Money Makes a Shill

Yes it's late, but that's when I do my best ranting.

Back when he was press secretary to our last useful President, Mike McCurry was a personal hero of mine. He seemed forthcoming and straightforward in a business (politics) that rarely sees "forthcoming" and never sees candor. He was a great press secretary, not like the talking chimps the Bush Administration has ponied up to the podium. Well, Ari was deft, but in a more malevolent, dark-side-of-the-force way.

That's why it's so sad and depressing to see someone of his former pragmatism shilling for what is possibly the worst government-meets-tech idea since email taxation. I won't go into the whole debate--you can read McCurry's hugely twisted slant here and the much more enlightening (and not written by a hired gun like McCurry) viewpoint here--but I just wanted to show how easy it is to fall from grace. Maybe someday I'll stop being idealistic and will sell my soul to AT&T for millions, but I can always say that McCurry & Co. did it first.

Okay, I said I wouldn't get into it, but briefly:
- the Internet is already regulated: regulated meaning kept neutral so that infrastructure owners must allow equal access to content-providers.
- the communications companies want an end to these regulations and a beginning to a "tiered" Internet where money buys fast-loading webpages
- Translation: right now, my blog (Blogger technical problems notwithstanding) and eBay load at the same speed. This would change if the telecomm companies get there way, and my page would load at a crawl so that eBay, which can pay, can zip people in and out.
- Even eBay, which has the money to do this, opposes this idea. That's because it's a colossal mistake.

Now it's super-late, and I'm not sure I'm making sense. But go ahead and read those articles, they're written "with care" and probably "edited for grammar", and you know neither of those things are particularly popular here at DU.