Soros, Ford shovel $196 million to ‘net neutrality’ groups, staff to White House
BY PAUL BEDARD | FEBRUARY 25, 2015 | 2:22 PM
Liberal philanthropist George Soros and the Ford Foundation have lavished groups supporting the administration’s “net neutrality” agenda, donating $196 million and landing proponents on the White House staff, according to a new report.
And now, as the Federal Communications Commission nears approving a type of government control over the Internet, the groups are poised to declare victory in the years-long fight, according to the report fromMRC Business, an arm of the conservative media watchdog, the Media Research Center.Liberal philanthropist George Soros and the Ford Foundation have lavished groups supporting the administration’s “net neutrality” agenda, donating $196 million and landing proponents on the White House staff, according to a new report.
And now, as the Federal Communications Commission nears approving a type of government control over the Internet, the groups are poised to declare victory in the years-long fight, according to the report fromMRC Business, an arm of the conservative media watchdog, the Media Research Center.
“The Ford Foundation, which claims to be the second-largest private foundation in the U.S., and Open Society Foundations, founded by far-left billionaire George Soros, have given more than $196 million to pro-net neutrality groups between 2000 and 2013,” said the report, authored by Media Research Center’s Joseph Rossell, and provided to Secrets.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai: Net Neutrality is a “Solution That Won’t Work to a Problem That Doesn’t Exist”
Nick Gillespie & Todd Krainin | February 25, 2015
Net Neutrality is “a solution that won’t work to a problem that doesn’t exist,” says Ajit Pai, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Pai is an oustpoken opponent of expanding government control of the internet, including FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s plan to regulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs) under the same Title II rules that are used to govern telephone-service providers as public utilities. Under current FCC regulations, ISPs are considered providers of “information services” and subject to essentially no federal regulation.
He is also sharply critical of President Barack Obama’s very public push to influence policy at the FCC, which is technically an independent agency. Last year, it was widely believed that Wheeler, a former head of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, would not push for Title II. Pai calls the president’s actions—which included “creating a YouTube video of with very specific prescriptions as to what this agency should do”—unprecedented in his experience. Coupled with the fact that “the agency suddenly chang[ed]course from where it was to mimic the president’s plan,” says Pai, “suggests that the independence of the agency has been compromised to some extent.”
FCC Chair Refuses to Testify before Congress ahead of Net Neutrality Vote
by ANDREW JOHNSON
February 25, 2015 10:19 AM
Two prominent House committee chairs are “deeply disappointed” in Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to testify before Congress as “the future of the Internet is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on new Internet regulations pertaining to net neutrality.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) criticized Wheeler and the administration for lacking transparency on the issue.
A Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission wants to see changes that could narrow the scope of new net neutrality rules set for a vote on Thursday.
Mignon Clyburn, one of three Democrats on the FCC, has asked Chairman Tom Wheeler to roll back some of his provisions before the full commission votes on them, FCC officials said.
The request — which Wheeler has yet to respond to — puts the chairman in the awkward position of having to either roll back his proposals, or defend the tough rules and convince Clyburn to back down.
It’s an ironic spot for Wheeler, who for months was considered to be favoring weaker rules than those pushed for by his fellow Democrats, before he reversed himself and backed tougher restrictions on Internet service providers.
Clyburn’s objections complicate the highly anticipated vote and add an extra bit of drama to the already high tensions on the five-member commission.
Wheeler will need the votes of both Clyburn and Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to pass the rules, since the two Republicans on the commission are expected to vote against anything he proposes.
Clyburn’s changes would leave in place the central and most controversial component of Wheeler’s rules — the notion that broadband Internet service should be reclassified so that it can be treated as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act, similar to utilities like phone lines.
Democratic FCC commissioner balks at net neutrality rules
By Julian Hattem – 02/24/15 12:00 PM EST
A Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission wants to narrow the scope of new net neutrality rules that are set for a vote on Thursday, The Hill has learned.
Mignon Clyburn, one of three Democrats on the FCC, has asked Chairman Tom Wheeler to roll back some of the restrictions before the full commission votes on them, FCC officials said.
The request — which Wheeler has yet to respond to — puts the chairman in the awkward position of having to either roll back his proposals, or defend the tough rules and convince Clyburn to back down.
It’s an ironic spot for Wheeler, who for months was considered to be favoring weaker rules than those pushed for by his fellow Democrats, before he reversed himself about backing tougher restrictions on Internet service providers.
Wheeler will need the votes of both Clyburn and Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to pass the rules since the two Republicans on the commission are expected to vote against anything he proposes.
Obama’s regs will make Internet slow as in Europe, warn FCC, FEC commissioners
By Paul Bedard | February 23, 2015 | 2:14 pm
As the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission toy with regulating aspects of the Internet, critics on those agencies are warning that speed and freedom of speech are in jeopardy.
In a joint column, Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai and Federal Election Commission member Lee Goodman, leveled the boom on the Obama-favored regulations, essentially charging that it will muck up the freedom the nation has come to expect from the Internet.
In one key passage of the column published in Politico, the duo wrote Monday that heavy-handed FCC regulations like those imposed in Europe will significantly slow down Internet speech.
