This pretty much lays it bare as to what the public commons is up against. Its daunting, and yet, its all perfectly legal. And that’s the problem.

This definitely qualifies as the money shot line (no pun intended) from this report….

“There is no connection between political spending and the policy work that gets done in the state Legislature,” Nunez spokesman Richard Stapler said.

Yep. And I’ve got that proverbial bridge to sell you.

What a hoot. Is Nunez doing stand up on the side? Can’t tell if he should be on C-SPAN or Comedy Central.

AT&T and Verizon, the two most dominant players in California’s telephone market, spent nearly $26 million to lobby lawmakers last year in a successful effort to access the state’s lucrative cable TV market.

The two companies also gave more than $1 million in campaign contributions, according to campaign finance reports released Wednesday by the secretary of state’s office.

—————

“The $25 million the telephone industry spent on lobbying was the factor in passing the bill,” said Carmen Balber, consumer advocate for the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a Santa Monica group that has been critical of the measure.

—————

[Local governments] worry that a lack of local contracts means cable providers will bypass less affluent neighborhoods and focus instead on bundling TV, Internet and telephone service to the well-to-do. Some rural counties said they might be bypassed by cable and telephone companies entirely.

Consumer groups also warned that cable prices could skyrocket as telephone and Internet rates have in the past few decades.

As lawmakers considered the legislation, lobbyists paid by the two companies treated them to meals at local restaurants and gave their top aides tickets to watch the San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres, Sacramento Kings, Sacramento Monarchs and the Los Angeles Lakers. The favors went to lawmakers of both major political parties.

—————

Meanwhile, AT&T spent $23.6 million to influence decision-makers in the capital, mostly for hiring lobbyists and paying for television commercials. Company spokesman Gordon Diamond said in an e-mail that California’s media market made the company’s advertising outreach expensive.

“AT&T spends what it needs to ensure that consumers, policymakers and others are well-informed and educated on issues,” Diamond said.

Read The Full Article

This bill is the same as the “Right to Farm” law in PA, where Factory Farms are deemed to be “normal agricultural activities” that local laws may not prohibit. The state legislatures are captives of corporate masters (which is to say we are governed by corporate states). Self-governance at the local level has been usurped. “Municipal corporations” are, by well-settled tyranny, mere administrative appendages of the state legislatures, with no autonomy or sovereignty of their own (this is a topic for a future discussion), while the minority of the opulent hiding behind private for-profit corporations enjoy limited liability, corporate constitutional privileges, the preemption of the Commerce Clause over local regulations of commerce, and the superiority of the Rights of Property over the Rights of People (for instance the right to self-governance).

These “Right of Corporations to Engage in Agriculture” laws never mention corporatization of agriculture, and instead refer to factory farming blandly as “farming.” Such illegitimate laws protect the privileges of opulent minorities to hide behind the fortress of the corporate form and immunize them from “nuisance suits” (attempts by citizens to self govern the communities where they live).

Such laws usurp the sovereignty of the People and bestow sovereignty on corporations. Corporate charters thus become institutionally akin to titles of nobility.

If the people affected by the decisions being made for their communities are not the ones making the decisions, there is no local democracy; there is no community self-governance. And if you don’t have democracy where you live, then where on earth do you have it?

This is not an agricultural problem. It’s not even a “corporate” problem. It’s a problem of rights-denial. It’s a problem of oppression in every community. It’s about the fact that municipalities are colonies of the corporate state.

- Posted by BenGPrice@aol.com, CELDF

Our fun friends at SBCAT&T are at it again. This is a particularly good column at directing attention towards what the actual point is in regards to the true nature of the situation regarding recent moves by SBC/AT&T against local municipalities control over their own public rights-of-way. Here are a few paragraphs….

After their novel and brilliant gambit of suing Geneva to “protect” the very citizens they’re taking legal action against, SBCAT&T managed to con the FCC into ruling that cities cannot unreasonably stop companies from competing with cable operators. But, just as the Greek Fates shared a single eye, the FCC commissioners share one brain which makes their finding that much easier to understand.

