Geroge Orwell rolls in his grave...again

Come one, come all! Let the hording begin...now! Have you been a struggling newspaper salivating at the thought of owning your very own television or radio station? Well now you can. Thanks to the Federal Communication Commission ruling on Dec. 18, newspaper companies can tap into a 32-year-old banned market of broadcast stations, and vice-versa, and start gobbling those suckers up!

The FCC ruled 3-2, along party lines (Republicans voted yes), to remove the ban. It used to be that cross-ownership, as it's called, was a threat to allowing independent media voices time on the airwaves. Now, media companies in the top 20 media markets in the U.S. - big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - can buy one another up regardless if they're print or broadcast companies. There are a few exceptions that allow merging outside of the top 20 markets.

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said the move was a "relatively minor loosing" of restrictions, while Democratic FCC Commissioner Micheal Copps said the decision was "one that would make George Orwell proud." Well, not really. Orwell feared information being in the hands of a few in his book, "1984," with such memorable catch phrases as "Big Brother is watching." This ruling paves the way for just that.

First, some context. The passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed the FCC to start dropping the restrictions on broadcast stations to buy one another up. What resulted was a feeding frenzy, a gorge if you will. In 1995, there were 29 big media corporations, not including newspapers. In 2006, that number shrank to eight - News Corporation, Disney, TimeWarner, Viacom, NBC Universal (owned by General Electric), Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google. Now most of the media so regular in our lives, like MySpace.com, CNN, FOX, Time magazine and YouTube, are owned by one of these eight giants.

Together, these eight corporations had a market value of about 1.2 trillion in 2006. That's a hell of a lot of buying power! With money like that, those corporations can buy stations and newspapers like college students buy coffee.

The main argument for this media consolidation revolves around profit and efficiency. But there are plenty of reasons to be alarmed. For one, media turned into a business, focusing on profit rather than content. Also, corporations are not agents of a democratic society, they're businesses. Why would a business sell a product nobody likes, or rather, thinks is too out there for their tastes? Well they don't, cause a business can't make money that way.

In that vein, more is better. More choices for people wanting to watch television, listen to the radio, pick up newspaper. As the big eight continue to gobble up media, the message becomes less diverse and access becomes restricted to people with views that may hurt the business. And with newspapers and broadcast stations allowed to buy one another up, who knows what feeding frenzy may endure in the coming years.

The first of it came July 31, when News Corp bought one of the few national newspapers left, The Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion. Since it served a national market, it did not fall in the now-dismantled ban.

Back to the FCC. In 2003 it made the same ruling only it removed the ban for the top 170 media markets. Congress and the courts said hell no, and the ruling was, well, overruled. The courts did say that the ban itself wasn't necessary anymore, and that was a major reason Martin said he went ahead with removing the ban yet again.

All this in the name of local media. Martin thinks that removing the ban will benefit local news coverage. Yet, in a 2004 report by the FCC, which it destroyed, it turns out that locally owned media does a better job at local news coverage. Locally owned television stations provide more time for news than when its not locally owned. Interesting.

So what's the real motivation behind this ruling? One can speculate, but this move is not going to create more access to diverse ideas and information. It isn't going to be good for democracy either. The Senate and the courts could strike down this ruling like they did the 2003 one. Poor Orwell, dead for 27 years and he's still not getting the rest he deserves.

Photo: Kevin Martin, FCC Chairman. Taken from http://www.fcc.gov.

Oily politicians living in a greenhouse

Politicians can only be trusted as far as one can throw them. And that's not far at all. Just one day after President Bush signed a declawed version of an energy bill that will force automakers to make more use of the evermore-expensive gas going into cars, the Environmental Protection Agency shot down a chance for 17 states that actually want to stop adding to global warming.

Given that the Bush Administration is awash in oil, it's not all that surprising: Bush, a failed Texas oilman whose family is tied to the royal Saudi family; Condi Rice, former director for Chevron; and Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton. Bush threatened to veto the energy bill if Democrats didn't send the bill to the dentist for a major root canal. Big Oil had the same prognosis.

Part of what was scrapped from the bill would have taxed the oil and gas industry to help fund renewable energy research and forced utility companies to have 15 percent of their energy coming from renewable sources.

The United States is a star when it comes to energy and emissions. It won first place in 2006 for devouring the most amount of oil in the world (20.6 million barrels a day), almost three times as much as the next country, China. The United States did lose its first place standing for world's leading polluter to China, picking up the silver metal.

With bedfellows like the auto, oil and gas industry, the U.S. may yet be able to get that gold metal in pollution back from China. But it's going to take more whining from industry about any attempt by any part of the U.S to curb greenhouse gas emissions. It was reported that Chrysler is leading the push to block the EPA from making fuel efficiency standards stricter. And it worked.

While one small bittersweet victory in the fight against U.S. oil addiction and global warming was won, another more important battle was lost. A 2004 California bill wanted to force automakers to reduce car emissions by 30 percent by 2016, starting with the 2009 models. In order to enact the law, the EPA had to grant a wavier to allow California to pollute less. The decision came two years after California asked for it and after the state sued the EPA in November.

The EPA denied the request. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson provides the groundbreaking reason in a statement:

"The Bush Administration is moving forward with a clear national solution - not a confusing patchwork of state rules."

