'Lincoln Legislators' are Heroes of Wisconsin, 'Real Americans' who Value Fairness, Protection, Equality

Wisconsin Update, Feb. 25, 2011


By George Lakoff

The Wisconsin protests are about much more than budgets and unions. As I observed in What Conservatives Really Want, the conservative story about budget deficits is a ruse to turn the country conservative in every area. Karl Rove and Shep Smith have made it clear on Fox: If the Wisconsin plan to kill the public employees’ unions succeeds, then there will be little union money in the future to support democratic candidates. Conservatives will be effectively unopposed in raising campaign funding in most elections, including the presidential elections. This will mean a thoroughly conservative America in every issue area.

The media, with few exceptions, is failing to get at the deeper issues.


Let’s start with the case of the Lincoln Legislators. As is well known about Lincoln, and as the Political Wire reports,

On December 5, 1840, Democrats “proposed an early adjournment, knowing this would bring a speedy end to the State Bank. The Whigs tried to counter by leaving the capitol building before the vote, but the doors were locked. That’s when Lincoln made his move. He headed for the second story, opened a window and jumped to the ground!

Lincoln would be, and we all should be, proud that the Wisconsin state senators have courageously crossed the state line to Illinois to avoid a quorum in Wisconsin that would have a disastrous effect, not only on Wisconsin, but on America for the indefinite future.

Quorum rules are an inherent part of democracy. They are in the Wisconsin Constitution for a reason. When an extreme move by a legislative majority would be a disaster, patriotic legislators can, like Lincoln, refuse to allow the disaster and have the power to stop it. That is their democratic duty, not only to their constituents, but to the nation.

That is why I think these legislators should be called the “Lincoln Legislators” as a term of honor. They understand that their courage is being called upon, not just in the name of collective bargaining rights, but in the name of protecting democracy from a total conservative takeover. The Lincoln story, and the greater good story, should be in the media every day. And Democrats nationwide should be hailing the courage, and vital importance, of those legislators.

Yet the media keeps reporting on them as “fleeing” and refusing to do their jobs. Where there is positive reporting, as on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, it is only about defending unions and collective bargaining rights.

The media — and the Democrats — also need to do a much better job on a sneaky conservative media strategy. The clearest example occurred in the NY Times. David Brooks, in his Feb. 21, 2011 column wrote: “Private sector unions push against the interests of shareholders and management; public sector unions push against the interests of taxpayers.” I turned on CNN that day and heard Anderson Cooper introduce the Wisconsin protest story as a battle between taxpayers and unions. These are massive distortions, but they are what conservatives want the public to believe.

The real issue is whether conservatives will get what they really want: the ability to turn the country conservative on every issue, legally and permanently. Eliminating the public sector unions could achieve that. Collective bargaining rights are the immediate issue, but they are symbolic of the real issue at stake. That is the story the media should be telling — and that Democrats everywhere in America should be shouting out loud.

What is standing in the way of having the real story told? It is the frame of collective bargaining itself, which only points to the parties that are doing the bargaining and what they are bargaining over.

The real point of collective bargaining is the idea of fairness inherent in democracy. Without unions, large corporations have an unfair advantage in hiring individual workers: Workers have to take what is offered, a fair wage for work done or not. Unions help to even the playing field, enabling workers to have a fair chance against wealthy, powerful large organizations — whether corporations or governments.

But public employees’ unions, in bargaining with governments, are raising deeper issues in which wealthy corporations and individuals play a huge role. The public employees’ unions are aware that the top one percent of Americans have more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent — a staggering disproportion of wealth. The wealthy have, to a large extent, amassed that wealth through indirect contributions to them by governments — governments build roads corporations use, fund schools that train their workers, subsidize their energy costs, subsidize their access to resources, promote trade for them, and on and on.

