Some people stay up late on December 31. I don’t intend to, Friday and New Year’s Eve or not. Boring, yes, I know. But until I switch to decaf coffee my sleeping habits are going to be a wreck, so I’ll just have to ride it out. And that means I want to get going right away with tonight’s stories.
Republicans are getting very loud on regulatory issues, both with the FCC and with the EPA. Fred Upton is ginning up support in Michigan for his planned House efforts to challenge EPA regulatory power grabs with respect to Carbon Dioxide, efforts that will surely influence the FCC and Net Neutrality. In addition, on Sunday morning at 9am Eastern he’s scheduled to speak with Chris Wallace on Fox, with repeats on Fox News Channel at 2 and 6pm Eastern. I am so glad he’s going out there and preparing to lead on regulatory issues.
Kay Bailey Hutchison has also called the FCC “wrong” on Net Neutrality, and is hoping to be able to get some sort of action through a Democrat controlled Senate. It won’t be easy, as she points out, but it could happen if we can swing enough Democrats to see the truth about the FCC power grab.
She also doesn’t rule out defunding the FCC’s Net Neutrality plans, a way of stopping the regulations that the President cannot veto.
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Earlier this week I mentioned a story at Safe Libraries exposing American Library Association astroturf promoting the radical Free Press agenda on Net Neutrality. Now, the ALA does not come into this debate with clean hands. The ALA has taken stands before, notably to protect terrorists from being caught by the FBI. But now they’re getting aggressive.
On the heels of this story about ALA astroturfing on Wikipedia, the ALA is attempting retaliation. They are attempting to block the Safe Libraries author from having any further access to edit Wikipedia unless his article is censored. Quoth Safe Libraries:
As a result of the publication of this blog post, apparent ALA supporters, if not ALA members or the OIF itself, have initiated action at Wikipedia that resulting in efforts to stop my editing there or to have me remove this blog post. Self-censorship, as the ALA would call it. At this moment, I have been indefinitely blocked from editing, likely in part because I have not removed this blog post.
The ALA will defend the “civil rights” of terrorists, but will silence anyone questioning the activities of the ALA. How convenient.
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Tech at Night took Christmas off (in fact I even decided not to bother to put up a post saying I was taking Christmas off), so I have some catch up to do. Looks like nine links tonight, so let’s start.
Jack Shafer at Slate of all places has made fun of Net Neutrality by detailing what might have happened had the FCC regulated information services back in 1993 instead of starting it now in 2010. Poor Marc Andreessen really does take the brunt of it, but it’s funny and enlightening at the same time.
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Some people who aren’t religious are content to leave it at that. Others feel the need to attack religion aggressively. Those people tend to get pretty egotistical, to the point that there’s a whole movement of them that calls themselves “Brights.” Because they’re smarter than you. Get it?
One of the “Bright” activists is Richard Dawkins, a mediocre popular science writer who promotes unfalsifiable theories of macroevolution. One “Bright” project he’s helped fund is the Atheist Bus, an ad campaign on buses in England. The ads read “THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.”
When I saw these ads, I thought they didn’t go far enough. If we want people to stop worrying, we should let them stop worrying about other critical issues.
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Tech at Night is starting a little later tonight than I planned. I ended up showing my brother The Greatest American Hero on Netflix. Oddly enough I had no trouble with that despite the Net Neutrality framework not having taken effect.
But yes, the big story is that the FCC voted to regulate the Internet. This has been coming for a long time, but now that it’s happened, our side is motivated like never before. Here’s a roundup.
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Tomorrow, tomorrow, the FCC is meeting tomorrow, December 21. The key item on the agenda is Net Neutrality. So of course, The FCC couldn’t keep its website up. And they want to regulate the entire Internet?
What’s at stake? Socialist plans to remake all the mass media in America in the style of Hugo Chavez. Al Franken’s bulling tactics succeeding. And overall, an unprecedented power grab online.
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The United States of America keeps the United Nations afloat. In 2009 we were assessed 22% of the budget of the UN, and paid out slightly under 24% of what was collected, thanks to the Tax Equalization Fund system*. So in practice we paid about a quarter of the UN budget. Without us, the UN has to do some serious belt tightening.
So if we’re going to keep alive the UN as we know it, spending $598,292,101 in a direct assessment and surely more in other expenses, we’d best make sure we’re getting our money’s worth. The Obama deficit has gone through the roof and we simply cannot afford frivolous luxuries anymore. If the UN is not achieving its mission, it’s time we stopped paying for it.
This month I believe the UN has finally crossed the threshold of uselessness, and it’s time we defund it.
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Super Mario Bros. Crossover is just the kind of game I should love. Especially with the inclusion of Mega Man, it’s a concept I enjoy very much. Sadly though I couldn’t really play it for ages because it’s keyboard only input, and that’s worthless. But I found Darwiin Remote last week (no typo in that name) which lets me play SMB Crossover with my Wii Remote, without even desyncing it from my Wii. So finally, I got to play the game.
Sadly, I was disappointed.
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Next week the FCC meets to make a decision on Net Neutrality. So there’s plenty going on as all sides press the FCC to do one thing or another. Some are lobbying more competently than others, though. Doing well are the Senate Republicans who prepare to fight and the incoming House Committee leadership who are getting loud on Net Neutrality and the runaway FCC.
Doing not so well are the forces of regulation caught this week making bad mistakes. First is the fringe neo-Marxist group Free Press. The Free Press tech brain trust made a terrible technical mistake on its website by sending anti-Comcast letters when they promised to send pro-Internet Takeover letters. Second we have radicals Media Access Project and Public Knowledge lying about Amazon’s Net Neutrality position, making the firm out to be taking a hardline pro-Internet Takeover position when in fact the firm supports a modest compromise.
If the radicals can’t even run their own lobbying efforts correctly, why should we trust them to run the entire Internet?
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