Even as I’ve said the bill is a good idea, Senate conservatives overwhelmingly voted against the Internet Sales Tax. The whole Tea Party era gang is there in the NAY column. It’s easy to see why too: guys like Mike Enzi are coming out and saying their purpose for the bill is to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. I can’t see this passing the House with the cloud of toxic rhetoric around it.
As Team Obama wavers between a bureaucrat and an actual expert for its DHS Cybersecurity head, insecure accounts are getting hammered by foreign attackers. Use good passwords. Never give the actual answers to ‘security questions.’ Keep software updated. And don’t approve random “Who unfollowed me/How much time am I wasting/Which President am I” Twitter apps!
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Sorry if you missed Tech at Night on Friday. I was under the weather. But I’m back, and with so much to review.
How about legislation, good and bad? Well, mostly bad.
- Senate Democrats continue to push for senseless regulation of 4G Internet speeds, hindering vital new technology to increase high-speed Internet competition in America. Worse, Democrat Anna Eshoo is piling on in the House.
- Mary Bono Mack continues her push on privacy and security even though I don’t really see a government role in that, at least when it comes to private sector data. High profile cases do not good models make.
- Joe Barton wants to harass Amazon now, once again proving we did the right thing in not letting him head up Energy and Commerce. Seriously: If you’re allying with a Massachusetts Democrat, reconsider.
- When government comes preaching fairness, watch out: the push for a nationally-enforced Internet sales tax continues, which of course is just the first step to a joint state-national sales tax akin to the Canadian Harmonized Sales Tax. It’ll start at just one percent, I’m telling you. “One penny, for the children,” or “for seniors,” or even “for the Global War on Terror.” And then it will grow.
- We’re deeply in debt and running a massive deficit, but it’s time for a new program on “distracted driving”!
- OK, one piece of good news: Kay Bailey Hutchison is pressing the issue in the budget supercommittee of all places. encouraging voluntary incentive auctions of spectrum is great news no matter what the context, as we need all we can get. Giving the D block, previously proven to be unwanted at auction, over to civil defense is also good news, I believe. We learned that on 9/11. Look, I’d be all for auctioning it… if we hadn’t already tried and failed.
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Oh for crying out loud. For all that Washington talks tough about getting Americans access to high speed Internet, the “supercommittee” wants to tax new spectrum licensees. That’s just what we need: make it more expensive to build out America’s wireless infrastructure in order to pay for the President and his Cabinet to hand out money to their friends and political supporters. Isn’t that special? Here’s a joint letter against it from a number of industry groups.
Then you’ve got Dick Blumenthal, Al Franken, and Amy Klobuchar, leading the charge for the Democrat-controlled Senate that hasn’t passed a budget in 900 days, but wants to get government involved on what can or can’t be called 4G wireless Internet. Great prioritization here.
Spectrum’s important, though. Merely having access to a solid Internet connection lets Americans ave lots of money every year. Not just from being able to buy online, but also from gathering information, and simply from being able to stay at home. IIA did the math and American families each can save thousands of dollars a year online. And we’re busy regulating, taxing, and harassing firms like Google and AT&T, instead of getting government out of the way of investment. Yes, I’m frustrated.
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So while there have been a number of genuine online attacks lately against the Senate, the CIA, PBS, Bioware, and more, the headlines have been full of reports of aftershocks. What seems to be going on is that existing account credentials leaked from previous attacks are being plugged into other sites, including Paypal.
Anyone who reuses passwords is vulnerable to these secondary attacks. Be careful out there.
These punks are overreaching though. Now the NSA is getting involved. These guys had a mission in life to track down and make life tough for Soviet spies. These no-life kiddies don’t have a chance.
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Even as Mary Bono Mack and Republicans fiddle with the pointless SAFE Data act that won’t actually do anything to prevent or even to deter online crime, the Internet burns with a string of further attacks. The Senate was hit twice, and the CIA was hit as well.
I thought we were the party that likes to solve crime by putting the criminals in jail? Why don’t we drop this reporting theater and get back to catching criminals blackmailing the US government and private enterprise?
Seriously? We want to jail kids who upload music to YouTube, and create a Communist China-style Internet censorship blacklist, but we’re blaming the victims of online attacks?
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Hello! There’s no one clear theme of things to discuss tonight. It’s a diverse list of topics, so let’s just muddle on through and see what’s going on.
We’ve got some good news from what the Republicans in Washington are going. On the Senate side, the side we haven’t heard nearly as much about thanks to the Obama-Reid majority there, conservative Republicans are taking key roles. Senators Toomey, Rubio, and Ayotte will join the Senate subcommittee responsible for FCC oversight. Get to it, gentlemen and lady.
Meanwhile, in the House, Speaker Boehner has come out strong against Net Neutrality, calling it a threat, and warning about follow-on regulation like the Fairness Doctrine. Committee members are active too, judging by H. J. Res. 37 by Greg Walden, Fred Upton, and the gang. This simple, readable, eight-line resolution disapproves the Net Neutrality power grab.
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The time has come for the Senate Republicans to begin thinking about what to do with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which this last cycle was run by Senator John Cornyn along with bureaucrat Rob Jesmer. Before any Republican endorses that team to go ahead and run the committee for another cycle, I urge them to consider alternatives.
The NRSC has the name and the databases to be a tremendous force for good for the party, much as the RGA was this cycle. But to do so it has to make the right decisions with those resources that it has. I submit that it could have done much better this year.
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I’ve obtained a few documents and one link which really tell us where we are in California right now. Per the polling, which has remarkably projected in California little or no TEA party/Republican/Independent/conservative backlash at all, I still see Carly having a one third shot to win this, and if we saw polling which actually demonstrated a partisan enthusiasm gap, that number would have been much higher.
Because seriously, who or what is supposed to be motivating Democrats in California this year? Moonbeam Brown, who failed last time around? Babs Boxer, who couldn’t even get the Chronicle’s endorsement? Or maybe the high unemployment is the ticket for them? Get real.
Marty Wilson, the Carly for California Campaign Manager, has made more key points about the race, in a memo to “Interested Parties” I got a hold of. Third parties do better in California than other states. They don’t do well, but they pull in a few points, and the major polls ignore them. He’s also pointed out that Proposition 19 (Cannabis legalization) was supposed to help Democrats, but it’s likely to fail now. He predicts that Fiorina beats Boxer by three.
I don’t even know what a California recount would be like, but we might see one if it’s closer than that.
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