As we look ahead to the fall elections, and the 2016 elections beyond, both the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions from this current excuse for a Supreme Court are weighing heavily on our minds. What's weighing even more heavily is that Americans soon may not have any serious access to honest media - and might only have propaganda from the new American oligarchs instead.
We wish we could say that our comments this day were hyperbole, that looking into the near future of political campaigns in America wasn't like staring into a magic mirror that only spouted lies and a fog of obfuscation.
We can't say that, though.
Just look at the news. Since the Supreme Court effectively removed any serious limits on political campaign financing earlier in the year, the hugely wealthy Koch Brothers and their ironically named political advocacy group "Americans For Prosperity" have spent more than $35 million, just on negative TV ads, trying to slur, slam, and denigrate just four Democratic candidates.
We're not exaggerating when we say that the Koch Brothers and those who stand with them will stoop to any level. The latest example of this was an AFP ad aimed at Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Udall from Colorado. That ad used a picture of President Obama and Senator Udall, taken from the dark days after the Aurora theatre massacre. The ad creators then photoshopped out the background and used the photo in a totally unrelated and negative context.
Surprisingly, the Koch-backed group was actually able to be shamed enough by the families of the Aurora victims that the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity changed the ad - but not by much.
You might have heard about this disgusting display on the news or on the internet - though you may not have even that option in the near future.
Even as Comcast is desperately scrambling to sell off assets, so that the Federal regulatory agencies might allow the Comcast/Time Warner merger to slip through, the FCC is also proposing the gutting of Net Neutrality.
That would mean that Internet Service Providers would be allowed to charge higher rates for different kinds of traffic online - effectively legalizing internet highway robbery. The recent dispute between Netflix and Comcast is a perfect example of how a telecom corporation can virtually hold up whomever they want in a world without Net Neutrality, and suffer no consequences.
Under a system without Net Neutrality, if you want to watch a TV show or news program owned by Viacom - for example Comedy Central or the new series on Showtime,'Years of Living Dangerously' - and the only choice for high-speed internet you have is Comcast (who owns NBC), that internet service provider may have the right to slow your viewing access down to a crawl. Unless, of course, you pay whatever extra access fee they decide to charge.
If you thought the recent study that proved that America has become an oligarchy - a nation where only the richest will have any opportunities - was a joke, as we assured you when we first saw it, that fact is indeed very serious, very sad, and a very real indictment of the way our U.S. government is currently working (or not working).
While we can't eliminate the oligarchs today, if you'd like to do something to help keep Net Neutrality alive, we recommend you send your scathing comments to the FCC as soon as their public comment period opens on this issue.
Just don't be surprised if, in the near future, the only ads on your television, tablet, phone and computer are political propaganda filled with hate and lies - and that's the only programming you get on those devices that actually runs smoothly, as we've all come to expect online.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Overflowing With Wisdom
As the decision from the State Department came down last Friday to delay the official ruling on the Keystone pipeline, we had a chuckle or two among our staff - in part because the announcement happened just before Earth Day.
Even while the 'Cowboy and Indian Alliance' was marching around the National Mall yesterday on Earth Day to protest the Keystone pipeline, the potentially disastrous project remains in the same place it's been since February. That's when a Nebraska judge verified that the political runaround favored by TransCanada was unconstitutional, leaving the massive oil corporation with no legally approved route through the Cornhusker State for the Keystone XL project.
That inconvenient truth didn't seem to deter Politico's Ben White on Monday, as Emily Atkin noted over at Think Progress. White railed against the delay on CNBC, saying that the State Department just didn't seem to understand its role in the whole process. Many other pundits on both the right and left simply insisted the decision on Keystone was a purely political one.
What's been clear for a very long time to native Nebraskans like us who care about the future, is that folks like Ben White, TransCanada, and the "it's all about politics" crowd are the ones who don't seem to "get it" when it comes to Keystone. So let us help make this brutally clear: Nebraskans don't want the pipeline, for some very good reasons, and those reasons aren't going to change.
We've written and drawn more than a few times over the last few years about the Keystone pipeline, and the biggest reason for Nebraska to refuse this project that we always come back to is water.
The Keystone XL pipeline, if it is ever authorized in Nebraska, would go over part of the Ogallala Aquifer, the worlds largest underground source of clean water. That water has come to be more than just a symbol for Nebraska and the other states on the Great Plains. It's the source of water that allows America to feed itself and much of the rest of the world, even as drought has become somewhat normal again for the region.
If that source of water is ever contaminated, as a undetected leak of tar sands oil and related chemicals could easily do, it wouldn't just be a minor environmental event. It could mean that a large section of the midwest would no longer be able to grow food, or allow people to have access to drinking water. No water, no crops, no herds, no people, no business, no income, no food.
