WhackyNation

Reconcile this one, you stupid liberals.

A brilliant man of two distinct worlds of endeavor has gone to his reward, and both worlds should pay him lasting homage. He had a tongue-twisting name, but a most friendly demeanor to go along with his brilliance.

I came to know him first as a onetime music critic, who was lucky enough to be in Washington, D.C., when he had just been named conductor of the National Symphony. In a concert at the Kennedy Center, he mesmerized an audience and this critic, as well, with his superb performance, not only as the conductor but also as the cello soloist playing one of my favorites, the Bocherini Cello Concerto.

I would hear him in concert several more times after that, and each time seemed to be even more superb than the previous performances. He was not only a fine conductor but it was also quite clear that he was the finest cellist in the world, one who rivaled the earlier master cellist, Pablo Casals.

However, it wasn’t only as a conductor and cellist that Rostropovich excelled. He was a historic figure for another extremely important reason. In his native Russia, he came to despise the old Soviet Union and its Communist dictators. Among his teachers and, later, his contemporaries, were two of the legendary names in Russian music, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.

Early on, Rostropovich signified he was totally opposed to Communism and, even more important, the Soviet leaders’ stranglehold on all things cultural. Composers had to toe the line and produce works that were designed to glorify the Communist spirit, whatever that is.

Shostakovich adhered to the Kremlin rulings, despite the fact that they were nebulous and in no way related to composing new classical works. But the clever Prokofiev hid his disdain for Communism by investing most of his new works with musical humor — something the thick-headed Soviet leaders didn’t understand, fortunately for Prokofiev.

Rostropovich, on the other hand, refused to hide his antagonism for the Red Party and its officials. He voiced his opposition on many occasions and, eventually, fled from his once-beloved Russia to take up residence in the Western world — thereby enhancing the music of the Western world.

His courage in turning his back on the Kremlin and its dictators was not only a boon to music in general. It was an enormous encouragement to those he left behind in Russia. Undoubtedly, his brave example helped fuel the new freedom that grew in Russia and helped overthrow the Soviet Union.

When I first interviewed Rostropovich, he was remarkably friendly and anxious to discuss his music and even his “escape” to freedom. But it seemed to me that his eyes beamed brightest when he detailed the day he first returned to his beloved — and free — Russia to see his old friends and to note the relaxed nature of the newly freed Russian people.

Mstislav Rostropovich, called Slava by his friends, died last Friday, April 27, in Moscow and was to be buried in a cemetery near the graves of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Although he will be honored in his native land, Slava belongs to the ages in my mind. The man of two worlds merits the plaudits and bows of the people in both of them.

You’ve heard the lament before. And you will hear it again. Many political observers keep saying that primary elections across the land are not very exciting and don’t charm voters into showing up at the polls. Maybe the failure of those very same observers to provide responsible election data is partly to blame.

However, as a lifelong news-media worker and a close observer of politics and elections myself, I want to know why the so-called experts who write or talk about politics insist that candidates and the ballot issues must be “exciting” to get out the vote — and, more important, to get the best results in the voting tallies.

Where does it say in our federal and state constitutions that elections are another form of show biz or a ball game that goes to the last inning? Elections in this land of freedom and liberty are serious business. They are not entertainment or another Arnold Schwarzenegger space adventure.

Failing to vote because the “elections aren’t exciting” is nothing more than a shameful copout that causes us all kinds of trouble in the long run. It should always be remembered by every citizen with a right to vote that, as George Jean Nathan put it, “bad politicians are elected by good citizens who don’t vote” — or, I hasten to add, by good citizens who don’t bother to find out who the best candidates are or determine the facts about critical issues on the ballot.

Voting is a very small price to pay to guarantee liberty and protect all other freedoms in our democratic republic. You want real excitement on Election Day? Then how about the excitement that would accrue for each of us if we were to be denied the right to vote in the first place?

That’s what revolutions are made of, and, of course, they could be described as being “exciting” — deadly exciting. But we don’t need a new revolution, not yet anyway. We already have the right to vote for whomever we choose, a right that was won for our side through a revolution more than 240 years ago.

So, all you couch potatoes who don’t plan to vote the next time a primary comes around, turn off the TV set or the radio for a half hour or so and exercise the greatest privilege you and other free people have in this world — the right to vote. Oh, and by the way, would you mind doing a little homework the next time out and study the backgrounds of all the candidates and the issues on the ballot?

