The Internet...oh that Internet beast...will it gobble you up? Net Neutrality will affect both the bloggers and their readers.

Don't let the date on this report get in the way of what's current.  I cross-posted this so that you might get a better picture of what is about to concern you if the politicians get their way.

  Over at the Huffington Post there's a headline story that reads "Net Neutrality Needs Your Help Today "  dated April 14, 2010, and that makes it very current!  Worse yet, the article is by John Kerry...Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts. That in an of itself should make you wary of what they are trying to do (word clue: control).  Now I don't have any immediate references as to how much money Mr. Kerry recieved from those backing this measure but I do remember explicitly that Hilary Clinton got a handful of money (that link alone brought in $119,250.00) from the very same backers back when she was still a senator from New York.

Now I opposed any legislation concerning net neutrality back then (2007) and still not in favor of the government getting their grimy hands on what I post here for free.  So educate yourself as to what their overall objectives are (word clue: control) and don't let this turn into a "I-told-you-so" situation.  ~ Norman E. Hooben
  
ps: Obama is on Hillary's side of the table on this issue. (word clue: control ...there! now you got it!)

The Net Neutrality Debate All On One Page

by Erick Schonfeld on Aug 31, 2008

Are you confused about Net Neutrality? Who isn’t? Some people argue it is necessary for continued innovation on the Internet, and point to Comcast’s bandwidth metering as a sign of things to come. Others claim that it is unnecessary regulation that will create unintended consequences in its wake. Opposing Views, the debate site that pits experts against each other to argue the pros and cons of the big questions of the day (read our launch review), last night put up a page on Net Neutrality. The page lays out the arguments pro and con for Net Neutrality, and then links to fuller arguments.
Marshaling the arguments for Net Neutrality are the Save The Internet Coalition, the Open Internet Coalition, and Public Knowledge. (It’s a freedom of speech issue, the ISPs are quasi-monopolies that cannot be trusted, innovation on the Web is at stake). Arguing against are the Cato Institute and Hands Off The Internet (it’s a technical issue best left to engineers, the cost of Net Neutrality will be passed onto consumers, regulation will backfire). Readers are then encouraged to vote on who is winning the argument, an add their own points of view, which can be elevated to the main discussion page.
Here’s a sample of some of the back-and-forth. The Open Internet Coalition argues that it is a fundamental principle:

Too often, the discussion of why we need to protect the open Internet degenerates into a stale debate about regulation versus the free market. In fact, it’s impossible for innovation to continue apace without some basic rules of the road to protect that innovation.
The open Internet was the principle leading the development of the Internet as the first open global communications network. And it helped drive the development of a host of Internet applications like Facebook, YouTube, and Skype. There would have been no motivation for the developers of these applications to have expended time, effort, and in some cases, their own financial security, in pursuit of their vision if they weren’t guaranteed their inventions would have been able to work over any Internet connection.

The Cato Institute warns of the difficulty of enforcing fuzzy concepts:

it’s important to remember that network neutrality is fundamentally a technical principle. Like any technical principle, it is fuzzy at the edges.
. . . Leading network neutrality proposals contain numerous ambiguities that would create uncertainty for everyone in the Internet industry. Here’s just one example: the most prominent network neutrality proposal of the 2006 congressional session, known as Snowe-Dorgan, defined a “broadband service provider” as “a person or entity that controls, operates, or resells and controls any facility used to provide broadband service to the public, whether provided for a fee or for free.” Does this mean that the owner of a coffee shop with a WiFi connection would be subject to FCC regulation of its firewall configuration? One would hope not, but that’s what the language seems to suggest. The same point can be made with respect to hotels, Internet cafes, airports, and even individuals who choose to make their home WiFi connection available to their neighbors.

Where do you stand on Net Neutrality? Go debate.

Everyone is compelled to be part of the system... That doesn't sound like freedom to me?

