Showing posts with label Net Neutrality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Net Neutrality. Show all posts

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Progressive Agenda Cries Foul on Supreme Court Campaign Ruling: Remains Silent on Comcast – Time Warner Merger

Well it has been a while since anything really motivated me to post to my blog, but these items brought forth a need to ask why?  Why is the public so silent to the real loss of independent thought, personal choice and diversity?  These recent items in the national news require the reader to look for the nexus between political parties, media monopolies and big money influence over politics and social issues.
The media would have us fearful of the ability for individuals to give privately to political candidates of their own choice, but no fear is sown for mega-media monopolization.  Over the past ten years the progressive mafia have made it their business to whack anyone who they perceive to be a threat to their agenda.  Look at what happened to a Brendan Eich, CEO of Mozilla.  The fascist behavior and intolerance is on full display.  Pay attention!  Just like the actions of Mozzilla to one of their own, Time Warner and Comcast have deep ties to the Progressive Agenda and all who fail to grasp the danger of too big to fail in media, need to do their homework on how the progressive agenda is steam rolling America into a form of tyranny that she may not recover from.
Pay attention America.  While the main stream media cries foul with the left side of their mouth, their right side silently grins at the perceived brilliance of their actions that go unnoticed or heralded by their supposed opponents.  I ask why?  Do you?
YiT ~ Shelly

Supreme Court strikes down overall limits on political contributions

Published April 02, 2014 - FILE: June 20, 2013: The U.S. Supreme Court building, in Washington, D.C.AP
Supreme Court BIG TOP.jpgWASHINGTON –  The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled Wednesday that limits on the total amount of money individuals can give to candidates, political parties and political action committees are unconstitutional.
The major ruling, which was hailed by Republican congressional leaders as a First Amendment victory, removes the cap on contributions, which was set at $123,200 for 2014. It does not change limits, though, on individual contributions for president or Congress, currently set at $2,600 per election.
Chief Justice John Roberts announced the decision, which split the court's liberal and conservative justices.
“Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades – despite the profound offense such spectacles cause – it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opinion.”
The overall limits "intrude without justification on a citizen's ability to exercise `the most fundamental First Amendment activities,"' Roberts said, quoting from the court's seminal 1976 campaign finance ruling in Buckley v. Valeo.  Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the outcome of the case, but wrote separately to say that he would have gone further and wiped away all contribution limits.
Others, though, described the ruling as a major blow to vital campaign finance rules. 
Continue reading article at this link.

How Comcast Bought the Democratic Party

A huge merger brought about by high-intensity lobbying goes unopposed.

By Matthew Continetti 
 

 


The communications giant Comcast announced in February that it would buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, creating the largest cable provider in America, with more than 33 million customers. That is about one third of the U.S. cable- and satellite-television market. FCC approval is required for the merger to go into effect. Critics of the deal say it would lessen competition and lead to even shoddier customer service. They are probably right, as all of us will soon find out, because there is little chance the merger will be stopped. Comcast, Time Warner, and their political fixers have spent years preparing for this moment — by buying off the Democratic party.
Comcast, which employs more than 100 lobbyists, spent almost $19 million last year on lobbying activities. Its president and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a golf buddy of President Obama’s, and a Democratic donor who has contributed thousands of dollars not only to the president’s campaigns, but also to the Democratic party of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the DNC Services Corporation, and to Steny Hoyer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bob Casey. Roberts’s executive vice president, David Cohen, is a former aide to Democratic bigwig Ed Rendell. Cohen skirts lobbying regulations through loopholes, has raised more than $2 million for Obama since 2007, and in 2011 hosted a DNC fundraiser at which the president called him “friend.” Cohen has visited the White House 14 times since 2010, including two visits to the Oval Office. He attended the recent dinner for President Hollande of France.
Cohen plays a major role in the Comcast Foundation, which has disbursed more than $3 billion since 2001, primarily to “groups that serve African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians” and other segments of the Democratic coalition. You will be surprised to learn that many of the groups to whom the Comcast Foundation has donated now support the proposed merger. Of the $33 million Comcast has spent on political campaigns since 1989, more than half, or some $18 million, has gone to Democrats. Barack Obama is No. 1 on the list of the top ten recipients of Comcast’s largesse. There are four Republicans on the list.
Continue reading article at this link.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Judicial Watch Uncovers Link Between FCC / Net Neutrality / Progressive Organizations / Soros


Big surprise…what we all knew is verifiably true!  The best can be read in the comments section if you go to the link and check out the readers comments.  Better yet…leave one yourself.

Yours In Truth  Winking smile  Shelly


Conn Carroll: Documents show FCC coordinated 'Net Neutrality' effort with outside group

By: Conn Carroll 06/02/11 8:05 PM

Senior Editorial Writer Follow Him @Conncarroll

Documents made public yesterday by Judicial Watch describe extensive collusion by Federal Communications Commission officials with a left-wing advocacy group in a campaign to expand government regulation of the Internet.

The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch in a December 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, were created after Democrat appointees solidified their 3-2 control of the agency in March 2009.

Judicial Watch is a conservative nonprofit that specializes in using the FOIA and other avenues to expose corruption in government.

