Various matters

[Jefferson23]

Wednesday, Sep 8, 2010 09:09 ET

By Glenn Greenwald

Snip*
(1) Time Magazine has a lengthy new article examining -- and largely deriding -- the intensifying fight over net neutrality. Just as was true for prior articles on this topic, Time does so without bothering to mention that the corporation which owns it, Time Warner Inc., is vehemently opposed to net neutrality and is pressuring the FCC to refrain from enforcing its principles. As both a cable provider and owner of massive amounts of entertainment content, Time Warner loathes net neutrality. One would think that ought to be disclosed by the corporation's news magazine when purporting to report on the issue. Moreover, as the article note, many of the anti-net-neutrality groups -- including those purporting to be grassroots groups -- are covertly funded by large telecommunications companies, but the article says nothing about whether any Time Warner properties provide any such finding. The nature of a corporatized media is such that these conflicts are so pervasive that ignoring them is the norm.



(2) Sheriffs in North Carolina are lobbying to be given full access to "state computer records identifying anyone with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances." That would allow all sheriffs and their employees to know of every prescription drug obtained by all residents. I've written before about these prescription drug databases -- 39 states now maintain such databases and allow access to federal law enforcement authorities -- but this underscores just how sweeping our Surveillance State has become: even programs that receive relatively little attention, like this one, are incredibly invasive. So little of what you do is unrecorded and unlinkable to you, and the category of information that is genuinely private shrinks continuously. We haven't come close to thinking about the short- and long-term effects which this loss of privacy will have for us as individuals, and on our culture and society.



(3) Slate's Tim Noah has written what is truly an excellent series on the vast economic inequality in America (Part I is here). A sample:


ncome distribution in the United States is more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador. Income inequality is actually declining in Latin America even as it continues to increase in the United States. Economically speaking, the richest nation on earth is starting to resemble a banana republic.


Combined with what Larry Lessig writes about today -- "a government captured by the economically powerful in society, as they find a way to convert economic into political power" -- a very compelling case could be made that this financial-based inequality, this growing oligarchy, is the premiere problem in America , the overarching issue infecting all others.

in full: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/08/today/index.html