The Internet Is About To Change. FCC To "Fix" It, However, It Looks Like The "Fix" Is In!

FCC Sounds Net Neutrality Death Knell

Published Tue, May 6, 2014  |  Christopher Eutaw, Managing Editor

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On May 15, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will meet to determine the fate of net neutrality. And based on everything that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said, we’re about to witness the death of the internet as we know it.

You see, until January of this year, net neutrality laws made sure the internet was an even playing field. Service providers had to treat all content, from websites and applications to cloud services, equally.

But on January 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court struck down the FCC’s Open Internet Order, laying a huge blow to net neutrality and paving the way for Chairman Wheeler’s current proposal to “fix” internet equality.

Unfortunately, Wheeler’s proposed solution would do anything but fix net neutrality. Instead, it would open the door for an internet “fast lane,” where service providers would be allowed to offer greatly increased speeds in return for a hefty fee.

Needless to say, this would be a huge benefit for the few companies that could afford such treatment. Meanwhile, startups, nonprofits and nearly all of us regular folk would be relegated to the “slow lane,” unable to compete with the hyperdrive speeds available to wealthy corporations.

There’s a More Sensible Solution

The internet fast lane is something that service providers have wanted for years. The profit potential is enormous, and content providers can just pass the increased costs on to consumers – making you and me the biggest losers.

Sadly, the one man with the power to regulate this kind of discrimination seems happy to give the service providers whatever they’d like. It’s not that surprising, either. Chairman Wheeler is a former cable industry lobbyist who, according to Mercury News, “earned a living for more than a decade [by] offering campaign donations in exchange for Congressional favors for big corporations.”

And even though his proposal has faced an incredible amount of backlash, he hasn’t backed away from the plan. Instead, he’s weakly defended his stance, saying that providers wouldn’t be able to slow down other, less preferential content to make up for the boost given to “fast lane” content.

On top of that, Mr. Wheeler says the proposal is better than the alternative – a vague law against “unreasonable discrimination” that would be difficult to enforce and would likely lead to unchecked abuse.

But the real problem here is that Wheeler has completely ignored the most sensible – albeit difficult – solution.

Luckily, Mozilla, creator of the Firefox web browser, has taken it upon itself to point out this solution by filing an alternative proposal. Mozilla’s plan would restore net neutrality without destroying what Chairwoman Mitchell Baker and former CEO John Lilly called “the miracle of the internet.”

“Our petition asks the FCC to adopt a modern understanding of the internet in a way to reach Title II directly and quickly,” said Chris Riley, Senior Policy Engineer at Mozilla. “This will also ensure that the FCC can adopt meaningful net neutrality rules with no blocking and no paid prioritization that will stand up in court.”

Riley is essentially repackaging an old idea with a new twist. The old idea – Title II classification – would make it possible for “common carrier” rules to apply to internet regulation, meaning service providers would be forced to operate under the principles of net neutrality, without discriminating against any content.

So far, Wheeler has said that he doesn’t want to jump directly to Title II reclassification, which is likely just a polite way of saying that he’d prefer to help out his cohorts at the major service providers. We’ll find out on May 15, when the FCC will vote on whether to start formally considering Wheeler’s proposal.

Following the meeting, there will be a “public comment” period of about 30 to 45 days during which anyone can tell both President Obama and Chairman Wheeler how they feel about the proposal.

In the meantime, you can email openinternet@fcc.gov or tweet@TomWheelerFCC to make sure that your voice is heard. The more people who speak up, the better.

Let’s not allow a corporate shill to destroy the internet as we know it.

In Pursuit of the Truth,

Christopher Eutaw

By Their Own Words, Liberals Show Their Colors. They Are Statists, PC, Progressives!

‘N’ Words

April 29, 2014 by Bob Livingston 

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Cliven Bundy's quote was taken out of context by The New York Times.

Political correctness and the creation of thought crimes are hammers statists and progressives use to stifle freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association and to deflect attention from the crimes of the regime as they push toward an egalitarian, centrally planned society devoid of liberty.

Last week, the PC crowd and their media enablers got all atwitter at the very idea of a rancher’s observation that dependence on the welfare state might have created a new form of slavery in the U.S. as egregious as the actual human ownership-type slavery that existed prior to the Civil War.

