Tag Archives | John McCain

FCC Votes for Net Neutrality, McCain Wants to Stop Them

john_mccainWell net neutrality fans, your enemies list just got one person bigger. John McCain is the latest to come out against the FCC’s work, and has even proposed legislation to stop the agency in its tracks.

On Thursday, the FCC approved a measure to begin the process of formalizing a set of net neutrality rules that would ban ISPs from selectively filtering or throttling content. Texas Rep. Barton tried to stop the FCC from voting on the measure in the first place by pleading with commissioners to stop the vote from occurring.

This was an exercise in futility: Chairman Julius Genachowski had already worked to seal the support of the two other Democratic commissioners, making approval all but certain before the vote occurred.

Enter McCain. The Arizona senator introduced the Internet Freedom Act, which would expressly prohibit the FCC from making rules on net neutrality in the simplest terms. Using the Republicans’ favorite phrase of late–“government takeover”–McCain said net neutrality would stifle competition and hurt the job market.

Much like Barton, McCain also took issue with the inclusion of wireless Internet in the FCC’s planned policy, saying the lack of regulation has helped the industry grow rapidly. It’s unclear if such a measure could pass: however at least 70 House Democrats have already written the FCC expressing concern over the proposal, Reuters reports.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out as net neutrality was one of Obama’s campaign priorities. You can bet there will be a lot of vote counting being done in the coming months: Republicans will have to get a super majority as I would almost expect the President to veto any legislation like this if it makes it to his desk.

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McCain Campaign Still Inept Post-Election, Sells Unwiped Blackberry

If you thought John McCain ran a shoddy campaign, here’s another reason to add to your argument. Fox 5 in Washington, DC was able to pick up a used BlackBerry from the campaign at a fire sale for a rock bottom price of $20. What the newsroom found when charging up the device was shocking. The campaign didn’t even bother to wipe the device’s memory!

Reporters were able to find the contact information for about 50 people associated with the campaign, as well as hundreds of emails dating from September through a few days past election night. The phone in question apparently belonged to a member of Citizens for McCain, a group of Democrats that were working to elect the Arizona senator.

The contact information was correct, Fox 5 reported, as it successfully contacted several of the individuals in the BlackBerry’s contact list. A few of them were quite peeved about the slip-up. When the McCain campaign was approached about it, they said it was a mistake and the phone was supposed to be erased.

One of the people they called made a comment that I have to admit I did chuckle at.

“They should have wiped that stuff out. Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise.”

Isn’t that the truth. It’s not like its too difficult to wipe a BlackBerry clean: actually its a simple process that takes less that a minute to begin. One begins to wonder: with all the other stuff that was being sold, what else may we find out?

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