Tubbing with the Dubby

December 18th, 2007

There’s something a wee bit desperate about Bush’s most recent attacks on credible governance — it’s like the little brush popper woke up with a start a few weeks ago and thought [sic] “Oh good grief, I have less than a year to go and the baby in the bathtub is still breathing!!!”

Today we’ll look at a couple of his little “underwater” projects for liberty — JAG and the FCC.

Yesterday we learned that the “compassionate Conservative” was planning to spy on Americans from his first weeks in the White House — well, you’ve got to give him credit for ambition. His unitary “signing statements” have taken care of any laws [hinting at decency] passed in the last seven years — he’s issued over 1100 of them, that’s mind boggling, right there; and the broken systems show all the fissures of neglect and partisan pounding.

The Department of Justice, for instance, is discredited, in shambles, from years of attempting to give Dubby what he demands. Mike Mukasey has turned out to be the Gonzo-lite we all figured him for [and you KNEW THAT, Diane Feinstein!! You and Holy Joe are a matched set!] only much more polite. Read about his “outing” as a Bushy here and here.

And now Dub’s insisting that the military JAG lawyers roll over like good Red dogs [ie, Petraeus-like.] You could say that’s a “step too far,” but he apparently took that one in his first weeks in office, if not before. You’ll find a couple of articles on that little project — and I’ve added a whistle blower piece about the Coast Guard to boot; it’s an illustration of all that’s wrong with the contractors, the gazillions spent, the CYA techniques and heavy-handedness of our current era. If you add the JAG folks, it a complete coup.

Next, the FCC is set to make a “little adjustment” that will allow more consolidation of big media [think of that little guy in the top hat on your Monopoly board] and they’ve handled the process in a defiant, up-yours manner. Which they can … cuz their majority are Bushies — and today they will likely overturn a ban on ownership that has protected us for the last 32 years.

Blub, choke, cough, spit — hard to get air at the bottom of the tub, eh? And it makes you wonder WHO this “new world order” is being built for, dun’t it? Hil or Barack or John? Ya think?

Just something to make you go “hmmmm!”

Jude

Control sought on military lawyers
Bush wants power over promotions
Charlie Savage, Boston Globe
December 15, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps - the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force - can be promoted.

A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the proposed regulations. But the requirement of coordination - which many former JAGs say would give the administration veto power over any JAG promotion or appointment - is consistent with past administration efforts to impose greater control over the military lawyers.

The former JAG officers say the regulation would end the uniformed lawyers’ role as a check-and-balance on presidential power, because politically appointed lawyers could block the promotion of JAGs who they believe would speak up if they think a White House policy is illegal.

Retired Major General Thomas Romig, the Army’s top JAG from 2001 to 2005, called the proposal an attempt “to control the military JAGs” by sending a message that if they want to be promoted, they should be “team players” who “bow to their political masters on legal advice.”

It “would certainly have a chilling effect on the JAGs’ advice to commanders,” Romig said. “The implication is clear: without [the administration's] approval the officer will not be promoted.”

The new JAG rule is part of a set of proposed changes to the military’s procedures for promoting all commissioned officers, a copy of which was obtained by the Globe. The Pentagon began internally circulating a draft of the changes for comments by the services in mid-November, and the administration will decide whether to make the changes official later this month or early next year.

The JAG rule would give new leverage over the JAGs to the Pentagon’s general counsel, William “Jim” Haynes, who was appointed by President Bush. Haynes has been the Pentagon’s point man in the disputes with the JAGs who disagreed with the administration’s assertion that the president has the right to bypass the Geneva Conventions and other legal protections for wartime detainees.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said that Haynes was traveling and unavailable for an interview, and she did not respond to other written questions submitted by the Globe. In the past, Haynes has made several proposals that would bring the JAGs under greater control by political appointees.

As part of the uniformed chain of command, the JAGs are not directly controlled by civilian political appointees. But Haynes has long promoted the idea of making each service’s politically appointed general counsel the direct boss of the service’s top JAG, a change Haynes has said would support the principle of civilian control of the military.

