For Teachers Unions, Focus Should Be Beating Brady

The taxpayers of Illinois are broke because of WHO we tax and HOW we tax, but not how much we tax. Illinois has one of the most regressive tax systems in the entire country. Overall, we tax the poorest 20% more than THREE times the wealthiest 1% (source: http://www.itepnet.org/whopays3.pdf). That is INSANE. And the only candidate who wants to change this disaster AT ALL is Rich Whitney, the Green Party candidate. The Democrats and Republicans are offering no solutions to this whatsoever, just temporary bandage "fixes" that do nothing to get at the root cause of the problem.



Whitney's full economic platform: http://whitneyforgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2010.Economy.state_.2.0wpd.pdf
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

My Observations on the Media: Bias and Selection

This evening, while I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, one of my favorite political TV programs, I suddenly came to a rather simple but nonetheless intriguing conclusion. I decided to follow up on my intrigue by fleshing out my thoughts in writing.

I have long maintained that no corporate media source has an actual ideological bias or perspective. They simply have an allegiance to some particular political party (i.e., in the United States, the Democratic Party or the Republican Party), some corporate interest, some particular powerful figure(s), or some combination of those. In other words, for example, the so-called "neoconservatism" of Fox News is a means to a particular end, and not an end in itself; and the same goes for MSNBC and its supposed "progressivism."

But as someone with a strong distaste of the two-party system, my realization tonight had to do with the difference between what might be called the faux progressivism of corporate MSNBC and what I would term a genuinely independent and uncompromised leftist perspective found in independent media such as Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

It is obvious where the differences lie between the structures of these programs. From the official Democracy Now! website:

Democracy Now! is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations. We do not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting, or government funding. This allows us to maintain our independence.

Meanwhile, programs such as The Rachel Maddow Show broadcast on corporate MSNBC obviously get their funding from advertising revenue, so whichever giant corporation is sponsoring MSNBC's programming generally is paying the bills that keep progressives such as Rachel Maddow on national cable television (and don't get me wrong; I do genuinely believe Dr. Maddow is a progressive and deeply admire her and her work).

But aside from those structural and organizational differences between the two programs, I believe it is important to examine the real substantive distinctions that arise between the actual methods by which the programs are produced.

I think the contrast is simply this: the corporate media, no matter how "liberal" or "conservative" it supposedly is, merely takes sides in a pre-selected debate. The overall framing of political issues is the same, whether you are watching, for example, the Fox News Channel or MSNBC, and whether you're reading the New York Times or the New York Post. Moreover, the selection of the political issues to be covered in the first place is essentially identical. Thus, the only difference between what many people consider to be polar opposites is just that - taking opposite sides in every debate, in pure binary fashion. Anyone who dares to question this portrayal of the political landscape is relegated to being what the media (objectively, of course) reports as being "radical" or "looney" or "out there" or "dangerous" or "extremist." Etc.

On the other hand, the process used by the independent media, such as in the case of Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, is not to simply choose sides in a predetermined debate, but instead to reframe the entire political spectrum and select the issues the staff feels are important in the first place. By merely selecting different issues to report on, rather than taking sides on issues handed down to you via a corporate hierarchy, a much more genuine shift in perspective and ideology can be communicated without having to adhere strictly to any talking points or paying undue respect to baseless assumptions and untouchable subjects. When ideology is produced this way, it can be done without telling someone what to think and without putting a lot of effort into making up arguments to always justify your side. Instead, objective truths can simply be reported and the intellectual work can be left up to the viewer to infer the implications (it's LITERALLY an honest rendition of "we report, you decide" that isn't so laughable!).

It doesn't take much while watching a segment of The Rachel Maddow Show or Countdown with Keith Olbermann to point out instances of the host doing all sorts of rhetorical and mental gymnastics just to demonstrate for the viewer why the host's side is right and the other side is wrong. Contrarily, Amy Goodman almost completely leaves her opinion (as well as her emotions) out of the program, and all of the ideological perspective that can be gleaned from Democracy Now! is simply by virtue of the fact that they report on things no one else is reporting on (which is, of course, no mistake). It leaves the viewer with a much more accurate depiction of reality, as well as a sense of being truly informed rather than brainwashed (regardless of whether the viewer is brainwashed in a "good" or "bad" way).

The result of this is a system where the individual host or face of any given media program, or any individual journalist, is largely irrelevant. In the end, it doesn't matter much that Rachel Maddow is a brilliant progressive who understands politics and public policy extremely well; she doesn't write the scripts and there are some areas where she and her staff know they can't go if they want to keep their jobs. Even if you deny any possible larger interpretations of the media, just the simple fact that MSNBC must drive up profits at all costs and keep viewership levels high is partially responsible for this. The reporting still has to follow the money. Even knowing just that alone, how could one ever expect a truly objective corporate media?

