The Sign Of The End Of A Presidential Term

You have so little to do that you spend your days picking fights with NBC News and The New York Times. Apparently having an agenda isn't taking up much time.

Of course, you can't go wrong attacking the media. Obama's getting mileage out of it as well. But he's making a far more comprehensive critique than just whining about mean reporters saying mean things about you:

On Friday, I wrote about how Obama is subtly sending out signals that he is going to reform media by emphasizing a more diverse ownership structure. Currently, radio station ownership is mostly held by white men. Latinos own 2.9% of all radio stations and African-Americans own 3.4% of them. TV is even worse. According to Free Press, "people of color own just 3.15 percent of commercial television stations in the United States... while women own just 5.87 percent of television stations."

Pledging a more diverse ownership structure is a serious challenge to the current media environment. Today, Obama pledged to use antitrust tools to work on media consolidation.

"I will assure that we will have an antitrust division that is serious about pursuing cases," the Illinois senator told an audience of mostly senior citizens in Oregon.

"There are going to be areas, in the media for example where we're seeing more and more consolidation, that I think (it) is legitimate to ask...is the consumer being served?"

Media consolidation is one of those "don't-you-dare-talk-about-it" topics that only someone with the reformer image like Obama can bring up. That he's managing to do it is actually a little courageous - I certainly remember the media wearing T-shirts saying "We have the power" mocking Howard Dean after he conceded, and the turning point in the campaign was when he broached the subject of media consolidation. It's a dead-true topic, by the way - in an exploding media landscape, the narrow band of media voices really does alter the way people interface with politics. Even now the media is trying to deep-six the Pentagon pundits story, and that's but one example. We need a panoply of voices to maintain a well-informed citizenry and allow for independent judgment.

California Matters

Just a few things to get you through the weekend:

• If you're interested in helping Barack Obama but aren't flying to Ohio or Texas like Brian and Julia, the Obama campaign is urging supporters in California to make phone calls into Texas this weekend. MoveOn is also running Yes We Can parties on Saturday and Sunday.

• Let's not give the Governor a heap of credit just yet for accepting the Legislative Analyst's suggestions to close billions of dollars in tax loopholes. According to the Sacramento Bee he ran away from this proposal within a matter of hours.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told business leaders Thursday he supports a proposal by nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill to rescind $2.7 billion in tax credits, but he later softened that stance and said he doesn't necessarily support all of her recommendations.

The Governor will be in Columbus this weekend for the Arnold Classic, an annual bodybuilding and fitness event, so if you get a minute, Juls, you can go ask him about this yourself!

• Tired of being bashed with the facts over the past several weeks, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has come out swinging, defending his decision to deny the California waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions on the grounds that global warming is a global problem. Which means, of course, we need to do less to fight it. Also today the EPA turned over documents related to their decision, months after they were requested.

• On a somewhat different note, I'm interested in this protest by the environmental justice community against cap-and-trade solutions such as what is promised in California as unfair to low-income communities, which are disproportionately affected by polluting industries that would be able to buy their way into continuing to pollute those areas.

EJ groups, long overlooked in the more mainstream environmental movement, fear that climate legislation will once again disregard the concerns of the communities who are already most affected by the factories and refineries responsible for global warming. In a cap-and-trade system, poor communities, where polluting plants are most often sited, will still bear the brunt of impacts if industries are allowed to trade for rights to pollute there. Instead of this system, they're advocating a carbon tax, direct emissions reductions, and meaningful measures to move America to clean, renewable energy sources.

"[C]arbon trading is undemocratic because it allows entrenched polluters, market designers, and commodity traders to determine whether and where to reduce greenhouse gases and co-pollutant emissions without allowing impacted communities or governments to participate in those decisions," says the statement.

I think it's a powerful argument, and something the environmental movement has to seriously consider. If we're going to allow polluting industries to pollute, there will be an adverse affect. How do we deal with that?

• In yet another reason why we should not allow the continued consolidation of media, new LA Times owner Sam Zell has now taken to the airwaves, blaming the coming recession on... Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama talking about the coming recession. Yeah, shut up already! This is the owner of the largest paper in California requesting what amounts to censorship, incidentally.

• Finally, a federal judge in San Francisco today lifted the injunction on the Wikileaks website, which allowed whistleblowers to post documents and anonymous information about government and corporate malfeasance. A win for the First Amendment and the public interest.

Add your own links in the comments.