Regulatory Vigilance and Budget Cuts
We should also take note of the revenues the FCC is earning from its enforcement actions against media outlets that violate decency standards.
While the radical Right is certainly in favor of cutting the budgets of domestic programs that provide services to low-income citizens and clean up the environment, it remains to be seen whether or not there will be similar applause for cutting the budgets of programs that provide services to conservative citizens who want to clean up the airwaves of America.
Only time will tell.
Published 12/19/2004 03:52:11 PM
<< 16 Comments Total
I see this is not likely to be a popular topic, given the skitty nature of our country. You could lose your job, friends, family, possessions, opportunity, or very life for speaking out.
As far as I'm concerned, the FCC sends mixed messages with a high degree of inconsistency and only acts when someone lights a fire underneath them.
How do they determine what is offensive and what is not? One thousand emails or one million emails? Twenty-five calls or twenty-five hundred calls?
Or do they play favorites and listen to the same people over and over again?
wiseguy
...it remains to be seen whether or not there will be similar applause for cutting the budgets of programs that provide services to conservative citizens who want to clean up the airwaves of America.
Is it that, or because nearly $8,000,000 in fines is starting to create a cash cow? I profess ignorance in what the budget for the FCC actually is and if $8,000,000 is even a dent.
Good evening, Wise Guy.
If people knew just how much domestic surveillance is occurring, they would never even go near a computer without firewalls, encryption, stealthing, and other measures in place. Any Website or blog with a leftist, liberal, or progressive orientation is likely to be monitored. That's the reality of and bad news about the nation in which we find ourselves today.
If what I am saying sounds paranoid, I might remind my readers that I am what is sometimes derisively known as a "techie," and I'm one of the graybeards of the computer revolution. I know whereof I speak, and some of that comes from very personal experience.
The good news is that, even though the government has good ability to keep tabs on what is being said, its ability to deal with the massive amounts of information is still very poor, and it won't get much better for a few years—not, at least, until much more sophisticated artificial intelligence is built into the routines that parse the data load the snoops are reeling in.
Now, you might notice that the number of complaints has skyrocketed just recently, and the average per-violation fine has done so, too. That having been said, notice that the number of violations, although increasing by 233% from 2003 to 2004 (from 3 to 11), has remained a small number. If you look at the ratio of actual violation notices to complaints, you'll see that the fraction has dropped from 3 out of 200,000 to 11 out of 1,100,000.
I am interpreting this as meaning that many of the 1.1 million complaints so far this year are coming from the same groups, and many of the complaints are targeting the same programs. This data is telling me that a cluster of religious conservatives (for the most part) is operating on a hit list, hammering the FCC tens of thousands of times on the same issues. Such groups can be entirely opaque, appearing as nothing more than uncoordinated actions by concerned, private citizens.
For its part, the FCC has figured out that, by using extraordinary fines, it need deal in a punitive manner with only a very small number of high-profile cases. Socking a few violators with staggering fines gets media attention, and this mollifies the religious conservatives far more than if the FCC were doling out modest fines to many standards violators.
Neat trick, huh? The FCC is into audience management.
That having been said, you will not soon be seeing bare people posing on this blog. The Dark Wraith Forums may eventually come to be an irritant to the Right, but there's no point in putting a lightning rod on the roof.
The Dark Wraith checks out the window for thunder clouds.
You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you...
Interesting blog. I will neither confirm nor deny that I will or will not read more of said blog.
Good evening, Lord.
Or, as Descartes might have said:
I blog, therefore I am not.
The Dark Wraith plausibly denies the existence of the Dark Wraith.
Good evening, Mr. Goat.
One of the rock-solid principles of regulatory theory is that punitive fines are solely a means of enforcing compliance. Because companies subject to the oversight of regulatory agencies have very little recourse against regulators in the normal court system, agencies must act with a high degree of prudence, judiciousness, and conservatism in handling cases of non-compliance. Many times, this delicacy appears to outside activists as lethargy or appeasement on the part of regulators. Sometimes it is; but often, it truly isn't.