While I’m at it, I want to repeat a suggestion I have made many times in print, on TV and radio broadcasts, and in speeches I have delivered on the lecture circuit. As an added inducement to voters to show up on primary and final election days, I have proposed a “reward,” if you will, for being a good citizen.

The reward might consist of, say, a tax deduction that could be awarded in several ways. For instance, if you’re a home owner, a small deduction in your property tax could be allowed each time you take the time and effort to show up at the voting booth and exercise your rights as a citizen.

Or, if you aren’t a home owner or property owner, that small reward could be granted through a government-approved coupon given to the voter — a coupon that could be redeemed anywhere. That may not be exciting, but it would be “rewarding.”

If my old friend, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, had succeeded in being re-elected governor of Washington State in 1980, she would have electrified the state — and the rest of the nation — with a series of innovations that would have made the state one of the most inventive and progressive in the U.S.

I acknowledge that many of the new ideas were mine, but as Governor Ray’s chief policy adviser, we had put our heads together in an imaginative look at the state’s future. One of the proposals she was prepared to make if re-elected was one I suggested and which she eagerly adopted.

It was a proposal to make Washington the second state in the Union to switch to an unicameral legislature patterned somewhat after the system adopted by Nebraska several years earlier. I had done a study of Nebraska’s one-house legislature and found that it was working extremely well — and, what is most important, saving the state millions of dollars, as well.

In my years as Governor Ray’s adviser, I was astounded by the problems she had with a two-pronged legislature. It was and still is a lumbering two-headed giant, whose political ramifications make governing so difficult that the net result is that virtually little of great value to the people is ever accomplished, except the continual raising of taxes, something the politicians do very well and very often.

The duplicative committee system in the present legislature is one of the major drawbacks to effective and timely government. I could never understand why an important issue had to be debated, tortured, and invested with many political “favors” in a Senate committee, then given similar treatment and made even worse by a similar committee in the House — or vice versa.

I saw so many good ideas emasculated and shorn of their real value in the four years I spent in Olympia that I wondered how in the world a politically poisoned legislature with two combative houses can accomplish anything of value in the few months it is in session. It was like watching a wounded centipede crawl interminably in a garden patch.

Yes, you might say, but that’s the way our forefathers created our system of government. They created a Congress with a Senate and a House, something they apparently inherited from the British system of a House of Commons and a House of Lords. There is no reason that all 50 states shouldn’t reconsider and institute single-body legislative governments.

I would hasten to add that even Congress would be a much better governing body if it were unicameral. That would require an immense rewriting of the U.S. Constitution, a project that might take forever to accomplish and probably would never happen because of tradition and the time element. But we can dream, can’t we?

Dixy and I both thought the unicameral system was a natural for a truly progressive state like Washington, and it was No. 1 on the list of recommendations she would have made if she had been re-elected to a second term. But it wasn’t to be, and I think the state is worse off because it never happened. One of these days, I’ll take up all the other new ideas Dixy and I were prepared to make in that second term that didn’t materialize. Some of them are real shockers — but worth considering.

The newspaper headline read: Summer bummer: $4 a gallon?” If she were alive today, my old friend, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, would undoubtedly be playing the familiar game of “I told you so.” She was never given to bragging, but she could have pointed directly to an extremely important report she once submitted to the President of the United States.

I have recounted her experience in detail in my newly published book, She Should Have Been President; The Wisdom of Dixy Lee Ray, and I will offer a brief repeat here because it is perfectly in line with the “I told you so” game she might have played with regard to the outrageously increasing cost of gasoline to American motorists.

Back in 1973, President Richard Nixon called Dixy to a meeting in the Oval Office. It was the time of a national energy crisis brought on by the shortage of gasoline. Dixy was the chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which was staffed by many of the brightest scientific minds in the nation.

Nixon asked Dixy, a world-renowned marine biologist, to come up with a plan to make America self-sufficient in energy of all kinds. Dixy put her A.E.C. scientists to work on the project and also summoned other highly reputed scientists from industry and the colleges and universities to help with the project.

Six months later, Dixy returned to the Oval Office and handed Nixon the finished project, a brilliant proposal for a new U.S. strategy on all forms of energy. She told Nixon that “total self-sufficiency” was not a wise idea but that a plan to end our dependency upon foreign oil and other products was doable.

