The unreasonable Republicans in the House of Representatives are willing to raise taxes by $800 billion. Anti-tax Republicans will raise taxes. I’m not happy about it, but that is what John Boehner and Mitch McConnell seem to be offering. They want to raise that money by limiting deductions instead of raising rates. They do not want to raise rates because that will impact many small | Read More »
Nobody wants the ITU treaty to go anywhere. Not Net Neut backers. Not House Republicans and House Democrats. But the Obama administration is failing to do anything about it. Remember when we were told electing Obama was the key to great international respect? Not so much…
Read More »Events get driven by something. The motive power behind what happens in policy and politics can often lie hidden like the mass of an iceberg underneath the sea. Those who bother wondering why President Obama refuses to compromise on anything in order to avoid the “Fiscal Cliff” theorize two primary things. Barack Obama plays the PR angle to make Rethuglicans appear as the political subsumed class* of lackeys to the E-Vil Rich. Others assume he’s Richard Roundtree** and he’s sticking it to the man.
Both of these conjectures see only the tip of the iceberg. There are two possible errors in assuming either explains our President’s behavior in total. The first mistake is to assume that Barack Obama completely drives this train. The second is to assume that he reacts totally based on his ideological battles against Conservatism. Assuming a bond fealty between Barack Obama and his committed core of followers causes me to realize that President Obama (and much of the rest of the professional left in America) has strapped himself in for a ride on the tiger. He’s driving the bus from the movie “Speed.”
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Who’s anti-science? We set up a bill to bring in more foreign scientist and engineers through the STEM Act, then pass the bill with virtually no Democrat support, and then get called ‘racist.’ Apparently science degrees are racist now, according to (frankly delusional) Democrats.
And more by the ever-busy Darrell Issa: his Reddit outreach continues as he promotes his two-year legislative and regulatory moratorium in the IAMA act (even the name is a nod to that community). But, based on the linked article, they’re looking for reasons to oppose. Left-’libertarians’ are too much reflexive fanbois of unchecked state power, when Democrats get to have that power. But, we’ll see.
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Apologies. I’ve had some technical issues tonight, and after twice nearly losing my list of links to work through… I’ll do my best, but I’m not really feeling it at this point. So sorry if I’m subpar tonight.
Two Google wins going on. Larry Page talked with FTC on antitrust and now the left is shrieking that sanity may prevail on this. Google isn’t a search monopoly. Amazon, eBay, IMDB, sites like these ensure it. Even if Bing and Duck Duck Go are having trouble breaking through, domain-specific search matters, a lot, and Google has to compete with that, or die.
That said, it’s ridiculous that Google was allowed to hack people’s browsers, store information surreptitiously, and instruct the browsers to send that information to their servers at later times. This directly against the expressed wishes and policies of the users involved. All they have to do is pay Obama his 20 pieces of silver, and they even get to keep the data.
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It’s funny how the same House Judiciary Committee that took up SOPA is now taking up IRFA, opposed by a growing list of groups including Taxpayers Protection Alliance, ATR, CAGW, and ACU. SOPA of course would have grown government in the name of strengthening copyright. IRFA makes government meddle more in a way that weakens copyright. And not in a good way, either: IRFA would not encourage innovation or content creation. It just favors Internet broadcasters over everyone else.
Also yeah, the RSC paper on Copyright that I backed before it was wrongly pulled, it is not a statement against property rights nor is it against copyright at all. If the side favoring ever-lengthening copyright cannot argue honestly with us, and has to mischaracterize those of us who favor an approach to copyright that balances the interests involved, then that to me suggests a deficiency in their position.
Read More »Hey, guess what? Barack Obama’s not running for anything any more! Which means that he officially no longer has to care about progressive sensibilities. President Barack Obama’s fundraising advisers have urged the White House to accept corporate donations for his January 2013 inaugural celebration rather than rely exclusively on weary donors who underwrote his $1 billion re-election effort. People involved in his re-election campaign said White | Read More »
So you may have heard that the Republican Study Committee pulled the copyright piece I spoke highly of over the weekend. I don’t have anything to say about this just yet. I’m going to reexamine the piece, to see if it had issues I didn’t notice in my quick read over the weekend. I’m also going to try to figure out just what’s happened. Then I’ll have more to say.
Copyright is ramping up, though. Darrell Issa is getting frisky against DMCA, and is going to push legislation. I don’t know if I support such a bill. The DMCA has issues, but for the most part it was a solid compromise that has served us well. It must not be changed lightly.
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Hey everyone. Sorry for not doing this Friday night. I was a bit out of it. So, we’re doing this Saturday night.
Some people just don’t learn, though. Google is still defending Net Neutrality incredibly enough. So are Facebook and Netflix, by the way (shameless plug for Amazon Prime streaming alternative).
Of course, there’s a problem here: Google’s PAC splits evenly D/R in donations, but The people of Google lean so far left they gave $737k to Obama, versus $31k to Romney. Think about that. Mo wonder they’re still trying to feed a beast of regulation that may try to break it up.
If anything does in Bay area innovators, it’ll be their slavish devotion to big-government Democrats.
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Nothing exemplifies the failure of Republicans to communicate more than the exit polling data regarding the public’s perception of the cost of living. A whopping 37% of voters selected ‘rising prices’ as their most important issue in the election, yet amazingly, they split their votes evenly between Romney and Obama. Hence, the arsonist behind the high prices for food, fuel, healthcare, and every other vital | Read More »
On Tuesday, President Obama held the 16th “full” White House press conference of his presidency. That’s right Obama goes golfing more than six times for every press conference he gives.
This was the first scheduled, solo news conference for Obama since March. The last time Obama saw fit to allow the White House press corps an opportunity to formally ask him questions on U.S. soil was his “hastily-announced” appearance in the White House briefing room on June 8, 2012, during which he infamously said “the private sector is doing fine.”
During today’s press conference Obama was asked about climate change, Gen. David Petraeus, the fiscal cliff, immigration reform, Iran, A mandate, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Gov. Mitt Romney and Syria.
Read More »This was a narrative/identity election not an ideological one and Romney lost the narrative and failed to motivate key undecideds and low energy Republicans while Obama motivated his base and managed to increase turnout in a few key segments. For more of my take on what happened and why I was wrong keep reading.
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Long week, so long I forgot to post this Friday night. Oops. Well, better late than never.
The race for the IP revolution is on. The benefits of a modern phone system are still getting explored, even as we see AT&T go first in this direction, but of course naturally the forces of regulation oppose innovation.
Read More »The left is pushing very hard for so called “Filibuster Reform.” Ezra Klein of the Washington Post poses the question today “Is this the end for the filibuster?” The problem with a president promising to “change Washington” is that the presidency isn’t the part of Washington that’s broken. The systemic gridlock, dysfunction and polarization that so frustrates the country isn’t located in the executive branch. | Read More »
Rough week, huh? Me too. I’ll make this quick, since the overriding story here is we’re going to have a rough four years fighting Obama regulators.
Though we’re lucky out of touch Susan Crawford isn’t on FCC.
We begin to see the full scope of the corrupt deal going on in New Zealand: Seems that the (German) Kim Dotcom bought escape from the authorities by promising free Intertubes for New Zealanders, even as he plans a new copyright infringement service.
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