With the recent legislation proposed by the GOP that requests for the removal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, one has to wonder if such a move is in the best interest of the average American family. Carbon emissions, cigarette smoke, lead-based paint, asbestos, and house hold chemicals are environmental toxins are scientifically proven to be harmful, especially to children. Removing the authority of the EPA to regulate emissions will put many urban, inner city communities with high concentrations of industry at significant risk.
The only way to minimalize the risks of environmental hazards is to limit exposure to them. Unlike certain health problems that we have no control over, environmental health hazards are issues we can prevent from happening. One thing to consider is that we are usually unable to see the effects of environmental toxins until children have grown into adults. For instance, mesothelioma symptoms, a lung disease caused by exposure to asbestos, have a latency period of as long as twenty years. It is important to educate families of the threat environmental toxins pose so they can prevent them as early as possible.
Children are especially vulnerable to environmental toxins. When children are growing, their behavior puts them closer to the ground ultimately promoting closer proximity to potential toxins. Additionally, their organs are developing, their bodies are smaller, and they breathe faster and take in more substances than adults. An increased breathing rate raises an individual’s susceptibility to the fibrous asbestos material that can cause mesothelioma and other lung cancers. Furthermore, the risk is compounded for families that can’t afford to live in places that are environmentally safe.
The Greater Birmingham children’s Environmental Health Initiative (GBCEHI) did a study targeting 12 zip codes in the Birmingham area. Their focus of study involved mostly populations that were primarily African-American and low-income. They found that these communities had high population densities with even higher concentrations of heavy industry. They have since discovered that one of the most prominent environmental hazards is poor indoor air quality, citing it as a massive contributor to asthma. More frighteningly, asthma shares the basic symptoms of most lung diseases: coughing, shortness of breath, and chest heaviness. Because of the similarities, most lung disease is not diagnosed until it is far too late. With the mesothelioma life expectancy being as short as fourteen months, the impact of environmental toxins can be devastating to a community.
Organizations such as the EPA and the GBCEHI are attacking the problem of environmental hazards on several fronts. To slash the EPA’s budget and remove their power over the regulation of carbon emissions seems to be counterproductive to the health and wellbeing of American citizens. We can only hope that our representative examine this issue thoroughly and come to a conclusion that finds a favorable balance for both environmental safety and American industry.
After Blue Shield shocked the nation with 59% premium hikes in California last week, the company just refused a request from the elected insurance commissioner to stop the increases for 60 days.
After Blue Shield shocked the nation with 59% premium hikes in California last week, the company just refused a request from the elected insurance commissioner to stop the increases for 60 days.
Blue Shield is making the case for tough premium regulation, because is has proven that it has the power to raise rates as much as it wants at will and refuse even a modest request from the elected insurance commissioner.
After spending the day walking the halls at the state Capitol in Sacramento yesterday, I can tell you Blue Shield made a big mistake when it decided to price gouge its customers. The state legislature is ready for a fight to give the insurance commissioner power to approve or to deny health insurance premium increases before they take effect. (You can help give them the push they need by sending an email to your state representatives today.) If that fight fails, Consumer Watchdog will help the voters decide through a ballot measure whether government should have the power to regulate and roll back excessive premiums.
Blue Shield made an offer in an errant press release it later recalled which no regulator or policyholder can accept. The company said it would let an independent actuary decide rate justification, and decided to live by the policy when news broke. The problem is that in the absence of legislated standards for what is an excessive premium, an independent actuary has no basis for review of the premium's reasonableness other than whether there is an error in addition, multiplication or subtraction.
Questions abound about how Blue Shield can justify its 59% premium hike other than by the means it seeks — an actuary to say all the math is good. The standard Californians deserve is that the rates are not excessive or discriminatory. That's the standard for the prior approval of auto and homeowner insurance rates in California that are rejected or accepted by our elected insurance commissioner. The standard saved drivers $62 billion on their auto insurance according to the Consumer Federation of America.
Blue Shield is more opaque than any health insurance company in California because of its unique tax status. We don't know how much the CEO makes, nor can we adequately see the company's the books since it is neither publicly traded nor a tax exempt charity that must make its tax returns public. Suspicion is Blue Shield cooked its books, and hid big sums of money, to justify the 59% increase.