Meanwhile, over the past three decades, while corporations and their investors have grown immensely richer on the public largesse, the middle class workers have had no substantive wage increases, leaving them poorer and poorer. Those immensely wealthy corporations and individuals have, through political contributions, managed to rig our politics so that they pay back only an inadequate amount into the system that has enabled them to become wealthy.

The real targets of the public employees’ unions are the wealthy free riders who, in a fair political economy, would be giving back more to the nation, and to the states and communities they function in.

That is the obvious half of what the Wisconsin protests are about.

The other half concerns the rights of ordinary people in a democracy — rights conservatives want to deny, whether gay rights, women’s rights, immigrant rights, retirement rights, or the right to the best health a nation can provide to all its citizens.

Unions, through their political contributions, support the basic freedoms, protections, and resources we all require to have a decent life and live in a civilized society. If those unions are destroyed, American life will become unrecognizable in a remarkably short time.

Democracy as we know it—not just budgets and unions—is at stake in the Wisconsin protests.

Progressives are organizing rallies to “Save The American Dream.” They are understating the case.

If the Democrats are not talking out loud about these deeper issues, then they are, by their reticence and silence, helping conservatives destroy unions, defund the Democratic party, and take over the country.

What The Radical Right Really Wants

By George Lakoff    Link to this story on Lakoff.com
—Dedicated to the peaceful protestors in Wisconsin, February 19, 2011

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women’s rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on.

Budget deficits are a ruse, as we’ve seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.

Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work, and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the President has discussed. But deficits are not what really matters to conservatives.

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.


In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: Empathy — citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility—acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions and empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one’s fellow citizens.

The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don’t think government should help its citizens. That is, they don’t think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don’t have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, “Let the market decide” assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values.

Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that. Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks, and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don’t deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life, a civilized society, and as necessary for business to prosper.

In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.

Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should NOT have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil’s own means can be used against conservatism’s immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture, or even death, say, for women’s doctors.

Freedom is defined as being your own strict father — with individual not social responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will of course need a gun.

This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.

What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.

Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific “cuts” is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American — the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.

Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud over and over that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.

Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called Democratic Communication Disorder. Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media, and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on tv are conservatives. Talk matters because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.

And Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks — talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. “Benefits” are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.

Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like “entitlements” instead of “earnings” and speak of government as providing “services” instead of “necessities.”

Is there hope?

I see it in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands citizens see through the conservative frames and are willing to flood the streets of their capital to stand up for their rights. They understand that democracy is about citizens uniting to take care of each other, about social responsibility as well as individual responsibility, and about work — not just for your own profit, but to help create a civilized society. They appreciate their teachers, nurses, firemen, police, and other public servants. They are flooding the streets to demand real democracy — the democracy of caring, of social responsibility, and of excellence, where prosperity is to be shared by those who work and those who serve.

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Blackburn's Internet Bill Repays Her Corporate Sponsors

 

'Internet Freedom' Bill Does the Opposite

Op-ed in The Tennessean Feb. 11, 2011

By Gary Moore

Print journalism reminded us of its value through Bill Theobald's story in The Tennessean Feb. 4 about 7^th District Rep. Marsha Blackburn's intakes of special-interest PAC money from industries she must vote on in Congress

A smidgen of analysis and a spoonful of clarification are in order, however.   

Primarily important, the story's facts and math underscore an expanding threat to American democracy, and that is getting multinational and large corporations out of Congress and the electoral process.   Corporatism is in favor; middle class democracy is out.  Nothing significant will get accomplished in Washington until that changes. 

So long as Blackburn luxuriates in the money that corporate sponsors toss her way, she will fight until her last fingernail chips holding onto the loophole-filled system we have now.   

Figures do not lie.  Of the $1.6 million Blackburn raised in the 2009-2010 election cycle, more than half came from special-interest PACs, including $105,250 from communications/technology interests, according to The Tennessean's story.

Not surprisingly, Blackburn has introduced a bill in Congress to privatize the Internet and hand it over to the profit-making designs of the giant Internet Service Providers, such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. 

