On this fifth anniversary of the Katrina disaster everybody is suddenly remembering the event as if the country had just awakened from a long nap to realize what they thought was a bad dream actually happened. Remembering Katrina also reminds us of the disconnect between then and now.

Then Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu was begging for federal help. Now she talks about too much government. Then a lot of Americans were saying government had not done enough; now we have a lot Tea Party types who want government to go away. Then the raw face of racial prejudice had news commentators writing about two Americas; now we have “birthers” and other assorted wingnuts proclaiming the nation’s first African American President is not really an American. Then the cameras were not shy about showing the realities of poverty in America; now politicians at the federal and state levels want to cut aid to the less fortunate.

After Katrina a lot of people said America would never be the same again because what happened was a national embarrassment that played no small role in the Democrats regaining control of Congress and the White House. People were crying crocodile tears about turning this country around, especially the growing gap between rich and poor and black and white that Katrina exposed. There were pledges to fix not only the lower ninth ward but lower ninth wards across America. The market-will-take-care-of-things, less government types seemed permanently discredited.

Five years later Katrina has been smoothed over, with not even a scar remaining for people to ask, “How did that happen?” The trips by politicians and tourists to gawk at the damage have stopped. I cannot remember when I last heard a politician or talk show guest refer to Katrina. Even as the BP oil spill spread across the Mississippi Delta few brought up Katrina.

So as the news media remember Katrina on this anniversary filtered through a lens that has become fogged with time, it is time to remember its realities.

The Missed Warnings

The screen opens in pastel blues and greens that recall a peaceful tropical lagoon with sugar sand and the sleep-inducing sound of gently breaking waves. Then the green takes on that ominous, sickly color the sky does before unleashing its furies, a color that, if you have ever seen it standing vulnerably alone in a wilderness, you never forget along with the plummeting air pressure sucking at your guts. A riot of color breaks out—yellows, oranges, violet, pink—echoing the cacophonous sounds, winds and smells that accompany a storm. Blood red washes over everything so quickly you know no one has time to retreat. It is as if the land has suffered a grievous wound and bleeds uncontrollably.

That was a computer simulation of an event like Katrina, an imaginary storm called “Pam” that was intended to simulate the damage a monster storm would cause New Orleans. This visual simulation would prove to be remarkably accurate.

The major facts were spelled out dramatically to the more than 250 federal, state and local officials representing 50 agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the states of Mississippi and Louisiana who gathered to watch those changing colors model a hurricane hitting New Orleans in the summer of 2004. Katrina would later validate the major warnings: evacuation would be a major problem since an estimated 100,000 households in the area did not have a car; survivors would need 1,000 shelters to remain open for months before it might be safe to rebuild; search and rescue operations would require 800 searchers. At the end of the Pam exercise federal and state efforts pledged “over the next 60 days” to “polish” plans developed during the Hurricane Pam exercise.

Not long after the Pam exercise experts at The National Geographic drew on the knowledge of experts from Louisiana State University who participated in Pam for an October 2004 article with the following scenario, “Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued.”

The bottom line became clear when the real thing hit: the damage caused by Katrina should not have happened. There had been plenty of warning about its potential impact and officials supposedly had planned for it. When Katrina struck, FEMA head Michael Brown pontificated,

Hurricane Katrina caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we’re  implementing it.

Shortly after the interview, Brown resigned.

The Pictures

A sense of things turned upside down appeared common during the early days after Katrina blew otherworldly scenes into our living rooms. The Superdome seemed to function like a giant magnet of truth, sucking into one place the poverty that stalked those streets of New Orleans that the tourists did not visit.

Suddenly the faces of poverty stared from the front page. A crowd of African American women huddle around a slumped figure with a white sheet draped over her shoulder. A woman in a head scarf and striped t-shirt extends a hand in comfort, trying to assure the exhausted and overheated victim all will be OK. Behind her another woman holds her hands to her mouth in a mixture of shock and grief while a man near tears watches with two boys whose faces betray their anxiety and confusion.

A second photograph: a large man holding a tiny baby over the shoulder of his football jersey pulls back a blanket to reveal the corpse of an old man as thin as a concentration camp victim slumped in a chaise lounge. Behind him lies the Superdome crowd that became a symbol for this disaster. To the side of the picture a woman walks towards the camera as she shouts at the photographer in frustration. There are no white faces anywhere.

A third picture: an African American woman with her dress draped over her shoulder swims through water colored like a stained glass window by oil, dragging an overnight bag and bottles of water.

A fourth: a young man with his foot in bandages lies on a cot clutching a bottle of water as vehicles drive by without even acknowledging him.

Then we see picture after picture of the crowds. Some huddle on bridges and overpasses that remain above the water, waiting for the rescue that is not coming. Others who have been fortunate to escape lie in makeshift camps that eerily resemble the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. At times it seems more reporters and celebrities can get into the city than aid workers. Somehow they manage to bring Harry Coniff to the Superdome but they cannot get anyone out. As rescue plans stall somewhere in the ether, the Dome becomes a perverse tourist attraction for media photographers who fly over it and drive around it, but take no one out with them. Treated worse than zoo animals the people make their anger known.

Moved by such scenes George Bush and some Congressional leaders announce they would do something to end the endemic poverty in the areas hit by Katrina. Predictably the far right balked at the price tag, prompting Bush to reassure his allies he would not raise taxes. So five years after Katrina New Orleans sports lots of bandaids, but the larger problem remains.

Those who were able to escape were dubbed “refugees” by some in the media as if they were from some foreign country—which in some sense is true for the places many came from lie outside the consciousness of too many Americans. I wrote in the book Strange Death:

As America continues to absorb the largest forced migration since the Dust Bowl, some    wonder whether it will create a similar economic crisis.

Guess what happened?

Today you need only drive through certain sections of our nation’s largest cities or through dying rural towns and Native American reservations to see sights reminiscent of Katrina. There are even blocks in the suburbs where mushrooming “For Sale” signs and uncut lawns provoke a sense of foreboding.

