russ960

I was watching the first half of the Republican CNN YouTube debates and I thought I would share my thoughts. First it seemed immigration dominated the first 15-20 minutes. You have Giuliani and Romney duking it out about who supported illegal immigrants. I can see Romney's point that he hired a company that it turned out hired illegal immigrants. I know I don't go out and check the legal status of the employees of companies I hire. I don't think it is reasonable to expect that. Then you have Giuliani who clearly has supported illegal immigrants via his sanctuary city policies in New York. You move from this to Tom Tancredo whom I like but disagree with. He stated he would shut down all immigration. Is this reasonable? I'm opposed to illegal immigration and anyone here illegally needs to go back. However I do think given our very low unemployment in the US and the fact that we are going to lose a large number of workers over the next few years as baby boomer's retire we can use legal immigrants. However, I do agree we need to enforce our laws against companies hiring and using illegal workers. We cannot allow illegal immigrants to flaunt their violation of our laws, use our welfare systems and not pay taxes.

Then you had Ron Paul. My feelings about Ron are confusing. I like his idea of a more limited government but the guy confuses me. First he rags on globalization and our free trade agreements with Canada and Mexico. Then later when he's called out as an isolationist he says he's in favor of free and open trade. Which is it? I can understand his opposition to the war in Iraq. I'm not sure I agree with it but I understand it. However, I think it is unfair to sit there an rag on our troops and demean their progress. The man seems to hold back details on his plans and I find that frustrating. He says things that invigorate his supporters and create headlines but lacks details.

Since I just got done ragging on Ron Paul I will call out a quote I did like:

"Department of Education -- Ronald Reagan used to talk about that"

I've always felt the department of education was unnecessary since education should be the domain of the states. Bravo Congressmen Paul!

Debate Transcripts from CNN

Russ960 -  http://www.rightsideoftech.com

Prior to Barack Obama's visit to Google he unveiled his tech agenda. In the agenda he argues for net neutrality legislation to "Protect the Openness of the Internet". I'm sure he will do nothing to abolish the regulation that protects the telecom industry leaders and prevent fair and open competition.

In addition to he calls for "Diversity in Media Ownership" in which he calls for the government to enforce the ownership of radio and television stations by minority groups. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against some diversity in this area but it should come from market forces and not from some artificial government program.

Under the "Protect Our Children While Preserving the First Amendment" he calls for more public programming (read more money for PBS types). In this area he mentions he would encourage a number of things on content producers and advertisers like:

Obama will encourage improvements to the existing voluntary rating system, exploiting new technologies like tagging and filtering, so that parents can better understand what content their children will see, and have the tools to respond.

and

Obama will encourage industry not to show inappropriate adult-oriented commercial advertising during children’s programming.

What the heck does he mean by encourage? Is he going to regulate this? If so how is he going to do that? Then he has this nifty little paragraph:

On the Internet, Obama will require that parents have the option of receiving parental controls software that not only blocks objectionable Internet content but also prevents children from revealing personal information through their home computer.

Who's going to pay for this? Why is this required of ISPs? What responsibility do the parents have?

Later on he talks about increased transparency in government which I'm all for. I think if we had more transparency in our government people would understand how out of control our it is. The item in this fact sheet that is giving him so much press is his desire to use social networks, blogs and wikis to help increase transparency and communication of the federal government. To me it sounds like he grabbed on to every technology keyword he could in hopes to generate some press. In the end it's more of the same. More government, more government and yet more government in our lives. Don't we have enough of that already?

So I just got finished watching the Ron Paul interview by Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. I've been finding Ron Paul's fiscal policies very attractive. However, I have to say I have some doubts about his policies concerning the military. I feel we would place our country at significant risk if we just pulled out of Iraq without some sort of established government. If we can't leave them with the tools to self govern we will be left with a terrorist factory that now sees our withdrawal as a defeat and makes us look vulnerable. Combine this with the fact that I feel Ron Paul would oppose efforts by domestic security forces to monitor and control passage/communications into and out of the US we will see more capability by terrorists for attack. These are issues that his sound bites don't address and they are real.

On a side note the idea of no Federal tax is appealing. However, let us not forget the state governments will have a feeding frenzy and it will be up to the people to control these hounds. I don't see this control today and I don't see the people standing up to their state legislators. This is something we need to remember if we were to eliminate the federal income tax. Those sharks will seek to tax us any way they can. We need sensible politicians who are willing to step up and say no more.

Red State has an article that details how Google pulled an ad commissioned by Senator Susan Collins because she references Moveon.org. The text of the offending ad is:

Susan Collins is MoveOn’s primary target. Learn how you can help
[source: examiner.com]

Seems this was an exercise in political speech and should be protected by fair use. Am I violating Moveon.org copyright or trademark by posting this? Are they going to file a DMCA against me because I’m exercising political speech? Isn’t fair when a politician is being attacked politically by an organization to make reference to that organization in response including advertising? Clearly this is a a move by the leftist movement in San Francisco to hide the actions of Moveon.org. Google should be ashamed and should reverse this decision and stop being evil. Remember they said they wouldn’t be evil!

http://www.rightsideoftech.com