Posts tagged with 'TMC'
The Wavelength: What Does Proposed AT&T and T-Mobile Merger Mean?
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Welcome to The Media Consortium’s newest blog, the Wavelength. Every other week for the next three months, the Wavelength will be your handy guide/resource to media policy-related news and info. For media junkies, it’s one-stop web surfing. We’ll be linking to all the great content on this fascinating, constantly-evolving topic posted by TMC members, and reporting on breaking news stories and hot topics within the media policy world, from the ongoing battle over Net Neutrality and Internet and wireless regulation, to political witch-hunts and partisan crusades, to how the media reports on media issues.
New Abundances and Their Effects
As physical limitations for how media is distributed and consumed decline, the competitive landscape changes fundamentally. In short, new abundances have turned the economics of distribution on its head.
For example, “loss-leader strategies” are inverted. (For more information about “loss-leaders,” a product sold below costs to create other sales, download Vol. 2, Chapter 4 of The Big Thaw.) Companies used to give away 1% of a product, such as perfume, to get the samplers to buy the other 99%. Now, companies such as Flickr or Skype give away 99% (often called a “freemium”) to sell 1% in the form of premium purchases. For example, Flickr Pro costs $25 per year. This flip has generated new abundances of products. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Why Diplomacy is Key to Fighting Climate Change
by Raquel Brown, TMC MediaWire Blogger
International climate negotiations are currently bogged down in smog. Many countries are in disagreement about the best way to go about reducing emissions and curbing climate change. Some, like the U.S. and Great Britain, are working together to cut carbon emissions; while others say it’s their way or the highway. Until the air clears, it will be difficult to determine which global leaders are making the most effective choices—or even what the best path to a cleaner earth will be.
On Tuesday, the world’s two leading polluters, the United States and China, finally signed a “memorandum of understanding” and pledged to work together to create a global solution to arrest climate change by December’s United Nations summit in Copenhagen, as Stephen Robert Morse reports for Mother Jones. The two countries have long disagreed on the best way to control climate change and used each other as an excuse for inaction. Disagreements have centered around which country should pay for clean-ups and new technologies.
As Agence Grance-Presse emphasizes in Grist, China and other developing nations have argued that they shouldn’t have to cut their emissions, as the bulk of pollution comes from industrialized countries. Developing countries do not have the means to finance a more energy efficient economy and many argue that the U.S. should take a leadership role and help them.
India made a similar point when Secretary of State Hilary Clinton visited last week. India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, was remarkably candid when he told her that India would not succumb to international pressures to set targets on emissions. After all, as Barbara Crossette points out for The Nation, developing countries shouldn’t have to clean up after rich countries’ negligence. Although India has a strong economy and is one of the world’s largest polluters, their rising population keeps per capita emissions lower than other developed nations.
Yet, actions speak louder than words. Going back to Grist, Grance-Presse notes that despite China’s non-committal stance, it has made significant strides in wind and solar power. Their next step towards improved energy efficiency should be reducing its coal-dependency, which accounts for 85 percent of its carbon emissions. However, as global temperatures continue to rise, it’s clear that active collaboration between industrialized and developing nations is necessary to meaningfully tackle climate change.
Much like China, India has made gains towards renewable energy. At a conference organized by a OneWorld.net sister organization in India last week, Special Envoy to the Prime Minister on Climate Change, Shram Saran, explained that India will do “Whatever we can within the limitations of our resources.” The country is exploring investments in solar, hydro, biomass and wind power. Some specific strategies are to replace incandescent with energy-saving flurescent bulbs, and to go “local” among Indian communities and farmers with a “people-centric” environmental campaign.
OneWorld reports that “This project intends to link grassroots communities, development practitioners, academia and policymakers with a view to encourage them to forge new partnerships with the government, domain experts, and community-based organizations working with vulnerable sections of society.”
