Sunday Funnies

If only we had elected this guy president

Asked whether he thought the Federal Communications Commission and Congress needed to preserve the Internet as we know it, the senator from Illinois said, “The answer is ‘yes.’ I am a strong supporter of Net neutrality.”

“What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites,” explained Obama, who warned that with such a change in standards “you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you’d be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites.”

Obama’s bottom line: “That I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there.”

Or maybe even this guy, four years ago.

So was President Obama when, in 2010, the White House declared that, “President Obama is strongly committed to net neutrality in order to keep an open Internet that fosters investment, innovation, consumer choice, and free speech.”

Or even this guy, four months ago.

And President Obama certainly sounded right in January, 2014, when he said, “I have been a strong supporter of net neutrality. The new commissioner of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, whom I appointed, I know is a strong supporter of Net Neutrality.”

But it seems we got tricked; we elected, and re-elected, an Obama who appointed this guy.

If reports in the Wall Street Journal are correct, Obama’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Thomas Wheeler, has proposed a new rule that is an explicit and blatant violation of this promise. In fact, it permits and encourages exactly what Obama warned against: broadband carriers acting as gatekeepers and charging Web sites a payola payment to reach customers through a “fast lane.”

Late last night Wheeler released a statement accusing the Wall Street Journal of being “flat-out wrong.” Yet the Washington Post has confirmed, based on inside sources, that the new rule gives broadband providers “the ability to enter into individual negotiations with content providers … in a commercially reasonable matter.” That’s telecom-speak for payola payments, and a clear violation of Obama’s promise.

This is what one might call a net-discrimination rule, and, if enacted, it will profoundly change the Internet as a platform for free speech and small-scale innovation. It threatens to make the Internet just like everything else in American society: unequal in a way that deeply threatens our long-term prosperity. 

There doesn't appear to be any ambiguity in the reaction to the proposal, that's for sure.  It may in fact be even worse than it initially appears.  Worst of all, those of us who support net neutrality may have to start sucking up to a few of the largest tech companies in order to save it.

No matter what may develop, there is only a short time left to save net neutrality as we know it.  That means a lot of loud complaining about this new rule to Wheeler and the FCC, just to see if public opinion can still make a difference.

It's the same federally as it is locally: as a concerned citizen you must take action.  I dislike having to repeat myself over and over again to my elected (and appointed) officials just as much as you do, but they don't seem to listen.  So make sure they hear you.

Friday Bundy Roundup

-- Who said it: Al, Ted, Cliven, or McGeorge?  I was just 4 out of 10.  I'm ashamed.

-- #ClivenBundyMovies: "Whiners of the Purple Sage", "Throw Mama in Front of the Feds", "A Day at the Racist", "Hiding Behind Miss Daisy", "Negro Like Me", "High Plains Grifter", "Twelve Years a Slave Isn't Long Enough", etc., etc.

When God closes a Fred Phelps, he opens a Cliven Bundy.
— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) April 24, 2014

-- An oldie but a goodie.

-- Some of the latest.

-- And as a reminder that the past isn't just prologue, it's not even the past...

And starring Greg Abbott as Cliven Bundy

Never one to skip a Tea Party poutrage -- and not content with only showing off his pathetic understanding of the law -- Greg Abbott has waded into (is that insensitive?) the Nevada-federal-grazing-land controversy by trying to recreate one at the Red River.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), the GOP candidate for governor, released a letter politely notifying the Bureau of Land Management that he is "deeply concerned" about reports that the BLM plans to "swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations."

At issue is some amount of acreage — Abbott says 90,000 acres, BLM says 140 — along the Texas side of the border with Oklahoma, delineated by the Red River. The BLM is currently updating its resource management plan for Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, deciding what will be done with the public lands under its management (it could sell the land, open or close it to public use, or let ranchers graze cattle on it, for example). As part of that process, BLM is looking to clarify who owns certain areas of property along the Red River.

You would think that the Texas-Oklahoma border is pretty well fixed by now, but determining the right line has consumed decades of court battles — all the way to the Supreme Court — and involves concepts like avulsion and accretion (when a river cuts away or adds land as it naturally changes course). Both the BLM and Abbott's office say they have the law and court precedent on their side.

Avulsion and accretion, General Abbott.  As opposed to revulsion and excretion, the typical reaction to your ridiculous pronouncements.

Attorney General Abbott in his letter asked the BLM for clarification of its intentions, asserting that "respect for property rights and the rule of law are fundamental principles in the State of Texas and the United States."

But candidate Abbott took a more populist tack, telling Breitbart Texas that he is "about ready...to go to go to the Red River and raise a 'Come and Take It' flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas."

With Ted Nugent, a herd of rednecks with guns, and a few camera phones provided courtesy of those intrepid journalists at Breitbart Texas, who were still picking up the broken pieces of their medium the last time we checked in.  Oh well, at least there'll be a pickup truck with a winch on the front to pull his wheelchair out of the rojo-colored mud when he sinks into it hoisting that petard.

Finally, after the mockery, the moneyshot.

...(M)ore to the point, to paraphrase Shakespeare, he's protesting way too much, perhaps in a bid to obscure the fact that the state of Texas — while Abbott served as its top lawyer — has its own spotty record with protecting private property rights.

You don't have to look too far back, either. Last Thursday, Texas seized the 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado from a branch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamist Mormon offshoot sect. The group's leader, Warren Jeffs, is serving a life sentence for "celestially marrying" two underage women, and Texas troopers helped vacate the remaining members last week.