While children, abandoned to the video babysitter by negligent parents, witness 25 acts of violence per hour, the FCC is saving us all from Nicole Ritchie using the ‘S’ word and Bono dropping the ‘F’ bomb. Perhaps they’ve never walked down a high school hallway during passing period.

——————–

As we all know, Mr. Brannock believes that SBCAT&T’s Project Lightspeed, and its refrigerator-sized emitters, should not be subject to local cable franchise agreements. At every opportunity he echoes the need for competition and lower cable bills. In fact, he spouts these arguments so frequently that SBCAT&T might save some money by replacing him with a digital voice recorder.

——————–

To quote my favorite TV judge Marilyn Millian, “Ni te crees a ti mismo” or “Not even you believe what you’re saying.” Yes, SBCAT&T loves to promote competition, that is, unless it’s competition with them.

——————–

In 2002 ten companies filed a complaint with the Texas Public Utilities Commission also accusing them of anti-competitive practices. When these competitors tried to set up T1 data lines, SBCAT&T claimed “lack of facilities.” Shockingly when Birch Telecom disputed SBCAT&T’s woeful tale, the missing “facilities” magically reappeared.

In 2005 Qwest Communications lodged a similar complaint with the FCC maintaining SBC was limiting the ability of rival companies to lease SBC lines at the cheaper government-regulated rates. They also said that SBC demanded smaller companies not merge with “blacklisted” competitors.

——————–

I spoke with Geneva’s Information Technology Manager, Pete Collins, who had some very interesting observations. The next time you get your SBCAT&T phone bill, take a closer look at their new logo. It does look just like a Death Star. We have Emperor Whitacre and Darth Brannock using Jedi mind tricks on us. “This is not the broadband you’re looking for.” “You don’t need competition — move along.”

Read The Full Article from The Batavia Sun

More on the corporate borg’s colonization of your local community, even your own personal property space. If this isn’t a compelling issue over the fundamental question of who has authority over your local public’s ‘rights-of-way’, I don’t know what is. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer…

Norm Ockuly is certain that if he plunked a refrigerator on his tree lawn and left it there, Willowick would give him a ticket and make him pay a fine.

But the metal cabinet in front of Ockuly’s house on Bayridge Boulevard belongs to AT&T. And telecommunications giants are not easily brought to heel.

Despite complaints from some homeowners, AT&T has planted boxes - big and small, sometimes alone or in sets of two or three - on tree lawns across Northeast Ohio.

The cabinets are part of AT&T’s Project Lightspeed, which will extend fiber-optic cable into neighborhoods and add video services to telephone and high-speed Internet options. The $4.6 billion project spans 13 states.

———————

Upon returning from vacation last year, Ockuly and his wife were dismayed that workers had laid a concrete pad on their small Bayridge Boulevard tree lawn. Soon, the cream-colored cabinet - the size of an armoire or home-entertainment center - appeared.

“The people who want this should have volunteered to have it in their front yards,” Ockuly said. “It looks like an outhouse in the front yard. I wanted to put a half-moon on it and decorate it for Halloween.”

Adding to the clutter is a smaller metal box. And across the street, AT&T installed another outhouse-size cabinet.

———————

“The services are wonderful, but do you want that giant box in front of your house?” Willowick Mayor Richard Bonde said. “If you have two identical houses and one has an AT&T box on the lawn, which one would you buy?”

Officials in several cities said prohibiting the cabinets is not easy because federal and state laws restrict their control over what AT&T does in a public right of way.

There’s another article regarding this issue Here at DSL Reports, which includes a small photo as a sample example of these boxes.

There are better photos from the Geneva, Illinois lawsuit Here.

This matter was described in more detail in the previous USTV post “Fighting AT&T - A City Challenges Corporate Control”, as well as the related post “AT&T Assaults Michigan Municipalities: Whose Property Is It Anyway?”

