Your browser may have trouble rendering this page. See supported browsers for more information.

|<<>>|625 of 714 Show listMobile Mode

Big Business gets Bigger

Published by marco on

Media Mergers

Mega Media Merger Mania on AlterNet covers a February 19th federal court ruling that deregulates the media industry even further. Two rules were struck down:

<q>The first is a 60-year old Federal Communications Commission rule that limits the number of broadcast TV stations a single company can own. The cap is currently set so that a single company cannot reach more than 35 percent of the national TV audience. The second FCC rule prevented a company from owning both a cable channel and a broadcast station in the same city.</q>

This will obviously allow a media corporation to exact even more control over the “hearts and minds” of a community. It will likely mean more mergers between media corporations in order to lock down a larger percentage of the market, which will lead to an even greater homogenization of media offerings and less competition between news sources. You know, sort of like TASS and Pravda. This decision promises to deliver less choice to the public and makes it far less likely that messages not on a corporate target will be delivered (like anti-ads for example).

Control of broadcast, cable and newspaper sources will be in a small number of corporation’s hands. How can that be good for a free flow of information?

<q>A recent study conducted by an alliance of public interest groups, including the Center for Digital Democracy, the Media Access Project and Consumer Federation of America, shows that fully two-thirds of all existing newspaper markets and one-seventh of TV markets are monopolies. Researchers also conclude that the elimination of the cross-ownership ban will cut the number of independent newspaper owners by half.</q>

In related news, the Tauzin-Dingell bill is coming to the floor of Congress, which promises to repeal the Telecoms Act of 1996. Significantly, this will repeal the requirement that local telcos lease their lines to competitors for internet access. Telecommunications: The Broadband Deregulation Debate provides details on the players in a short, concise format.

Basically, if you have Covad broadband, say hello to the joys of Verizon broadband if this bill passes, since Verizon will no longer be required to let Covad use its lines for service. Study Urges Defeat of Tauzin-Dingell documents an economic analysis of the telecoms situation.

<q>Your choice is stark: You will either continue the beneficial open market policies of current law — or return us to the days of one-company control over telephone services and the last-mile infrastructure that connects our homes to the information highways we depend on … </q>

If the law passes, the telecoms landscape will consist of only Verizon, QWest, BellSouth and SBC.

Energy Markets

In another recent example of unregulated free markets gone amok, there’s Enron. Enron and the Myths of Runaway Capitalism discusses some of the fundamental design flaws of the purely growth-oriented capital economy we have today. Enron benefitted from an extremely loosely regulated market as well. The myths that govern such thinking are extremely dangerous. The scary part is that Enron had and has a lot to do with the way the energy market in many states (New York, California, Massachusetts, etc.) are run.

<q> … we are told — and, more incredibly believe — that checks and balances are bad, because free markets are good. Unregulated markets are ideal. Left free to work its magic, self-interest (ie. greed) ostensibly leads things to work out to the benefit of all, as though guided by an invisible hand. This myth is taught in Economics 101 as gospel truth, trumpeted routinely in the business press, and sold abroad as the cure for what ails all economies.</q>

The article goes on to discuss in reasonable detail the pitfalls that await a corporation − and an economy − that relies purely on shareholder price to determine value. This all without even addressing that most estimations of value and cost are purely financial (think GDP), and don’t cover the “true cost” of doing business, like environmental effects etc. remember that we live in an economy that counts the Exxon Valdez as an economic success because it generated $30 Billion worth of clean up, an overall gain for the economy.

Social Security

This is the same economy into which some want to invest the government-enforced pension plan, Social Security. Four Lies About Social Security (again, on AlterNet) talks about:

<q> … a brilliant, multi-year public relations campaign engineered by rich Wall Street firms, in conjunction with their friends in conservative Washington think tanks. Their goal: to convince the public to consider dumping Social Security in favor of private accounts. It’s a campaign built on misinformation, distortion, and outright lies.</q>

Wall Street and mutual fund managers everywhere would love to get their hands on the broker’s fees for processing the investments of Social Security, of course. In order to do this, the message has to change from the current “No Risk” pension plan to a different one. The article discusses the four current favorite replacements.

Emissions “Intensity”

Just to show the sheer single-mindedness of the “invisible hand” form of economy, Bush’s Global-Warming Smog talks about the recent announcement by the administration that they have a solution to the environmental problems. It basically lies in recharacterizing the word “problem” to mean something else, using different numbers, and denying scientific research.

<q>During the 2000 campaign, Bush declared that were he to win he would reduce America’s emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas.</q>

Shortly into his term, he flat-out denied the Kyoto treaty.

<q>After an uproar ensued, Bush grudgingly conceded that scientific research does indicate global warming is under way and poses a genuine threat, and he promised to devise an alternative to the Kyoto process.</q>

Now he has that replacement plan. On Valentine’s Day 2002, he announced:

<q>Our immediate goal is to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions relative to the size of our economy.</q>

The “relative to the size of our economy” is the clincher. That’s what the emissions are now and they’re choking the planet. That just means that the emissions have to rise less than they did before and the plan works. Great. That’s not all. Even this “expansion as reduction” model will be acheived by self-regulation of the industries through tax credits and incentive plans. Some of these plans don’t even involve reducing emissions, just tracking them.

<q>His plan would grant companies that produce greenhouse gases credits for merely monitoring and reporting their emissions, not reducing their output, and these firms could then sell their pollution credits to other companies, which could use the credits to increase their emissions.</q>

Once again, we have long-term solutions put off for short-term gains. And, once again, these short-term gains are realized by only a few.