FCC TO ANNOUNCE NEXT WEEK IT'S PLAN FOR INTERNET IN THE FUTURE

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in a recent interview, announced that next week he will be making public the plan the FCC has for the future of the internet.  What hasn't been reported by the MSM, is the fact that Mr. Genachowski has surrounded himself with the most left-wing, Progressive organizations that are fighting for their "right" to get on the web and media bandwagon. 

The FCC has determined that there is a need for the government to get involved in the expansion of the internet.  It appears they are working on ways to pay back these organizations by taking from current providers that have spent billions of dollars building the infrastructure and giving it to groups like "Free Press" and "Public Knowledge" in the name of diversity. On the "Free Press" website, they have a video that touts that they "want media reform in order to transform America's democracy." (I don't know about you, but I don't want to transform this country.)
In other words, what these groups want is to suck off of the "evil corporations" that have invested heavily in developing the infrastructure to bring internet to their customrers.  They want  government to step in and fund their groups in the name of diversity in order to give the "evil corporations" more competition.  The problem is that it's not really competition when the government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars (actually, that's your and my hundreds of billions of dollars) on behalf of the competition.

Another example of who is making these decisions is the FCC "Diversity Czar", Mark Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd has proven himself to be a proponent of big government as long as it's funding his socialist agenda.  He has been quoted as saying that in order to make media more "fair" it will require that someone will need to "step down so someone else can have power."   

What that translates into is, we want a free lunch. We feel life hasn't been fair so now we believe you need to give up your investment and give it to us because we deserve it.  We are entitled to it.  It's our turn now and we have big government spending billions to make sure we get it.  This, my friends is redistribution of wealth or socialism.  This is the government deciding who will be the winners and who will be the losers.  All of this under the guise of "diversity."  All of this with our hard earned tax payer dollars.

I love how progressives create a "crisis" when there really isn't one.  I also love how they take a commendable mission like getting internet into EVERY home in America but they want to do it with your money and you don't have a say about it.  Pretty soon, there's not going to be enough pockets to pick to cover all of the agendas they are trying to cram down our throats.

We must pay attention to this power grab.  We must pay attention to who is going to be awarded "special" deals.  You need to check out these organizations...there's several of them banding together but the main ones seem to be:

Free Press, Public Knowledge...check out their websites:   http://www.freepress.net/policy/ownership    http://www.stopbigmedia.com/=atstake  http://www.freepress.net/resources/ownership  http://www.savetheinternet.com/members

Public Knowledge http://www.publicknowledge.org/

ORGANIZATIONS:
Alliance for Taxpayer Access
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Digital Democracy
Creative Commons
Digital Freedom Campaign
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Free Press
Free Software Foundation
FreeCulture.org
Future of Music Coalition
IPac
Internet Archive
Knowledge Ecology International
Media Access Project
National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture
Organization for Transformative Works
Save the Internet
Software Freedom Law Center
The Media and Democracy Coalition
Wireless Innovation Alliance

This is taken from Free Press' website:
The Free Press policy team regularly meets with legislators on Capitol Hill to advocate for legislation to promote diverse and democratic media ownership, and Free Press research and legal teams submit comments to the FCC. (so how will this affect the direction the FCC is wanting to go with the internet as well as all media?)



FROM THE "FREE PRESS" WEBSITE:
Why care about media?
Media play a huge role in our lives.
The Internet, TV, radio, newspapers, movies and books inform our ideas, values and beliefs. They shape our understanding of the world.

Media are also essential to our democracy. We depend upon the news and information we get from the media to make informed decisions and to hold our government and corporate leaders accountable.

What's wrong with media?
Our media system is in a crisis.
The takeover of our country's media outlets by a small handful of giant conglomerates (those bad corporations that invest billions on the technology and employ hundreds of thousands of people, as well as the horrible corporations that own media outlets that don't agree with this administration so they must be racists and dangerous) puts too much power and influence in too few hands. (Oh but not in your hands so now you think it is your right to get a piece of the pie because you deserve it?) That's bad for our democracy, which depends on our ability to access diverse (you mean like Obama said years ago, who is going to have to step down in order to let other diverse ownership be able to step up~is that re-distribution of air waves?) sources of news, information and opinion. (There's plenty of diverse news, information and opinion...it just doesn't happen to be yours.)

