Perseverating on the FCC vote, June 2nd

As I write this, I feel so disheartened because I don't think anything can be done about this vote.

Eric Boehlert of Salon.com interviewed the former FCC chair under Clinton, Reed Hundt. Mr. Hundt speaks with strong words:

"...If Dwight Eisenhower were alive today he'd be warning us about the dangers of the military-industrial-media complex...It's the culmination of the attack by the right on the media since the independent media challenged and helped topple Richard Nixon..."

Also in Salon.com, Meredith Hobbs covered the last unsanctioned public open hearings held by Copps and Adelstein, those rogue FCC commissioners. One quote in particular by a participant points out this:

"I worked 23 years in a big corporation. There is no democracy in a corporation."

John Nichols, Madison Capitol Times, Wisconsin’s progressive journal, writes about the unexpectedly strong grassroots nature of the opposition to this vote.

Ted Turner, in the Washington Post, ends with this feisty paragraph:

"If, on Monday, the FCC decides to go the other way, that should not be the end of it. Powerful public groups across the political spectrum oppose these new rules and are angry about their lack of input in the process. People who can't make their voices heard in one arena often find ways to make them heard in others. Congress has the power to amend the rule changes. Members from both parties oppose the new rules. This isn't over. "

Although there might be a infinitisimally tiny chance that the FCC chair may be persuaded to postpone this vote by all this uproar, my sense is that this work will be all absolutely futile. (Why does this remind me of the Borg? Actually, the editors of Salon.com created a special section on the "media borg") My hope is that somehow, somewhere this may start the process of making people more aware of what is going on in government today, that this grassroots nature continues to grow and expand into the other areas: the environmental policies, the educational policies of this administration. There needs to be at the very least balance between the Borg, oops, I mean, corporate and public interests.