No kidding. All it would take is one wrong spill. Just one, and you could say good bye to our entire home state, permanently.
Sure - there are pundits who say that other elements of environmental responsibility, like the expected new emission rules, far outweigh the impact of Keystone.
We also understand how many Americans handle issues that don't happen right in their own backyard - badly. Four years after the Gulf oil disaster, and twenty-five years after the Valez oil spill in Alaska, most Americans have no idea that both disasters are still ongoing - including, in the case of the Gulf spill, BP's attempts to wriggle out of any serious legal penalties.
That, in a nutshell, is why Nebraskans continue to refuse Keystone, and why Americans who care about the environment still celebrate Earth Day every year: To remind Americans that these fights to keep our water, air, and environment clean are a daily struggle, one that we should all be paying attention to.
If we don't, we literally may lose our entire state. One spill is all it could take.
Knowing that, it shouldn't be difficult for anyone to understand why Nebraskans would prefer TransCanada to "get lost."
Even while the 'Cowboy and Indian Alliance' was marching around the National Mall yesterday on Earth Day to protest the Keystone pipeline, the potentially disastrous project remains in the same place it's been since February. That's when a Nebraska judge verified that the political runaround favored by TransCanada was unconstitutional, leaving the massive oil corporation with no legally approved route through the Cornhusker State for the Keystone XL project.
That inconvenient truth didn't seem to deter Politico's Ben White on Monday, as Emily Atkin noted over at Think Progress. White railed against the delay on CNBC, saying that the State Department just didn't seem to understand its role in the whole process. Many other pundits on both the right and left simply insisted the decision on Keystone was a purely political one.
What's been clear for a very long time to native Nebraskans like us who care about the future, is that folks like Ben White, TransCanada, and the "it's all about politics" crowd are the ones who don't seem to "get it" when it comes to Keystone. So let us help make this brutally clear: Nebraskans don't want the pipeline, for some very good reasons, and those reasons aren't going to change.
We've written and drawn more than a few times over the last few years about the Keystone pipeline, and the biggest reason for Nebraska to refuse this project that we always come back to is water.
The Keystone XL pipeline, if it is ever authorized in Nebraska, would go over part of the Ogallala Aquifer, the worlds largest underground source of clean water. That water has come to be more than just a symbol for Nebraska and the other states on the Great Plains. It's the source of water that allows America to feed itself and much of the rest of the world, even as drought has become somewhat normal again for the region.
If that source of water is ever contaminated, as a undetected leak of tar sands oil and related chemicals could easily do, it wouldn't just be a minor environmental event. It could mean that a large section of the midwest would no longer be able to grow food, or allow people to have access to drinking water. No water, no crops, no herds, no people, no business, no income, no food.
No kidding. All it would take is one wrong spill. Just one, and you could say good bye to our entire home state, permanently.
Sure - there are pundits who say that other elements of environmental responsibility, like the expected new emission rules, far outweigh the impact of Keystone.
We also understand how many Americans handle issues that don't happen right in their own backyard - badly. Four years after the Gulf oil disaster, and twenty-five years after the Valez oil spill in Alaska, most Americans have no idea that both disasters are still ongoing - including, in the case of the Gulf spill, BP's attempts to wriggle out of any serious legal penalties.
That, in a nutshell, is why Nebraskans continue to refuse Keystone, and why Americans who care about the environment still celebrate Earth Day every year: To remind Americans that these fights to keep our water, air, and environment clean are a daily struggle, one that we should all be paying attention to.
If we don't, we literally may lose our entire state. One spill is all it could take.
Knowing that, it shouldn't be difficult for anyone to understand why Nebraskans would prefer TransCanada to "get lost."
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Breaking The Chains That Bind
As we watch events unfold around the world today, celebrating the forty-fifth anniversary of Earth Day, we have to admit that we understand the feeling so many environmentalists often express: That our politics and media in the United States are too often chained down, with no significant hope visible, and no positive change likely in the foreseeable future.
Right now, in America though - especially in the fields of politics and media - this is not one of those times.
The current media landscape, across the board, is really nearing a tipping point of serious change. Ken Vogel & Mackenzie Weigner of Politico, as well as our friend Rick Ungar of Forbes, both pointed out last Friday that those who privately subsidize right-wing media - from Rush Limbaugh all the way to Fox 'News' - are beginning to make one thing clear: The days of millions of dollars of money for next-to-no-return at the ballot box will likely soon be coming to an end.
That certainly won't mean an end to right-wing hate media. There has always been an audience, however small, for the kinds of divisive political hate media that fills the airwaves today. If the political left has one lesson in business for the political right that its learned over the past decade, it's that when talented, motivated people are given even small opportunities to capitalize on a small audience, they can still be successful - or at least pay the bills.