Only subpoenas and special investigative hearings will determine the truth in the absence of new authority given to the elected insurance commissioner Dave Jones. Legislation by Assembly Member Feuer will give the commissioner that power and it is precisely what Blue Shield's second PR problem in two weeks sought to derail. Once again, Blue Shield has made the case for exactly the tough regulation it seeks to stop.
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Posted by Jamie Court, author of The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell and President of Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.
With the belated victory of Kamala Harris as Attorney General, the full results of the 2010 election are in for California. There many things that progressives can be proud of – a sweep of statewide offices, picking up another Assembly seat, defeating prop 23 and passing prop 25. On the other hand, there are also some major disappointments – the defeat of prop 19 (marijuana legalization), the defeat of prop 21 (a VLF to fund the state parks), the defeat of prop 24 (rolling back corporate tax breaks), and the passage of prop 26 (2/3rds requirement for fees). Prop 26 especially complicates what this victory means for California.
Indeed, our situation is a lot like the national picture after the 2008 elections – we have an executive who straddles the line between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party, a big legislative majority, but not the ability to break the fiscal deadlock and really be able to govern our state.
So where do we go from here?
Finance:
The rather comfortable million-vote margin by which prop 25 passes would make me rather optimistic about the possibility for the passage of a majority-vote revenue proposal. However the failure of every revenue increase – prop 19, 21, and 23 – are daunting evidence to the contrary. Granted that the outcome might be different in a presidential electorate (younger, more minority and working class voters, higher turnout generally), but I think this shows how difficult it will be to thread the needle of the “Program/Government Blindspot” and the prevalence of austerity thinking, even if we link taxation to spending.
In the mean time, California Democrats have a daunting task ahead of them – to balance the budget without doing any more harm to already brutalized public services, and to create the economic growth necessary to ensure that the budget stays balanced. In the short-term, there are four things we can do:
Going back to the Steinberg Maneuver – According to the California Budget Project, Prop 26 doesn't establish a blanket 2/3rd requirement for all fees. A number of fees, including “charges where the feepayer receives a service, product, benefit, or privilege…charges imposed for entrance, use, purchase, or lease of state or local government property, penalties, fines, or other monetary charges resulting from a violation of the law, charges imposed for “reasonable regulatory costs” and assessments and property-related fees,” are not covered by the 2/3rds requirement. Thus, it's still possible to raise revenue through a two-step process in which said fees are raised by a certain amount by majority vote, then taxes are raised and the fees are lowered by the same amount by a majority vote. The issue here is whether we can get Governor-elect Jerry Brown to sign such measures, given previous statements of his.
We can try again with Ballot Box Budgeting – there's some indication that Brown's approach will be instead to put the budget to a vote as a proposition in a special election. The tricky thing here is how to persuade the public to vote for said budget; Schwarzenegger tried this in 2009 and it was dramatically unsuccessful. Perhaps the 2010 election signals a more realist (and realistic) electorate, but it's a roll of the dice.
Banks – I'vewritten before about the potential that a state reserve bank offers. That was true before the 2010 election, but it's even more true now. Given the newly-created restrictions on raising revenue, a state reserve bank offers an entirely new possibility, both for resolving the current budget crisis, and for creating the economic growth necessary for California's future development.
I believe that this bank would be even more likely to gain support if, within the state bank, there was created a series of Development Funds – a Green Development Fund, an Education and Innovation Development Fund, a Health Care and Medical Science Development Fund, and so on – that could make targeted investments into key sectors of California's economy, both public and private.
Jobs – with or without financing from a state reserve bank, a Job Insurance fund would fit under the exemption in prop 26 – since the “feepayer receives a service, product, benefit, or privilege,” namely eligibility for a job when unemployed. Ultimately, as I have said before, California cannot balance its budget with 12% unemployment because revenues will continue to decline, no matter how much spending is cut. What is needed is a sudden shock to California's labor market, and unemployment being cut in half is that shock – it will pump huge amounts of money into local retailers and other businesses, it will make employers see the ranks of the unemployed in their communities shrinking, and hopefully shift the “animal spirits” of both employers and lenders.