My Problem with the Two-Party System

One of the most consistently annoying things about American politics is the lack of real choice in mainstream political parties and candidates. This is, of course, made even more frustrating by the equal lack of diversity in mainstream media coverage of these political parties and candidates. Essentially when people complain that an American news outlet is "biased," the problem is not that the news outlet is biased in a particular ideological sense, but rather that it is biased toward a particular political party and its candidates. For example, Fox News isn't really conservative; it's Republican. The neo-conservatism of Fox News is simply a means to an end, the end being the election of Republicans (or certain subsets of Republicans) to political office. The same goes for MSNBC, which many like to call the "liberal" alternative to Fox News. MSNBC's so-called "liberal" bias is also nothing more than a means to an end, in this case with the ultimate goal of making Democrats look good and Republicans look bad. Meanwhile, networks such as CNN and others attempt to fool people into thinking that they are unbiased simply because they are not clearly always backing Democrats or always backing Republicans. Instead, they alternate between Democratic Party supporters and Republican Party supporters, and dumb their hosts down so much that there isn't any substance to be biased in the first place. These hosts generally ask a set of incredibly stupid, dull, and narrow-minded questions that are intended to generate the largest amount possible of well-prepared party-line statements from the usual pair of a party-line Democrat and a party-line Republican. The quick succession of these party-line statements from what are generally considered a "Republican strategist" and a "Democratic strategist" is intended to give the impression of a debate. Yet anything that is not well within the mainstream of Republican and Democratic politics is completely ignored, even when highly relevant. This is easy and convenient for the mainstream corporate media because it presents an easy to follow narrative of "right vs. left" or "good vs. evil." No room is left for nuance or alternative ideas and perspectives. There has to be a good guy and a bad guy in every debate, and those roles are filled differently depending on which channel you're watching. Anything that challenges this simple, dramatized, dumbed down portrayal of politics is considered to be too complicated, unworthy of coverage, or not serious enough.

I won't go into the corporate hijacking of the media, extreme consolidation of big media conglomerates, and other reasons behind the poor quality of mainstream media. Those are all equally important problems, but I won't address them here.

I digress. All of this is to say that one of the most frustrating things about the tyrannical two-party system in America is its conscious painting of everyone outside of the two-party system as a radical, an idealist, or someone who just doesn't have their head on straight. I'm not talking about so-called "independents" who are so devoid of any real opinions or substance that they simply alternate between voting for Republicans and Democrats based on their current mood or something equally as superficial. These are the bipolar folks who the talking heads and political pundits on TV spend most of their time guessing about. These "independents" swing elections and like to feel as if they are unpredictable. In some senses they are; but you've always got a 50/50 chance at guessing correctly what they'll do next. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but I wouldn't call that too unpredictable or independent.

This country has been tricked into thinking that Republicans and Democrats are actually very different, and that there aren't any major ideas or issues those two parties don't address. So-called "liberals" are well conditioned and programmed to dismiss those who refuse to accept the failures and massive compromises of the Democratic Party. They adapt their views and opinions to fit within the Democratic Party, rather than the other way around because it is much more difficult to make an impact on the Democratic Party. For example, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos is quite guilty of this. He has often made light of those to the left of him, or anyone who supports progressive causes without compromising their ideals. Moulitsas harshly criticized Rep. Dennis Kucinich during the health reform debate for displaying just a small amount of independent thought. Moulitsas clearly believed it was more important to hand the Democratic Party a political victory than to actually help Americans who needed real reform. Then in a recent Daily Kos poll regarding Illinois politics, the sleazy and disgraced "independent" gubernatorial candidate Scott Lee Cohen (who initially ran as a Democrat for lieutenant governor) was included as an option but Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney was not. Scott Lee Cohen has not even chosen a running mate yet, and it is questionable at best whether he will even be on the ballot. Rich Whitney, on the other hand, will be on the ballot due to the Green Party's "established" status as a political party in Illinois (even with all the unfair obstacles the two major parties purposely erected in order to avoid just that). Whitney received about 10.5% of the vote in the 2006 Illinois gubernatorial election, far more of a political feat than Scott Lee Cohen, an extremely wealthy pawnbroker, has to his name. Yet the Daily Kos refuses to acknowledge this and instead has decided to play it safe by conducting their polls in such a selectively biased manner.

Then there's the Tea Party movement, which largely exists within the context of the Republican Party, rather than acting as a real threat to it. The corporate media assists with this by speaking pejoratively of the Tea Party as if they should just "grow up" already and join the Republican Party. I despise the Tea Party and think it is a backwards, reactionary, racist movement - but I deeply admire the aspects of it that truly challenge the status quo, and dare to protest both Republicans and Democrats based on principle. I'm not saying that their motivations are correct or that they have any of their facts straight; I'm just saying it's admirable when people stand by their convictions and refuse to fall back in line as they are told to. It's my opinion that all protest is good protest. Authority should never be trusted on its word.

The result of all this is a very close-minded electorate and an extreme oversimplification of political issues and public policy. Those who would be considered centrist or moderate almost anywhere else in the world are considered radicals here in America. On any given political issue, a wealth of ideas and perspectives are completely left out of the mainstream discussion. Why is that? I really don't believe it is a cultural issue as much as it is a consequence of our particular political system. I don't believe there is anything inherent in the American people that makes us more likely to accept the illusion of choice, other than the fact that it's what we've always had. We're used to it.

