The FCC has put forth its new net neutrality proposal, and Free Press tells us why it's bunkum. To sum: the FCC still asserts authority to enforce net neutrality regulations without reclassifying broadband providers as telecommunications services rather than information services, which we've only been telling them to do for-freaking-ever now, while suggesting it might resort to such reclassification if the big telecoms act badly. "If"? Verizon has asserted, in court, a First Amendment right to herd its paying customers to websites Verizon prefers, regardless of what said customers prefer, and reports of slow traffic to Netflix have been much too frequent in recent weeks. Hence both Free Press and the People's Email Network help you tell the FCC, again, to preserve net neutrality the only way they can: by reclassifying broadband service providers. Memo to pundits who think people won't run through a wall for net neutrality just because their Netflix is slow: have you ever seen how people get when their page won't load right away? If I were the FCC or a big telecom, I'd fear that reaction, writ a million times larger.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported late last week about a lawsuit alleging that Kellogg Brown Root requires its workers who wish to blow the whistle on fraud to sign "confidentiality" agreements barring them from speaking to government officials, under threat of firing or legal action! A KBR executive responds that the confidentiality agreements only aim to "protect the integrity of the internal review process," and that KBR forwards all accusations "supported by the facts" to "the proper authorities." If you believe any of that, you must have been in a coma during Tha Bush Mobb years. KBR still gets to feed an awful lot at the government trough these days, which I must attribute to their familiarity with the process; certainly I could not attribute that to their work rewiring buildings in Iraq, which work electrocuted at least one Green Beret while showering. Hence the National Whistleblowers Center helps you demand that the Department of Justice investigate KBR, since KBR may well have violated at least two federal laws with its confidentiality agreement.
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