Friday, December 15th, 2017
Stephan: I am amazed how little coverage the FCC decision to end net neutrality is getting. It's sort of the "C" block story. But, in terms of how things are going to affect your life, net neutrality and the grievously ill-conceived tax bill are the stories that matter today, and even more tomorrow.
Here is what happens next with net neutrality.
The Federal Communications Commission has voted to repeal net neutrality, despite overwhelming public support for the regulation, which requires internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast to distribute internet access fairly and equally to everyone, regardless of how much they pay or where they’re located.
Despite last-minute requests to delay the December 14 vote from some Republican members of Congress, it went through as scheduled, thanks to the support of a much longer list of Republicans who favored the repeal and urged the vote to be held without delay. As had been heavily predicted for months, the vote was split 3-2 along party lines, with the FCC chair Ajit Pai and the other Republican members Michael O’Rielly and Brendan Carr voting for repeal and Democratic commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel voting to protect it.
The vote to repeal came in spite of overwhelming bipartisan support for net neutrality from the public, as the FCC was clearly determined to move ahead with the repeal. Tensions were high during the hearing — and at one point, in the middle of Pai’s remarks, […]
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Friday, December 15th, 2017
Kaleigh Rogers and Jason Koebler, - Motherboard
Stephan: Here's what corruption looks like; this is why I see the congress as mostly made up of ethically compromised and corrupt corporate vassals. Is it any wonder we're in the shape we are?
Credit: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg
Wednesday afternoon, 107 Republican members of Congress sent Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai a lettersupporting his plan to repeal net neutrality protections ahead of the commission’s Thursday vote.
“The record is exhaustive, every viewpoint is well represented, and the time has come for the Commission to act,” the letter says. The current regulations, of course, are widely popular with the American people, and there have been widespread public protests urging the FCC to keep the protections in place.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its Subcommittee on Communications and Technology released the letter, and it is signed by 107 lawmakers. Many of their signatures are illegible, and the committee did not release a typed list of the members who signed it. A call to the committee was not immediately returned.
Motherboard staff has attempted to compile a list of names on the letter. The full letter is embedded below. So far, we have been able to read 84 names; if […]
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Friday, December 15th, 2017
LYDIA WHEELER , - The Hill
Stephan: Not all Republicans are stupid -- Roy Moore, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, Blake Farenthold and many others not withstanding. The smart ones understand that they are increasingly a nativist, racist, christofascist cult that has only a few years left before they are marginalized. As a result Republican do not like democracy and are doing everything they can through gerrymandering, polls taxes, voter ID, and other tricks to ensure they retain at least some power as America becomes a majority minority nation. The particularly don't like colleges, educated voters tend to vote Democratic, and so they don't want students voting. As a result we get to this.
A lecture hall of community college students, a high percentage of which are in poverty.
House Republicans are pushing a higher education bill that scraps requirements for colleges and universities to alert students to register to vote.
As part of legislation rewriting the laws governing colleges and universities, Republicans left out provisions added in 1998 and 2008 to ensure that schools make a good-faith effort to distribute voter registration forms to students enrolled at their institutions.
The House Education and the Workforce Committee approved the bill late Tuesday in a 23-17 party-line vote that largely went under the radar.
It would nix language requiring that schools request voter registration forms from their state at least 120 days before the voter registration deadline, and send students an “electronic communication” exclusively about voter registration.
It also eliminates language specifying schools are required to follow these requirements for general and special federal elections, state gubernatorial elections and elections for chief executives within the state.
The proposed legislation, known as the Promoting Real Opportunity, Success and Prosperity through Education Reform (PROSPER) Act, only says that schools must “make a good faith effort to […]
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Friday, December 15th, 2017
VALERIE TARICO, - Raw Story
Stephan: For some years, based on the psychological, sociological, anthropological, and psychiatric data, I have been saying that fundamentalist religiosity is less about religion and more about mental illness. Or, put another way, Fundamentalism is the social context within which a range of mental illnesses often occur. Here's the latest on that trend.
Trump in evangelical prayer meeting.
Credit: You Tube
At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia. When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.
But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia. I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It […]
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Thursday, December 14th, 2017
Stephan: Doug Jones' win has been the "A" story on all media all day. But I want to talk about something not receiving much attention except on Rachel Maddow's show. To whit: voting matters. White people in Alabama still voted overwhelmingly for Roy Moore, although White women less so, and younger voters particularly so. What mattered, what elected Jones, was turnout. More people voted for Doug Jones.
I hope all my socially progressive readers hear this. I know from the emails I receive that many social progressives think that there is no point in voting, both parties are corrupt.. yada...yada. Let me be explicit: This is absolute crap.
If you don't think that there was a difference between Roy Moore and Doug Jones you shouldn't be allowed out alone. Voting is the key to a successful democracy, and the point is not convincing people to change their positions, the point is to get out all the people who think as you do to vote.
The way to get rid of Trumpism, is for EVERY SINGLE PERSON who cares about wellbeing to vote in support of those convictions. More votes, more wins. It's that simple.
People wait in line to vote in the Arizona to vote
Credit: www.azcentral.com
The question hovering over the Alabama U.S. Senate election, at least for the pundits, was simple: Would Alabama Republicans rather vote for a child molester or a Democrat? The answer was sadly predictable: Even though the allegations against Republican Roy Moore — that he had pursued or molested teen girls when he was in his 30s — were entirely credible, white conservative voters still picked Moore over the KKK-fighting Democrat Doug Jones.
In the end, however, in a true miracle that concludes a bizarre year in American politics, Jones won the Alabama race in a squeaker. (At this writing, his margin over Moore is barely over 10,000 votes.) In the end, Jones’ unexpected victory came because Democrats — depressed after many years of never winning statewide elections in Alabama — were fired up to vote, and turned out in big numbers sufficient to drown out the hard right.
As Nate Cohn of the New York Times tweeted, the Alabama result was the direct result of […]
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