The AT&T boxes are bigger than the Verizon boxes - and apparently have exploded on at least one occasion. See the insides of Verizon’s boxes Here

SB 364 - This act provides that state laws and regulations shall preempt local laws regarding agricultural operations and provides that any farm or farming-related activity that is in compliance with all applicable state and federal laws shall also therefore be in compliance with any local law or ordinance. Local laws regarding the licensing or operation of a farm or farming-related activity that are not identical to state law and regulations, as promulgated by the Department of Natural Resources, are rendered null and void by the act. This act does not limit the planning and zoning authority of first class counties.

Under current law, farms and farming-related activities are protected against nuisance suits resulting from changed conditions in land around the farm, provided the farm or activity has been in existence at least one year and has not previously been found a nuisance. This act adds protection from suits of trespass and violation of local ordinances for farms and farming activities under the same conditions. Additionally, current law allows farms and farming-related activities to reasonably expand and still retain their protected status against nuisance suits, provided the farm or farming activity meets certain criteria as specified. This act allows farms and farming-related activities to also reasonably diversify or modernize under similar criteria and remain protected against suits of nuisance, trespass, or ordinance violation.

The act protects farms and farming-related activities from suits of nuisance or trespass for any condition resulting from, but not limited to, the acts of planting, cultivating, harvesting, mowing, applying pesticides or herbicides, land clearing, livestock management, or construction of farm roads, lakes, and ponds.

Farms or farming-related activities are not protected from suits of nuisance or trespass resulting from negligent conduct.

Read the public statement by the Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility on this egregious ruling here.

- Posted by BenGPrice@aol.com, CELDF

AT&T has struggled with it’s roll-out of huge telco boxes. It seems AT&T’s U-verse is ‘your world delivered’ in the form of a hulking gray box on the public ‘right of way’ in front of your home. In the competition with cable, AT&T wins for the biggest boxes and most number of lawsuits they’ve filed over where they can put them. Your world delivered - when and where they want.

In Shorewood, the quiet block where Joe Dean lives is caught in a battle of telecom giants, and he doesn’t like it.

It began in July, when a tan metal cabinet the size of a refrigerator was plopped down in the right of way in his block, the 4400 block of Stowell Ave. The cabinets house the equipment that AT&T, the world’s largest telecommunications company, needs to enter the subscription television market, improve its Internet services and provide computer-linked telephone service - would put them in direct competition with Time Warner Cable.

“Those boxes are an abomination,” Dean said of the cabinets, noting that AT&T’s competitors don’t need such equipment. “We called Village Hall, and they said it was just an upgrade in phone service.”

——————-

Lawsuit issue: The City of Milwaukee last month became the first in the country to file a lawsuit against AT&T to force the company to enter into a franchise agreement. Anita Gallucci, a Madison lawyer representing more than 30 other state communities, said she will file legal documents in support of Milwaukee’s position within the next two weeks.

“We’re all interested in maintaining our authority over the public right of way and the franchise agreements,” Gallucci said.

The metal boxes: Gallucci questioned the need to have the boxes on public land, noting that Verizon, a cellular telephone service also entering the competition, is running fiber optics directly to the homes. “AT&T wants to use the existing copper wire, and it’s just an effort to save money,” Gallucci said.

Communities also are concerned about the placement of the boxes in the public right of way

Read The Full Article

Strange that this (“Robots Could Demand Legal Rights”) is presented as some kind of futuristic possibility. In fact, robots have already gained plenty of rights and “social benefits.” After all, what else is a robot than a machine that autonomously pursues some set of goals programmed into it by its owner(s)? And what else is a corporation than an example of such an entity? Maybe it’s a bit confusing that human beings are used as off-the-shelf components in the design of this particular type of robot. But it’s certainly not the first time that machines have existed within which human beings serve as convenient components. (Think Roman galley, etc.) In his book “Rights, Person, and Organizations: A Legal Theory for Bureaucratic Society,” (University of California Press, 1986) Meir Dan-Cohen does an excellent job of teasing out this congruence between intelligent machines and corporations, including a “thought experiment” of a corporation that gradually replaced all its human workers with computers, eventually employing not a single human being either on staff or in management yet still enjoying the full civil status (including lobbying rights, etc.) of the ordinary corporation in the American polity.