One of Haynes’ allies on the Bush administration legal team, former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, recently coauthored a law review article sharply critical of the JAGs’ unwillingness to endorse the legality of the administration’s treatment of wartime detainees.

Yoo, who wrote a series of controversial legal opinions about the president’s power to bypass the Geneva Conventions and antitorture laws before leaving government in 2003, called for some kind of “corrective measures” that would “punish” JAGs who undermine the president’s policy preferences.

Yoo’s law review article did not specifically discuss injecting political appointees into the JAG promotions process, and Yoo said in an e-mail that he did not know anything about the new Pentagon proposal. But several retired JAGs said they think the proposed change is an attempt by the Bush administration to turn Yoo’s idea into a reality.

Under the current system, boards of military officers pick who will join the JAG corps and who will be promoted, while the general counsels’ role is limited to reviewing whether the boards followed correct procedures. The proposed rule would impose a new requirement of “coordination” with the general counsels of the services and the Pentagon during the JAG appointment and promotion process.

The proposal does not spell out what coordination means. But both JAGs and outside legal specialists say that it is common bureaucratic parlance for requiring both sides to sign off before a decision gets made - meaning that political appointees would have the power to block any candidate’s career path.

“It only makes sense to put this in if you want [general counsels to exercise the power to give] thumbs up or thumbs down, in order to intimidate JAGs,” said retired Colonel Gordon Wilder, who was the Air Force’s top JAG specialist in administrative law until last January.

Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor who is also general counsel to the National Institute of Military Justice, agreed that the regulation boils down to giving political appointees the power to veto JAG promotions.

“The message would be clear to every JAG, which is that when you have been told that the general counsel has a view on the law, any time you dare disagree with it, don’t expect a promotion,” Saltzburg said, adding “I don’t think that would be in the best interest of the country. We’ve seen how important it can be to have the JAGs give their honest opinions when you look at the debates on interrogation techniques and the like.”

Key members of the Bush administration legal team have pushed to subject the JAGs to greater political control for years.

In the early 1990s, both Haynes and Vice President Cheney’s top aide, David Addington, were politically appointed lawyers in the Pentagon during the Bush-Quayle administration. On their advice, Cheney, who was then the defense secretary, proposed making each service’s general counsel the boss of his JAG counterpart, but the Senate Armed Services Committee forced the administration to back down.

In 2001, Haynes and Addington were restored to power in the Bush-Cheney administration, and the conflict over JAG independence resumed amid the fights over such war on terrorism policies as harsh interrogations.

Responding to the conflicts, in 2004 Congress enacted a law forbidding Defense Department employees from interfering with the ability of JAGs to “give independent legal advice” directly to military leaders. But when President Bush signed the law, he issued a signing statement decreeing that the legal opinions of his political appointees would still “bind” the JAGs.

And throughout the past several years, the administration has repeatedly proposed changes that would impose greater control over the JAGs, such as letting political appointees decide who should be the top service JAGs. Each previous proposal has died amid controversy in the Pentagon or Congress.

The new proposal goes further than anything the administration has pushed before because it would affect all military lawyers, not just the top JAGs. Retired Rear Admiral Donald Guter, the Navy’s top JAG from 2000 to 2002, said the rule would “politicize” the JAG corps all the way “down into the bowels” of its lowest ranks.

“That would be the end of the professional [JAG] corps as we know it,” Guter said.

Bush Assails the JAG Corps
Scott Horton, No Comment, Harpers Mag
December 16, 2007

One of the myths of the Bush Administration regards its relation with the military. The facts are very stark. This Administration consists largely of men and women who evaded military service and who have little respect for those who serve in uniform. They have a passion for heavy-handed use of the armed forces, for foreign escapades which they pursue with little planning and shoddy design, but they are uninterested in taking the advice of the career military about how to pursue these matters. Their mantra is consistent: We know better. But in fact it should be: We know nothing.

