Category: Politics

T.C. Sottek at The Verge, writing on the recent move by Congress in which lawmakers gave ISPs the okay to sell customer data:

The only people who seem to want this are the people who are going to make lots of money from it. (Hint: they work for companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.) Incidentally, these people and their companies routinely give lots of money to members of Congress.

So here is a list of the lawmakers who voted to betray you, and how much money they received from the telecom industry in their most recent election cycle.

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Keep in mind this isn’t law yet, but Loren Grush has the details:

Some notable missions are canceled under the request, including NASA’s contentious Asteroid Redirect Mission — an initiative to robotically retrieve a piece of an asteroid and bring it into the vicinity of the Moon. A mission to land on Jupiter’s moon Europa is also canceled, though a mission to fly by the icy world, known as the Europa Clipper mission, made the cut. Meanwhile, the proposal doesn’t call for any major changes in focus for NASA’s human exploration program. There’s no language about a return to the Moon, so the agency is still ostensibly on a “Journey to Mars” for now.

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Thomas Kaplan at The New York Times:

The House Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would raise the number of people without health insurance by 24 million within a decade, but would trim $337 billion from the federal deficit over that time, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Monday.

Republicans had been bracing for what was almost certain to be a bleak accounting of the legislation’s projected effects. The American Health Care Act, as Republicans call their bill, was already facing widespread criticism from providers of health care, some conservatives, and a united Democratic Party. The numbers released Monday will make only it more difficult for Republicans to explain why their legislation would bring positive change to the country’s health care system.

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I’m enjoying the latest episode of Pod Save America, on which Katie Couric talks about what the media is doing right — and wrong — under the Trump administration.

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Kara Swisher has posted a draft of the letter:

Since the country’s birth, America has been the land of opportunity — welcoming newcomers and giving them the chance to build families, careers and businesses in the United States. We are a nation made stronger by immigrants. As entrepreneurs and business leaders, our ability to grow our companies and create jobs depends on the contributions of immigrants from all backgrounds.

Good.

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Barack Obama:

All of us, regardless of party, should throw ourselves into that work — the joyous work of citizenship. Not just when there’s an election, not just when our own narrow interest is at stake, but over the full span of a lifetime.

I’ll be right there with you every step of the way.

And when the arc of progress seems slow, remember: America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We the People.’ ‘We shall overcome.’

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Yours truly:

I don’t know what’s going to happen. I fear that we will be unable to insure our son because he was diagnosed with a brain tumor as an infant. I fear that I am going to be in a position where I have to choose between my company and my family.

That — in no way — is something that I should fear as an American citizen, an entrepreneur or a father.

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Eric Berger at Ars Technica:

The space agency’s next major exploration program could last the better part of half a century, too. So we ought to choose wisely. The Moon is closer and offers potential utility as a refueling station in space. Mars harbors more intrigue in the search for life and represents the Solar System’s best bet for a second home. But we’re going nowhere without a final choice—followed by investment and commitment. Absent this from the Trump administration and Congress, NASA will continue to find itself adrift.

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Ezra Klein, Editor-in-Chief at Vox:

Donald Trump is not a man who should be president. This is not an ideological judgment. This is not something I would say about Mitt Romney or Marco Rubio. This is not a disagreement over Donald Trump’s tax plan or his climate policies. This is about Trump’s character, his temperament, his impulsiveness, his basic decency.

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While Obama didn’t speak directly about the Apple/FBI case in his appearance at SXSW, I sure don’t like his comments. Michael Shear at The New York Times:

“If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there is no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer?” Mr. Obama said. “How do we disrupt a terrorist plot?”

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Hadas Gold at Politico, quoting Donald Trump:

“One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading. I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”

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Marco Arment:

As we’ve learned from national hero Edward Snowden and, well, almost every other high-profile action taken by law enforcement recently, this most likely has very little to do with the specific crime or iPhone that the FBI is citing in this case.

It’s their excuse to establish precedent and permanent backdoors for themselves so they can illegally spy on anyone’s data whenever they please.

This is the most dangerous kind of slippery slope in today’s world: one that starts under the guise of security in the face of terrorism.

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