- Posted by Ted Nace

Well, sort of. Not that the New York Times would follow the question down a culture-challenging path, but a crumb is a crumb from ye royale cake, I suppose. Of course, when the flagship advertiser for the institutional status quo in this nation says it’s up to us to decide, it raises the perennial question of who is the us who should be deciding.

Safe as Milk?
The New York Times
January 6th, 2007

The Food and Drug Administration’s assessment that food from cloned animals is safe to eat is a victory for biotech companies and a loss for everyone else. Like many decisions on the cutting edge of agricultural technology, it was hurried along in a way that is more sensitive to political and economic pressure than to the long-term welfare of animals, humans and the world they inhabit. Asking whether cloned meat and milk are safe is not even the right question. The right question is, why clone at all?

Approving food from cloned animals will create another food-labeling nightmare and the same aggressive litigation that usually blocks any attempt to tell consumers where their food comes from.

But cloning has much worse consequences. It marks a revolutionary shift, from the relative randomness of sexual reproduction to the apparent uniformity of asexual reproduction. Because cloning creates genetically identical animals, it will shrink the gene pool on which agriculture rests, and any drastic shrinkage in genetic diversity creates enormous health risks for a species.

Cloning isn’t just a matter for the F.D.A. to decide. It is up to us as a society to decide as well. We should be asking much broader questions than the F.D.A. is able to. Who will cloning benefit? What will it do to the health of the animals themselves?

But the most important question of all may be this one: Are we willing to judge the suitability of new technologies in ways that fully address their ethical and biological complexities? Or are we doomed to give in to politics and the bottom line?

Go To The Original Article

Here is something going which was going around amongst the Michigan Association of Municipal Attorneys as they were forced to confront a new wave of assault by the corporate borg of AT&T (a confrontation they lost at the end of 2006 with the adoption of new state franchising rules, written by and for Verizon and their compatriots in the corporate fraternity). Its a bit of an older note regarding this issue, but unfortunately still relevant.

Perhaps the Michigan ML (and all local governing entities) should refocus how they are confronting this issue. Instead of trying to restrict this kind of uncontrolled behavior by corporations such as AT&T through ‘regulating’ them, perhaps they should assert their rights to represent the interests and wishes of their own communities and the public property they are entrusted to care for. This could be done somewhat in the manner that other communities around the nation have done, such as these here.

Included on Saveaccess are a collection of photos of some of these boxes (a number of them parody send ups to drive the point home) being planted by AT&T, as part of their “Project Lightspeed” (or “Project Blightspeed” as I call it). It really is atrocious that they assume the right to just drop these anywhere and everywhere they want, without regard to local concerns. Also heard somewhere out east as of late, one blew up, caught on fire, caused a bit of a stink, both literally and figuratively. (If you don’t get the photo attachments in this email and would like them, just let me know and I’d be happy to send them to you individually. They really are astounding examples as to the brazen nature of this implementation).

From: Michigan Association of Municipal Attorneys
AT&T Boxes & Private Property Issues
September 8, 2006

To: Mayor/President, City Manager, City Council, Public Works & Cable Commission:

Many members have been calling League staff about the deployment of AT&T Lightspeed Boxes, and other AT&T infrastructure, in their communities‚ private and public right-of-ways. League staff is working with municipal attorneys and local officials, on what solutions or protections may exist to stop the inappropriate deployment of this infrastructure. If you have any questions or have any experience with this issue, please call Joe Fivas at (517) 230-7007.

AT&T’s Three “NO’s” to Private Property Owners
Whose Property is it Anyway?

You drive home from work and lo and behold, there is a huge new box on a concrete slab in your front yard. Man is it ugly. You call city hall and ask them who gave them the right to kill your home’s curb appeal and lower its property value. The city employee tells you there is nothing they can do about it. They tell you to call the big phone company. You do. After working through a complicated phone tree, you finally connect with a real person. You ask her to remove the box and she says “NO”. The big phone company is bringing you progress by updating its equipment. It is operating within its legal rights, etc. You then ask her when you will be able to buy the service this new box is delivering. She pauses while she brings up your account, then says that your home is not listed as serviceable. What!?! What is this thing doing on your property? “Bringing you progress,” the big phone company employee states.