The men and women who serve in uniform generally reflect the nation as a whole in most respects, including in political outlook; the military has, of course, always been a bit more conservative than the country as a whole, and for the officer corps, the Southeast has consistently been overrepresented, while for the enlisted ranks, the armed forces have in recent years drawn more heavily from exurban and rural areas. This reflects a number of factors—a culture which romanticizes military service, more limited economic opportunities for certain demographics—but, broadly, these groups are disproportionately Republican. And the military has therefore tended to be more Republican in its outlook than the country as a whole, the officers corps dramatically so.

Polling shows these numbers are changing. That’s largely in response to a sense that the military is disrespected by the Bush Republicans, and that its role is being abused. Just looking at the headlines over the last, fairly typical week, we see that abuse in a number of stories. For instance, polls show that military families have turned against Bush and now have an on-balance negative view of his performance as president. A group of more than thirty generals and admirals,(PDF 864 kb) including many very prominent names, called on Congress to defy a threatened presidential veto and to pass a bill that would state still more explicitly the existing outlawing of the Bush Administration’s torture techniques. Even the Armed Forces Journal, a right-leaning bulwark of military thinking, issued harsh words against Rudolph Giuliani and Attorney General Mukasey over their irresponsible comments on the subject of waterboarding and abusing detainees.

What is the Bush Administration’s response to this? It wants to politicize the military. It seeks to introduce a system in which officers are reviewed on their politics in connection with promotions. We see the trend to politicization in the way the Bushies respond to criticism from retired military already. Any general or admiral who raises a critical voice towards them is instantly labeled as a “Clinton general”—and if he or she makes a critical attitude plain before departing, something far more vicious is likely to happen. I catalogued some of the cases in which generals were viciously assailed for expressing mild criticism of an Administration policy or decision here. The truth is that military promotions have long rested on a careful process of peer review, resisting political intervention for all but the highest echelons of generals. This is a system designed to build professionalism and self-confidence and to break away from the American military legacy of the nineteenth century in which officer appointments were the subject of constant political gamesmanship–with disastrous results.

The Bush Administration has picked its laboratory for the politicization of the military. It is the JAG Corps. No doubt the reason for the choice–JAG leaders stood up against the Administration’s torture policies, going to Capitol Hill to oppose them. More recently, senior JAGs have exposed the frauds that are being committed in Guantánamo and elsewhere through a sick perversion of the military justice system. All of this was engineered by loyal Bushies operating mostly out of the Justice Department—which has emerged as the nerve center of the Bush Administration’s efforts to corrupt many aspects of our society, including the criminal justice system.

As usual, Charlie Savage at the Boston Globe is the man on top of this story. He covers it in Saturday’s paper:

The Bush Administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism. The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps—the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force—can be promoted.

A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the proposed regulations. But the requirement of coordination—which many former JAGs say would give the administration veto power over any JAG promotion or appointment—is consistent with past administration efforts to impose greater control over the military lawyers. The former JAG officers say the regulation would end the uniformed lawyers’ role as a check-and-balance on presidential power, because politically appointed lawyers could block the promotion of JAGs who they believe would speak up if they think a White House policy is illegal.

Retired Major General Thomas Romig, the Army’s top JAG from 2001 to 2005, called the proposal an attempt “to control the military JAGs” by sending a message that if they want to be promoted, they should be “team players” who “bow to their political masters on legal advice.” It “would certainly have a chilling effect on the JAGs’ advice to commanders,” Romig said. “The implication is clear: without [the administration's] approval the officer will not be promoted.”

And who, exactly, would be making the call? The key figure would be William J. (”Jim”) Haynes II, Rumsfeld’s general counsel at the Pentagon. Mr. Haynes is a principal architect of the nation’s torture policy, a man widely accused of “failing to properly advise” Rumsfeld on these matters. Haynes was put up for a judgeship on the Fourth Circuit, but his nomination was blocked by Republicans outraged over his unethical conduct at the Defense Department.