Our media is in trouble in other ways, too.
The big cable and phone companies that control access to the Internet want to be gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites and services you can use depending on which companies have paid them the most. (That would be capitalism...which has been the foundation of this country) They want to turn the open Internet we've always had into a closed, private toll road.

And public broadcasting, one of our most valuable public resources, is under constant threat in Washington by those who would cripple alternatives to the commercial media and muzzle the critical voices and diverse fare that public media offer. (what have you been smokin'?  what in the world do you mean that public broadcasting is under constant threat in Washington?)

It's up to us to change the media. The way we do that is by changing media policies. (What your video says is that you want media reform and to transform America's democracy~what's wrong with media today and our democracy....we don't want America transformed!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Isn't it just the result of market forces?
No, it's shaped by the government.Our media system wasn't created by the "invisible hand" of the free market. It's the direct result of policies made by Congress and the Federal Communications Commission in Washington.

There's really no such thing as "deregulation." We're always going to have rules. (Just try starting your own radio station without a license and see how fast the FCC shows up.) The question that matters is whom those rules will benefit. Do the laws and regulations benefit the public or do they just benefit big companies that can afford high-priced lobbyists?

For decades, communications policies have been made behind closed doors in the public's name but without our informed consent. That's unacceptable in a democracy.   (kinda like this administration with the White House meetings with the unions (Andy Stern in particular) and the kickbacks and strong arm tactics being used by the House and the Senate to buy off politicians for votes for health care?)
Only by restoring public input in the policymaking process can we create policies that serve the public interest.

Who owns the airwaves?
Believe it or not, you do!
The "airwaves" are the transmission frequencies used by radio, TV and satellite broadcasters, cell phone companies — even your TV remote control — to transmit signals.

Although the airwaves are used for many different purposes, they ultimately belong to you — the American public — in the same way that your sidewalk or your local park belongs to you. The airwaves are a public resource. Unfortunately, citizens rarely even get to use the airwaves to make their own voices heard!

Some businesses, like cell phone companies, pay the government to use the airwaves (also called "spectrum"). Radio and TV broadcasters, though, use these airwaves free of charge. In return for this generous government handout, broadcasters are required by law to serve the public interest.




AND NOW WE HAVE MARK LLOYD, THE FCC DIVERSITY CZAR:

Mark Lloyd is vice president of strategic initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He is also an affiliate professor of public policy at Georgetown University. A frequent contributor to both academic and popular publications, his book Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2007. Prior to joining LCCR, Lloyd was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he analyzed policy and conducted research on the relationship between communications and strong democratic communities. From 2002 until 2004, he was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An Emmy Award-winning journalist, Lloyd produced and reported for radio and television operations including NBC and CNN. He also worked as a communications lawyer at the firm Dow, Lohnes & Albertson and served as the general counsel of the Benton Foundation. Lloyd received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.


Ironically, Mr. Lloyd has aligned himself as well with "Progressive" organizations moving to transform America and the media.  That makes it quite unsettling considering Mr. Lloyd and the Chairman have surrounded themselves with these radicals that want to force their ideology on Americans and are wanting to do so by taking over the air waves and the internet.

Here's Mr. Lloyd in the nutshell.  This is the best description of him I have seen.





Speaking as a part of the National Radio Project on May 11, 2005, Mark Lloyd said that white Americans are "in a very protected position vis a vis broadcast stations." In his view, "As a result of this, we end up in a situation where we don't know the problems and challenges that a variety of the communities living in the United States face"

Well, all media in this country, but particularly broadcast media, was established at a time when all non-white Americans, and actually most women had very few protected legal rights in this country. As a result of that, various policies were developed that put essentially white Americans in a very protected position vis a vis broadcast stations. White Americans own and control 98 percent of all federal licenses to all broadcast operations in the United States. If this were South Africa, if this were any other country, and you saw roughly a third of the population licensed to two percent of the resources, that we would be shocked and dismayed and quite concerned about that situation. But, again, that is the situation in the United States.

It is not because there are, I don't think, deliberate policies in place now. It's because historical patterns have established this incredible inequality in the ability to communicate messages, again, among ourselves and other Americans. As a result of this, we end up in a situation where we don't know the problems and challenges that a variety of the communities living in the United States face. [...]

