What may be the only FCC public hearing on the Comcast-NBC merger was held Tuesday, July 13th. The following is a report from the hearing that shows how nonprofit organizations were enlisted by Comcast to distract from the possible impact if FCC approves of this media consolidation move.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hosting four public information meetings on the proposed study of the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and its potential impacts on drinking water…The meetings will provide public information about the proposed study scope and design. EPA will solicit public comments on the draft study plan.

The public meetings will be held on:

* July 8 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. CDT at the Hilton Fort Worth in Fort Worth, Texas
* July 13 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. MDT at the Marriot Tech Center’s Rocky Mountain Events Center in Denver, Colo.
* July 22 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT at the Hilton Garden Inn in Canonsburg, Pa.
* August 12 at the Anderson Performing Arts Center at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. for 3 sessions – 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT

Go below the fold for more essential information.

In George Orwell’s 1984, the slogan “Freedom is Slavery” is one of the striking expressions in the book. But, we can see from the health care debates that the opponents of health care reform, have, from the beginning in the 1940s, and right up to the present, been trying, in effect, to persuade the American people that “Freedom is Tyranny.” They’ve been telling us that the freedom to choose insurance providers is the freedom that we should always fight for, when actually that freedom is the tyranny of minimal choice of providers. They’ve also been trying to tell us that the system that would provide us the maximum freedom of choice of providers, Medicare for All, is not freedom but tyranny, because it doesn’t allow us to choose insurers. But we can see that their success in this campaign, over many years, is due to a confusion between Government-run health care and Government-run health insurance. They never make the distinction. They try to tell us that one is the other. But that is not true. They are different, and the importance of this difference is that the freedom to choose insurers is not an important freedom. But the freedom to choose providers is. And it is Medicare for All that will maximize that freedom for us. So, it is Medicare for All that we should have. And when the President and other politicians and interest groups tell us that Medicare for All is off the table, we should be very angry, because that move subjects us to the tyranny of limited choice of health care providers. And we should sustain that anger until the tyranny of the private insurance system is replaced by the freedom of Medicare for All, the freedom to choose the provider(s) we need to get well and stay that way.

from The Baseline Scenario — AIG in Review