Think about it. If all of us tried thinking outside of the box for once, we might get somewhere, collectively.

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it."
— Karl Marx

BEFORE YOU PROTEST TAXES

Before you protest taxes, try these for starters: two pointless and deficit-exploding wars, the PATRIOT ACT, state secrets, government-sanctioned torture, warrantless wiretapping and retroactive immunity for telecommunications corporations, massive cuts in education spending across the country, private military contractors who profit off of war (thus giving them an incentive to prolong it indefinitely), corporations buying elections and corporate ownership of our government, the failure to regulate Wall Street and the banks that helped destroy our economy, corporations outsourcing and shipping American jobs overseas while receiving tax breaks, the millions of Americans who STILL will have no access to health care or will go bankrupt in the process of being forced to buy it, the immoral and failed war on drugs, insane copyright and patent laws, the secretive ACTA negotiations, Draconian immigration policies, etc.

What the conservative movement is getting right

I'm not saying that the "Tea Party" movement is the right way to do it, or that any of their claims are valid, but certainly the left appeared disconnected from reality when they made light of what happened with the recent elections in New York's 23rd district and counted it as good for leftists. Sure, it was a minor victory for the Democratic Party that was notable for its nearly unprecedented nature (the congressional seat was held more recently by the Whig Party than a Democrat). And it was fun watching Rachel Maddow report on Dede Scozzafava's last name becoming a verb. Yet the events of the last few years, with President Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, for all of their symbolic significance, have produced little in the way of tangible, substantial results. Looking at what has happened with the debate over health insurance reform, for example, leads one to question whether what is good for the Democratic Party is indeed good for the left at all.

The health insurance reform debate has proven that progressives are a nearly powerless minority in Congress, regardless of the fact that Democrats hold a strong majority. This proof can be found easily in the latest version of the "reform" bill currently being peddled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Far from what any true progressive desires, this bill is more than a simple compromise. Compared to what could have been, it's a true disaster. The number of compromises conceded to the right wing surely outnumber the aspects of the bill that actually please the left. The public option has been deformed so much that it fails to even serve its original purpose of providing competition for the private sector. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office projects that indeed, premiums for the public option will be even higher than premiums for private plans. This is of course because as a major concession to conservative Democrats (no, they're not moderate), premiums for the public option will be negotiated with providers rather than tied to Medicare rates + 5%. In addition to this, the CBO estimates that at most the public option could potentially cover six million people (a mere fraction of the uninsured, the rest of which would be forced to buy insurance from the private sector, but more on that later). Even more troubling is that those same conservative Democrats will likely vote no when the final bill comes up for passage anyway, so why include language to appease them while ignoring the wishes of those who actually plan to vote yes? The individual mandate to buy health insurance is a terrible idea when the rest of the "reform" isn't enough to actually bring down health insurance premiums in the first place. It's essentially a blatant giveaway to the health insurance industry. Then there is the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies, which the Senate bill also fails to eliminate. Remember all the hubbub over that just a few weeks back? Well, the Senate already "forgot." Or maybe the insurance industry just got a tighter grip around the necks of Democrats in the Senate. The infamous Stupak amendment that plagues the House's version of "reform," seriously restricting abortion rights, shouldn't go unmentioned either, but it has received more than enough coverage throughout the media. In exchange for all of the compromises and concessions to the right wing, progressives get absolutely nothing. Thus, it is misleading to say that this is all just a matter of typical political compromise, as anything less than a single payer system is a massive compromise in the first place. The great compromise was silently made the minute President Obama started talking about a public option, rather than single payer, on the campaign trail and then later from the White House. This was Obama's greatest misstep regarding the issue of health care, the biggest policy initiative of his presidency's first year.

All of this is to say that maybe the conservatives are onto something by being independent enough to at least disown the Republican Party when they see fit. They haven't been afraid to do so since being reduced to a minority in Congress and kicked out of the White House. Perhaps that's just it and it's really just a condition of being in the minority, but something tells me it's deeper than that. If the left had an equivalent of the "Tea Party" movement currently, I seriously doubt that what Congress is touting as health insurance "reform" would fly. Democratic politicians would get the message that their constituents are simply unhappy with a lukewarm variation of the status quo, practically molded after the wishes of health insurance industry lobbyists. The corporate-funded "Tea Party" movement is nothing if it's not full of dangerous and destructive ideas that should be rejected by any forward-thinking person. But it also carries a valuable lesson to learn for progressives. Sometimes the largest obstacle to democracy and progress is not the Republican Party, but the two-party system in general.

Of Tea Parties, Then and Now

There is something about the so-called "Tea Party" anti-tax movement of late that truly irks me. I think I have narrowed it down to historical inaccuracy. If you look at the Tea Party faction of American society today, what you see is a hodge podge of angry citizens yelling and hollering incoherently about how much they hate President Obama, Democrats, liberals, and government in general. They claim to be mad about "the direction our country is going in" (which is obviously socialism), but they don't seem to pick out a particular policy they disagree with, or give any justification as to why they are upset with it. They are just pissed off, and they don't want to take it anymore (even though progressives "took it" for the better part of the last 30 years and Democrats have only been in full control of government for less than a year with barely anything to show for it).

