....LMB: "Dirty Lungs"....

June 15, 2002

Does anyone remember when EPA bigwig Eric Schaeffer resigned, claiming that the Bush administration was trying to destroy the agency? Here's what he was talking about.

The US Environmental "Protection" Agency (EPA) has proposed reforms to the Clean Air Act that will make it easier for industry to continue polluting. And the plan's backers are barely even trying to put a positive spin on this. First, they make the unconvincing claim that the current regulations actually prevent some companies from upgrading their machinery so that it would be more pollution-free. Then they make the stronger argument that more pollution means lower electric bills for all. Yay!

It drives me crazy. Pollution is what economists call an "externality": when you can get someone else to foot the bill for something that gives you profit. Imagine if no factories had smokestacks, if all the smoke and air pollution that a factory produced was confined to the building. The companies would have to put in high-powered air filters to keep the air breathable, hire someone to clean the used filters, and cart away all the filtered dust and smoke particles. Or they'd have to buy their employees oxygen tanks and goggles so they could work in that environment. Imagine the colossal expense they'd rack up. But instead, they pump all that shit into the air, into our lungs, damaging our bodies, and they pocket the change. Fucked up? Hell yeah.

Posted by Jake at 11:00 AM
Comments

Its nothing new. The EPA Bastards are lying all the time about everything, so how are you and I going to know how bad the industry is really polluting in the first place. You are right, profit from polluting is fucked up and must be controlled. However lying big brother EPA ripping off every family they can like they did mine and spending millions for nothing is also fucked up. The EPA Thugs are not going to help any of us.

B. Birch

Posted by: Bruce Birch at August 18, 2003 11:02 AM

Its nothing new. The EPA Bastards are lying all the time about everything, so how are you and I going to know how bad the industry is really polluting in the first place. You are right, profit from polluting is fucked up and must be controlled. However lying big brother EPA ripping off every family they can like they did mine and spending millions for nothing is also fucked up. The EPA Thugs are not going to help any of us.

B. Birch

Posted by: Bruce Birch at August 18, 2003 11:04 AM

Its nothing new. The EPA Bastards are lying all the time about everything, so how are you and I going to know how bad the industry is really polluting in the first place. You are right, profit from polluting is fucked up and must be controlled. However lying big brother EPA ripping off every family they can like they did mine and spending millions for nothing is also fucked up. The EPA Thugs are not going to help any of us.

B. Birch

Posted by: at August 18, 2003 11:07 AM
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Lying Media Bastards is both a radio show and website. The show airs Mondays 2-4pm PST on KillRadio.org, and couples excellent music with angry news commentary. And the website, well, you're looking at it.

Both projects focus on our media-marinated world, political lies, corporate tyranny, and the folks fighting the good fight against these monsters.

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Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

Posted by Jake at 04:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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