The Lessons

Almost a century ago people in rural American communities like Lincoln, Colorado, found a way to take care of people in need, but in 2005 America could not take care of people begging for help on our television screens. The grim conditions we agonized over did not appear overnight. They had festered over the years until like a particularly large and aching infection they burst over the country. Katrina not only leveled houses across the Gulf Coast, it blew away the misperceptions, distortions and confusion that had been erected around America.

A month before the conclusion of the Pam simulation, a task force of distinguished academic researchers representing the American Political Science Association (APSA), released American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, a sobering document with ominous conclusions. One statement particularly evoked comments many made about Katrina. In the section “The Uneven Playing Field,” the task force wrote:

Government is expected to help insure equal opportunity for all, not tilt toward those who already have wealth and power.

The report’s opening pages read like a doctor’s diagnosis:

Our country’s ideals of equal citizenship and responsive government may be under growing threat in an era of persistent and rising inequalities. Disparities of income, wealth, and access to opportunity are growing more sharply in the United States than many other nations, and gaps between races and ethnic groups persist. Progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and in some areas reversed.

That was written six years ago, yet it could have been written yesterday. If anything in the midst of what the media are now terming the Great Recession, the situation appears worse.

Not only has the inequality deepened, but voices defending it have become louder. The most visible result of Katrina is that it failed to produce a movement dedicated to alleviating the inequalities the cameras revealed; but instead has produced a backlash. It reminds me of 1968 when Robert Kennedy conducted his famous visit to the other America. After Kennedy lay dead in a hotel kitchen the nation voted in Richard Nixon.

Katrina revealed a profound disconnect in America and today that disconnect has become worse. Take a mental level and lay it on democracy’s foundation to see how far the bubble marking the level of the playing field moves off center. Then ponder the consequences. The interesting thing about a tilted playing field is that it constantly drums an incessant “why” into everyone on its slippery slopes.

Katrina’s death toll has seared itself into our memories, but we still face the spiritual death occurring as the playing field continues to tilt. Ultimately, behind everything from the Era of Bad Feelings to Katrina lie two contrasting views of human nature dueling for this nation’s future. On the one side lies the belief that human beings are by nature sinful creatures, a view not unfamiliar to religious fundamentalists, closet Dixiecrats and corporate laissez faire defenders.

This nation faces nothing less than an iron curtain of dogma that threatens to implacably divide us into the equivalent of the Cavaliers and Roundheads who spread blood across the soil of England. The stakes in this civil war have become nothing less than the fate of succeeding generations, for if the playing field tilts too far it will become extremely difficult to level it without drastic action or a replay of the Great Depression.

The most disturbing aspect of the rhetoric of the Raucous Right lies in a thinly veiled contempt for not only their ideological opposites, but also for all Americans. From the premise that people with opposing beliefs are not worthy of respect it is easy to conclude that one can do whatever they want with those they hold in contempt. As Tom DeLay once noted, sometimes sinners need the sword to keep them in line.

In contrast to this vision stands the core belief of Liberal America that people will do the right thing if only given help to overcome the occasional bad luck that befalls them, education to cope with those who would take advantage of them, information that is predicated on fairness, and the right to cast their vote and have it fairly counted.  Democracy is, by nature, a liberal institution, for it is founded on the notion that the collective wisdom of the people serves as a force for good. The level playing field depends on this view. If you believe people are by nature good then you believe they should all have an equal chance.

Five years after Katrina the question remains, Is it true people really do not want to use government to help one another, that in fact O’Reilly is right? Is it survival of the fittest?  Evidence suggests the answer is that we neither yearn for a laundry list of programs, nor do we support a tilt of the playing field.

America has stood at this place before, so if history serves as any guide, sooner or later the frustration will turn in a positive direction. Throughout American history political parties and movements have rallied people around the idea of the level playing field–so if the present political parties no longer stand for these values, another group will.

For me a touching photo from Katrina symbolized it all. It showed a small black child guiding the wheelchair of an elderly white woman. Their hands touched one another in a way that said legions about the American people.

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I was proud of America last night.  A lot of people have begun to wonder if civility in politics is an endangered species, but the people who showed up for the net neutrality meeting in Minneapolis proved you could have a public meeting about a critical topic and not have it degenerate into shouting, name-calling and the other shenanigans that occur daily in Congress and made a disgrace of the health care town meetings.  Every speaker at last night’s meeting, regardless of their perspective or how off-the-wall their ideas, received polite applause.

The lack of contentiousness also signaled something very important, that as usual the media have missed.  Some of the major players in recent political donnybrooks were no-shows at the FCC hearing on net neutrality either meaning the issue is of no concern to them or they have yet to develop a position on it.  For example, take the Tea Party that made such a mess of the health care hearings. It  seemed to have no visible presence at this meeting.

Without folks like the Tea Party trying to take over the event what we heard last night were American voices unfiltered by media gatekeepers or ideological script writers. Fittingly the seats in the auditorium were a subdued red and blue; as if the bright reds and blues the networks use to keep score on election night had been toned down.  That is not to say the speakers were not passionate or angry.

The Speeches

Minnesota Senator Al Franken opened the evening with an anecdote about a corporate CEO who firmly believed that the Internet should be like cable television, with those who could afford it getting better service and more programming than those who could not.  In answer to this the Minnesota Senator quoted former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black who once said that freedom of speech does not give some the freedom to combine to prevent others from publishing.

Franken was followed by the man who was deservedly introduced as one of America’s true unsung heroes, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who for over a decade he has quietly been leading the fight to preserve freedom of speech by standing firmly for what Justice William O. Douglas famously termed, “the marketplace of ideas.”

It was Copps and fellow Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein who in 2003 hatched the so-called Magical Mystery Tour, a series of public hearings over a Republican FCC’s attempts to relax the rules on media ownership. During that 2003 tour  Copps spoke of the changes that had occurred because of a 1996 law relaxing the rules on media ownership:

The largest company owned less than 75 stations before deregulation. Today one   company, Clear Channel, owns more than 1,200 stations…The number of radio station owners has decreased by an incredible 34 percent since 1996. The number of minority owners has dropped by a shocking, and nationally embarrassing, 14 percent…In our hearings around the country, Commissioner Adelstein and I have talked to many capable young musicians and creative artists who are simply unable to secure air time in the new consolidated radio environment. Real news radio is dying outside the largest cities, and      viewpoint diversity has given way to a constant drumbeat of one-sided talk shows.