Would you believe that Comcast, AT&T and Verizon are her three largest contributors in that industry?

In Orwellian fashion which seems to make every day in Congress "Opposite Day," Blackburn's HR 96 is styled as "The Internet Freedom Act."  

Freedom for whom?   While Blackburn realizes she must talk the talk of Internet equal rights for all (AKA Net Neutrality), which is what we have now and which Americans do not want to lose, her bill does the opposite.  Blackburn's bill would forbid the Federal Communications Commission from regulating or overseeing one byte of the Internet, thus stripping the FCC's long-held role of watchdog for the public interests. 

Blackburn's bill would be more accurately named the "Corporate Takeover and Privatization of the Internet Act." 

For all of Blackburn's attempts to confuse the issue, it is really simple:  What's best for the corporations vs. what is best for the American people.  Do you want Wall Street to shape the Internet to benefit their CEOs and shareholders, or do you want free speech and the First Amendment in charge? 

Blackburn's bill would allow the ISPs to throw up "toll roads" on the information superhighway.  You will pay more for fewer choices.  It will be pay-per-view.  Your favorite sites could move more slowly than before, because the telecoms are making more profitable sites move faster.   Oh, and they will know which sites you like and which to charge extra for by snooping on your transmissions, just as if someone opened every piece of snail mail you receive before delivering it. 

Do you like to Skype?  Use Vonage or Magic Jack for long distance calls?  Those competitors of the phone and cable companies will cost more, and may be driven out of business, after the Internet is privatized.

Do you like Netflix?  Using technology similar to what the Chinese government uses to effect censorship, Comcast in 2007 was caught secretly cutting off the connection between consumers and Netflix, which competes with Comcast for movie viewers. 

Google started in a garage.  Facebook started in a dorm room.  What if those startups had not had access to relatively cheap messaging on the Internet?   It is the entrepreneurs and small businesses that drive employment in the U.S.; the large corporations and multinationals are rewarded by Wall Street when they lay off workers or cut costs by shipping jobs off-shore.

The Internet was developed by the U.S. government---that means us, the people---for military use at first, and then UCLA researchers, funded by a federal grant, made the Internet suitable for public consumption.   

 For candidates who are not wealthy and for anyone who wants to post and search for diverse opinions, and for small businesses, the Internet is the last level playing field.  America's unique spirit of free enterprise and a chance for everyone to make it is embodied in the Internet like it is nowhere else.  Equal Internet rights go hand in hand with democracy.

Regular Americans paid for the Internet.  We expect to keep it.  Just as most Americans do not want Social Security to be privatized and put in Wall Street's hands, we do not want the Internet to be privatized.

Figures do not lie.  Politicians do.

Gary Moore is public information coordinator for Citizens for a Free and Open Internet PAC.


Link to The Tennessean online:
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110211/OPINION03/102110363/Blackburn-s-Internet-bill-repays-corporate-sponsors

Blackburn's Rakes in Big Money Hustling for Corporations She Votes For

In The Tennessean, Feb. 4, 2011
By Bill Theobald,
Gannett News

WASHINGTON — Rep. Marsha Blackburn's donations from special-interest groups skyrocketed during the last election cycle as she assumed a leadership role on a powerful House committee.

Blackburn, a Republican member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, received $939,544 from political action committees over the past two years, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

That's 38 times what she received from PACs during her first election campaign in 2002. Back then, most of her contributions came from individuals. More than half of her recent contributions came from PACs, including many with issues before the Energy and Commerce Committee.

More special-interest dollars are headed her way. Blackburn has scheduled at least nine fundraisers in Washington over the next two months, in addition to two held last month, according to the Sunlight Foundation's Political Party Time website. Three of the nine are billed as dinners with five guests who are expected to donate $500-$2,000 each.

Such aggressive fundraising may seem strange given that Blackburn, of Brentwood, won 72 percent of the vote in last year's election, doesn't face re-election until 2012 and started the year with $849,056 in her campaign account.

