hen Bob McChesney raises the alarm about a media issue, I say pay attention. Even if no one else is sounding the alarm, pay attention. Why? Because no one spends more time than McChesney engaged in the serious endeavor of figuring out how we now communicate, how we will communicate, how powerful media corporations seek to influence that communication, and how government agencies can and do fail to protect the public interest in a wide-open and wide-ranging democratic discourse.

That’s what McChesney has done with Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy.

David Cay Johnston has given us another great book full of fascinating accounts of how corporations profit not by delivering a better product or being a more efficient producer but by gaming the system. This is not a pretty picture.

Most of the industrialized world pays less for it yet gets more. There is a stark imbalance between the rich and the poor’s access to it. Enormous and powerful corporations want the government to “reform” the system by delivering them lots of customers and goodies and then staying out of their way.

I speak, of course, of broadband internet.

If you’re sick of having to pay extra for healthy foods or having few food choices beyond Coke vs. Pepsi or seeing farmers get screwed by “Big Ag,” then now’s the time to take action.