Energy

TheDC Morning: How the left astroturfed net neutrality into existence

Mike Riggs Contributor
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1.) How the left astroturfed net neutrality into existence — Despite what you may have heard, yesterday’s net neutrality vote at the FCC wasn’t the result of millions of Americans or even tens of thousands of Americans waking up and saying, “I think I am going to suddenly care about this!” No, like most Washington success stories, yesterday’s enslavement of the Internet was made possible by a small group of people with a lot of money. “After McCain-Feingold passed, several of the foundations involved in the effort began shifting their attention to “media reform”—a movement to impose government controls on Internet companies somewhat related to the long-defunct “Fairness Doctrine” that used to regulate TV and radio companies,” writes the WSJ’s John Fund. Those outfits are Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, all of which have given money to left-wing froth factory Free Press. As a result of Free Press’s close ties to staffers for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, net neutrality crusaders gamed the debate from the beginning: “Some of the same foundations that have spent years funding net neutrality advocacy research ended up funding the FCC-commissioned study that evaluated net neutrality research.”

2.) Eating steak will make you poor, thanks to ethanol — Reason one million and six why ethanol is a scam that the American people should not be funding with their hard-earned tax dollars: It makes steak more expensive. “For years, the livestock industry was the main buyer of cheap and plentiful corn. Then came the ethanol mandate in 2005. Ultimately, the government required that Americans use about 13 billion gallons of ethanol in 2010,” reports NPR. According to economists, ethanol subsidies have increased the overall cost of food by 1.5 percent, and the cost of meat even more so. This bothers J. Patrick Boyle of the American Meat Institute for reasons that any hardworking American can relate to: “The government mandates the consumption of your product, subsidizes its production, and then insulates the product from international competition.” The cost of steak is too damn high!

3.) Obama administration covers for organized labor–again — “The Office of Labor Management Statistics (OLMS) was supposed to release an annual report tracking labor unions and evidence of corruption in union leadership in January 2010 but still hasn’t released the document,” reports The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle. “Don Todd, who led OLMS during the Bush administration, told The Daily Caller he doubts it would be too difficult for the Obama administration to release that information, as they’re supposed to keep track of it all year long. He also said that this administration’s failure to release the report is ‘freakishly incompetent.'”

4.) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sues the Washington Post company — Irony of ironies: Kaplan, the for-profit education company that keeps the Washington Post Company afloat, is being sued by the EEOC for not hiring enough people of color. According to Bloomberg, “Washington Post Co.’s Kaplan Higher Education division was sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over claims the company rejected job applicants based on credit history, a decision which discriminated by race.” Kaplan is also being investigated by the Florida AG for its recruitment practices, which involve getting mostly low-income and minority students to borrow huge sums of federally backed aide, which they won’t be able to repay with a for-profit degree, but which will ruin their credit scores.

5.) Banks now openly stealing from people — The locks were changed on Mimi Ash’s front door when she came home from a weekend ski trip, and her house was empty, reports the New York Times. “All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words ‘Together Forever,’ that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert.” The culprit? Bank of America. “In an era when millions of homes have received foreclosure notices nationwide, lawsuits detailing bank break-ins like the one at Ms. Ash’s house keep surfacing.” The reason: Not even the banks know what’s what anymore. They foreclose on paid-off houses, or shut off the power to homeowners who are up to date on their payments. In Florida, they stole a woman’s iPod; in Texas, they spoiled 100 lbs of frozen fish by killing the electricity to a house that they shouldn’t have. This Christmas, make sure and thank the Lord for TARP!

6.) House Republicans dreading their ‘first adult moment’ — “Congressman-elect Tim Scott, one of two incoming freshman Republicans who will serve as part of GOP leadership, is voicing doubts about raising the debt ceiling, a key showdown vote poised for the first few months of the next Congress that incoming Speaker John Boehner has called ‘first really big adult moment’ his conference will face,” reports TheDC’s Jonathan Strong. “I think until proven otherwise we’re looking for $300 billion in cuts if that’s possible,” Scott said in an interview. “Right now all the talk about the issue seems to be that it’s a foregone conclusion that you cannot do that. I’d like to let the proof be in the pudding.” We can tell you right now, Congressman-elect Scott: The pudding tastes like human excreta.