Monopolization of cultural outlets

Monopolized media is just crap, but has alot of funding.

Through their control over the FM and AM radio frequencies, corporate executives dictate to us what brand of subcultures we subscribe to. They create entire scenes, you buy into it, and they take your money. Genuine local scenes are burned at the alter of dividends.
Radio stations are licensed to organizations by the Federal Government. Since around 1925, the radio license have been monopolized by corporations, whose lawyers ensure that the Federal guidelines for what constitutes "public service", the basis for granting the radio stations a license, does not infringe upon their profiting from their monopoly over the content of the radio frequencies which they hold a license for.

"FCC Should Revoke KCOP’s License"
2013-10-10 by Steve Ross, CWA/NABET Local 53 [http://www.calaborfed.org/index.php/site/page/fcc_should_revoke_kcops_license]:
 An era quietly ended in Southern California last month, one that should not go unnoticed by the public, broadcasters or the Federal Communications Commission.
For the first time in over 50 years, KCOP-TV in Los Angeles doesn’t have a newscast. Fox Television, which owns the station, pulled the plug on its 7 pm and 11 pm news programs on September 22nd.
Throughout its history, KCOP’s newscasts were never more than a blip in the ratings, but they did help launch and further extend the careers of many fine broadcasters, including George Putnam, Regis Philbin, Hal Fishman, Warren Olney, Larry Atteberry, Rick Garcia, Sylvia Lopez, Ellen Leyva and Rick Chambers.
For many years KCOP was also one of the few independent voices for television news in Los Angeles, competing against KTTV, KTLA and KHJ (now KCAL) at 10 pm. In the 1980’s, KCOP even created an advertising campaign based on that theme – “Very Independent” – and produced some award winning newscasts and investigative stories with a very limited budget.
Sadly, that era ended long ago. Thanks to deregulation and consolidation of the broadcast industry, there are no longer any truly “independent” voices among the Los Angeles television stations. Broadcasting today is dominated and controlled by corporations – and much of what we see and hear over the airwaves in Los Angeles is decided 3,000 miles away at corporate headquarters in New York City.
That was never the intent when these broadcast licenses were issued. Radio and television stations operated under strict guidelines to serve “the public interest, convenience and necessity” – and risked losing their licenses if they didn’t provide enough news and public affairs programming.
Today, the closest thing to news and public affairs you’ll see on KCOP is TMZ and endless re-runs of Seinfeld.
Fox is treating KCOP like it’s a cable channel – which it is not.
Broadcasters still have an obligation to serve their local communities. The FCC requires "local live programs" and "programming devoted to discussion of local public issues." Further policies call for an "opportunity for local self-expression" and "the development and use of local talent."
Where are those programs on KCOP?
These are not just abstract ideas for NABET members and others who work in the broadcast industry. Corporate control of broadcasting has not only silenced local independent voices, it has eliminated thousands of union jobs around the country.
It’s time to put a stop to this -- or we will see other corporate carpetbaggers do exactly what Fox has done, not only at KCOP, but at WWOR-TV in New Jersey – another Fox station that recently had its newscast dropped.
New Jersey residents have long complained that WWOR was more focused on covering New York City than it was in serving New Jersey. The late New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg even went so far as ask the FCC to revoke WWOR’s license, because it “has not served New Jersey well.”
Following Lautenberg’s death in June, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez took up the cause, calling for a review of WWOR’s license.
Menendez wrote in a letter to Mignon Clyburn, the acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission [http://www.menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/press/sen-menendez-calls-upon-fcc-to-review-wwors-license-following-closing-of-news-division]: "It is becoming increasingly critical that the FCC make a determination about WWOR’s license and whether they are adequately serving New Jersey as the law and FCC rules stipulate.  From my perspective, News Corporation (Fox) is not."
The people of New Jersey deserve better. So do those of us in Southern California.
KCOP’s license comes up for renewal with the FCC in 2014. I am calling on California senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to challenge that renewal and to have KCOP’s license reassigned to a broadcaster worthy of having it.