The plan would have authorized Congress to forge ahead with an end to the unfortunate ban on oil refineries, a resumption of the stalled program for more nuclear power plants, and renewed efforts to explore other energy sources — such as solar power, wind power, and all other potential producers of energy.

Nixon thanked Dixy for her extraordinary effort, but she saw that he seemed listless and no longer interested in the energy shortage. Little wonder. The Watergate scandal had already broken, and Nixon knew then, late in 1973, that his days as President of the U.S. were near an end. In fact, he never submitted Dixy’s plan to Congress, and it is probably still sitting there on a shelf of the Oval Office.

Had her plan for ending the energy shortage been adopted by Congress, we would no longer be dependent upon countries in the Middle East, South America, and elsewhere for a supply of oil. Also, we would not now be embroiled in Iraq or any other nation in the Middle East, Asia, or South America.

At the same time, many more refineries would have been built, and gasoline would now be substantially lower in price than the coming $4-a-gallon envisaged by the newspaper headline. And, with more nuclear-power plants on line, energy would be plentiful and much lower in cost than at present.

Yes, the Watergate scandal cost a President his job, but it did much more damage than that. It reminds us that an enterprising member of Congress could do his nation a great favor by finding Dixy’s report and getting it passed into law by Congress. I have tried to get the ball rolling with letters to members of the Washington State delegation, but, thus far, there has been no response. Dixy would have said: “I told you so.” What a tragedy!

Despite a large debt of more than $100,000 that remains to be paid to the city of Seattle for past parades, the city’s gay community is determined to continue its annual “Gay Pride Parade” in 2007.   The gays’ sponsoring organization, Seattle Out and Proud, has been staging the parades each year since 1975. 

However, some members of the group remained skeptical recently and tried to persuade the organization’s board to cancel this year’s parade, along with the gay festival that accompanies it each year in Seattle.  They also suggested that Out and Proud file for bankruptcy and dissolve the group.   

Disregarding the skepticism, the board decided it would go ahead with this year’s parade and festival and hope that the debt could be erased somehow in the coming months.  The board pointed to what some observers have said is the “great popularity of the parade with residents.” 

I don’t know how the gay board is going to pay off its debts to the city this year and in the future.  But I have to dispute the belief that the parade is very popular in Seattle.  Frankly, I hope the gay community will reconsider its past and prepare a wholly different future, not only in Seattle but in cities across the nation. 

I’ve seen several of the parades from time to time, and I have been appalled by the displays of gays taking part in them, their gaudy dress, and their embarrassing demeanor.  I know, too, that many homosexuals in the community, both male and female, dislike the parades and festivals and are embarrassed by their outlandish displays. 

A gay who has been a longtime friend is specially mortified by the annual festivities and, with a deep frown, said to me one day:  “I’m not a freak, and these parades and festivals make all gays and lesbians appear to be freaks.”  He is a successful businessman and readily acknowledges he is gay. 

I feel extremely sorry for him and the many other reticent homosexuals who disdain awkward exhibitions like those seen in the annual gay parades and festivals.  In fact, I have known a great many gays, particularly in the arts and entertainment field I covered for years as a critic, and most are extremely talented individuals and fine citizens. 

I believe homosexuals are the victims of biological mishaps and that they cannot be blamed for the fact that they are born gay.  Some theological extremists insist that gays could be “cured,” if they wished.  But I don’t buy that.  Most biological scientists agree that homosexuals are accidents of nature and cannot reverse their gayness. 

Also, I don’t agree with gays who demand they be given the right to a same-sex marriage in every state of the union.  However, I do believe — and I have said so in many commentaries — that all states should approve the right of same-sex couples to join in a “partnership.”  Whether the anti-gay forces like it or not, same-sex couples are going to live together and even adopt children.  And, being partners, they should have most of the  same rights and privileges states extend to man-woman marriages.  To deny them that partnership is cruel and inhumane. 

Having said all that, I still believe gay parades and festivals should be abolished and that all gays and lesbians should shun the exhibitionism that goes with them.  I have said in the past, and I repeat it now:  “Everybody should go back into the closet, because their traits and habits are nobody else’s business.”

