U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez on Wednesday gave the final approval for the $1 million settlement, initially filed in September.
As part of the settlement, the university has agreed to pay $30,000 to each of the 21 plaintiffs, a total of $250,000 to their attorneys and a total of $100,000 to 15 other claimants.
The settlement also stipulates that UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi issue a formal written apology to the students and alumni who were pepper-sprayed. It also calls for the university to develop new policies regarding student demonstrations and use of force.
In the very same week...
• A military judge agreed that U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning's pre-trial confinement, for having allegedly leaked classified diplomatic cables, was excessively harsh, but refused to dismiss the charges against him. Instead, the judge reduced 4 months from Manning's potential life sentence that he hasn't even received yet while being jailed for 2 years and 8 months, so far, waiting for his day in military court. The judge also delayed the start of his trial for another 3 months in the bargain.
• 26-year old activist and Internet prodigy and pioneer Aaron Swartz killed himself after what his family describes as bullying by a federal prosecutor who filed felony charges against him --- with potential penalties of nearly 50 years in prison --- for something that has never been a crime and has no victims.
Meanwhile, just a few weeks earlier...
• Britain's largest bank, HSBC, was slapped on the wrist with a $1.9 billion settlement (a few weeks of profit) for having knowingly laundered billions of dollars for drug cartels and terrorist organizations and rogue states after federal prosecutors in the U.S. decided that any harsher punishment --- such as larger fines or taking them to court or, God forbid, sending any single one of their employees or board members to prison for even a day --- would potentially result in bankruptcy for the "too big to jail" international bank.
And, a few weeks before that...
• Oil giant BP pleaded guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter and other criminal charges related to the massive oil spill and deaths of 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. They agreed to pay $4.5 billion in fines (they made more than that in profit alone in the third quarter of 2012) over a five year period. Nobody would face any jail time in the settlement.
Yet, all the while...
• NRA stooges continued to pretend that their big bad assault weapons are responsible for keeping this country safe from big government tyranny.
What the fuck is wrong with this picture, those people, this Administration, our Dept. of Justice, and this country?
"In Washington, there's no ruling party," progressive activist and congressional expert Howie Klein of "Down With Tyranny" told me during my interview with him on the Mike Malloy Show just prior to Thanksgiving. We were discussing issues surrounding the increasingly conservative bent of the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House.
"The ruling clique in Washington is what's called 'the conservative consensus'," he continued. "And 'the conservative consensus' is the Republicans, not just in Congress, but the Republicans who stay there forever --- in think tanks, and in the media, and in the consultant world, the pundit world. So them --- and the Democrats who are also part of that world --- that's 'the conservative consensus'. It's everybody but the progressives."
That "conservative consensus" is on display every night on CNN, courtesy of Burnett and her insipid Out Front program. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more blatant example of the "conservative consensus" in the media than her comments that I happened to catch last week while on the road.
Here's Burnett during a discussion on her show last Monday (1/7/2013, the full video is here) about the various concerns --- pretend or otherwise --- about President Obama's nomination of former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as the next Secretary of Defense. Her guests were former George W. Bush Speechwriter and Senior Adviser David "Axis of Evil" Frum and former Pentagon Press Secretary for Barack Obama, Doug Wilson. [Emphasis added.]
And in 2006, to David [Frum]'s point, Hagel said, and I'll just quote him in part: "I would say that a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible responsible option ... I believe a political ... settlement will be the answer. Not a military settlement."
Now, since then, to be fair, he has tempered his point of view. In an op-ed as recently as September, he says "war with Iran is not inevitable, but U.S. security is seriously threatened by an armed Iran."
But is he really outside the mainstream on Iran?
What she did right there, with that almost off-handed, almost imperceptible throw-away line --- "to be fair, he has tempered his point of view" --- is simply incredible to me, and a perfect example of the "conservative consensus" that Klein was talking about.
Since when did shifting one's position towards a possibility of war, rather than diplomatic solutions, become a "tempered" point of view in this country? That nobody on the show even blinked an eye about it is even more astounding.
For the record, no matter the way he is being slimed by the "conservative consensus" at CNN and elsewhere on this and other matters, Hagel, a two-time Purple Heart recipient during his time as an infantry squad leader in the Vietnam War, is anything but a pacifist or a so-called left-wing peacenik when it comes to these matters...