His actual quote, which was taken out of context (surprise) by The New York Times, was not “racist” in any way when one stops for a moment to consider what was actually said:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Bundy’s crime is he had revealed an actual truth that the regime wants to suppress: That government social programs have created a new class of slaves who are dependent upon government and those same programs have been as destructive – if not more so — to black families as actual pre-Civil War slavery. To my mind, Bundy’s only error was in restricting his observation to black families. Anyone dependent upon government welfare programs for subsistence is a slave to government, and social welfare programs are destroying the fabric of U.S. society on the whole, not for just one race.

These facts have been uttered before without creating quite as much controversy. In August, 2013, Wisconsin candidate for Lieutenant Governor E.W. Jackson, himself a descendent of slaves, said government welfare programs had done more to destroy black families than slavery ever did. Dr. Walter E. Williams is quoted as saying, “The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done, namely break up the black family.”

Entertainer Bill Cosby has noted much the same thing as has Dr. Ben Carson. So are these men” racists?” Or is racism limited to whites who speak the truth? Only in a PC world.

When one is uttering a truth, that truth is made no less relevant by the color of the utterer’s skin, nor does it suddenly become “racist” based on the utterer’s skin color, despite what statists would have you believe.

Much was also made of Bundy’s use of the word, “negro,” as if that word has suddenly become equated to the word “nigger” as a black pejorative. Negro is an anthropological term used to describe one of the three races of humans.

This is something that was once taught in school, before they became nothing more than government indoctrination centers. Many of those of Bundy’s generation (and mine) learned in school that the three races of humans are Caucasian (Caucasoid), Mongolian (Mongoloid) and Negro (Negroid). The term “negro” as a race designation has long appeared on U.S. government documents, including on the 2010 census form. It also remains in use by some organizations that purport to advocate for black causes, not the least of which is the United Negro College Fund.

That progressives suddenly don’t like the word, as evidenced by one progressive’s intellectually void comment in my article, He’s A ‘Racist,’ Now The Feds Are Free To Kill Cliven Bundy, is irrelevant.

The PC crowd also cleverly mischaracterized Bundy’s comment by claiming that he wanted to see blacks go back to picking cotton. To miss the metaphor Bundy used when he stated, “…because they never learned how to pick cotton,” reveals either a dearth of intellectual capability or a devious attempt at deflection.

Unfortunately, the hue and cry of the PC crowd and their enabling government propaganda machine, combined with the cowardice of conservatives who are cowed by the very mention of “racism,” have served to deflect attention away from the larger issue of the Bureau of Land Management’s egregious treatment of Bundy, his cattle and the supporters who rallied against big government. That’s exactly what the PC crowd hoped for.

While “nigger” has become the “N-word” and apparently the PC crowd is aiming to make “negro” a new “N” word, there is another “N” word that progressives are using to intimidate conservatives and shut off any legitimate debate. It is the word “Nazi” and its associated “F” word, “fascist.”

Conservatives almost always run away from these terms and abandon any conversation where they are employed – exactly the aim of the person using them — because they don’t know how to respond. Response is quite simple.

Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) was the Nazi party. Nazis controlled Germany and transformed it into a fascist totalitarian state that controlled industrial production and just about every aspect of German life including thought and speech.

Statists falsely equate Nazism as a “right wing” philosophy and “socialism” as left wing. But Hitler himself points out that they are equal and therefore, left wing. He said, “Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is socialism — not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our socialism goes far deeper.”

Whether you call them statists, progressives, socialists, liberals or RINOS (Republicans in name only), they are the ones who advocate for policies more akin to the Nazis and fascists.

One such example comes from an Obamacare troll named Paul Edward who appeared suddenly attempting to “defend” Obamacare in my article, Obamacare Is A Success. I engaged him at length out of enjoyment and to let him expose his own hypocrisy and ignorance. He did not disappoint.

See, for instance, this comment:

Here are some example of Paul Edward’s “intellectual talents.”

And compassion.

And lack of any vestiges of “racism” or “classism.”

It is not conservatives who want bigger government. Those who want government involved in every aspect of people’s lives from cradle to grave, those who favor heavy regulation of industry and business, like the German fascists, and those who advocate for wealth redistribution programs, like the communists, are the statists, progressives, socialists and liberals.

It is not conservatives who try and stifle free speech and who create “hate crimes” and “thought crimes,” like fascists, it is statists, progressives, socialists and liberals.

It is not conservatives who forced the ouster of Brendan Eich from Mozilla because he supported traditional marriage, it was statists, progressives, socialists and liberals.