Great Britain’s innovative solution to climate change is the “clean energy cash back” program. According to Chelsea Green’s Paul Gipe, the program features feed-in tariffs for Combined Heat & Power (CHP), small solar PV systems on new homes and a tariff for existing homes. What distinguishes this from other tariffs are the added incentives: if a homeowner reduces their own consumption, they can sell the surplus electricity to the grid, and receive an additional paid bonus in return.
“The proposed program, like the successful programs it was modeled after, was designed to ‘set tariffs at a level to encourage investment in small scale low carbon generation.’ This is in contrast to faux feed-in tariffs that set the tariffs on the ‘value’ of renewable energy to the system as in the California Public Utility Commission’s largely ineffective program,” says Gipe.
Britain was the first to set legally binding carbon budgets when they passed Britain’s Climate Change Act last year. This low carbon policy aims to transform Britain’s economy and has a realistic shot at reaching the country’s renewable energy and carbon targets.
Meanwhile, how does the U.S. measure up? The Nation has an excellent overview of the current status and future of the climate bill. In this interview, the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin says that farming and manufacturing interests will be one of the key battles in passing climate change legislation through the Senate. The future of the Senate bill is also contingent on the outcome of international negotiations in Copenhagen. And although the ACES bill does not meet the requirements scientists believe are necessary to curb climate change, Eilperin remains optimistic that the bill sets up a valuable platform for successful legislation in the future, much like the Clean Air Act.
The U.S. appeared hypocritical when they urged other nations to reduce their carbon emissions and commit to climate change when they themselves haven’t made strides. Rather than lead by example, Republicans like Michael Rogers (R-MI) opposed the U.S. climate change bill because the bill will “eliminate our middle class and send it to China and India,” as Osha Gray Davidson reports for Mother Jones. Some argue that a U.S. effort to cut carbon emissions will put America at an economic disadvantage if China and India do not take similar steps.
In other news, The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen reports on global warming skeptic James Inhofe’s (R-Okla) shocking claim that burning oil doesn’t cause pollution. Really?! I thought we were past all that nonsense.
But there are pervasive problems on the home front too. As climate legislation dawdles in the Senate, few have considered how climate change will impact marginalized communities. In an article for In These Times, Michelle Chen highlights how global warming widens the climate gap and exacerbates social and racial inequalities:
“The reality is, poor people always lived in the most environmentally vulnerable places – places that were vulnerable before the climate change problem made them worse. The real problem in this country is we haven’t had a real serious discussion about the social equity issues connected to climate and environment. Sadly, too many people aren’t inclined to engage in that discussion,” said Elliot Sclar in an interview with Chen. Sclar is the director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University.
As the world tries to break the stalemate over how to reverse climate change, it is ambiguous whether the U.S. has encouraged any collective progress. While our government has taken small steps toward investments in alternative energy, other nations have leapt ahead in their commitment towards a sustainable environment.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment. Visit Sustain.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on the environment and sustainability, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health, and immigration issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net, Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Mulch: Market-Driven Sustainability
by Raquel Brown, TMC MediaWire Blogger
Last week, Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil and the American Automobile Association (AAA) announced new programs that promote sustainability and a cleaner planet. The three corporations may have turned over a new leaf, but their efforts may actually be a case of corporate greenwashing. In today’s economic climate, many companies are taking advantage of consumers that don’t have the funds to be choosy about the environmental-friendliness of their purchases.
Wal-Mart announced its plans to develop a sustainability index to measure the environmental impact of its products, establish international sustainability standards and offer transparency to consumers. This program, described by The American Prospect’s Alexandra Gutierrez as “nutrition labeling, but for the planet,” is very ambitious. Wal-Mart will work with a consortium of universities, retailers and government agencies to determine each products ranking over its life cycle, then relay that information back to consumers.
But when has Wal-Mart ever acted in the environment’s best interests? In a two-part blog for Sojourners, Tracey Bianchi writes skeptically about Wal-Mart’s ulterior motive, given the corporation’s reputation of using unethical business practices to maximize profits.
