As you probably know, Buyblue will be giving a Yearly Kos workshop on How to Vote With Your Wallet. We're going to talk about Net Neutrality, and in preparation, we're researching the campaign contributions of telecommonsters to members of the relevant House and Senate committees. Those committees include House Energy and Commerce, the Telecommunications subcommittee, House Judiciary, Rules, Senate Commerce.
As we are sure you know, Ed Markey, D-Mass., proposed the Markey Net Neutrality Act. That measure failed in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Shortly thereafter, the committee voted on Chairman Joe Barton's (R-Texas) HR 5252, the COPE (Communications, Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement) Act of 2006, the legislation designed to convey more money to the 8 telecommonsters that support the bill, against the wishes of gunowners, Christians, Google, banks, financial institutions, Yahoo, Amazon.com, bloggers, and my aunt Myrtle's dog in Cambodia. I mean the whole rest of the world is against COPE and for net neutrality. It's eight giant companies and their Congressional shills against the world (The 8 - AT&T, BellSouth, Cisco, Comcast , Qualcomm, SBC, Time Warner, and Verizon.)
Interestingly enough, here are the names of some members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, their votes on the Markey proposal, and their votes on COPE. Between the Markey vote and COPE vote they changed their minds. They voted YES on Markey and then YES on COPE. That's not sensible. We wonder why.
Boucher, Rick (D-VA)
Brown, Sherrod (D-OH)
Davis, Jim (D-FL)
Engel, Eliot L. (D-NY)
Gordon, Bart (D-TN)
Inslee, Jay (D-WA)
Pallone, Jr., Frank (D-NJ)
Ross, Michael A. (D-AR)
Strickland, Ted (D-OH)
Stupak, Bart (D-MI)
We wonder if they were offered money, goods, services, investments, points, tips, campaign contributions, or other tangible things. If you have any tips, pointers, reliable information, solid reports, inside scoop, or videos, please let me know. We'll investigate, follow up, and incorporate what checks out into our information.
We don't expect anyone to have the video of a lobbyist bribing a congressman or his staff, but we would like fellow Kossacks to know about the vote and participate in the search for the reasons for the changed minds. We believe it an engaging and useful search, and informative. We hope you are openminded and observant.
We hope to see you at Yearly Kos, and at our workshop. And do remember to vote with your wallet. Thanks.