"Hip Hop, White Supremacy & Capitalism"         
2013-11-10 from "YourWorldNewsFilms" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc32ZXnHxus]: 
This is version one of the brand new documentary corporations won't want you to view and study. If you are upset at the way corporations have co-opted Hip Hop and re-sold it in the most racist, hyper-violent, and misogynistic ways possible, then this is a film you must watch. "Hip Hop, White Supremacy & Capitalism: Why Corporations Infiltrated RAP Music" is an incredibly powerful and in-depth film focusing on the nefarious role corporations have played in co-opting Hip Hop Music (RAP), suppressing socially and politically progressive messages, while creating and promoting the most racist, misogynistic and hyper-violent images.    
"Hip Hop, White Supremacy & Capitalism: Why Corporations Infiltrated RAP Music" exposes seldom discussed facts regarding the relationship between Hip Hop and Corporations. This film features Hip Hop artists like: Narubi Selah, Capital-X, The Welfare Poets, Jasiri-X and media activists like: Rosa Clemente, Dr. Jared Ball, Paul Porter and Solomon Comissiong.    
This documentary also showcases a ton of Hip Hop footage that places its focus in brilliant context for viewers. To say this film is a "MUST SEE" might be an understatement. This film should be used a tool to mobilize, galvanize and organize communities to reject Corporate Back Hip Hop, Create Alternative Media and to Support Hip Hop Artists whose music uplifts, empowers and educates its audiences


"Hip-Hop is Dead (on the radio); KWIN & Hot 104.7: A Case Study"
2012-02-25 by "Revolutionary Hip-Hop Report [rhhr.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/hip-hop-is-dead-on-the-radio/]:
“the radio feeds young america hysteria, thru your stereo, now they wanna cop a new whip, jewelry, and a pair of those brand new sneakers from their favorite rap crew…corporations clap to your music, their hip to your sound, but in the underground, you don’t add to the movement, greedy white man controlin you rappers and controlin the audience, with party-jams, paychecks, and royalties, it’s all politics” -Nikfuq                                   
This table is of 60 songs, 30 from each station, played during a 2 hour period in the middle of a weekday:

bold = song or artist played more than once on either station = 82%
italics = artist played at the same time on both stations = happened 4 times, 1 time the same song was playing on both stations                                            
* = song played on both stations, ** = song played twice on same station, altogether = 50%

9 artists, featured on 36 songs (Drake, Rhianna, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Flo Rida, Usher, Pitbull, Chris Brown, & T-Pain) were on 60% of the songs played.
7 songs, played 3 times each (David Guetta/Usher – Without You, Rihanna – We Found Love, Jay-Z/Kanye West – Niggas in Paris, Flo Rida – Good Feeling, Rihanna – You Da One, J. Cole – Workout, Drake/Nicki Minaj – Make Me Proud) made up 35% of what was played

34 songs (57%) are from the Universal Music Group, 16 (27%) are Sony Music Entertainment, 5 are from Warner Music Group, and 3 are from EMI Group, also known as the “Big 4.”
83% were from either Universal or Sony, 97% (58 out of 60 songs) are from 1 of the “Big 4.”

KWIN is owned by Citidel Broadcasting, owner of 250 radio station nation-wide. Locally, Citadel owns KHOP, The Hawk, KAT Country, and ESPN Radio. Hot 104.7 is owned by Buckley Broadcasting, which owns 20 other radio stations.

Free-Market liberals and the DemocRAT Party

Liberals, progressives, and non-Whites who disdain the Republican Party ideology of [White] American Nationalism instead choose to uphold the Democrat Party as the only alternative on the ballot box, and ignore the other ballot box party which would better uphold their values (Peace and Freedom Party), choosing instead to support fascists in the Democrat Party as the "lesser of two evils".