None of these steps is a total solution for the fundamental problem of revenues – given the problems we had with the budget even before the recession. But they will fill the gap so that we can debate the question of majority-vote revenues in an economic climate of balanced budgets, normal levels of unemployment, and higher economic growth.
This doesn't mean dismantling regulations in the name of the environment, but rather shifting the direction of regulation away from NIMBY no-growth, which only encourages sprawl and wasteful development, towards in-fill building of affordable housing in already-developed areas while protecting undeveloped land. It also means – and here is where environmentalists need to reckon with the realities of class and race – getting rid of the tools of modern class (and racial) discrimination: zoning rules that limit building heights to two-stories or less, that ban unrelated individuals from living in the same house (to prevent renters and subdivision), that establish minimum lot sizes to mandate , or that mandate the construction of garages. In other words, ending exclusionary zoning and encouraging inclusionary zoning.
Finally, it means supercharging public investments into green energy, mass transit, and other sustainable ventures. A statewide version of LA's 30/10 plan, aimed at speeding up and extending High-Speed Rail and local mass transit would be a huge transformation, both in terms of creating jobs and spurring growth, but also in lowering CO2 emissions and pushing land-use away into energy-efficient high-density development. Large-scale alternative energy projects, like the Beacon Solar Energy Project, San Fransisco's tidal energy project, should be built under public auspices, making use of the newest forms of technology. The advantage to this approach is that it allows the public sector to act as a yardstick competitor to California energy companies, spurring innovation and providing a guaranteed market for green manufacturing firms under democratic auspices.
All of this links together. Without financing, there's not going to be a green revolution in California any time soon. Without new sources of economic growth that don't depend on housing bubbles, California won't get the revenue it needs. In the end, the fight over our budget is really about the future direction of this state – whether we will have a government that can help build a broad economy or a night watchman state that is powerless to prevent corporate greed from running wild.
(8.15.10 Disclosure: My union, CSEA, endorsed Wood, and I volunteer on his campaign.)
Carl Wood is the Democratic candidate for the CA 65th Assembly District, the most depressed area in the nation after Detroit. Carl is a lifelong labor guy with deep roots in the community. As Public Utilities Commissioner, Carl Wood helped guide the state through the disastrous energy crisis, protecting the interests of workers and working class utility consumers.
Wood is unapologetically liberal and direct, in a very pleasant way. Here he is at the California Democratic Convention last April 2010:
Even if California passes Prop 25, the Majority Budget Initiative, Californians will still need a 2/3 majority to address the structural revenue deficit in the state budget. We’ll need 2/3 to counter the Yacht Party, and we need more progressive Democrats to lend our own team a bit more moxie.
Carl Wood is not afraid to regulate. He’s not even afraid to say “regulate,” and sadly, that is saying something these days. Too many Democrats are still self-censored captives of right wing frames. Carl has already completed a public career, and he’s not afraid to be a one termer, if that’s the price for voting based on policy rather than politics.
Arguments against democratic oversight of any aspect of the economy, exalting commercial secrecy over regulatory openness, supposed private efficiency and vigor over governmental bureaucracy and torpor, ultimately boil down to the justification used by Mussolini’s defenders: “He made the trains run on time.” But, as this book so persuasively demonstrates, it is democratic processes that make the utilities run better, cheaper, more efficiently and more reliably.
We need Democrats who can persuade voters to fight for their own interests, especially in the CA 65th, where the unemployment rate is second only to that of Detroit. Who will boldly assert we need more jobs, more state revenue, and less genuflecting to the free market? Carl Wood.
Jerry Brown’s in the middle of an interesting news cycle. First, the transcripts of secretly recorded conversations were released under California’s sunshine regulations. And well, That’s Our Jerry!
George Skelton went through and picked out some gems from the transcripts of the interviews.
* Responding to the snide digs of Republican gubernatorial contender Steve Poizner about his being a career politician: “A certain amount of wisdom and maturity is needed in this toxic, partisan environment that the state has become. It’s funny that he would think that ignor- ance has now become a virtue.”
