FOCUS: Ending Net Neutrality Is the Atom Bomb in Trump's War on the Truth
Sunday, 26 November 2017 11:43
Bunch writes: "Trump's big, bad idea is so universal it can embrace ideas that seem to be contradictions - until you look a little closer."
Protestor rallying in Washington, DC earlier this year in support of net neutrality. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Ending Net Neutrality Is the Atom Bomb in Trump's War on the Truth
By Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer
26 November 17
t’s so fitting that the Trump administration announced what may prove to be its most democracy-altering decision yet — a push by the pro-Trump Federal Communications Commission to end so-called net neutrality on the internet — on the Tuesday afternoon flowing into Peak Thanksgiving. It was as if the government wanted an overfed nation overdosing on tryptophan and TV blowouts of the Dallas Cowboys to nap through the news that the giant corporations of Big Telecom are about to gain massive control over the information that Americans consume, until it is just too late for regular folks to rally opposition to the latest episode of “Big Brother: America” from our reality-show president. Simply put, Team Trump didn’t want the average American to have good information about what is fast becoming the defining feature of our 45th presidency: It doesn’t want the public to have good information.
The cloud of chaos emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days makes it easy to lose the big picture. When the president of the United States is getting up before sunrise to Twitter-trash-talk a basketball dad (who, like most of Trump’s targets these days, just happens to be black) with an inane racist comparison to Don King, or arguing that it’s better in Alabama to vote “perv” than vote “Democrat,” while no actual legislation is getting passed, it’s easy to get lost in the hourly outrage cycle and view The Donald as an unhinged nut, his presidency in flames.
But behind the smoke and mirrors, Trump World is getting stuff done — bad stuff, like the gutting of many major regulations that once protected our environment, or the toxic police-state culture created by “taking the gloves off” ICE enforcement agents or your local cops, or installing regressive judges across the land. But the defining feature of Donald Trump’s presidency is its all-encompassing war on the truth. The tactic is the stream of lies that the president spews — sometimes dozens in a week. But the broader strategy is equally alarming: Trump hopes to extend and expand his reign of dishonesty by remaking the media landscape with fewer, diminished sources of valid facts, elevating the handful of outlets that worship our Dear Leader (Sinclair, Fox) while seeking to destroy the credibility and reputation of everyone else.
Trump’s big, bad idea is so universal it can embrace ideas that seem to be contradictions — until you look a little closer. How else to explain the fact that the FCC — controlled by a majority of pro-Trump commissioners — is, with its all-but-a-done-deal rollback of net neutrality, giving the gift of a lifetime to monster communication companies like Philadelphia-based Comcast as well as Verizon and AT&T. Yet at the same time Trump’s Justice Department seems to be taking an anti-big-business stance in opposing the planned merger of AT&T and Time Warner without the spin-off of key assets like Time Warner’s CNN, the bete noire of Trump’s rabid fan base.
But there’s been widespread (and seemingly informed) speculation that the government’s merger move has little to do with its usually pro-business ideology and everything to do with old-fashioned revenge against the news outlet that Trump has called “the Fake News Network” and accused of treating him so unfairly (despite considerable evidence of the exact opposite). There’s no smoking gun, but pro-Trump news outlets like the Daily Caller and the New York Post have quoted sources that Trump would love to oust CNN chief Jeff Zucker, and other journalists have labored to find a reason for trying to block the merger other than presidential spite. So basically Team Trump wants fewer outlets controlling the news — and it wants those that survive to, in the immortal words of Omarosa Manigault, “bow down to President Trump.”
Hatred for, and the stifling of, a free press and free flow of information is the glue that holds the Trump presidency — and the 36 percent who support him — together. Consider these droplets:
These official acts come against a constant drumbeat from Trump seeking to delegitimatize journalism and the First Amendment at least in the eyes of his own supporters, calling hardworking reporters “the enemy of the American people,” threatening to relax libel laws amid the dream of forcing more outlets to go out of business like Gawker, and disrupting the news cycle with increasingly off-his-meds 6 a.m. tweets.
But the end of net neutrality would mean Trump and his allies are going nuclear in their war on information. Without the controls adopted by past incarnations of the FCC, your internet carrier would be free to charge you more for certain content; imagine if Comcast or Verizon started charging you for packages of accelerated and accessible websites — a “news” package with CNN.com and Philly.com or a “sports” package with league websites or Deadspin. (That’s how they do it now in countries like Portugal that don’t have net neutrality.)