Copps made a similar speech last night, but the situation has become even more alarming. As Copps put it:

Public interest got lost in a frenzy of speculation that made it difficult for broadcasters to  survive.

Copps also receives the award for the soundbite of the night:

Truth tells its story only when it can be heard.

After Copps had outlined what was at stake, Amalia Deloney, of Latinos for Internet Freedom, provided an impassioned introduction to new FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Clyburn made two crucial points that need to be repeated over and over again in the debate over net neutrality. The first is that the Internet, which presently still suffers from a digital divide, has the potential to be the great equalizer of our times. Second, she reinforced the theme for the night—that it was important to listen to all participants.

Clyburn brought up the Google Verizon merger noted in the previous essay, drawing a line in the sand by pledging that she would not approve any agreement that resulted in further consolidation of America’s media markets. She cited one fact I was not aware of which is that a majority of people of color access the Internet through their cell phones.

The Panel and the People

Clyburn was followed by a panel of three local people who spoke of the importance of net neutrality. One of them, community organizer and hip hop artist Chaka Mikali, echoed Copps’ speech of seven years ago as he told how the Internet enabled him to bypass the record companies that had little interest in new talent or different ideas. With the Net he could sell his work online and publicize it through blogs and social media.

Mikali’s remarks went to the heart of why net neutrality is so important. It is called neutrality for a reason: it asserts no one should be denied access because her or his ideas are unpopular or unconventional.  Listening to him reminded me that if media concentration had prevailed over the life of this country it is a good bet neither Elvis Presley nor Louis Armstrong would have ever become some of America’s most influential artists, since early in their careers both were ignored by the major media outlets of their time. Armstrong and many other early African American jazz artists recorded for what were then called “race records.” As for Presley, his story is an American legend of how a poor truck driver with a high school education scraped up enough cash to record a demo record with a visionary named Sam Phillips, who realized that he had a diamond in the rough when he heard the slick-haired teenager sing.

For the next three hours a steady procession of people patiently stood in line waiting to tell their stories on the two microphones. While at times the feed failed to pick up some of their remarks, those that it did catch had some riveting stories to tell. There was a gentleman in a short-sleeved sport shirt who said he was unemployed and that without net access he would be unable to find another job. There was the deaf and blind woman with a broad-brimmed hat shading her face who reminded everyone that the bandwidth issue was not just about file sharing or watching YouTube. For the disabled the Net is literally a lifeline that for many requires large bandwidth for the special services and tools that make it possible to access news or keep in touch with friends.

There were several who spoke for the homeless, pointing out that cheap Internet service is vital for them because it is the only way they can receive messages and keep up on important issues.  Those services are provided by nonprofits that depend on low-cost access.  One speaker noted that the Internet was the only home many knew.

Another woman who had worked with an antiwar group on the West Coast related a great story that reinforced the point that the Internet carries news and information the mainstream media suppresses.  She told how her group had won a case against  local law enforcement officials for harassing them, but their local newspaper refused to carry the story.  Several  bloggers heard about what happened and wrote about it online.  The publicity generated by the Internet finally attracted coverage from TV news and major newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

After two hours there were still many waiting for their two minutes on those microphones, some with prepared statements in their hands, each with a unique story.  It was the best reality show I have seen recently. Several students reinforced the importance of net neutrality and bandwidth for online education, which was the only way they could study for a college degree. Their professors spoke of how critical net neutrality was for their teaching and research. Health professionals likened Internet rationing to rationing health care then went on to point out that without net neutrality the revolution taking place in American health care would be stopped dead in its tracks.  Remote clinics would not be able to use the net to access specialists for consultation and there would be no links to online records that enabled clinics and hospitals to save the lives of those with allergies or other special conditions.

The Bottom Line

The broadcast itself was testimony to why we need net neutrality. Commissioners Copps and Mignon are to be commended not only for holding the hearing but also for staying the entire four hours to listen to everyone. The networks, the cable channels and satellite TV all ignored this meeting. So did the local paper and most of the media, with the exception of Minnesota Public Radio. Thanks to The Uptake, those who could not make it to South High School were able to see the testimony live.

As many speakers pointed out, the big fear is that the Net will become like cable television. In fact it could be worse than that because it threatens to combine two business sectors that have become more notorious for screwing consumers than the proverbial used car salesperson–cable and cell phone companies. In such an environment a program that only attracted a thousand viewers probably would not be broadcast.

That realization and the testimony made me ponder what this country has made of the Internet and broadband communications.  As anyone who has visited Europe or the Far East knows, countries in those regions are far ahead of us in both cell phone access and cheap, fast Internet service.

Rather than seeing the Internet for what it could be–and what it is in so much of the rest of the world–the leaders of this generation have settled for half-measures with a few subsidies, programs that promised more than they delivered and a confusing regulatory structure no one is happy with.  We have created a mongrel Internet that has everyone calling for tech support.  Like the early days of radio, there is still no national vision and even less consensus on what the Internet should be.

If the story of the decline of America is written like the story of the fall of the once-glorious British Empire, its turning point will be this nation’s failure to embrace the Internet.   We will let those future historians sort out who to blame for this, but right now the list of culprits is long from cable and entertainment companies who throw up roadblocks because they fear the Net will make them obsolete to those who want to regulate content like they do in China for fear people might get the wrong ideas.

But what united all those diverse voices in Minneapolis was a grassroots belief that this country needs to do more to bolster the Internet.  While free market advocates insist that the market can develop the Net on its own, history teaches a different lesson.  America became a world power in part because in the nineteenth century this country invested billions in developing a coast-to-coast railroad system that served the entire nation.  The railroads made America a major player in international markets because they enabled this vast country to quickly ship farm produce and factory products to seacoast ports and then to the rest of the world.  Without government subsidies this would have never happened.

We need to make a similar commitment to developing the Internet.  That means we need make sure everyone has access and to support the concept of net neutrality.  Curiously, the means to accomplish much of this is already there.