He voted in favor of the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists", the joint resolution passed just 3 days after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 which was used as the pretext to launch the War in Afghanistan --- despite the fact that it was not approved by the U.N. That resolution passed with overwhelming "mainstream" support in the U.S. House by a vote of 420 to 1. It passed in Hagel's U.S. Senate by a vote of 98 to 0.
The 2002 "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq" resolution (the Iraq War Resolution) passed the U.S. House with a "mainstream" vote of 297 to 133. It also easily passed in the U.S. Senate, where Hagel was a member at the time and where he voted in favor along with "the mainstream", 77 to 23. Five years later, and after thousands of U.S. troop deaths and zero WMD found (the major public pretext for that war), Hagel began to offer reasonable doubts about the efficacy of the war, and joined Democrats in politely requesting that George W. Bush begin to explore options for timelines to end the increasingly bloody and costly occupation.
Back in 1999, Hagel also co-sponsored the failed "Kosovo Resolution" in the U.S. Senate to authorize the use of U.S. military force against Yugoslavia by President Bill Clinton. While that resolution was unsuccessful, perhaps making a case that Hagel was outside of the U.S. Senate "mainstream" in that instance, the authorization would have allowed Clinton to send ground troops into Kosovo, demonstrating --- along with his votes in favor of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan --- that Hagel does not have a record for opposing the use of military force when he believes, rightly or wrongly, that it may be justified.
Hagel, no matter what one may feel about him, has a record of falling firmly into "the mainstream" when it comes to the use of U.S. military force and launching wars. To suggest otherwise is absurd, but a perfect example of "the conservative consensus" that now pervades the D.C. beltway media. The idea that war with Iran is an inevitability has become a "mainstream" talking point for both Republicans and their media pawns, such as Burnett on CNN. Anyone who doesn't agree is outside of the mainstream until they are forced to "temper" their views to favor the possibilities of war against a sovereign nation.
This is the world turned upside down. But that seems to be where we are in the "mainstream" view of the media's "conservative consensus".
We may as well toss in here an observation about Burnett from Glenn Greenwald several weeks ago, who snarked via Twitter: "Congrats to vocal Occupy Wall Street critic Erin Burnett on her marriage to Citigroup Managing Director David Rubulotta".
Yes, Burnett, who famously mocked Occupy protesters' objections to the Wall Street bank bailouts during her very first week on CNN in 2010, got married just before Christmas to Citigroup's Managing Director. They met, according to Huffington Post, while she was a VP at Citigroup. (Who knew?)
At the time, media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff --- at CNN --- decried Burnett's obnoxious coverage as "condescending and reductionist".
But, of course, that's the "liberal" CNN you've heard about, where, previously, Campbell Brown --- the wife of Dan Senor, Bush's propaganda man in Iraq turned Mitt Romney's Senior Adviser --- had her own prime time show, for years, just like Burnett. Brown's own conflict of interest was almost never, if ever, stated on her No Bias, No Bull show (seriously, that's what it was called!)
It's one thing to ask tough questions of elected officials. It's another thing entirely to serve as a mouthpiece for the hackneyed Rightwing "conservative consensus" talking points of a disingenuous and discredited political party. Erin Burnett helps turn that consensus into the mainstream every night on CNN --- not on Fox "News", not on Rightwing talk radio, but on CNN --- whether it means attacking the political views of peaceful citizen protesters without disclosing ones own conflicts of interest likely fueling those attacks, or normalizing the idea of war against a nation which currently represents absolutely no threat to this country. That's who Erin Burnett is and she represents everything that continues to be wrong with CNN.
Lots to catch up on before we're back at full speed, but if the news out of the White House was always this much fun perhaps this work wouldn't be so difficult in the first place.
As promised, when a petition posted to the White House's "We the People" website crosses the threshold of garnering a certain number of signatures, they issue an official response to it.
Recently, the petition calling on the Obama Administration to "Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016," crossed that threshold.
There is no word on whether Dick Cheney was the one who filed the original petition, but the official response from Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, is awesomely geek-worthy and follows in full below. Among other observations, he astutely asks: "Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?"
The Force is strong with Mr. Shawcross...
OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO
Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.
This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For
By Paul Shawcross
The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:
However, look carefully (here's how) and you'll notice something already floating in the sky --- that's no Moon, it's a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that's helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts --- American, Russian, and Canadian --- living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We've also got two robot science labs --- one wielding a laser --- roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.
