I’d like to start off tonight’s edition by saying that I enjoy some of the pushback I’ve been getting in this Tech at Night series. It’s fun when someone comes here, telling me I’m all wet, then ending up admitting they’re enamored of the whole Obama regulatory apparatus. It feels good to have my pro-liberty, pro-growth, small-government positions validated like that. So to the multifaceted George Soros astroturf machine I say this: keep it coming.
And of course, one of their key talking points is that wireless competition is in danger. Consider that Radio Shack says you have nine options, and Cellular South, a carrier you might never have heard of, is suing AT&T now, while budding 4G national competitor LightSquared answers accusations it’s buying favors from Obama. It’s hard to see how the DoJ lawsuit is anything but an attempt to prop up Sprint Nextel, and hard to disagree with T-Mobile thinking its deal with AT&T will proceed on the merits.
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This is one of those weeks when all the important stuff happens at once, and there’s much to cover. I’ll start with the big national story. As I previously covered, The Eric Holder/Barack Obama Justice Department is coming after AT&T, using its own odd brand of economics to claim that the merger with T-Mobile would make the wireless market less competitive. When in fact, as history has shown with deals like Sprint/Nextel, prices are only going to come down as the market gets more competitive.
But, nonsensical as it is, the Obama administration is pressing on with the same tired thinking that gave us zero net job creation last month, and downward revisions in prior months. So let’s sweep around and look at what’s going on, what others are saying both about the news and about the prognosis, beyond the Culture of Corruption aspect I already covered.
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Hello again to those I saw in Charleston over the weekend, and hope to see you next time to those who weren’t able to make it!
While I return to California and get settled in again, it seems that some are leaving the state for good, and the hostile business climate is why. This includes the punitive Amazon Tax which has made it impossible for Amazon and others to host affiliate programs in California, destroying small businesses, slashing profits, and killing jobs. And this is a story we’re seeing again and again, up and down the state. New and higher taxes, even of the unconstitutional variety, kills jobs.
So my message to Tennessee’s Governor Haslam is don’t do it. Don’t be like us. Create a job-friendly environment, or you will only compound whatever revenue problems you have.
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Amazon’s not kidding one bit about punishing states that attempt to punish it. After Amazon sent a last ditch warning to Associates that all California Associates would be terminated in the event Governor Brown signed the budget with the Amazon Tax in it, the Governor went ahead and did it.
So, every Amazon Associate in California just got terminated, including countless small businesses scraping by in a lousy economy (11% unemployment in CA, thanks to Brown, Obama, and the ARRA). I was one of them. I got the notice at 9:45pm. For the email’s contents, see below the fold.
Democrats: Killing jobs since 1861.
Contrast with Republicans who are embracing new technologies like Skype, shunned by the Nancy Pelosi era House.
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Can we just start shooting the hackers? It seems like it’s war on the Internet these days, and the more there is for me to cover, the more work it is churning out Tech at Night!
Lulzsec denies the allies are in Baghdad the leader is arrested despite an earlier claim on Twitter that it was true.
Anyway, Shame on the Daily Mail for trying to turn a Lulzsec hacker into a sob story. He’s a criminal gangster who couldn’t hold a real job. Let him rot.
How bad is Lulzsec? Even other hacker gangs hate them. I assume it’s because others realize that Lulzsec’s insane overreach is going to bring the hammer of justice down on the entire field. Especially when they’re targeting security experts, besides. It’s true, too: The FBI is on the march here, on the heels of arrests already made in Spain, Turkey, and the UK.
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I’ve said before that the case against the AT&T/T-Mobile deal makes no sense. Not only does the historical record suggest that the merger will increase competition, but the actions of key players are the opposite of what we’d predict if the merger were expected to reduce competition and raise margins.
There’s something more to it, though. That something is astroturf pushing a basic agenda of an expanded government role in the media. Why yes, the same forces were behind Net Neutrality are now behind the anti-AT&T coalition, in addition to Sprint who wants to keep prices higher and competition lower, by preventing AT&T and T-Mobile from getting together and being more effective.
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Free Press is getting the heat. It’s been exposed through FOIA that the far left front group was secretly coordinating media strategy with people at the FCC, including Commissioner Michael Copps. So when Copps makes a statement about media regulation, Free Press’s pet issue, I have to assume they wrote it for him. Media Reform is their code for nationalization of the press, after all.
So now that they’re getting exposed, it’s almost not surprising that Free Press and their allies at the FCC are getting violent against conservatives and others exposing the truth about them.
Let me interrupt the Free Press update with some great news, though: Spain has made some arrests in connection with the Playstation Network attack I would love for every one of these antisocial online goons to get real jailtime.
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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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I hear that Free Press employees all have to see the New Orleans Saints’s old team doctor after one month on the job, because they all get turf toe by that point.
But seriously, they really are. National Journal recently wrote them up (subscription only, unfortunately) but here’s what I think the key takeaway is about the neo-Marxist organization dedicated to the nationalization of all mass media in America:
Most of Free Press’s financing is also concealed. In 2008, the group and its lobbying arm, the Free Press Action Fund, raised $5 million, including $270,330 in public contributions and $3 million from 12 major donors. The group’s Form 990 tax filings do not include the names of 11 out of 12 donors, but Internet searches revealed donations of $225,000 from the Park Foundation and $300,000 from the Ford Foundation. In the same year, the action fund spent $332,967 on lobbying and $89,855 on grassroots efforts, according to its Form 990.
What do they have to hide? Why are the supposed proponents of openness themselves so opaque? Just how do we know that George Soros and Google aren’t behind the hidden donations, as the organization acts in the interests of huge, wealthy Internet firms in the course of its net neutrality special interest lobbying?
We don’t, and until they open up, we have every reason to believe they’re a bunch of fakers who throw big, corporate money around to gin up artificial support. I mean heck, they can’t even give consistent numbers on how large they are.