To claim that the Federal Communications Commission would use its authority to the end of self-funding would be tantamount to accusing this Administration of abusing its power by instrumentalizing agencies to inappropriate, self-serving ends.
And we all know how dedicated this Administration is to the rule of law and to honesty and transparency in its actions.
The Dark Wraith actually managed to keep a straight face while writing that last sentence.
I am interpreting this as meaning that many of the 1.1 million complaints so far this year are coming from the same groups, and many of the complaints are targeting the same programs. This data is telling me that a cluster of religious conservatives...
This is from a couple of weeks back
Activists Dominate Content Complaints
One of the rock-solid principles of regulatory theory is that punitive fines are solely a means of enforcing compliance.
I was laughing before I even got to your closing....
Unless you can fund your program
Good evening, good friends. This is some information about blogging on this blogger. A number of you had asked if there was a way to register without having to go through the normal steps of setting up a blog of your own just so you can post with your name on your comments. Well, as it turns out, there is a way.
Here's how you do it (straight from the people at e-Blogger and edited for clarity):
If you'd like to sign up for Blogger to leave
comments but do not want to create blogs of your own, all you need to do is start the registration via the normal way through Blogger (like when you are posting a comment, or when you click on the e-Blogger logo at the top left-hand corner of the blog). Follow the steps for
creating a Blogger username/password. Once you've successfully done this, you'll be prompted to create a blog. At this point, just click on the Blogger logo in the left hand corner of the page, and it will
automatically take you to the dashboard to edit your profile. Presto! You've bypassed the blog creation part of the routine; and you are at your profile screen where you can enter as much or as little information as you want, and set your level of privacy for any information you do choose to put in.
I shall be putting up a side-bar link this weekend on blogging basics, and I shall put this information there so new visitors will have permanent access to it. That blogging basics link will also have some help on HTML, as well. Now that OddJob has become a veritable mark-up master, perhaps I'll have him write that part.
The Dark Wraith gets down to work for the night.
Oh, and one more thing: a Windows trick. The first time you enter your username and password to do a post, Windows will probably ask you if you want Windows to remember this information. First of all, agreeing to this does not create a security opening; that list of username/password combinations that Windows maintains is very secure. However, only if you see a Windows request should you agree to this. Some sites (including e-Blogger) have a "Remember Me" checkbox that you should not, in general, use.
Anyway, once you have told Windows to remember your username/password combination, whenever you need to put that information in again, all you have to do is get the cursor into the username window field, then click your mouse (or double click, for some computers) in the field again, and your username will appear in a drop-down listing. Just click on that username, and the password will suddenly appear where its supposed to be. Then, all you have to do is click on the sign-in button, and you're in.
One of the advantages of using this method is that it induces you to create longer passwords without having the pain of having to type in those long passwords all the time.
Just some little helpful tips from your local Dark Wraith.
My Pet Goat is at least as adept as I am, and I strongly suspect rather a bit more so.
- oddjob
Perhaps, but I have less to worry about from you when it comes to my stash of Spam.
The Dark Wraith sets the security alarm.
Dark Wraith, This is OT, but you don't have open threads, so....
This is an education topic, but in more than one way:
Newspaper's Analysis Finds Evidence of Widespread Cheating by Texas Schools
To me there is no surprise here at all, and it shows one of the unavoidable and fundamental problems with Georgie's ideas about how to fix elem. & secondary education. When I was in grad. school I learned that any time you create a rule (or custom, or paradigm, or ... ) you necessarily create a way to cheat. "Cheating" is by no means unique to humans; even plants do it. It's such a common life strategy that some kinds of ecologists routinely look for evidence of it in the systems they're studying.
Have economists also come to this conclusion?
In any case, I don't think Shrub's education ideas are likely to have considered this basic fact about the way the universe operates.
- oddjob
Good evening, OddJob.
There's no such thing as an off-topic post on The Dark Wraith Forums, especially when it comes to education.
A controversial hypotheses made the rounds some years back that humans evolved to have empathy for other humans solely because that allowed them to far more effectively deploy strategies that involved deception. By knowing—by understanding on an emotional level—what one's opponent is feeling, one can be far more efficient in sorting out the best ways to circumvent cognitively rational psychological defenses of one's opponent.
