Kabuki, or for real? This is as unequivocal as it gets:
Barack Obama called for “the strongest possible rules to protect” the open internet on Monday and came out against proposals championed by cable and telecoms companies to create a fast lanes for the web.
The president’s statement comes as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prepares to publish new rules to regulate the internet after a series of legal defeats at the hands of telecoms and cable companies.
“An open internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life. By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known,” Obama said.
The president came out firmly against a proposal that would allow cable companies to create “fast lanes” for higher paying customers. Cable and telecoms companies have lobbied for fast lanes, arguing that companies like Netflix should pay more for the large amount of bandwidth they use.
This is more Obama Kabuki, but the following is not. Over the past ten years our nuclear arsenal has shrunk by 85%, but the cost of maintaining what’s left has increased by 30% to $8.3 billion a year. That increase is due to skyrocketing profits for contractors and massive investments in projects that were later cancelled. “The whole system has failed us,” says Roger Logan a nuclear scientist and one time manager at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Obama is modernizing the system at a cost of $355 billion dollars. That’s another $35 billion dollars a year handed over to the defense contractors. Why do we even have a nuclear arsenal? We all know that we’re never going to use it. Of course crazy John McCain and the other neo-con interventionists might drop a few nuclear bombs on somebody(s). Maybe we keep nuclear bombs and spend all that money to shut McCain and the rest of the crazies up?
Kabuki or not, it’s long overdue. Nice of them to hold this until AFTER the election. We wouldn’t want a strong position on a hot button democratic issue to get in the way of triangulating Democrats.