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* Being Jerry the Jerk as Goldmacher interviews him about raising millions from special interests for his pet project, two charter schools he founded as Oakland mayor: “This is the Lord’s work. . . . You have kind of a picky little thing here. . . . That’s the luxury you have! I can tell you’re a nice middle-class kid, you’re not in the ghetto. Do you know they have murders in the state? . . . This is life and death!” (LA Times)
On the latter quote, I wonder if Brown would react the same way if somebody else had asked the question. Say somebody like Skelton. While I don’t denigrate his experience, it is also a little bit troubling that Brown lambasts Goldmacher for nothing other than the fact that he is young and/or white.
Also in today’s news cycle, Brown has an interview with Legal Newsline, a conservative website that is curiously anti-lawyer. In the interview, Brown questions the value of regulation.
“The whole framework of law is crucial for the operations of business enterprises,” Brown said. “But when over prescriptive, it creates a huge and growing amount of overhead and it does seem that we’re reaching the point of counter-productivity.”
As progressives, we must be careful about how we discuss these topics. While there might be some areas where regulations are outdated and need to be reformed, but when we discuss “regulation” generally, it is clearly a net benefit. And I think this is what Jerry Brown is getting at. When you attack regulation, you attack the requirement that doctors are licensed. When you attack regulation generally, you imply that business should hold the advantage over consumers. It may not be said, but regulation enables consumers to deal fairly with business. It blocks bait and switch and other swarthy business “techniques.”
So, I’ll choose to highlight the first part of that quote, while Legal Newsline chose the latter part.
The whole framework of law is crucial for the operations of business enterprises.
In my last post (and the post before that), I mentioned the importance and difficulty of talking about financial regulation, a task which has been made all the more difficult by an arcane financial products industry that isn't really understood even by its experts.
So in trying to get to grips with this topic, I'm trying to triangulate in on it from different angles – one of which, the idea of a public bank as a yardstick I discussed last week. Today, I'd like to bring up an important point about financial regulation, that the problem we face is three-fold: deregulation, un-regulation, and regulatory capture (and potential incapacity).
More over the jump!
Pretty much all that needs to be said about the impact of deregulation has already been said. And quite a bit has been written about the government's refusal to regulate the new “shadow financial sector.” And if that were all there was to the story, it would be fairly easy to fix the financial sector.
The problem is regulatory capture and potential incapacity – regulatory capture seems to be nearly inevitable, as long as financial institutions can offer jobs to former regulators, contributions to electeds and party organizations, and financial experts to the regulatory agencies themselves; even if that weren't already a massive conflict of interest that allows financial institutions to game the system, you have the problem that even a completely honest regulatory watchdog might not have have the financial, personnel, legal, and expertise resources needed to actually regulate – and Congress certainly hasn't shown itself particularly interested in keeping the FDA up to scratch, let alone the SEC.
So what do you do if old regulations are gone, there aren't new regulations to deal with new problems, and the regulators either can't or don't want to regulate? This brings me to a point brought up by Matt Yglesias, when he pointed out that the failure of regulatory authorities to recognize and halt this crisis:
..leaves us with an appreciation of crude measures rather than hubristic efforts to get the regulations precisely right…The best you can hope from a regulatory regime is that it will be a satisficing [sic] solution wherein some fairly crude rule will improve on the outcomes generated by the unfettered market. When that’s not the case, we may as well let the market go unfettered even though that, too, will be somewhat sub-optimal.
What we don't need is to look to the newest fad in economics (behavioral economics, I'm looking at you) to give us a flawless model for predicting when market faiilures will happen. What we don't need is “regulation for the 21st century,” or for any new paradigm. What we need are regulations that work without regulators – automatic regulation.
Automatic regulation doesn't refer to some sort of sci-fi legislation that creates self-enforcing, self-aware regulatory cyborgs. Although a Wall Street Robocop would be a cool idea, I'm actually talking about regulation that establishes clear and transparent bright lines that any informed member of the public or the media can understand. The Glass-Steagall Act's separation between commercial and investment banking was virtually self-evident: if people could deposit their money in a bank, that bank wasn't allowed to underwrite securities (stocks and bonds); if a bank floated bond issues and acted as a broker in the securities market, it couldn't receive deposits. A reserve requirement, like the Fed's reserve requirement or the 1860s rules that required "national banks" to back their bank notes with T-Bills, is easy enough to check: you look at how much money the bank is circulating, and how much it's supposed to keep in reserve, and if the two numbers don't balance out, there's a problem. Bob LaFollette, one of the forgotten heroes of American Progressivism, in his 1924 third party race for the presidency called for the breaking up or nationalization of all corporations with (either 9% ot 15%) of market share – a radical proposal, but one that would have been easy to administer.
