I know nobody wants to talk about Net Neutrality right now when unions are the issue giving everyone warm feelings right now, but there were important hearings held Wednesday. Greg Walden’s House subcommittee held hearings on HJ Res 37, which disapproves of Net Neutrality to invoke the Congressional Review act and overrule the FCC’s power grab. On top of that, the FCC responded to the demands from Fred Upton, Lee Terry, and Walden to give an economic justification for Net Neutrality. The response was unsatisfactory, and the Republicans concluded, in a statement that in fact called Net Neutrality a “power-grab”: “The truth is imposing these rules will cause more harm than good by stifling innovation, investments and jobs.” They’re right, too, notwithstanding Nancy Pelosi’s ignorant bleating . But on to the hearings. Digital Society has some gory details , but I’ll highlight one notable exchange between Marsha Blackburn and Free Press’s Derek Turner. I don’t have a transcript handy, but Blackburn pressed Turner on his organization’s funding. He says the funding sources will be disclosed, and I look forward to hearing what comes of that. Turner claimed that no corporations fund Free Press, so if a corporation like Working Assets , owners of CREDO Mobile , has been giving them money, then he lied. Which is interesting, because Working Assets claims credit for funneling $45,520 to Free Press in 2007 and another donation in 2009 . Meanwhile the FCC continues to stall , failing even to put the Net Neutrality details in the federal registry, a step required for the FCC to enforce the rules which are supposedly so urgent. This is possibly something shady but also possibly just incompetence, which makes it laughable either way that Julius Genachowski would be considered for the job of Commerce Secretary . Heck of a job, Julius. The FCC’s stalling may not matter though, as the Net Neutrality repeal resolution passed the subcommittee by a 15-8 vote. Does that look like a huge margin? It was a party-line vote. Elections have consequences. Now I promised some hypocrisy, and here it is: Target is backing California’s proposed (and unconstitutional) Internet sales tax on out of state firms aimed at firms like Amazon, while not collecting sales tax itself from residents of states it’s not in. The same also applies to Bloomingdale’s. Keep in mind this tax would only cover less than 1% of the state’s budget deficit, even assuming the most optimistic projections. So why are we ignoring the Constitution again? Oh right, because the unions control the CA Democrats and would never allow meaningful spending cuts. I can’t wait until Anonymous finds out that handcuffs hurt . Please save the prison rape jokes though; I miss having a President that took it as the serious problem that it is. Even if 4chan does, and I’m not making this up, have an entire subforum devoted to drawings of sex with young boys, including forcible rape. They give it the bland name of “/y/”. And to wrap up the night, Rumor has it that Sprint may buy out T-Mobile , which is amusing it means a real 4G provider would buy the fake 4G provider. I don’t honestly know if the two combined could compete with Verizon or AT&T, though, when the two aren’t even using the same technology to begin with. Sprint uses CDMA and WiMax, while T-Mobile uses GSM and HSPA+.
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Tech at Night: FCC, Net Neutrality, Amazon Tax Hypocrisy
Well folks, looks like I could be “peeling off” a few more here. Not only do conservatives have to contend with Obama’s OFA (Organizing for America) , progressive orgs like MoveOn, SEIU, et al in massive Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts but now I’ve discovered to my chagrin that NBC, MSNBC and YouTube are in the mix. How did I get here? I’m not going to divulge all of my “Mrs. James Bond” tactics but it’s easier to just put it up on the screen in pictures. I started out by wanting to delve further into the ultra-progressive cell phone company CREDO which has donated over $65 million to progressive causes but got side-tracked when I discovered what I’m about to show you. CREDO had its beginnings from Working Assets: Working Assets is a for-profit business that markets services, including phone services and credit cards, to a liberal demographic, and provides a small percentage of its annual profit to non-profit liberal and activist organizations. And if you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see that Drummond Pike was the co-founder. Working Assests and Credo fund ACORN and it’s voter registration arm Project Vote. As the screen shots from 2007 and 2008 illustrate. Click to enlarge. Here is Working Assets web page. Since a lot of these web pages tend to go to “URL heaven” I’m going to give you a screen shot of their “Activism Center.” Highlighting is mine: Note the above highlighted paragraph: To further strengthen our democracy in the run-up to the 2008 election, we helped 2.5 million Americans register to vote and organized our landmark Election Protection program [emphasis mine] of volunteers, who fanned out across the U.S. to monitor polls and guarantee free and fair elections. What many on the Right may not realize is that Election Protection and Election Administration are code words used by the Left to stop legitimate solutions to problems within our electoral system. Groups like ACORN and Project Vote have routinely sued Secretaries of State across the country to stop voter ID bills and prevent states from removing dead and inactive voters from the rolls. The term Election Protection is thrown around on the left as a way to convey what they like to portray as targeted attacks on minorities. So I googled Election Protection and came up with this. Header is below: We get a list of all their member organizations. ACLU, Alliance for Justice et al. The Alliance for Justice members are mostly legal orgs but also contains Planned Parenthood and others protecting women’s abortion rights. SEIU as no surprise is on the member list but I didn’t screen shot it. Now on to another screen shot of members: We see NAACP, Deepak Bhargava’s Center for Community Change, Color of Change and CREDO mobile. However, if one scrolls down further we find these other “members.” And the mega-surprise for me here folks was, as you guessed it: NBC News, MSNBC, and YouTube. Partners in a massive GOTV effort in 2008. Now if one scrolls way down to the bottom of the page you will see at the bottom left hand corner “follow us on twitter.” Their twitter handle is 866OURVOTE, AKA Election Protection . And if one spells that out in numbers, it is the contact phone number at the top of the Election Protection page. 866OURVOTE’s web page is Election Protection and here is a quote: If you experience problems at the polls on Election Day(such as long lines, voter intimidation, suspicious behavior, machine malfunctions, registration errors, etc.) you can report it to us via text message or the web by using your Twitter account! (Don’t have one? Click here to sign-up.) Now if you look at a tweet they put out on Nov. 5, 2008, one day after the election: (screen shot in case they pull the account…): The URL leads you to this web page and I’ll give you a screen shot and a quote. Highlighting is mine: Washington, DC — Election Protection, the nation’s largest nonpartisan [emphasis mine] voter rights coalition, has fielded over 200,000 calls to its 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline, including over 80,000 calls on Election Day alone. Questions and concerns from voters across the country – from the hotline, website and social networking sites like Twitter – were answered and acted upon by a network of over 10,000 trained volunteers across the country. Nonpartisan? With members like ACLU, CREDO Mobile, SEIU, Color of Change, Center for Community Change? Come on guys, give me a break. For some reason this writer highly doubts with all these ultra-liberal progressive organizations involved in this massive GOTV effort their campaign slogan was “Vote McCain/Palin.” Even though we all know Maddow, Olbermann and Matthews are full of drivel, it is still disturbing to this writer to find the names of NBC, MSNBC and YouTube as members of this “GOTV Coalition.” Allegations of media bias have swirled around since before Obama was elected. Media outlets have been accused of ignoring stories and refusing to properly vet Obama and now with NBC, MSNBC and YouTube partners with OTHER leftist organizations to “protect elections” it’s easy to determine what side they are working for. Yes, this may have helped place a Man in the Oval Office in November of 2008. FYI anyone interested in using CREDO Mobile they use Sprint service. Crossposted at Emerging Corruption Crossposted at Conservative Outlooks
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NBC/MSNBC & YouTube teamed with progressive orgs with financial ties to ACORN in 2008
