REPUBLICANS AREN'T THE ONLY ONES WHO GAME THE RULES AGAINST THE GRASSROOTS... TAKE HILLARY CLINTON FOR EXAMPLE

Noah is an old pal of mine. We used to work together when I had an indie record label and he was the only person at the major that bought half of it who understood any of it. Here's his first guest piece for DWT. I'm hoping it won't be his last!

-Howie


INFO CONTROL

  
Here’s one way that the status quo politicians and the powers behind them plan to hinder "upstart" grassroots candidacies. Obviously, pressure is being applied to media outlets. Establishmentarians want to keep things in their own little closed, elitist, detestable club, the fraternity of corporatocracy tools.

Jonathan Tasini is running for Senator in the state of New York. He has obtained 40,000 signatures on his petition and he is now, quite legally, on the ballot as a Democrat for the state’s September primary. He is challenging current Senator Hillary Clinton for her seat.  New York’s Channel 1 Television has declared that Tasini is not worthy of participating in their upcoming debates; debates that are ostensibly meant to provide the voting public with information so that they can make an informed choice when they go to the voting booth. Until this year, if you polled 5% or more in a known poll, you could get an invite to participate. Participation is a key to the democratic principles upon which our country was formed and built. John Tasini is polling in the 13 to 22% range. This year, however, there is a brand new qualification for participation in Channel 1’s debates; you have to have raised at least $500,000. John Tasini is only up to $132,000. Channel 1 is owned by media giant Time Warner. According to the Federal Elections Commission, Time Warner has contributed $5000 to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. John Tasini is against the war in Iraq. Those are the bare facts.

Regardless of his other qualifications and other positions and regardless of whether anyone in New York wants to vote for the man, he is on the ballot. Shouldn’t the citizens of New York hear what the man has to say?  On the surface, this looks like hardball politics at its best (worst). Were there "suggestions" made? Was pressure applied? Is there something else going on? Why the new, (in)convenient monetary qualification? Most importantly, isn’t this all really about the flow of information and what we get to hear, read, and see? "All The News That Fits Our Agenda." John Tasini doesn’t have the $500,000 so John Tasini can’t face the public in an open debate. That’s the modern day equivalent of a Poll Tax.

I liken this to the attempts to inhibit Net Neutrality. I see it all as part of the same approach. Welcome to The Clampdown. Fresh faces with new ideas and other voices are not welcome by the old media. They’re rising up everywhere, from every point along the political spectrum.

The preservation of Net Neutrality is, for one thing, about the preservation of open, free-wheeling exchanges of ideas and information among people, exchanges without the filtration of media and telecommunication corporations. Those corporations want to be the middleman, controlling what you see, hear and read, not unlike what is happening on Channel 1. The telecoms (TW, Qwest, Verizon, Comcast, Bell south, etc.)  say it’s about money. AT&T is on record as saying no one should get a free ride. But, it hasn’t been free all along! At& T, Verizon, Qwest and Bell South alone took in a combined $170 BILLION last year for telecom services. No, it hasn’t been free. Do you get free email? What this is about is what information will be at your disposal. Canada seems to have a less open internet. In 2005, Canada’s telecom giant, Telus blocked its customers from visiting a site that was sympathetic to the Telecom Workers Union during a dispute with them. Obviously, they didn’t want their customers to hear what one side had to say.

This kind of thing could easily become the norm here, if we let the powers that be in our corporations and their handmaidens in Washington do what they want. We all know what kind of internet they have in China. We all know what PRAVDA and TASS were in the USSR, one story with only one highly slanted point of view for all. We already have a press that does little more than reprint government and corporate handouts, press releases, and even ready made “news” clips. What’s next? A major news outlet helping to lie us into war by running a daily barrage of stories about WMDs in Iraq? Ooops! That’s already happened. See the New York Times and all of the smaller papers that reprinted their "coverage."  Innovation such as ebay, or google itself is not the only thing we’ll lose if our corporatocracy is allowed to stifle everything and crush every idea and voice in its path. People bouncing ideas off eachother is a good thing. Lennon and McCartney weren’t bad working alone, but how many would have heard of either if they had never worked together first?

There seems to be a serious effort, on the part of our coporatocracy, to keep the status quo. The inside the beltway crowd is an "old boys network." It crosses party lines. The Democrats think the way to victory is by presenting themselves as "New! Spiffy! Republican-Lite!" Then, they wonder why they lose because those that want Republican anything will go for the real thing. Those that want more than that will go for a third party (or is it second party?).

Look how Senator Barbara Boxer and Bill Clinton ran to Joe Lieberman’s aid. Look how Representative Rahm Emanuel and Senator Chuck Schummer clubbed former Marine Paul Hackett’s uprising to death like it was a Canadian seal pup. Look how Howard Dean’s grassroots ("Net-Roots") candidacy was savaged by the so-called mainstream media as they rushed to protect the status quo. But, the tide of grassroots/net-roots campaigns continues to grow. Internet influence is scaring the establishment types. They are trying to stuff a genie back into the bottle, desperately. It’s a delicious irony that the internet was invented by the Dept. of Defense. Sorry, Mr. Gore. 

-Noah