Dark Fiber

I’ll bet not many of you have heard the term “dark fiber,” but I predict you will hear a lot about it in the next few years. In simple terms dark fiber refers to an unlit strand of fiber in fiber optic cable.  A fiber optic cable is like stranded wire in that it consists of dozens and dozens of thin bundled glass filaments (see above picture). What makes it different than stranded wire is that each fiber can carry its own signals.

When the technology was first developed the capacity of these information pipes was equivalent to a drinking straw, but software and hardware innovation have had the impact of enlarging that drinking straw to the the equivalent of a city water main.  These technological advances mean a fair amount of fiber in this country is under-utilized.  That has left a lot of dark fiber across the United States.

The problem is no one knows how much there is.  Here in Minnesota the state has undertaken an initiative to identify all the cable in the ground and how much is being utilized.  That study has found we have a line here in Minnesota where only about half the capacity of the “pipe” is currently being used.  Even more interesting is that so much cable was laid that the state literally does not know where it all is or how much capacity it has.  My city has a huge bandwidth line going less the a 1/4 mile from our city center but no one can tell us how to hook up to it.

Joe Savage, spokesperson for the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council – a non-profit organization of 200 companies and other organizations dedicated to expanding the deployment of all-fiber, next-generation networks–stated in a press release this March:

America will need widely available, vastly higher broadband speeds within the next decade to ensure that our citizens and our businesses can compete in the global economy. Accordingly, we need a national strategy to expand next-generation, very high-bandwidth networks to every community in the country.

The technology already exists to far exceed that goal. So does the willingness of many telecommunications providers to build the all-fiber networks that will get us there and beyond. Our hope for the National Broadband Plan is that it will set the stage for policies that will remove existing barriers and provide incentives for private investment, so that the deployment of this critical infrastructure can accelerate.

To give you some idea of how much dark fiber is available, National LambdaRail (NLR) has acquired more than a third of the 28,000 route miles of dark fiber so far snapped up by the research community, according to Steve Corbato, Internet2′s director of network initiatives and an NLR board member.

A white paper on the economics of dark fiber makes the case for using it more widely:

A typical dark fiber connection may cost one time $25,000.  If your organization is currently leasing an OC-3 circuit (155 Mbps) it could be paying anywhere between $3000 – $6000 per month which results in an annual cost greater than purchasing dark fiber. If your organization is leasing local loops with greater capacity then OC-3 the cost savings can be more dramatic.

The typical payback for dark fiber as opposed to purchasing managed bandwidth is 12 to 18 months. And for this short payback the customer gets a “future proof” network for the next 20 years where there is no increase in local loops costs as the customer’s bandwidth demands increase except to upgrade the equipment at the ends of the fiber.

As I mentioned in the previous piece, cable companies are especially reluctant to lease dark fiber. One industry source confirmed this noting:

Cable operators, he said, are concerned that not only will prices fall, but that the super- fast service will encourage customers to watch video on the Web and drop their cable service. The industry is worried that by offering 100 Mbps, they are opening Pandora ’s  Box, he said. Everyone will be able to get video on the Internet, and then competition will bring the price for the broadband down from $80 to $60 to $40.

The Sleeper Issue

Why I have I included all this information about dark fiber in an essay about net neutrality?  Because last night in Minneapolis it was clear people worry a few companies will dominate the market and net neutrality will go out the window.   Dark fiber offers an opportunity to short circuit this scenario.  We can have net neutrality and real choices in Internet access if we adopt a strategy of encouraging the use of dark fiber.

If you do a search on dark fiber for you state you will probably find multiple entries about various cities that are in the process of developing their own Internet networks.  Now, as several speakers in Minneapolis warned, government can pose as much a threat to net neutrality as any corporation.  That is why the FCC needs to couple dark fiber policy with net neutrality.  Any entity that gets into the Internet business must agree to makes access affordable and be content neutral.

Of course the devil will be in the details.  But the comments of those people in Minneapolis gave me faith that we can work it out.  They also carried an implicit warning.  The first Magical Mystery Tour in 2003 arose over the FCC’s proposal to change the rules about media ownership. It precipitated a public reaction that spread across the country until Congress was forced to take action.

The amazing part about those protests was that there was no great leader, sword in hand, leading the charge. This was a spontaneous uprising, a popular revolution whose roots go back to those anonymous “embattled farmers” who stood at Lexington and Concord.   For those who feared for the future of the American people this was a sign that when sufficiently aroused they could exert their power.

That protest represents a significant statement that the American people still will  fight for fundamental values even when they involve complex, arcane language in an arena few had ever paid any attention to. The turnout in a high school auditorium in Minneapolis shows that spirit is still present.

The 2003 protest occurred before the social media we have today had been well developed. If we throw Twitter, Facebook and cell phone texting into the equation, it means that net neutrality could generate a far larger protest.  It has the potential to become a powerful issue for our own times.  So stay tuned.

A NOTE ABOUT LISTENING:

The first draft of this article, written too quickly last night, generated some pretty low ratings, in fact the lowest ever. They were justified. The original article had typos and all sorts of other mistakes.  It was a good lesson to learn. It also affirmed the message of the essay. An open Internet allows for the kind of feedback that can provide positive change and make us all better.

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Perhaps the most important meeting you never heard of will take place tonight in Minneapolis. It is an FCC hearing about the future of the Internet. Given that the Net is now the main information pipe for all of us, how that pipe is to be regulated, what we will pay to use it and who the players are will be one of the more important decisions that will shape our democratic society for the next half century.

The story behind that hearing is complex one that starts back in the nineteenth century with Samuel Morse typing on a telegraph key and winds through courts, Congress and regulatory agencies with enough twists and turns to set your head spinning. But trust me, if you follow the story you will understand why it is so important.

A Little History I: The Telegraph

People are always searching for parallels to the Net, but probably the two most relevant ones are the telegraph and radio. The role of the telegraph in transforming America is symbolized by an 1844 public demonstration of Samuel Morse’s invention to a distinguished audience in the nation’s capital. The person selected to send the demonstration telegram was Dolley Madison, the widow of the father of the Constitution.  In 1866 the first transatlantic cable linked Europe and America in real time at an initial speed of six words a minute.