Automatic Financial Regulation:
In thinking about how to create automatic regulation for the financial industry, three broad categories of regulation come to mind:
Bright Line Regulations – the proposed limitation of oil derivatives seems like a good place to start in terms of automatic regulation – extending these limits to other commodities such as electricity and waster might prevent a future Enron-like fraud-via-false-scarcity (such as befell California). Another example of how one could establish an automatic regulation in finance would be to ban tranche-ing, preventing one step of the process by which uncertain assets can be repackaged into a more marketable form. Restoring transactions on margin, or establishing a small transactions tax would further reduce speculative bubbles, market “hurn,” and pump-and-dump schemes without restricting long-term investment. If these ideas seem a little scattered, and underdeveloped, I accede to that, but I would point out that all of them rely on relatively simple prohibitions or requirements, reducing the effort of oversight.
Competing Public Ratings Agencies – one major area of the financial sector whose inherent weakness has allowed bubbles to become more frequent in recent years is the fact that the major ratings agencies for stocks, bonds, derivatives, and so on are for-profit private institutions whose livelihood depends on a reputation for providing good ratings for their clients. In this, we see a parallel between virtually all of our recent financial scandals – in the Enron/WorldCom/etc. corporate scandals of 2003, it was accounting/consulting agencies who helped conceal the bookkeeping fraud that made most major American corporations seem more profitable than they really were; in the housing bubble, the subprime/securitization/tranching system wouldn't have functioned without housing evaluators whose conflict-of-interest-ridden valuations helped spiral real estate prices out of rational bounds. Hence, I would argue that one major systemic change that should be done is to create a number of public rating agencies for stocks, bonds, other securities, and real estate, who would be required to use common standards of valuation, and whose ratings would only be published as averages – complicating if not completely eliminating the process of agency capture.
Right of Private/State Suit to Enforce – arguably one of the most important elements in the civil rights bills of the 1960s were the provisions allowing private citizens to bring suit to protect their own rights (Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Section V of the Voting Rights Act), allowing enforcement to continue even when the government was hostile to civil rights enforcement. In recent years when the regulatory agencies have been captured by conservative ideologues, the use of state suits to force the EPA or similar agencies to enforce the laws have been crucial in preventing the total undermining of environmental and other regulations. Hence, one crucial factor in creating automatic regulation must be a clear mechanism to allow private groups, state attorneys general, and the U.S Justice Department to bring lawsuits against both regulators and the subjects of regulation to require that bright lines be enforced.
CALIFORNIA TAKES ANOTHER GIANT LEAP ON GLOBAL WARMING POLICY
AIR BOARD RELEASES COMPREHENSIVE PLAN TO CUT POLLUTION
SACRAMENTO (June 26, 2008) – The California Air Resources Board (CARB) released the nation’s most comprehensive plan to date for reducing the pollution that causes global warming. While the plan is still a proposal, it represents the furthest step forward any state has taken in the fight against global warming, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
Patricia Monahan, the director of UCS’s California office, said CARB’s plan would add more momentum to the fight against global warming. “California is showing the rest of the country how we can build a clean energy economy,” she said. “There’s no drilling our way out of energy problems. As energy prices skyrocket, consumers need real alternatives that sip rather than guzzle, and that are homegrown instead of imported.”
The 75+ page plan includes a range of policy recommendations. Chief among them is increasing the state’s renewable electricity standard. The plan also contains provisions for a regional cap-and-trade program that could work in harmony with other more specific policies to reduce pollution economywide. The plan also says CARB will consider a vehicle “feebate” program that would provide incentives to consumers to buy cleaner cars.
In addition, the proposal includes plans to reduce emissions from heavy-duty trucks with hybrid engine technology and better fuel economy. Like many of CARB’s proposals, the heavy-duty truck provisions would improve public health by also reducing smog-forming pollution. The plan also advocates for a high-speed train system in California.