Haynes has in fact been little more than putty in the hands of David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, and the man who really crafted the torture policy. Haynes would, under this system, have ultimate control over who gets a promotion. And Guantánamo chief prosecutor Colonel Moe Davis recently told us exactly the sort of performance Haynes summoned–he instructed Davis to line up a series of juicy prosecutions to be carried out, with certain results (Haynes controls the other end, too) just in time for the 2008 presidential elections–political show trials.

The United States has had a tradition of civilian control over the military. It is one of the essential features of our democracy—one that George Washington himself insisted upon, taking off his uniform and never wearing it once he became president. Note by contrast how Michael Hayden, now a political appointee, struts about wearing his Air Force uniform. This shows a different tradition. But the American tradition pre-Bush 43 has focused on military officers being non-political, which is to say uninvolved in partisan politics—not stripped of the right to hold political views. The Bush Administration has made partisan fidelity an essential aspect of its ethos in the Pentagon, and so far it has gotten away with a policy that eats away at the fabric of our military culture.

John Yoo, the man who authored the Administration’s torture policy and other abominations, and who rather surprisingly continues to roam freely across the political stage, is the dark figure behind this move as well. He authored a shocking piece in the UCLA Law Review recently in which he viciously, and falsely, attacks the JAGs and suggests aggressively that they need to be brought under political control. I discussed his piece here. Now we see the control measure that has been settled on.

Yoo frequently parrots the German legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. But on this point, he has another model: Leon Trotsky. Given responsibility by the Bolsheviks for crafting a new army which reflected the Communist state ideology, Trotsky quickly concluded that it was essential that the officers corps be put to careful tests of fidelity to the party and its leadership. To this end, party functionaries were to have control over all decisions as to promotions of military officers, and the military commissioner (the so-called военком for военный комиссар) were instituted to keep an eye on those already in place. All of this is laid out in the first volume of Trotsky’s How the Revolution Armed from 1919. And since any number of the Bush Administration’s Neocon advisors are recovering Trotskyites (not to mention Condoleezza Rice, who wrote her thesis on this subject), I’m sure there are no shortage of cadres familiar with Trotsky’s plans for controlling the military hanging around the White House.

One thing’s for sure: this does not reflect the Founding Fathers and their conception of civilian–military relations. Nor does it reflect the values of a democratic society. Many of the problems of the last six years come from the administration failing to heed the advice of a professional military, which has been trained to render advice of a high professional level to civilian leadership. The attitude of the Bush Administration has been to attack those who show objectivity and independence. They want people who mouth the party line, not people who give them the benefit of professional analysis. That, indeed, has been the hallmark of this administration and the cause of many of its more spectacular failures.

This proposal will give us a new generation of politicized military leaders. Instead of figures of integrity and objectivity, it will give us political sycophants and stooges. It’s yet another abysmally bad idea from people who have no shortage of them.

Coast Guard Employee Alleges Retaliation
Whistle-blower seeks probe of his charges against staff of DHS Inspector General.
Spencer S. Hsu, The Washington Post
Sunday 16 December 2007

A civilian U.S. Coast Guard employee was placed on paid administrative leave, threatened with a criminal investigation and confronted by guards at gunpoint in retaliation for disclosing information embarrassing to the service’s troubled fleet replacement program, his attorney said.

Anthony D’Armiento, a former Northrop Grumman systems engineer working for the Coast Guard’s acquisitions department, asked the Bush administration to appoint an independent inspector general to investigate his allegations against staff members of Richard L. Skinner, inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. D’Armiento’s attorney called their actions “an egregious act of intimidation and excessive force” against a government whistle-blower.

D’Armiento was placed on leave Oct. 1 and told to cooperate with Coast Guard investigators or face criminal prosecution, said Debra S. Katz, his attorney, in a letter to Skinner and the White House.