Without net neutrality in Portugal, mobile internet is bundled like a cable package https://t.co/IwAnwW8f1s
There’s more. An internet provider would have the power to slow down the delivery of sites (presumably ones that don’t pay or offer other perks in return for high speed) and it could block some altogether — like, for example, sites that are dedicated to complaints from customers of Comcast or other telecoms. To civil liberties groups like the ACLU, ending net neutrality isn’t just a way for billion-dollar companies to squeeze a few extra bucks from consumers, but “also one of the foremost free speech issues of our time.” In explaining its opposition, the ACLU writes: “After all, freedom of expression isn’t worth much if the forums where people actually make use of it are not themselves free.”
The stifling of good information creates a world in which citizens decide which version of “the truth” they want to believe, often with disastrous consequences — the fantasy world that Trump and his true believers covet. If you want to go to Ground Zero for the war on information, go to Alabama, where as much as half or more of the electorate won’t believe Senate candidate Roy Moore is a sexual predator because the allegations were reported in the Washington Post, one of the news outlets that our Oval Office authoritarian has decreed as “fake.”
But a thousand Alabamas and a thousand Roy Moores will blossom across America’s political landscape in an era when the flow of information is even more tightly controlled by a handful of powerful corporations who can and will be bullied and intimidated by the White House. It’s critical for the future of American free speech and democracy that the net neutrality rollback be stopped, but with the rubber-stamp FCC preparing to vote Dec. 14, there are few good options and virtually no time to stop this dictator move. The war on factual information and the truth is repulsive, but it’s not the most outrageous thing about the Trump presidency. The most outrageous thing is that Trump is winning.
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=40776"><span class="small">Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page</span></a>
Sunday, 26 November 2017 09:19
Rather writes: "I fear that one of the most insidious casualties of our current age is a sense of peace."
Journalist Dan Rather attends the 'Truth' New York special screening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema on October 23, 2015 in New York City. (photo: Mark Sagilocco/Getty Images)
What Is Patriotism?
By Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page
26 November 17
fear that one of the most insidious casualties of our current age is a sense of peace.
We are buffeted by winds of chaos: scandal and outrage, whipped up into cyclones of distraction by the shattering of our democratic norms, the stoking of our basest tribal divisions and the dangerous incoherence of those infernal tweet storms. Our digital leashes have us tethered in body and mind to the instantaneous. It is so hard to press pause, let alone to turn it off, even for the duration of a cup of tea with a friend or a movie with a grandchild.
As a lifelong reporter, the stories emanating out of Washington, and every corner of the globe, are like a buffet of such abundance that my instinct is to try to sample everything. Just as meteorologists talk about 100-year floods or storms, journalists group once-a-year stories or the once-a-decade stories. Well these days there seems no shortage of once-a-lifetime stories about the cravenness, deceit, corruptions and cruelties of our age. We cannot allow ourselves to look away. We must bear witness. And yet there also must be a balance so that we can still find time to live.
That is why I tried to step back this holiday weekend with my family for some time on a human scale - the one-on-one bonds of love and shared experiences that really make life worth living. I have carved out moments of peace. I have embarked on walks, read, and shared long conversations without glancing at the latest headlines. I have remembered the joy of taking measured breaths and allowing the mind to wander.
I am at an age where I never know how many more moments like this lie ahead, but the truth is none of us really do. And that is why we all must carve out time for peace and reflection. I say all of this acknowledging what a luxury peace is and recognizing that we have thousands of men and women serving in difficult and dangerous military and diplomatic missions overseas and for them and their families, there is no peace. And I reflect on the millions of my fellow Americans who are suffering in the aftermath of hurricanes and wildfires. For them, there is no peace. And of course there are the millions of personal tragedies, accidents, illnesses, and cruelties that are part of the human condition.
We all must suffer through those, and that is why the added burden of the gratuitous and unnecessary chaos we see from our national leadership is so galling and damaging.
I know some of you have marked on this page about how often I mention my book WHAT UNITES US. But in my current mind, I cannot separate my thoughts from what is perhaps the most personal expression of myself I have ever shared with the public. In the book's essays are my greatest hopes and fears for a country I desperately love. And the book tour to which I will soon return has been so fulfilling for my body and soul. Meeting thousands of you in person and sharing in civil unrushed conversation refills my tank of optimism that we will make it through our trials. If you care about this mission or want to share this sentiment with others, I hope you find your way to WHAT UNITES US.
