible, Thomas Paine's fiery call to revolution, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution , our laws, the Congressional Record, newspapers and books.

Though they feared that a government might try to censor the printing press - as King George had done - they could not imagine that America's public discourse would ever consist mainly of something other than words in print.

And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.

Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America. In fact, according to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of four hours and 28 minutes every day -- 90 minutes more than the world average.
When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average American has. And for younger Americans, the average is even higher.

The internet is a formidable new medium of communication, but it is important to note that it still doesn't hold a candle to television. Indeed, studies show that the majority of Internet users are actually simultaneously watching television while they are online. There is an important reason why television maintains such a hold on its viewers in a way that the internet does not, but I'll get to that in a few minutes.

Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the television networks mimicked the nation's leading newspapers by faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar.
But all the while, television's share of the total audience for news and information continued to grow -- and its lead over newsprint continued to expand. And then one day, a smart young political consultant turned to an older elected official and succinctly described a new reality in America's public discourse: "If it's not on television, it doesn't exist."

But some extremely important elements of American Democracy have been pushed to the sidelines . And the most prominent casualty has been the "marketplace of ideas" that was so beloved and so carefully protected by our Founders. It effectively no longer exists.

It is not that we no longer share ideas with one another about public matters; of course we do. But the "Public Forum" in which our Founders searched for general agreement and applied the Rule of Reason has been grossly distorted and "restructured" beyond all recognition.

And here is my point: it is the destruction of that marketplace of ideas that accounts for the "strangeness" that now continually haunts our efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation.
Whether it is called a Public Forum, or a "Public Sphere" , or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America's earliest decades.

In fact, our first self-expression as a nation - "We the People" - made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government.
The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were:

It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry, save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all;
The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent Meritocracy of Ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them;
The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a "Conversation of Democracy" is all about.

What resulted from this shared democratic enterprise was a startling new development in human history: for the first time, knowledge regularly mediated between wealth and power.

The liberating force of this new American reality was thrilling to all humankind. Thomas Jefferson declared, "I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."It ennobled the individual and unleashed the creativity of the human spirit. It inspired people everywhere to dream of what they could yet become. And it emboldened Americans to bravely explore the farther frontiers of freedom - for African Americans, for women, and eventually, we still dream, for all.

And just as knowledge now mediated between wealth and power, self-government was understood to be the instrument with which the people embodied their reasoned judgments into law. The Rule of Reason under-girded and strengthened the rule of law.

But to an extent seldom appreciated, all of this - including especially the ability of the American people to exercise the reasoned collective judgments presumed in our Founders' design -- depended on the particular characteristics of the marketplace of ideas as it operated during the Age of Print.

Consider the rules by which our present "public forum" now operates, and how different they are from the forum our Founders knew. Instead of the easy and free accessindividuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.

Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers.

Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens.

Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.

The number of cables connecting to homes is limited in each community and usually forms a natural monopoly. The broadcast and satellite spectrum is likewise a scarce and limited resource controlled by a few. The production of programming has been centralized and has usually required a massive capital investment. So for these and other reasons, an ever-smaller number of large corporations control virtually all of the television programming in America.

Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.

So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television's domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information network in all of American television.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.

And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.

The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.

For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.

Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.") In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore.

Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to "glue eyeballs to the screen" in order to build ratings and sell advertising. If you have any doubt, just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings, and on and on and on.

And more importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that need to be addressed by the American people.

One morning not long ago, I flipped on one of the news programs in hopes of seeing information about an important world event that had happened earlier that day. But the lead story was about a young man who had been hiccupping for three years. And I must say, it was interesting; he had trouble getting dates. But what I didn't see was news.

This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of "The Daily Show," when he visited CNN's "Crossfire": there should be a distinction between news and entertainment.

And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.

One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these ads.
That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now filling up with the wealthy.

Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.

And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.

Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon ad.

The advertising of products, of course, is the real purpose of television. And it is difficult to overstate the extent to which modern pervasive electronic advertising has reshaped our society. In the 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith first described the way in which advertising has altered the classical relationship by which supply and demand are balanced over time by the invisible hand of the marketplace. According to Galbraith, modern advertising campaigns were beginning to create high levels of demand for products that consumers never knew they wanted, much less needed.

The same phenomenon Galbraith noticed in the commercial marketplace is now the dominant fact of life in what used to be America's marketplace for ideas. The inherent value or validity of political propositions put forward by candidates for office is now largely irrelevant compared to the advertising campaigns that shape the perceptions of voters.

