Here a few updates in the intersection of Internet, the law, and politics:
Free Press is still being hypocritical: They took out a full page ad denouncing (in true Communist style) FCC Chairman Genachowski for having one closed door meeting with the likes of AT&T and Verizon. Free Press has had over 30. By their own standard, the FCC has sold out to the neo-Marxist Free Press itself, not to ISPs.
FCC plans threaten the recovery: The Hill warns that 500,000 good jobs in the industry could be lost if the FCC proceeds as Free Press demands. Net Neutrality and Title 2 “Third Way” Deem and Pass reclassification must be stopped.
No, really, Free Press is two faced about the FCC, and is holding themselves and ISPs to a double standard. Communists get to do what they want, but people who create good jobs in America have to sit in silence as the industry is attacked with crushing regulation, if they get their way.
Remember the Andrew McLaughlin Emails? Timothy Carney points out that they reveal the White House to be violating the pledge to attack special interest lobbying.
California’s going to have a busy ballot in November. In addition to voting for Governor, Senator, and more statewide offices than you can shake a stick at, we’re going to have a long list of initiative statutes and constitutional amendments to deal with.
One of the more interesting ones is numbered 19. Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, if passed will legalize small time use, cultivation, and possession of cannabis for all Californians, instead of just those with doctor’s notes.
The first thing many critics of the initiative point out is that 19 can’t change federal law. That is true, but what it will do is turn California authorities into non-combatants on that front of the federal Drug War. That’s important, because according to Ballotpedia 99% of all cannabis arrests in America are by state officials, not federals. Without state cooperation, the federal cannabis prohibition will be, for all but the most high profile distributors, de facto repealed.
California is a sovereign state, and if we want to leave enforcement of federal law to the federals, we have every right to do that. If the FBI wants to start rounding up every idiot 16 year old who messes around with dope after school, instead of going after terrorists and international gangs, let them. But if Proposition 19 passes, that’s not our state government’s problem anymore.
The only factor in my mind that determines whether Proposition 19 should pass or fail is whether the policy is the right thing to implement. I personally don’t favor a sweeping new set of taxes combined with the legalization of a socially corrosive drug, and so I will vote against it. But standing up for expanded DC power at the expense of the states will be the last thing on my mind when I vote no.
Free Press, the Communist organization founded with the goal of “media reform,” which should be read as the nationalization of mass media in America, is still shouting about the great injustice at the FCC. That injustice is, of course, the shocking revelation that the FCC is meeting behind closed doors with industry stakeholders before making any firm decisions about the Internet, and in particular the Title II Deem and Pass reclassification plans to regulate the entire Internet in America.
Free Press wants you to think there’s something corrupt about this, though as Politico points out, Free Press itself is still taking part in the meetings. Some animals are more equal than others, I suppose.
Yes, inspired by Youtube’s own RoahmMythril, I’ve tried a no damage, Buster only run of Cut Man. And somehow, I succeeded, though I had to learn actually HOW to beat (without getting hit) the nearly patternless Cut Man along the way.
It doesn’t matter that nearly all House Republicans are against it, and a good number of Democrats besides. It doesn’t matter that ATR is against it, CNBC warns it could “kill the Internet,” or that we just don’t need it.
The FCC has gone ahead and put out a Notice of Inquiry to go ahead with Deem and Pass reclassification of ISPs away from being “information services” under the law, which was the plainly obvious intent of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. You see, in Comcast v. FCC, the courts have strictly limited how much regulation the FCC can do of information services. So, the FCC is going to declare that ISPs are now phone companies, and regulate accordingly.
Continue reading »
Welcome to the fourth and final part of the series (See I, II, and III to get up to speed with what’s going on here).
Brief summary: Andrew McLaughlin is Deputy White House CTO, and has been reprimanded by the White House for inappropriate relations with his former employer, Google. Due to a Google Buzz security hole, wide-eyed observers at Big Government noticed that McLaughlin was still very cozy with Google through his Gmail account. This led to a FOIA request for those emails, and now I’m reading them from an InsideGoogle.com release.
On to Part III of that release.
Continue reading »
We continue now from Part I and Part II of the series. InsideGoogle.com has the emails between Andrew McLaughlin and his contacts in Google, all the while serving as Deputy White House CTO, in a 3 PDF set, and I’m now starting on the second file.
Continue reading »