When the Boston Tea Party happened in 1773, the colonists were protesting the policies of a foreign government, not just government or taxes in general. The one glaring similarity between the modern Tea Party movement and original colonial protesters, however, is that in both cases they were acting largely against their own best interest. Specifically, allowing the East India Company to export tea directly to the colonies would have had the effect of cheaper tea for the colonists. This would have been good for most colonists, but particularly bad for the wealthier Northern merchants, who were basically the ruling elite class of the time (in the North). These Northern merchants also happened to be the driving force behind the Boston Tea Party.

Then and now, what we see is a ruling class of wealthy elites trying to start a revolution but also making damned sure that it doesn't get too revolutionary. Alternatively phrased, they didn't want the revolution to become a threat to their own power in society: no social change, no liberation for the urban lower classes - simply independence. The British government was only their enemy because they saw it as an obstacle to their own interests. In today's case, the wealthy elites aren't even the ones you see on TV for the most part. They are the ones behind the scenes, pulling the strings. Conservative corporate-funded groups like FreedomWorks as well as multi-millionaire Glenn Beck have brought out the Fox News crowd in hordes to protest, well, something.

Thom Hartmann offers a radically different perspective on the Boston Tea Party, and though it seems contradictory to some of what I have read, it certainly seems plausible. He contends that these Northern merchants were actually the equivalent of the mom-and-pop small business owners of today, protesting against the Wal-Mart of their era, the East India Company. While this contradicts what I have just written, it actually helps to serve the argument that these colonists were not simply opposed to government and taxes. They were opposed specifically to economic regulation by their mother country that was crafted with only Great Britain's interests in mind, heavily unbalanced against the colonist's burgeoning economy. Indeed, at this point, the American economy had outgrown its mother, and at some point it had to detach. It was the natural progression of things.

Would the Tea Party crowd please stop with the more-patriotic-than-thou attitude now?

President Obama talking like a true liberal (for once)

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter -- that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves. - President Barack Obama

I thought this guy would never say anything worth quoting again. I was wrong. If this is his first time as president talking like a progressive and not a centrist, let's hope he can walk the walk for once too.

Van Jones resigns due to pressure from Glenn Beck and Fox News

TV killed our democracy. - David Bazan

The Democratic Party, except for its most progressive members, is basically a subsidiary of corporate America at this point. Congress, with few exceptions, is essentially bought and paid for by our corporate overlords. Corporate money in politics has hijacked our democracy and sent it straight to hell. A sad thing, really. So it goes with a two-party system. I have no faith in either party anymore. The Democratic Party is simply a (slightly) lesser of two very sinister evils.

I write this hours after Van Jones, now former "green jobs czar" of the Obama administration, has resigned due to pressure from, well, Glenn Beck and Fox News - and not the American people. We have lost another brilliant mind in the Obama administration due to right-wing paranoia and hyperbole.

Thomas Jefferson writing to Isaac McPherson on "intellectual property"

Thomas Jefferson was a genius. Some of his words have been unfortunately used for gravely perverted purposes (such as his quote that appeared on the t-shirt of Timothy McVeigh, as well as that recent nutcase that brought a loaded gun to a town hall meeting on health care reform). In the following writing, though, Thomas Jefferson demonstrates a brilliant insight about the very concept of ideas. He is absolutely correct in his assertions here, and this makes for a great argument against the current copyright and patent laws in this country.

It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that [Volume 3, Page 43] these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.

The Founders' Constitution
Volume 3, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, Document 12
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html
The University of Chicago Press

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh. 20 vols. Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905.

President Obama, temporary safety or essential liberty?

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. — frequently attributed to Benjamin Franklin

In just a few weeks, President Obama will have been in office longer than George W. Bush was without a major terrorist attack on United States soil. On September 12, 2009 the talking points of Dick Cheney, asserting that Obama administration policies have made us less safe, will drift further into irrelevance.

This is a good time for reflection on some of the policies the Bush administration put into place in order to combat terrorism, namely the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act). Taken from AnswerNote, here are some of the most dangerous and disturbing sections of the USA PATRIOT Act:

• Section 218 amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), authorizing secret searches without public knowledge or Department of Justice accountability, so long as the government can allege a foreign intelligence basis for the search.



• Section 213 warrants -- "Sneak and Peek" -- extend the authority of FISA searches to any criminal search. This allows for secret searches of one's home and property without prior notice.



• Section 214 permits the removal of the warrant requirement for "Pen registers" which ascertain phone numbers dialed from a suspect's telephone and "Trap and trace" devices which monitor the source of all incoming calls, so long as the government can certify that the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing investigation against international terrorism.



• Section 216 clarifies that pen register/trap-and-trace authority applies to Internet surveillance. The Act changes the language to include Internet monitoring, specifically information about: "dialing, routing, and signaling." It also broadens such monitoring to any information "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation."



• Section 206 authorizes roving wiretaps: allowing taps on every phone or computer the target may use, and expands FISA to permit surveillance of any communications made to or by an intelligence target without specifying the particular phone line or computer to be monitored.