Keep in mind, space is no longer just government-only. Private American companies, through NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO), are ferrying cargo --- and soon, crew --- to space for NASA, and are pursuing human missions to the Moon this decade.
Even though the United States doesn't have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we've got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and we're building a probe that will fly to the exterior layers of the Sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe.
We don't have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke's arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.
We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White House science fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country's future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.
If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
Paul Shawcross is Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget
Tell us what you think about this response and We the People.
Well, now, given the Academy's latest Titanic disaster, a certain Hollywood blogger would be within her rights to say, "TOLDJA!"
The Oscar nominations that were announced last Thursday provided clear evidence that the experiment with Internet Voting by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) was exactly the disaster some members had expected --- and that the reason wasn't technological befuddlement on the part of older voters, as AMPAS had unpersuasively claimed. Rather, the problem was a simply crummy online voting system that stymied the ballot-casting efforts of even computer-savvy "youngsters" like documentarian Morgan Spurlock.
The nominations list is so devoid of internal consistency and logic that show-biz pundits are using terms like "baffling" to describe it. That's a far cry from the supposed cross-category bias toward edgier, more youthfully skewing pictures we were supposed to see after the Academy's old guard supposedly gave up on learning how to use the Internet. Instead, the lack of any pattern whatsoever to the noms shows that Internet Voting was every bit the nightmare for the Oscars that it has been for the American and even the Canadian elections systems as a whole, as The BRAD BLOG has detailed for many years.
But so far, it seems, no mainstream journalist or Academy member is willing to voice the unavoidable conclusion that this year's contest is now hopelessly tainted, and its results even more meaningless than usual. If your nominations basically represent a compendium of votes that were able to get past a firewall of interface and design ineptitude --- not to mention the votes of anybody else who might have inappropriately succeeded in entering and perverting the system --- legitimacy for this year's supposed winners is now largely gone with the wind.
Of course, Oscar results have never been overseeable or "verifiable" by the public. Unlike organizations like the National Society of Film Critics, the Academy doesn't reveal the number of votes received by each winner, nor does it even name the runners-up. It's always lacked the transparency required for legitimacy of any small "d" democratic "election". But under the old, paper-ballot-only system, at least Pricewaterhouse Coopers (the pedigreed professional-services firm that is AMPAS' official vote tabulator and certifier) could see with their own eyes who had won. We could either trust their accounting or not.
But now, not even they know who won or lost, since there's no way for them to verify the accuracy or completeness or integrity of the online vote by the time it got to them. Thus, nobody --- least of all the Academy --- will ever know who "won" the Oscars. Ever!
The calamitous insecurity of untransparent e-voting --- whether in person at the polls or via the Internet --- is something interested parties are loathe to acknowledge. That's why opportunistic companies like Everyone Counts --- which provided the Oscar voting software despite their rich history of gumming up the works in more important, governmental races --- get to fail ever upward.
If we as a society can't cry foul when a shady but well-connected software firm louses up something as comparatively inconsequential as the Academy Awards, how are we ever going to confront the reality of what they and their ilk are doing to our democracy?
Read my full story on this year's epic Oscar Internet Voting collapse, posted at Orlando Weekly, right here. It starts this way:
That's because we'll never know who was even nominated...
Steve Schneider is an Orlando-based media critic who writes about the intersection of popular culture and public policy. He holds a master's degree in Media, Culture & Communication from New York University. Read his blog, "Vision Thing", at Orlando Weekly and follow him on Twitter: @Schneider_Stv.
Yes, Oscar has caught the dreaded Internet Voting disease, and it seems to be working out about as well as it did for Canada in 2012 and just slightly better (as far as we know) than it did for Washington D.C. back in 2010 or for Honolulu in 2009 (where the same company ran that particular Internet Voting disaster.)
From rejected passwords and missed deadlines to fears of system hacks and depressed participation, the whole thing has apparently been a colossal clusterfudge --- not to mention a chilling echo of the catastrophic insecurity of the American election system as a whole in the age of electronic balloting.
Of course, AMPAS should have known better when they hired the disastrous Everyone Counts outfit to run their Internet Voting scheme. But this would hardly be the first time the Academy swooned over the influence of a former Washington power broker. The revolving door between the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and Everyone Counts may finally be paying off for the Internet Voting democracy-be-damned company.
Making the situation even worse, AMPAS and its surrogates have attempted to recast the meltdown of their system as mere techno-confusion on the part of older Academy members, thus smearing anyone concerned for the legitimacy of this year's Oscar as a clueless adversary of "progress."
