It’s not making much news, but Hillary Clinton has a proposal that should have all of us running away from her in abject terror.
No, it’s not the completely predictable proposal to force us all to pay for health insurance (that’s a yawner, from where I’m sitting) it’s the story being reported in this AP news story:
Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday called for a national broadband Internet system and permanent research tax credits…
“The nation that invented the Internet is now ranked about 25th in access to it,” Clinton said in her latest speech directed at the middle class appeals.
Called “Connect America,” Clinton’s broadband network would give businesses incentives to go into underserved areas, support state- and local-based initiatives and change the Federal Communication Commission rules to more accurately measure Internet access.
Can we say FCC as a national internet service provider (ISP)? If a federal agency is given authority over the internet, can there be any doubt that they will become the ultimate ISP, and govern the internet as they govern television and radio broadcast. Even beyond that, rules changes allowing FCC regulation of the internet will give the FCC regulation of cable television as well.
Let’s imagine, shall we, that the self same government agency that has so famously declared certain words as unspeakable over the airwaves, and certain body parts as unviewable on television, can now determine what will or will not be acceptable on the internet.
Obviously there will be no more porn (and no more porn channels on pay-per-view, either) but that’s just the start. How about access to information on sex education? How about medical journals? And why stop there? How about an internet ‘fairness doctrine’. Political forums would be subject to requirements concerning equal times on the forum for dissenting views, or be faced with closure.
But that’s also only the surface. This is where the real money is. Access to all materials that have ‘cloudy’ licensing issues will be blocked. Peer to peer will be history. Torrents a thing of the past. If you want music or movies, software or whatever, you will have to go to the license holders and pay whatever price they ask. No more testing on the QT to make sure the product will work for you, not unless you can find someone with a duplicatible hard copy. No more catching that missed episode of you favorite TV show by accessing a torrent file.
“Follow the money” the saying goes, and I think I can spot where the money is coming from, and where it will be going, if Hillary gets her wish on this issue. Forget socialized medicine; we’re talking basic information access here.
But that’s also just the tip of the iceberg. Putting the gov’t in charge of internet access puts us in the same category as China; where anything the gov’t doesn’t approve of will be blocked. It opens up the door to a 1984 type scenario where information and history are completely malleable, where truth is whatever those in charge deem it to be at any given moment (we have always been at war with Eastasia…) because they can simply dictate that the records be changed, and there won’t even be the gaping holes in the photographs next to Stalin to point out that something is missing.
Is anyone still so naive as to think that once the camel’s nose is under the tent that the whole camel won’t shortly follow? That giving the gov’t the ability to provide access to the internet won’t eventually lead to active control of content? It’s happening now everywhere the gov’t is involved; the internet will be no different, and is already no different in places where internet access is provided at gov’t expense; the attempts to control content in libraries are a shining example of this.
We should run screaming from suggestions such as the one floated by Ms. Clinton. Better yet, we should vow never to listen to (much less elect) someone with such a shaky notion of what real freedom is.
Postscript
I left that screaming tirade just the way I wrote it. Get a load of that guy, would you? What I find amusing is the fact that no one coined the term Hillary Derangement Syndrome in her entire time in politics, but they sure are quick to jump to the defense of demonstrably insane conservatives by calling their opponents insane.
I have eaten a Big Bowl of Crow since publishing this and other thoughts on many subjects. Here is the text of the AP article I was winging on about. I can’t find it anywhere on the internet when I search it now but I saved a copy when I wrote this article.
The Associated Press Go to Google News
Clinton: Internet Access Key to Economy
By PHILIP ELLIOTT – Oct 10, 2007
MERRIMACK, N.H. (AP) — Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday called for a national broadband Internet system and permanent research tax credits, while also quoting comedian Stephen Colbert for the second time in a week in a swipe at the Bush administration.
The Democratic front-runner and New York senator said that if elected she would invest in high-tech fields in order to sustain the high-tech jobs that are critical to economic prosperity and strengthening the middle class.
“The nation that invented the Internet is now ranked about 25th in access to it,” Clinton said in her latest speech directed at the middle class appeals.
Called “Connect America,” Clinton’s broadband network would give businesses incentives to go into underserved areas, support state- and local-based initiatives and change the Federal Communication Commission rules to more accurately measure Internet access.
“I see this problem in New York. A lot of the utilities don’t want to connect up our isolated, rural areas. And they also don’t want particularly to go into our underserved, poor, urban areas because there’s so much money that can be made in Manhattan and our suburban areas,” Clinton said. “It was like when we had to electrify the country in the 1930s. Utilities didn’t electrify places because it wasn’t cost effective for them to do so. Well, we’ve got to play catch-up.”
Clinton said the Internet is the new necessity for economic development.
“In the 19th century, we invested in railroads. In the 20th century, we built the interstate highway system. In the 21st century information economy we need to invest in our information infrastructure.”
Clinton also advocated making permanent the research and experimentation tax credits, which more than 15,000 companies have used since they began 1981.
“We cannot rebuild a strong and prosperous middle class if we don’t have a new source of new jobs,” Clinton said. “Our country is a country of innovators. We’re not acting like it right now, but we have all the potential to get into gear quickly.”
Clinton also repeated a pledge made last week in a speech to the Carnegie Institution for Science to give researchers increased freedom and to end the politicization on science. She cited Colbert, the Comedy Central news anchor with a pseudo-conservative personality.
“To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, that great philosopher, this administration doesn’t make decisions based on facts, it makes facts based on decisions,” Clinton said to laughter. “By ignoring or manipulating science the Bush administration is letting our economic competitors get an edge in the global economy.”
Later Wednesday, Clinton lashed out at Republican activists for questioning the financial need of a 12-year-old who spoke up on behalf of Democrats who sought an extension of the State Child Health Insurance Program. Bush vetoed the bill that would have done so.
Some conservative bloggers suggested the family of Graeme Frost had granite counters in its Baltimore home and could afford health insurance. The family said its counters are made of concrete.
“I don’t mind them picking on me; they’ve done it for years,” Clinton said to laughter from the audience at Symphony Hall in Boston. “You know, I think I’ve proven I can take care of myself against all of them.
“But President Bush and the Republicans should lay off Graeme Frost and all the other children who are getting health care because we have decided to do the right thing in America,” Clinton said.
Associated Press writer Glen Johnson in Boston contributed to this report.
Hosted by Google
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Reading back through that press release, I can’t tell the difference between what I think the internet should be now, and what she was talking about then. Since the Orange Hate-Monkey has nixed the net neutrality rules that we fought so hard to see put in place, we are now dominated by corporate information providers who can shut any or all of us off for whatever reason they like even though the internet is the only way to get some forms of business transacted these days. If the FCC ran it, and that isn’t even what she was talking about but let’s go worst case, at least they would be required to provide me with internet access. Corporations do not have to suffer the indignities of serving the poor and undeserving, even when denying service is the same thing as signing a death warrant.