• Section 505 authorizes the use of an administrative subpoena of personal records, without requiring probable cause or judicial oversight.

Faced with a national security crisis, makeshift laws like this may have somehow made sense to members of Congress and those in the Bush administration at the time. But eight years later, such far-reaching legislation must be revisited at the very least, and eventually repealed. Our country must wake up and realize that such policies, along with U.S.-sanctioned torture and other recent so-called anti-terrorism government practices, do not make us safer; they make us less safe.

When President Obama promised to change the tone in Washington D.C., it would have been truly naive to believe that he would do so. Every politician running for national office pledges to change the way American politics works, but in nearly every case, American politics changes them. So it goes. However, when I voted for President Obama, I did expect him to make substantive changes in policy from the Bush administration, especially in the arena of civil liberties. This is one of the cases where he has failed to do so.

This neglect of civil liberties has been brought to the forefront of national memory by the recent flare up of discussion regarding allegations made by former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tom Ridge that politics affected decisions on whether to raise the Homeland Security threat level before the 2004 elections. Such a Homeland Security threat advisory system (available for online viewing here: http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/Copy_of_press_release_0046.shtm) is a vivid reminder of some of the foolish policies our nation was tricked into accepting without much of a debate on the merits. Regardless of the truth behind Mr. Ridge's allegations, it brought the threat level back into the news, if only briefly, demonstrating its obsolescence. In addition to this, more details are being released today of alleged torture techniques used by the CIA and authorized by the Bush administration, including threats of death and threats of assault on family members made to detainees.

I have supported most of President Obama's economic and domestic policy initiatives, including his ongoing push for health care reform, compromising though it may be. Yet when it comes to national security and civil liberties, Obama has been consistently weak, disappointing progressives, civil libertarians, and others concerned about individual liberty. It is somewhat understandable that Obama would wait at least a few months before considering what steps need to be taken on these issues, as many other pressing issues had to be addressed in an immediate fashion, such as the economic crisis he inherited. But patience among those concerned with civil liberties is wearing very thin, and this upcoming grim milestone of sorts is a good time for Obama to revisit these issues and ask himself what most Americans have been asking for a very long time now: Do these policies really make us safer or are they more of a threat than the problems that they aim to solve?

The New Deal to End the War over Intellectual Property

By its very nature, intellectual property is something that is incredibly difficult to deal with in legal terms, because there is no way to conclusively define it or its limits. Age old debates rage on regarding a host of definitions, boundaries, claims, and questions under such a broad, ambiguous topic. When Mark Getty, chairman of Getty Images, a media company that owns a vast amount of images, famously described intellectual property as the oil of the 21^st century, he was absolutely correct (Brown). Just as wars have been fought over the natural resource of oil, so will they be fought, figuratively at least, over intellectual property in the information age. Intellectual property is not a limited natural resource, but as Getty’s quote demonstrates, the content industry is doing everything they can to make it seem that way. They accomplish this in a variety of ways, many of which are unfair or at least unreasonable. Turning intellectual property, and consequently information in general, into a “limited resource” of sorts poses a serious problem for society and for the rights of the individual, but before this can be stopped, it must be clear who the perpetrators are. The content industry is a broad term used to describe the companies who own a big share of media and claim exclusive rights to that media, including music, movies, writings, and other information. In particular, the music industry is the primary one involved in the “war” over intellectual property and is a good representation of the bigger picture. There is a desperate need for the current, outdated business model defended by the Recording Industry Association of America to be replaced by a model such as the Voluntary Collective License, which both legalizes peer-to-peer file sharing, but also provides compensation for the artists.

The Voluntary Collective License was brought forth by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (Schwabach 80). Such a system would set up a collecting entity that could collect a monthly fee from file sharers, who would then be able to distribute and share music files over the Internet legally and in a way that they see fit. This monthly fee would be a reasonable fee such as $5 as the EFF suggested, and it would be added onto another cost such as the ISP subscription price. Musicians would be paid based on how much their music is downloaded, which is a statistic that would need to be closely watched by the collecting entity. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology activism group, is not alone in such a suggestion. Greg Kot, music critic for the Chicago Tribune, agrees with such a business model as well. In his recent article, “How $5 could Save the Music Industry,” Kot points out that not everyone in the music industry has got it wrong. The Songwriters Association of Canada is also pushing for a nearly identical model to be used, where the $5 monthly fee simply becomes part of the price of every Internet connection in the country, virtually making access to music something that just comes with the Internet (1). Even in the worst case scenario, this would serve the industry better than its current plan, with sales declining and more money being lost every year (1).