Sound familiar?
Watching this offensive and destructive meme take hold everywhere from Deadline Hollywood to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is a sobering reminder of how important it is to fight for paper balloting in every governmental contest in the nation, and how much P.R. firepower we'll have to overcome in the process.
Read my full story on the entire fine mess, posted at Orlando Weekly, right here. It starts this way:
UPDATE 1/12/13: It's official. The "baffling" nominations are now out and no one can ever know who really won this year's Oscars. Details now here...
Steve Schneider is an Orlando-based media critic who writes about the intersection of popular culture and public policy. He holds a master's degree in Media, Culture & Communication from New York University. Read his blog, "Vision Thing", at Orlando Weekly and follow him on Twitter: @Schneider_Stv.
"I didn't leave the Republican Party, it left me." – Former FL Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, 9/6/2012
"Anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee should have their head examined." - Rep. Peter King (R-NY), 1/2/2013.
In the wake of the Jan. 1, 2013 decision by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to postpone a vote on Hurricane Sandy relief until after the 113th Congress was sworn in, NY Rep. Peter King's sense of betrayal, which he described as "a knife in the back" in a remarkable floor speech, is understandable, but his proposed remedy is woefully deficient.
The only way that Republicans in an entire region of the country --- the Northeast --- can achieve meaningful representation in the 113th Congress may be by way of a massive party switch. The increasingly rare breed of "moderate House Republicans" may soon only be left with the choice of emulating the late Sen. Arlen Specter's 2009 party switch, by either becoming Democrats or by becoming independents who will caucus with the Democrats.
Of course, that didn't work out terribly well for Specter either...
Under Boehner's leadership, the U.S. House generally acts (the so-called "fiscal cliff" bill not withstanding) under what's known as the Hastert Rule --- named after former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) --- in which the Speaker will not allow a measure to come to a vote unless it is supported by a "majority of the majority" which, as of now, is still the Republican Caucus.
Six of the ten Northeast States (VT, ME, MA, RI, CT, and NH) did not elect a single House Republican in 2012. Only one of Maryland's eight representatives is a Republican. New York elected 27 members of the House --- only six are Republicans. New Jersey's twelve member House delegation is evenly divided, six Republicans and six Democrats. Pennsylvania is the only state in the entire region which, thanks to gerrymandering, features a Republican majority, 13-5, in the U.S. House.
That math presents an ever tightening noose, and a test of character for GOP members from the Northeast.
Political analysts have understood for some time that the threat of a billionaire-funded "Tea Party" primary has forced moderate Republicans to choose between their principles and political survival. But the abrupt postponement of the Sandy relief measure on the final day of the 112th Congress underscored that the divisions within the GOP entail not only differences between a dwindling number of moderates and "Tea Party" radicals, but stark regional differences as well.
Just as Sandy proved a test of character for Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), so too the postponement of Sandy relief --- and ultimate passage of a vastly scaled-back relief package on the first day of the 113th Congress --- now presents a test of character both for Northeast Republicans and those GOPers who placed nation before party in voting to approve the "fiscal cliff" deal.
Either moderate and Northeast Republicans abandon all sense of principle, and the health of their own communities, by caving to the radical elements which have overtaken their party, or they follow the dictates of conscience and the practical realization that the only sure way to evade a "Tea Party" primary is by switching parties.
If, nationwide, 17 moderate Republicans made the switch, Democrats would regain the majority and sanity might be restored.
But, of course, those who switch from R to D, or even R to I, may find themselves pushed out of Congress all together nonetheless, just as Specter was.
Either way, there are difficult days ahead for the dwindling GOP moderates and Northeast Republican caucus, as they find themselves increasingly in a minority of the majority...
Video of Rep. Peter King's 1/2/2013 denunciation of Speaker Boehner's postponement of vote on Hurricane Sandy relief follows...
The latest sign of right-wing radio's malaise may be seen in the apparent demise of Boston's WTKK-FM.
The Greater Media Inc.-owned smooth-jazz-turned-right-wing-talk station is reportedly preparing to undergo yet another format change in early-January, returning to music.
As a conservative who listened to WTKK for years, I'm amused by this development, especially in light of the continued industry-wide fallout over Rush Limbaugh's verbal assault on Sandra Fluke earlier in the year.
