Net Control

The age of hypocrisy is alive and well. On the issue of net neutrality, Tea Party idealist Ben Cunningham of the Tennessee Tax Revolt said:
“it’s ideological: individual decisions freely made by consumers and vendors will provide the best regulation of the internet. Letting the FTC set rules will only bring out armies of lobbyists seeking to influence policy.”

This is the same hands off policy the government had towards the banks, which brought us the worldwide recession. Federal oversight and regulation of banks was bad, we were told, the markets could regulate themselves said Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

After the damage was done and the market crashed, the former Fed champion of deregulation admitted he had been mistaken in thinking markets could or would regulate themselves. Only a banker has the luxury of twenty-twenty hindsight without any repercussions.

And, as if on cue, here’s a supposed grass roots enthusiast telling us we should repeat the same mistake with giant Telecommunication companies.

Without rules, a few corporations will gain too much power, and in turn will control information on the web. If one wanted to look up the impact of the BP oil disaster, would it lead to a corporate propaganda site, or would it lead to a local site showing the devastation up close and personal?

If we don’t protect net neutrality, we’ll end up with covert corporate control as opposed to the overt type of control like we see in communist China.

At this very moment “armies of lobbyists” are working against net neutrality and “seeking to influence policy”. We are a nation of laws for a reason, under the right circumstances and combined with governmental hands off policies, human nature cannot and will not regulate itself. This is a truism even a former banker now admits.

We've been Warned

There is much uproar currently in the news over the president’s religion. Believe it or not, there was actually a time in this country when it was considered rude and socially unacceptable to ask which religion someone belonged to. That information is your personal business and nobody else’s.

Thomas Jefferson said “Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friend’s or our foe's, are exactly the right“.

Not so today where too many bombard us with their brand of religion, like Glenn Beck, who said during his speech on the Washington Mall “it’s not about politics, it’s about God.” Glenn Beck started out as a radio stunt man. Now he’s continuing his antics by using religion as a prop to convince the easily swayed citizen that Glenn’s a ‘shepherd of the people‘, all in his zealous pursuit to merge his brand of religion with politics.

James Madison reminded us what happens when religious and civil power were entwined “What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution”. Madison knew that one day the country would confront “the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government.”

That day is now here. The corporations are the leaders, the journalists and politicians are their minions, and the rest of us are the sheep being fleeced by false gods in the name of salvation. It's so ironic that the Founding Fathers predicted this and warned us all, long ago, of the extreme danger of mixing politics with religion.