Franken, Bachmann, Walz and Ellison "Bobble Reps"

Asked at Saturday’s Netroots Minnesota conference what blogs he follows, Rep. Tim Walz pulled out his iPhone and rattled off a few sites: Talking Points Memo, Bluestem Prairie, MN Publius and others. Then he showed off his favorite iPhone app — a new one that features his likeness and that of every other member of the House and Senate as shakeable cartoon bobbleheads.

The 99-cent “Bobble Rep” app helps users find out who represents them in Congress, either through a direct search or by using the iPhone’s GPS locator. The caricatures — heads for each of 540 legislators put on one of 12 bodies — were drawn by MAD Magazine artist Tom Richmond to be fun and nonpartisan. But Apple didn’t see it that way: it rejected the application claiming “it ridicules public figures.”

Richmond wrote:

This is truly ridiculous. These caricatures aren’t mean or very exaggerated. They are simple, fun cartoon likenesses of the politicians and the purpose of the app is an informational database. There is no editorial commentary involved at all.

Indeed, related projects, while likewise tame, could probably be construed as far more “offensive,” to use Apple’s word. Sen. Franken, for instance, was rendered as a 3D vampire bobblehead, “The Count,” (along with Norm Coleman) by the St. Paul Saints baseball team in March. And earlier this month, Franken and Coleman were given the MAD Magazine treatment in a spoof ad for “Democra-cialis, ” a cure for the kind of “electile dysfunction” that plagued their 2008 Senate battle, in MAD’s list of “dumbest people, events and things” of 2009.

But last Monday, Apple reversed its decision, green-lighting the app that made its way to Walz’s cellphone.

Walz’s wielded smartphone could’ve been a good prop for another question he answered — about net neutrality. He said he’s “absolutely convinced that we must keep net neutrality,” and thanks to his resolve, “AT&T doesn’t even come to my office anymore” to lobby against it, he added. He said he’s surprised that conservatives aren’t more concerned about the freedom issues surrounding the possibility of corporations controlling what internet users can and can’t access.

“If you want to wave the patriot banner,” he said, “wave it on net neutrality.”

Here’s how each of Minnesota’s Bobble Reps look:

Photo: Alper Bozkurt, Boyce Thompson Institute

Gov. Tim Pawlenty got it wrong last week when he talked about Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount, but the winner of that recount got it right when talking yesterday on another topic: cyborg bugs. Franken made this statement during a speech in Washington, D.C.:

Several years ago — I can’t remember exactly when, I think it was the mid- to late-’90s, I went and gave a speech to the folks at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And I remember asking what cool things they were working on. And later a guy came up to me and took me aside and told me he was working on an unmanned aerial vehicle the size of an insect. I was really excited about that.

Evidently that hasn’t happened. They didn’t make the bug-sized unmanned aerial vehicle work.

But they did create the ARPA-net 40 years ago. And the ARPA-net grew into the internet, which is almost as cool as a bug-sized unmanned aerial vehicle with a camera and a Hellfire missile on it.

Hmm … he “can’t remember exactly when”? Even in his prepared remarks (”pretty sure it didn’t happen”) Franken sounded iffy on this fly thing, like he was inviting a fact check.

Turns out he’s right: DARPA’s hybrid insect microelectromechanical systems (HI-MEMS) program has not so far achieved its dream:

To be considered successful, the final HI-MEMS cybernetic bug must fly 100 meters from a starting point and then be steered into a controlled landing within 5 meters of a specified end point. On landing, the insect must stay in place.

Jeff Goldblum as "The Fly"

But military research sometimes has beneficial civilian side-effects (for example, DARPA’s role in pioneering the internet — now threatened, Franken says, unless Congress enacts net neutrality legislation).

Cyborg bugs may not yet be delivering tiny payloads to enemy targets, but in the course of trying scientists have developed nifty little radios you could implant in a moth.

One thing holding back full implementation: Moths don’t live long enough to make it worth it.

