The milk fight, which is being watched in the industry from coast to coast, started because Mr. Hettinga runs a rare hybrid operation. Most dairy businesses either only produce milk, or only process it. He does both. As a result, he falls into a protected class that isn’t bound by an arcane system of Depression-era federal rules. Under it, milk processors selling into specific geographical areas, which cover most of the country, must all pay into that area’s pool for subsidizing milk prices. But so-called producer-distributors have always been exempt.
Category: Politics
The Role of Civil Disobedience Today
Students examine civil disobedience’s history and explore whether it is a viable form of protest in today’s world
The End of the Internet?
The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.
Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
The $200B Broadband Scandal
My friend Bruce Kushnick is a man on a mission. In The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal, he writes:
. . . in the early 1990’s . . . every Bell company . . . made commitments to rewire America, state by state. Fiber optic wires would replace the 100-year old copper wiring. The push caused techno-frenzy of major proportions. By 2006, 86 million households should have had a service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions . . . In order to pay for these upgrades, in state after state, the public service commissions and state legislatures acquiesced to the Bells’ promises by removing the constraints on the Bells’ profits as well as gave other financial perks . . . The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.
The manipulations, deceptions and broken promises are documented in detail in New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, California and Massachusetts. Book synopsis here.
More here.
Shopping in 1975
Alex Tabarrok via a Sears Catalog:
Sears’ lowest-priced 10-inch table saw: 52.35 hours of work required in 1975; 7.34 hours of work required in 2006.
Sears’ lowest-priced gasoline-powered lawn mower: 13.14 hours of work required in 1975 (to buy a lawn-mower that cuts a 20-inch swathe); 8.56 hours of work required in 2006 (to buy a lawn-mower that cuts a 22-inch swathe. Sears no longer sells a power mower that cuts a swathe smaller than 22 inches.)
Could Blogs Get Tangled in Web of Ethics Rules?
That’s because state elections law says that anyone who spends more than $25 a year to advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate – without that candidate’s knowledge or control – must register with the state as an independent committee and disclose the sources of the money spent and how it was expended.
Should bloggers be regarded as a part of the news media, exempt from such rules, or should they be seen as partisan actors in a campaign who must register? Few bloggers draw the line where Berg did.
Did an iPod Scuttle the (Broadcast) Flag?
Wes Phillips takes an interesting look at the Senate Commerce Committee’s recent sausage making discussion regarding the “Broadcast Flags” – or “Audio Flag’s. These are essentially “takings” of our fair use rights via Hollywood special interests:
John Sununu (R-NH), an MIT graduate, questioned the necessity of the restriction. He said that advocates of the restriction maintained that its absence would “stifle creativity.” He demurred. “We have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and product and content development…new business models, and new methodologies for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it always restricts innovation…why would we think that this one special time, we’re going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it will actually encourage innovation?”
State Electronic Surveillance Laws
National Conference of State Legislatures:
Electronic surveillance is also examined in a brief
that is part of NCSL’s series, “States
Respond to Terrorism,” which surveys states’ efforts to protect democracy
from future terrorist attacks.Electronic Surveillance involves the traditional laws on wiretapping–any
interception of a telephone transmission by accessing the telephone signal
itself–and eavesdropping–listening in on conversations without the consent
of the parties.Following the tragedies of September 11, there is growing
support to give law enforcement agencies more power to tap into private
communications to thwart further acts of terrorism by monitoring private
electronic communications. State and federal policymakers face the challenge
of balancing security needs via electronic surveillance against the potential
erosion of individual privacy.
Zawodny: Has Google Lost its Soul?
We all knew it was a matter of “when” not “if”, but it’s surprising to see that it had to happen this way. Over on Google Blogscoped, I see that Google Removes Its Help Entry on Censorship: The page which used to say: Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results.
Now simply 404s. It’s gone. Well, except for the cached copy in Google itself.
Rather than using that page to explain how and why they’ve compromised their corporate philosophy in China, they’ve removed it entirely with no e
Read the comments for a rather troubling look at Google’s censorship.
Google in China
So it has happened. Google has caved in. It has agreed to actively censor a new Chinese-language search service that will be housed on computer servers inside the PRC.
Obviously this contradicts its stated desire to make information freely available to everybody on the planet, and it contradicts its mission statement: "don’t be evil." As Mike Langberg at the San Jose Mercury News puts it: their revised motto should now read "don’t be evil more than necessary."