“Wal-Mart’s green claims are good, but the reality is that they are not a free ride to environmental bliss. They are, at best, a $400+ billion change in the way we do business in the global marketplace. At worst, they are greenwashing and a sort of salve to the part of our soul that silently moans, “’How you consume comes with a price tag that you cannot afford,’” Bianchi writes.
But at the end of the day, Wal-Mart’s true intentions are irrelevant, says Jodi Kasten in Salon. As the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart has an incredible amount of influence over which products are made and sold. The company can use its clout and market-driven incentives to curb pollution and implement environmental changes. This approach could yield more effective results than climate change legislation. Retailers who might be willing to flout the law aren’t willing to risk losing customers.
“Uncovering greenwashing is an Olympic sport amongst environmental activists. I’m all for that. I think that abuse of the systems which are already in place give consumers a false sense of environmental awareness. But, we do have to consider that ANY system of sustainability information is better than what we have now, which is nothing,” Kasten writes.
Climate criminal ExxonMobil pledged to invest $600 million in alternative-energy technology last week. After adamantly refusing to adopt alternative-energy for years, the oil giant is partnering with Synthetic Genomics to create an algae-based biofuel. Does this partnership mark a paradigm shift for ExxonMobil? Hardly.
As Grist’s Joseph Romm reports, ExxonMobil is still funding climate change skeptics, even after promising to no longer finance organizations “whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner,” as stated in the company’s 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report.
ExxonMobil also helped fund Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada’s study condemning green jobs, as Osha Gray Davidson notes for Mother Jones. Many conservative Congressmen, most recently Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), have used Calzada’s study to back their opposition to the ACES bill.
Finally, AAA is now extending its services to cover bicycles. Despite a long history of lobbying against the environment, including strong opposition to public transportation funding and criticizing The Clean Air Act, the company has experienced a sudden change of heart. According to Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones, it all breaks down to competition. The Better World Club (BWC) rivals AAA as an environmentally friendly auto club that provides services that range from discounts on hybrid car rentals to eco-travel services. For the past seven years, BWC offered the nation’s only roadside assistance program for bicycles.
BWC has tried to distance themselves from AAA, claiming that they “are nothing like … other auto clubs,” and even linking to information about AAA’s anti-environment lobbying. “We have the same reliable roadside assistance, but we have a unique policy agenda.” AAA stands to gain new customers who use alternative modes of transportation and muscle out an organization that had good intentions from the start.
In the long run, one green initiative doesn’t make a corporation environmentally sustainable. While these companies try to shine green in the public eye, it remains to be seen as to whether they will actually advocate for positive change, or continue to push their own political agenda.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment. Visit Sustain.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on the environment and sustainability, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health, and immigration issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net, Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.newsladder.net, This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Reconciliation and Discrimination on the Healthcare Front
Last Thursday, the House and Senate passed budgets for fiscal year 2010. The House version includes critical language that could open the door for healthcare reform in 2009–and not a moment too soon. Unemployment is skyrocketing, increasing numbers of Americans are going without health insurance, and Democrats are looking to pass a healthcare reform bill fast.
In the American Prospect, Ezra Klein explains three ways that budget reconciliation could be used to fast-track healthcare reform by bypassing a filibuster, allowing reform to pass with a simple majority vote. The three options are: regular reconciliation, delayed-onset, and do-over. Klein thinks there’s a real chance that the delayed-onset or do-over reconciliation options could work. Delayed-onset reconciliation would kick in only if the Democrats and the Republicans haven’t passed a healthcare bill by a certain date. Do-over reconciliation would be based on a gentleman’s agreement between the chairs of the House and the Senate budget committees to pass budget amendments if the two parties can’t agree on a healthcare reform package within a certain amount of time.