But her fundraising is standard for a lawmaker seeking to advance in Congress in these respects:

Her large campaign bank account creates a strong disincentive for anyone to run against her.

Republicans now control the House, and Blackburn is vice chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee that handles commerce, manufacturing and trade. That makes her attractive to donors from the health-care, communications, finance and insurance industries, among others.

Blackburn can use the money she raises through her campaign committee and a separate leadership committee, Wedge PAC, to curry favor through donations to other Republican House members and candidates, and to party committees.

She defends donations

Blackburn said her early fundraising is a way to be prepared.

"You never know what the next election cycle is going to look like," she said.

Her PAC contributions, she said, represent donations from constituents who work for those companies.

"We have so many constituents who work for corporations, and those constituents will ask for a contribution from that PAC to my election," she said.

Memphis-based FedEx has been Blackburn's largest donor during her House career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington watchdog group. The next-largest donors are AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications, the American Bankers Association, and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

Blackburn said those who object to PAC contributions usually favor public financing of elections.

"I think it is important for individuals to be able to contribute their time, their effort, their energy, their money to help those that share their philosophy of government, their philosophy of free enterprise in the private sector," Blackburn said.

She declined to discuss her political aspirations.

"It's not my job to chart my path. That's God's job," she said.

Blackburn's path probably won't take her beyond the House, at least for now.
Tennessee has two popular GOP senators and a new Republican governor.

Campaign finance reform advocates say Blackburn's PAC donations show how special-interest groups improperly gain influence with lawmakers.

"It's a sorry state of affairs when we say that this is the way the system works," said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen, a Washington consumer advocacy group that favors public financing of elections. "This is the classic case of influence-peddling."

Blackburn's campaign committee raised nearly $1.6 million during 2009-10. Of that, $858,544 came from PACs. Her biggest backers were PACs representing health care ($249,817) and communications/technology ($105,250), according to an analysis by Congressional Quarterly.

In addition, Wedge PAC raised $146,839 over the two-year cycle, with $81,000 coming from PACs.

Blackburn's Wedge PAC leadership committee and her campaign committee donated a combined $274,225 in 2009 and 2010 to candidates and party committees, including $148,500 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. The NRCC supports the campaigns of GOP House candidates around the country.

When Blackburn first ran for Congress, she raised $24,665 from PACs, out of a total of $648,824.

Businesses back billls

Legislation Blackburn has introduced reflects the interests of many of her PAC donors.

Three bills she introduced in January have a long list of GOP co-sponsors and backing from many in the business community. One is a proposed substitute for the health-care reform law enacted last year, another would block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and the third would block the Federal Communications Commission from regulating the Internet.

These are the first major bills Blackburn has introduced during her eight years in the House that are likely to receive committee hearings and could come up for final votes in the GOP-controlled chamber.

Strategy isn't unusual

Blackburn's fundraising strategy isn't unusual.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, who came to the House the same year as Blackburn and is now in leadership, received about $1 million in PAC contributions over the past two years and gave nearly $1 million to House candidates and party committees.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., another member of Blackburn's class and a Democratic House leader, raised $1.3 million from PACs in 2009-10 and doled out about $2 million to candidate and party committees.

The Sunlight Foundation's list of 11 Blackburn fundraisers from January to March isn't comprehensive because the group gets its information from invitations anonymously forwarded by lobbyists and others, said Nancy Watzman, a consultant with the foundation. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Chattanooga, is the only other member of the 11-member Tennessee congressional delegation with events this year listed on the site.

Blackburn's first event was a Jan. 19 lunch at The Capitol Hill Club, a Republican-run venue blocks from the Capitol. The suggested contribution was $1,000 a PAC or $500 a person. "Co-hosting" the event cost $2,000 a PAC or $1,000 a person. Six of Blackburn's nine remaining events are scheduled in March.

Holman, with Public Citizen, said Blackburn's campaign fundraising is "potentially corrupting."

