Summary: It’s Veterans Day and what better day to discuss honoring our service men and women as well as the worthwhile work of organizations like Veterans for Peace, Vote Vets, and Operation Stand Down Nashville, which organizes a community-based event that provides homeless veterans with a wide range of necessities including food, clothing, medical, and legal assistance, and job counseling.
Listen to: Stand Down, Georgie, Stand Down Please (37.25MB, :23:15)
Always On illustrates what we’d be talking about if we were on the air 5 days a week.
In a shocking move that will set workers’ rights back decades, the Bush Labor Board steamrolled America’s workers in September, issuing a sweeping set of 61 decisions that stack the deck in favor of Big Business over working men and women.
The decisions:
- Make it harder for workers to form unions but easier to get rid of existing unions;
- Make it easier for employers to escape liability for breaking the law and weaken already ineffective remedies;
- Make it easier for employers to discriminate against union supporters and replace strikers; and
- Make it easier for employers to escape bargaining obligations.
If Liberadio(!) were on the air, we’d be speaking to Stewart Acuff, AFL-CIO Organizing Director.
The conference, organized by the Tennessee Environmental Council and Tennessee Conservation Voters, runs Thursday, Nov. 15th through Saturday Nov. 17th at Lipscomb University.
Tony Garr and the Tennessee Health Care Campaign have put together a town-hall like discussion with some of our state legislators for tonight.
The event, Improving Access & Reducing the Financial Burden of Health Care, will give you a chance to discuss Tennessee’s health care issues with State Reps Brenda Gilmore (D, the Fightin’ 54th!), Sherry Jones (D, the Fightin’ 59th!), Democratic Majority Leader Gary Odom (D, the Fightin’ 55th!), Mike Turner (D, the Fightin’ 51st!) and Janice Sontany (D, the fightin’ 53rd!). State Senator Jack Johnson (R, the Fightin’ 23rd!) is also on the schedule.
In addition, David Lyle will moderate a panel and Garr will present a report compiled by Tennessee’s Comptroller John Morgan that offers practical solutions to some of the state’s most pressing health care challenges.
When: Tonight, 6:00 – 7:30 PM; Refreshments from 7:30 – 8:00 PM (Mmmmmmmm…refreshments!)
Where: Brookmeade Congregational Church, 700 Bresslyn Road, Nashville
For More Info: 615-227-7500
Yesterday, FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin proposed a loosening of media ownership rules. In a joint statement, Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein respond:
This is portrayed as a moderate proposal, but it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Don’t let the wool be pulled over your eyes. The proposal could repeal the ban in every market in America, not just the top twenty. Any city, no matter how small, could be subjected to newspaper broadcast ownership combinations under a very loose standard.
Under Chairman Martin’s plan, all markets will be open to one company combining broadcast properties with cable, the newspaper (already a monopoly in most places), even the Internet Service Provider. His proposal could propel a frenzy of competition-stifling mergers across the land. He can try to characterize his plan as affecting only the “largest markets,†but consider:
• The top 20 markets account for over 43% of U.S. households. Even on its face, this proposal directly affects over 120 million Americans.
• The Chairman then creates a loophole that Big Media will drive a truck through, permitting a newspaper-broadcast combination in any market in the country. We have seen how loosely the Commission has granted waivers in the past. If this proposal goes through, the FCC could grant cross-ownership applications in such small towns as Meridian, Mississippi and Bend, Oregon. When big conglomerates can’t get their way in a general rule, they press for loopholes that swallow the rule, and they would succeed with this approach.
• The non-top four stations that major newspapers will now be competing for are precisely the stations more likely to be owned by small, independent broadcasters. If we ever got serious about women and minority ownership, these are also the stations most available to them. Chairman Martin’s rule pretty much reserves these outlets for the big guys. So this proposal actually perpetuates the shamefully low levels of minority and female media ownership.
The Martin rules are clearly not ready for prime time. Under the Chairman’s timetable, we count 19 working days for public comment. That is grossly insufficient. The American people should have a minimum of 90 days to comment, just as many Members of Congress have requested. More importantly, the Commission has yet to finish its Localism proceeding, teed up four years ago, or to forward comprehensive ideas to increase women and minority ownership of broadcast outlets.
There is still time to do this the right way. Congress and the thousands of American citizens we have talked to want a thoughtful and deliberate rulemaking, not an alarming rush to judgment characterized by insultingly short notices for public hearings, inadequate time for public comment, flawed studies and a tainted peer review process – all designed to make sure that the Chairman can deliver a generous gift to Big Media before the holidays. For the rest of us: a lump of coal.
