So, I'm finally settled back in. Here's the rest of those Quick Hits I didn't get to while at the Austin airport, as well as a few more that have accumulated since.
The Austin Statesman picked up our little youth caucus, but seemed to miss the point. The caucus was an informal meeting, not a strategy session to construct a master youth plan. And the focus of the discussion - to what extent our youth movement needed to be about GOTV and infrastructure for organizing our peers, or building an ideological consensus - was barely touched on in his piece.
In this piece by The Washington Post, 29 year old Republican tech strategist David All confirms the complete disconnect between the GOP and Millennials. My favorite line:
David All points to a page on McCain's Web site as more old-fogy branding:
PEW reports that young voters in this election are at least - if not more - knowledgeable about the candidates' position on Iraq.
Anderson Cooper's ac360 blog profiles HeadCount and their latest work at the Camp Bisco festival.
The Virginia Pilot reports that young Viginians (under 25) are registering at twice the rate of their elders. Registration has increased 10% in the last year.
Rumors abound that Barack Obama is going to show up as a surprise guest at this year's Lollapalooza, which takes place in his hometown of Chicago.
Young People For just announced the new class of their Front Line Leaders Academy.
Nine Latino organizations are teaming up to spend $5 million on a nonpartisan voter registration effort targeting 2 million Latinos.
Finally, Rock the Vote is teaming up with Comcast in its effort to register 2 million new voters this election cycle. I'm not a fan of this partnership. Last year, Comcast was caught blocking internet traffic from peer to peer networks. They are on the wrong side of the Net Neutrality debate.
So I thought this was interesting. There's a new coalition with a sizable constituency working on the net neutrality issue: Gamers for Net Neutrality.
Gamers aren't the most obvious constituency out there, but there are millions of gamers in America, all of whom have a stake in this fight. The average age of a gamer in America is something like 35 - so this isn't just about high school kids and college slackers. There's a lot of voting power there - particularly with consoles like the Wii expanding the user base.
Here's a little video they're using to promote their effort. As a Halo 3 player myself, it's funny (if a little cheesy).
I am starting to agree with Josh that the AT&T Pearl Jam incident may be reaching a tipping point. Maybe I've become too invested in it, but it is certainly starting to feel that way. Today, Down With Tyranny tipped me off to Trillium, a socially responsible investment firm with over 200,000 shares of AT&T common stock, who sent a letter to AT&T (pdf) inquiring about the incident:
As citizens we are alarmed whenever the free marketplace of ideas is impeded by political censorship. As shareholders we are most concerned about the impact such controversy can have on AT&T’s reputation among consumers and its good standing in regulatory and legislative communities.
This controversy arises at a particularly inopportune moment. The Company is
advocating against proposed laws and regulations that would limit its prerogatives as a gatekeeper of information flows across the internet. The Company’s defense of such prerogatives has always turned on assurances that the Company would never interfere with content passing through its pipes.
The fact that politically oriented lyrics were edited from a webcast by AT&T would appear to constitute precisely such interference and thereby cast doubt on the Company’s assurances to the contrary.
What's great about this is that Trillium is wielding its power as a stockholder and partner of AT&T to demand an accountability moment:
As a matter of risk management, we urge the Company to make a full review of and public report on the incident. Only in this way can shareholders, consumers, regulators and legislators understand why this incident occurred and be assured of the Company’s ability to prevent similar incidents in the future.
As part of that review we would like to know on what specific grounds Davey Brown Entertainment’s agent(s) decided to take the draconian step of depriving viewers of fully permissible content. We would also like to know if the Company was aware of Davey Brown Entertainment’s actions before this controversy became public. If so, do the Company’s policies require it to inform content providers such as Pearl Jam whenever such actions occur? It is our understanding that Pearl Jam was notified of the incident by fans rather than by the Company.
The company is also pursuing this through OpenMic, a Tides Center Project supported by Trillium, which seeks to establish a framework for shareholders to ensure that publicly held media companies uphold the public trust. I love the fact that we're seeing parts of a corporate social responsibility movement take a stand here (and honestly, their investments in AT&T make them a potentially powerful and effective ally). This would have been a great issue for Buy Blue.