Our democracy has been hallowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially created. Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."

Like you, I recoil at Lippman's cynical dismissal of America's gift to human history. But in order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum and create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the Rule of Reason. We must, for example, stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth.
I don't know all the answers, but along with my partner, Joel Hyatt, I am trying to work within the medium of television to recreate a multi-way conversation that includes individuals and operates according to a meritocracy of ideas. If you would like to know more, we are having a press conference on Friday morning at the Regency Hotel.

We are learning some fascinating lessons about the way decisions are made in the television industry, and it may well be that the public would be well served by some changes in law and policy to stimulate more diversity of viewpoints and a higher regard for the public interest. But we are succeeding within the marketplace by reaching out to individuals and asking them to co-create our network.

The greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible marketplace for ideas is the Internet. Indeed, Current TV relies on video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send us what we call viewer-created content or VC squared. We also rely on the Internet for the two-way conversation that we have every day with our viewers enabling them to participate in the decisions on programming our network.

I know that many of you attending this conference are also working on creative ways to use the Internet as a means for bringing more voices into America's ongoing conversation. I salute you as kindred spirits and wish you every success.

I want to close with the two things I've learned about the Internet that are most directly relevant to the conference that you are having here today.
First, as exciting as the Internet is, it still lacks the single most powerful characteristic of the television medium; because of its packet-switching architecture, and its continued reliance on a wide variety of bandwidth connections (including the so-called "last mile" to the home), it does not support the real-time mass distribution of full-motion video.

Make no mistake, full-motion video is what makes television such a powerful medium. Our brains - like the brains of all vertebrates - are hard-wired to immediately notice sudden movement in our field of vision. We not only notice, we are compelled to look. When our evolutionary predecessors gathered on the African savanna a million years ago and the leaves next to them moved, the ones who didn't look are not our ancestors. The ones who did look passed on to us the genetic trait that neuroscientists call "the establishing reflex." And that is the brain syndrome activated by television continuously - sometimes as frequently as once per second. That is the reason why the industry phrase, "glue eyeballs to the screen," is actually more than a glib and idle boast. It is also a major part of the reason why Americans watch the TV screen an average of four and a half hours a day.

It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what the industry calls "time shifting" and personalize their television watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.

The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.

We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy's future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom.

Roadkill

2005-10-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

You see them all the time up here. Especially this time of year. They can leap a cattle fence as easy as your big brother reaches across the table for the last pork chop.

And into the road.

And then they're dead or wounded, and your car hood is "stove in," that is if you're lucky enough to end up with just a little front end damage. There are secondary highways you really don't relish traveling after dusk. I haven't hit a deer yet, but it's only a matter of time. Several close calls already, and I've only been up here since the beginning of the year. People say it'll happen when I get a new car. That must be the reason there are so many old cars on these roads. Superstition, sweet and true, my friends.

There is a finite amount of deep freezer space in the Rockies. This is a fact. True, there are a lot of hunters in these parts, and elk and venison are tasty, but the amount of hunting that does go on doesn't seem to be keeping pace with the big yellow trucks I see out on the highways in the morning picking up carcasses.

I'm sure there's a way to calculate the cost of auto damage, highway cleanup and repair and human injury and/or death due to striking deer (or elk) and compare that figure to the cost of cattle and sheep that might be lost to natural predators, if they still existed. Hard to say. In the world we live in, solving a problem often takes away a person's paycheck, and that's one less dollar leaping into the box store tills.

Most of the injury and damage has got to be absorbed by ranchers. They're the folks who use these roads the most. I wonder if they ever think about it.

Good, old America. Could she tell a story

2005-09-29T16:09:00.000-07:00

Why is it so important that America be great.

Couldn't she just help out during community litter cleanups or volunteer for an after-school program?

Couldn't America be that enthusiastic and engaging biology instructor all the students say is their favorite teacher.

What would be wrong with America not leading the next meeting?

Why not let some other nation lead, and then America, quiet and unassuming, could make a recommendation that's enthusiastically adopted by the other countries. The kind of recommendation that ends the meeting early and makes everyone happy. Laughter and back slaps in the hall, etc.

Or better yet, why couldn't America just raise her hand at the meeting and say, "I'll do it--no strings attached."