Christopher Busch, a UCS climate economist, pointed out that many of the draft plan’s policies would save consumers money and yield economic benefits, while the overall cost of implementing the plan would likely be negligible. “Fundamentally, we’re talking about making our economy more efficient, which will give us energy savings,” he said. “And investing in clean, renewable energy will make our electricity and fuel supplies more diverse, and insulate us from price swings in the fossil fuel market.”
Busch added that global warming pollution reduction strategies also would provide public health benefits by cleaning up the air as well as support the state’s growing clean technology industries. “California has proven time and again that we can clean our air and grow our economy,” he said. “Now the state is going to prove the same thing with global warming.”
The renewable electricity standard in the plan would require utilities to generate 33 percent of their electricity from clean, renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, by 2020. Such a standard would reduce global warming pollution by an amount equivalent to avoiding the construction of 10 new large fossil fuel power plants or removing nearly 3 million cars from the road. And such a standard could save residents money on their electricity bills by displacing natural gas. Additionally, it would reduce smog-forming pollution, create new green-collar jobs in the state, and bolster California’s growing clean technology sector.
“California has a wealth of renewable electricity potential we aren’t tapping into yet,” said Dan Kalb, UCS’s California policy coordinator. “Shifting to clean, safe sources of carbon-free electricity in a smart and well-planned manner is a win for the environment, the economy and consumers.”
more…
(For more about the benefits of boosting the state’s renewable electricity standard, go to: www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/33_percent_RES.pdf )
CARB also identified a feebate program as one avenue for reducing vehicle pollution. S uch a program would establish one-time rebates and surcharges on new passenger cars and light trucks based on the amount of global warming pollution they emit. This program would deliver benefits on its own, but also would complement California’s tailpipe standards if both were implemented. According to a University of Michigan study, implementing a clean car discount program would deliver an additional 21 percent reduction in global warming pollution beyond the tailpipe standards.
More than 1.5 million new vehicles are sold in California each year, which represents about 10 percent of the new vehicle market in the United States. A quarter of California’s global warming pollution comes from cars.
“A feebate program is a great way to make cleaner cars more affordable for everyone,” said Spencer Quong, a UCS senior vehicles engineer. “Cleaner cars simply cost less to operate, so people will save money on gas with this program, too. On top of that, this ‘clean car discount’ program would give automakers an added incentive to produce cleaner vehicles.”
The regional cap-and-trade market approach in CARB’s plan would work best IF California can strengthen the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) efforts, according to UCS. The WCI is a partnership among several western states and Canadian provinces to reduce global warming pollution.
“CARB’s plan on cap-and-trade is a step in the right direction and draws on some lessons learned from other cap-and-trade systems,” said Busch. “But until the details are filled in, the jury remains out on whether or not the program will be as well designed as it could be.” UCS is VERY pleased to see that cap and trade accounts for only 20 percent of the needed emissions reductions, while the remaining 80 percent will come from direct regulations. “The plan appropriately recognizes that cap and trade is not a silver bullet,” Bush said.
Busch cautioned that CARB’s plan implies that the agency is considering auctioning less than half of the pollution allowances under a cap-and-trade system initially. He pointed out that cap-and-trade systems work best when as many pollution allowances as possible are auctioned and that giving them away can create unwarrented windfall profits for polluters. (On page 19 of the plan, CARB calls for the program to “quickly transition … to a system in which the majority of allowances are auctioned.”)
CARB also recommends limiting the number of “offsets,” or substitutes polluters could use to avoid making pollution reductions on their own. But until those offset limits are specified, Busch said, it will not be possible to determine how effective a cap-and-trade program would be at reducing pollution, fostering innovation, creating jobs, or improving public health in California. Ideally, in-state offsets would be emphasized more than out-of-state offsets. UCS urges CARB to prohibit the use of offsets for compliance with direct regulations such as the renewable energy standard.
One day your website is yours, and the next day it is someone else’s. Organizations, businesses and regular people are at the mercy of a confusing deregulated system.
A little over a week ago the Speak Out California website suddenly disappeared, and viewers instead saw a website full of advertisements.