D’Armiento cooperated, but after he was told he could retrieve his office and home computers from Skinner’s offices in Rosslyn on Oct. 29, Paul Weare, an investigator for the DHS inspector general, attempted to question D’Armiento. When D’Armiento refused to answer, three guards appeared, one pointed a gun at his chest, denied him his equipment and threatened him with arrest if he returned, Katz said.

“Mr. Weare was trying to lure Mr. D’Armiento to the OIG office where he could be further interrogated without his attorney present,” Katz said in the letters, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Post. “This staged armed confrontation was an extreme and transparent act of retaliation against Mr. D’Armiento.”

Skinner’s office did not respond to repeated requests for a comment. A DHS official confirmed that D’Armiento is under investigation.

The Coast Guard said in a statement that “unauthorized disclosure or improper handling of sensitive, classified or proprietary information is strictly prohibited and may result in administrative or criminal charges.”

Katz wrote that when D’Armiento declined to speak with Weare in an interrogation room and said, “I want my computer back now,” Weare told him to “back off” and “get out of [his] face.” After a guard drew his handgun, prompting D’Armiento to say he would call the police, a guard replied, “We are the police,” Katz wrote.

Katz said that, on Sept. 25, D’Armiento turned over to a fellow whistle-blower Coast Guard documents marked sensitive but unclassified, and that the papers showed that the agency was aware of hundreds of defects in communications equipment aboard its new, $640 million flagship vessel, known as the National Security Cutter. The ship is part of the Coast Guard’s $25 billion fleet replacement program, known as Deepwater.

In the documents, dated August and September and reported by Wired magazine’s Web site, Coast Guard officials noted the probability that the first of eight planned cutters “will be unable to process classified information.” Nevertheless, the Coast Guard appeared prepared to accept responsibility for correcting some defects at added taxpayer expense after delivery, even though that was the contractors’ obligation, D’Armiento alleged.

Coast Guard officials called the criticism premature. They said the authorities were aware of the reported defects. “We’re not going to accept [delivery of] a cutter with any kind of major problems,” Coast Guard spokeswoman Laura Williams said.

The vessels are being built by Northrop Grumman with electronics provided by Lockheed Martin. The first cutter, the Bertholf, whose price tag has doubled since 2002 and whose delivery was delayed from August to April, is undergoing trials at sea. The second and third of eight planned ships are under contract, estimated to cost $500 million each.

The Coast Guard is also addressing design flaws that could lead to fatigue cracks well before the end of the first cutter’s 30-year life span.

FCC’s Contested Cross-Ownership Rule Set for Vote
Frank Ahrens, Washington Post
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The Federal Communications Commission is pushing ahead to pass a rule today that would allow more consolidation of local media ownership in the nation’s largest cities, despite the fresh threat of a legislative rebuke and continued protests from advocacy groups.

The rule, proposed by Chairman Kevin J. Martin, a Republican, has been assailed by members of his own commission, denounced by a unanimous vote of the Senate Commerce Committee and called harmful to media diversity by a number of groups who say Martin is rushing it through without adequate public comment.

However, Martin’s action is backed by the White House, which over the weekend successfully headed off a House Democratic attempt to deny the FCC money to implement the new rule, according to a number of sources.

Approval of the media-ownership plan would partially lift a 32-year-old ban that prevents one company from owning a newspaper and television or radio station in the same city. Under Martin’s plan, a newspaper could own one television or radio station in the nation’s 20 largest media markets, assuming certain conditions are met. A newspaper could not own one of the top-four rated television stations, for instance. Companies such as Tribune and Richmond’s Media General have argued for the rule change.

In the nation’s approximately 190 other media markets, a company could petition the FCC to allow a merger between a newspaper and broadcast station, but the deal would have to pass tests to be approved. Opponents of the plan say the tests are so vague as to be meaningless.

Martin is showing some compromise on the so-called “cross-ownership” rule. Through yesterday afternoon, he was working with fellow commissioners and advocacy groups to “put some teeth” in the tests, said one FCC official. For instance, Martin suggested that if a newspaper and television station were allowed to merge, the station should have to provide at least six to seven hours of news programming per week to guarantee coverage of local news.

