by Calculated Risk on 3/17/2005 10:29:00 PM

Democratic Senator and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) gave an interview to a blogger this week. The interview is worth reading and I would like to highlight a couple of points:

Sen. Reid on the budget:

... –this budget–everything is being put to the back burner except these tax cuts being made permanent. This document should be filed under fiction in the Library of Congress because they don’t include the costs of the ongoing war in Iraq, they don’t list there the tax cuts, what that cost is going to be over the years; it doesn’t take into consideration so many different things, Social Security costs, and for the first time in the history of the country, they’re doing a budget on a five year budget rather than a ten year because if you look past five years its even more bleak than the first five years.

And on the media and the Internet:

Raw Story: I think it’s significant that you’re giving an interview to us as an online site. I’m curious as to what your opinions are on the role of blogs and where you see them in the political ecosystem.

Sen. Reid:

I personally believe that much of what goes on in America today is governed by wealth and power. That if you look at what’s happened with the newspapers over the years, during the days of the founding fathers, they used to post newspapers in public squares and people who couldn’t read had the papers read to them. The Federalist Papers were a way of communicating; people read and learned. Well, when the radio came along, it changed it a little bit, but you still had the Fairness Doctrine so you didn’t have to worry. Really, the beginning came in the early 1950s; I think it was ‘52 or ‘53 when the networks decided to go to half-hour news programs. Then people stopped reading the newspapers even more. But on television you had the Fairness Doctrine.

What has happened in recent years, the Fairness Doctrine has been taken away, that is, equal time for pros and cons on an issue. And they also allowed the concentration of media power, so one station, one owner can own 1,200 radio stations. What this means is that wealth and power control most everything in this country. But one thing they do not control–wealth and power does not control the Internet. Through the Internet, regular ordinary people have a voice. That’s why I go out of my way to communicate any way that I can on the Internet and I think the blogs are a tremendously important way for the American public to find out what’s really going on.

My emphasis added.

I agree with Sen. Reid's comments on the budget and the media. Read the entire interview here.