Friedman and Wilson have shown conclusively that good progressive radio is not being allowed to succeed --- that the national corporate interests of these large media conglomerates (just as predicted by some media observers decades ago, following the passage of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996) are being placed ahead of the local public interest obligations which broadcast licensees are required to meet in exchange for their use of our public airwaves.
With the challenges now being faced by good progressive talkers facing obstacles stacked against their success, is there anything wrong with enjoying the spectacle of seeing bad right-wing radio fail, as appears to be the case in Boston at year's end?...
For over a decade, WTKK's top star was former Pat Buchanan political advisor Jay Severin. Once a nighttime star on Entercom-owned crosstown rival WRKO-AM, Severin had a deep voice but a shallow intellect; as a 2001 Boston Globe profile observed...
As Dan Kennedy noted years ago in the Boston Phoenix, Severin's "Extreme Games" broadcast decreased the IQ of the Boston talk-radio crowd with these bon mots:
• On Hillary Clinton: "that cynical, criminal, sociopathic bitch ... one of the worst people on the planet."
• On Janet Reno: "she's a lesbian, evidently."
• On taxpayer-funded services he doesn't want to see: "free turkey basters for reproducing lesbians."
(Media Matters compiled a similar list of Severin's shockers in 2005.)
Severin's hot tongue and cold brain led him into a years-long feud with Boston Globecolumnist Scot Lehigh, who revealed in 2005 that Severin had falsely claimed to be a Pulitzer Prize winner. Four years later, Severin was suspended for racist invective about immigrants from Mexico, and promised to produce a kinder, gentler broadcast upon his return.
Well, that didn't last long: just two years later, Severin was fired for boasting about his sexual exploits and making light of the concept of sexual harassment. Severin soon made his way to Clear Channel-owned WXKS-AM, but found himself out of a gig one year later when WXKS switched to an all-comedy format. (He's now with Glenn Beck's entity The Graze, er, The Blaze.)
WTKK's other star was Michael Graham, who joined the station in 2005 after being forced out of WMAL-AM in Washington, D.C., then owned by ABC Radio, for declaring that "Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization." For most of his WTKK career, Graham, who recently announced his departure from the station, avoided Severin's shameless sleaze: in fact, I considered him a friend, invited him to appear as a guest on my own talk-radio program The Notes in April 2010, favorably reviewed his 2010 book That's No Angry Mob, That's My Mom, and appeared as a guest on his "That's a Wrap" segment on January 14, 2011.
However, I can't look past Graham's disgusting declarations about dwarfism and discrimination in August 2011, remarks that turned out to be a reprise of earlier anti-dwarfism potshots from May 2011. The remarks were not only ludicrous, but incoherent even from Graham's political perspective. Don't conservatives believe in merit? If someone with dwarfism is the most qualified person for a given job, shouldn't that person get the job, and not be discriminated against while on the job? Wouldn't it make more sense for Graham to support, not mock, the plaintiff in this case?
But such is the upside-down logic of what is promoted as "conservative" talk radio today.
While the troubles faced by progressive talk radio are often, opportunistically, regarded by those on the Right as "evidence" that Americans are simply not interested in "liberal views" over our public airwaves, less frequently noted --- largely due to the lack of a similar left-wing "echo chamber" on our public airwaves --- is that right-wing talk now faces problems as well competing in the "free market" (where such a market can be found in talk radio, anyway.)
WTKK, which carried Don Imus, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham in its heyday, and WXKS, which carried Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Mark Levin before going under, aren't the only stations to fall flat in a once-vibrant, right-wing talk radio market. Salem Radio Network-owned WTTT, home of agitprop ayatollahs Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt, switched to Spanish gospel music in the late-2000s. In addition, WRKO-which carried Rush Limbaugh from 1994-2010 before losing him to WXKS, only to reacquire him this year --- let go of four hosts in 2012; the station, which features Washington Times columnist Jeff Kuhner and Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, in addition to Limbaugh and Levin, is no longer a ratings powerhouse, and isn't much of a political powerhouse either (as outgoing US Senator Scott Brown, who was worshiped on the station for years, can attest).
Why has right-wing talk tanked in Boston? Simple. The shows became repetitive claptrap. The era of independent conservative and libertarian views (of the sort expressed by erstwhile talk-radio titans Jerry Williams, David Brudnoy and Gene Burns) gave way to the era of blind pro-GOP cheerleading. The quality of the shows declined, and so did the audience.