As for the impact of the telegraph, here is a trivia question for you: why do we have universal time zones? Answer, because of the telegraph. The growth of the telegraph forced the United States to adopt a uniform time system, for without it the sending of messages would have been chaos.  Trivia question number two (try these on your friends), what was the main weapon that allowed the United States to capture Chief Joseph on his epic journey? Same answer, the telegraph because it enabled the Army to instantaneously know of Joseph’s movements so they could get troops there quickly. Trivia question three, who introduced the credit card? Western Union created the first charge card in 1914. Trivia question four, what enabled the formation of the modern financial system? By now you have the picture.

There were two problems with the telegraph that have relevance for net neutrality. In the beginning there were many telegraph companies competing for service. In 1851 the Bureau of the Census reported 75 companies with 21,147 miles of wire. The problem with this system was sending messages from one carrier to another. They would get garbled, arrive at the wrong time or not arrive at all. So companies began forming pacts to collaborate with each or started buying up other companies to make sending message easier (think today’s cell phone market).

By 1866 75 companies had been reduced to two, Western Union and the American Telegraph Company. Then there was only one: Western Union.  Of course this roused the ire of many Americans who opposed the idea of one company controlling 90% of any market. Trivia fact number five concerns the 1893 Populist platform which contained planks to nationalize the telegraph, telephone and railroad industries. Think how different America would have been had this gone through.

Much like the current fight over Internet access, the Western Union monopoly precipitated a battle over the freedom of the wires in which the press played a leading role (since it depended on the telegraph). The press argued that the only way to ensure freedom of information was to keep the government out of telegraph regulation. When the Populists proposed to nationalize telegraph lines the New York Times editorialized with words that sound remarkably contemporary:

A change of this service from the company, or any other organization like it, to the government, must be a change for the worse.  But clerks of the telegraphic branch of the post office would surely partake of the Spirit which characterizes nearly all American government employees.  They would be indifferent, unsympathetic, generally supercilious, disposed to shirk work, and would do no more than was necessary to retain themselves in place.

The opposition to Western Union in part came because in the late nineteenth century only the well-off could afford to send a telegram. In 1860 it cost a dollar per ten words to send a message from Chicago to New York and $2.50 to send one from San Francisco. By 1890 the rates were $.40 and $1.00 respectively—still out of the reach of those who made a dollar a day.  This early precursor to today’s “digital divide” gave the well-off and business an advantage over the average citizen. For example, take stock trading. Using the telegraph rich people could have instant access to Wall Street while the average citizen had little clue as to what was going on.

Probably the most famous example of this inequity was the 1896 election where under the guidance of the Karl Rove of his day, “Dollar Mark” Hanna, William McKinley ran the “Front Porch Campaign” in which Hanna funneled reporters to McKinley’s home in Canton, Ohio to meet personally with the candidate. They then filed instantaneous reports by telegraph of these conversations, making voters feel like they were right there listening to McKinley. To cope with this William Jennings Bryan broke with precedent and conducted the first whistle stop campaign that would have him travel 18,000 miles, stop in 26 states, average 80,000 words a day, and speak to at least five million people.

A Little History II: Radio

When radio first developed it was a lot like the telegraph. Anybody could set up a radio station and broadcast whatever they wanted. Part of this stemmed from the fact that early radio was not sure what it wanted to be. Some saw it as a communications medium (what we now call short-wave radio), others saw it as an information source and a third group saw it as a great way to broadcast entertainment and make money.

Before the First World War the airwaves were full of chatter, but the military found this chatter interfering with their own communications after the United States entered the war, so they put a gag order on all transmissions until the war was over. After the war several people, most notably David Sarnoff of what would become RCA, conceived of the idea of linking radio stations into networks that provided common programming and were supported by advertising.

By the middle of the Jazz Age, the networks were becoming frustrated with the amateurs whose signals could disrupt their own.  This brought about the creation of what has become today’s broadcasting structure with the formation of the Federal Radio Commission in 1926. It was given the power to issue licenses, along with the equally important task of assigning frequencies and power levels “as the public convenience, interest, or necessity requires.”

A decade later the amateurs had gone the way of all those telegraph companies as the networks came to dominate the radio waves and the medium became dominated by entertainment and commercials.

The Fight over Net Neutrality

This history should provide lessons for how communications technology can shape our democracy.  That is why the battle over the Internet is so important. There has been much talk flowing through the media and even more through the Net about the possibility of Internet Service Providers charging users by the amount of bandwidth they use. This is usually referred to as net neutrality, meaning the Internet plays no favorites when it comes to how much you use it.

None other Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell broached the idea in an interview with the Texas Tribune back in April. Here is a summary of what he said:

“Net neutrality” is the term for an internet in which everyone pays the same price without regard to use. Companies now can charge more for higher-speed access, but their pricing is neutral when it comes to the amount of bandwidth they actually use. McDowell sides with the companies that want to charge heavy users more money and light users less.

But what has really heated up the fire is the proposed deal between Google and Verizon. If you have been asleep lately—as I have (see below)—here is a brief summary of this rather complex deal. We all know who Google is and we all know Verizon, so what is a cell phone company doing cutting a deal with a search engine? Well, part of it is that Google is no longer just a search engine; its tentacles are reaching out into all sorts of Internet-related fields from software to content. Meanwhile Verizon is not just a cell phone company; it provides regular phone service and also is branching out into content.

What has brought the two together is that anyone with half a brain can see that it won’t be too long before most of us receive a fair amount of our Internet content on cell phones. Google has more than half a brain, so it has been negotiating with Verizon to cut a deal that would basically allow some content to get to users faster if the content provider paid Verizon a fee. In the search engine wars, this means you could get better and faster searches from Google than Bing or some other source.

But the real deal involves YouTube, because as we all know the Net is rapidly becoming the delivery service for visual content. Many futurists, me included, believe the time is not far off when the Net will replace cable and satellite as the way we get video. If YouTube were to get preferential rates from Verizon you can imagine how that will play out. It will also open the door to a host of similar alliances because Bill Gates won’t sit tight and watch Google and Verizon cut Microsoft out of the picture.