Whether or not this is a reasonable model, we cannot allow it to be an excuse for living by a lesser standard of conduct. Sadly, I see cheating all the time, not incidentally among most of my students at any opportunity they can find.
Much of my work as a business consultant was in Texas. I saw cheating on a scale that was beyond what I thought civilized people were capable of committing. You see, I used to help small, development-stage companies "go public" and stay in compliance with all of the reporting regulations promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the state equivalents. Far too often, the officers and directors of companies didn't want to disclose to the SEC and the public at large the truth; instead, they wanted to disclose what would pass for the truth. They saw securities laws like drivers see speed limits: suggested, ideal behaviors that only "pussies" actually abide. Only when law enforcement happens to be actively watching does one pretend to behave properly, and only then until the law turns its back, once again.
And if anyone should accuse a businessman of wrong-doing, the resort of immediacy is to lie, and if possible, find a way to make the accuser appear guilty of crimes.
A wonderful friend of mine who is an attorney in Texas was with me in fighting the good fight of our lives against cheaters who had once been our friends down there. Although in the end we won, it was not without staggering cost in careers, fortunes, friendships, and lives.
Everywhere I go, I find that many people cheat as a matter of course.
But in Texas, they do it for blood.
The Dark Wraith begins the night shift.
Everywhere I go, I find that many people cheat as a matter of course.
As I said, we are hardly alone in this. Our ethical systems deplore it (or not, depending on what culture you're from and how you are raised), but it is nonetheless true that very many organisms cheat.
Two biological examples:
1: There is an orchid (I think in Australia) with a very odd-looking flower. It happens to bear an extremely close resemblance to the female of a native wasp species. Not only that, but when it blooms it emits a chemical that not only closely simulates the chemical pheromone emitted by the actual female when she is ready to mate, it actually emits a chemical more stimulating to the male than the female's own pheromone. Thus, the orchid "cheats" the male into thinking it's a "she", and he lands on "her" and tries to mate with "her". Of course this gets him no satisfaction, but his body motions trigger the flower into smacking its pollen packets onto him. Not expecting this from "her", he flies off in frustration. Sooner or later he encounters another of these imposters that has already released its pollen and tries yet again to mate. (The pollen release reconfigures the flower, presenting the pistil in a manner that lets it receive the pollen packets from an appropriately laden male.) Since "she's" still releasing this hyper-stimulating pheromone mimic, and since "she" looks right, the once frustrated male becomes the twice frustrated male - and the orchid successfully mates, competely at the wasp's expense.
2: On my deck I have a blueberry bush in a big pot. When it blooms in spring it has small down-facing bell-shaped flowers with the usual nectar and pollen, and even though I live in a city, I see about four or five species of native bees working those flowers. As a general rule, plants don't invest any more energy in making nectar and pollen than they have to, and they usually make the pollinators work for what they get. I don't believe my blueberry is any different in this regard, but it does have to contend with one nuisance. The biggest bee is the native carpenter bee, and it has strong enough mouthparts to eat through the outside of the petal base, right where the petal joins the carpel, just above where the nectar is secreted inside. When you look at the flower arrangement it seems clear that the flower's trying to get the bees to come into the flower to get the nectar, and in so doing get dusted with pollen for the next blueberry flower. The carpenter bees don't bother with that. They just chew through the side of the flower and skip the pollen. Thus, the blueberry gets exploited by a cheating bee. It sets fruit just fine, so it clearly manages, but that one bee species "cheats", nonetheless.
As I said, regardless of the ethical merits (& I'm not saying I reject the ethics, for I don't) cheating is a very widespread phenomenon in earth's living world.
- oddjob
ps: About fifteen years ago some ornitholgist or other did genetic studies with a swan species (thought to be very faithful) and in so doing learned that she was getting some quietly on the side because some of her cygnets certainly came from sperm not donated by her mate.
Always look over your shoulder. ;)
I discuss this topic daily myself. I also have a website that talks about based business home income opportunity second work related things. Go check it out if you get a chance.
thanks for the infomation