In a seminal May 1997 Boston Phoenix article entitled "The Death of Talk Radio," Dan Kennedy recognized early signs of the collapse of conservachat. Reading his piece again now is like reading one of climate scientist James Hansen's papers from the early-1980s; in both cases, it's stunning to see just how accurate they would prove to be.
Kennedy drew a connection between media consolidation, thanks to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President, and the overall decline in the quality of the talk radio product:
In Boston, for instance, WRKO and WHDH once competed for the talk-show audience. In 1993, though, American Radio Systems, which owns WRKO, bought WHDH, something it would not have been allowed to do prior to deregulation. For a while the company continued to operate both as talk stations; on 'HDH, [Howie] Carr faced off against [Jerry] Williams.
But as soon as it was clear that Carr had established himself as the new ratings champ, American Radio Systems moved Carr into Williams's slot on WRKO and essentially folded WHDH, replacing its spot on the dial (AM 850) with WEEI, an all-sports station and the Boston home of Don Imus.
Having a monopoly makes it easier for a station owner to fill up his time slots with cheap syndicated programming. One can hardly fault American Radio Systems for running top-rated programs such as those hosted by Limbaugh, Dr. Laura [Schlessinger], and the I-man. But WRKO now offers no local programming between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. And at WEEI, the day's local programming doesn't start until noon, even though Boston is arguably one of the most sports-obsessed cities in the country.
Although one would hardly know it from listening to the likes of the foul-mouthed Howard Stern, some observers worry that the trend toward media concentration will also result in an increasingly bland talk-radio environment.
After Disney purchased ABC, for instance, it dumped left-wing syndicated host Jim Hightower, who'd been critical of the merger.
...
You might think that Gene Burns, well-known for his libertarian views, would hail deregulation as some sort of triumph of the market. Yet Burns --- a founder and past president of the National Association of Talk Show Hosts --- contends there's no such thing as a free market in radio. Instead, he argues that commercial enterprises operate radio stations as government-protected monopolies. His solution: "total deregulation," which would allow anyone to launch small radio stations without the approval of the Federal Communications Commission.
...
"Out of that primal mix, I think, some clever operators would emerge," Burns says. "But they're never going to let that happen. If they did, they would die from a wound of a thousand cuts."
Burns' highlight of the problem (if not his proposed solution) echoes the very premise that Brad Friedman has been highlighting at The BRAD BLOG for some time: the continuing lack of real, free market competition in talk radio, and the destructive effect it has had on progressive talk in recent years. His observations on the vertical integration --- the very definition of monopoly control --- between corporate station owners and national syndicators (now, often one and the same) violates anti-trust standards established by the U.S. Supreme Court, and now all but ignored by DOJ and FCC alike, from as long ago as 1948's U.S. v. Paramount ruling which ended the major movie studio grip, and complete control, of film distribution to national theater chains which those same studios owned.
The Supreme Court case led to the major movie studios selling off their theaters around the country. In the meantime, major media corporations have been able to gobble up virtually all of the stations they like in each major market and push their own syndicated products across the public airwave bandwidth they have been allowed to license, while the DoJ and the FCC look the other way and allow the media powerhouses to establish monopolies akin to those broken up by U.S. v. Paramount.
With the incipient demise of WTKK, the previous deaths of WXKS and WTTT, and the poor health of WRKO, it's clear that talk radio in Boston is beginning to resemble Muhammad Ali in the last two years of his boxing career. Will the format begin to die off in other major cities as well? Is the Boston situation just an outlier, or a harbinger of a new trend away from Republican radio rallies?
If it's the latter, then it's a development that's long overdue. Whatever intellectual value conservachat once held has long since gone away. I'm not going to miss jokes about Mexican immigrants and the disparagement of people with dwarfism. I'm not going to miss over-the-top invective about Democrats and shameless sucking up to Republicans.
In a darkly funny New York piece about National Review's recent post-election cruise, Jonah Goldberg is quoted saying...
I'll leave the author of Liberal Fascism --- and a man who once seemed to recognize the flaws of talk radio --- to deal with his fears, imagined or otherwise. Meanwhile, here's hoping that more Americans follow Boston's lead and reject the lies peddled by right-wing radio --- the lies about climate change being a hoax, about America being a center-right nation, about President Obama's alleged fondness for Marxism, and so on.
May the anti-conservachat sentiment in Boston spread throughout the nation --- and rush more reactionaries right off the radio.
