LET THEM EAT TV
According to William Neikirk of the Chicago Tribune, buried inside the legislative package of current spending reductions in Medicare and Food Stamps is a 3 billion dollar fund to provide free digital TV converters to people who have analog only television. Soon all of the major TV networks will have gone digital and many people with old analog TV sets (mostly the poor) will be unable to receive television.

The reason given for this spending proposal is that the legislators don't want to deny Americans their right to TV. However, we might ask why the broadcast industry would propose such a generous outlay of taxpayer's money? Could it have anything to do with the potential numbers of new subscribes to digital media (i.e. cable or satellite TV?)

Interesting questions - the poor get the free TV boxes but how do they pay the monthly access bill? Will they have to further cut into their food and medication budget?

Perhaps what is most disturbing, however, is that the coupling of this legislation with reductions in spending for basic necessities such as health care and alleviation of hunger clearly demonstrates just how far we have come as a nation in reordering our priorities towards those less fortunate.

Can TV truly be our compassionate answer to the needs of the poor? And how effective will it have to be to distract them from untreated illnesses and constant malnutrition?

Ted Guhl
November 10, 2005

In-ALIEN-able Human Rights
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Habeas Corpus is a fundamental law in American and British jurisprudence (found in the Magna Carta) in which a court is required to command anyone who has restrained another person to produce before the court the person who is in custody and to show cause why that person is being restrained. If sufficient cause is not shown, the court is required to order the person discharged.

Habeas Corpus is essential in assuring our right to freedom from despotism.
As we are all aware, America is currently denying this fundamental right to an unknown number of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay as well as other secret jails in Eastern Europe and possibly elsewhere.

This past Thursday, the US Senate passed a measure that would deny foreigners declared to be "enemy combatants" the right to a hearing under Habeas Corpus. This disturbing precedent was amended to Senator McCain's important proposal to clearly define and stop torture.

When a person being held prisoner asks for a Habeas Corpus hearing, they are not challenging the reason why the are being held, they are asking if there is any reason?

This amendment indicates just how far some of our leaders have come in seeing anyone who is not an American citizen as undeserving of basic human rights. We preach freedom and human rights to the rest of the world and at the same time propose legislation that denies it to them in American law. This is absurd and undermines our constitution's expressed belief in inalienable human rights.


Ted Guhl
November 15, 2005