Here’s video of Franken, with his insightful insect comment at the 3:23 mark:

And, without comment, President Obama:

In 2006, for example, the company donated $200,000 to the International Republican Institute, a Washington organization where McCain served as chairman of the board. This was the year that, not coincidentally, McCain was also chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, the group responsible for overseeing the telecom industry.

Yet AT&T has wormed its way into policy and campaign issues beyond just giving millions in coercive, soft-money donations to McCain’s campaign: A total of 12 of McCain’s campaign advisers and/or staff are either registered as lobbyists for or served as an executive of AT&T. His chief adviser, Charlie Black, is the former chairman of lobbying firm BKSH & Associates, which has represented AT&T for the last decade.

In the case of McCain, such close ties have paid off for the telecom giant: As a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee (he twice served as chairman), McCain voted to allow the AT&T merger in 2005, when SBC Communications bought AT&T for $16 billion. And he introduced a measure that would limit the Federal Communications Commission authority to review telecom takeovers and monopolies. As chairman of the committee, he also voted to ban state and local taxes on Internet access, a bill supported by the AT&T and the rest of the telecom industry. McCain won praise year after year from the industry for his support of bills that favored the giants but not the public at large.

It makes sense then that AT&T, the biggest telecom company in the country, will be the biggest party thrower at the RNC next week, hosting nearly 20 parties across the Twin Cities for Republican lawmakers. That’s because, with net neutrality a campaign issue, AT&T has the most to gain. McCain has vehemently opposed net neutrality, meaning that he thinks Internet Service Providers, such as AT&T, for example, can own and restrict content on the web.

To get access to such “privileged” content, users like you and me would have to pay for an expensive, multi-tiered service package. In other words, McCain wants to give his buddies at AT&T and other telecom industries major tax breaks (25 percent, according to his most recent tech plan) and the ability to censor and control content. Such a trampling of net neutrality would result in billions of dollars in profits for AT&T, which is in the wireless, internet, and satellite TV business and has more than 100 million customers. But it would mean consumers and businesses would have to pay a lot more for access, and even then companies like AT&T could block content, services, and applications.

Next week, AT&T parties will dot the Twin Cities day and night, its party goers/lawmakers lit up by the blue glow of their AT&T iPhones and telltale smiles. As the second-largest campaign contributor in the country, donating a total of $39.5 million since 1989, just ahead of the National Association of Realtors, AT&T is going all out for the shindigs, hosting one every day for various state delegates. And while it’s illegal for private companies to host a party specifically for individual lawmakers, it doesn’t stop the companies from courting them and schmoozing them. Here are just a few of the parties AT&T will be throwing for lawmakers next week:

August 31
Salute to the Screen Actors Guild at the Fine Line Music Café (10pm-2am)

September 1
AT&T reception for California delegates at Brit’s Pub (5pm-7pm)

September 2
Young Guns reception at Brit’s Pub (5pm-7pm)
African-American voter reception at Karma (7pm-10pm)

September 3
The One campaign featuring “A-list” musical guest at Epic (10pm-2am)

A bill co-sponsored by Minnesota DFL Reps. Keith Ellison and Tim Walz aims to keep the Internet a level playing field for all users and charge the Federal Communications Commission with ensuring that telecoms do not offer content based on how much a company pays them to display their content. 

Introduced by Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Charles Pickering, R-Miss., the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 would bar “unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degradation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet.”

The New York Times editorial board endorsed the bill this weekend. “Cable and telecommunications companies are fighting net neutrality with lobbyists and campaign contributions, but these special interests should not be allowed to set Internet policy,” wrote the Times. “It is the job of Congress to protect the Internet’s democratic form.”

Savetheinternet.com, a repository of information about telecoms and their attempts to limit Internet freedom, points out that Net neutrality brings together unlikely partners together for a common cause. The bill has the support of such disparate groups as Christian Coalition,Teamsters, PETA and Gun Owners of America.