Evidence continues to mount that minorities are especially burdened by our dysfunctional healthcare system. Public News Service reports that lack of health insurance is becoming an epidemic in Michigan, that 28% of Ohioans under the age of 65 were uninsured between 2007 and 2008, and that minorities are still aren’t getting fair access in Massachusetts, despite attempts at reform. New America Media points to yet another alarming study from the University of Chicago on race and health disparities in Illinois:
In other news, personal responsibility takes a back seat to the war on drugs in Virginia. At Feministing.com, Miriam Perez discusses the case of a Virginia teenager who was suspended from school because she was seen taking her birth control pill during lunch hour. Never mind that her doctor had prescribed it and her mother already knew all about it.
It’s disappointing news on the 55th anniversary of the birth control pill. I guess they missed the memo about the benefits of preventative reproductive healthcare. If you need more proof that prevention pays, check out the latest study, covered in RH Reality Check by Emilie Ailts.
James Ridgeway of Mother Jones asks whether Obama’s FDA will be a watchdog or a lapdog when it comes to regulating Big Pharma. Under Bush the FDA became little more than a marketing arm of the drug and medical device industry. Ridgeway wonders whether the regulator agency will regain its authority and dignity in the new administration.
Finally, some news from the intersection of healthcare and human rights. Adam Serwer of TAPPED and Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly react to the news that doctors oversaw the torture of prisoners at CIA black sites. “Torture isn’t acceptable, no matter who’s inflicting the pain or coming up with legal rationalizations for it. But there’s something uniquely offensive about medical professionals who were directly involved with the torture of detainees at CIA secret prisons,” Benen writes.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the ECONOMY, and IMMIGRATION, check out, Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: The Daschle Debacle
Tom Daschle withdrew his name from consideration for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Health Czar on Tuesday in the face of overwhelming public pressure to step aside. Daschle had been plagued by ethics problems that emerged during his confirmation process: He failed to report taxable benefits, including a chauffeur and vehicle loaned by a political ally. Daschle repayed over $100,000 in back taxes and interest last month, but it wasn’t enough.
In the video clip, above, Andrea Mitchell tells CNN that she’s just gotten off the phone with a “tearful” Daschle who said that he was withdrawing because he couldn’t pass healthcare if his ethics issues were too much of a distraction. (Hat tip to RH Reality for the dramatic clip.)
Czar 44, where are you? Like many others, Ernest Luning of the Colorado Independent wonders if meaningful healthcare reform is now up in the air. It’s a good question. As Matt Cooper reports for TPMDC, the Obama administration didn’t really have a plan B. Daschle was supposed to be the administration’s single point of contact for all things health care, and the Health Czar job was created just for him. Now, Ezra Klein asks in The American Prospect, what happens to the Office of Health Policy Reform?
Jeanne Lambrew, the deputy director of the OHR, described the thinking yesterday in her speech to the Academy Health Policy Conference. “Health reform is such an all encompassing and important priority to the President that he needed someone in the White House coordinating the effort,” she said. The question is whether he still does. OHR was created for Daschle at Daschle’s request. Obama wanted Daschle in the White House. Will he want Daschle’s successor in such close proximity? Will he split HHS and OHR?
Losing Daschle is a blow to reform, but it’s not a lethal wound by any means. His main qualification for the job was that he knew the Senate. Given the healthy Democratic majority in the Senate, I’m not sure that his mojo is as critical as it might have been.
In Mother Jones, James Ridgeway argues that Daschle was not only doomed for being a deadbeat tax-payer, but more importantly, for not reporting the proceeds of his high-flying lifestyle as an undeclared healthcare industry lobbyist. Daschle literally made millions from cronies in industries that he would have helped regulate as Health Czar.
John Nichols of the Nation says good riddance: Daschle wasn’t so progressive in electoral politics, either, Nichols notes. As a senator, he worked closely with the Bush administration to orchestrate a bailout of the airlines while his wife was an airline industry lobbyist. And after 9/11, Daschle thwarted Russ Feingold’s attempts to put civil liberties amendments in the PATRIOT Act.