We realize there is some urgency with respect to the Tribune transaction. The Chairman, however, has refused to act on Tribune’s waiver requests that would permit the transaction to close. Let us be clear: it is improper to hold the Tribune hostage in order to force a vote on media ownership before the end of the year. We are prepared to vote on the Tribune waiver requests within three working days after the Chairman circulates a draft decision. There is simply no excuse for using Tribune as a human shield.
Joint Statement [pdf]
Eighteen months ago, Kevin Martin and his merry and band of FCC commissioners began a review of its media ownership rules. It’s was a big deal when they brought one of only six public hearings to Nashville and here, just like in the other five cities, the response to media consolidation was undeniably one-sided – the public is against it.
But that fact is just one of many that FCC Chairman Kevin “Stinky” Martin leaves out of his editorial in today’s New York Times. Instead he proposes that in response to the clamor to reform media ownerships rules the right thing to do is – you guessed it – relax them.
Martin starts out with a couple of relative truisms, at least – the daily newspaper is a vital source of information for many and the publishing landscape has changed dramatically over the last 30 years:
In many towns and cities, the newspaper is an endangered species. At least 300 daily papers have stopped publishing over the past 30 years. Those newspapers that have survived are struggling financially. Newspaper circulation has declined steadily for more than 10 years. Average daily circulation is down 2.6 percent in the last six months alone…If we don’t act to improve the health of the newspaper industry, we will see newspapers wither and die. Without newspapers, we would be less informed about our communities and have fewer outlets for the expression of independent thinking and a diversity of viewpoints. The challenge is to restore the viability of newspapers while preserving the core values of a diversity of voices and a commitment to localism in the media marketplace.
However, each point after is a lesson in obfuscation and denial.
After six public hearings, 10 economic studies and hundreds of thousands of comments, the commission should move forward. The commission should modify only one of the four rules under review — the one that bars ownership of both a newspaper and a broadcast TV or radio station in a single market. And the rule should be modified only for the largest markets.
Sure the commission should move forward, but if Martin was sincere in referencing the public hearings, studies, and comments he would have mentioned that the overwhelming majority of people are not in favor of any relaxation of media ownership rules, no matter how small.
A company that owns a newspaper in one of the 20 largest cities in the country should be permitted to purchase a broadcast TV or radio station in the same market. But a newspaper should be prohibited from buying one of the top four TV stations in its community. In addition, each part of the combined entity would need to maintain its editorial independence.
And what might be left to purchase after the top four TV stations in its community? The more affordable properties owned by small local minority-owned businesses. How would this add to diversity in a market? And who will guarantee that the “combined entity” will “maintain its editorial independence?” Historically, left to their own devices, media conglomerates have done just the opposite.
The cross-ownership rule is the only media ownership rule that has never been modified since its inception in the mid-1970s. For the last decade, F.C.C. chairmen — Democrats and Republicans alike — have said this rule needs to be revised.
Yeah, dude, but you’re revising in the wrong direction.
The ban on newspapers owning a broadcast station in their local markets may end up hurting the quality of news and the commitment of news organizations to their local communities. Newspapers in financial difficulty often have little choice but to scale back news gathering to cut costs. Allowing cross-ownership may help to forestall the erosion in local news coverage by enabling companies that own both newspapers and broadcast stations to share some costs.
Allowing cross-ownership can also mean that in addition to scaling back news gathering to “cut costs” in the newsroom, precious independent and local television news gathering will also be scaled back to “cut costs.”
Since 2003, when the courts told the commission to change its media ownership rules, the news media industry has operated in a climate of uncertainty. Many newspapers and broadcast stations are operating under waivers of the ban on cross-ownership. The F.C.C. needs to address these issues in a coherent and consistent fashion rather than considering them case by case, making policy by waiver.
In 2003, the courts told the commission to change its media ownership rules because the FCC had tried to force through the relaxation of these rules despite an overwhelming outcry from the owners of the airwaves – the public. You ignored it then and you’re doing the same thing now.
I confess that in my public role, I feel that the press is not on my side.
Neither are the American people, my friend.
A colleague on the commission, Michael Copps, for whom I have the utmost respect, has argued that our very democracy is at stake in the decisions we make regarding media ownership. I do not disagree.
Commissioner Copps has also been arguing tirelessly for the people against the relaxation of these rules. Do you have the respect to listen to him?