Former FLDS member Flora Jessop tells Reuters that Texas deserves the land for having the courage to prosecute Yearning for Zion leaders. But the state claimed its right under a Jan. 6 forfeiture judgment from a state court. "Efforts to seize the property," Reuters' Jim Forsyth notes, "were initiated in 2012 by the attorney general's office."

Then there's the issue of private companies — specifically oil pipeline interests, but also power companies and for-profit toll highway operators — using eminent domain to seize private property, with the state's blessing. In March, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear a final appeal from northeast Texas landowner Julia Trigg Crawford, who refused to sell her land to TransCanada, which used eminent domain to put a leg of the Keystone XL pipeline through her land.

When you've lost both ends of the political spectrum represented by Julia Trigg Crawford and Warren Jeffs... it's entirely possible that you might just lose the governor's race.  That's conditional upon the Texas Teabaggers being able to see the light through Abbott's Shroud of Hypocrisy, which might be a standardized test too far.

McBlogger says it shorter.

Update: Now that the new conservo-hero has shared his thoughts on race relations, his fans seem to be vanishing.

“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton,” Bundy was quoted as saying to a group of supporters last Saturday. “And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

[...]

Bundy’s speech also seemingly derailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s apparent attempt to link his gubernatorial campaign to the Bunkerville camp; Abbott had allegedly written a letter to the BLM accusing it of “threatening” to seize land along the Red River in northern Texas.

But after being contacted regarding the rancher’s “Negro” remarks, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that Abbott’s letter “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”

As my friend Neil likes to say, everything is connected.  That goes double for stupid, mean, racist, and Republicans.

Update II: But Bundy does have a positive opinion of undocumented immigrants.

"Now let me talk about the Spanish people," Bundy said in a new video unearthed by New York magazine, right after he concluded his thoughts on "the Negro."

"I understand that they come over here against our Constitution and cross our borders," he says. "But they're here and they're people. I worked side-by-side a lot of them. Don't tell me they don't work, and don't tell me they don't pay taxes. And don't tell me they don't have better family structures than most of us white people."

"When you see those Mexican families, they're together. They picnic together. They're spending their time together," he said. "I'll tell you, in my way of thinking, they're awful nice people. We need to have those people join us and be with us."

What a terrible quandary the conservatives are faced with now.

Uber awful

The minute I laid eyes on 'em, I knew they were no good.

At least one ride-sharing company has decided to openly defy city law that bans its unlicensed drivers from charging for rides.

While a few free-ride promotions remain ongoing, Uber spokeswoman Nairi Hourdajian confirmed Tuesday that the service, which connects interested riders with willing drivers via smartphone apps, is indeed charging for rides and will “stand by” any drivers who receive city citations.

Where are all the conservatives crying "illegal"?  We certainly aren't going to find them in a federal courtroom, sitting higher than everybody else.

A federal judge Monday declined to issue a temporary restraining order sought by Houston and San Antonio cab companies hoping to block ride-sharing services that permit riders to use smart phone applications to catch rides.

Houston-based U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore set a July 15 date for an injunction hearing, which could result in stopping the smartphone-based companies from operating or give city ordinances as chance to catch up with the technology.

Gilmore said she had some "real concern" about whether the taxi and limousine companies had standing for a temporary restraining order, and added that she was particularly concerned about doing anything that stands in the way of a political process that already is under way.

Isn't that wonderful.  Let's break the law AND have the judge blow it off.

This is the same company that is busily lining up behind Google and Facebook with their own grandiose schemes to take over the world.

Honestly, I think what finished it for me was when I saw one of the local diehard Democratic activists -- he has both pimped Uber relentlessly and also drove the presidential limo when Obama came to town earlier this month -- compliment Robert Miller, Republican fundraiser and Uber lobbyist, on his sartorial splendor at City Hall.  If you needed a better example of class warfare, waged on the poor from the Democrats and the Republicans working in harmony, I do not know where you might find it.  Oh wait.

Oligarchy, it's what's for dinner.  I just don't think trust fund millennials are ever going to get it, even if they read this.

There is nothing progressive about lowering earnings for working-class people, nor is there anything progressive about undercutting labor costs to the point workers are driven into poverty and homelessness. It's a game as old as the laborers in the days of the Bible and as recent as those sweating in the mines of Western and Southern Africa. Play the working class against one another for the benefit of the wealthy who seek to be served no matter the human cost.

Texas Monthly weighed in also with the public policy perspective.

Regulating services like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar is important. Companies that profit off of public infrastructure (i.e., roads) need to pay taxes that help maintain that infrastructure, but that's just the beginning of the question. Are the unlicensed, part-time, "your driver is your buddy" chaffeurs of Lyft and Sidecar safe behind the wheel, if there's no regulation? Cities have a legitimate interest in regulating taxi franchises for multiple reasons: safety, tax purposes, and ensuring that there are enough cabs on the road—i.e., that the business model remains profitable enough that people continue becoming cab drivers—to provide travelers with the ability to, say, get to and from the airport in a reasonable manner. 

All the cab companies have ever said is that Uber and the rest of these operations should abide by the same city laws that they have for decades.  Uber cannot seem to do that.

I wouldn't hire this outfit to clean out my garage.  And to be clear, everybody that does hire them is fighting the class war on the side of the wealthiest against everybody else.

Texpate has some additional thoughts on the libertarian lousiness that is Uber, and Kuffner has been all over it (mostly from the opposite perspective).  With the first draft of the ride-sharing ordinance made public, the heated discussions will now begin.  As with Houston's proposed non-discrimination ordinance, it's time to make your city council member hear your voice.