Do you remember the way candidate Obama spoke out fervently in favor of net neutrality throughout his campaign? Check out this video compilation of some of his many pre-election pro-net-neutrality pronouncements.
Guess what? Now that Google and Verizon have decided that a multi-tier non-neutral arrangement will help their profits statements, Obama is unwilling to fight back. Just as he failed to do regarding single payer health care. Just like he failed to do when Wall Street "reform" failed to address too-big-to-fail and failed to reinstate Glass-Steagall (and see here). Just like he did when the military-industrial complex insisted on ramping up U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. Just like he fail to do as he continues to drag his feet on Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell. Now Obama is unwilling to fight back in support of net neutrality: "President Obama campaigned on net neutrality, and yet the White House has been surprisingly quiet on the issue since the breakdown of FCC negotiations and in the wake of Google and Verizon's joint policy proposal."
President Obama has lost his voice regarding net neutrality even though
Joel Kelsey, political advisor with nonprofit media-reform group Free Press, "said the proposal would create "tollbooths on the information superhighway."
"It's a signed, sealed and delivered policy framework with giant loopholes that blesses the carving up of the Internet for a few deep-pocketed Internet companies and carriers," he said in a statement.
In the midst of all of this hypocrisy, Obama's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
unloaded on the "professional left," insisting that " “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
How about this, Mr. Gibbs? Barack Obama has repeatedly proven that he would rather have
any sort of deal than a deal that achieves the principles Mr. Obama announced in his campaign speeches.
Obama achieved some good things too, but how is anything mentioned at the top of this post differ from anything john McCain would have done? Except, perhaps, when he called the health care bill "reform" instead of calling it the "send gushers of tax money and forced clientele to the health insurance industry."
The above-described failures didn't occur in a vacuum. We also seen his refusal to bring American torturers to justice. We've seen expansion of off-shore oil drilling. He's authorized
remote-controlled drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, where these are conducted by the CIA, and
in which numerous civilians have been killed, and we have good reason to believe that many other deaths of innocent people
have been covered up.
I voted for Barack Obama, but I'm sorely disappointed. Not that there was any other reasonable place to put my vote. From now one, though, I am going to judge Barack Obama solely by what he does, not by his elegant campaign speeches.
For additional trustworthy information on the Google-Verizon deal,
see this list of articles at Free Press.
