CNN: FCC board rejects expanded cable oversight; ThePete: Of Course They Do

This is another great example of the coming feudal planet where corporations rule with governments just pretending to be in charge. The FCC, which is stacked with Republicans ruled against enlarging government regulation over cable companies. Yeah, big surprise, big government ruling in favor of big business. What's worse is that they're masquerading the move as being for our own good. Check out this cutting from a CNN.com article that reports on the FCC being butt-buddies with big business (I'm paraphrasing, of course):

A recent FCC report promoted by Kevin Martin, the agency's chairman, found that cable TV reaches a wide enough U.S. audience to trigger a rule within a 1984 law that would give the government significant new powers to ensure program diversity.

But a majority of the agency's five-member commission said the report endorsed flawed data and should have used other sources. Some said they weren't even aware of the agency's own numbers until Monday night.

"Our job of ascertaining the facts is made more difficult because the draft cherry picked the only data that justified the outcome apparently desired while suppressing other data," Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said.

Right, right--so FCC dudes that are of the same ilk as the Bushites who suppressed data on Global Warming are now claiming that pro-big-business data is being suppressed? Likely story.

The math is simple here, folks. Power corrupts. Regulation curtails power. And since I have exactly two real choices for my TV service provider (one cable company and one mini-dish company serve my area) I'd say more regulation is required. I have no choices within the services, too. For Time-Warner Cable, I can either pay too much for too little, way too much for more, but still not enough decent programming, or--well, that's where I stopped paying attention.

Ah well...

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