This week, the House is expected to vote on something termed, in perfect Orwellian prose, the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006." It will be the first real battle in the coming War of Internet Democracy.

On one side are the companies that pipe the Internet into our homes and businesses. These include telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon and cable companies like Comcast. Call them the pipe companies.

On the other side are the people and businesses that send Internet content through the pipes. Some are big outfits like Yahoo, Google and Amazon, big financial institutions like Bank of America and Citigroup and giant media companies soon to pump lots of movies and TV shows on to the Internet.

But most content providers are little guys. They're mom-and-pop operations specializing in, say, antique egg-beaters or Brooklyn Dodgers memorabilia. They're anarchists, kooks and zealots peddling all sorts of crank ideas They're personal publishers and small-time investigators. They include my son's comedy troupe--streaming new videos on the Internet every week. They also include gazillions of bloggers--including my humble little blog and maybe even yours.

Until now, a basic principle of the Internet has been that the pipe companies can't discriminate among content providers. Everyone who puts stuff up on the Internet is treated exactly the same. The net is neutral.

But now the pipe companies want to charge the content providers, depending on how fast and reliably the pipes deliver the content. Presumably, the biggest content providers would pay the most money, leaving the little content people in the slowest and least-reliable parts of the pipe. (It will take you five minutes to download my blog.) The pipe companies claim unless they start charge for speed and reliability, they won't have enough money to invest in the next generation of networks. This is an absurd argument. The pipes are already making lots of money off consumers who pay them for being connected to the Internet.

The pipes figure they can make even more money discriminating between big and small content providers because the big guys have deep pockets and will pay a lot to travel first class. The small guys who pay little or nothing will just have to settle for what's left. The House bill to be voted on this week would in effect give the pipes the green light to go ahead with their plan.

Price discrimination is as old as capitalism. Instead of charging everyone the same for the same product or service, sellers divide things up according to grade or quality. Buyers willing to pay the most can get the best, while other buyers get lesser quality, according to how much they pay. Theoretically, this is efficient. Sellers who also have something of a monopoly (as do the Internet pipe companies) can make a killing.

But even if it's efficient, it's not democratic. And here's the rub. The Internet has been the place where Davids can take on Goliaths, where someone without resources but with brains and guts and information can skewer the high and mighty. At a time in our nation's history when wealth and power are becoming more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, it's been the one forum in which all voices are equal.

Will the pipe companies be able to end Internet democracy? Perhaps if enough of the small guys make enough of a fuss, Congress may listen. But don't bet on it. This Congress is not in the habit of listening to small guys. The best hope is that big content providers will use their formidable lobbying clout to demand net neutrality. The financial services sector, for example, is already spending billions on information technology, including online banking. Why would they want to spend billions more paying the pipe companies for the Internet access they already have?

The pipe companies are busily trying to persuade big content providers that it's in their interest to pay for faster and more reliable Internet deliveries. Verizon's chief Washington lobbyist recently warned the financial services industry that if it supports net neutrality, it won't get the sophisticated data links it will need in the future. The pipes are also quietly reassuring the big content providers that they can pass along the fees to their customers. Will the big content providers fall for it? Stay tuned for the next episode of Internet democracy versus monopoly capitalism.

Tax bills now wending their way through the House and Senate would cut about $60 billion in taxes next year. But there's a huge difference between the two. The biggest item in House bill is a two-year extension of the president's tax cuts on stock dividends and capital gains. The House bill doesn't touch what's called the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). By contrast, the biggest item in Senate bill is temporary relief from the AMT. But the Senate bill doesn't extend the dividend and capital gains tax cuts.

No legislative choice in recent years has so clearly pitted the super-rich against the suburban middle class. Most of benefits of the House's proposed extension of the dividend and capital gains tax cuts would go to the top one percent of taxpayers, with average annual incomes of more than $1 million. Most of the benefits of the Senate's cut in the AMT would go to households earning between $75,000 and $100,000 a year, who would otherwise get slammed.

The AMT was enacted more than three decades ago to prevent the super-rich from using tax breaks to avoid paying income taxes. But it's now the super-rich who are making off like bandits, while the AMT is about to hit the middle class. That's because the AMT was never indexed to inflation, which means it's starting to reach taxpayers considerably below the super-rich.

This year, the AMT will affect more than three million middle-class taxpayers who will no longer be able to deduct state and local taxes or use the child tax credit. Next year, if not adjusted, it will affect ten million more taxpayers. So unless the Senate version of the new tax bill prevails, middle-class taxes will rise -- even as the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 continue to reduce taxes on the very wealthy.

Here's where things get politically interesting. Both groups -- the super-rich and the upper middle class -- have lots of political clout in Washington, especially in Republican circles. So as these two tax bills move on a collision course, the multi-billion dollar question is: Which group will win?

The likely answer: Both! Here's betting the Senate and House will compromise by extending the dividend and capital gains tax cuts and cutting the AMT. It's an elegant compromise, of the sort Washington is skilled at making. There's only one problem. With it, the budget deficit will explode even more.

