Snarked on Net Neutrality

I've written before about Net Neutrality, and probably a quarter of my tweets relate to the issue. The FCC's Net Neutrality rules just went into effect, and Free Press is one of several entities to file suit against the FCC. The rules, you see, don't provide for true Net Neutrality; while they address the issue where land-based computers are concerned, they don't for wireless.

It's hard to get a handle on how much profit Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint make per cellular customer, but enough is never really enough, is it? AT&T recently eliminated the ability to buy a limited number of texts in favor of a $20.00 option for unlimited texts. I believe wireless companies make approximately a 10,000% texting profit. Another example: When I tried to change our existing plan to less than 700 minutes, I learned the 400 minute option—which would have worked for us as our daughter does most of her talking at night and on weekends— had disappeared. Like restaurants charging more for ever-larger plates, cellular providers are closing out less expensive options in favor of larger profits. And as there's so little competition, who's to stop them?

Free Press, a national, nonpartisan group working to reform media, sends out daily emails about media-related news. Many of those news items these days relate to the activities surrounding the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger (different filings made by AT&T as various items have leaked surrounding costs and jobs, lobbying money spent on Congress, unions, and corporations to win their support, and the recent Justice Department's Anti-Trust filing) to the fight for and against Net Neutrality.

I spend a lot of time reading articles linked to by Free Press in newspapers, magazines, online journals, The Huffington Post, etc., because the issue of Net Neutrality is important to me as a writer and former web publisher. You can imagine, then, that I was more than a little perturbed when I read the following headline yesterday on the Techland blog for @Time by @MattPeckham: Net Neutrality Proponents Sued by Net Neutrality Proponents? Though Peckham eventually cuts to the chase, it's not until four paragraphs in that he addresses the issue; until then the suit is made to sound frivolous and nonsensical. Here's the lead-in that follows the headline:

The folks who just officiated over net neutrality Internet regulations, the Federal Communications Commission, are being sued by—yep, the folks who fought to make net neutrality happen. Net neutrality's advocates suing net neutrality's enforcers?

True story.

Again, Peckham eventually makes Free Press' case, along with the FCC's response, but to me the article's headline, that snarky lead-in, and the lack of context related to the issue frustrated me. What's ultimately at stake is what the creators of the Internet envisioned, not a two-tiered system that cellular providers have already begun to force on customers.

It's clear that corporate interests already have a disproportionate impact on legislation, but articles like Peckham's do nothing to dispel the idea that corporate interests now infect journalism. The media bias I fear comes from corporate America, and that's what I worry filtered through into this particular article. "He said, he said" doesn't provide readers with the information they need to understand what's going on, any more than allowing politicians and their spin-meisters from making lies without being called on their bullshit because we've so perverted the concept of equal time that lies and reality now share the stage.

Yesterday I tweeted my displeasure and early today Matt Peckham answered me in a tweet. And then he snarked me by posting about a #Superficial #Reader" and linking back to his article on the Techland Blog. Ouch!

Snarked on Net Neutrality

Back to the 80s

Although I didn't vote for this particular video at Save the Internet.com as regards the possible AT&T/T-Mobile merger, it makes the point I can't imagine needs to be made again.

I lived through the 80s, when there was a telecommunications monopoly, when "Ma Bell" was the only option for telephone and long distance service. I also remember that when the Trust Division of the Department of Justice busted the monopoly, prices went down, particularly for long distance. No longer did family and friends "save up" to make the occasional phone call that actually didn't cost all that much, we could call throughout the country at competitive rates.

Obviously I'm against the merger, because anyone with a fraction of a brain realizes that the fewer companies in competition with each other, the higher the price consumers pay...well, except where Apple cuts in so they can screw with the competition all the while screwing the consumer. But because corporations now write our legislation and have thoroughly co-opted regulatory agencies, I think that the merger will likely go through, particularly now that AT&T has bought off progressive groups. But here's a couple of cautionary tales from my personal files...

