Sen. Diane Feinstein's Net Neutrality Killer
Via Crooks & Liars comes word that Sen. Diane Feinstein was attempting to insert into the economic stimulus bill a provision called "Reasonable Network Management," a term apparently straight out of Comcast's playbook of euphemisms for corporate control (read that, ownership) of the Internet.
Now, it seems that Feinstein has managed to get her nasty little trick inserted via amendment through the backdoor of the House-Senate conference committee that reconciles the differences in the two chambers' versions. At the second link is the means by which you can contact Rep. Henry Waxman, who seems to be in a position to do something about Feinstein's stunt but who is apparently right now supporting her net neutrality killer amendment.
What Feinstein is doing is nothing less than sponsoring legislation further defining legal censorship of the Internet, claiming her handout to corporate welfare queens is to the noble purpose of providing more laws "...so that American ISPs can deter child pornography, copyright infringement, and other unlawful activity." Yes, Feinstein is trotting out the children; and if that isn't enough for all of us to hand the keys to the Internet to government and corporate bosses, she's tossing in the music industry, which is apparently being systematically destroyed by people sharing lousy pop music performed by over-hyped, talentless twits whose fortunes are made by record industry power brokers who tell addled music listeners that bad music is good music.
Ah, yes, and if all of that isn't enough, we also need the government-corporate Axis of Weasels to protect the world from "other unlawful activities."
No, that doesn't mean the Right-wing Websites will get shut down for FBWS ("Felonious Blogging While Stupid"); it means... oh, my! It means whatever the federal law enforcement community decides it means.
That's right. Legislation with language that vague is precisely how interpretive regulation morphs into its ugly (and constitutionally sanctioned) evil twin, quasi-legislative regulation.
If you don't like this nonsense Feinstein is pulling, you have but one option: you need to start bitching. Either you can do so to yourself and your long-suffering friends and relatives, or you can bitch your fool head off to select congressional representatives, including your own and that guy I mentioned earlier, Henry Waxman.
You can also raise Holy Hell with Sen. Feinstein, herself. Here's how:
In Washington, D.C.
Senator Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-3841
Fax: (202) 228-3954
TTY/TDD: (202) 224-2501
In California
San Francisco
One Post Street, Suite 2450
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: (415) 393-0707
Fax: (415) 393-0710
You can also send the corrupt authoritarian Democrat an e-mail message.
It should go without saying that any message you send to Sen. Feinstein should contain only the most diplomatic of language and be free of implied or expressed threats, including those involving turbo wedgies. It would also be terribly insensitive — in light of last week's jaw-dropping blunder in which she let the cat out of the bag that our Predator drone flights to bomb Pakistani targets are being launched from Pakistan, itself — to start your message to Sen. Feinstein with the greeting, "Dear Stupid." Accurate, yes; appropriate, I think not.
Anyway, you might want to suggest in your message that she stick with helping her war profiteering husband keep getting those big bucks in pork-barrel war money from appropriations that went through the Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee on which she sat until the stench of her conflict of interest became too much even for her Democratic and Republican cohorts in the upper chamber of Congress. (Instead of requesting that the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into what Feinstein did, how did the Senate handle the matter? Why, Ms. Feinstein is now the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee! Boy, that'll teach her a thing or two.)
If you're uncomfortable addressing a supposedly "liberal" Democrat with harsh words, just tell her you were compelled to do so by the Dark Wraith. Remember: he might seem incredibly charming, but he's a paleo-con; that means he has no patience for Republicans or Democrats when they're sporting their Prada jackboots.
We shall surely not stop the death plunge of this nation into an authoritarian state; but at the very least we can make its shock troops suffer the incessant din of our ceaseless bitching about it. Sen. Feinstein might even have to use some of that lobbying money she gets from the entertainment and telecom industries to buy a set of earplugs.
The Dark Wraith encourages readers to help make the Democrats at least pretend to be something other than Republicans with candy coating.
Comments
Wrote trog69:
Wrote Peter of Lone Tree:
From your sidebar:
The mercenary corporation (otherwise described as the 'private security company') Blackwater is changing its name to Xe.
Kevin at Cryptogon has a companion piece to this entitled "Blackwater Worldwide Changes Its Name to Xe; Same Mercenaries, but Now with More 'Aviation Support'" and within which he links to an article entitled Global Cocaine Trade Moves to Africa.