AT&T’s three “NO’s” to Private Property Owners

Will you keep the box off my property and stop digging up my lawn? NO
Will you pay me to use my property or to make up for the damage to my property value? NO
Will you guarantee that at least I can purchase the service that you’re taking my property for? NO

What’s Going On Here?

AT&T Corporation is asking for changes in state telecommunications law that would allow them to use easements on private property and public property next to your home to deliver their new video product. However, unlike the power and cable companies, that can also access the utility easements, AT&T is insisting on the right to NOT offer the service to the property owners affected by all the digging and that new 5 foot tall box in their front yard.

In Michigan and around the country, public utilities, such as electricity, gas, phone service, and cable generally were allowed the use of utility easements to deploy their services. When a private property owner or the community gave a public utility easement or when the law created the easement, everyone assumed they did it to receive utility services. In essence, it was a negotiation where the public utility got the right to use the private property or public property that might impact that private property owner, and the private property owner could at least receive the service. Society and the individual homeowners benefited from the arrangement. They could at least purchase needed utilities. The channels of commerce were opened up. The private companies received a property right to deploy their public services and in trade agreed to offer service to the affected property owners.

AT&T is pushing legislation that allows them access to public and private rights of ways WITHOUT the corresponding obligation to offer the service to the people affected. In the name of maximum business flexibility, AT&T is insisting that it have access to the utility easements but guarantee the affected homeowners absolutely nothing. They may be offered the service in that big new box, they may be offered a satellite dish, they may be offered nothing. Only AT&T knows.

Read more on this issue at Saveaccess, which also contains links to a number of rather compelling photos on how these boxes are being planted around various localities, and all perfectly legal without any recourse by cities or citizens to stop them from doing so. Is that because AT&T is constitutionally protected to engage in this because you don’t have the legal right to ‘impede commerce’?

Jane Smiley asks on The Huffington Post Is There Something Wrong With The System?

Uh, yeah, I think so, Jane. Though this commentary misses the mark on a few points, such as identifying the ascent of the corporate state as being the destructive Supreme Court ‘Santa Clara’ ruling of 1886 (it was not a ‘clerical error’ and it was hardly the first SC ruling to grant unwarranted and illegitimate powers to ruling minority elites over the democratic majorities), it still is heartening to see *the* key issue - corporate ‘personhood’ - being identified and called out in the public discourse.

Our life is far more profoundly shaped by the power of corporations than the Founders would have thought possible. Not only do Americans eat corporate food, and grow obese and unhealthy thereby, depend upon the oil companies and the car manufacturers, and thereby destroy the Earth, demand cheap goods, and thereby wreck their own manufacturing infrastructure and accumulate loads of unnecessary possessions, they listen to canned and bottled hate-speech on corporate radio and TV and thereby surrender their judgment and their rights; they go to corporate churches and buy the ideas that accrue to the power of those churches. The fatal difference between corporations and people is that corporations are necessarily irresponsible. It’s in the charter. They have to profit, while people have to weigh monetary profit against other forms of relationship and interaction. Individual shareholders and executives can evade responsibility for”externalities” like global warming in a way that they would not necessarily be able to evade responsibility for running over the neighbor’s dog–our country is filled with people who do things at work that they would never do at home. Their sense of responsibility can be lessened by the fear of losing a job, or, more subtly, by the effect of company propaganda, or the break-down of accountability because of long chains of command. One thing incorporation does is separate the assets of the shareholders from the assets of the corporation, so that no one has to be ruined by his mistakes at work. Risk-taking comes to have no downside, especially if the risks only effect those who are out of sight and out of mind. As long as corporations can claim rights as persons while evading regulation for business practices, the deck will be stacked against the voters; the war machine, the oil machine, the food machine, and the financial markets machine, among others, will continue to call the shots.

Read The Complete Post