1) Not long ago my daughter's cell phone died, and we needed to buy her a new one. She was not up for an upgrade, but Verizon had always worked with us in the past because we've been long-time customers and sent business their way. Well, the times they have changed. Forget that there's no longer actual tech support at their company store; I already knew that. But nobody was willing to help me out when we went in to buy her a new phone. Even though they'd just locked us in to another two years service for her a few months ago, we ended up shelling out full price on a phone that would have cost a new customer a fraction of the price. Why? Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Verizon, AT&T, and t-Mobile together control the vast majority of the mobile phone market. A few years ago, when we did quite a few deals with Verizon, it was a different picture. So now, higher prices, less customer assistance...how great is that?

2) We've long been users of DSL; Southwestern Bell, which at one time was part of AT&T, and is once again part of AT&T (funny that, no?) and we live in a major metropolitan area. And yet, for the entire period of time we've had DSL, our service has sucked. Why? Because "we're at the edge" of a service area. For the same period of time we've heard that SWB/AT&T is "upgrading in our area," yet it's never happened. How do I know this? Well, yesterday, after trying to watch yet another buffered video (about the Dale Chihuly installation at the MFA in Boston), I called tech support. I was told: "Your DSL is as fast as it's going to be because you're at the edge of a service area, but we're upgrading in your area." If we lived in the boonies, this would make sense, but we don't.

Think about what the telecom companies have done: They charge tremendous amounts for basic cell service...much higher than you pay for a land line...for diminished quality, and the possibility of brain cancer. Does it really cost them as much as it does to provide service? Well, we know that text messaging represents pure profit to wireless providers, and that's just one service for wireless users. The wireless bill for our three-person family now includes three data plans for three smart phones in addition to a special text fee for Rachael who, like her college pals, texts almost exclusively. I'm thinking Verizon makes a bloody fortune from us, and I can only be happy that we signed her up for a data plan when we a couple of months ago because now Verizon, like the other carriers, has set in place tiered usage fees. They're also trying to eliminate the ability of users like my husband to toggle his phone to his laptop to avoid yet another data plan. They sold us the phone with that as a major feature less than a year ago, yet now they want to reneg on it.

Ain't the lack of competition grand?

Back to the 80s

Gotta Love the Free Market

I just read that the U.S. lags behind other many other developed nations in terms of broadband access and speed. That according to the FCC, which, as we all know, is not exactly a market-neutral entity, as most recently evidenced by the so quick the revolving door gave me whiplash career change for Meredith Baker, who just a few months ago voted for the monopolistic merger of Comcast and NBC, only to have announced last week she'll be working as a lobbyist for Comcast.

Every day I read something that infuriates me, that makes the case that "we, the people," no longer are. Whether it's Net Neutrality, the wives of investment bankers getting bailout money, or the sale of our infrastructure to foreign interests, monied interests are not looking out for you and me...they're looking out for themselves, but have convinced many of us that it's government that's the problem, that taxes are awful, and that the free market can solve anything.

It's as though there never was a Great Depression, trust busting, or any ability in our minds to understand how credit inexorably links Wall Street to Main Street. Or that if we cede control over legislation and regulation to business, they come out on top at our expense.

We blame Obama (not entirely blameless), rather than remembering what he inherited. We refuse to pay for our wars by raising taxes, and believe ridiculousness like 90% of funding to Planned Parenthood is for abortion, 15% of our budget funds the NEA, and that foreign aid accounts for a quarter of our spending.

The "government is evil" bunch hasn't got it entirely wrong, but that's only because government is in so deep with big business that I believe this picture says a thousand words.

Gotta Love the Free Market

Business as Usual?

In another sign that our nation is veering headlong into corporate facism, both the FCC and Congress are engaging in closed-door meetings with ISP's to re-write telecom law, most likely to limit effects of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality, for those of you who have heard the term but are uncertain as to its meaning, is precisely what it says: that there be no restrictions used by those who provide the "pipes" for the Internet. In other words, An ISP must be neutral in allowing content through its pipes and cannot slow down access to or prevent users from access to online content.