We had no way of even knowing what had happened. It was just a surprise. One day typing “speakoutca.org” into a web browser took viewers to our website, the next day it took viewers to an ad site that someone else managed.
Some of us are more sophisticated and internet-savvy than most citizens so we were eventually able to track down some information. I’m not going into details here, except to say that no one at Speak Out California received any notice that this was going to happen. It took several days to even track down where the domain name (this is what internet addresses like speakoutca.org are called) had been registered, who had registered it, and contact info for the registrar. Then it took several more days to restore the domain name to us and get it working again.
Here’s the thing: the only way we were able to get this name back and get the site operating again is because some of us are much more internet-connected than most people. Most people would have no idea where to even start to look for information and help solving a problem like this.
This is certainly not an uncommon problem. My wife had a business named Dancing Woman Designs with a website at dancingwomandesigns.com, and then one day she didn’t. She received no notice, nothing. It was just there one day and gone the next and if she wanted it back it was going to cost her. It was going to cost her a lot. And so she doesn’t have dancingwomandesigns.com anymore and that address takes you to an ad site. A whole business that took years to get going and build is history now. It was wiped out in a minute because someone was able to get the web name.
A larger business is more likely to have the resources to hire the necessary experts to fight something like this. But it can be an expensive proposition and it can take time.
This is the difference between regulation and deregulation. Regulations protect regular people. Deregulation enables and protects scammers, schemers, and cons. The Internet is largely unregulated and is full of scammers, schemers and cons. Most of the businesses and organizations on the internet are good, honest, credible and legitimate but regular people are also left completely at the mercy of numerous cons, scams, schemes and rip-offs and the burden is on us to find a way to tell the difference.
We got Speak Out California back up and running. It only took us a week and a little money. But we are sophisticated, internet-savvy and connected — and lucky. Hmm … maybe some new legislation is warranted.
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S.
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in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world’s largest media corporation.
In 2004, Bagdikian’s revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) — now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric’s NBC is a close sixth.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was created in 1934 with jurisdiction over radio, interstate telephone communication, and later television. But the FCC has always struggled with a fundamental lack of clarity about its proper functions. In its mission to serve the public interest, should the FCC crack down on indecency on the airwaves? Should it use its power to rescind the licenses of wayward stations?
Get background information on some of the FCC’s more recent decisions below:
Local Radio Ownership Rule, National TV Ownership Rule enacted. A broadcaster cannot own television stations that reach more than 35% of the nation’s homes.
1946
Dual Television Network Rule enacted, prohibiting a major network from buying another major network.
1964
Local TV Multiple Ownership Rule enacted, prohibiting a broadcaster from owning more than one television station in the same market, unless there are at least eight stations in the market.
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1981 [Reagan Presidency]
Reagan Administration deregulation under the leadership of FCC Chairman Mark Fowler. Deregulatory moves, some made by Congress, others by the FCC included extending television licenses to five years from three in 1981. The number of television stations any single entity could owngrew from seven in 1981 to 12 in 1985.
1985 [Reagan Presidency]
Guidelines for minimal amounts of non-entertainment programming are abolished. FCC guidelines on how much advertising can be carried per hour are eliminated.
1987 [Reagan Presidency]
“Fairness Doctrine” eliminated. At its founding the FCC viewed the stations to which it granted licenses as “public trustee” – and required that they made every reasonable attempt to cover contrasting points of views.
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1996 [Clinton Presidency]
President Clinton signs the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It is generally regarded as the most important legislation regulating media ownership in over a decade. The radio industry experiences unprecedented consolidation after the 40-station ownership cap is lifted.
Does Clinton regret the Media Merger Mania he unleashed?
It’s not clear:
Bill Clinton’s Take On Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal
8/6/2007
The Fallout From the Telecommunications Act of 1996
* Lifted the limit on how many radio stations one company could own. The cap had been set at 40 stations. It made possible the creation of radio giants like Clear Channel, with more than 1,200 stations, and led to a substantial drop in the number of minority station owners, homogenization of play lists, and less local news.