"If they give you money, it is very, very difficult to say no to these contributors," Holman said. "This a potential problem. It needs to be watched."

One of Blackburn's largest donors, AT&T, declined a reporter's request for comment on its contributions, but not before contacting Blackburn's office to alert staffers to the request.

Contact Bill Theobald at wtheobal@gannett.com.

Link to Tennessean online story Feb. 4, 2011

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110204/NEWS02/102040356/Rep-Blackburn-s-leadership-role-brings-surge-giving-from-PACs

Draw a Line in the Sand; Equal Internet is Democracy's Last Stand

Wall Street Takeover of the People's Internet is fully in play, aided by the usual suspects

While Republicans in the U.S. House have been noisily repealing health insurance reform; while unemployment and foreclosures are daily issues for too many Americans, and while hateful talk is a backdrop to runs on ammo at Wal-Mart, there is a "stealth issue" that could trump them all.

The Corporate Takeover and Privatization of the Internet does not show up on the radar for most Americans.  However, for voters who seek a full range of opinions and for candidates who do not have big money, for startup entrepreneurs and small businesses, the Internet is all they have. 

A free and open people's Internet goes hand in hand with democracy.  In fact, the Internet is the last level playing field.

This level playing field is about to be tilled up by the giant telecoms, aided by congress members they sponsor.    While this may be the free speech issue of our time, it is still in a "stealth" zone because we short-sighted, easily distracted Americans are not feeling any immediate pain---the Internet is working fine as it is now.       

Besides, what kind of issue is "Net Neutrality" to bring passion among the populace and lure web surfers off their couches?    As a tag "Net Neutrality" does not sound particularly sexy or inflammatory, or it sounds like something that is overly nuanced and would take too much time and too many brain cells to ponder.   

Nuance is not needed to get this issue, nor is tech geekiness.  It is simple:  Either the government oversees the Internet for the good of the public, or the government hands it over to the few, giant Internet Service Providers (ISPs).  

Either free speech and the First Amendment win, or Wall Street wins. 

Net neutrality allows any individual, regardless of net worth or other measure of status or position, to go anywhere on the web for information.  Likewise, every one of us can post our message and opinions on the Internet, putting us on equal footing with millions-making CEOs.  

The pain for the public will set in later.  With Wall Street and the CEOs' stock options in charge, costs will skyrocket.  The flow of information will not be an open and international spigot---it will have the ISPs straining and parsing the content with only corporate profits as their guiding star

The ISP Cartel could put up expensive barriers to entry for startup businesses and political aspirants.   They could make favored opinions move more quickly.   They could censor news they did not like.  

If AT&T were class action-sued for cheating customers, for instance, how much of that news do you think AT&T would allow to flow through its pipes?  Or more ominous, since Comcast now owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC and TV and radio stations across the country, how much play would a negative story about Comcast get on the NBC Nightly News or any other NBC-related outlet?

Print journalism has been gutted in the U.S.  With increasing consolidation of corporate control over the Internet, and with news media ownership becoming concentrated in the hands of a wealthy few, the Internet could turn into Fox News. 

At best, the Internet will become as toothless and corporate as broadcast TV, with its low-brow, low-budget "reality" entertainment…with its "infotainment" division as hard-hitting as a Katie Couric rant about photos of "Glee" actors in their underwear. 

The ISP Cartel will push a political agenda to maintain the congress members they have purchased to protect their profits.  Dissent will be down; censorship will rule.   They will tell us how to think and vote, but, hey, they will still let us know what Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are doing as that stuff mushes our brains. 

Do you like to get your news from CNN or MSNBC and not Fox?  If Rupert Murdoch or other extreme political interests buy their way into the Internet as has been done with television, radio and newspapers, Faux News may somehow load faster than others or may be the only choice. 

Do you like Facebook or YouTube?  The ISPs will charge "protection money," a la Tony Soprano, as a double-dip fee to keep our favorite sites moving fast.  Oh, and they will know the web sites we like by snooping on our transmissions, just as if someone opened every piece of snail mail we received before delivering it.  