Wrote Minstrel Boy:
good morning dark wraith:
sometime around the first gulf war i sent my last letter to di-fi. in it i chronicled my time of great support and approval of her. right after the milk/moscone shootings, my second favorite city of san francisco (after, of course the new orleans that doesn't exist anymore) where i was in the midst of my celebrated blue period was in turmoil. awash with shock, fear and sorrow. diane stood there resolute, knowing full well that she could be easily shot down just as were harvey and the previous mayor. she walked the streets then. often without anything more than a small entourage, taking time to speak with folks she met.
she was a good mayor. she might even have been a good governor. she's been a total tool as a senator. she began getting in tight with the bushies during bush41's term. i can understand the logic that says if your hubby sells guns and stuff that war's not the worst thing in the word. i might even give a pass on a quick third world dustup that's over quickly and turns a nice profit.
she didn't even bother to ask any questions. she just voted with the republicans time and time again. she's also been a prominent supporter of harry (the wuss) reid. even with a majority she preaches "capitulation" to even the most insane of republican demands.
there has, for a long time, been a focus on branding. the authoritarians realized that while jhodpurs and jackboots can be a charming fashion statement, they telegraph intentions plainly. rather than say, for korea, that we are going to call our young people back into service and send them into battle and war, we called it a "police" action. branding. rather than call our forces in vietnam exactly what they were, combat battaliions, we called them "peace keepers." what's in a name?
first off, if peace is the point, the last thing in the blue eyed world that you would send would be a bunch of teen agers with automatic weapons. where that can become a stabilizing addition to any society has yet to be seen. if peace is really the aim, one would send the quakers, the hippies, housewives, 2nd grade school teachers, or many other classes of people our great nation can offer. shoot, one might even send the peace corps...
i have almost a cottage industry going where i debunk some of the old saws about vietnam. like "it was a military victory but a defeat in the press and in congress."
simply untrue. often they cite the tet offensive as an example of battlefield victory followed by political defeat. the facts are that before tet we effectively controlled right around 20% of the countryside. ten months after the communist offensive, ten months of hard and bitter fighting we said "yay! we're the winners!" and declared a moral, and military victory. we did this because we controlled right around 20% of the countryside.
even a casual reader of the brilliant, but often misunderstood, and more often misquoted sun tzu would understand that in battle, campaign, or the course of a war itself, ties go to the defender. we were not playing defense in vietnam.
yeah, we had a brutal kill ratio. often it was approaching 25 and even 30 to 1. what did that acheive for us?
nothing that nixon negotiated at paris was more, or more honorable, than what could have been achieved by truman and eisenhower in the fifties by not going in at all. truman could have nipped the entire thing in the bud by simply telling the french that they wouldn't be riding back into indochina on our surplus ships, they also wouldn't be shooting at insurgents with our surplus weapons. when the french fell, eisenhower could have said "well, you are the winners. we'll talk business as soon as you have something to sell." nope. nobody wanted to ever admit that the little guys in the black pj's had done a beautiful rope-a-dope maneuver on us. we punched ourselves out in pretty short order. 7 years of full on combat (which wasn't ever "officially" a war, it was an "assistence" or "support" operation) and we achieved something right around jack fucking shit.
Xe (pronounced "Z" like that shit's important) is the hong kong same same bloody minded mercenary group.
just as iraq, no matter what kind of press they get, was, is, and will continue to be, a mistake, a disaster, a quagmire, and, above all an unjustified bloodbath.
Wrote kelley b:
Amerika has its own response to the economic crisis.
Of course, the DINOcrats have their own reply to Amerika's response.
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I sent out plaintive missives to everyone I thought might be in a position to help, yesterday when I first heard about this. God, I really, really, detest that broad. This should be the most non-partisan rebuke in history, but I know that's just fantasy since, once again, money wins over justice.
I see this as a tumor that is supposedly "reined in" when the telecoms overstep things a bit too much, but eventually only the echos of pissing and moaning about this will be heard, and then that too will disappear, for "better content's sake" of course. AOL users around the globe will be tickled pink by all the "new" offerings by the conglomerates who told them how awesome it all is to start with, as you mentioned. gaaaaaaaaaaaa.