Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

The current FCC is a tremendous improvement over the Bush FCC and the two older Democratic appointees have resisted the corporate drive toward deregulated media monopolies for many years. Obama's FCC chairman has supported easing access to low power FM radio station licenses for non-profit groups and there is a bill circulating in Congress to that effect. The Bush FCC appointees fought this tooth & nail. The weak point right now is not the current FCC but Congress--too many craven right-wing Dims.

Public approval of this Congress right now is at 14%. They know whatever they do at this point they're going to get creamed in November but they're acting like they've all been paralyzed with Yanomamo blow-gun venom. It's a type of political insanity where they keep repeating the same right-wing behavior expecting different electoral results and they should have learned that lesson from Al Gore in 2000. The stupidity of trying to out-Republican the Republican Party isn't just an obvious sign of DLC Dim corruption--it's a proven failed political strategy for the Dim Party.

Freedom of the print media press and freedom of the broadcast press are two different animals under American law. This is because, under original telecommunications law, in order to operate as a broadcast news source, a broadcast spectrum frequency user must obtain a license from the government to use THE PUBLIC'S airwaves (held as a commons in the interest of the public by the government) in a manner that is both profitable to the license holder and commensurate with the public interest. The legal definition of what is "commensurate with the public interest" with respect to broadcast press law has been developed since the 1930s, but, as with so many other American institutions, how violations of the public interest are recognized and dealt with depends on how many citizens get riled up and raise formal hell over a given issue as to what gets attention and what gets done (when there is a sitting FCC with enough people on it willing to listen to the public as there is right now). This is an entirely different set of legal conditions than is applied to traditional print media press which is directly shielded by the 1st Amendment.

When [R] Bob Dole was Senate Majority Leader the federal government (illegally in my opinion) sold off what was then estimated to be about $70 Billion dollars worth of the digital broadcast spectrum--sold outright to the networks without any fiduciary responsibility to use any of it in a manner commensurate with the public interest so far as I know. Even Bob Dole had the balls to admit at the time that he thought this was the biggest rip-off of the U.S. public (of something that the public owned in common like the national parks) that he had ever seen. He was soon out of power after that remark and could never find significant campaign funding for his attempts to organize presidential runs.

The corporate switch to the digital TV broadcast spectrum was one way for the network frequency users to shed another layer of accountability to the FCC or the public. I am not an expert on broadcast press law pertaining to the use of the digital spectrum so I am unsure if there IS any relevant law that applies to it besides specific, case by case, digital broadcast obscenity rulings.

But the American public have been beaten down, dumbed-down and programmed to confront their government's continual failures and betrayals with complacence and defeatism instead of organizing to resist.

socialist,

well put.

>>Why would the corporate interests that control the media and teabagger groups want to undermine their own interests? It makes no sense.<<

Why did the Prussian wealthy and German Army promote a mere private first class veteran to the leadership of their nation? They thought they could control him, and he would control and manipulate the people into starting a new war of conquest. We have a corporate elite who make much of their money out of eternal war, and want to keep doing so. A corporate plutocracy that fears the mob is wising up to the scam and wants to divert them with enemies to fight, without and within the country. In Nazi Germany the list of the "enemies of the state" stretched long from the Jew to the Gypsy to the Homosexual to the Czech to the... Beck seems to be making up a list right in front of us. And we are arguing about the Fawning Corporate Media's propaganda machine? The left has just been warned about their extermination and we are fussing over debating points?

Gary

"A third argument is that "While possible, a new form of fascism is too unlikely to be taken seriously."

I see this view as a tribute that blindness pays to vision. It is merely a sophisticated way of conceding possibility while justifying inaction. The outside chance, after all, rarely deserves to be a focus of continuing attention. In terms of its implications, therefore, "unlikely" may be the equivalent of either "impossible" or "so what?"

In daily life, of course, people and groups do take precautionary action to protect themselves or others against some unlikely events. This is the basis of the vast insurance industry in the capitalist world, which provides protection for some people against some of the monetary losses resulting from ill health, accidents, theft, fires, earthquakes, or floods. In all these cases of unlikely "bads," not insurance but prevention is the best protection. In the case of friendly fascism, it is the only protection."
-- Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America (1980)

socialist,

Thanks for your on point reply. i'm less willing to accept that the powers behind the media are as in control of events as they like to portray themselves, and i see clear potential for their proto-fascist genie to spin out of their control.

i'm trying to be less reactive and confrontational in this forum, i still fall into it, so i appreciate your reply.