D.R. Tucker is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer and a former contributor to the conservative website Human Events Online. He has also written for the Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, ClimateCrocks.com, FrumForum.com, the Ripon Forum, Truth-Out.org, TheNextRight.com, and BookerRising.com. In addition, he hosted a Blog Talk Radio program, The Notes, from August 2009 to June, 2010. You can follow him on Twitter here: @DRTucker.
Some folks might call this sort of a thing "a vacation". Given my record at accomplishing same over the past many years, however, that word seems a bit of an overstatement. Still, I'm gonna try my best to look the other way for a bit, though I suspect I'll still be checking in (unless I can help it, and I'm gonna try to help it) as news warrants. I'll also be editing, as usual, upcoming pieces from our excellent guest bloggers who will also be making some occasional noise here in my "absence".
So, with all of that vaguery in mind, we'll see ya --- one way or another --- before, during or after the turn of the New Year. Just wanted to let ya know why things may be going quieter here than usual for a bit...
P.S. If you'd like to make a year end contribution to help fill our gas tank --- both figuratively and literally in this case --- it is, as always, greatly appreciated! You may do so easily via the "Donate" button at right ---> |
1) "20 school children stabbed in China on the same day proves nothing can be done to stop crazy people!"
Nope. Though it does prove that, even without access to guns, crazy people may still try to kill people. But, unlike all of the 20 school children in Newton, CT, who were shot several times each in a matter of minutes with a legally purchased and registered semi-automatic rifle equipped with high capacity magazines, none of the 20 kids stabbed in the China incident actually died. No wonder the NRA stooges stopped referring to that story within about 24 hours of the Newtown shootings, but it was "fun" while it lasted (and before the wingnuts bothered to read beyond the China story's headline.)
2) "More guns would have stopped it!"
Nope. Despite NRA Con-Man-in-Chief Wayne LaPierre's embarassing argument that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun", armed guards didn't stop the Columbine mass shooting or the Virginia Tech mass shooting (the worse in the nation's shameful history of mass shootings) or even the assassination attempt on President Reagan. But, more to the point, this 2009 ABC News video just destroys the absurd notion that "more guns would have stopped it!"
3) "You just want to take away my guns!"
Nope. But we do, at the very least, agree with the vast majority of NRA members (if not their terrorist-enabling, con-men leadership) who strongly support new gun safety regulations, such as mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, bans on concealed carry permits for violent misdemeanants and domestic abusers, gun safety training requirements for gun owners, and barring those on the "Terror Watch List" from purchasing weapons, just to name a few. Why does the NRA oppose all of those things despite the overwhelming support of them by their own members? Because they don't care about their members, the 2nd Amendment or gun safety, they care only about their real bosses: the U.S. arms industry. Period.
4) "More people die in automobiles, so you must want to ban them too!"
Nope (and we don't want to "ban" all guns, either.) But we'd have no problem with severe safety regulations and oversight on the manufacture, purchase and use of guns, just as we have in effect for the manufacture, purchase and use of automobiles. Seat belt requirements don't prevent everyone from dying in cars, but we still require they are built into every car and used by every driver. The result: the prevention of thousands of deaths and injuries each year. We also have serious licensing requirements for the use of cars, including proficiency tests before anybody is allowed to legally operate one on their own. We have universal speed limit laws, stop lights, and laws that bar drunk driving (which can be enforced before someone gets killed.) We also require that everyone purchase insurance before operating a motor vehicle. Yet few, if any (and certainly not the industry's top promoter, the AAA), cry "Liberty! Freedom!" in response to all of those sensible safety regulations. And, it should be noted, all of those safety regulations are in place for a "tool" that is designed to kill nobody, unlike semi-assault rifles and high-capacity magazines which, when used as designed, are meant to kill as many people as possible and as quickly as possible.
5) "Guns are just a 'tool'! Mental illness is the real problem!"
Nope. There are insane people everywhere, but almost no developed countries with the insanely high rates of gun violence that are found in the U.S. Nonetheless, it's clear that many people involved in violent gun crimes are mentally ill. So, what would you like to do about mental illness then? Spend more federal government money on health care? Sounds good. Require the "jack-booted thugs" of the federal government create "lunatic panels" to judge who is and isn't mentally equipped to operate a firearm before they are allowed to buy one? Would you like publicly available lists of who the Big Government believes to be insane? Or lists of which families have someone judged by the government to be mentally ill living in their households? You "ObamaCare" opponents ought to love all of the above! Doesn't sound intrusive at all!