On the music activist side, I mentioned Rock the Vote in my previous post (an no word yet on whether they will pursue this or any messaging around Internet Freedom in 2007/2008), but I neglected to call attention to the Future of Music Coalition, which has previously stood up for Network Neutrality. I've got emails out to their staff to see what action - if any - they will take on this issue. So far it's not on their site.
Putting together a one-sheet to pass around to folks might still be a good idea. Lots of information is out there, but as far as I can tell, there's no single repository that lays it all out in plain language. And certainly no one is making the argument for other musicians or youth organization to get involved. I got to thinking, though, that what we need even more than a one-sheet is a good piece of media that mashes-up some of the better stuff about Net Neutrality and Internet Freedom with contextual footage of the Pearl Jam incident. A hot, 2-minute video would go a long way to galvanizing support for this.
Matt Stoller just recorded a video with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. It's not at all what I'm talking about, but it's all I got for now:
Update:Free Press has a new post about this, outlining AT&T's previous shady tactics and linking this incident to the broader fight for Internet Freedom.
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Wired reports that, contrary to their previous public statements, censorship of political speech during Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza show are part of company policy:
A crew member who worked on a show webcast by AT&T confirmed that there was a policy in place to remove artists' political comments from shows before they were webcast.
"I can definitively say that at a previous event where AT&T was covering the show, the instructions were to shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political. Granted, they didn't say to shut down any Anti-Bush comments or anything specific to any point of view or party, but 'getting political' was mentioned."
They also draw the connection to Net Neutrality:
Randall L. Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T, is also the Vice-Chairman of the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, and has motivation to shield Bush from criticism. And as some readers of this blog have pointed out, AT&T is free to do whatever it wants to the audio on its webcasts.
But one has to wonder whether the same political filtering policy applied to AT&T's webcasts could eventually affect to the company's portion of the internet backbone, in the absence of the net neutrality legislation it actively opposes.
Hat tip to Matt Stoller at Open Left, who digs into the campaign finance records to reveal AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is a hard core Republican donor.
Hi, my name is Wes Morgan. I’m an online organizer with U.S. PIRG, currently based in Denver, CO. I graduated in 2003 from Calvin College with a degree in computer science (and a minor in Spanish). Currently I’m directing a program called Code for Change. Code for Change brings together young programmers (students and recent grads) to work on open source software projects that help build progressive infrastructure. For example, this summer we’ve been adding new features to CiviCRM, part of the CivicSpace project.
There are few things that give me more hope for the future of progressive politics in the U.S. than the Internet and the rise of the netroots. The fact that regular folks like us can use the Internet to speak out, take action, and organize others to do the same is amazingly healthy for democracy. We should hang on to this for dear life.
Sadly, as most good things are, the Internet is under attack by those who wish to bend it to their narrow special interest (usually profit-driven) purposes. Net neutrality is the label we’ve given to the fight against this attack, and it is critically important that we win it. U.S. PIRG has a page with information and actions you can take on net neutrality, and Mike Connery also has some great ways to help out in a recent post to Future Majority. However, when we define what we mean by “net neutrality,” we’re usually only talking about one aspect of what’s required to have a free and open Internet. I would argue that there are three equally essential pieces to this puzzle.
Open networks (traditional “net neutrality”)
Open standards governing how the networks operate (and interoperate with each other)
Open software implementations of those standards (open source)
Update: Lessig comes out of "retirement" to make a statement and explain what's going on.
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First an update: This weekend, the LA Times reported that the censorship by AT&T of the webcast of Pearl Jam's performance at Lollapalooza wasn't a glitch or even a one-time mistake, as AT&T alternately claimed. It's a habit. Both the Flaming Lips and John Butler Trio have reported that their political speech was censored during AT&T Live Webcasts.
At YearlyKos, I met FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. He's an amazing man, but he told us something very disturbing. He thinks that the signs are out there that the FCC is getting ready to loosen media ownership rules against the will of the public. They have already done this with the internet, and Congress has not acted to remedy the problem.