And if you have read this far in this post, I take you for a reader. So I will share a section of the book that is particularly resonant today. I have spent my time this weekend in Galveston and in the book's first essay. I reflect on my first trip here roughly 80 years ago. These are the memories of life that stay with you, and from which I fervently hope we can begin to mend our tattered social fabric. I hope you enjoy and I am eager for your thoughts on this excerpt and the book more generally in the comments section below.
(From the Essay "What is Patriotism?", WHAT UNITES US: REFLECTIONS ON PATRIOTISM)
When I was a young boy, we didn’t have much in the way of material possessions. But around 1940 or ’41, we got our first family car — a heavily used 1938 Oldsmobile that I can still see so clearly in my mind’s eye. Its previous owner had lived along the Gulf of Mexico, and it was thus considered a “coastal car,” which meant it was rusted, especially along the lower-left side. Its engine had also thrown a rod, blowing a big hole in the engine block, which had been patched. It was a bit of a rolling wreck, but I didn’t see it as anything but beautiful.
In my neighborhood, the notion of a family vacation was an unheard-of luxury, something you might see in the movies but never expected to experience yourself. Yet that year, as the Fourth of July approached, my mother had the idea of driving to the beach in Galveston to see the fireworks over the Gulf of Mexico. My father was a little unsure of trusting the new car to take his young family on the round trip of roughly 100 miles, but my mother was persuasive. When the morning of the Fourth arrived, I was giddy with anticipation.
A trip from Houston to Galveston these days is relatively easy. At that time it was a big deal. There were no freeways, so we took the two-lane coastal road, and I remember how hot the day was. The humidity must have been approaching 100 percent. All the car windows were down, and to help the time pass, my mother had us sing patriotic songs. First and foremost was “America the Beautiful.” She always thought it should have been made the national anthem, as it is less militaristic than “The Star-Spangled Banner” and easier to sing. I have inherited that opinion. We did sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” too, however, and there was a debate in the car about whether we should stop so that we could get out and stand while we were singing. We ultimately decided that we should probably keep going, our hands over our hearts as we sang. As proud Texans, we included several state songs in our repertoire (“Texas, Our Texas,” “Beautiful Texas,” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas”). I remember singing my heart out, and we repeated the songs over and over again, stopping to make sure my little brother and sister could learn the lyrics.
When we finally arrived in Galveston, it seemed magical. I can still taste the salt air and see the sun flickering on the rippling water of the Gulf. As we all sat on the seawall that had been built after the great hurricane of 1900, I thought this work of civil engineering was so marvelous it might as well have been the Great Wall of China. We played on the beach, and when the sun went down, we watched the fireworks. In retrospect, this was probably a modest show — low budget and low altitude — but I was transfixed. I had never seen anything like it. I oohed and aahed at the starlit night. I knew, after all, that “the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.”
We had no money for the extravagances of a hotel, so the five of us slept in the car, curling up every which way. As we drove back the next morning, we were all a little stiff, but for that moment life seemed perfect. I have often wished I could have bottled that day to taste its sweet innocence once more. I had no way of knowing then that the country would soon be engulfed in war, and that some of the happy families we saw strolling the beach would have fathers go off to battle and never return. I didn’t know that I soon would be stricken by rheumatic fever and confined to my bed. And I couldn’t have anticipated that my parents, whom I can still picture sitting contentedly in the front seat, would pass away relatively early in my life. All I knew then was that I liked the feel of the road and the sight of the scenery going past. I liked going places . . . and I still do.
Check out our new Facebook page What Unites Us and please use #WhatUnitesUs to mark your comments. Thanks.
As Flynn Cuts Off Trump, Top 4 Alleged Crimes He Could Sink Trump With
Saturday, 25 November 2017 14:26
Cole writes: "Flynn was a top Trump campaign official and then National Security Adviser to the president. He appears to have committed or planned several alleged crimes and if Trump was in the loop, he would be tarnished by Flynn's rackets. (Not that Trump doesn't have his own tarnishing rackets). Remember, it isn't the crime that usually gets them but the cover-up."
President Donald Trump. (photo: Getty)
As Flynn Cuts Off Trump, Top 4 Alleged Crimes He Could Sink Trump With
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
25 November 17
et. 3-star general Michael Flynn, under investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, has ceased sharing information on his case with the Trump white house. Analysts think that this move may be a sign that Flynn is turning state’s evidence and may provide information damning to Trump.
