As the Consumerist reminds us why we need the no-crippling-nor-prioritization-of-service network neutrality rules the FCC plans to gut, I have even more action alerts with which you may demand that you, not some ISP, determines what your internet experience will be like: one from Roots Action, another from CREDO, and a third from Free Press. That last one, from Free Press, is a phone-calling tool, so even if you've used any of the others, you can still use that one; FCC Chair Tom Wheeler needs to know he has nowhere to run. The Consumerist reminds us that if we let corporations run the internet, they will crush innovation, because it's really very easy right now to start an innovative website or application on the internet, but when we all have to pay out the ass to do that, it won't be easy to innovate anymore. And big corporations don't innovate -- small businesses innovate, and then big corporations gobble them up. And Roots Action reminds us, also, that on the very same day the FCC announced its plan to gut net neutrality, Brazil codified net neutrality provisions into national law. I'd hate to think our government was so addled by big corporate money that it couldn't do the right thing -- the thing that promotes innovation, the thing that promotes freedom, the thing that enjoys actual bipartisan support from left and right.
Meanwhile, you may recall that the National Organic Standards Board (or NOSB) banned the use of the antibiotic tetracycline in certified organic apples and pears after October of this year -- after your activism, no doubt -- but the NOSB hasn't banned the use of another antibiotic, streptomycin, in certified organic apples and pears, so the Organic Consumers Association helps you tell the NOSB to end streptomycin use on organic apple orchards the same day it ends tetracycline use. Why? Well, the more we overuse antibiotics, the more resistant the bacteria they target will become, until we're one day inundated by super-bugs everywhere that we can't kill. Orchards have used antibiotics to combat fire blight, a disease apple and pear trees get that makes the trees look like they've been burned and which ultimately kills the tree. But the best way to fight fire blight is to prune the blighted areas of the tree before they spread to the roots (which, I know, requires more workers, but hey, our U6 unemployment rate is still nearly 13%). And some scientists have also had success using bacteria and yeasts to take down the fire blight bug. So it's not exactly antibiotics-or-die for the organic apple and pear industry.
Finally, President Obama has, in the past, been a staunch advocate of securing "loose nukes," but his 2015 budget makes big cuts to programs that find and secure loose nuclear weapons and material. For the third year in a row, I should add. And the 2015 budget actually increases funding for nuclear weapons! That's getting it precisely backward -- does this mean we're going to just fire more nukes at terrorists and rogue states that get their hands on nuclear weapons? Seems to me we're much better off getting hold of those nukes before anyone else can. Seriously, I'm boggled at the priorities Mr. Obama has put on display here. Mere pretend deficit-hawkishness doesn't explain it -- you have to wonder if nuclear non-proliferation programs are "unpopular" now merely because Mr. Obama embraced them. Of course, if that's the case, then appeasing these fair-weather opponents isn't the right thing to do. You also have to wonder if Mr. Obama simply means to embrace good ideas in public and kill them in private. Hell, that's how it seems to have worked on network neutrality and the financial transaction tax! But if that's the case, then he needs to hear from us, so the Council for a Livable World helps you tell Mr. Obama to restore cuts to nuclear nonproliferation programs.
Comments