PRESS CONFERENCE AND RALLY
Join the San Francisco Labor Council and Senator Leland Yee to Fight UC Regent’s Effort to Take Away Collective Bargaining Rights
University of California Regent David Crane recently took his cue from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and called for an end to collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.
On Friday, join hundreds of workers to rally against Regent Crane’s recent attack on working families. Crane, a resident of San Francisco, was appointed to the Board of Regents by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger during his final days in office. Crane currently awaits confirmation by the Senate.
Friday, March 4, 2011 @ Noon
University of California Medical Center
513 Parnassus Avenue
San Francisco, California

2011-03-04 "Courting Labor, Yee Vows to 'Toast' UC Regent Appointee; Mayoral candidate holds rally to denounce regent who argued against collective bargaining for public employees" by ELIZABETH LESLY STEVENS from "Bay Citizen" online journal
[http://www.baycitizen.org/politics/story/courting-labor-yee-vows-toast-regent/]
On Sunday, San Francisco resident David G. Crane penned an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, examining in wonkish detail the disparate histories behind the granting of collective-bargaining rights to private-sector and public-sector workers.
Crane, a Democrat who served as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's economic policy adviser and who has been an active proponent of pension reform at the state and local level, suggested that most public employees didn't need collective bargaining powers, since protections under the Civil Service Act already guarantee job protections. "Collective bargaining is a good thing when it's needed to equalize power, but when public employees already have that equality because of civil service protections, collective bargaining in the public sector serves to reduce benefits for citizens and to raise costs for taxpayers. Citizens and taxpayers should consider this as they watch events unfold in Madison," he wrote.
With the union unrest in Wisconsin in the air, state Sen. Leland Yee, who is running for mayor of San Francisco, has evidently decided to turn Crane into Labor's Public Enemy No. 1.
"David Crane, he thinks custodians, teachers, nurses and other public sector workers don't need representation," Yee told a group of union demonstrators Thursday at the Parnassus campus of the University of California, San Francisco. The picketers alternated chanting "Nasty, greedy Crane," with "I don't know but I've been told, Regent Crane is mighty cold."
The crowd cheered on Yee, who had convened the event. Yee told them that Crane maintained, “‘You guys are making too much. Your benefits are too much.’ David Crane wants to abolish all the unions … representing the workers of the state of California. When he gets his way, if he gets his way," he said, state employees will be "working in a sweatshop, working for a pittance."
The crowd booed. Yee, flanked by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma and San Francisco Labor Council chief Tim Paulson, beamed.
Crane is somewhat astonished by the goings-on. "Nothing in my op-ed calls for an end to collective bargaining and I support collective bargaining for UC employees," he wrote in an e-mail, when asked to comment on the anti-Crane rally. "Either Senator Yee did not read the op-ed and statement or he is just raising a fake issue for hoped-for political gain. Either way I think citizens are tired of it and that a senator should know better."
To punish Crane, Yee vowed to scuttle his appointment to the University of California Board of Regents. Schwarzenegger tapped Crane as a regent shortly before leaving office. The state Senate — Yee's stomping ground — must vote to approve the appointment by year's end, or else Crane will be forced out. Yee is hoping to have the Senate vote soon to scuttle the appointment, a Yee aide said.
"David Crane has got this little thing he wants. To be confirmed as a UC regent. David Crane, you are fired," Yee said. "He is going to be toasted like you cannot believe."
Somewhat ironically, Crane's argument that collective bargaining powers were unnecessary did not apply to workers at University of California, where Yee held his demonstration. Crane points out that UC workers are not covered by the Civil Service Act.
When asked how off-point it might be to be holding the anti-Crane demonstration with UC workers, Yee was unapologetic. He said that if Crane is attacking most state workers' collective bargaining rights now, it is to be expected that he will attack collective bargaining rights for UC workers and private-sctor workers eventually. (Crane's incendiary op-ed, however, seemed to support private-sector workers' collective bargaining rights.)
"We all know he does not support workers' rights," Yee said. "He outed himself regarding what he thinks about workers' rights. Workers everywhere are being attacked."