Now who will pay for this? Guess? You and me. If we want faster, better Internet or access to Google and its empire we will pay higher fees. The result of this would be an Internet that looks a lot like cable TV with different levels of service costing different prices.  For those of you who followed the history, it also begins to resemble radio.

Enter the Courts

In April the DC Circuit Court issued one of the most controversial and important decision of the past few years in Comcast v FCC. The facts are pretty clear: Comcast was blocking some Internet traffic, so the FCC told it to stop. That traffic consisted largely of people who were using services like BitTorrent to download large files. The story of BitTorrent is important because it is part of the battle going on about who will control information in the next millennium.

You may not have heard about BitTorrent but as its web site states, it is turning conventional economics on its head.  It is essentially a file sharing technology and it scares the heck out of folks that try to sell DVDs and CDs. Let’s say I have a copy of something you want and vice versa, we can trade, just as if we lived next door to each other or in a college dorm.

Peer-to-peer file sharing, which is what BitTorrent is about, revolutionizes information flow because if there is a piece of information out there that someone wants it can be shared. Trading MP3 files or movies is only the tip of an important conceptual iceberg because it would mean that for the first time in history people could control information flow. Say there is a document the government would just as soon you not see; with peer-to-peer if someone has it they can quickly make it available to everyone. If what passes for radio today won’t play a track—share it. A movie that doesn’t make it into the normal distribution channels and into your local theater or DVD store—share it.

Comcast’s ostensible excuse that file sharing was eating up bandwidth may have some validity, but the real reason is that information providers don’t like file sharing. Remember, Comcast is a cable network so if you share a movie, that means you don’t watch it on Comcast. The FCC ruled Comcast:

Had “significantly impeded consumers’ ability to access the content and use the applications of their choice,” and that because Comcast “ha[d] several available options it could use to manage network traffic without discriminating” against peer-to-peer communications its method of bandwidth management “contravene[d] . . . federal policy,”

Comcast appealed the decision to the DC Court. Much of the argument in this case rests on what is known as the FCC’s “ancillary authority,” which put in plain English essentially says that since services like cable TV and the Internet are not directly spelled out under the FCC’s current charge, they are covered by various provisions that allow it to regulate things like the placement of broadcast stations, content, etc.

One by one, the DC Court waded through the legal precedents for this authority as it pertained to Comcast and struck them down.  Essentially it ruled that Comcast could close the door on any content provider.  You can hear the shouts from Google-land still because it meant that Comcast or Verizon or any other service could, if they wanted, cut off Google.

It also meant the FCC could do nothing about it.

Where Are We Now

Where we are now is in a mess. We will let the legal scholars ponder whether the DC decision was a fair reading of the law and instead deal with what it has done to telecommunications which is to leave regulation of actions like Comcast’s in a state of chaos. Senator John Kerry put it pretty well:

I know that Congress did not intend for cable and telephone broadband Internet service providers to fall outside the authority of the FCC to protect consumers.

There have been discussions in Congress and at the White House about how to fix this mess, but the issue of the future of the Internet makes the discussions over health care and financial regulation seem relatively simple. In short, if Congress and the White House can’t solve those problems don’t expect miracles on this one.

That is what brought the FCC to Minneapolis this week. Since the Comcast decision it has been meeting with folks like Comcast, Verizon, Google, and Skype to try to broker some agreement on how broadband Internet service should be regulated.

This has predictably set of a war dueling soundbites. David M. Fish, a spokesman for Verizon, stated,

We are currently engaged in and committed to the negotiation process led by the F.C.C.   We are optimistic this process will reach a consensus that can maintain an open Internet,  and the investment and innovation required to sustain it.

James Rucker, executive director of ColorofChange.org., countered,

We’ve seen what happens when big industry is able to write its own rules — look at the    banks, look at BP. We cannot let the same thing happen with the Internet.

One important aspect of this story to point out: be glad we have a Democratic FCC. If you remember back to the last Presidential election, I believe this site was the only one that listed among its top reasons to vote for the Democratic candidate that the winner of the election would be appointing a new Federal Communications Commission. Had John McCain won, the FCC might not have even ruled against Comcast since the GOP has generally not supported net neutrality.  The hearing in Minneapolis probably would not have taken place—at least not in the form it will take.

The Minneapolis Hearing

The hearing will take place August 19th at 6:00 Central Time. Since most of you won’t be in Minneapolis, you can watch it live on the Uptake site here.  If you have nothing better to do you might want to tune in.

I will follow up with highlights and more commentary.

NOTE: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

This past month my disability finally won the battle–at least for awhile–putting me down with a fractured vertebra I am still recovering from.  So essays will continue to be a bit erratic for awhile. Stay tuned for a forthcoming one on the misguided campaign to shut off the filibuster.

Hope all of you have had a good summer.

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With the midterm elections looming closer, those of you who live in areas with especially competitive races as I do are starting to see the first skirmishes in what will become an all-out ad war by September. This will be the nastiest, all-out, highest-spending off-year election in American history.

The GOP is banking (literally) that they will cripple the Obama Presidency, perhaps even dealing enough of a blow to make Barack Obama a one-term President.  Meanwhile the Democrats are merely hoping to hold serve (been watching too much tennis) preventing the usual midterm leakage that often happens in the first term of a new Presidency. Their fears have a strong basis in fact.

Midterm Disasters

The history of midterm disasters for Democratic Presidents is not very encouraging. Bill Clinton swept into the White House after a decade of Republican rule with a determined progressive agenda that, like Barack Obama’s, featured health care reform. We all know what happened to that.  It has become a textbook case of political miscalculation.

Less well-recognized is what happened to Bill Clinton after getting hammered in the famous 1994 midterm that swept Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America into Congress and left Clinton facing an opposition that was even willing to shut down the government to get their way.  Gingrich believed the midterm results constituted a mandate that entitled them to do whatever they thought was necessary to forward their agenda. It was the beginning of what I have termed the Era of Bad Feelings.