The Daily Show helps explain the complicated issue of net neutrality:

But both of these successes are again facing threats. Under new chair Kevin Martin, the FCC is scrambling to relax longstanding rules governing media consolidation. It announced, with only one week’s notice, that the final public hearing on media ownership will be held in Seattle this Friday, Nov. 9. By year’s end, the Commission may change the provision that prevents the same company from owning both a TV station and newspaper in the same town. And net neutrality remains under fire, thanks to the telecommunications and cable industries that want to replace an equal-access Internet with a two-tiered scheme that McChesney calls a “fast lane” and a “dirt path.”

On Saturday, he spent a few minutes discussing these important policy crises and their impact on democracy.

Paul Schmelzer: Two things I wanted to ask you about are the FCC ownership vote and net neutrality. But let’s start with the FCC. What is the story there?

Bob McChesney: The FCC under Kevin Martin has reopened a review of its media ownership rules, as it’s required to by law. And he agreed, and the FCC agreed after the last time the rules were thrown out in the court system, that to make sure it’ll past legal muster this time they would hold at least six public hearings on what people think of these rule changes. The last one is coming on November 9 in Seattle. Chairman Martin of the FCC is making it clear that he is determined to change the rules – he’s been public about this – as quickly as possible, as dramatically as possible, and really has no concern whatsoever with following the spirit of the process where the public hearings hold any value. He’s given in almost every case minimum possible notice to the community that’d they’d be having hearings. The last two, literally a week’s notice. And these are supposed to be hearings to solicit public opinion from across the board. They’ve tried to put them during daylight hours when working people can’t get away from work. And he’s made a mockery of the process.

Some people say, “With the democratic control in Congress, won’t this get stymied?” In all likelihood it will, and in all likelihood there’s a good chance the courts with throw it out again, because it’s such a blatant violation of the spirit of the law.

But my sense is that there’s tremendous pressure on the Bush administration and therefore on the Republicans on the FCC to scrap these rules to allow the big media owners, who really depend on being able to gobble up local media monopolies, to get their way. They’re calling their debts in, so to speak. I think they’re going to try to ram this through and then negotiate it in Congress and get some of the deals through. They understand it’s completely bogus what they’re doing — legally, ethically, morally. But it’s all about power politics and delivering the goods to very wealthy and powerful campaign donors and funders.

PS: Kevin Martin hasn’t said what his proposal would be, but it’s understood that he’ll probably be relaxing cross-ownership rules. But is it true that he hasn’t laid out a plan, and if so, what are people responding to?

BM: They won’t lay out a plan, and they’ll give the bare minimum amount of time for the public to see what exactly it’s proposing, if any time at all.

PS: So people are having hearings about media ownership in general, but no specific proposal.

BM: They’re saying, “What do you think about consolidation? What do you think about media in your community?” Which isn’t actually bad; it’s just open-ended. “If you could have a clean slate, what do you think a healthy media environment – what policies would get you there?”

And what Kevin Martin is hearing everywhere, overwhelmingly, [is that] people are dissatisfied with the current state of media in their communities. There’s way too much commercialism and concentration, and if anything, they want policies that are going to encourage more local owners, more diverse ownership, and generate some sort of coverage on radio, television and related newspapers that’ll actually serve communities rather than just be a service to advertisers and corporate headquarters in some far off land.

PS: So who is Kevin Martin? Everyone knows Michael Powell [former FCC chair and son of Colin Powell], but Kevin Martin is not really known to many people. He was kind of a buddy with Powell. He’s a Republican member of the Commission, right?

BM: He was on the commission in 2003, and he made his name working for the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign in 2000, and he has very clear political ambitions. Generally speaking, when you leave this position at the FCC, either you have political ambitions, you try to go into political office – in which case, feathering the nest of major potential funders is a smart move – or you do what Michael Powell did and most members of FCC have done in the past: you go to work for the industry and make a seven-figure income capitalizing on your public service. So that’s his fallback position. If he can’t raise enough money to be a U.S. senator from North Carolina, he can make a million dollars-plus a year working for AT&T or Comcast or one of these big companies he’s theoretically regulating in the public interest.