Should governments in free, democratic nations like the U.S. that rely on a competitive economy and a capitalist system be controlling and financing news media like radio and television stations, just as the federal government in America does with the Public Broadcasting System?

My answer is a loud, unequivocal “No!” But that’s exactly what has happened in our nation, whose otherwise proud First Amendment to the Constitution promises a “free press” among other important freedoms. We also know that PBS TV and radio are decidedly on the Liberal side of political and related issues and that we have several examples of censorship of conservative issues by PBS directors.

I can already hear PBS backers, who are also apparently Liberal themselves, shout in unison that the PBS radio and TV staffers are giving the public programs they cannot get on commercial television and radio — and that they have a right to pursue the entertainment and Liberal course they do unabashedly.

I acknowledge that PBS television, at least, has offered some top-grade programs, but they are programs that could be produced by commercial television — and, in fact, are offered by a private foundation. In the Seattle area, the Classic Arts Showcase is seen at all hours of the day and night on Channel 75. I should know; it’s my favorite channel.

Only in Communist and Socialist nations — as well as in Islamic countries — are the news media totally controlled and operated by government or theocratic leaders. Voices of opposition or opinions that run counter to the policies of such governments are never heard nor seen by the people in those countries.

In commentaries like this one that I have made in the past, I have always referred to a specific example that underscores the problem. Newspapers owned and operated by private firms never complain about government control and operation of PBS and all its affiliates in radio and television across the land — most probably because most of the newspapers are controlled by Liberals.

But, just let government dare to create and control newspapers in direct competition with the private newspapers — and I am positive you would be reading cries of anguish from the privately owned dailies and weeklies, as well as demands that the government newspapers be shut down.

Should Congress pass a law forbidding government operation of any kind of news media? Absolutely! But it could never happen with the Democratic Party and all its Liberal cohorts in control of Congress. At the same time, should a private citizen or private organization file a suit charging that PBS’ TV and radio networks are in direct violation of the free-press guarantee in the First Amendment?

If such a suit is ever filed, it will be interesting to see what the Liberally influenced private news media do. Will they applaud and support the originators of the suit — or will they permit their Liberal tendencies to dictate support of the similarly Liberal government-operated and financed PBS TV and radio network?

And, finally, it would also be interesting to see what might happen when such a suit is considered by the courts, particularly the Supreme Court of the United States. bYour guess is as good as mine.

The nation’s voters have been given notice by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. If they are foolish enough to elect her President in 2008, one of the penalties that will come with that political mistake is that she has already put us all on notice that her husband, the former President, will be given the job of “roaming ambassador to the world.”

According to the Internet site, NewsMax.com, the senator was quoted as saying to a political rally at a junior-high-school gymnasium in New York: I can’t think of a better cheerleader for America than Bill Clinton, can you? He has said he would do anything I asked him to do. I would put him to work.”

She said an ambassador like her husband was precisely what the nation needed in the wake of a war in Iraq that has left America isolated and hated throughout much of the world. Then she added: I believe in using former presidents, particularly for what my husband has done, to really get people around the world feeling better about our country. We’re going to need that. Right now they’re rooting against us and they need to root for us.”

Mind you, she is talking about a former President who was impeached and who would have been kicked out of office if Congress had not been controlled by his own political party. Also, he most assuredly would have been given the boot if America’s Liberal news media had applied the pressure for completing the impeachment procedure.

Is this the man we want representing us in the capitals of the world? I think he would be the worst possible choice for the job. In fact, if the people abroad dislike and distrust us, Bill Clinton may be a large part of the reason. Let me offer just a few examples to prove my point.

First, it was his administration that refused to provide military and arms aid to Iraq’s Turks when they had the manpower to seize Saddam Hussein and end his bloody reign in the early 1990s. That would have made the Iraq war unnecessary and saved other Middle Eastern nations from an invasion by Saddam’s army.

Second, it was Bill Clinton who rejected two or three opportunities to have pro-American Arabs hand Osama bin Laden over to American authorities. Again, that would have saved New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon from the plane attacks organized by bin Laden’s terrorists — and also prevented terrorist attacks against U.S. forces abroad.

Third, Bill Clinton’s sex-capades with Monica Lewinsky and several other women in his political career have made him the laughing stock of the world — and would be an embarrassment he could not counter in the job his wife says she would give him as “ambassador to the world.”

