Posted on May 3, 2010 by Dr. Slammy
Scholars & Rugues
During the campaign then-candidate Barack Obama kept reminding us that “politics is the art of the possible.” We were encouraged to understand “possible” in the same context as “Hope®” and “Change We Can Believe In™.” That is, the Obama presidency was to usher in a new age where the old business as usual politics of the Beltway wouldn’t be tolerated. “Yes We Can©,” he insisted, summoning the disaffected masses into an arena of engagement where the entrenched forces of corporatism and corruption could be, would be, overthrown.
That was the promise. That was the dream.
The reality of the Obama administration has been a smidge less kumbayah than many might have hoped, though. The health care “debate” was as nasty and dishonest as anything the Republic has seen since … well, honestly I can’t quite think what the applicable touchpoint might be here. Civil rights? The Summer of 1968? The entirety of the Reagan years? Blowjobgate? Heck, I don’t know. Suffice it to say that from one end of the process to the other, if a government or corporate official’s lips were moving, somebody was being played.
In the end we got “reform.” I won’t try and parse the details – that’s been done pretty well in other places – but I will point out that the Monday after the bill was passed in the House, health stocks led a thumping Wall St. rally. Those of us who believe that things happen for reasons felt this was significant.
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Some defended Obama, arguing that this was the best that could have been done, given the current construction of Congress. Others pointed out that he pandered to the “center” while either ignoring or arm-twisting the “left,” and they noted consistent poll results showing that the progressives were in line with a 70+% majority of the population.
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(Now)the Obama administration seems to be on the verge of abandoning another major campaign issue: net neutrality. Granted, this is one with more than a few legal and judicial twists and turns to consider, but language like “keeping in place the current regulatory framework for broadband services” is rhetorical sleight-of-hand. It certainly sounds better than “selling out a campaign promise because corporations are more important to this administration than the people who elected us.” But hey, I work in Marketing so I certainly appreciate strategic messaging.
The analysis linked above talks about potential abuses if we fail to enact a net neutrality policy. What might those abuses look like? Well, Rosenbaum speculates at four – and here are some more to ponder:
(1) Block your tweets, if you criticize Comcast’s service or its merger, especially if you use the #ComcastSucks hashtag.
(2) Block your vote to the consumerist.com, when you vote Comcast the worst company in the nation. No need for such traffic to get through.
(3) Force every candidate for election to register their campaign-donations webpage and abide by the same weird rules that apply to donations by text message.
(4) Comcast could even require a “processing fee,” becoming the Ticketmaster of campaign contributions.
(5) Comcast could reserve the right to approve of every campaign online and every mass email to a political party’s or advocacy group’s list (as they do with text message short codes).
(6) If you create a small online business and hit it big, threaten to block your business unless you share 1/3 or more of all your revenues with them (apps on the iPhone app stores often are forced to give up a 1/3 or more; so are cable channels on cable TV).
(7) Block all peer to peer technologies, even those used for software developers to share software, distribute patches (world of warcraft), distribute open source software (Linux). In fact, Comcast has shown it would love to do this.
(8) Block Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Moveon.org (and its emails), because of an “exclusive” deal with other blogs. Or alternatively, block FoxNews.com because of a deal with NBC and MSNBC.
(9) Monitor everything you do online and sell it to advertisers, something else that some phone and cable have done, with the help of a shady spyware company.
(10) Lie to you about what they’re blocking and what they’re monitoring. Hell, the FCC wouldn’t have any authority to make them honest. The FCC couldn’t punish them.
This is a really, really big deal – in some ways perhaps a bigger deal than health care because of the role that the Net plays in the development of public opinion (such as it is) and shaping policy.
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Link:
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2010/05/03/obama-caving-on-net-neutrality-we-can-no-longer-believe-a-word-he-says-can-we/_______________________________________________________________________________________________
An excellent, albeit lengthy, post well worth reading. The citizens face a huge setback to Internet Freedom should the FCC and the administration be persuaded to drop support for Net Neutrality in leiu of the recent letter from 74 Democratic Reps requesting that they do just that.
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