Do you like to Skype?  Use Vonage or Magic Jack for long distance calls?  Those competitors of the phone and cable companies will cost more, and may be driven out of business, after the Internet is privatized.

Using technology similar to what the Chinese government uses to effect censorship, Comcast in 2007 was caught secretly cutting off the connection between consumers and Netflix, which competes with Comcast for movie viewers. 

  The imminent trouble is that the usual suspects are plotting to game the Internet to Wall Street's liking, and as usual, the public be damned.  The scheme is familiar and relentless:  one more piece of what is in the public interest gets twisted into what is in Wall Street's interests. 

Last month a private sector lobbying entity, the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee, held a "State of the Net" conference in Washington.  While  wining and dining Washington lawmakers, the event sponsors put on a program that sounded less like "advice" and more like a pep rally for the corporate interests who would wrench the Internet from the public's slipping grasp.   That Tennessee's 7^th District Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn was the keynote speaker---she who would privatize Social Security and the Internet and de-fund Medicare and public education--- and that AT&T, Comcast, Google and Microsoft were the event's "Platinum Sponsors," is all you need to know.

Blackburn's speech was followed by a session called, "Congress, Technology and the Tea Party."

A preview of fear-mongering could be found in the titles of some of their breakout groups:  "The State of the Social Net---A Catalyst for Civil & Political Revolution or a Hyped Distraction?" And, "Can the U.S. Continue to Support a Free Global Internet in the Age of Wikileaks, Cyberwar and Rampant Copyright Piracy?"

Blackburn has introduced a bill (HR 96) in the House of Representatives which hands the Internet over to the giant telecoms and forbids the Federal Communications Commission from touching one byte of the Internet.  By the way, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon and other industry related political action committees have contributed more than a quarter million dollars to Blackburn's PAC, according to Federal Election Commission records. 

Blackburn sits on the Communications, Technology and Internet Subcommittee in the House.  According to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Citizens for a Free and Open Internet PAC, Blackburn's political campaign committee and her WEDGEPAC received $278,035 from major Internet stake-holders from June 7, 2002 through Nov. 22, 2010.  The single largest contributor was wireless kingpin Verizon through its political action committees with $44,035 donated, although AT&T and BellSouth combined contributed $58,500.

  AT&T re-bought BellSouth, a formerly divested Baby Bell, in 2006.  FEC records show AT&T's PAC donated $42,500 and BellSouth's PAC contributed $16,000 to Blackburn.  Next were the National Cable and Telecommunications Association PAC with $35,000 and Comcast with $21,000.  Other contributors among major stake-holders in how the burgeoning Internet evolves and is regulated included Time Warner, Viacom, Yahoo and General Electric, which owns NBC, which just became Comcast.

Those totals do not include donations from individuals.  The numbers do not include many Blackburn contributors which have a stake in the Internet but which are not so close to Internet transmission, such as the Recording Industry Association of America,  Warner Music Group and other music industry and various business corporations and associations.

Total of all donations from corporate and other PACs was $2,612,085 over the same time frame, making the Phone, Cable, TV and Internet PACs represent about 10.64% of all contributions.

Unfortunately for the people, we don't have highly paid lobbyists, and the FCC as the people's "lobbyist" has a wimpy record recently on sticking up for the public interest.   A December swipe at net neutrality left loopholes wide enough that Verizon could drive through a truck load of lobbyists.

In another letdown of the public interest and an appeasement of corporate interests it is supposed to regulate, the FCC just approved Comcast's acquisition and merger with NBC-Universal to form an unthinkable, vertically integrated monopoly.  (Will somebody please dust off the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and send it to Washington?) 

Comcast, the nation's largest ISP and cable provider, now owns a vast catalog of NBC's movies, productions, content and other assets.   Will Comcast push its own and more profitable content ahead of others?   Of course, and further, they will say they have a duty to shareholders to do so.

