PDHblog
This is a place for members of Progressive Democrats of Hawai‘i to express their thoughts
and exasperations about political happenings. The opinions and views are not necessarily
those of PDH's steering committee or membership as a whole.

We usually don’t copy whole messages for our blog here, but I want to make an exception for the following essay by David Swanson. I don’t agree with him on every single point– For example, his 7th paragraph. I believe swing voters DO exist. For example, they’re the ones who voted for George Bush in 2004 and now wish they hadn’t. But in about two months, we’re going to have our own Primary, right here in Hawaii, so let’s think a bit about why we should bother to vote, eh? Here we go: (more…)

i imagine most of you are aware of the media matters for america organizational website, but if you’re not you should check it out because they do a good job shining the spotlight on major new media when they aren’t walking the straight and narrow, so to speak.

with all the sites i try to visit everyday, i admit i don’t go to this site very often, but i was browsing yesterday and came across a report that was put together by media matters regarding the progressive majority and the myth that america is by and large a conservative nation.

personally, i’ve felt this way for a while, though clearly didn’t have this kind of data to back up my ‘hunch’. a similar (maybe in a more playful way) approach to this subject is taken up by Thomas Frank in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. of course, it’s a great book that i recommend (if you ask nicely, i may let you borrow mine).

anyway, the report, titled The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative American Is a Myth, is quite insightful (or at least i think so) and is full of statistics gathered over years by nonpartisan sources. while i’ve still got a bit to get through, i thought i’d share.

while, as they say, the devil is in the details, and while this report doesn’t (at least not yet) go into details regarding issues, the numbers don’t lie.  the majority of the people in this country are at least progressive leaning, even if they wouldn’t use the term ‘progressive.’  i think this report is just what progressive need to direct the conversation away from the conservative talking heads and even mainstream news media.  i think this is a report everyone should read, especially those who don’t already call themselves progressives (i call myself a liberal, but mostly to annoy people).

how can we begin framing the national debate in terms of what this report presents?  i’ve already started thinking about….

what a crazy, interesting day it was yesterday!

i was woken by the shaking and rattling, but didn’t bother to go outside. we managed to go online and see the first estimates of location and strength before the power went off. our cat was super freaked out. i talked to my dad on the big island and found out that they had it WAY worse than we did. all the glass in their house was broken, piano walked into the middle of the room, crack in the driveway, roads closed. as we drove to waikiki to attend a memorial service for our paddling coach who died during the molokai crossing 1-yr ago, we noticed a lot of people outside talking to each other and looking dazed. we paddled out to the ocean and spread flowers, then spent much of the day eating and drinking with paddling friends. drove through waikiki and saw all the lines at the abc stores… then went to the little market on mccully and algaroba to buy beer with no line. stopped at a friend’s house for a bbq, then the lights came back on right after dark. all in all, it was a pretty nice day. having no power seemed to force people to go outside and interact with each other. a friend commented that it would be nice to have days without power on a more regular basis!

Sorry about the interruption. I accidentally deleted the blog database (Oct 4th) and had to get my web host to restore it to their last back up (Oct 1st). We lost a couple of posts and comments and were offline for about 2 weeks, but at least we regained our archive. I have learned my lesson and will back up now.

More than any other issue, Net Neutrality, to me is one of the most important. Some of you may have recently heard of what Senator Boxer of California has had to say to the FCC about their failure to act on an important study about local radio and television programming. In responce, Kevin J Martin, the Commision Chairman has made the working paper public. You can find Senator Boxer confronting the Commission on YouTube. As I mentioned in another post Net Neutrality is a complex issue to articulate. There is another video on YouTube from Senator Kennedy that that provides some insight into the principal of Net Neutrality and a more broad approach to maximizing the use of the Internet to advance democracy. I tend to single out the FCC as being the most important agency affecting future use of the Internet however the FEC may also have a significant impact on it’s use. At any rate, regulation of all forms of public communications media seem to be an important issue in our present and future discourse. No doubt I’ll be back soon with more interesting developments and I’ll try to dig up information that is more pertinent to us right here in Hawaii.

It’s truely frightening that in an election year, 911 and partisan politics are so closely intertwined. It’s even more so as we understand how this all has come about.

Historically the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of course used the Fairness Doctrine and two corollary rules, the personal attack rule and the political editorial rule to “manage” political commentary over radio and television. The FCC is directed by five Commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for five-year terms, except when filling an unexpired term. The President designates one of the Commissioners to serve as Chairman. Only three Commissioners may be members of the same political party. None of them can have a financial interest in any Commission-related business.

So low and behold, under Republican leadership, in 1987 the Fairness Doctrine was repealed. Then again during Reagan’s presidency in 2000, regulations against monopolies were relaxed to the point of being nonexistant and the personal attack and political editorial rules were a appealed. So now we have unregulated partisan control of television, radio, cable networks, etc. and this year the Rebublicans are going after the Internet by oposition of Net Neutrality legislation.

One should wonder how Ed Case would vote on such an issue? One could argue that his hidden agenda for obtaining public office is to influence the outcome of all these issues.

For now, the Internet belongs to all of us equally. Imagine a world where it does not. Unfortunately, Net Neutrality is an very difficult concept to understand. We all need to work hard to learn about it and in turn teach others how it can work for the average citizen.

So while it’s still free … I’ll provide one more link, this time on what Keith Olbermann has to say about 911… He speaks to me, I hope you all agree.

Steven

Hi,

Just a quick note. For those who have not already logged their concern with ABC’s mockumentry pathto911. Check out this easy “Letter to Robert Iger” sponsored by our very own. 120,000 names is less than 48 hours!

http://www.democrats.org/page/petition/pathto911

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