If we don't understand how important media is, we cannot solve any other problem the society faces. And that means changing policies so that we can get more views on the air, so that not one interest is able to dominate our discussion in the United States...The problem with media, it really takes changing the fundamental rules.

Wow. This man has an official position at the FCC?

Chief Diversity Officer Lloyd is virulently anti-capitalist, almost myopically racially fixated and exuberantly pro-regulation.

(It will come as no surprise to those who follow the work of the Media Research Center to learn that Lloyd was also at one time, prior to attending law school, an Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer for among other outlets NBC and CNN.)

Lloyd is in fact a Saul Alinsky disciple. In his 2006 book entitled Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America, he calls for an all-out "confrontational movement" against private media. He wants leftist activists - through incessant political pressure - and the government - through the creation of a totally untenable operating environment of fees, fines and regulations - to work together to force the commercial broadcasters out, to be replaced by public broadcasters.

Lloyd had this to say about the First Amendment:

It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

"[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."

Nice, eh? Note how Lloyd views the freedoms of speech and the press as just two of a number of "communications policies." Ones that he appears to view as less than equal - and in fact impediments to - the others he seeks to see implemented in the interest of promoting "democratic governance."

Note Lloyd's use of the word "democratic" to describe the "governance" he seeks to promote. It's the same word he uses to describe the work Hugo Chavez is doing in Venezuela.

As we see here in a video from the June 10, 2008 National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in Minneapolis, Minnesota discovered by the intrepid people of the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck program, who used it in conjunction with their graciously having me on their airwaves on Wednesday.

What Lloyd says about Chavez is more than a mite frightening:

"In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela.

"The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country."

"And we've had complaints about this ever since."

"The property owners and the folks who then controlled (read: OWNED) the media rebelled" in 2002 against Chavez's "incredible...democratic revolution." You bet they did - they were watching Chavez seize their property and nationalize their industries.

Lloyd then expresses disdain for the fact that there were some senior officials in the Bush Administration who gave a wink and a nod to the attempted ouster. How dare we in any way intervene to prevent Chavez's full-on Communist takeover?

And this is where Lloyd gets really dangerous given his new gig: "But he (Chavez) came back with another revolution (in 2006), and then began to take very seriously the media in his country."
Well let's see; what does Lloyd mean by this? How exactly did Chavez "beg(i)n to take very seriously the media in his country" when he "came back with another revolution?"

NGOs Warn of Restrictions in Pending Venezuela Law
Associated Press - May 7, 2009
Prominent Venezuelan nongovernmental organizations warned Thursday that a bill being drafted by lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez could be used to financially strangle groups that criticize the government.

Chavez clamps down on broadcast media
Irish Examiner - Friday, July 10, 2009

President Hugo Chavez's government is imposing tough new regulations on Venezuela's cable television while revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations.

Report: Venezuela's Hugo Chávez aggressively seizing control of media
Miami Herald - August 14, 2009

An unclassified report lists examples of Venezuelan government efforts to crack down on or seize control of media outlets to stifle criticism.
How's that for a chronology of authoritarian censorship?

Ridiculously exorbitant fees and fines on broadcasters could certainly be "used to financially strangle groups that criticize the government," could they not? That is, when the government's not simply "revoking the licenses" of stations that don't toe the Party line. Or better still, "seiz(ing) control of media outlets to stifle criticism."

This entire censorious evolution - from fines, to license rescissions to outright seizures - took place in just over three months. This is Lloyd's definition of Chavez "tak(ing) very seriously the media in his country," as a part of leading an "incredible..democratic revolution."

Please view the Media Research Center and other like-minded entities here in the U.S. as akin to the "Venezuelan nongovernmental organizations" sounding the alarm about the governmental hammer about to fall on dissenting media - in our case conservative and Christian talk radio. We're the ones who've "had complaints about this" backdoor approach to silence the Right from its very inception.

As we draw closer to its execution, we work to ensure that we too do not suffer a Venezuelan fate.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2009/08/28/video-fcc-diversity-czar-chavezs-venezuela-incredible-democratic-revol#ixzz0iJKfDSbx

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2009/08/28/video-fcc-diversity-czar-chavezs-venezuela-incredible-democratic-revol#ixzz0iJKL45uH