Comcast's merger approval was less than three days old when MSNBC ratings leader Keith Olbermann, who espoused a progressive view and regularly shamed Fox News types for lying, was removed from his position. 

The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. possessions.

In the future, video, radio, telephone and other connections will all go through the Internet, and most of that will be wireless.  Most Americans only have one or two choices now for receiving Internet---the phone company or the cable company.   The lack of competition that we already have has caused the U.S. to drop to 15^th or worse in the world in per capita broadband adoption, and bandwidth speed in the U.S. also lags yet costs more. 

President Obama's campaign promise that "we will take a back seat to no one" in maintaining an open and widely accessible Internet rings hollow now that the FCC has made its shallow statement on Net Neutrality only after weeks of secret meetings with AT&T and Comcast lobbyists. 

Leading up to the FCC's Dec. 21 "fake neutrality" order, the major corporate players had been spending a reported $700,000 a day to lobby Congress and the FCC.  According to The Washington Post, "Over the past three years more than 150 organizations hired at least 118 outside lobbying groups to influence the outcome of the (FCC's) vote."

Don't the people need their cop on the beat to oversee the giant corporations who seek first to please Wall Street?  The giant telecoms have zillions of dollars for advertising and lobbying, and they have the best legislators money can buy.  Have we forgotten the enduring effects of the financial meltdown that came from lack of regulation, and then led to "socialized" (bailouts for investment bankers) losses?

Google started in a garage.  Facebook started in a dorm room.  What if those startups had not had access to relatively cheap messaging on the Internet?   It is the entrepreneurs and small businesses that drive employment in the U.S.; the large corporations and multinationals are rewarded by Wall Street when they lay off workers or cut costs by shipping jobs off-shore.

The Internet was developed by the U.S. government, beginning in the Eisenhower years after Russia's Sputnik made U.S. leaders fearful that they were getting beat in technological advances.   The military used it first, and then UCLA researchers, funded by a federal grant, made the Internet suitable for public consumption. 

 We taxpayers funded the development of the Internet. We provided AT&T and the like with billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to extend service outside of densely populated cities.  We charged AT&T and Verizon nothing to dig up public rights-of-way to put in their lines.  Our phone bills each month contain a "Universal Service Fee," which is supposed to help the telecoms pay for extending service to virtually all Americans. 

Regular Americans paid for the Internet.  We expect to keep it.

The Internet is rightly an American product that belongs to Americans.  It is truly the people's Internet in its ownership, in its equality, in its equal rights for all to the same level of free speech.  America's unique spirit of free enterprise and a chance for everyone to make it is embodied in the Internet like it is nowhere else.

Here is where we draw the line in the sand.  The fight for free speech on an open Internet is democracy's last stand.  Blackburn and the corporate thugs will have to pry this laptop from my cold, dead hands.

This is no less an issue than health care or education or Social Security or anything else;  it is more of an issue because this goes to the heart of what is truly our No. 1 issue:  corporate takeover of our entire political system and electoral process.  

With the Supreme Court paving the way for secret, unlimited domestic and foreign contributions to decide our elections, campaign finance and election reform is the No. 1 issue.  Nothing positive and major will get done by Congress on this or any other issue until government is back in the hands of the people. 

This is not just any issue.  This is every issue.  Internet Equal Rights is both a proxy for and copy of every other issue, such as health insurance reform.  The playbook is the same, the players are the same, and the basic issue is the same---who runs the country. 

Do you like your Internet as it is now?  Snap to it and raise Cain with your representative and senator to put the public first.  The Constitution still reads, "We, the People," not, "We, the Fortune 500."  Do not let us get steamrolled by another corporate lying and fear-mongering campaign.   Nothing less than the future of democracy is in the balance.

Link to Citizens for a Free and Open Internet PAC: www.WhatsUpWithMarsha.com

Other important links: 

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

http://www.truthout.org/