PS: It’s been argued by some that this probably has to do with the pending purchase of the Chicago Tribune by Sam Zell. What I’ve heard is that this will serve him well in a market like Chicago. Basically, doesn’t the Tribune own WGN, the paper, all these different things? This would benefit him.

BM: If the rules change that are being proposed, he’d be at the top of the list of beneficiaries. There’s a lot of others there, but he’d be at the top of the list. It would be in reverse alphabetical order.

PS: Net neutrality: Can you tell us what it is and why we need to worry?

BM: Net neutrality is the principle that all websites are created equal – that if you start a website, you’ll have the same shot of getting through the system as a website owned by Microsoft or Rupert Murdoch. The genius of the Internet was never technology; it was always policy. It was the policy of network neutrality. It wasn’t built into the technology. It was something that was required by US telecommunication laws. It was a hard-won victory.  And the big telecom, telephone and cable companies that now provide 98 percent of the broadband service in the United States hate it, because they basically want to make their websites come through faster – or websites that pay them off come through faster. If you don’t pay them off you get put on the dirt path.  So they’re trying to get rid of net neutrality, that core founding principle.

They got the Bush administration FCC, under our good friend Martin, to renege on net neutrality in 2005, but we’ve been able to forestall it through a number of fights. But in the next two years, it’ll go one way or the other, and it’s absolutely imperative that we lock in the idea that all websites are created equal. Otherwise, we’re just going to have a supercharged digital version of a corporate oligopoly built into the technology now, not even just the marketplace.

PS: Give me a real-world example of what that’d mean.

BM: If you get rid of net neutrality, it means there will be a fast lane and a slow lane on the Internet. So there’s going to be really a tiered service. It’s built into the model that there’s a fast lane and a slow lane; there’ll be a digital divide. So you’ll pay more to get the fastest possible service at your end as a consumer. But the real measure will be: when you want to go on and buy a book, you aren’t going to have that many options, because the fast-lane options are going to be people that cut in with the phone or cable company and give them a piece of the action. For somebody to compete with them they’ve got to cut in a better deal with the phone or cable company or they’re going to be on the dirt trail – or banned altogether.

And I think we should also understand there’s a real political implication here. In Canada, where they don’t have net neutrality, the dominant cable company banned the website of the union when they had a strike, so people couldn’t see what the union had to say.

And I think we know already in the United States, that the phone company and the cable company have voluntarily participated in spying on the citizenry illegally. We have no reason to trust them whatsoever. Even if they were the most wonderful people on earth, you should never give a couple of institutions that much power over your free speech and free press. And they’re not the most wonderful people on earth, so case closed. It’s just a non-starter.

The National Conference on Media Reform, sponsored by Free Press, comes to Minneapolis June 6-8, 2008.

Photo via Grade the News

Collins corrects Kersten: In her column linking arrests at a recent Critical Mass ride to “anarchy” at the 2004 Republican National Convention, the Star Tribune’s Katherine Kersten “worked overtime to create an image of New York that would make it easier to make her point,” write’s MPR’s Bob Collins. Among the facts he’s questioning: GOP delegate Annette Meeks’ charge that protesters spit on her. “[D]elegates didn’t mix with protesters,” he wrote. “See, the way it worked was a ‘tiered’ security area was placed around Madison Square Garden… the closer you got to it, the tighter the security.” Kersten also choses not to note the peaceful — and sometimes creative — protest by 100,000 people the Sunday before RNC2004 began.

WWW inventor fears end of free internet: “When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission.” That’s not Al Gore talking (although, for the record, Gore never made the claim), but Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who created the World Wide Web in 1989. In a recent blog posts he writes that a free internet is threatened — and along with it the kind of innovation he’s heralded — and that regulation enforcing “net neutrality” must be considered. He defines the term: “If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.” Learn more at Save The Internet.

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