These Times

If you look across the spectrum of data coming across our feeds, you begin to get a very clear picture of what is going on.

The age of information works both ways… It opens the world to you about everything that is going on. You literally can access to 88% of the world from your hand.

But also through that same open door, it allows the world to see everything that goes on with you.  Granted, there are 7 billion people and the chance they want to find out about you is small.  But if they ever did, your profile is up for sale. Someone, somewhere is going to choose money over morals and hand it over.

Most of us are not criminal and don’t have crimes we are running from. But everyone has a late bill paid, or two.  In today’s world, that late bill can cost you dearly with a lost opportunity you otherwise would have had.  Higher rates today are being paid by you, for something that cost “no one” “nothing” 6 and a half years ago.

Because technology is still newish for most of us, we accept such as necessary for business. We were too busy enjoying its fruits to worry about the aftereffects our indulgences will bring us the following day after.

Now we have reached that point, it seems. And particularly with the political season upon us, we get daily reminders that even benign innocent items in ones past, can be twisted in certain ways to cause us lots of pain and consternation.

“My disheveled opponent bought some Tinactin in 2006…  You contracted Athletes Foot, didn’t you?  You were so disorganized in your hygiene behavior that you literally allowed a FUNGUS to grow unmonitored, unrestricted, and unopposed so long, that you had to get medication for it… Tell us why Mr. Disorganized,  should we then take your word over what you say you will do to solve these complicated global problems?  When you can’t even take care of a foot fungus by practicing basic hygiene? ”  (Ted Cruz was the template for that; could you tell)

Never mind that around 15% to 25% of people are likely to have athlete’s foot at any one time… (That’s one out of four on the high end, one out of 6 on the low end.)

But whether any accusation is true or not, if it resonates, then reputational damage is done to the person simply by just being the object of such an accusation. Their time must be diverted to address the issue, which of course takes time away from focusing on issues that really do matter and are far more important.

We are in a world ruled by distortion gamesmanship.  I was so saddened to see that even Hillary has stepped into it now, (being hard on accusations–loose on facts), now that Sanders got a surprising jump in Michigan.  Today one is gamed to distort ones opponent first and often.

Like this guy here... right or wrong he wears the effect of the sucker punch in Fayetteville NC he never saw coming….  Today, he who was punched then escorted out the building, is absolved of all crimes. His puncher has been arrested and I guess (he must have waved off his right to an attorney) is still bragging to all who listen how wonderful it was to cave in a black person’s face.

But by the time that comes out. our attention is long gone and we are hard pressed to remember it… All we do remember is that someone hit someone who based on our previous beliefs, either did or did not deserve it. But that person hit, has this episode virtually attached to his computer-collected profile now until he dies. It’s there for future employers, future co-workers, even future in-laws to exploit to their advantage.

Is this what we bargained for as we rushed headlong into the information age?

Yet it can be fixed fairly easily; you just have to overcome the power of Big Money to make it so.  No you won’t put the genie back into the bottle.  Instead, you capture the genie, then make it pay for the mischief it has done.

Which means you open up information gatherers to lawsuits…. Currently they are protected.  But you allow them to become victims of huge settlements whenever their information goes against what 12 random people sitting on a jury think should be moral and proper.

In doing so, you put the trust back between us and our machines.  Because I really don’t mind if I’m tracked at 1:15 pm March 11th driving though Chik Fil A’s drivethru to pick up some grilled nuggets and delicious waffle fries. (Ok, damn it, I got an Oreo Shake too, IT WAS SMALL!!!!)  as long as I know that no matter who knows about it, it can never be used against me because if it is, I too become part of the upper 1`%…

When we reach that point, we are back where we were when growing up, where our spinster neighbor knew everything about us from peaking out the curtain, but would never tell anyone because she’d then be ostracized for being a spinster neighbor who peeked out of curtains, which in our town was the kiss of death.

The result is that we didn’t do anything really illegal because on that she could tell, but it didn’t hold us back from having fun because there, our secrets were safe….

So if corporations are today allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election campaigns because they allegedly are “people” too and have certain inalienable rights,  DOES IT NOT STAND ALSO, that they should be accountable for all the unlimited amounts they damage and harm others? With that new badge of citizenship, shouldn’t they also have certain “inalienable” responsibilities?

We all know the answer!  WE, THE PEOPLE, need to open our informational gatherers to the potential of huge lawsuits for when they do wrong… By doing so, we do our very best to insure that very little wrong will ever occur in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Love My President

When General Grant was first given command of the Northern Army, he rushed into battle at the Battle of the Wilderness… After three days of hard fighting with great numbers of casualties, the two armies separated. The Northern troops, used to their previous commander, began to bivouac to regroup and lick their wounds…  Allegedly  two men were digging embankments and the General rode up on them, asked them what they were doing.  “Setting up camp” they told him.  “We’re not camping” he said, “Tell the men to prepare to move out. Johnny Reb is wounded; time to chase him down for the kill…”

The life and energy that rippled though those troops is now legendary.  Such is the duty and obligation of a leader….