When America dies, will there be a lot of other countries at her funeral? Will they say, "America. She was a wonderful nation. Gave and gave and never asked for a thing. Do you remember the time she took in the Ugandans when their house burnt down. Why there's old Bert Ugandan over there. Is he crying?"

The Neo-con Regent

2005-09-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

I think I now know what the serfs felt like under the rule of a boy king.

That's a wrap. Let's set up the next scene, Hugging the Smudge-faced Child.

2005-09-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

"People just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption," said the president, adding that if Americans would skip trips that are "not essential, that would be helpful."

Story here.

I suggest that the president stop making photo-op trips to the disaster areas as his "helpful" contribution to gasoline conservation. Of course Scott McClellan disagrees.

But is anyone fooled? The president once again seems to have been caught not giving a damn, and this is all spin control. Firefighters for props, Hollywood-like levee repair sets built then torn down after the cameras departed.

Where's my Evian! Can I get an Evian, here? This heat is unbearable. I'll be in my dressing room.

Below lies a shadowy box

2005-09-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

Time has slowed.

When I woke this morning I could hear a light rain falling. I thought of just lying there, but then I realized the septic company would be at the house at eight.

Time sped up.

A light rain fell. Fuck. I'm going to be outside with the sludge pumpers. Dress, brush this, brush that, work boots sitting at the door... is Joe, the septic guy. He's on time. I'm the one who overslept.

Time slowed again.

It felt good outside. A little breeze, about 45 degrees F, and Joe was an amiable, middle-aged man just trying to get a job done. As he poked the ground searching for the hollow thunk of concrete, we talked about septic system emergencies. I suppose everyone likes to tell a horror story or two about their occupation--the 10 foot cobra found under the hood of a sedan, the tree surgeon crushed by his patient. Joe was no different.

Time slowed further.

I suppose I should recount Joe's gothic tales of the septic, but the stories themselves are not important. What satisfied me was the context of the telling, and I mean everything that made up that context (I won't recount completely; in recollection, the metal dulls). In any case, they were really bad stories. Except one in which a lady asked the use of the pumping hose to vacuum her carpets. But rain dripped off our hats, and you could smell the sweet wet earth turned up by spades, and there was nothing to do but do what we were doing. No better time and place in which to tell and hear a story, and no better story than one of personal experience--embellished, fractured, fantastic, ungrounded, the mind's fabrication altered out of reality by both teller and listener. Fiction.

Humans are great liars. In fact, of all our attributes, I think we have made the most of lying. We lie to remove discomfort, but we also lie to take pleasure. Sure, deception was/is a survival tool, but I wonder what we would be like if it hadn't been a necessary trait or if a competing trait had won the gene war. Would private property exist, for instance? Government? Public art? Humanism? Would we tell stories?

All I'm certain of is that watching and listening to Joe tell his cockamamie tales of ghostly bathtub backups and odd, sentient creatures living in the ooze felt to me like each cell of blood on earth was laughing at the same time.

I have you, my darling Internet

2005-09-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

Since February, I have not viewed one single television broadcast. No news, no primetime, no daytime, no late night. No sports, no educational programming, no pop culture talk shows, no political talk shows.

I have seen no footage or coverage of Hurricane Katrina or Rita. I have a vague understanding that Tom Cruise did something on Oprah, that there was someone known as The Runaway Bride, that some show called Lost is "really good."

I do not know what the hot new trends are. For instance, I don't know what the new iPods look like (but I do know there is a new one...isn't there?), what exactly a "desperate housewife is," who is with whom in Hollywood or what animal is currently selling Budweiser beer.

I do read online newspapers: NYT, LAT, WP, WSJ, Bus Wkly. I read links sent to me by friends. I spend time in a philosophical chatroom, which is rarely engaged in philosophical discussion. I have read, since February, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Razor's Edge, Villa Incognito, The Elementary Particles, Diamond, London, A Soldier of the Great War, Steinbeck's America and Americans, Rousseau's A Social Contract, Zinn's People's History of the United States and its companion volume, Voices of a People's History, and a manual for the beginning sea kayaker.

I live in a rural area where there are scant billboards on which to reflect. I do not listen to commercial radio. I do, on occasion, listen to music programs on NPR as well as This American Life.

In essence, to a great degree, I have cut myself off from modern commercial propaganda outlets.

A caveat: I do have a "television monitor," which I use exclusively to view motion pictures.

In the coming months, I will record how, if at all, this semi-isolation from the conduits of commerce and obedience affects my thinking and behavior.