It is not conservatives who are engaged in a war on Christianity and who are trying to stop public prayer and other public religious expressions, like the fascists, it’s statists, progressives, socialists and liberals.

It is not conservatives who are using government databases (the IRS) to gain information with which to silence and marginalize people, like the fascists, it’s the statists, progressives, socialists and liberals.

Conservatives such as myself advocate for lassez faire capitalism. Conservatives such as myself advocate for freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association. Conservatives such as myself would not call for a company to fire a man for contributing to causes anathema to our belief system. Conservatives such as myself advocate for a return to Constitutional governance, the elimination of the welfare state and for the end of the Federal Reserve.

Conservatives such as myself are not intimidated by the Paul Edwardses of the world and PC crowd. Do not be concerned with their “N” words.

Left Is Far From Accepting Of Contrary Opinions Or Views.

Krauthammer: Left 'Totalitarian' About Opposing Views

Friday, 11 Apr 2014 11:50 AM

By Courtney Coren

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The left's attempt to ban public discourse on controversial subjects such as global warming  amounts to totalitarianism, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer writes.

"The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition," Krauthammer writes in The Washington Post Thursday.

"The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian," he explains. "It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences — from social ostracism to vocational defenestration — upon those who refuse to be silenced."

Krauthammer argues that the debate over global warming is a prime example of the left trying to silence opposing views.

Those who believe in man made caused global warming, including President Barack Obama, declare "the science of global warming to be 'settled,'" he explains.

As a result, "anyone who disagrees is then branded 'anti-science.' And better still a 'denier' — a brilliant chosen calumny meant to impute to the climate skeptic the opprobrium normally reserved for the hatemongers and crackpots who deny the Holocaust."

This totalitarian attitude was also recently on display in the situation that forced Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich to resign just 10 days into the new post because it was discovered that he had donated money to the Proposition 8 effort in California, which defined marriage in the state's constitution as between one man and one woman, the conservative columnist says.

Krauthammer explains that there is a hypocrisy in whom the left decides to lynch since President Barack Obama held the same position in 2008, when Proposition 8 was passed, when he said that "his Christian beliefs made him oppose gay marriage."

The left calls opposition to gay marriage bigotry, he writes.

"By that logic, the man whom the left so ecstatically carried to the White House in 2008 was equally a bigot," he adds.

Those who hold opposing views to the left's orthodoxy are labeled "a denier, a bigot, a homophobe, a sexist, an enemy of the people," Krauthammer writes.

"What's at play is sheer ideological prejudice — and the enforcement of the new totalitarian norm that declares, unilaterally, certain issues to be closed," the conservative author contends.

"Closed to debate. Open only to intimidated acquiescence."

These intimidation tactics are also seen in women's issues like abortion and equal pay, Krauthammer claims.

The best way to fight this growing "totalitarian impulse," he concludes, is to "defend the dissenters, even if — perhaps, especially if — you disagree with their policy. It is — it was? — the American way."


Related Stories:

• John Fund: Radical Gays Persecuted Mozilla's Ex-CEO
• David Limbaugh: Leftist Though Police Hit Mozilla CEO

© 2014 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Ironically, Liberals Are The LEAST Open To Dissent And If You Disagree They Go After You Personally. So Much For Accepting Others Opinions.

The Liberal Bigots Strike Again

April 11, 2014 by Chip Wood 

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If you support the traditional view that marriage should be between a man and a woman, could that cost you your job? The intolerant left says the answer to that question is a loud and emphatic “Yes!”

Their latest victim is Brendan Eich, an inventor of JavaScript and the co-founder of the Web browser Firefox. Back in 2008, Eich donated $1,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8 in California, a ballot measure that said, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Recently, when Eich was named CEO of Mozilla, the company that oversees Firefox, that 6-year-old contribution cost him his job. We’re told that half of Mozilla’s board of directors resigned to protest Eich’s appointment. But that leads to a question: If half the board opposed him, how the heck did he get the job?

The wireless company Credo Mobile launched an online petition demanding that Eich either renounce his beliefs or resign. The petition quickly acquired nearly 75,000 signatures.

OKCupid, a popular online dating service, urged its followers to boycott Firefox to protest Eich’s selection. The company posted a letter denouncing the CEO, stating: “Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame and frustration are our enemies and we wish them nothing but failure.”

Those are pretty harsh words against a person who, in 15 years at Mozilla, had never been accused of demonstrating any prejudice against gay employees — or anyone, for that matter. In one of his few statements on the subject, Eich said: “I don’t want to talk about my personal beliefs because I kept them out of Mozilla all these 15 years we’ve been going. I don’t believe they’re relevant.”