Flynn was a top Trump campaign official and then National Security Adviser to the president. He appears to have committed or planned several alleged crimes and if Trump was in the loop, he would be tarnished by Flynn’s rackets. (Not that Trump doesn’t have his own tarnishing rackets). Remember, it isn’t the crime that usually gets them but the cover-up.
1. In summer of 2016 and again in Dec., Flynn discussed with Turkish officials the possibility of kidnapping the Turkish Muslim religious leader Fethullah Gulen, whom some charge with running a cult. Gulen was given asylum in the US in the late 1990s. His Gulen or Hizmet movement was a partner with prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, until the two broke with one another a few years ago. Erdogan accuses Gulen of being behind the attempted coup of July 15, 2016. Flynn took money from a think tank close to a wealthy Turkish bussinessman who in turn is close to ERdogan, to do oppo reasearch on Gulen.
2. Flynn may have been offered millions of dollars to help free Reza Zarrab, a gold trader close to Erdogan,
3. Flynn declined to register as a foreign agent in connection with these activities or to report them as part of his security clearance at the NSA.
4. Flynn was fired for lying to VP Pence about his extensive contacts with the embassy of the Russian Federation in fall-winter ’16. But did Trump know? I don’t think they’re telling Pence very much.
It isn’t a crime but it isn’t a good look, either: Flynn went around saying the most horrible things about Muslims and even that he was afraid of them. Then it turns out he is working for them to the tune of $500k. The hypocrisy of the Flynn-Trump hate machine could eventually come back around and bite Trump on the ass. If you say you hate people, you attract a public invested in that hatred. But if you are actually doing business with and dancing before those very people, that could prove a problem for Trump’s base.
I'm on the FCC. Please Stop Us From Killing Net Neutrality
Saturday, 25 November 2017 14:21
Rosenworcel writes: "Net neutrality is the right to go where you want and do what you want on the internet without your broadband provider getting in the way. Proponents of wiping out these rules think that by allowing broadband providers more control and the ability to charge for premium access, it will spur investment. This is a dubious proposition."
FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, center, alongside Chairman Ajit Pai, left, and commissioner Brendan Carr, right, during their confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on July 19. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
I'm on the FCC. Please Stop Us From Killing Net Neutrality
By Jessica Rosenworcel, Los Angeles Times
25 November 17
ight now, you can go online and connect with friends, watch videos and read the news. There's a good chance you are reading this online right now.
We do much more on the internet than consume content, however. Increasingly, the internet is also where we create. We use online platforms and digital services to develop, share and spread ideas around the corner and around the globe.
This is the open internet experience we all know, and it's a big part of why America's internet economy is the envy of the world.
But this week, the leadership at the Federal Communications Commission put forth a plan to gut the foundation of this openness. They have proposed to end net neutrality, and they are trying to force a vote on their plan on Dec. 14.
It's a lousy idea. And it deserves a heated response from the millions of Americans who work and create online every day.
Net neutrality is the right to go where you want and do what you want on the internet without your broadband provider getting in the way. It means your broadband provider can't block websites, throttle services or charge you premiums if you want to reach certain online content.
Proponents of wiping out these rules think that by allowing broadband providers more control and the ability to charge for premium access, it will spur investment. This is a dubious proposition.
Wiping out net neutrality would have big consequences. Without it, your broadband provider could carve internet access into fast and slow lanes, favoring the traffic of online platforms that have made special payments and consigning all others to a bumpy road. Your provider would have the power to choose which voices online to amplify and which to censor. The move could affect everything online, including the connections we make and the communities we create.
This is not the internet experience we know today. Americans should prevent the plan from becoming the law of the land.
There is something not right about a few unelected FCC officials making such vast determinations about the future of the internet. I'm not alone in thinking this. More than 22 million people have filed comments with the agency. They overwhelmingly want the FCC to preserve and protect net neutrality.
At the same time, there are real questions about who filed some of the net neutrality comments with the FCC. There are credible allegations that many of the comments were submitted by bots and others using the names of deceased people. What's more, some 50,000 recent consumer complaints appear to have gone missing.
As he announced this week, New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman has been investigating these apparently fake comments for six months. The Government Accountability Office is also looking into how a denial-of-service attack may have prevented people from getting their thoughts into the official record.
In short, this is a mess. If the idea behind the plan is bad, the process for commenting on it has been even worse.