The underlying question is, who ends up paying for Iraq, the Katrina cleanup, the Medicare drug benefit, homeland security, everything else? If the House has its way, it won't be the super-rich, who will get their capital gains and dividend tax cuts extended. If the Senate gets its way, it won't be the middle class, who would otherwise be hit by the AMT. If the House and Senate compromise by giving both groups what they want, there's only one group left.

That group is the poor and near-poor. Cut more taxes on the super-rich and the middle class, and the only way Congress can say it's grappling with the soaring budget deficit is to cut more programs for the poor. That means fewer food stamps, less Medicaid and vanishing housing assistance.

Of course, this won't be nearly enough to shrink the deficit. So in order to extend the tax breaks for the rich and to avoid the AMT, America will have to rely even more on foreigners -- from whom we're already borrowing more than $2 billion a day.

In the end, it will be our kids and grandchildren who get the tab, because they'll have to pay foreigners back. And our current political leaders? They couldn't care less -- because by then, they'll be long gone.

You didn't hear much at the Republican Convention about jobs and wages, because job growth has stalled and wages are stagnant. But you did hear about something Republicans are now calling the "Ownership Society." The notion is to expand private ownership through more tax cuts on capital investments, tax credits for saving and privatized Social Security.

Sounds nice, but here's the problem: The Republican rhetoric assumes most Americans can save and invest. The reality is, most Americans are deep in debt. Before they can join the "Ownership Society" they've got to pay their credit card bills, their rising variable-rate mortgages and their auto loans. After that, there's no money left because jobs are in short supply and wages are stuck in the mud.

The Commerce Department reported this week that personal incomes rose a measly one-tenth of one percent in July, the lowest rise in almost two years. And – given rising prices for food, fuel and health insurance – consumers spent more than they earned. So last month, Americans went even deeper into debt. The result: Less ownership, not more.

It's true that more than half of American households now own stocks in corporations. But for most, it's just a few thousand dollars worth. And the total value of their current portfolio is less than they invested. They got lured into the stock market during the late '90s when stock prices were pumped up with accounting steroids.

The fact is, an Ownership Society based on the stock market would be a casino. The Bush administration would like you to put your Social Security payments into the stock market, but beware. If your timing is bad, you could find yourself retiring in a bear market. It's happened before. That's one of the reasons Social Security – as social insurance – was invented.

Face it: The Republican "Ownership Society" is hokum. Ownership of America is now more concentrated than since the days of the Robber Barons of the 19th century. The richest 1 percent of America owns more than the the bottom 90 percent put together.

There are only two ways to reverse this trend, neither of which the Bush administration will support. The first is to enact a progressive tax on wealth – say, one-tenth of 1 percent per year, on those who own the most. Right now, the only wealth that's taxed is real property. The property tax is often regressive because poor and working-class families tend to cluster in their own communities, which means they pay through their noses for schools and local services.

A fairer system would tax total wealth, and it would be administered nationally. Revenues could be distributed to communities on the basis of population – enabling poor communities to have good schools and better services. If George Bush ever suggests this, I'll eat my spinach.

The second way to reverse the concentration of wealth in America is with an educational system that assures that every American can make the most of his or her God-given talents and abilities, and become rich one day if that's what she wants. But that's not what Bush has done. The administration has left the "No Child Left Behind Act" woefully underfunded, so states don't have enough money to respond to children who are left behind in lousy schools. And the administration has cut funds for job training, making it even harder for today's workers to get the skills they need to get ahead.

I'm all in favor of a real Ownership Society. But that's not at all what Republicans are selling.

This commentary originally appeared on Marketplace, public radio's only daily business news program and is reprinted via a special arrangement between TomPaine.com and Robert Reich. Marketplace is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and is heard on 322 public radio stations nationwide.  

Will the war on terrorism enhance globalization, further immersing America in the global economy? Or will it cause us to retreat or try to retreat from the rest of the globe?

At first glance, the war seems to have generated a flowering of multilateralism. Western Europe and America haven't been closer since World War II. Suddenly, it seems we're also close allies of Russia, China, Pakistan, even places Americans hardly knew existed six weeks ago, like Uzbekistan.

And with political alliance comes economic integration. There's even a move afoot to increase trade with Pakistan. The administration is pushing Congress harder than ever for authority to move trade treaties without amendment.

Yet, most of this is symbolic. In fact, terrorism is already causing America and other advanced nations to step back from globalization. You can see this reflected in the steep drops in global equities, higher interest rates on bonds of emerging markets, and higher insurance costs in doing business abroad. Why? Because of the added risks of a world threatened by terrorism.

Or just look at the bottlenecks at our borders. Inspections of cargo inside trucks and tankers are dramatically slowing the flow of foreign parts and supplies, which is forcing American companies to stock more inventory and consider shifting some of their suppliers to the United States.

Foreign travel is down, not only among tourists but also corporate executives and staff. And the costs of providing security for overseas staff are rising.

You can bet on tighter controls over immigration to the United States. Legal immigrants accounted for more than a third of the growth of America's work force during the last decade. But those days may be over.