From FreePress.org: You can help stop Kevin Martin’s rush to gut media ownership limits. Tell Congress to Stop Big Media.
Hey! Look at us! The Democrats won in 2006 and we’re still jammerin’ on about the threat of election fraud. Go figure. It’s almost like it’s a non-partisan issue. Weird.
And we’re not alone. One of our guests this morning was Nashville filmmaker David Earnhardt, producer, writer and director of Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections. The documentary, which will have its theatrical premiere tonight at the Belcourt Theater, shows just how insidious and pervasive election fraud was in 2004 and 2006 and how it threatens the integrity of the upcoming 2008 election. The stories are shocking and the Americans working to save our democracy are inspiring.
However you label yourself politically, if you can still get tickets for tonight, don’t miss it. Or grab a copy from the website and show it to everyone you know.
Psssst! I have a Veterans Day secret. It’s not really much of a secret, really, because if you think about it you’d naturally come to the same conclusion. Here it is: Not every veteran thinks alike. Much like the rest of the country, military personnel have different ideas and opinions on a variety of different subjects – including war.
So it should come as no shock when we read that Admiral William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, says that the saber-rattling of right-wing war hawks towards Iran is unhelpful:
None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go. Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.
Or when the group Veterans for Peace, a non-profit educational and humanitarian organization of vets dedicated to increasing public awareness of the costs of war, lead anti-war rallies across the country.
What does surprise, however, is the treatment that these men and women get from other Americans. Oh sure, we expect extreme levels of disgusting behavior and hypocrisy from someone like Rush Limbaugh, who loudly professes to “support the troops” while at the same time labeling any soldier who disagrees with the Republican Party’s stance on the war a “phony soldier.” But do we expect the organizers of a Long Beach, California Veterans Day parade to exclude the Iraq Veterans Against the War – a national organization that calls for immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq – from marching with their fellow servicemen and women?
Iraq Veterans Against the War member Jason Lemieux, a Marine who served three tours of duty in Iraq and is now against the war, as well as other veterans from both Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out, were excluded from the parade by the Veterans Day Parade Committee, a non-profit group that organizes the event. “I wanted to march like the rest of the Iraq veterans,” Lemieux said, “I served my country. I’m a veteran of a foreign war. I think I deserve that respect.”
Those that disagree with the organizers’ ruling call it a free speech issue. But it’s much more than that. It’s about honoring the service of veterans despite their beliefs and opinions. The American people learned a valuable lesson after the Vietnam war – you can hate the war but respect the warrior. Ironically, the very people who criticized the anti-war activists of the 60’s and 70’s for not supporting the troops are doing the same exact thing. Strange times, indeed.
Marty Kaplan writing for The Huffington Post tells us today about a new study that illustrates how our entertainment tastes as polarized as our political views. The 24 question poll, a joint effort by the Norman Lear Center and John Zogby, “may give candidates some ideas about where to advertise,” but it also illustrates that “just as there are conservatives, liberals and moderates — there are people with red, blue and purple taste.”
But all Americans, it turns out, have one thing in common – they like to play the Mario.
For those of us who’ve been hankering for a third party candidate who can heal this divided nation we may have our answer: Mario/Luigi ‘08!
Nintendo Party, anyone?
Yesterday, President Bush and his spokesperson, Dana Perino, were crowing about the effect his “frank discussion” with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf had on the leader’s decision to schedule elections sooner rather than later – Feberuary of ‘08.
“You can’t be the president and the head of the military at the same time,” Bush said Wednesday, telling reporters about the 20-minute telephone call he had with Musharraf. Said the president: “I had a very frank discussion with him.”
Today, however, as opposition leader Benazir Bhutto’s house is surrounded with razor wire and military, we hear cricket noises coming from the White House.
You might not want to wait another 5 days to address Musharraf’s latest move, Mr. President. Scramble, scramble!
Our neighbors to the north are a day away from picking a new governor and the Democratic candidate, Steve Beshear, is twenty points ahead. So what do you do if you’re the Kentucky GOP? You get Debbie Boone’s dad to light up the phone lines with bigoted and inflammatory rhetoric.
“Now do you want a governor who’d like Kentucky to be another San Francisco?” Boone asks. “Please re-elect Ernie Fletcher.”
I’ll get my Pat Boone records, you get the lighter fluid. Or is the Larry Craig Theory of Gay Proportionalityâ„¢ in effect here?
(Hat tip: TPM and FOL Delworthio)
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