A few days ago, the problem because crystal clear. AT&T censored political speech over streaming video by Pearl Jam at a concert. This was overt censorship of political speech. With the flurry of outrage, it's increasingly clear that corporate control over our media system is not only a huge problem but a well-understood problem by the public. AT&T is trying to pass this off as a simple mistake, though there's no particular reason to trust what the company has to say, and Wired is reporting that the company may also have censored political speech by the Flaming Lips and the John Butler Trio. But whether this is a mistake or not is not really important. The question is whether there should be a gatekeeper in front of what we have the right to say. And the answer to that question is obviously no.
I don't think Stoller is right to say that the problem of corporate control over our media is a well understood problem by the public. I think people have a sense that the media today sucks, and consolidation is bad, but when it comes to something more abstract like Net Neutrality, or the full consequences of greater corporate control of the media, I'm guessing that 99% of the public either don't understand the extent problem or aren't even aware of the problem. In regards to young people, the question actually came up during the technology and politics panel at Yearly Kos, and I'll repeat what I said then: This issue doesn't even register among most young people.
What I think we have with this Pearly Jam incident (and more so now that other bands are reporting similar incidents) is a teaching moment - an opportunity for media activists and youth organizers to really educate their members about the problem.
To that end I would suggest that most youth organizations seize that opportunity. More after the jump.
Got this via Down with Tyranny, but Save the Internet has the post to read. Apparently AT&T censored a live broadcast of Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza-headlining performance during which Eddie Vedder sang some lyrics not so favorable to the Bush Administration.
AT&T claims it was "a glitch" or "a goof," but you really don't get to make those kinds of mistakes when you're lobbying Congress to allow you to be the arbiter of how content is moved on the Internet. And AT&T has a record of acting in bad faith.
Added Craig Aaron, communications director for Free Press, "Every time something is censored or blocked it’s a 'mistake' or a 'glitch.' And that could well be the case. But of course there’s no way for users to know. That’s exactly how it will be on the non-neutral Internet and closed wireless networks, where AT&T will be a gatekeeper deciding what you see and when you see it."
Pearly Jam have long been huge supporters of the progressive movement, going to far as to mobilize young voters on behalf of Jon Tester in Montana. I hope this pushes them to throw their hat into the ring on net neutrality. For more info, visit Save the Internet.
First of all, Mike and I have decided that our "quick hit" or "daily digest" pieces are now going to be called "Around the Tubes". I'll try and tag the older digest pieces when I find them, but for now, here's what I've been looking at in the series of tubes this morning:
Kid Oakland has a really nice post up at both MyDD and Daily Kos that uses a conversation with a young elected official and a young activist that helped get him elected to talk about the Millennial Generation. There's also a few really good conversations in the DKos comments. Though Kid Oakland isn't really much of a kid, he consistently writes great pieces on both Millennials and politics in general, so I've placed his blog on the blogroll.
Forex News takes a look at the practice of Redlining student loans that I pointed to the other day. The article gets someone from the loan industry to say in plain language what they are doing, and why:
He said default rates are used along with other data about a school, including anticipated income after graduation and dropout rates, to help set rates that protect the interests of the lender.
Dean used the example of a student attending an Ivy League college as opposed to another at a small trade school.
The industry would view the Ivy League student as clearly "on the path to success," while the other student presents greater risk, he said.
"Should both of those students get the same rate?" Dean asked.
No, you're right, we subsidize student loans in this nation to benefit mainly the upper class and the upwardly mobile, which is how it should be. Those plebes should stick to playing video games, or whatever it is those poor fools do, and leave the learning to those who can really use it!
For some strange reason that Chris Dodd guy (you know, the one whose running for President) wants to do something about the cost and efficiency of student loans. This is from a press release he put out last week:
"As the average student leaves a four-year institution with $20,000 in debt, it is essential that we do all we can to ensure that students are securing their loans on the best terms possible," said Dodd Campaign Spokesperson Christy Setzer. "By requiring banks to compete for the right to make or own government-guaranteed student loans, students can be assured they are get the best rates on loans while the program provides significant savings to taxpayers as government subsidies are driven down by market competition."
