Consider what happened in September [09], when the insurance industry released a study purporting to show that reform would cause insurance premiums to skyrocket. The Senate Finance Committee—the logjam in the legislative process—was set to vote on its bill in less than 48 hours. The study, commissioned by the insurance lobby and conducted by a private accounting firm, represented a clear effort to undermine support. It was the kind of move that lobbying groups make all the time—and, in the old days, it might have worked, since nobody would have seen through the study’s tilted assumptions until, as with McCaughey’s old article, the damage had been done. But within hours of its publication, several blogs, including this one, had published critiques showing just how flawed the study was. The critiques circulated in Washington and provoked a backlash against the insurers. Wavering Democrats said they were offended by the effort at political sabotage; the Finance Committee went on to pass the bill, as it had originally planned.

Not that fact-checking was the media’s sole job over the last year. Speaking for myself, I certainly spent far more time on the more mundane task of explanation—whether it was describing how a particular policy proposal might work or laying out the political dynamics of a particular moment. Occasionally this writing got a lot of attention, because it included a reporting tidbit that qualified as a scoop. More often, it didn’t. But over time I came to realize that the mere sharing of information has enormous value—even to people in Washington who, you might suppose, already know what they need to know.

Indeed, one of the many lessons I learned over the last year is that, even at the very highest levels of power, people frequently operate with limited knowledge and perspective. That’s true of how they think about policy and that’s true of how they think about politics. As one high-ranking official memorably told me in February, while everybody was scrambling to salvage reform after the Massachusetts Senate race, nobody really sees the whole playing field.

[via The New Republic - Finishing ‘The Treatment’]

The secret police. The police state. Big Brother. Nanny State. Wiretapping. Subpoenas. Censorship. The Patriot Act (USA). Un-American aka Avatar according to conservatives. Flight boarding cards with special acronyms printed on them, you know then you are on the list.

New laws came quietly into effect in South Australia this week restricting the promotion and display of R-rated movies.

Source here and here. Digg.com discussion here.

New law applies to general outlets containing films with classifications lower than R18+, and not adult-only premises. [Applying] to titles for sale or rent unless those titles are quarantined from all other audiovisual materials, in an area signposted with a warning. [You will] find them in plain packaging displaying nothing more than the film’s title.

It’s censorship on the fringe, it’s censorship without the stigma of using the word. It’s even more insidious because they’re not calling it what it is. Essentially, what’s really happened here is a rather large portion of Australia has just banned hard-R movies. Technically they can still be shown, but what theater will run an R-rated movie when they can’t advertise that they’re playing it? None of them will.

First Rupert Murdoch (who is from Australia) making headlines with his wild accusations of Google stealing news. Then this new headline from Australia. Haven’t they had enough already with their proposed internet filter on ISP level? Filters are bad. That is why mainstream media exists, and is now in decline. And the public made it a public debate. Not a government decision. And public action is upon us. Other source here, and petition of the EFA here.