How he performed on the job didn’t matter to the gay and lesbian brigade. They wanted his scalp. And they got it.

After Eich agreed to resign, Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker issued a statement that said in part, “We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.”

So forcing someone to resign because of a private donation made more than six years ago is how you demonstrate that you’ve “stayed true to” yourself? Remember, not a single person claims that Eich did anything on the job to demonstrate any kind of anti-gay bias. By all accounts, he was scrupulously fair to everyone.

And bear in mind that, at the time, most of the public said they agreed with him that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Proposition 8 passed easily in California, one of the most liberal States in the Nation, although it was later overturned by the courts. It won the support of a substantial majority of blacks and Hispanics.

In fact, let me mention two prominent Americans who also opposed same-sex marriage back in 2008: Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. Of course, both now claim that they’ve had a change of heart.

More than 35,000 people donated to the campaign for Proposition 8. Thanks to a court ruling, the names of all the contributors — and in some cases, their addresses and the name of their employers — have been made public. I wonder how many more will become targets of angry and intolerant gays.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas warned of this possibility four years ago. In a 2010 dissent to a court decision requiring such disclosure, he wrote:

I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in “core political speech,” the “primary object of First Amendment protection.”

Not every gay person agrees with the angry intolerance Eich witnessed. Andrew Sullivan, a well-known gay-rights activist, wrote:

If we cannot live and work alongside people with whom we deeply disagree, we are finished as a liberal society.

…

What we have here is a social pressure to keep your beliefs deeply private for fear of retribution. We are enforcing another sort of closet on others. I can’t believe the fanaticism.

Just how bad will could this latest form of bigotry get? On Sunday, during an appearance onABC News’ “This Week,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said what we’re witnessing is the left’s “new fascism.” He warned:

This is just the most open and blatant example of the new fascism, which says, “If you don’t agree with us 100 percent, we have the right to punish you unless you’re like Hillary and Barack Obama and you recant.

…

I think the question I’d ask yourself is: Are you willing to live in an open and tolerant society, or do you have to impose your views at the cost of people’s jobs?

One of the most ironic statements on the controversy came from the gay-rights organization GLAAD. President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said: “Mozilla’s strong statement in favor of equality today reflects where corporate America is: inclusive, safe and welcoming to all.”

Yes, the GLAAD’s leader actually said “welcoming to all.” What she meant, of course, was welcoming to everyone who will march in lockstep with GLAAD. If you dare to disagree with the gay rights brigade and they find out about it, watch out. They’ll go after you, your family, your job and your employer.

If you’re a Christian photographer who’d prefer to not to cover a gay wedding, they’ll go to court and force you to do so. If you’re a baker who has religious objections to a gay marriage, you’d better not decline to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple or you might get sued.

It seems that it is only traditionalists who must demonstrate “tolerance” these days. Apparently, the gay-rights activists can be as bigoted and intolerant as they want.

Welcome to the Brave New World of America in 2014. If you don’t like it, you’d better do something about it.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

–Chip Wood

Intolerance Police Hound Brendan Eich From Mozilla CEO. You Either Agree With The Mob Or You Are Expressing Hate Speech. Good bye Free Speech.