Today, when the internet surprised me with the completely unexpected news that my commander in chief had decided the most hated of entities, Comcast and Verizon, were now going to be under government control, I understood the awe and appreciation that those men in a muddy Virginia swamp must have felt… Instead of licking wounds from Tuesday, this man says: what are you doing?  We got to fight.  We got work to do.  We got to turn this thing around… and if we rest, we lose. We aren’t resting…

Let’s take on these broadband providers, you know? These guys who keep you waiting 45 minutes on the phone to talk to someone whose thick Indian accent you can’t understand… you know? Just so you never get what you wasted 45 minutes for…..

And while we are at it Mr. President, can we please have our Justice Department use our courts to smash both major Telecoms into pieces, break them up like we did Ma Bell which made telephone so much more competitive and cheaper and led to what it is today?

So instead of feeling helpless, beat up, forlorn, defeated… our president instead says the equivalent of: “Let’s hunt some Orc….. ”

Instantly rejuvenated,  we answer:  YEAH!!!!!!   The Internet shall always belong to ‘We, The People’, first….. That is worth spilling blood …..

No More Net Neutrality….

This was a surprise.  Today the Federal Appeals Court ruled against the FCC, and for Comcast and Verizon and AT&T…….

If you’ve always loved your cable company, XOXOXO,  then have no fear.  But….if they have ever pissed you off in your lifetime, GRRRRRR, …be afraid, very afraid.

Essentially what this ruling “could do” is give them unlimited power over what you see, or not see on the internet….. As well as unlimited power over what they can charge for the privilege (no longer your right) to see what ever it is they choose to show you…..

The internet is set become another payola as was the radio….  no matter what station you tune, you hear the same 10 songs, unless of course, you always listened to WVUD….. And the reason you hear the same 10 songs, is because those record companies paid the 10 highest fees to the corporate entity overseeing the  music selection….

Now do you see where we are headed?

Ever heard of Netflicks?  Of course you have.  Dump your stock.  They will now be charged between $75- 115 million extra a year, just to have their movies carried by Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T..

Prefer to use Google over the Alta Vista search engine on the Comcast Site?  Expect to pay a premium.  Wish to see a video from your children in South Africa?  Expect to pay for it….  YouTube?  Will now be pay in advance….

At stake is “common carriage”.  It is a centuries old premise that if someone operates in the public arena, one must allow all the same option to use it.  One can’t for example, run a ferry and not allow his mother in law to cross, or Ted Cruz… If one is providing a public service, under common carriage principles he must not discriminate between parties….

This was one of the tenants that helped strike down bus segregation in the Old South, the fact that this age old principle was violated.

However… what happened…. was in 2005, the Supreme Court in their “Brand X” decision, decided that broadband (and wireless), was NOT a common carriage entity under existing law… Phones, yes; old cable, yes; but broadband… no…   The current court used that decision to say that since broadband was NOT a regulate common carrier provider (even though obviously it is), it did not have to comply with the common carriage principles every other entity has to follow….. Broadband is not a telecommunications network, and therefore FCC rules DO NOT APPLY.

The 2011 FCC rules being challenged in this court case, essentially state that broadband providers cannot block competing traffic on their network or discriminate against another company’s services that ride over its network in order to benefit its own competing services.

Here are the fears.

Net neutrality supporters have long worried that a broadband provider, such as Comcast, may purposely slow down traffic from an Internet company, such as Netflix, that uses its network to deliver services. In this case, Comcast could slow down the video streams of Netflix, making it impossible for Comcast broadband customers to use this service, which competes against Comcast’s own on-demand video service.

This happened immediately after the  decision.  Try going to the EFF site, Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization hostile to corporate takeover of the internet.  It takes 5 minutes to load each page, and all other sites take under a second.  I tried it repeatedly with always the same results.  Prior to the decision, it had always been in an instant.  So obviously now that companies can do what ever they want, any website critical or your cable company, is getting dissed…  (No wonder Chris Coons uncharacteristically is sucking up to the Cable Industry.)  If Christine O’Donnell runs again, she will be the only candidate in the race, according to the internet…. unless you do “their” bidding.