Before one can understand why such a solution is needed, the concept of intellectual property must be closely examined. Though it is not what is directly, consciously being fought over, all of the conflict regarding illegal file sharing of music stems from the issue of intellectual property. James Boyle, in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, points out that in American history, “intellectual property law is largely motivated by utilitarian concerns,” and it is not meant to hand out “rewards for hard work” (Boyle 2). Rather, as defined by the Constitution in the Patent and Copyright Clause, the purpose of intellectual property law is in fact “to promote the progress of science and useful arts” (Schwabach 4). One aspect that has consistently been absent in American law on intellectual property is that of “moral rights,” which Aaron Schwabach in his book Intellectual Property: A Reference Handbook describes as including the “right to protect the work from changes” and the “right to withdraw a work from distribution” (5). Schwabach contends that in the United States, copyright is an economic right and not a moral one, and that it is aimed at helping society rather than the author (4–5). Michele Boldrin and David Levine of The American Economic Review also distinguish another form of intellectual property that has not been traditionally protected under American law, which they name “downstream licensing,” when a creator of a work is able to determine what can and cannot be legally done with that work after it has been legally sold to the consumer (Boldrin and Levine 209). The music industry sees intellectual property as something they must have absolute control over, because it is everything they own, and it creates their livelihood. On the other hand, consumers and technology activists see restrictions of the legal use of products, such as technologies like digital rights management (DRM), as a direct infringement upon their rights. They believe that once they have legally purchased music or some other copyrighted work, the statute of fair use should apply extensively to what they are legally able to do with it.

The music industry’s approach to this problem is to bring lawsuits against thousands of individuals in an attempt to scare as many people away from file sharing as possible. This flawed approach results from the music industry’s flawed way of viewing the purpose of copyright law in America. They fail to see the distinction between the moral rights and the economic rights granted by copyright. The music industry also delves far too deeply into downstream licensing with their digital rights management schemes, limiting what even law-abiding, legitimate consumers can do with what they legally purchase. In this way, they are punishing those who allow their business to be profitable in the first place.

In doing so, more than anything else the music industry is setting itself up to be the target of much hatred and harsh criticism. A new plan like the Voluntary Collective License would also help remove the negative connotations that are associated with the industry now almost universally among music fans, critics, and technology activists. According to the official Web site of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the main representative of the music industry, their mission is “to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality” (“What We Do”). The current method of going after their own consumers with outrageous lawsuits and fines is not working at all towards that goal, even though they are somehow able to convince themselves that it does. The current business model that is in place for the music industry is outdated and now it is all but failing miserably. The first problem with it is that the RIAA still refuses to admit that there is anything wrong with the way they have been doing things, even in the face of drastically declining album sales across the board and widespread criticism to boot. The RIAA failed to see the Internet as an opportunity and instead opted to see it as a threat. Because of this, they held to their old business model while music fans found their own ways to distribute and consume content.

It is difficult to broach the subject of intellectual property without also considering technology and innovation, two other major factors that come into play within this discussion. When Grokster, a distributor of peer-to-peer software that enabled illegal file sharing to occur, lost the Supreme Court case against MGM Studios, Charles Ingrassia of the University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy quoted a technology activist as calling it “a very dangerous decision for technology and for innovation” (Ingrassia 357). Stemming from their different views on intellectual property, the recording industry and its critics both also have very different views on technology and innovation. The recording industry sees technology as something to create new ways to sell their products to the public, and as a way to enforce their exclusive right to do so. Consumers and technology activists, conversely, see technology as a means to achieve innovation. In this view, technology is something that puts more power in their hands to do what they please with a given product that they own. Innovation, they believe, is the direct result of the advancement of technology. The recording industry sees technology’s purpose as generating more revenue for them while ensuring the protection of their artist’s innovation.

In relation to innovation, Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, in an interview with PC World claims that the music industry “is already making a lot of new business models” and that “the number of legal download and subscription services that are getting really good reviews right now is staggering.” One must question, however, which reviews he has been reading. In general, the legal options of acquiring music online have been met with dissatisfaction from many people for a variety of reasons. The proof of this is chiefly the fact that illegal music downloading still runs rampant. The reason is not because people will always resort to stealing music even when a good, viable, legal alternative exists. Legal online avenues such as iTunes simply do not offer nearly as many options to the consumer as all the peer-to-peer networks. The biggest problem with most legal online music download stores is one imposed directly by the music industry itself. This problem is a technology known as digital rights management (DRM), where the record companies demand that bundled with all music downloads is software to ensure that the music in question cannot be copied or reproduced beyond a certain limit. While the RIAA sees this as a way of protecting their intellectual property, DRM is an outright infringement upon the rights of consumers, as well as a clear example of the downstream licensing that has not traditionally been a part of American law. According to Wired magazine, in regards to DRM, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu claims that it is “too often ignored” that DRM “makes the product less valuable by disabling the product in some way” (Singel). Wu is correct in his claim, because essentially that is what DRM is – a lock that limits a product’s usefulness to the consumer. This leaves absolutely no incentive for the consumer to drop the habit of downloading from peer-to-peer file sharing networks and start using legal online music downloading stores. In essence, they would be paying more for less.

The RIAA is trying to ignore this obvious flaw with their new plans to promote downloading music legally online. In response to such annoying business practices, many technology savvy users have found ways around the various DRM schemes. They have developed workarounds that will remove the annoying locks on song files and return them to a normal, reasonable level of usability. However, making things more difficult for consumers was not enough for the RIAA. Beyond enforcing DRM upon most legal music downloads, they also pushed for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to be passed in 1998, which made it illegal to tamper with copy protection methods (Schwabach 82). By this new law, everyone who offered workarounds for a DRM method was a criminal. Before the DCMA was law, it would have been legal for someone to make personal copies of albums or songs for themselves, even if that meant bypassing DRM protection, under fair use. Now, this is only the case for non-DRM-protected music, which is a small minority of music downloaded legally.