Before my fellow FCC members vote to dismantle net neutrality, they need to get out from behind their desks and computers and speak to the public directly. The FCC needs to hold hearings around the country to get a better sense of how the public feels about the proposal.
When they do this, they will likely find that, outside of a cadre of high-paid lobbyists and lawyers in Washington, there isn't a constituency that likes this proposal. In fact, the FCC will probably discover that they have angered the public and caused them to question just whom the agency works for.
I think the FCC needs to work for the public, and therefore that this proposal needs to be slowed down and eventually stopped. In the time before the agency votes, anyone who agrees should do something old-fashioned: Make a ruckus.
Reach out to the rest of the FCC now. Tell them they can't take away internet openness without a fight.
Congress Must Protect Dreamers From Trump's Intolerance
Saturday, 25 November 2017 14:19
Gupta writes: "Congress faces a pressing deadline to restore protections for Dreamers - those brought to the United States by a parent and who have grown up here since they were kids - by the end of the year."
Protesters gather at Trump Tower in New York in opposition to the announcement by President Trump that #DACA must be changed. (photo: Carolyn Cole/LA Times)
Congress Must Protect Dreamers From Trump's Intolerance
By Vanita Gupta, The Hill
25 November 17
ongress faces a pressing deadline to restore protections for Dreamers — those brought to the United States by a parent and who have grown up here since they were kids — by the end of the year. It is far too common for Congress to delay needed actions, but passing a clean Dream Act cannot be another thing that politicians put off before heading home for the holidays. This is an issue of fundamental human decency and justice — one that will say a great deal about our values as a country.
If lawmakers fail to act in December, young people across the United States will be forced to flee the only country they’ve known or once again recede into the shadows. This is a cruel and inhumane way to treat people who consider the United States their only home and are valuable members of our society. Dreamers came to the United States with their parents who believed that this country offered them a chance at a better future.
It didn’t have to be this way. This is a crisis entirely manufactured by President Trump, who insisted on using Dreamers as a bargaining chip to push his extreme agenda and openly admitted that he revoked Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) so he could try “getting something in return” for agreeing to protect these young people. Dehumanizing these individuals is reprehensible, and it is up to Congress to act compassionately and responsibly in the next two weeks.
President Trump and members of his administration have been quite open about their extreme intolerance for immigrants and who they believe should have access to the American Dream. During his presidential campaign, we heard the hateful rhetoric in Trump’s speeches. We saw him fill his administration with xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and racist individuals who seek to divide and marginalize us based on how we look or how we pray.
We watched as his administration refused to unequivocally condemn the white nationalists marching down the streets of Charlottesville. Now Congress has to decide whether to follow his lead or to solve this crisis in a bipartisan way.
Today, Dreamers run small businesses, teach, work in our hospitals and schools, serve in the military, and are leaders in their communities. That’s why earlier this month, more than 70 civil rights organizations from across the country came together to ask the Trump administration and members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — to come together to protect Dreamers.
Right now, there is a bipartisan Dream Act sitting in Congress that will solve this manufactured crisis that Trump created. It’s a bill that has been kicking around in Congress in some form or another for over a decade. It has support from influential members of both parties – from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
Congress should immediately pass a clean Dream Act — one without any divisive amendments. There are human stakes in these negotiations. Our elected leaders must not use this opportunity to try to push through other aspects of their agenda, which have nothing to do with Dreamers.
We are a nation with a strong history of immigration. Turning our back to those who seek a better life in America is a fundamental rejection of our founding principles. We cannot let President Trump’s abdication of leadership dictate the future of Dreamers living in the United States. Members of Congress have an opportunity to show meaningful leadership by casting an historic vote to protect Dreamers next month. It is time for them to do the right thing without further delay.
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t’s so fitting that the Trump administration announced what may prove to be its most democracy-altering decision yet — 
et. 3-star general Michael Flynn, under investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, has ceased sharing information on his case with the Trump white house. Analysts think that this move may be a sign that Flynn is turning state’s evidence and may provide information damning to Trump.
ongress faces a pressing deadline to restore protections for Dreamers — those brought to the United States by a parent and who have grown up here since they were kids — by the end of the year. It is far too common for Congress to delay needed actions, but passing a clean Dream Act cannot be another thing that politicians put off before heading home for the holidays. This is an issue of fundamental human decency and justice — one that will say a great deal about our values as a country.
