These stories have nothing to do with each other, except that they do. The six-year campaign to get Certain People put in charge of all those alphabetic agencies in Washington is bearing fruit.

The first we will call the "Mom Said No--Let's Go Ask Daddy" amendment. It affects power companies [coughlikeEnronmaybe?cough] ability to overrule state regulators and put massive power transmission lines wherever the fuck they want.

The second is under the Department of Won't Anyone Think Of The Children? and would give the FCC, that bastion of civil liberties 'n' free speech 'n' all, authority to regulate content of cable and other off-air providers just like they now do with over-the-air (broadcast) radio and TV. The regulations, we are told, would be to regulate violent programming. The FCC has been "studying" this question for three years, it seems, and by sheer coincidence released their report --discovering that they not only have this right but that it "does not conflict with the First Amendment" --a week after the Virginia Tech shootings. Sheer coincidence, we tell ya.

I've been reading Paul Starr's "Freedom's Power", and while I have a ways to go yet, one thing has already struck me forcibly - the rise of the authoritarian right was aided by media consolidation.

Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bain Capital and the Mays family score a http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/16/news/com... "> major media coup . Now that hedge funds are http://cyrusfirstofearth.blogspot.com/20... "> monitoring the blogosphere for key memes against which to trade it only makes sense that the private equity firms should lend a hand by financing the http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=11... "> new new consolidation of media. Since behavioral finance is the now dominant paradigm, and http://cyrusfirstofearth.blogspot.com/20... "> sentiment analysis now the rage, why not maximize by creating a perfect black box? You.

Something Lambert said about fundamentals got me thinking.
You ever been in one of those fourth and go with six yards between you and glory?Just enough to keep the blitz honest.
You run through your check list – The struggle ahead is steep and stark.