Finally, when dealing with issues such as copyright infringement, there is the issue of morality to discuss. Why is it that illegal peer-to-peer file sharing of music is so morally acceptable to such a wide variety of people, while the actual theft of a physical product is frowned upon? Mohsen Manesh of the Stanford Technology Law Review pins it down to two reasons. Not only does current technology make it extremely easy and virtually free to make a work in electronic form available online to anyone accessing the World Wide Web, but also there is a definite “moral distinction” in the minds of those committing copyright infringement between what they are doing and theft (Manesh 2–3). Manesh contends that the reason why people look down on theft but not on copyright infringement is perhaps not based on the law at all, but rather on that “moral distinction” (3). Although consumers may feel that they are acting within morality when they commit copyright infringement, this is not the view of the recording industry. The recording industry repeatedly compares copyright infringement directly to theft and sometimes even much more serious crimes. There may be no physical copy of a work being taken from them, but they still feel every bit as violated and have gone out of their way to make this clear. This is how the RIAA justifies bringing lawsuits against the thousands of individuals who have no moral problem with illegal file sharing, but instead of creating more dissent between the two sides, a new plan like the Voluntary Collective License should be adopted in order to form a solution that works. Otherwise, the ongoing battle would have no end in sight.

The implications of this battle over content control stretch worldwide, reaching both everyone in the music industry as well as music fans and technology activists alike. At this point, the RIAA is unlikely to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with their current plan of simply suing every “copyright infringer” they can find. While they see this as scaring off other potential file sharers, what it is really doing is making the need for a new plan even more obvious. Eventually, this will bring the music industry to the realization that they need to start doing something proactive to save their failing business model. It will be years before something like the Voluntary Collective License or Songwriters Association of Canada plan will be able to be seriously considered at large, but when the RIAA is finally ready to admit they need a real change, those plans will still be there, ready to bring relevance back to the music industry.

Works Cited

Boldrin, Michele, and David Levine. "The Case Against Intellectual Property." The American Economic Review 92.2 (2002): 209-212. JSTOR. 02 Mar. 2008 <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28200205%2992%3A2%3C209%3ATCAIP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2>.

Boyle, James. "Intellectual Property Policy Online: a Young Person's Guide." Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 10.1 (1996): 47-111. 24 Feb. 2008 <http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v10/10HarvJLTech047.pdf>.

Brown, Diane. "Twenty-First Century Oil." Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis Magazine Winter 2007. 11 Mar. 2008 <http://magazine.iupui.edu/07/intellectual_property.html>.

Ingrassia, Charles. "A Helpful Loss? the Implications of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. V. Grokster, Ltd. on Future Distribution of Products Capable of Infringing Uses." University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy (2005): 357-367. 24 Feb. 2008 <http://www.jltp.uiuc.edu/recdevs/ingrassia.pdf>.

Kot, Greg. "How $5 Could Save the Music Industry." Chicago Tribune 20 Jan. 2008: 1.

Manesh, Mohsen. "The Immorality of Theft, the Amorality of Infringement." Stanford Technology Law Review 5 (2006): 1-26. 24 Feb. 2008 <http://stlr.stanford.edu/STLR/Articles/06_STLR_5>.

Schwabach, Aaron. Intellectual Property : a Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2007.

Singel, Ryan. "DRM is Dead; Long Live DRM." Wired 14 Jan. 2008. 15 Jan. 2008 <http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/drm-is-dead-lon.html>.

Spring, Tom. "Three Minutes with RIAA Chief Cary Sherman." PC World 30 Oct. 2003. 15 Jan. 2008 <http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,113133-page,1/article.html>.

"What We Do." RIAA. Recording Industry Association of America. 13 Jan. 2008 <http://www.riaa.com/whatwedo.php>.

wrangler jeans

If you have good posture
and it doesn't worry you
try helping another
as they struggle in their chair

Still or straight it doesn't matter
The question is still there
It will serve you right
It serves them right

Life through math

All of the lights are off. My monitor glows alone in the dark.

There are many kinds of relationships in the world. For instance, we say that two people are related by blood if they share a common ancestor and that they are related by marriage if one shares a common ancestor with the spouse of the other. We also speak of the relationship between boyfriend and girlfriend, between student and teacher, between people who work for the same employer, and between people who share a common ethnic background.

I read this. I think about life and everything. Told between the covers of a mathematics textbook.

Anyway, I recently saw the Black Lips perform live at the Logan Square Auditorium. This was a fun show for me, primarily because of its intensity. It is rare that I enjoy the live music of a band I am not familiar with. This was an exception. I was crushed in the midst of the excited crowd. My body was swayed powerlessly among them. As the furious crowd shouted the lyrics back at the band, I felt for a moment that I was foreign.



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Now playing: Spoon - Metal School
via FoxyTunes

Of thoughts and how they materialize

Hello everyone. I hope this transmission finds you all well.