Let me give you some personal, historical perspective. Years ago when AOL was still preeminent, AAR was not available to all of AOL's users. There was nothing as a content provider I could do about it. Indeed, I remember being stunned after speaking with somebody at AOL who told me, "We are not required to provide access to all websites online." Several years later, when a router in the Mid-West broke, AAR became unavailable for a good chunk of the country and the company that provided that router was not required to fix the break. Instead I was forced to pay AAR's host to create a fix around the break, and in the interim weeks, we lost untold thousands of users temporarily...and the number of users who simply thought we'd gone offline permanently remains unknown.

Let's jump to the future now, where Time/Warner exists and NBC and Comcast may be merging. Without Net Neutrality, when owners of the pipes that bring us content also own companies that generate large amounts of content, they can, quite legally, either slow down or stop the competition. In a case brought by Comcast against the FCC earlier this year, a federal appeals court stated that the FCC lacked the authority to require Net Neutrality, leading both the FCC and Congress scrambling to create some level of authority by regulation or law.

As public agencies do when preparing to enact regulatory changes, the FCC asked for public comment regarding Net Neutrality. Although 85% of respondents asked for Net Neutrality, these closed-door meetings signal yet another Obama administration deal limiting real change. Similar opaque, revolving-door meetings on Capital Hill - where nearly 3/4 of telecom lobbyists are former federal employees - are yet another sign of business as usual.

While I understand that changes are incremental and evolutionary rather than revolutionary, it pains me to say that Barack Obama's efforts to avoid conflict and create compromise too often benefit the industries in need to regulation. It's one thing to hold meetings with telecom companies, but closed-door meetings stink of back-room deals.

Where's the sunshine?

Business as Usual?

Dallas Coffee Party...a Big, Fat Flop For Me

I joined the Coffee Party nationally and in Dallas earlier this year, and attended the first meetings with high hopes. As I reported on the Dallas Coffee Blog I started earlier this month, it's very easy to click a Facebook button and join a cause. It's a lot more difficult to create something sustainable afterward.

The Dallas Coffee Party kicked off with great fanfare, with local TV and print news coverage of the first meetings, and after the second meeting I volunteered to become an admin for the Facebook page. I was sick for the third meeting, and at the fourth, was one of six who bothered to attend...out of nearly a thousand Facebook members. Of course, that the meeting wasn't properly publicized or added to the national FB page where members looking for meetings could find it didn't help, but as a result of that meeting, I set up a Dallas Coffee Blog and an @dallascoffee twitter feed to gin up interest. I believed - and hoped - that if a local person wrote original content and tweeted other content of interest, more people might feel a connection and an inclination to actively participate.

In the interim, the originator of the DCP quit, and in-fighting broke out between two of the other three admins, leaving me stuck in the middle. Although the Coffee Party is thriving throughout the country, it's dead in the water in Dallas because of a lack of momentum and planning, and because too many of the few grown-ups involved actually decided to behave not as grown-ups but as petulant children. While I don't count myself as one of those pouting tots, it's obvious I've got some anger seeping through here, so I'll simply tell you what I did earlier today: Transferred all the DCP bloggings as a single note to the DCP page on Facebook, and after deleting the @dallascoffee twitter feed, I'll be deleting myself as a DCP admin.

It's true that not much time has lapsed between my first blog and tweet efforts and now, but with a thousand DCP members, and my RT'ing @dallascoffee tweets to the DCP page and linking to all the blog entries, I can't say that the word didn't get out. The word got out, but nobody cared. That's fine. I gave it a shot, and as I wrote on my DCP note, I'd rather write one blog nobody reads than two. Only one local person directly accessed the 28 tweets I've made...the other four are from CP's elsewhere. Almost 400 people subscribe to my @laurie_gold twitter feed and I'll concentrate on them rather than the five (again, including just one local person) who subscribed to @dallascoffee.

Because I'm proud of the blog entries I wrote for DCP, I'm going to insert them here onto my Toe in the Water blog...later today, after I've done so, I'll come back in here and provide links to any who are interested. And, as I wrote on the DCP page, I look forward to somebody with vision, patience, and a game-plan to reinvent the Dallas Coffee Party so that I can rejoin. In the interim, I'll look for another group to hook up with, possibly one in Ft. Worth. Sad that in one of the largest cities in the U.S. we were unable to sustain things here, but it's time to move on. My experiment failed.