This wouldn't be as funny if that gutted energy bill wasn't signed into law the day before. Even funnier is how much Johnson echoes what General Motors said in a statement when the EPA ruled against the states. In short, it said without a "patchwork of state-specific regulations that would divert our resources," it could research better technology. Interesting. Maybe Johnson was reading from General Motors' press release when he gave his reason for denying the waiver. General Motors was ranked number 3 in the Fortune 500 for 2006, and donated $1.6 million to Republican politicians since Bush has been in office - almost twice what it gives to Democrats.

This whole sad episode of Big Business and Uncle Sam is strange from the start. Shouldn't it work the other way around, where the EPA should be suing states to make stricter rules. This is the logic of the American political system, and for 17 states, a major drawback to do what most of the world is trying to do, fight global warming.

There are other states that want to follow in California's green footsteps: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Florida. Iowa wants to join the bandwagon as well.

Where California killed the electric car, the EPA killed better controls on pollution. Cough. But the battle isn't over yet. California, and the other states, could appeal to the courts. They could also wait until Bush leaves office and hope a more green-minded, less oily president takes charge. The rest of the world is probably hoping for the same thing.

Photo taken from i.treehugger.com.

I am not addicted, I can stop when I want!

A bittersweet victory. Now that the elite have moved global warming from myth to fact, Democrats introduced a bill in January to move America away from its oil addiction, an addiction that makes Homer Simpson's Duff Beer binges look responsible.

Seriously. The energy bill signed by President Bush on December 19 does some good for the environment. It also makes strides toward kicking that nasty oil addiction. But the bill visited the dentist before signed into law, and its sharp teeth were dulled down to weak molars.

First, some facts. In 2006, the U.S. gobbled 20.6 million barrels of oil a day, more than any other country in the world. Talk about addiction! Getting the silver metal was China, with 7.3 million barrels a day. Of all that oil the U.S. devoured, 12.2 million of those barrels a day are imported.

Some dealers are making big bucks off this addiction. Take ExxonMobil, a company that broke its own 2005 global record for the corporation that made the biggest annual profit in history: $39.5 billion, yes, $39.5 billion in 2006! In fact, 3 of the 10 Fortune 500 companies of 2006 were oil companies.

So they're not hurting a bit. America's "War on Terrorism" has done more to enrich the pockets of Big Oil than any other time in history. Continued war in Afghanistan and Iraq, mixed with a oil supply close to peaking and more and more countries demanding the black gold has kept the price of oil high. Good for Big Oil, bad for us addicts.

It's good for Big Oil cause, as shown above, they're making a killing in profits. These are the golden days for Big Oil, and who can blame them for being so damn happy. But they weren't always so. By the end of 2001, the price of oil per barrel slid down to about $20. Big Oil felt powerless. Then the tide turned and prices soared to heights never before seen. Every year, the price got higher and higher, and then oil hit $99 a barrel on Nov. 21.

Now for us poor addicts. As the cost of oil rises, so does gas - if one drives. On Dec. 24, 2001, the average price of gas in the U.S. was $1.11/gallon. The same day in 2007, the price jumped to $3.03/gallon. But it doesn't stop there. Almost everything people rely on in this society uses petroleum: the food we eat, the plastic containers and bags we store stuff in, hell, even vitamin capsules. As oil prices rise, so does the cost of all those products relying on oil. And that doesn't even consider the cost to bring, say, produce from the farm to a supermarket near you.

OK, so the U.S is addicted. To make matters worse, there isn't a rehab clinic yet for oil addicted countries to clean up. So the Democratic-controlled Congress decided it was time to at least try and curb that oil itch. They introduced an energy bill that, among other things, would get more bang out of the gas car's use. It would also improve the amount of ethanol (corn-based fuel) produced.

A 1975 law required cars to squeeze 27.5 miles per gallon, and light trucks (which funny enough, includes SUVs) 22.2 miles per gallon. Now, cars and light trucks must hit an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The auto industry didn't like this at first, but the politician that grabbed the most amount of their campaign cash ($104,350) in the 2006 election cycle, John D. Dingell, prodded them to accept it. Thanks John!

But Big Oil wasn't so willing to back down from their complaints. The version of the bill that passed the House of Representatives had two major differences from the one the Senate voted for, and Bush signed. For one, the bill targeted utility companies to move 15 percent of their energy to renewable sources by 2020. That was a no go for the Edison Electric Institute, a utilities lobby group.

Also, Democrats wanted to increase the tax on oil and gas industry, which would have raised about $13 billion for the development of renewable energy (remember, ExxonMobil alone made $39.5 billion in profit in 2006). Another report put the tax figure at $21 billion.

Big Oil was able to destroy parts of the bill due to the delicate majority the Democrats have in the Senate. They called out all their big Republican guns, and their biggest oil lobbyist, President Bush, to put a halt on messing with them. During the 2006 election cycle, the oil and gas industry gave $16.3 million to Republican politicians, about five times as much as they gave to Democrats.

Small victories are better than no victory. The bill will help reduce the U.S. addiction to oil, dropping five million barrels a day by 2030. It does open the door to making a cleaner fuel source, but ethanol is part of another addiction, which is tied to oil more than most think. Relief to the oil addiction will be a 12-step program with no sponsor. But hey, the U.S. can stop using oil when it wants right...right?