I have found my way into the month of February. This month is nearing its end, though, and I heard March is coming soon.

My life is counted out in beats of hysteria. Large monsters with furry eyeballs (the reverse is normally true, but not in this case) have crept around my window sill. They have not yet reached inside. When I talk about truth, I am usually not telling the truth. I do not usually mean what I see. It's so hard to believe. Sometimes. But if sometimes implies not always, why can't all men be free? Not just here, but there too. There. There is just as important as Here; There is a place. There does not need a period before it to be capitalized. It was difficult for me to demonstrate that initially, so I included some fluff. I apologize for the fluff here. There is a lot. In just a simple paragraph, there is so much that does not need to be said, heard, read, typed. But alas. How do you go about life removing the unnecessary things? Is it possible?

In the night, as in the day, I wonder about these things. I am not a professional. Not at what I do, or what I aim to do. Always doubting. But so often in my mind, images of what will most likely (or maybe most certainly) never be my future are conjured up. I want them to be mine. These are small video snapshots tiny pieces coming together furiously.

It all makes sense now.

Scooters, vacation, fall
-"Your Confidant"

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Now playing: Daniel Johnston - My Life Is Starting Over
via FoxyTunes

Welcome to the year 11111011000

Woke up today with a bloody nose.

I don't usually get bloody noses.

Anyway, so, first post of the new year. First post from school. First post in a long time, etc. I've been learning a lot about aliens recently. My mind has been concentrated on extraterrestrial intelligence and the Drake equation. How foolish of us.

In fact, I may have never gotten a bloody nose before today.

I've been trying to find some time to read some novels lately. I got about 7 or 8 free books from my parents' friend in New York who owns a bookstore. Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, Nelson Algren...some really good stuff, but I can never find the time. But that's really probably just what I tell myself. I really probably have a lot of time on my hands. Maybe I just don't use it efficiently.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I got at least one or two before.

I think it's the political season. I think I need to go get some tea. It's the only healthy thing I can do for myself anymore.

I'm back! Hey!

Hey, where did all the people go?

I hope you had a very merry Christmas. Here's hoping the new year is equally as merry. Well, I mean, we can hope...

Right?

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired

Hello everyone.

I'm sorry I didn't write you in the last week or so; I haven't felt up to it. I still don't feel up to it. Actually, I probably won't be feeling up to much of anything in the foreseeable future. A few days ago I was diagnosed with a rare, terminal illness known as "infectious mononucleosis," but I think the doctor made a mistake and it's just mono.

Anyhow, in order to prepare for death in case the doctor was right, I have composed a list of things I want to do before this tragic illness takes me to the pearly gates or the flames below:

1. I want to go to Germany, Italy, Japan, Ireland, Poland, and maybe a few other countries.

2. I want to live for about 55 more years, give or take a few.

Alright, so that was easy. In other news, I've got six new books to read, the In Rainbows discbox from Radiohead, and a lot of medicine to take. There's also been a lot of movie-watching going on around here, suspiciously.

"Your Confidant"

My top-secret plan to be tired when I finally stop sleeping

Because the ticket industry is probably the single most evil of them all, save what I like to call the "intellectual property" industry or Big Brother, I happened to return empty-handed from the first Wilco pre-sale. In case you didn't know, Wilco are playing 5 shows in a row at the Riviera and while doing so they will attempt to play every song in their entire recorded library. So in other words, each of these shows will be completely unique. Also, I decided I want to go.

The ticket empire beat me to it, though, and the first pre-sale was sold out in seconds. Now, in a matter of hours (10am CST) I will be back for round two. The problem is, I'm still awake, writing this, so I probably will be getting less than seven hours of sleep, since I sleep terribly in the first place. And less than seven hours just doesn't cut it for me.

Oh, and after a few days of finally being back to normal, my mouth thought it would take things for an unexpected turn and start swelling up again. So I also have yet ANOTHER dentist appointment tomorrow.

When you lose your wisdom, it really comes back to bite you with a vengeance.

"Your Confidant"

Fracture

Today (Thursday) I am heading to Day 1 Studios in Chicago to playtest a new game they are developing called Fracture. I am pretty excited for this. Apparently the appointment is going to take about an hour: 30 minutes to play the game, and another 30 minutes to give feedback. Earlier in the year, Day 1 Studios made a presentation in one of my classes and gave us a preview of the game. From what I could see there, it looked pretty fucking awesome. If I remember correctly, there is this crazy new physics engine that they're using. It looked insane.

Anyway, I have to wake up a little early for that (11:30am is really early for me).

Signing off,

"Your Confidant"

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Now playing: Wilco - Let's Not Get Carried Away
via FoxyTunes

On the Assembly Line

Today, I visited the workplace. I folded some bags. I packed them into boxes. Then I sealed the boxes and put them into larger boxes. Here's the way it all works:

20 bags go into one smaller box.
Eight smaller boxes go into one larger box.
These larger boxes are contained in the "factory."
Then, they are shipped off to some hungry consumer, most likely some sort of medical institution.

My wages are decided by the number of smaller boxes I complete.

I am Faceless.

"Your Confidant"