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BLOG ENTRIES ADDED TO TOE IN THE WATER FROM SHORT-LIVED DCP BLOG:

Financial Reform...It's Complicated

Stand Up...Or Stand Down

What If You Gave a Coffee Party and Nobody Came?

Corporate Fascism?

An Experiment

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And, in case anyone's interested in links to articles from the @dallascoffee twitter feed...

Lost Decade Looming? (Paul Krugman NYT)

More on TX text book fight

New project of freepress.com invites us to keep media on its toes by submitting biased and or overblown reporting.

A nun is "automatically excommunicated" after sitting on hosp comm that agreed to perform abortion to save mom's life.

NYT: A generation gap on immigration

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the...

Coffee Party USA is launching Coffee with Main Street campaign from now throughout the month of June.

Million-Dollar Ad Blitz to Kill Net Neutrality

The Senate approved a provision putting space between bond issuers & rating agencies

NYT: U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits

NYT: Senate Beats Back Efforts to Ease Regulation Bill

Commentary on Findlaw about First Amendment

Newsweek article on Walt Whitman important for us to consider

Huffpost - Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, USA TODAY found.

Rabbit hole of corporate spending on campaigns.

Tom Friedman in today's NYT

Dallas Coffee Party...a Big, Fat Flop For Me

Stand Up...Or Stand Down (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

The rallying cry for the Coffee Party is "Wake Up and Stand Up. Yet there is so much negative hateful rhetoric floating around these days that otherwise intelligent people are afraid. Afraid that by standing up, we will incite the fringe folk into doing dangerous things. So afraid, in fact, that they believe we must instead stand down, and further, pull the covers over our heads.

Obviously this is not a view to which I subscribe. Appeasement is never the answer. It failed when the Europeans tried it in the 1930s, and can you imagine what this country would have looked like had Abraham Lincoln appeased the South...or allowed secession rather than standing up for our Constitution?

We live in a polarizing time, with two entrenched sides who often cede control to the fringes rather than creating a larger, more inclusive tent in the middle. And so at times we have left-wing Democrats who are willing to cut their noses off to spite their own faces, refusing to settle for incremental changes while at the same time right-wing Republicans turn obstructionist, resulting in grid-lock that causes them to move ever-farther to the right.

Judging by his actions, Barack Obama is a moderate president. And yet he provokes even more anti-government rhetoric than Bill Clinton - another moderate president - did. Many of Obama's stances were once also taken by Republican presidents Reagan, Nixon, or Bush (take your pick as to I or II).

Whenever I can't use logic to figure something out, I remember something I learned in graduate school: Follow the money. And that's where I think much of the dissension lies. The billions spent by the health care industry to prevent health care reform, the millions the financial industry is spending to prevent reform, and the money just pledged by AT&T to gain a stronger foothold in the fight against Net Neutrality...what do each of these three things have in common? The bottom line is the bottom line. Lots and lots of people and companies became very, very wealthy during the Clinton and Bush II years, and as time went on, most of the money rose to the top and consolidated among fewer and fewer.

Since Barack Obama won the presidential election of 2008 and the birthers started yammering, I began to well and truly believe that among those who have accumulated the greatest wealth are those who would do just about anything to keep it. It is in their interest to distract us, to make and keep us angry. The middle class may indeed be disappearing, but when considering the cause, ask yourself, who has the most to lose? If you have difficulty answering this question, consider that the top 1% own 42% of wealth in the U.S. The next 19% own an additional 50%, leaving the remaining 80% of us owning less than 10%. Even more astonishingly, of all the new financial wealth created since the Reagan presidency, nearly half of it went to the top 1%...nearly 95% went to the top 20%.

If you come to the same conclusion that I have - that money funds anti-reform movements as well as obsfucating the truth from those ignorant enough to search for it themselves - you will undoubtedly conclude that now is the precisely the time for us not to stand down. Now is the time for us to stand up, to make the voice of reason rise above the voices of anger and ignorance.

~Laurie G

Stand Up...Or Stand Down (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)