And don't expect a major new round of global trade talks to emerge from the World Trade Organization meetings, beginning November 9th. Many poorer nations are feeling the double punch of a slowing global economy and political unrest at home. They want rich nations to open their borders to exports of agricultural commodities, textiles and steel. But rich nations, including the United States, aren't in any mood.

Just last week, the Commerce Department's International Trade Commission found that America's steel industry has been seriously injured by foreign steelmakers, clearing the way for the White House to impose higher tariffs and quotas on foreign steel.

The irony, of course, is that the best way to fight terrorism over the long term is to give young people in poorer nations reason to believe they can make it in the new global economy. A retreat from globalization is exactly what the terrorists want.

Robert Reich, U.S. secretary of labor from 1993 to 1997, is University Professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University, and founder and national editor of the American Prospect.

The righteousness of our cause shouldn't prevent us from asking why so many people around the world who aren't terrorists hate America and from seeking ways to reduce their hatred. Recognizing America's past failing in this regard isn't justifying terrorism. Finding means of ameliorating the hatred isn't appeasing terrorists. Rather, it's looking at terrorism's larger context -- the soil in which it has taken root -- and examining our role in helping to create those conditions or allowing them to endure.

Here's where America's political and intellectual left and right seem incapable of reasoned debate. Much of the left is still bemoaning America's Cold War support of anticommunist dictators -- the shah, Mobutu, Somoza, Greek colonels, Korean generals, Pinochet, Marcos, Armas, the mujahideen -- and our nation's gruesome record advising them, training their death squads, schooling and equipping their torture specialists, and helping them squirrel away their vast wealth. Given this history, the post�September 11 effulgence of American flags, patriotic hymns, and "freedom and democracy" bromides offered by American politicians strikes many on the left as dangerously ahistoric if not downright hypocritical.

The right dismisses this sordid history as irrelevant to the current crisis and accuses anyone on the left who dwells on it as "blaming America" for terrorism. Both sides are wrong: the left for suggesting that this history should make us any less determined to fight Islamic extremism and the right for assuming that this record has no bearing on why much of the third world is hostile toward us. Of course, we must proceed against terrorists with full force. Yet it's also important to understand that our checkered history has shaped the understandings of many poor nations whose cooperation we need in order for that force to be effective and many of the world's poor who are both attracted to radical fundamentalism and repelled by American bullying.

This blaming-versus-understanding terrain is also where American backers and critics of Israel butt heads. Backers don't want to admit that part of the third world's animosity toward the United States comes from its unswerving support for an Israeli government that's been assassinating Palestinian leaders, bombing Palestinian towns, demolishing Palestinian homes, and expanding Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Critics, meanwhile, fail to acknowledge the immensity and randomness of the violence aimed at Israeli Jews, and their legitimate worries about surviving in a region whose hostile Arab population is growing quickly. Here, too, much of this debate is beside the point. It's time for the United States to pressure Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat to resume the peace process with an eye toward a separate Palestinian state on the West Bank. Indeed, the United States and the West may have to take a stronger role in creating that state. Without it, continued hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians will only further inflame the Muslim world.

Finally, we have to think through our responsibilities as the world's only remaining superpower. America-firsters insist that we have no obligation to anyone beyond our borders and should act only where our national interest is directly at stake. This entails expanding global trade, stabilizing the world economy through the International Monetary Fund, defending ourselves against missiles from rogue states, and fighting terrorism that threatens domestic security. Globalists say that we have more important moral duties: We must fight genocide wherever it breaks out; share our wealth and knowledge in order to save the lives of 50 million people a year -- 12 million of them children -- who will otherwise die of preventable disease or malnutrition; and bear our rightful share of the cost of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, improving working and living conditions in the third world, and reversing the trend toward greater inequality between rich and poor nations.

Considering the larger context of terrorism, each of these positions has part of the truth -- but again, neither is sufficient. America-firsters are correct that the national interest is America's paramount concern, but globalists correctly focus attention on the many ways in which the United States can play a more constructive role in the world. Spreading prosperity and relieving human suffering are in our national interest to the extent that they reduce the anger felt by many of the world's poor toward rich and powerful America while creating opportunities for the poor to share the benefits of the global economy. It's the same lesson we learned from rebuilding war-ravaged Europe and Japan after the Second World War, when an emerging Soviet threat prompted us to take a broader view of national security. The terrorist threat should cause us to think no less generously. Identifying and responding to the root causes of terrorism in no way justifies the horror that terrorists inflict; nor should doing so be seen as a means of appeasing them. To the contrary, it's part of a long-term strategy to eradicate them. Ultimately, terrorism cannot be rooted out by anything other than its roots.

Britain's Tony Blair, who has offered the most eloquent justification for why we are at war against terrorism, promised during his first campaign for prime minister to be "tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime." It was possible and desirable to do both. It's the same with the current war, which must be fought on two fronts: We must be brutally tough on terrorism but equally tough on its causes.

Robert Reich, U.S. secretary of labor from 1993 to 1997, is University Professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University, and founder and national editor of the American Prospect.