Dodd, who will be unveiling details of his plan in the coming weeks, announced that under his plan the government would force student lenders who participate in the Federal Family Education Loan program to compete for the right to make or own federal student loans through a government-run auction. As a result, an additional $20 billion will be available to be directed back to student aid and other federal education programs.
Last week Dodd announced he would introduce legislation that would require private lenders to provide more accurate and timely information to customers about interest rates, terms and conditions of their loans in order to ensure students better understand their debts and obligations.
Dodd has also put forward a National Service Plan, which includes a video from a live video chat he did. I guess Senator Dodd hasn't gotten the memo that young people don't vote, and they really should be ignored.
Meanwhile, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions approved a package of legislation to renew the Higher Education Act that would basically transfer about $18-billion dollars of profit from the college loan industry to students. At least that's theoretically what it would do, though I still think direct loans from the government would be a much better use of our resources.
But, some people still would love to see a Gore-Obama ticket (From Young Turks via Tennessee Guerrilla Women.
I personally would prefer a Gore-Dodd ticket, but it would be nice to get all the cultists Obamiacs on Gore's side, so there's that.
And for those of you who don't remember the brilliant, rambling, incoherent rant in a bottle that is Senetor Ted "grumpy grandpa" Stevens (R-Alaska and R for Retarded) here's grumpy grandpa's explanation for why we should charge companies a fee to use the interwebs.
He's right, the internet is not a truck you can dump your stuff into. The quote about his staff sending him internets that take all night to arrive is so funny, I would swear it was a Jon Stewart skit. It's sad when our elected officials provide more hilarious caricatures of stupid and inept politicians than our best comedians can ever hope to.
Today, Jenni Engestrom was named "Deputy CEO for Public Affairs," for the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver -- but she is better known as the Director of Communications for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
...
The liberal blogosophere is united on many fronts -- not just disliking US foreign policy. We also hate the RIAA -- for suing our friends, for lobbying for laws that suspend due process rights of the accused (the RIAA's favorite law, the DMCA, was used by Diebold to suppress information about failures in its voting machines), and for demanding the right to "pretext" (commit wire fraud) in order to catch "pirates."
Worse still, the RIAA are part of the initiative to corrupt net neutrality, imposing centralized controls on the transmission of information across the network.
It has been Engestrom's job to sell these initiatives to the American public.
Political Wire got an advance look at a new West Chester University/NPR poll in Pennsylvania that shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain, 52% to 42%, in the key battleground state.
The Center for American Progress Action Fund reported last month that 3.1 million Minnesotans could lose their employer health benefits under Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) health care plan, which ...
The AP reports that Lehman CEO Richard Fuld admitted to Congress today that he has taken home over $300 million since 2000, “some $60 million in cash compensation.” Furthermore, ...
Lynn Sweet previews the rules for Tuesday night's town hall presidential debate moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw.The questions will "be culled from
a group of 100 to 150 uncommitted likely voters in the ...
The latest batch of Fox News/Rasmussen swing state polls shows that Sen. Barack Obama has made significant gains in Colorado, Missouri and Florida. In Ohio and Virginia, there was little change from ...
In this mildly inappropriate version of the classic School House Rock, a girl turns eighteen and learns how to lose her voting virginity.
Register to vote at ...
I have been thinking about the generational differences in the use of the internet for political expression. I want to share my basic idea and hopefully you will share your thoughts about the ...
Update: Ironically, USA Today has a much better write-up (and a cover-story, no less) on the poll results than does their partner Gallup. Most notably, Gallup buried the headline in their analysis. ...
The voter registration press releases are streaming into my mailbox nonstop today.
From Rock the Vote:
As many states' voter registration deadlines come to a close tonight, Rock the Vote is ...
A press release from the Student PIRGs just hit my inbox. In the next week, 29 states will reach their voter registration deadlines. As we know from previous elections, at least 70% of registered ...
