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Leading Democratic Candidate for the CA 80th Assembly District seat vacated by the termed-out Bonnie Garcia (R), Greg Pettis, has cultivated Labor support throughout the Coachella and Imperial Valleys.  Pettis serves in his 14th year as Cathedral City Councilmember, having been elected thrice in a City with about fifty-eight percent of its population identifying as ethnic or racial minority.  Pettis has also served as Mayor Pro-Tem of Cathedral City.

More below the flip...

Those ads aren't cheap. I believe we are looking at something like 60,000 bucks .... depending on the circulation it could be as high as 100,000 bucks,  especially if this ad runs a few more times.

The disturbing part of the ad isn't what it says, but who says it.  To get a sense of the seismic impact here consider what it would mean if someone could quote Rosa Parks as suggesting we didn't need to re-authorize the Voting Rights Act.  Well, the opponents of net neutrality have succeeded in doing something almost that outrageous.  The eye-popping quote is below the fold...

Once again, a key voice of sanity and careful reading is Harold Feld, a public-interest lawyer at the Media Access Project who writes a column called Tales of the Sausage Factory in which he minutely disects policy and politics of electronic discourse.

Jeff Brown talked with PAUL MISENER and SCOTT CLELAND about the internet industry. Misener, former FCC attorney is VP, global public policy, Amazon.com. Cleland, of Precursor, a telecom industry research and consulting firm, is also chairman of NetCompetition.org, which is funded by telecom, cable and wireless companies.

They did not speculate about first amendment violations, digital products, or choice ("whether all content on the Internet is created equal"). They talked about minimizing the cost of competition for a handful of "telecommunications" retail/wholesale carriers: The Consumer Grid.

COPE is unconstitutional.  The legal argument:

Can the federal government assume authority, essentially seize these local assets, without compensation to local governments (takings clause)?  Is there also a federalism issue?  How does regulating the cable system of, say, Wichita, Kansas, meet the test of interstate commerce (10th Amendment)?

More on the flip...  

But here's the thing: obviously, Net protections (now left out of the House version) are crucial, but even without them, COPE is a gigantic profit-fixing scheme for telecoms and the cable industry.  It's a corporate giveaway of epic proportions, and does a lot to shunt control of local cable financing away from local and state regulatory agencies to the BushCo-administered FCC.

(More down below)

Obviously, the Net protections as offered by the Markey amendment were crucial, but even without them, COPE is a gigantic profit-fixing scheme for telecoms and the cable industry.  It's a corporate giveaway of epic proportions, and does a lot to shunt control of local cable financing away from local and state regulatory agencies to the BushCo-administered FCC.

(Here comes more...)

This is my first diary entry, and I guess it's my first attempt at blogging (althought that fact surprises me).

Thursday was a depressing day for the internet at the House of Representatives. There were a couple opportunities for debate on network neutrality -- first, when the House debated the rule (from the Rules committee) that excluded the Sensenbrenner-Conyers bill from consideration by the full house as an amendment to COPE; second, when amendments to COPE were debated.

Below, I'll give my brief thoughts on what happened yesterday. I'm also going to take a look at the votes and do some counting ...

But the entire Net Neutrality debate is a smokescreen that's masking the really harmful effects that the final version of COPE will usher in.

COPE is a full-frontal attack on every municipal government in America and it will result in a fundamental change in the way your town works, regardless of where you live.

In the end, if we preserve Net Neutrality but let the rest of COPE pass, we will have won nothing.

Some info on the dark heart of COPE and how this evil piece of business is going to rob from local taxpayers, plus some thoughts on how to frame this fight going forward on the flip...

Call me a pessimist, but I think this is a bigger story than YearlyKos or Coulter or Al Zaquari (?spelling?).

Two letters appeared today in my local paper, The Portland Press Herald, both in support of the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE). You can find them here (scroll to the bottom, they are the last two).

I am on good rapport with the letters editor, and have also had some short editorials published, and would like to craft a good response to what I see is an attack on the freedom that is the web as we know it.

Any help you can provide would be aprreciated. Legalize needs to be such that this layman, and hence my readers, can understand it.

   He also linked to the website of a former AT&T exec, David S. Isenberg's musings about loci of intelligence and stupidity. He has many links and quotes including a story about Howard Dean taking action when he was informed a group whose board he sits on was supporting the Teleco net takeover.

   Isenberg suggests hooking up with this group.  I haven't time to follow this up right now, so thought I'd post it here and let everyone peruse it.

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The Internet as we know it may soon cease to exist.

Three weeks ago, a House subcommittee voted 27-4 to hand a giant victory to corporate interests.  The bill, known as the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006, now goes to the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week.

With this bill, the Congress is continuing their trend of giving away public goods to corporations.  But now, it's not forests or wetlands or wildlife refuges.  It's the democratizing communication medium we use every day.  And it's not just Republicans.  Democrats voted for this bill too.