Of course, Americans all over the country would be able to pay their bills better if our country's "minimum wage" was really a living wage - and not a way to keep people chained to their current economic status. Raising the federal minimum wage to a living wage is a concept the majority of Americans support - and it would certainly break those chains. With right wing hate-media collapsing, maybe there's finally a chance for those of us who exist in the political center to finally push through legislation supporting what the true majority of Americans want.
Sadly, though, we have a feeling that such a movement may take longer than usual reaching into some corners of America. Oklahoma for example, where the Governor recently chained minimum wage workers to a below poverty pay level, effectively declaring with a sneer, an ideological war against the working poor.
In case you missed it, Republican Governor Mary Fallin signed a law last week banning any city in Oklahoma from passing its own higher-than-state-level minimum wage. The new law also banned any city from enacting its own laws about paid sick days or vacation requirements.
If the tea party nuts on the far right truly believed the anti-big government slogans their extremist right-wing media pushes them to chant, you might expect there to be rallies against this kind of state government overreach. After all - nearly 75% of Americans support a higher minimum wage.
That support doesn't just come from the political left and center either.
This past week, a group of local Christian pastors in Florida stood up against the kind of dismissive and disgusting hatred of the poor that's pushed so often in the right-wing hate media. This occurred after a Republican member of the U.S. house sneered in a dismissive way towards one of his own minimum wage earning constituents at a public town hall meeting.
Indeed, on issues from the minimum wage, to universal background checks, to getting money out of politics, the overwhelming majority of Americans from the progressive center left through the moderate center right agree.
That same majority of Americans also seem to be coming to a realization: That as long as we stay exclusively in our own ideological camps, and refuse to work together, the oligarchs - the richest Americans, who consider themselves above both the left and the right - will use our divisions to keep us all chained down like slaves.
If right-wing hate media truly does begin to fail, as it seems set to do, maybe the moderates on the right really could join together with progressives on the left to make a moderate amount of progress for us all.
Right now, in America though - especially in the fields of politics and media - this is not one of those times.
The current media landscape, across the board, is really nearing a tipping point of serious change. Ken Vogel & Mackenzie Weigner of Politico, as well as our friend Rick Ungar of Forbes, both pointed out last Friday that those who privately subsidize right-wing media - from Rush Limbaugh all the way to Fox 'News' - are beginning to make one thing clear: The days of millions of dollars of money for next-to-no-return at the ballot box will likely soon be coming to an end.
That certainly won't mean an end to right-wing hate media. There has always been an audience, however small, for the kinds of divisive political hate media that fills the airwaves today. If the political left has one lesson in business for the political right that its learned over the past decade, it's that when talented, motivated people are given even small opportunities to capitalize on a small audience, they can still be successful - or at least pay the bills.
Of course, Americans all over the country would be able to pay their bills better if our country's "minimum wage" was really a living wage - and not a way to keep people chained to their current economic status. Raising the federal minimum wage to a living wage is a concept the majority of Americans support - and it would certainly break those chains. With right wing hate-media collapsing, maybe there's finally a chance for those of us who exist in the political center to finally push through legislation supporting what the true majority of Americans want.
Sadly, though, we have a feeling that such a movement may take longer than usual reaching into some corners of America. Oklahoma for example, where the Governor recently chained minimum wage workers to a below poverty pay level, effectively declaring with a sneer, an ideological war against the working poor.
In case you missed it, Republican Governor Mary Fallin signed a law last week banning any city in Oklahoma from passing its own higher-than-state-level minimum wage. The new law also banned any city from enacting its own laws about paid sick days or vacation requirements.
If the tea party nuts on the far right truly believed the anti-big government slogans their extremist right-wing media pushes them to chant, you might expect there to be rallies against this kind of state government overreach. After all - nearly 75% of Americans support a higher minimum wage.
That support doesn't just come from the political left and center either.
This past week, a group of local Christian pastors in Florida stood up against the kind of dismissive and disgusting hatred of the poor that's pushed so often in the right-wing hate media. This occurred after a Republican member of the U.S. house sneered in a dismissive way towards one of his own minimum wage earning constituents at a public town hall meeting.
Indeed, on issues from the minimum wage, to universal background checks, to getting money out of politics, the overwhelming majority of Americans from the progressive center left through the moderate center right agree.
That same majority of Americans also seem to be coming to a realization: That as long as we stay exclusively in our own ideological camps, and refuse to work together, the oligarchs - the richest Americans, who consider themselves above both the left and the right - will use our divisions to keep us all chained down like slaves.
If right-wing hate media truly does begin to fail, as it seems set to do, maybe the moderates on the right really could join together with progressives on the left to make a moderate amount of progress for us all.
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