Our Transmitter Range, 89.5FM KZCT in Vallejo

Through our partnership with the GOTT [link], in solidarity for Peace and Justice [link], the Northbay Uprising radio news program is transmitted weekly at 89.5 FM throughout the northeast San Pablo bay.

Campaign Directory

 United Public Workers For Action [www.upwa.info] [510-233-5820]

Committee for the Study of History and Current Context

Learn about the true origin of the USA as a Democratic Society [link]!

Purdue University President declares war of censorship on Howard Zinn's "A people's history of the United States" [link]

Santa Cruz tortures political dissidents

Human Rights abuse in itty-bitty Santa Cruz [link]

"My Experiences in Solitary Confinement"
by Steven Argue of the Revolutionary Tendency:
I myself spent about 5 months out of my 9 month sentence in the Santa Cruz County Jail in solitary confinement. I was in jail for coming to the defense of a woman and small child who were being brutalized by the police at a protest against the U.S. bombing of Yugoslavia. In jail, I was immediately put in solitary confinement, being told, "Mr. Argue, I have put you in administrative segregation because I deem you a threat in potentially organizing against authority".
In solitary I wrote a lot and what I was writing was getting published on the outside. I was threatened by guards that they would hurt my wrist if I kept writing. I kept writing. The guards then one day handcuffed me and then brutally beat me, hurting my wrist so bad that I couldn't write for months.
Protests outside the jail against my beating then got me out of solitary confinement for a while, but I was put back in after getting caught with an extra blanket another prisoner had gotten to me to fight excessive cold of the nights. (As an additional punishment, they turn up the air conditioning at night and deny additional bedding or clothing to inmates.)
The next time I got out of solitary I started petitions against the privatization of the commissary and the increase in price for materials needed to contact the outside world.
Everyone in my cell block signed the petition and it was published on the outside. Prices for some materials were brought down, and I was put in the hole (i.e. solitary confinement without reading or writing materials) for the rest of my stay.

Santa Cruz's treatment of the homeless compared to other cities' Wet Houses

Defend those without homes! campaign page [link]
Santa Cruz is attacking houseless people [link]

"Wet Houses", a step in a positive direction concerning addiction and alcohol: 
NOTE BY NORSE: Tip of the hat to Rowland for providing a page of references on "wet houses" which I reprint after the article below. Santa Cruz, as Rowland notes, is moving in the opposite direction--with police and vigilante attacks on addicts, alcoholics, and homeless people under the false label of "Public Safety" and "Environmental Concern".
We need sanctuary camps, wet houses, trash pick-up's, Sharps containers, injection and inhalation centers, a restoration of public rights in public spaces for everyone, decent 24-hour restroom facilities (not just $4 million stadiums for the fans $14 million+ on De Sal consultants), an "empty buildings" tax, scads of emergency housing (and legalized camping with adequate facilities in the meantime), prison and police reordering, and other fundamental changes. Not to mention an end to the Drug War.
Instead we get Public Hysteria generated by the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Santa Cruz Neighbors, the Downtown Association, the SCPD, Take Back Santa Cruz, The Clean Team, & the Robinson-Comstock-Terrazas-Mathews-Bryant Council majority using needlemania to push a "Pummel the Poor" campaign.
The same old labels that have been around for generations dismissing the lower class as lazy have been unearthed and are now--zombie-like--leading committees like the Public Safety Committee and the Public Safety Citizen Task Force, gloating. Their recent victories? The destruction of the city's S.O.S. needle exchange program, a bigoted Mayor falsely conflating homeless survival behavior with "crime", a collusive police force using hysteria to pad their ranks, & the new demonization of medical marijuana (the freezing of any new clubs in the city and the TBSC-orchestrated denial of permits to a new one in Harvey West recently).
Not to mention a surge in violent hate crimes against homeless people with the usual indifference or collusion from police, jail, and medical authorities.
Instead of focusing on the huge agglomeration of wealth and power at the top, we are being directed to turn our anger and frustration on those below while the local police state expands, the constitution disintegrates, and Obama's undeclared wars multiply.
The "Public Safety Committee" of City Council is now calling for more laws against the homeless (24 hour stay-away orders if you're cited in the parks--even before trial), triple fine zones for violating "don't be linger in public if you're penniless" Sitting and Panhandling bans, sweeps of the parks, tracks, and levees, more Park Rangers to aid in the pogrom, and--soon to hit City Council--a law banning "loitering" on the medians of roadways to remove panhandlers (and political protesters).
On the "liberal side", we have the Homeless Lack of Services Center colluding with police in further repressing the homeless population--colluding with ID programs, "no impact" zones, failure to provide disability protection, and failure to expand meaningful affordable shelter (i.e. campgrounds). We have fluff and folly programs like the 180/180 which serve as fund-raising magnets for the few while ignoring emergency shelter needs of the vast majority. And a local gang of Democratic Party hacks who don't mind watching the Constitution (nationally and locally) shrivel as long as Obama's doing the shriveling.
Bring Back Santa Cruz.
Additional Wet House info at:  [Google Search: alcohol allowed in shelters]