The headline struck me in the face as to how close we are to the stated truth, "A Manageable People"... Sort of scary and yet they are doing just that as we speak.  They manage the way we live and we let them get away with it.  With the recent passage of the so-called Obama Care health legislation we are getting one step closer to managing the way we die.  You may want to go back and listen to one of Obama's advisors who clearly believes that it is easier to kill you than to control you (Listen here to Zbigniew Brzezinski, "It's Easier To Kill A Million People Than To Control A Million People").  Some of you Obama supporters may be saying to yourself, "Well they don't control me." Let me remind you that you believed in both of these liars, Obama and Brezinski, during the campaign but you were too naive to connect the dots.  You might want to check out an after action report here "Obama lied about contacts with Brzezinski before OH primary".  And if you don't think that believing in lies has anything to do with control then you haven't looked in the mirror lately...nor your wallet! ~ Norman E. Hooben

The following from: FamilySecurityMatters.org

April 14, 2010

A ‘Manageable People’

Daniel Greenfield

The government’s logic behind compelling all Americans to buy health insurance was that the system wouldn't work, unless everyone was compelled to be part of it. Conformity is, of course, a major requirement for big government solutions – they don't work unless everyone is forced to take part in them. And they don't work unless everyone lives mostly in the same manner without individual choices that might take them off the graph. (They still don't work even then, but the numbers look better up front.) And this is how big government solutions lead to the pursuit of a "More Manageable People."

 

What enlightened Europeans used to admire about America was its world of possibilities, free from the old burdens of feudalism, of people who were expected to knuckle to their betters and know their place. Americans instead made their own place. The open "New World" gave birth to a staggering explosion of wealth, technology and culture, precisely because it was much less regimented. If you wanted to live in a tightly managed society with repressive laws where your options were limited and your social mobility minuscule, you could just stay home. On the other hand, if you wanted a decent life or a shot at being the street urchin who becomes a Carnegie, you could go to America instead.

 

Or at least, that's the way it used to be – until, with the best of intentions, we began replacing a government of the people with a government that saw the people as ants who needed to be brought into line. The late 19th and 20th century saw the rise of a new idea of American government, no longer representative, but transformative. Government no longer existed to listen to the people, but to take them by the hand and reform them. Teach them to wash behind the ears, save money or spend it (as the situation called for), drink less and be obedient – all in order to make their lives better and teach them to be a better people.

 

Soon, everything from stopping alcoholism to disease prevention to ending poverty and fighting racism became the purview of government. And the results were not only disastrous over and over again, but also grimly totalitarian. We sterilized people we considered inferior in order to fight poverty. A view upheld, promoted and enforced by luminaries such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Margaret Sanger. We created a national crime syndicate in order to fight alcoholism. We caused massive social disruption, first through aggressive segregation efforts and then aggressive desegregation efforts, both led by liberals. We bankrupted the economy to save the economy. We created an entire culture of poverty in order to fight poverty. 

 

The progressive idea of government was broken – badly broken. And in the process, Americans had traded their birthright of freedom for the promise of government solutions that made the social problems they were trying to solve that much worse. But rather than admit defeat and pull back, the big government reformers decided that there was nothing wrong with their ideas – there was something wrong with the American people.

 

Their grand failures inspired them not to an attitude of humility, but hostility. Their analysis of their own failures blamed not so much their policy, as the people. The American people were willful. They behaved and thought in ways the social scientists did not expect. They did not do what was "good for them." They needed nannies and regimentation. They had to be made more manageable and brought into line.

 

But since "manageable" is not a terribly democratic or appealing world, "equality" was instead repurposed to mean the same thing. Where equality had once meant equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it instead became the euphemism for creating an average society, one in which people would be forced to live like everyone else, to think like everyone else, to have the same jobs, the same wages and the same lives. Only then would the big government plans finally work, because the people they were meant to work on would be interchangeable, cogs in a machine, even numbers without fractions that add up very nicely.

 

Where the Old America had been based around the revolutionary notion that people should define their own lives by their own decisions, the New America had reverted to the medieval notion that everything would run best if people lived the way they were supposed to, did what they were told, and shut up when their betters (with the appropriate degrees and government positions) were talking. The Town Halls and the Tea Party movement represented an explosive clash between the Old America, that actually took the Constitution seriously, and the New America, that viewed it as a framework for imposing their solutions on an ignorant public.

 

Where the Old American was a random variable, the New American had to be a known and fixed quantity. After all how do you plan big government solutions that affect hundreds of millions of people, unless you reduce those people to a handful of numbers? You cannot cover the health care of 400 million different and unique people. Only individual providers and doctors can do that. What you can do is cover the health care of what you define as a typical American family and a typical American single individual, and then force everyone into that category. Compulsory insurance, death panels, heavy taxes on large coverage – and all the assorted totalitarian ugliness of Obamacare is the logical outcome of that philosophy. Everyone must fall into the same category, or the system can't work. And if you don't conform, you will be made to conform. Goodbye Constitution; hello Flow Chart.