There are many other reasons Clinton should never be the nation’s traveling ambassador, but it would take many more paragraphs than I am allotted here to detail each one. Suffice it to say that we could not afford to have him ranging worldwide to pursue the sexual peccadilloes that marked his career before and after he became President.

It has been reported that Hillary has been losing ground lately to her rivals in the race for the Democratic Party nomination. If she insists on making her husband America’s representative abroad, I think she will lose a lot more ground with independent voters and with women in general. And that would be all right with me. She won’t get my vote anyway.

As a news editor, you sometimes know when a simple story is watershed.

For instance, in 1994 18-year-old American Michael Fay was caned in Singapore for vandalism.  That story was watershed because most Americans came together on the principal that you better obey the law or be willing to pay the consequences.  I knew it the moment the story broke.  In November of that year Americans rejected liberal apologists and voted the Republican Revolution led by Newt Gingrich.

This weekend I think we witnessed another watershed story: Sheryl Crow’s global warming manifesto for toilet paper rationing will be the beginning of America rejecting the Hollywierd environmental wackos, including Al Gore.

I think the singer stepped in it when she urged all of us to use one sheet of toilet paper per bathroom visit.  Yeah, right.  What planet does she live on?

America’s reaction is at first laughter.  But the second reaction is: “Do these people really believe what they say?”  And when the realization sinks in that the answer is “yes” then there is the rethink about everything else they have been saying.  Credibility has been lost.  20 foot rise in sea levels, Mr Gore?  “Life as we know it” is disappearing?

Hyperbole loses.

Al Gore and Sheryl Crow may well become known as the “one-sheeters.”  Crow’s missive may well have sunk any hope Al Gore had regarding a presidential run.  More importantly, her tissue issue is now turning tide of global warming alarmism in this country.

As Americans question her judgement about bathroom smarts, they may think she is as full of it about global warming.  Americans will wonder what she has for brains.

And that, my friends, is the fateful beginning of this latest enviro-wacko cause being flushed down the crapper.  Mark my words.

What was the greatest human tragedy the U.S. and the rest of the world suffered in the 20^th Century? You might hasten to answer “The Second World War” or “The First World War” or epidemics like the flu pandemic that followed the first world war or the alarming loss of life and physical damage incurred in the polio epidemic in the mid-20^th Century — or one of the many other tragedies inflicted by Mother Nature.

Pick any of them and you would have guessed wrong. By far the greatest loss of human life in both centuries was caused by the environmental extremists, who persuaded the U.S. and other nations throughout the world to ban the use of the most remarkable insecticide created by science, DDT, the malaria fighter.

The ban came in the 1970s as a result of a campaign launched by the extremists, urged on by one of the most damaging books in world history, Rachel Carson’s scientifically flawed “Silent Spring.” Citing damage that was minor or non-existent, the anti-DDT forces managed to persuade political officials to outlaw the life-saving insecticide.

Before the introduction of DDT, malaria was taking the lives of approximately 3,000,000 people every year, not only in certain areas of the U.S. but mainly in poverty-stricken regions of the Far East, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Then, when DDT was applied to the mosquito-ridden swamplands and homes around the world, the deaths miraculously dropped to just a few scores a year — a fantastic victory over malaria!

When the ban on the use of DDT was imposed in 1972, the deaths from malaria began to mount once again, and today the annual death toll from the mosquito-caused disease is climbing once more toward the 3,000,000 mark and, worst of all, it threatens to rise above that figure in future years. Saddest of all, the majority of malaria victims are children.

Now, at last, a light can be seen at the end of the dark tunnel. It comes in the form of an announcement from the World Health Organization that it has endorsed the return of DDT and hopes its endorsement will persuade all nations to begin applications of the insecticide, not only to swamplands but to the interiors of homes and huts in mosquito-infested countries.

The Associated Press noted that a few countries that did not adopt the ban have continued to use DDT, and that they have not experienced the death toll recorded in other non-using countries. Also, President Bush’s $1.2 billion, five-year initiative to control malaria in Africa calls for the use of DDT in homes and swamplands of African nations.

An urgent appeal for resuming applications of DDT came from Dr. Arata Kochi, who is the director of W.H.O.’s malaria-control department. Dr. Kochi said, in a statement that was directed, in part, toward environmental organizations: Help us save babies, as you are helping to save the environment. Help us advocate for careful, limited use of indoor spraying.”