2009-03-31 "Study: Seattle home for alcoholics saved taxpayers $4 million"
by Vanessa Ho from "Seattle Press-Intelligence" [http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Study-Seattle-home-for-alcoholics-saved-1302953.php]:
For years, Nathaniel Porter began his day with a pint of vodka or whiskey, which often made him throw up, which made him reach for a beer. He was off his schizophrenia medication, going to the sobering center a lot, and living in shelters, which made him want to start the next day the same as the last.
 But a year ago, Porter moved into the 1811 Eastlake house, a subsidized apartment building near downtown Seattle for homeless alcoholics. He now often starts his day by sending his friend Jim to the corner shop for a six-pack of beer or a couple of tall boys, and settling in for "The Jeffersons" or "Good Times." But he's off the "hard stuff," takes his medication regularly, stays out of the sobering center, and goes to a meditation group.
"It's wonderful," said Porter, an amiable 51-year-old, of his current home. "I stay out of trouble. I come in, go to my room. It's nice and peaceful."
Porter's progress is echoed in a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, led by a University of Washington researcher, found that the once-controversial 1811 program -- which provides housing and services without demanding sobriety -- saved taxpayers more than $4 million in one year.
"It was perceived that we were opening a party house where people could drink and run amok and generally set their hair on fire," said Bill Hobson, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center. The agency opened the home in 2005, after years of protests.
"This research shows that this is not the case."
Researchers followed 95 chronically homeless alcoholics, who, before moving into the home, had run up a taxpayer bill of $8.2 million in hospitalizations, emergency services, jail time and sobering center visits.
 After one year of being in the program, the same group cost taxpayers only $4 million, the study found. Each resident also drank less the longer they lived in the home, and their toll on publicly funded programs decreased as time went on.
"One of the overwhelming sentiments was just how much better life was at 1811," said Mary Larimer, a UW professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and lead author of the study.
"Certainly, it is much easier (to change) when you are not cold, hungry and scared, and have a few meaningful events in your life."
Larimer also compared residents against a control group of 39 homeless alcoholics on a wait-list to get into the home. She found that the residents, after six months of being in the home, cost taxpayers 50 percent less than the wait-listed group.
The research represents the first controlled study to look at the Seattle program, which is part of a national model called "Housing First," in which people can live in subsidized homes and get services without having to give up drinking or attend treatment.
"This is an extraordinarily successful program," said Ron Sims, the outgoing King County Executive. He admitted Tuesday that he was among the many initial skeptics of the program, and that he had been concerned about it "enabling" alcoholism. He reluctantly allowed the county to fund it, with an initial investment of $2 million, followed by $240,000 a year in operational support.
"It was a doggone good thing to do," he said. "Our return on investment has exceeded any expectation."
 For Porter, the home has given him stability in what had been a chaotic life, leading him to drink less. He explained it simply:
"Out there, I wanted a roof over my head. I got to drinking heavy when I was thinking about getting a roof over my head. I came here. I got a roof over my head."