Hilzoy of the Washington Monthly thinks she sees a silver lining to this dark Daschle cloud: Obama was willing to sacrifice Daschle, a mentor and personal friend whom Obama had handpicked for two of the most important jobs in his administration, someone he had every personal and political reason to want by his side. Maybe Obama really is serious about raising ethical standards in Washington?
One of Obama’s first acts in office was to sign an executive order tightening restrictions on lobbyists joining the executive branch. Daschle was a lobbyist in all but name, he even worked for the lobbying firm Alston & Bird. Daschle’s back taxes were a big problem, but Tim Geithner was confirmed as Treasury Secretary despite having owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes. What made Daschle’s position untenable was the fact that he’d accrued his undeclared income as a crypto-lobbyist for interests he hoped to regulate. That’s exactly the revolving door Obama pledged to block.
Passing the stimulus bill will be the first step towards reforming healthcare. First off, that mammoth bill has to pass before Obama and the Senate can focus on anything else. Also, the stimulus offers short-term life support for the programs that many hope will form the basis for a universal healthcare system–billions of dollars to help states maintain healthcare services in the face of shrinking revenues. We can’t expect to expand Medicaid to cover everyone before we help the states run the programs they’ve already got.
Obama campaigned on promises of sweeping change. The honeymoon is over and the public is eager to see if he can deliver on ethics and healthcare reform.
In other healthcare news, Martha Rosenberg of AlterNet reports on the shady backstory of how Risperdal, a drug meant for treating rare psychiatric disorders, became the seventh best-selling medicine in the world. In Mother Jones, Maia Szalavitz notes with grim satisfaction that the economic downturn is putting abusive “tough love” and “troubled teen” franchises, such as the notorious Tranquility Bay program in Jamaica, out of business.
Weekly Pulse: Obama Suspends All Last-Minute Bush Regulations, Pending Review
Within hours of taking the Oath of Office, President Barack Obama ordered all federal agencies to suspend all of Bush’s eleventh-hour rules changes, pending a full review. This means that Bush’s notorious “conscience clause” rules are on hold until Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services can review them. That would be Tom Daschle. It’s highly unlikely that Daschle would sign off on these rules, which would give government healthcare workers unprecedented latitude to refuse reproductive health services on religious grounds.
This isn’t just an abstract issue. A nurse in New Mexico is currently being sued for removing a patient’s IUD without her permission and refusing to put it back in because the nurse opposed IUDs on religious grounds, Jodi Jacobsen reports in RH Reality.
Obama is also planning to repeal the Global Gag Rule, which disqualifies international organizations from receiving any federal funding if they provide abortions or even inform women that abortion is an option. The flipping of the Global Gag Rule is becoming something of presidential tradition, Steve Benen notes in the Washington Monthly: Bill Clinton reversed it shortly after he took office and George W. Bush wasted no time in bringing it back when his turn came.
However, the new president is not expected to overturn the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research by executive order. Instead, Obama wants Congress to pass a law lifting the ban. Obama has said that he’d rather let Congress express its overwhelming bipartisan consensus in favor of stem cell research by passing a law, as opposed to overturning the ban by fiat.
Another controversial target for federal funds is needle exchange for intravenous drug users. Obama has said that he supports federal funding for needle exchange, but he sent a mixed message when he chose a Drug Czar who is opposed to the idea. In AlterNet, Alan Clear urges the president to include needle exchange as part of his drug control policy.
Looking at the bigger picture, Ezra Klein sits down with two policy experts to discuss the best road to universal healthcare for In These Times. On Air America, Thom Hartmann discusses the Campaign for America’s Future’s plan for universal healthcare (audio).
Healthcare reform can’t come soon enough for small business owners struggling to afford skyrocketing healthcare costs for their employees. Public News Service reports on the plight of small business owners in Oregon and Colorado.
Now that the inauguration is over, the real work is at hand. Obama has signaled that he will make healthcare reform a high priority in his administration. It remains to be seen whether his focus on the economic crisis will dilute his efforts in the healthcare arena. One hopes that these two projects will compliment one another and not conflict.