Meanwhile, with Clinton facing the Gingrich vitriol, the President began the era that has become known by its strategy–triangulation.  History–and the Democratic Party–are still divided over whether Clinton triangulated too much over issues such as welfare reform and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act.

Whatever you think of triangulation, it is clear the midterm results seriously altered the Clinton Presidency and the Democratic Party.  It wasn’t only Clinton who began to triangulate, Democrats began running as fast as they could from any association with the word “liberal.”  Many of them started sounding like “Me-Too Republicans,” a movement that would lead Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone to utter the famous retort that he represented the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

If you review the recent history of midterm losses they more often than not have provided a clue to the fate of the incumbent or his party. Dwight Eisenhower lost 61 seats, including a modern record thirteen Senate seats, in 1958. We all know who won in 1960. Lyndon Johnson lost 51 seats in 1966 and decided not to run in 1968.  Gerald Ford lost 53 seats and the White House.  George W. Bush lost 36 seats in 2006.

The only exceptions to this rule have been Harry Truman who lost 57 seats in 1946 and came back to win that famous 1948 close election by running against the “Do Nothing Congress” and Bill Clinton who turned the tables on Gingrich, taking his strategy directly from Harry Truman. The other interesting exception is Jimmy Carter, who only lost 18 seats (one less than Eisenhower during his first term) and yet failed to get reelected. This history is why the GOP hopes to inflict a painful defeat to Barack Obama and return to the White House.

The Green Party

There is also a lesser-known statistic about midterm elections–and most recent elections–and it concerns money. Call it the Green Party.  The conventional wisdom since the very first congressional election is that money helps buy elections, but research shows the issue is a bit more complex. In a study on the impact of money on elections for Americans for Campaign Reform, Daniel Weeks observed:

But the true picture of campaign spending and its implications for electoral success is more nuanced than the vote-buying hypothesis suggests. Simply put, campaign dollars are not created equal. The force of the first dollar spent in terms of its vote-getting effect for the candidate is considerably greater than that of the millionth.

Weeks found that except in the costliest districts, once House race campaigns spend over a million this additional spending “means almost nothing at all.” In essence Weeks concluded:

So long as otherwise qualified candidates obtain sufficient resources for the voters to learn who they are, additional spending by themselves or their opponents does not measurably impact the chances of their success.

Note the qualifier, which has big implications for the upcoming election: “obtain sufficient resources.” Weeks translates this into his major finding which is that where money makes a difference is for those challenging incumbents. In short, “the more money challengers have to spend the better able they are to communicate their message and give voters a reason to prefer them over the incumbent.”  Money is the great equalizer to the well-known incumbent advantage.

Other studies have narrowed this even more saying that early money is especially important for success. This seems logical since many times someone running against an incumbent is lesser known so getting information out early helps to negate that advantage. A team of researchers found that early money donors tend to come from business. The authors believe:

These early money donors have become de facto gatekeepers narrowing the scope of choice presented to the American public- a far cry from the American notion of democracy, and a fact often overlooked in normative discussions of democratic accountability.

The study reviewed 721,196 contributions to over 1,500 candidates to reach its conclusions. Their biggest finding is that corporations contribute 44% of all early money provided by interest groups, trade associations 31% and labor 19%. Assuming the trade associations are largely corporate that adds up to a whopping 75% of all early money being provided by big business!

So here is the equation concerning campaign contributions: there is a cap beyond which additional money does not help, money is especially important to those challenging incumbents, early money is the most important, most early money comes from corporations and corporate-related groups (trade associations).

Enter the Supreme Court

As many of you are aware, recently the Supreme Court sent a shock wave through American politics. The January a 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ranks as one of the most far-reaching, controversial and ultimately damaging opinions issued by the Court in its long history.

Some of you Hillary Clinton supporters may remember what sparked the case, a 2008 blistering pseudo-documentary produced by an anti-Clinton group that called itself Citizens United. In the movie an all-star cast of right wing commentators including Ann Coulter, Bay Buchanan, and Robert Novak were brought in to do what was essentially a hatchet job on Hillary Clinton.

Some language from a web site promoting a New York showing of the so-called documentary provides a flavor of its content:

The Queen of Mean had grown comfortable pulling the lever of personal destruction, and no one in her political circles was willing to put a check on her Evita Peron style of governing.

When word leaked out about the film it sparked outrage, especially since Citizens United was trying to claim it wasn’t a political ad but a documentary. A district court and the Federal Elections Commission disagreed, ruling that it was a campaign ad and subject to the rules governing such advertising.

Citizens United took the case to the Supreme Court. Arguing for the government was none other than Supreme Court nominee and Solicitor General Elena Kagan.  Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal points out:

In abandoning a central rationale for the 1990 opinion, Ms. Kagan may have made the conservatives’ job easier. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his concurring opinion, seized on Ms. Kagan’s concessions to justify overruling the 1990 case, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

Richard Hasen, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, who supported the voided law in Citizens United, said Ms. Kagan’s gambit failed because it let Chief Justice Roberts off the hook. This bungling is one reason I oppose the Kagan nomination. It also is a clue to what I consider her conservative perspective.

The Court’s overruling of Austin decision that had governed corporate campaign contributions came in plain language this Court does not often use:

Austin is overruled, and thus provides no basis for allowing the Government to limit corporate independent expenditures.

Read those words again because they will play a VERY big role is this midyear election. There is “no basis for allowing the Government to limit corporate independent expenditures.”  The opinion goes on to say:

Prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is an outright ban on speech, backed by criminal sanctions.

Antonin Scalia’s concurring opinion is one of his worst, full of disingenuous logic like the following:

It is far from clear that by the end of the 19th century corporations were despised. If so, how came there to be so many of them?

But typical for Scalia his ending is designed to rub salt in the wound:

Indeed, to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate.

Justice Stevens–who will be deeply missed given what we may be getting as his replacement–authored the dissent.  Zeroing in on the Court’s apparent willingness to overrule precedent he wrote:

Even more misguided is the notion that the Court must rewrite the law relating to campaign expenditures by for-profit corporations and unions to decide this case.