Mozilla CEO Resignation Raises Free-Speech Issues

Friday, 04 Apr 2014 08:13 PM

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The resignation of Mozilla's CEO amid outrage that he supported an anti-gay marriage campaign is prompting concerns about how Silicon Valley's strongly liberal culture might quash the very openness that is at the region's foundation.Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich stepped down Thursday as CEO, just days after his appointment. He left the nonprofit maker of the Firefox browser after furious attacks, largely on Twitter, over his $1,000 contribution to support of a now-overturned 2008 gay-marriage ban in California.
"There was no interest in creating an Internet lynch mob," OkCupid co-founder Sam Yagun, whose dating service site was among those engaged in online protest, said Friday. "I am opposed to that with very bone in my body."
But Eich's abrupt departure has stirred the debate over the fairness of forcing out a highly qualified technology executive over his personal views and a single campaign contribution six years ago. And it raises questions about how far corporate leaders are allowed to go in expressing their political views.
Some are also questioning whether the episode undercuts the well-groomed image of Silicon Valley as a marketplace of ideas and diversity of thought, and whether, in this case, the tech world surrendered to political correctness enforced through a public shaming on social media.
OkCupid never demanded Eich resign, and after discussing the issue with Mozilla, Yagun ended the call for a Firefox boycott Wednesday afternoon.
In retrospect, however, Yagun said he wished he had framed the Firefox boycott in a slightly different light.
"I would have loved to have engaged in a debate over what happens when freedoms collide," Yagun said. "We have freedom of speech, which I would defend to the end. And we have what I believe is a fundamental liberty of people to marry and love whoever they want. We took a stand that matters to us personally and as a business — and I think the world will be a better place because of it."
While a handful of workers at top tech firms including Apple, Yahoo and Google supported the gay-marriage ban, the vast majority gave money to oppose it.
Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker touched on the delicate balancing act in her Thursday blog post announcing Eich's resignation.
"Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech," Baker said. "Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard."
Eich' s technical reputation is strong. He created JavaScript and helped write the code to run Netscape's Navigator web browser before co-founding Mozilla.
Mozilla, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., declined to make any further comment Friday. Eich did not respond to requests for comment.
Harmeet Dhillon, vice chairman of the California Republican Party, said Silicon Valley can be intolerant, and noted 52 percent of California voters supported the anti-gay marriage measure.
"Many people have told me they're afraid to identify themselves as conservatives," she said. "We face issues of political correctness all the time."
Eich's resignation should serve as a chilling reminder to workers at all levels that their off-duty behavior or personal opinions could still cost them their jobs if their employers are worried about a backlash hurting their business, said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute.
New York and a few other states prohibit employers from firing workers for political activity, but even those protections are limited.
Some firings of lower-level employees have raised even more troubling questions about worker rights than Eich's resignation, Maltby said. Some women have gotten fired for Facebook pictures showing them wearing a bikini on the beach, and a teacher lost her job for another Facebook photo that showed her holding a beer.
Most employers are vague about their restrictions on what workers are allowed to share online.
"There is no clear line," Maltby said. "The line is whatever offends your boss or the CEO."
Chick-fil-A Inc. President Dan Cathy's opposition to gay marriage has created controversy for the Atlanta-based company best known for its fried chicken sandwiches and closing on Sundays. But he has maintained his position.
While many gay-rights activists and commentators welcomed Eich's departure, there were dissenters.
Andrew Sullivan, a prominent gay blogger, railed against the pressure that led to the resignation.
"You want to squander the real gains we have made by argument and engagement by becoming just as intolerant of others' views as the Christians?," he asked. "You've just found a great way to do this. It's a bad, self-inflicted blow. And all of us will come to regret it."
Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group, took issue with Sullivan.
"I don't believe this is a question of suppressing free speech," he said. "It's a question of the market regulating itself."
Had Eich stayed in his job, "a tsunami of negativity was going to eventually overwhelm him and the company," Sainz said. "It's entirely a measure of our success as a movement that we are now part of that long list of issues that CEOs have to consider."
Robert P. George, the Princeton University professor and conservative intellectual, said Eich's case was another example of how religious conservatives who only support heterosexual marriage are being victimized for their views. George has dubbed the incident "Brendan Eich's defenstration."
"Now that the bullies have Eich's head as a trophy on their wall, they will put the heat on every other corporation and major employer," George wrote, in a post on First Things, a conservative journal on religion and public policy. "They will pressure them to refuse employment to those who decline to conform their views to the new orthodoxy."
Russell Moore, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the Mozilla case signaled "very hostile times" for anyone who believes marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Eich was "hounded out of office," he said.
Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, who was the first openly gay bishop elected in the Anglican Communion, said in a phone interview that a corporate board has a right to take stock of how executives' views shape a companies' reputation.
But Robinson noted that Eich said his personal beliefs would not affect his performance as CEO.
Still, Robinson said he disagreed with the idea that Eich served as an example of bullying by liberals, as some conservatives claim.
"It seems to me when a society makes a determination that something is wrong, for example racial hatred, then somehow it's not intolerant to insist upon that understanding," Robinson said.
Justin Lee, founder of the Gay Christian Network, which tried to build bridges with evangelical opponents of same-sex relationships, described himself as "a passionate supporter of marriage equality." But Lee said he didn't think Eich should have left or been pressured to leave because he donated to Proposition 8.
"As much as I disagree with the donation, this is America, and I believe he has a right to support the political causes he believes in," Lee said.
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Associated Press writers David Crary and Rachel Zoll in New York and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this story.
© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.