 

Wealth Redistribution eliminates classes and pushes everyone further into the average column. By eliminating classes, it also eliminates social mobility, which creates a more controllable static society in which everyone is just getting by, except the people with government connections or engaged in illegal activity (the two are often interchangeable in a tightly regulated system). Forget about the urchin becoming a Carnegie. That's off the graph. Forget about the middle class too. Making everyone average means pushing everyone down, not up – because it requires less resources to deprive people of wealth, than to give them wealth, and it helps pay for the redistribution process too.

 

Capitalism smashed feudalism once, by shaking up the nobility and creating power based on economic success, rather than inherited titles or brutality. Now feudalism is back, except it's being called socialism, but the endgame is the same. A static society with a massive lower class tethered to specific highly regulated occupations, and a tiny upper class that has been put in charge of running their lives. The new "Protectors of the People" may be armed with PhDs rather than banners and cavalry, but the end result is the same.

 

Lenin promised the peasants, land. Under Communism, not only did the peasants lose what little land they had, they also lost their livestock and even the right to leave the farm without permission. Now consider how many rights American farmers have lost since the 19th century. Consider how many rights Americans have lost, period. How many forms do you have to fill out to do even the simplest things? How much permission do you need from the authorities to do what you want? How well do you even know the laws by which you're governed? All for your own good. To be a more manageable people.

 

The reformers could never accept the reality of human nature – that people would drink more than is good for them, that people will eat more than is good for them, that some will earn more and some will earn less, that some will be bigoted and others ignorant, and that people will make good choices and bad choices. But rather than understanding that American government was created not to impose solutions but to protect that ability to choose, the reformers instead decided that government could be a moral force by taking away those choices, and allowing only those choices of which they approved.

 

But turning people into slaves does not improve society, it worsens it. And the bad choices will still continue to be made. Communism deprived the Russian people of economic freedom, and so they found it instead through crime and the black market. Socialism deprived Canadians of health care freedom, and so they found it across the border instead. Prohibitions deprived Americans of legal liquor, and they embraced illegal liquor instead. Each attempt at imposing control creates an opposite reaction because people naturally strive to be free, to make the choices that they want to make. And they will make them, no matter how oppressive the tyranny becomes.

 

To create a more Manageable People is the objective of all tyrannies. But in 1776, Americans demonstrated how unmanageable a people they were. The Tea Party movement is demonstrating that again today. And those who would manage Americans into a state of absolute conformity should remember that as well.

 

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Daniel Greenfield is a blogger, columnist and freelance photographer born in Israel, who maintains his own blog, Sultan Knish.

Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (0)

COPYRIGHT 2010 FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS INC.

Takin' Back Our Country...you bet!

It's a myth. FDR did not get us out of the Great Depression...

Wall Street Journal  April 12, 2010

“Congress—both chambers with Democratic majorities—responded by just saying "no." No to the whole New Deal revival: no federal program for health care, no full-employment act, only limited federal housing, and no increase in minimum wage or Social Security benefits.”

(Democrats said, "Just say no!" Wow!  They must have been watching Miracle on 44th Street or The Bells of St. Mary's)

Did FDR End the Depression?

The economy took off after the postwar Congress cut taxes

By BURTON FOLSOM JR. AND ANITA FOLSOM

'He got us out of the Great Depression." That's probably the most frequent comment made about President Franklin Roosevelt, who died 65 years ago this week. Every Democratic president from Truman to Obama has believed it, and each has used FDR's New Deal as a model for expanding the government.
It's a myth. FDR did not get us out of the Great Depression—not during the 1930s, and only in a limited sense during World War II.
Let's start with the New Deal. Its various alphabet-soup agencies—the WPA, AAA, NRA and even the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)—failed to create sustainable jobs. In May 1939, U.S. unemployment still exceeded 20%. European countries, according to a League of Nations survey, averaged only about 12% in 1938. The New Deal, by forcing taxes up and discouraging entrepreneurs from investing, probably did more harm than good.

Associated Press

Franklin D. Roosevelt

What about World War II? We need to understand that the near-full employment during the conflict was temporary. Ten million to 12 million soldiers overseas and another 10 million to 15 million people making tanks, bullets and war materiel do not a lasting recovery make. The country essentially traded temporary jobs for a skyrocketing national debt. Many of those jobs had little or no value after the war.
No one knew this more than FDR himself. His key advisers were frantic at the possibility of the Great Depression's return when the war ended and the soldiers came home. The president believed a New Deal revival was the answer—and on Oct. 28, 1944, about six months before his death, he spelled out his vision for a postwar America. It included government-subsidized housing, federal involvement in health care, more TVA projects, and the "right to a useful and remunerative job" provided by the federal government if necessary.
Roosevelt died before the war ended and before he could implement his New Deal revival. His successor, Harry Truman, in a 16,000 word message on Sept. 6, 1945, urged Congress to enact FDR's ideas as the best way to achieve full employment after the war.