“The agency has a responsibility to grapple with difficult issues,” Martin said in an interview yesterday. “This is the only media ownership rule that has never been fully reviewed.”

Martin is thought to have the three votes required from the five-person commission to pass the rule, with Republicans Robert M. McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate expected to join him. Democratic commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein plan to vote against it.

“The FCC has never attempted such an act of defiance against Congress,” which is threatening to overturn the vote, Adelstein said in an interview yesterday.

Also today, the FCC is expected to approve a national ownership cap on cable companies. Under the proposed rule, no cable company could have more than 30 percent of all U.S. cable subscribers. Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, has 27 percent.

Martin has called the existing cross-ownership rule, enacted before the rise of cable and satellite television and the Internet, obsolete and ripe for revision. He is backed by the Newspaper Association of America, the largest trade group of U.S. newspapers. The group says struggling newspapers could be helped by being allowed to buy television stations, whose advertising revenue could help pay for the cost of newsgathering.

Last week, while testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee, Martin was asked by a number of senators to postpone today’s vote. Committee member Byron L. Dorgan ( D-N.D.) turned up the heat on Martin yesterday with a letter signed by 25 senators — including Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the committee’s vice chairman — demanding Martin postpone the vote or face the swift drafting of a bill designed to overturn it.

“If you proceed to take final action on this rule on Dec. 18 without having given reasonable opportunity for comment on the actual rules and study the related issues, we will immediately move legislation that will revoke and nullify the proposed rule,” the letter reads.

In an interview yesterday, Dorgan said he has pressed Martin for studies on local media, trying to ascertain how many voices each community has. Dorgan thinks it is important to know whether each local television or radio station has a separate voice before the FCC allows further consolidation among them.

“I ask him how much voice-tracking is going on around the country at radio stations,” Dorgan said, referring to the money-saving practice of transmitting one broadcast to several radio stations and sometimes suggesting to listeners the broadcasts are local.

Dorgan added, “There are all kinds of voices, but there’s one ventriloquist.”

FCC to Vote on Media Ownership
JOHN DUNBAR, AP
December 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — Despite intense political pressure, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to approve a proposal Tuesday that will allow broadcasters in the nation’s 20 largest media markets to also own a newspaper - overturning a 32-year-old ban.

Republican Chairman Kevin Martin says his plan is a “relatively minor loosening” of the rule, but it has received a considerable amount of opposition.

On Monday, 25 senators, including four Republicans, sent him a letter threatening that if he goes ahead with the vote, they will move legislation to revoke the rule and nullify the commission’s action.

But according to a letter that surfaced late Monday, it is clear the chairman has the full support of the White House. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez wrote Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Dec. 4 expressing the administration’s opposition to legislation approved by the Senate Commerce Committee that would have delayed a vote.

The secretary wrote that the “the current ownership rules are significantly outdated in the modern media marketplace” and that the FCC has “crafted changes that appropriately take into account the myriad of news and information outlets that exist today.”

Gutierrez wrote that the administration opposes the Senate bill “or any other attempt to delay or overturn these revised rules by legislative means.”

The cross-ownership ban was approved by the FCC in 1975 to serve “the twin goals of diversity of viewpoints and economic competition.” The FCC at the time noted that “it is unrealistic to expect true diversity from a commonly owned station-newspaper combination.”

Opponents of the ban say in the past decade there has been an explosion of news outlets thanks to cable television and the Internet and that such restrictions are no longer necessary. Ban supporters say there may be new outlets, but there has been no corresponding increase in news gatherers and producers, especially at the local level.

The agency first tried to loosen the ban in 2003, but the move was rejected by a federal appeals court. Since then, the commissioners have been trying to craft a new set of rules that will survive judicial scrutiny.