Posted by Dan Cirucci On February 23, 2015 0 Comment
By Dan Cirucci | Dan Cirucci’s Blogspot
It’s no accident that George Washington was called “the father of our country.”
From the very beginning, American presidents have been somewhat patriarchal — not in the sense of a monarch, of course but more like a strong, caring, reliable dad who sees the best in us, inspires us, rallies us and above all, defends and protects our national family.
That’s what the best dads do. That’s what we’ve come to expect from them.
But what if we had a dad who always noticed our faults? What if he was repeatedly critical? What if he kept pointing it out to others whenever he thought we did something wrong?
Instead of challenging us to aspire to our highest goals, what if he constantly warned us and attempted to lower our aspirations? What if he pushed us to pull back instead of leaping forward?
What would it be like if we had a father who at times appeared to be arrogant and occasionally disdainful toward us?
Fox’s Neil Cavuto Admits Yes Mr President its All Fox News Fault
Fox’s Neil Cavuto breaks out the sarcasm: Yes, it was somehow Fox that caused the IRS to crack down on conservative groups, Fox that told people you could keep your doctor under Obamacare. Calling ISIS the “JV team”? The measles outbreak? Blame Fox.(Brent Bozell)
Saturday Night (Pointed) Humor: Cavuto Admits That It’s All Fox News’s Fault
By Tom Blumer | February 21, 2015 | 11:59 PM EST
Thursday on his Your World show, host Neil Cavuto went after the Obama administration’s near obsession with the coverage it gets on Fox News.
While Team Obama can count on the Big Three triumvirate of ABC, CBS and NBC to toe the line, promoting its points while generally avoiding damning information, Fox has generally remained fair and balanced, an approach which has clearly gotten under their ultra-thin skins.
The occasion for Cavuto’s rant, which veered into some impressive sarcastic humor, was Eric Holder’s claim that Fox wouldn’t have anything to talk about if it wasn’t noting the failure of the administration to call Islamic terrorism what it is, i.e., Islamic terrorism:
Transcript (bolds are mine):
NEIL CAVUTO: All right, folks. I have a confession to make.
I did it again. Eric Holder caught me.
ERIC HOLDER (taped): We spend more time, more time, talking about “What do you call it?” instead of “What do you do about it?” I mean really, y’know, y’know, if Fox didn’t talk about this, they’d have nothing else to talk about.
CAVUTO: Yeah. If not for us at Fox News making such a big deal out of saying “Islamic extremism,” no one would be making a big deal out of the White House not saying “Islamic extremism.” Not this Democratic congresswoman or this former top Obama intelligence official. They say words matter too, but it’s Fox News making the big stink, so, well that’s all that matters now.
And it got me thinking. You know it happens sometimes. I know, I’ve heard this before, this whole White House mentioning this Fox News thing before.
(shows a series of derisive or negative references to Fox News by Barack Obama and Josh Earnest)
CAVUTO: Well, I am so busted. Pick a crisis, any crisis, you name it. Fox News is behind it. Worse yet, Fox News created it. And I’m here to admit the White House ain’t telling you the half of it. How clever we are, how devious we are. If only I had known that you had known.
If only I had known that Fox News said you could keep your doctor when you couldn’t keep your doctor, and it wasn’t the President saying that.
Or that it was Fox News’s plan to send your health insurance premiums skyrocketing and not the President’s plan.
Or that Fox news dismissed ISIS as “the jayvee team” and not anyone on the President’s team.
Or FOX News was the one spying on our very own James Rosen, and not the Justice Department spying on our very own James Rosen.
That Fox News was the one targeting conservative groups, and not the IRS targeting conservative groups.
Very clever. God knows what other controversies we caused. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before it all comes out.
So let me just fess up now and spill the beans. Everything bad, Every time … Fox!
All this frigid weather? Yeah, Fox News. Don’t ask, we just did it.
This whole measles outbreak thing? Bingo! Fox News!
This tepid economic recovery? Sorry, Fox News.
The housing meltdown that preceded it? You guessed it. Fox News started it.
The Internet bubble? Fox News created it, then we burst it so could keep milking it.
The energy crisis back in the 1970s: Fox News — which is amazing, because we weren’t even around in the 70s!
But that didn’t stop us from having a role in the JFK assassination. Yeah, that was a Fox News guy in the grassy knoll.
The Titanic. Yeah, the captain, see the captain? So Rupert Murdoch wth a beard, don’t you think? And now you know why the movie was so good. We damn near wrote the script!
Pearl Harbor: Fox News knew the Japanese were coming!
The potato famine. Even Fox News’s Irish-American anchors (i.e., Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity — Ed.) did nothing, nothing to stop it from coming. They’re the culprits!
“Tsunamis: Fox News! Earthquakes: Fox News! Tornadoes: Fox News!
That meteor hit in Russia that blasted buildings a couple of years back? Well, (that was) Fox’s little Putin payback.
Oh yeah-yeah-yeah, this goes way back, to the Dinosaurs: Fox News killed them off.
And the Big Bang? Fox News started life itself up, only to toy with all living creatures since, and make a mockery of political leaders today.
Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case’s undoing
By Ellen Nakashima February 22 at 3:10 PM
TALLAHASSEE — The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison.
But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device —a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.
Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.
Today, 20-year-old McKenzie is serving six months’ probation after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century. (The other two defendants also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to two years’ probation.)
Republican lawmakers investigate White House net neutrality push
Republicans want to know whether the Obama administration influenced the FCC’s proposal
By Grant Gross
Computerworld | Feb 20, 2015 2:18 PM PT
WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans are demanding to know how much the White House influenced the Federal Communications Commission while the agency crafted net neutrality rules.
The FCC has until Monday afternoon to produce unredacted email messages, focused on net neutrality rules, between FCC staff and officials with the Obama administration, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said in a letter to the FCC Friday. The Utah Republican is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Chaffetz’s committee is “investigating the potential involvement of the White House” in the creation of proposed net neutrality rules that the FCC is scheduled to vote on next Thursday, he said in the letter. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will propose regulations that would reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service instead of a lightly regulated information service.
An FCC spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment on Chaffetz’s letter.
The Government’s War on Freedom of the Press
Press freedom has declined in recent years.
Ken Silva | February 21, 2015
The U.S. plummeted to a dismal 49th place on the Reporters Without Borders annual Press Freedom Index, marking the country’s second lowest ranking since the list was created in 2002 and its lowest since 2006. Other countries ranked in the 40s and 50s include Haiti, Mongolia, and Chile .
The index cited “judicial harassment” of New York Times reporter James Risen, the arbitrary arrest of at least 15 journalists during the Ferguson, Missouri clashes, and the fact that U.S. journalists are still not legally entitled to protect sources who reveal confidential information about their work.
The U.S.’s slip in press freedom rankings mirrors its seven-place drop in Freedom House’s Global Press Freedom Index from 2013-2014, though the country still ranks among the 14 percent of countries whose press is classified as “free” in the latter scale.
Reality may be even worse than the rankings suggest. Legal protections for the press have only eroded since the 2006 trough year when the Bush Administration threatened to prosecute Risen for publishing stories chronicling warrantless wiretapping of citizens’ phone calls.
Garrett Leads Bipartisan Effort Against the Unfair Practice of Civil Asset Forfeiture
February 14, 2015
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Chairman of the Congressional Constitution Caucus, issued the following statement in support of the reintroduction of the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, to protect Americans from having their property seized without the due process of law through civil asset forfeiture:
“Most Americans assume that the government cannot take your things without due process, but it is happening,” said Garrett alongside his colleagues from the House and Senate. “Under current law, federal, state and local police can seize your property unless you can prove you acquired it legally. This must change. The FAIR Act will protect our constitutional rights and save American families from a costly and messy legal process to regain what is legally theirs.”
PHOTO : Garrett joins a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers that want to change the unfair practice of civil asset forfeiture with the FAIR Act. (From Left to Right: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ),Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-CA), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN))
Internet groups in tricky position over US net neutrality
Richard Waters in San Francisco
Be careful what you wish for. That is the message for companies such as Google and Facebook as US regulators move ahead with a plan to enshrine the idea of an open internet in regulation.
On the face of it, the big internet companies will have scored a significant victory if the Federal Communication Commission votes, as expected, for its new “net neutrality” rules this month. The regime is intended to make sure broadband and other network providers cannot block or otherwise hold internet services to ransom.
Who could take issue with such a noble purpose? Telecoms regulation is not usually the kind of thing to excite much public interest, but this is a cause that has reverberated widely. Populist campaigns like the one waged over net neutrality, however, do not allow for much in the way of nuance.
The problem comes with the form the rules will take. With heavy nudging from the White House, the FCC has opted to re purpose an authority it was given under an old telecoms law, known as Title II, to make it apply to the internet era.
By DAVID E. SANGER and NICOLE PERLROTHFEB. 12, 2015
PALO ALTO, Calif. — President Obama will meet here on Friday with the nation’s top technologists on a host of cybersecurity issues and the threats posed by increasingly sophisticated hackers. But nowhere on the agenda is the real issue for the chief executives and tech company officials who will gather on the Stanford campus: the deepening estrangement between Silicon Valley and the government.
The long history of quiet cooperation between Washington and America’s top technology companies — first to win the Cold War, then to combat terrorism — was founded on the assumption of mutual interest. Edward J. Snowden’s revelations shattered that. Now, the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent companies from greatly strengthening encryption in commercial products like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones has set off a new battle, as the companies resist government efforts to make sure police and intelligence agencies can crack the systems.
Congress probing White House role in FCC chief’s net-neutrality plan
By JIM PUZZANGHERAcontact the reporter
Two congressional committees have launched investigations into whether the White House improperly influenced the net-neutrality proposal released last week by the head of the Federal Communications Commission.
On Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a letter to explain his decision and produce documents related to communications and meetings involving the White House and agency officials concerning the issue.
Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Wheeler he was concerned that there was “apparent pressure exerted on you and your agency by the White House.”
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_riaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 165
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_inhaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 166
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_mastodonIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 177
