Coverage of Iraq has plummeted, because people in power no longer want to talk about it suddenly. Journalists should be over there demanding front-page coverage, lead-story coverage every day. They should be demanding that no politician running for federal office can go to bed until they say what the hell they're going to do about Iraq and what how accountable they are for it.

But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.

Maybe if you and ten of your friends could pool your savings and borrow some money and actually buy some obscure station in Sonoma, and then take some chances and have some fun.

But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

In many respects, we now live in a society that is only formally democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena. In our society, corporations and the wealthy enjoy a power every bit as immense as that assumed to have been enjoyed by the lords and royalty of feudal times.

As the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic force in society.

The range of debate between the dominant U.S. [political] parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the business class.