Lacking one vote, the Court’s opinion in Citizens United now stands. It also profoundly changes the playing field for the upcoming election.

The Impact of Citizens United

Let us go back to our election “equation.”  If the Republicans are to alter the balance of power in this midterm election to do so they must defeat enough incumbents to either win back power or severely cripple the Democrats’ ability to operate. The blueprint is the 1994 election.

The equation says that in order for a challenger to defeat an incumbent they must have a heavy insurgence of early money.  Without this the challenger faces an uphill fight.  Based on the study cited above, the major contributors of early money are corporations.  With the Citizens United decision that influence is multiplied even more.

The expectation is that corporations will pour a lot of early money into these Congressional races now that Citizens United gives them the ability to do so.  And that is exactly what is happening.

In May the Washington Post reported an interesting shift in donations from corporate PACS. During the Obama campaign corporate PACS gave 58% of their contributions to Democrats. This year they have given only 48%.  The Post goes on to note this shift is “unusual.”

The last time corporate PACs made such a dramatic shift to the Republicans was in 1995, after the GOP’s rout of the Democrats in the 1994 midterms. This time, corporations have switched sides before the election.

And guess where those contributions are coming from? The Post notes:

The health industry is the most striking example of the corporate shift to the GOP. Last year, the PACS of health and medical companies gave Democrats 61 percent of their $31.5 million in political contributions.

As noted earlier on this blog with the heath care debate, health contributions to Republicans, especially those in key committee roles increased.  Their contribution were heavily weighted towards the Republicans attending Obama’s health care summit.

Guess who else has been pouring money into this campaign? None other than America’s favorite villain, BP. An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that committee members enjoying the most campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry were most likely to comment on the alleged failures of the Obama administration’s cleanup effort.  And guess which party those members represented?

BP and the health care industry aren’t the only corporate big spenders. At the top of the list are the firms targeted by the recently passed financial regulation act.  In a hard-hitting and eye-opening investigative report The Center for Responsive Politics notes these firms in essence bought themselves a watered down bill.  Its report, “Crossing Wall Street,” should be required reading for all Americans. Lawrence Baxter, a law professor at Duke University whose research focuses on regulation of financial services, stated:

It’s amazing how some industries can stay in the game when common sense says they clearly need to be regulated. But then you look at their campaign contributions and you understand why. Campaign contributions are very effective at slowing down reforms that need to be done from a public interest perspective.

Complete with charts and spreadsheets, the Center details how the financial services industry succeeded in making what had been an acceptable bill into a mediocre one.

This Fall

There seems little question that given the open door the Supreme Court has provided with Citizens United, corporate America is out to throw its muscle around in the coming election.  That muscle is designed to aid GOP candidates.  Given what we already know about the impact of early contributions, this means GOP, challengers will have a decided advantage.

According to a recent National Public Radio Poll that is exactly what is happening. Their survey of sixty House seats that are likely targets was not encouraging for Democrats.  Republican Glen Bolger who along with Democrat Stan Greenberg conducted the poll spun the results this way:

When you look at the generic ballot for Congress in the Democrat-held seats, the Republican is up by 5 [points]. But among those who rate their interest as 8 to 10, you know, the high-interest voters, the Republican leads in those Democratic seats 53 to 39.

All Greenberg could say in response was:

What I’m hoping that this poll brings about is that the Democrats are running with a much more effective economic message, which talks about who they fought for, and what they are engaged in now.

Bolger predicts the Republicans will pick up at least 30 seats. If they pick up ten more they are in power once again in the House. Given the Blue Dog Democrats’ tendency to vote with the GOP as much as they vote with their own party, thirty could be enough to realign the House.

Who Do You Want Running America?

Right now the Democrats seem dazed and disorganized, like a prize fighter who has taken a hard blow and is trying to recover while the referee counts to ten.  It is time for them to get back on their feet and fight.  Press releases and other materials coming from the Democrats currently lack any coherent message other then the need to support the President.

Given the NPR poll findings that in those sixty districts Barack Obama is not very popular this does not seem to be a winning message. But is that lack of popularity real or the result of corporations trying to frame the debate? The midterm elections will swing on the answer to that question.

The data gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics–which BTW is nonpartisan–all but hands the Democrats an issue on a silver platter: they need to run against the impact of Citizens United. Using the data from the above reports they need to raise an outcry against the growing influence of corporate America on legislation and on events like the BP oil spill.

Polls show that people are not happy with the health care bill or the financial bill, mainly because they feel both do not go far enough. The health care bill, for example, watered down the preexisting condition section. The financial bill watered down the notorious “too big to fail” provisions that in part have produced this financial mess.  As the above studies show, that watering down did not come from the White House but from corporate money bags.

Here is a bold prediction: How that is framed will decide the winners and losers in this coming midterm election. If the Republicans can convince the American people that the failures in health care, financial reform and the BP fiasco are the fault of the White House they will win their 30-plus seats. On the other hand, if the Democrats can get the truth out–that these bills were watered down by big business and its Republican allies–they will accomplish two major goals: first, they will again position their party back where it needs to be as a defender of the American people against corporate lobbyists and second, they will minimize their loses and might even surprise some people.

Anyone could write the campaign commercial: shots of corporate big wigs testifying before Congress, maybe some Michael Moore-type videos of lobbyists leaving the offices of Republican politicians, a few of the graphs from the Center study and one question: Who do you want running America?

That statement would not merely be campaign rhetoric, but the truth. This midterm election is really about the power of corporate America to control this country. If their money succeeds in swinging this election a year from now they will be expecting their payback.

Well, the time has come for payback time for the American people. It is time to pay back for what happened to the health care and financial bills. It is time to pay back BP.  Minnesota’s Tarryl Clark showed it can be done when she hit right wing radical and BP apologist Michelle Bachmann with a series of hard-hitting ads targeting Bachmann’s support for BP.

Coda

In a little-noticed ruling the Federal Election Commission ruled that Citizens United did not have to disclose its contributors.  Expect more hit jobs from them like the one they tried to do on Hillary Clinton.  But also just because the FEC does not require them to disclose who is funding their vitriol does not mean we cannot demand it.

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