Hollow Government Comes to Akron

Don't do it Mayor Don.

I am flummoxed over the Mayor's announced plan to privatize the City of Akron's sewer system.
The lure of easy money no matter how good it looks will come with a price. Calling it an" tuition plan" doesn't make it anything else other than a privatization plan.

Mayor Plusquellic is one of the last people I could imagine embracing a Friedmanite ponzi scheme like selling off a public asset. Slapping the education label on the the thing and avoiding the greater debate of what happens after the transfer is made is a worrisome sign. Is this more about the City bracing for future cash crunches than free college? What happens to the sewer rates when a foreign entity takes over? Is the water system next?

Much more on this later.

FCC Creatively Destroying Local Media

The motive behind the proposed FCC rule changes for media ownership is no longer a secret. In an op-ed article in today's New York Times, FCC commissioner Kevin Martin makes a case for media consolidation as a means to bail out America's failing newspapers. He is suggesting that relaxing just one area of the cross- ownership rules, in which newspapers could buy local television or radio, would provide much needed breathing room for lagging print media.

It's hard to believe that this is where the proposals for rule changes would end. The ideology at the FCC since the Michael Powell days (or since the 1996 Telecomm. Act) is one that espouses letting a free market philosophy termed creative destruction work it's magic. It's kind of a social Darwinism of markets approach that relies on peeling back the regulatory limitations and seeing what happens when the winners take all of the resources. The winners are of course big media conglomerates and the losers in the end are the general public. The only thing more insidious than allowing the ownership rules to be relaxed is a tiered internet. Both of which screw the consumer in the race for the bottom line. It's no wonder that the FCC is fast tracking the rule change in hope of getting it approved by December.

Last week's Bill Moyers Journal featured a story on the push to further relax ownership rules and the effect on minority owned radio. The potential damage that could be done to an already bleak media landscape is alarming. No wonder I can't trust anyone in politics named Kevin.