Tech at Night: Thursday Morning Leftist Insanity Edition

On August 21, 2014, in General, by Neil Stevens
Tech at Night

Public Knowledge, one of the extreme leftists organizations pushing for socialized Internet, with Net Neutrality as the latest wedge to grow government, has been at this a while. Their former President, Gigi Sohn, even left to go work at the FCC to fight for extremism from within. And now we find out just how extreme they are.

Harold Feld, their Senior Vice President and Legal Director, has decided publicly to make fun of critics of the plan they support for government regulation of the Internet, Title II Reclassification of Internet services as … suddenly no longer information services for some reason. He decided to bring up ebola, even as right now people are actually dying of it, and it’s a fear people are actually having right now. Alinskyite tactics here, folks. Just push emotional buttons rather than engage on the issues.

Courthouse

As many of us predicted all along, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the FCC’s Open Internet order, which attempted to force “Net Neutrality” on the nation. The Open Internet order was part of a plan claimed to oppose “discrimination” but in practice would hinder ISPs from charging people for what bandwidth they use.

The FCC had previously attempted to enforce such rules illegally, but lost in the Comcast v FCC case. This time Verizon took them on, and the FCC lost again.

If we don’t win the next Presidential election, I expect an even more radical attempt next time, though a move called Title II Reclassification.

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Tech at Night

How desperate do you have to be? The radicals at Public Knowledge are trying to take credit for Republican initiatives. To claim a lefty was the ‘thought leader’ behind phone unlocking is ridiculous. That was Derek Khanna. Even Washington Post says so.

AT&T is wishing for a modern FCC so that they can innovate with the IP revolution. Instead FCC is threatening the economy by stalling, and for the basest of reasons: to try a power grab.

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Tech at Night

Ah, Free Press. One of my early favorite tech topics at RedState. One of the more visible George Soros-funded fronts, along with Public Knowledge. I have to say my early hits have been somewhat successful too, when Free Press completely gave up on Save the Internet as a fake left-right thing, instead fully integrating it with the Free Press extremist brand. Remember when they could fool solid groups like Gun Owners of America with their dishonest rhetoric?

I mean, they do still have language up that says “Organizations as diverse as the Christian Coalition for America, Moveon.org, the ACLU and the American Library Association have joined in support of Net Neutrality.” But, what? MoveOn, ACLU, and ALA are ‘diverse?’ Get real. Christian Coalition is the only right-wing fig leaf they have left, and Christian Coalition isn’t exactly known as a small-government group, nor a tech policy leader. Come on. I won, they lost. Net Neutrality was exposed as a single-party, left-wing effort, like so many others of the extremist Obama regulators. Time to… Move On.

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Tech at Night

Good news, everyone! Kay Bailey Hutchison and Senate Republicans were able to help defeat the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act once again.

Bad news, everyone! We lost the Presidential election, so President Obama is almost sure to try to defy the Congress, which won’t even pass the idea through one house, let alone both to make it a law. He’s going to try to implement this through executive order!

Meanwhile it falls to the Congress to investigate actual foreign threats in the digital theater.

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Tech at Night

Why Mitt Romney must win the election: Dianne Feinstein is urging Barack Obama to defy the Congress, which refused to pass the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act, and rule by decree on the matter.

And I know it’s a lot of inside baseball, some of the details of which I’m not entirely up on, but the FCC has been making hay before the election, and it’s not even pretending to make sense. Much as I’ve previously noted the left-wing advocacy groups do, the FCC uses whatever argument it must for the immediate issue at hand. Consistency across issues is not required.

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Tech at Night: The left’s war on spectrum.

On May 19, 2012, in General, by Neil Stevens
Tech at Night

The FCC and the radicals are at war with the secondary spectrum market. Gigi Sohn even tried to make the point at the Less Government debate that license holders don’t own spectrum. That’s true. They own the licenses. That’s where property rights come in.

So it’s disappointing to see Democrats still piling on against Verizon even as the push begins to go after Dish. As an aside, to Koch-funded groups ever get called “public interest groups” the way Soros-funded groups do?

Marco Rubio does not want the UN regulating the Internet. Good on him.

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Tech at Night

In case you missed it, Friday’s Tech at night featured Q&A with Rep. Steve Scalise. Don’t miss is now.

Team Soros, assemble! Remember when it was “wrong” for AT&T to get spectrum by buying T-Mobile? Remember when I said it should be allowed because the Obama administration and the radicals were making it too hard to get spectrum any other way? Vindication, baby: The left unites to fight Verizon buying spectrum another way. Before the excuse was to prevent industry consolidation. Well, Verizon is buying from cable companies, not wireless phone providers.

Note that Verizon has strongly refuted their claims, including the dangerous, crypto-socialist idea that the FCC should be allowed to dictate to Verizon and Comcast an alternate transaction. Such as one to benefit T-Mobile.

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Tech at Night

FCC reform advances in the House. Greg Walden’s FCC Process Reform Act is a needed bill, so I’m glad that it went from committee to the floor, and took minimal modification in passing. I like that it got an extra poke at FCC being more closed on FOIA requests than even CIA.

Locking in the reforms is important, and CTIA is right in saying we need a “more transparent, predictable regulatory process.”

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Nima Jooyandeh facts.