Of course, this is just a new spin on the old "Gun don't kill people, people kill people" yarn which even folks on the Right don't actually believe. If they did, as Lee Fang recently pointed out, they wouldn't be so upset about the pretend "Fast and Furious" scandal.
6) "If not mental illness, it's video games and Hollywood movies that are the problem!"
Nope. If that was the case, the gun violence rates would be just as high in places like Canada, Great Britian and everywhere else in the world where they enjoy the same video games and Hollywood movies that we do here in the "land of the free and the home of the brave." But it's darling that you want to protect the bastardized version of what you believe the 2nd Amendment says and what the founders created it for, even while not seeming to give a damn about undermining the 1st in the bargain.
7) "'Gun Control' is just another excuse to take away my 'civil liberties'!"
Nope. Oh, and what "civil liberties"? Which ones? Where does the U.S. Constitution guarantee the "civil liberty" of the unlimited purchase and use of semi-automatic assault rifles, ammunition and high-capacity magazines? Even extreme rightwing Justice Antonin Scalia has no problem with the 1934 ban on machines guns. But, regarding that quaint "2nd Amendment Protects Us From Tyranny!" argument, how'd that work out in preventing the very real tyranny of the PATRIOT Act and all of the other civil liberties outrages that followed? Or, were you, like the NRA, one of the folks who didn't seem to care about that type of very real government tyranny, as it swept across our nation, with little or no complaint from folks like you, over the past decade or so?
Of course, if the founders had hoped that guns would be used by the citizenry to rebel against the federal government, one wonders why they expressly barred treason in the Constitution. It almost seems as if the argument that the 2nd Amendment was meant to allow the people to rebel against the federal government was made up long after the fact in order to dishonestly justify unlimited gun ownership with no regulation whatsoever. And, of course, it was.
Any other really dumb responses to Newtown that we missed?
Beyond the question of whether it is appropriate or not to use blatantly false and misleading "dramatic license" in a theatrical film which it's filmmaker describes as employing "almost a journalistic approach to film", there is another troubling issue that seems to be getting lost in the debate.
It is disturbing, if not altogether surprising, to find an article on the front page of the Los Angeles Times recently, discussing the film, and its related "debate" amongst Democrats and Republicans on the U.S. Senate Intelligence over "the value of 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'"
The topic is one we have covered extensively here at The BRAD BLOG --- coverage that has included a five-part series on the history of CIA torture and a dire warning that the very survival of our Constitutional Democracy could hinge on justified prosecutions of those who previously ordered or engaged in torture.
In early 2009, in "Fixing the Facts and Legal Opinions Around the Torture Policy," I took dead aim at the sophistry employed by President Barack Obama to evade his constitutionally mandated obligation to see that the laws are faithfully executed. The same Harvard Law School-educated President who said that, in torture, America had lost its "moral bearings," suggested we must only look forward, not back. As I noted at the time, it was an "illogical formulation [that] was incompatible with the very essence of the rule of law."
Those prosecutions were not forthcoming, and, as a result, we find two writers at Los Angeles Times discussing the dispute triggered by the movie, Zero Dark Forty, over the efficacy of torture without so much as a passing reference to the fact that torture is a crime under both U.S. and international law.
This woefully deficient "coverage" drew a sharp and very personal response, given my family's history, by way of a Letter to the Editor I wrote to the paper, which they recently edited, and then published...
My letter/response to Los Angeles Times follows:
In Dec. 1941 my father was waterboarded by the Japanese in Shanghai. Even though he thought he was signing his own death warrant, he confessed that he was a British agent. It wasn’t true, but, at that moment, he would have signed anything just to end his ordeal.
Irrespective of whether the information garnered by torture turns out to be true, and there’s no way at the time to know, torture is a crime under both U.S. law and international treaties. In 1948 the Japanese officer responsible for waterboarding my father was tried and convicted at the war crimes trials in Hong Kong. That same standard should be applied to the Americans who ordered or took part in waterboarding.
In a reply email, Los Angeles Times Letters Editor Paul Thornton advised me that an edited version of the above letter was "scheduled for publication in Sunday's Los Angeles Times." The edited version did not include my criticism of the paper's failure to mention the legal issue in its coverage of the story.
Instead, the first line, published on Dec. 16, reads: “I am deeply troubled that anyone would suggest there's a debate on the efficacy of torture.”