Congress—both chambers with Democratic majorities—responded by just saying "no." No to the whole New Deal revival: no federal program for health care, no full-employment act, only limited federal housing, and no increase in minimum wage or Social Security benefits.
Instead, Congress reduced taxes. Income tax rates were cut across the board. FDR's top marginal rate, 94% on all income over $200,000, was cut to 86.45%. The lowest rate was cut to 19% from 23%, and with a change in the amount of income exempt from taxation an estimated 12 million Americans were eliminated from the tax rolls entirely.
Corporate tax rates were trimmed and FDR's "excess profits" tax was repealed, which meant that top marginal corporate tax rates effectively went to 38% from 90% after 1945.
Georgia Sen. Walter George, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, defended the Revenue Act of 1945 with arguments that today we would call "supply-side economics." If the tax bill "has the effect which it is hoped it will have," George said, "it will so stimulate the expansion of business as to bring in a greater total revenue."
He was prophetic. By the late 1940s, a revived economy was generating more annual federal revenue than the U.S. had received during the war years, when tax rates were higher. Price controls from the war were also eliminated by the end of 1946. The U.S. began running budget surpluses.
Congress substituted the tonic of freedom for FDR's New Deal revival and the American economy recovered well. Unemployment, which had been in double digits throughout the 1930s, was only 3.9% in 1946 and, except for a couple of short recessions, remained in that range for the next decade.
The Great Depression was over, no thanks to FDR. Yet the myth of his New Deal lives on. With the current effort by President Obama to emulate some of FDR's programs to get us out of the recent deep recession, this myth should be laid to rest.

Mr. Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, is the author of "New Deal or Raw Deal?" (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Mrs. Folsom is director of Hillsdale College's annual Free Market Forum.

Home

Michelle Obama admits, "Kenya is home country."

Source: World Net Daily   (Note: Please watch the Michelle Obama video below.)

BORN IN THE USA? 

Kenyan officials affirm: Obama 'son of this soil'

In partying mood after election win, did African lawmakers say too much?

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By Drew Zahn
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Kenyan Nominated MP Millie Odhiambo

On the floor of the Kenyan National Assembly the day after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president, members of the African country's parliament celebrated "a Kenyan ruling the USA," calling Obama "a son of the soil of this country."
As WND reported, Kenyan MP James Orengo asked the nation's parliament only last month, "How could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the president of America?"
And while none of the comments made on Nov. 5, 2008, were quite so blatant in identifying Kenya as Obama's birthplace, the declarations nonetheless claimed the president-elect as a Kenyan.
New strategy unveiled on answering Obama's eligibility questions. See how you can help.
"Could we allow … a Motion for Adjournment so that we could also continue the celebrations of having a Kenyan ruling the USA?" asked the MP for the Ikolomani Constituency, Dr. Boni Khalwale.
The mood on the floor of the Parliament was so raucous that day that an extended debate occurred on whether or not to call the session off to celebrate Obama's election victory. Several MPs were even reported missing, allegedly because they were still out partying.
Nominated MP Millie Odhiambo requested of the chair, "The president-elect, Mr. Obama, is a son of the soil of this country. Every other country in this continent is celebrating the Obama win. It is only proper and fitting that the country which he originates from should show the same excitement, pomp and color. I, therefore, seek leave of the House that we adjourn to discuss the issue."
Eventually, the chair was compelled to issue an official statement of congratulations in the effort to move the session forward. Deputy Speaker Maalim Farah delivered the statement, in which he echoed Odhiambo's "son of the soil" language:
"Honorable members, as you may be aware, the people of the United States of America have just had a historic election where the son of this soil, Barrack Hussein Obama, has been elected the 44th president of the United States of America and the first African-American president in the history of that country," said Farah, "please join me in registering and sending this House's congratulations to the President-elect Obama for overcoming great odds to emerge victorious."