The coordination between FCC officials and Free Press, the advocacy group, was on behalf of a proposal that the agency assert authority to regulate access to the Internet as if it were a public utility in the interest of insuring "Net Neutrality."

Proponents said doing so would assure equal access for all Internet users by barring companies from offering preferred rates for higher delivery speeds. Other users, especially in communities with limited Internet access, would be forced to accept poorer service.

But critics said the proposal would actually give the FCC the first tool it needed to ultimately regulate content, and they argued that the FCC has no authority over the medium in the first place. It would be akin to forcing FedEx and UPS to treat all packages the same way the U.S. Postal Service does.

Free Press is the most vocal of a number of far-left and liberal advocacy groups that for nearly a decade have pushed numerous proposals for vastly increasing government regulation of the Internet


Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/06/conn-carroll-documents-show-fcc-coordinated-net-neutrality-effort-outside#ixzz1OBeSDjcD

Senate to Legislate Alternative Media Out of Existence?


With the 2012 campaign season just starting to wind-up, here’s the latest attempt by politicians (specifically the Senate side) to de-connect those of us who want to get our news someplace other than through the MSM celeb’s.  Start here and finish-up with the full story to keep up with their “under the radar” attempts to shut down free and unfettered news.

Yours In Truth  Winking smile  Shelly


Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the not-understanding-the-technology dept

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. A few weeks back, we noted that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons had proposed a new bill that was designed to make "streaming" infringing material a felony. At the time, the actual text of the bill wasn't available, but we assumed, naturally, that it would just extend "public performance" rights to section 506aof the Copyright Act.
Supporters of this bill claim that all it's really doing is harmonizing US copyright law's civil and criminal sections. After all, the rights afforded under copyright law in civil cases cover a list of rights: reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works or perform the work. The rules for criminal infringement only cover reproducing and distributing -- but not performing. So, supporters claim, all this does is "harmonize" copyright law and bring the criminal side into line with the civil side by adding "performance rights" to the list of things.
If only it were that simple. But, of course, it's not. First of all, despite claims to the contrary, there's a damn good reason why Congress did not include performance rights as a criminal/felony issue: because who would have thought that it would be a criminal act to perform a work without permission? It could be infringing, but that can be covered by a fine. When we suddenly criminalize a performance, that raises all sorts of questionable issues.
Furthermore, as we suspected, in the full text of the bill, "performance" is not clearly defined. This is the really troubling part. Everyone keeps insisting that this is targeted towards "streaming" websites, but is streaming a "performance"? If so, how does embedding play into this? Is the site that hosts the content guilty of performing? What about the site that merely linked to and/or embedded the video (linking and embedding are technically effectively the same thing). Without clear definitions, we run into problems pretty quickly.

Click here to continue reading...


Friday, March 4, 2011

Republican Reactive Neutrality

Republican Reactive Neutrality

Nick R. Brown

by Nick R. Brown

I feel like, “We warned you,” is not quite poignant enough.  But well…we warned you.  Those of us in the free market technology policy sector have been trying to wake up various think-tanks and Republican politicians alike to the dangers of Network Neutrality for roughly 6 years now.  We were all ignored for the most part and now the reality is starting to sink in that Republicans will have to lie in the bed they made for themselves.

Thanks should be given to a few diligent organizations like the late Progress & Freedom Foundation led by Adam Thierer, Jon Henke’s Digital Society, and Information Technology & Innovation Foundation who have beat the drum tirelessly.  In the last year Americans for Prosperity can be applauded for their efforts to educate and build up a grassroots movement.  And organizations like CATO and Phoenix Center have provided key scholarly work.

Where was everyone else?

It’s not really a complex arithmetic to figure out that if you ignore an issue that you won’t make up any ground on the issue.  Net Neutrality was essentially ignored by our side and the result was that we lost the regulation battle.  Technology policy is not sexy.  Much of it is hard to understand.  Some of the time it is difficult for those of us that love technology to understand.  We dig through it though because we have a passion for it and desire to find ways to communicate what many times is a lot of “techie jargon” into a language that normal people speak.  This is no different than me trying to understand lawyer speak or this strange medical language that people like my father speak fluently.  The reality though is that amongst policy circles, tech policy guys are still the nerds, and many times we are pushed aside, the attitude by the mainstream policy folk is one of, “Go back and play with your gadgets and stay out of the way of the important issues.”

Then what happens is everyone wakes up one day, the Net is regulated, business models are destroyed, infrastructure is in the hands of the FCC and provider side innovation is most likely about to take a dive and gents like Kevin McCarthy (CA-R) stand up and say, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?!”  This is precisely what happened earlier this week when McCarthy wanted to know why various Internet providers were not doing more to help the Republicans fight against Net Neutrality.

(more…)

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

State of Washington Congressman Rick Larsen on “Net Nuetrality”

Thank you for contacting me in regard to net neutrality. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me on this issue.
As a member of the Congressional Internet Caucus, I strongly support efforts to make access to broadband services universal in the United States. Our country must adopt a multifaceted approach to promote broadband access by helping providers expand broadband access in underserved areas, encouraging small businesses to invest in broadband, and ensuring that consumers can choose between high-quality, affordable Internet options. Read Congressman Larsen's full response by clicking here.