* Lifted from 12 the number of local TV stations any one corporation could own, and expanded the limit on audience reach. One company had been allowed to own stations that reached up to a quarter of U.S. TV households. The Act raised that national cap to 35 percent. These changes spurred huge media mergers and greatly increased media concentration. Together, just five companies – Viacom, the parent of CBS, Disney, owner of ABC, News Corp, NBC and AOL, owner of Time Warner, now control 75 percent of all prime-time viewing.
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* The Act gave broadcasters, for free, valuable digital TV licenses that could have brought in up to $70 billion to the federal treasury if they had been auctioned off. Broadcasters, who claimed they deserved these free licenses because they serve the public, have largely ignored their public interest obligations, failing to provide substantive local news and public affairs reporting and coverage of congressional, local and state elections.
* The Act reduced broadcasters’ accountability to the public by extending the term of a broadcast license from five to eight years, and made it more difficult for citizens to challenge those license renewals.
One Candidate has spoken out against this senseless consolidation of the Free Press — that Candidate is John Edwards
8/6/2007
John Edwards:
“It’s time for all Democrats, including those running for president, to stand up and speak out against this [News Corp.-Dow Jones] merger and other forms of media consolidation.”
So far, Edwards is the only candidate to address this issue, and he deserves enormous credit for exhibiting such courage. The media is a potentially devastating enemy – just ask Howard Dean. However, Hillary Clinton has the greatest moral obligation to take a stand given what her husband saddled us with.
And Edwards has paid the Price for telling the Truth to the American People!
The price tag: being “Virtually Ignored” by the Media, and even being dropped from Candidate Polls, based on the arbitrary decisions of corporate Media Executives, and little else:
What is Edwards saying that they find so disturbing?
Edwards Comes Out Strongly Against Media Consolidation
Aug 2, 2007
Challenges Democratic presidential candidates to cut off contributions from News Corp Executives
Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Today, Senator John Edwards spoke out strongly against media consolidation which threatens the health of our democracy, by calling on Democrats to openly oppose and take the necessary steps to stop the merger between News Corp and the Dow Jones Company/The Wall Street Journal. Edwards called on Democrats to oppose the merger in light of the biased and unfair manner Fox News, and other media arms of News Corp, cover Democrats and the Democratic Party.
…
“News Corp’s purchase of the Dow Jones Co. and The Wall Street Journal should be the last straw when it comes to media consolidation. The basis of a strong democracy begins and ends with a strong, unbiased and fair media – all qualities which are pretty hard to subscribe to Fox News and News Corp. The reality is that Americans deserve more news outlets – not fewer. It’s time for all Democrats, including those running for president, to stand up and speak out against this merger and other forms of media consolidation.
Al Gore, another Progressive Statesman, has also spoken out just as urgently against this “wild west” atmosphere for evermore Media Consolidation:
Gore Lashes Out at Media Consolidation
by Jill Lawless
August 28, 2006
“Democracy is under attack,” Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. “Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time.
“Democracy is a conversation, and the most important role of the media is to facilitate that conversation of democracy. Now the conversation is more controlled, it is more centralized.”
…
In the United States “the only thing that matters in American politics now is having enough money to put 30-second commercials on the air often enough to convince the voters to elect you or re-elect you,” he said. “The person who has the most money to run the most ads usually wins.”
Where do the other Candidates stand on the FCC, Media Consolidation, and the Fairness Doctrine?
It would be nice to know!
(The Fairness Doctrine, by the way, pre-Reagan era, used to require ALL qualified Candidates, get Equal Air time from the broadcasters, in exchange for their very lucrative broadcasting licenses.)
Edwards has the guts to take a Stand and speak out, like Al Gore did —
“One of the things we have a problem with in America is the conglomeration and consolidation of the Media.
We need to make sure that diverse voices are being heard, and we don’t have that kind of consolidation because that’s a big part of the problem.”
If the Trends set in motion by Ronald Reagan, and continued by Bill Clinton, are allowed to proceed unchecked as they have for 2 decades, this is the likely Future we will face
Instead of the “Big Six” Media Conglomerates —
we’ll end up with the “Titanic Two”
Fox and MSNBC!(and just wait til they merge)
If you think the Media stinks now —
just stay tuned …
and now a word from those Sponsors,
those VERY Special Interests down at www.MediaLobbyists.Inc …
underwritten and enabled by “Business as Usual” politicians, SPONSORS!