Other speakers lauding Obama's ties to Kenya included Nominated MP Mohammed Affey, who said from the floor, "For the first time, we have a leader of a great country in this world whose blood is Kenyan."
Kalonzo Musyoka, vice president of the Republic of Kenya celebrated "an African American of Kenyan origin being president-elect."
MP Asman Kamama suggested the Assembly celebrate the success of "our brother, Obama from Kogelo," while MP David Ethuro of the Turkana Central Constituency labeled Obama "a president with roots from Kenya."
As WND has reported, several sources – including National Public Radio – have claimed Obama's birthplace as Kenya prior to his election as president.
WND also reported when a video appeared in which Michelle Obama said her husband's "home country" was Kenya, though her comments didn't specifically suggest his birth there.
The video, posted April 3 on YouTube and forwarded by a score of Internet e-mails, shows Michelle Obama saying, "When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test."

The reference drew attention because of the claim made in numerous lawsuits and other challenges to Obama's occupancy of the Oval Office that he is not eligible to be president under the requirement of Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution that the president be a "natural born citizen."
But the NPR reference and Michelle Obama's comment are far from the only ones of their kind.
At one point, there were reports that even Obama's grandmother claimed being in attendance at his birth in Africa.
According to a compilation of images at a military forum, another reference was made in 2008 in the Nigerian Observer.
Under a byline from Solomon Asowata and a Washington dateline, the report says, "Americans will today go to the polls to elect their next president with Democratic Party candidate, Senator Barack Obama largely favoured to win. The Kenyan-born Senator will, however, face a stiff competition from his Republican counterpart…"


A commentary at The Post & Email website said, "It is no wonder that many doubt Obama's claim of a Hawaiian birth."
It cited another report from African Travel Magazine that said, "As Kenyan born U.S. Senator Barack Obama jets into Kenya today as part of his African tour, concerns have once again been raised on the security preparations for other visitors and residents. ...."
The Post & Email commentary also cited a report from Indonesia Matters that includes similar references.
WND documented earlier several other statements linking Obama and Kenya.
These included the apparently archived article from the Sunday Standard in Kenya.
The report begins, "Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack (sic) Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations."


The article is credited to the wire service Associated Press at the bottom of the page. However, the article could not be found either in the AP archives available to the public online or the archive on the newspaper's website. WND telephone calls and e-mails to the newspaper did not generate a response.
Last year, an African news site and an MSNBC broadcaster referred to President Obama's birthplace as being outside of the United States.
Network correspondent Mara Schiavocampo was reporting on the celebratory atmosphere in Accra, Ghana, immediately prior to Obama's visit to the west African nation.
Interviewing a person who appeared to be a shop operator, she stated, "Barack Obama is Kenyan … but Ghanaians are still proud of him."
The video of the report is at this link.
Also, a report at Modern Ghana posted in advance of the president's visit cited his birthplace on the continent of Africa.
"For Ghana, Obama's visit will be a celebration of another milestone in African history as it hosts the first-ever African-American President on this presidential visit to the continent of his birth," the report said.


WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums exceeding $1.7 million to avoid releasing an original long-form state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions.
WND also has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.
Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"

"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas Strip

WND also reported previously when Michelle Obama contradicted Obama's story that he lived with his mother and father for several years in Hawaii after he was born before his father left to pursue a graduate degree.
Michelle Obama said her husband's mother, Ann Dunham, was "very young and very single" when she gave birth to the future U.S. president.
Her comments undermine the official story as told by Barack Obama – that Dunham was married to his father, Barack Obama Sr., at the time of birth.
The remarks were made by Michelle Obama during a July 2008 round table at the University of Missouri. Obama was responding to criticism of her husband's presidential campaign speeches about fatherhood and faith-based initiatives.

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New strategy unveiled on answering Obama's eligibility questions. See how you can help.

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Previous stories:
Kenyan official: Obama born here
NPR archive describes Obama as 'Kenyan-born'
Did Michelle say Barack born in Kenya?
Did Obama's grandmother say he was born in Kenya?
Eligibility challenger: Don't touch my brain!
Army suggests brain scan for eligibility challenger
Army suggests brain scan for eligibility challenger
Army 'showdown' at eligibility corral
Obama: Tea party based on eligibility issue
Courts can remove ineligible chief executive
D.C. court case demands Obama explain eligibility
Democrats suddenly interested in Obama birth certificate
Race on to demand eligibility documentation
Obama's eligibility becomes war among the states
3 dozen lawmakers want proof of Obama eligibility
Congressional ad mainstreams Obama eligibility
Franks joins demand for eligibility proof
Congressman eyes lawsuit over president's eligibility

eBay seller releases video of 'Obama birth certificate'
THE FULL STORY: See listing of more than 200 exclusive WND reports on the eligibility issue

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Drew Zahn is a news editor for WorldNetDail