Broadband providers could create tiers of service that would require Internet companies trying to reach their customers over this infrastructure to pay a fee for a certain quality of service. For example, Amazon may pay Verizon to prioritize its traffic to ensure that its streaming services get a better quality of service or so that its Web pages load more quickly. Net neutrality supporters say such a system would relegate smaller Internet companies, which cannot afford to pay for priority service, to a slower and less reliable Internet. These Net neutrality advocates say this will stifle innovation.

The court ruling could pave the way for broadband operators and backbone Internet providers, which provide the nationwide infrastructure for the Internet, to create new revenue streams by charging Internet companies, such as Amazon, Google, and Netflix fees for offer priority delivery of their content.

Mozilla responded with this…

“Giving Internet service providers the legal ability to block any service they choose from reaching end users will undermine a once free and unbiased Internet. In order to promote openness, innovation, and opportunity on the Internet, Mozilla strongly encourages the FCC and Congress to act in all haste to correct this error.”

And that is the solution.  The FCC can simply redirect broadband and wireless to be back in the public domain, and net neutrality can continue.

Or Congress can pass legislation demanding he same.

Or the Supreme Court can overturn the Appeals Court’s decision.

It comes down to our rights  to free access of knowledge, versus a corporation’s right to make money.  As has been the trend lately, the Court decided the trump suit was a corporation’s right to make money….

Foreign Companies! If You’re In a Right To Work State, GET OUT NOW!

Fact, Alambama’s law is just the first.
Fact, Right to Work States are also anti-foreigner states.
Fact, Union states, have a more balanced approach to business.
Fact, laws passed by Alabama, Arizona, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and Utah, will apply to your executives as well as Mexican farm workers.
Fact, in Alabama, one German executive was detained from a Mercedes Plant, and one Japanese executive visiting a Honda plant, was picked up in a dragnet.. Because they couldn’t prove they were citizens (they weren’t), they were incarcerated.. In both those cases hush money and calls from the state executive, took care of the issues, putting the executives out of jail.

If you are a foreign company, thinking of building in any redneck state to save labor, there is a good chance you might find yourself in jail the next time you visit…

As they currently say in Alabama (while the crops rot in the fields…). “The Law… is the Law.” You would be safer building a plant in Venezuela where, yes, it could be nationalized, than you are in building in Alabama where you can’t visit… or find decent workers who will work for the prices you want to pay.

Move North. Safest place? Delaware.

People Versus Profits?

The Communication Workers Union, consisting of some 45,000 people, has gone on strike against Verizon Communications. It may be difficult to get repairs or service in the next month….

Verizon made 1.6 BILLION in profit last quarter… (that is only three months.)

And yet, Verizon wants to tie pay increases more closely to job performance, make it easier to fire workers for cause, halt pension accruals this year and require union workers to contribute to health-plan premiums……..

These are real people… asked to sacrifice for what? A corporation?

What exactly is a corporation? It is a piece of paper… that says: “I’m a corporation.” It is not a person, it does not eat, drink, live, give birth, raise children, bury it’s parents, worry about crooked bosses, crimp and save for retirement, or go to the doctor to hear it has cancer…

Those people on strike, however, do undergo all those things…

What we’ve come to, is a crossroads….. Do we as a society, want to better a corporation, that does nothing for us, just increases the wealth of the top !% even more, or…. do we want to help our neighbors, who will spend their money in our shops, our stores, our restaurants, our gas stations, our bakeries, our cinemas, our churches, and keep those entities going on a little longer?

Yes, we’ve come to a crossroads… What benefit at all to society is $1.6 Billion spread over three months, when it means $1.6 billion less out of our local economies because of fewer people working? Can’t you see? $1.6 Billion is siphoned right our of the Mid Atlantic economy, never to return…….

What happens if one gives each of those 45,000 workers an extra $1000? The new total, $45,000,000 immediately begins to flood through the mid Atlantic region… Workers are behind on their bills. That money goes right into the economy…

How much of a loss to Verizon? $45 million may sound like a lot, when looking from zero… Who wouldn’t buy a Powerball ticket, if he was guaranteed a cool $45 million?

But, if one takes the yearly total of $45,000,000… and divides it by 4, to see the quarterly total, .. one gets $11.25 million…

So how much of a dent into Verizon’s profit, would that $11.25 million make?

It would impact Verizon’s profit last quarter by 0.70 of one percent .. which means that 99.30% of Verizon’s profit would remain intact…

But an additional $45,000,000 a year would flow through our economy….

And this is where you should get angry…. This doesn’t affect what you will pay for your phone service…

They made that $1.6 Billion WITH the current labor contracts.. those same ones WITH the pay increases, those same ones WITH the pension accruals this year, and those same ones WITH employer contributions to employee’s health-plan premiums… They made 1.6 Billion with all that, and now they want to suck out more???

WAKE UP AMERICA…… WAKE UP….