Under Martin’s proposal, one entity would be permitted to own a newspaper and one broadcast station in the same market. But it must be among the 20 largest in the nation and following the transaction, at least eight independently owned-and-operated media voices must remain. In addition, the television station may not be among the top four in the market.

Martin’s proposal is opposed by Democratic commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, who also voted against loosening media ownership rules in 2003. The commission’s other two Republicans, Robert McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate, have been more receptive to broadcast media deregulation.

The vote is scheduled for Tuesday’s meeting, slated to begin at 10:30 a.m. When the vote will actually occur is tough to determine. Last month’s meeting was delayed 12 hours while the commissioners and staff worked out the details of various proposals behind closed doors. The meeting is scheduled to be broadcast on C-SPAN3.

Defiant FCC chief refuses to delay vote
Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Kevin J. Martin endured three hours of aggressive questioning from the Senate Commerce Committee, with lawmakers accusing him of rushing to help big media companies at the expense of the public.
Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times
December 14, 2007

WASHINGTON — Facing growing criticism of his agenda and tactics, a defiant Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, refused senators’ requests Thursday to delay a vote next week on his plan to loosen restrictions on owning a newspaper and broadcast station in the same city.

Martin endured three hours of aggressive questioning from the Senate Commerce Committee, with members accusing him of rushing to help big media companies at the public’s expense.

“If you move ahead and do it, you’re a braver man than I am,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). She accused Martin of having an “obsession” with changing media ownership rules that was distracting the FCC from the more important issue of guiding the nation’s 2009 transition to digital television.

Amid complaints from within the commission and Capitol Hill about a lack of openness at the FCC, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) called for Congress next year to overhaul the agency’s procedures and alter its deregulatory bent.

“I am becoming increasingly concerned that the FCC appears to be more concerned about making sure the policies they advocate serve the needs of the companies that they regulate and their bottom lines rather than the public interest,” Rockefeller said. “We cannot allow this to happen.”

Martin was grilled about pushing the FCC to vote Tuesday on his plan to ease a 32-year-old restriction on the ownership of a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market. Martin wants to lift the so-called cross-ownership ban in the top 20 U.S. markets and allow such combinations in smaller markets if the FCC determines that they would be in the public interest.

Critics say the FCC chairman is moving too fast and failing to take into account public opposition to the plan. Asked by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) if he would delay the vote, Martin replied, “No.”

Martin, a Republican, said the FCC had been reviewing its ownership rules for 18 months and that the commission needed to act to help the financially struggling newspaper industry.

He said he was open to making revisions to his proposal, such as tightening what critics have called loose standards for determining if a newspaper/broadcast combination would produce more local news.

But when Kerry urged him to seek consensus on cross-ownership before voting on a rule change, Martin responded, “I’m not convinced on media ownership there ever will be consensus.”

Lawmakers and public interest groups had expected the FCC’s periodic review of its media ownership rules to extend into next year. But Martin accelerated the process in October, rushing to hold the final two public hearings with minimal notice and proposing to vote on a plan Tuesday, just a week after public comments were due at the FCC.

The moves outraged the FCC’s two Democrats, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein, as well as many members of Congress, who accused Martin of short-circuiting the process.

Fearing the consequences of more media consolidation, they said the FCC first should complete a long-pending review of ways to ensure that broadcasters serve their local communities and take steps to increase ownership of radio and TV stations by women and minorities.

The Senate Commerce Committee unanimously approved legislation last week that would force at least a six-month delay in the cross-ownership vote and summoned Martin and the other commissioners to testify.

“The FCC is poised to make some bad decisions, and it seems to me at this point only congressional oversight can get us back on track,” Copps said, acknowledging that Martin had the votes on the five-member commission to approve the rule change.

After the FCC recently granted waivers to Tribune Co. of the cross-ownership rule in Los Angeles and four other cities, allowing it to close its $8.2-billion deal to go private by year-end, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said there was no reason to rush a vote on such a controversial issue.

“Why give us an argument to attack you all?” Lott said. “I would plead with you to take a little more time.”

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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