Scientists approving the return of DDT to the fight against malaria acknowledge that the pesticide must be used carefully and not over-used, particularly in agricultural areas. With careful use, they say, there is no reason for environmental organizations to continue their campaign to ban DDT.

It hasn’t happened yet, but, gradually over the years, it seems we’re beginning to see signs of that long-sought breakthrough in the hypocrisy that has dogged college sports across America. I believe the beginning of that breakthrough came about 15 or 16 years ago, and much of it happened right here in Washington State.

I remember it well, because I commented on it in commentaries I delivered on television and radio at the time.

Similar statements came from three of the most respected coaches in football. One was Johnny Majors of the University of Tennessee, another was Don James of the University of Washington, and the third was Jim Walden of Washington State University.

What they all said at virtually the same time was that most of the nation’s colleges and universities were drawing considerable cash from the box office at varsity games and that it was time the schools began compensating players for their services to help them make ends meet while attending school.

The coaches acknowledged that many of the players attend school on scholarships, but that they still needed additional funds for other expenses. Practice sessions and game days take most of the players’ free time, so they rarely have a chance to work at jobs after school hours.

The coaches’ logic made a lot of sense to me. I think the public, as well as the colleges and universities, should face the truth.

Football, basketball, baseball, and other major varsity sports are honest trades. They are certainly as legitimate as engineering, medicine, business administration, communications, or any other pursuits.

The big difference is that the major sports make a lot of money — for the colleges, that is. But none of it goes into the pockets of the young players who draw the crowds. Today we seriously maintain a year-round charade in all college sports programs that goes by the name of “amateur status.”

We continually appeal to all the players to perform for the sake of school spirit and for dear old alma mater. Why have we gone on kidding ourselves all these years? As I said, the colleges make sure that their key athletes are given scholarships so they don’t have to pay tuition costs. And a few are even given jobs, if they are able to find the time to work at them. But, for the most part, players rely on money from home or from dedicated alums to help them meet their expenses.

The methods many colleges have used to recruit and reward players have been scandalous and often don’t bear scrutiny because they would offend the students who pay their way through for four years or more. At least paying athletes for their efforts — say even $50 or $75 a month, as the coaches suggested — would begin to curb the hypocrisy.

However, I don’t think even $50 or $75 would be enough. The hypocrisy ought to be wiped out completely. I believe the varsity athletes who draw the big crowds and fill stadiums or arenas week after week should be paid at least a reasonable wage drawn from ticket proceeds.

I’m serious! The players have earned their salaries, and they risk serious injury for the sake of old alma mater. And, if they were paid out of box-office receipts, the scholarships they now receive could go instead to athletes in all the sports that don’t pay for themselves because they don’t draw large crowds.  It’s time to end the hypocrisy!

For many years, I have been saying and writing that we must soon have revolutionary changes in two main segments of American life to halt the continuing slide toward Socialism that is being engineered by Liberals and Ultraliberals. One of them is the print and broadcast news media and the other is academia, specifically the faculties of our colleges and universities.

We’ll set aside a commentary concerning the college faculties and take it up another time. This time I want to devote my attention to the news media, to which I have devoted 55 years of my working life. The revolutionary action I have proposed with regard to the news media goes by the intriguing title of “One to a Customer.”

The situation in America’s news media today is alarming and dangerous. On one hand, a few large megacorporations are swallowing up newspapers, large and small, and effectively denying a growing number of small communities of their small newspapers and their right to coverage of local news.

Soon, the nation will see the daily newspaper field reduced to just a few chains with a lock on all news coverage. Of course, the gradual decrease in advertising and circulation will some day soon force all the dailies to switch to the Internet to save their economic skins.<.

However, until that day arrives, the megacorporations will rule the roost and dictate what news will be delivered, how it will be delivered, and when it will be delivered. In order to combat the monopolies that are now controlling the printed press, I proposed long ago that an amendment be written to the U.S. Constitution declaring that no individual or firm could control more than one segment of the print or broadcast news media — hence my “One to a Customer” idea.

The growing newspaper chains would have to divest themselves of all but one of their ownerships under the “One to a Customer” amendment — thus immediately guaranteeing that no single person or corporation could monopolize the new