Sunday Musings

(2PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

A few things… after the drop.

Just came across this thoughtful, calm, piece over at commondreams: What Is To Be Done(?)

Thoughts?

The sad truth is, it seems to me, that breaking through the wall of indifference today requires either a volume we aren’t organized enough to generate, a desperation we haven’t gotten to yet, or a creativity that largely eludes us.

He kind of boils it down to Campaign Finance Reform. Well, of course.

And Climate Change.

And all of it.

We (this time I mean “We The Left”) haven’t had such great success with making headway on any of these things, but…. well, it could get worse. A free press, free internet, is crucial.

Check this: Josh Silver on Democracy Now out and his ‘save the internet’ website w petition.

[edit 12:24CST]: Here, I’ll highlight this from the transcript there:

JOSH SILVER: Remember, we had a presidential candidate in Obama that literally said, “I will take a backseat to no one for net neutrality.” Those are strong words. And suddenly we have all these powerful industry players echoing that sentiment and agreeing specific-with the identical policy that the public interest community wanted. Everybody thought that when Julius Genachowski took over the Federal Communications Commission, he would quickly pass a net neutrality rule and solve this problem and make good on the President’s promises. It is a testament to the massive lobbying clout of the telephone and cable companies that this has happened, that this FCC chairman-certainly unexcusable, but it explains why he’s sitting on his hands, although it really is to the surprise to all of us. We all thought that this would not be a problem by now. Nobody expected the court case in April that took away the agency’s authority. Many people are not talking about the fact that it would be very easy for Chairman Genachowski-he has the votes-to simply move what’s called a reclassification of agency authority, and he could reestablish his authority at the agency, and we can solve this problem.

And what’s really the most alarming thing, Juan, is the fact that what we’re seeing is the same old same old, the same kind of approach to policy making and regulation that we saw in the run-up to the financial crisis, the same kind of oversight that we saw with the oil spill. It’s the same kind of money in politics kind of running the show and running the table in Washington. And at some point, we have to stop it, because the fact is, if we can’t deal with this money-in-politics problem and the campaign finance problem, and if we cannot ensure quality journalism and access to information for the American people, we have no democracy. It will not work. And those are the two lynchpins of our current democracy, and every problem with every other issue circle back to them. Fortunately, especially with this internet issue, there is something you can do. You can go to savetheinternet.com. You can take action, join millions of people who get it and are starting to get involved.

So. Where are we at, Docudharma bums? Summer doldrums still? (Ive got a couple more weeks of that myself.) Or pre-midterms fumings? Or just whatever mass media tosses in our face this day and tells us we’re supposed to be thinking about? Blog wars? Class War? Or, most importantly, is buhdydharma still buhdydharma or has he morphed into some other incarnation of himself in another realm and is now blogging away under a sockpuppet at taonowdotcom … ? (Okay, that was a trick, just wondering if he’s reading. heh.)

Discuss.