Why we won’t solve any other major problem confronting the U.S. without media reform.

The following remarks were delivered by Bernie Sanders to the National Conference for Media Reform. Sanders is the junior United States Senator from Vermont.  He is an independent, but caucuses with the Democrats.  Amy Goodman describes Sanders’ speech as an “alternative State of the Union.”

The full text to Sanders’ speech can be found here.  Video of his presentation can be found here.  Here are excerpts of Sanders’ speech to the NCMR in Memphis:

[W]e will not succeed unless you are there, unless there is a strong grassroots media, which demands fundamental changes in media today and the end of corporate control over our media. We’ve got to work together on that.

Now, you are going to hear from a lot of folks who know more about the details of the media than I do, but what I do know a lot about is how media impacts the political process, what media means for those of us who day after day struggle with the major issues facing our country and a goal of trying to improve the quality of life for all of our people.

And I want to spend just a minute in telling you what I suspect most of you already know. If you are concerned, as been said, about healthcare, if you are concerned about foreign policy and Iraq, if you are concerned about the economy, if you are concerned about global warming, you are kidding yourselves if you are not concerned about corporate control over the

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Are Victims Evil?

I’ve written before about how banking laws are for sale (some would say I’ve ranted before).  In that post I discussed payday lending.  I often hear that payday lending is not predatory and that such lenders must be offering a service, else why would people borrow money at 300%, 400%, 500% or even more?

I also hear people blame the victims of payday lending.  Others say the borrowers are at fault for borrowing money at horrible interest rates.  Even borrowers hold themselves at fault.  When (if) they get out of the trap (and make no mistake, it is a trap with a cycle of borrowing the same money repeatedly, because the costs are so high people have great difficulty paying the debt without borrowing to do so) they still blame themselves for getting into it.

Many borrowers blame themselves for being stupid or taking the ‘easy way’ out.  One person I know, when faced with the choice of becoming homeless or getting some money, said she thought the loan was an answer to prayer.  “As I prayed for help,” she said, “an ad for payday loans came on tv.  I thought God was answering my prayer.”  Hundreds and hundreds of dollars later in interest, she thinks it was the devil.

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Ed Markey: A good friend for each of us who believes in a vigorous First Amendment

The American public has a friend in Ed Markey, the Massachusetts' representative who is the now the Chairman and the highest-ranking Democrat of the House Subcommittee on Telecomunications and the Internet. Markey knows media well. This video is proof. He knows that the telephone companies have one full-time lobbyist in…

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How to save the Internet: net neutrality (equal access)

This post is yet another entry summarizing proceedings of the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee. The conference is sponsored by Free Press.

A panel presented yesterday was entitled “Saving the Internet.” [At his plenary speech, Bill Moyers has suggested an alternate way of designating this issue: “equal access to the Internet.”] At the panel presentation, Tim Wu summarized the concept of net neutrality issue. Tim is a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in telecommunications law and copyright. In 2006, he wrote a book titled Who Controls the Internet.

Wu explain that the Internet is a meritocratic network. It is a place where we don’t need permission to speak. The aim of “net neutrality” is “to protect this no-permission” aspect of the Internet. The electric network of the Internet, itself, is a second form of neutrality. The idea is that any compatible device should be allowed to be connected to the network.

The function of net neutrality is to protect the Internet from incursions by phone companies and cable providers. If they had their way, the Internet will become like cable companies or “like the Chinese Internet,” where the provider tells you how you can use the network.

Wu previously worked with a telecommunications company. He was not proud of this, but admitted that his job was to try to sell ways to discriminate use based on content. Ironically, this is exactly what he is now concerned about. That is why he wrote a seminal paper …

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Laying out a new agenda? For which America?

Lewis Lapham served as editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until his retirement in from those duties in 2006.  But he has continued on in his writing.  In the January 2007 "Notebook" he bristles at the suggestions of Nancy Pelosi and others that impeachment hearings are "off the table."  Lapham…

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