The Cost of Free Speech

Isn't the internet wonderful?  You can be rich or poor...

Let me start that again.

All you need to get on the internet is a little know-how, and a library with internet...

No, that doesn't work so well either these days.

If you can afford a computer, and if you can afford an internet hook-up, then you can get online and go anywhere.

But that may not be true for long, either.

Telecom companies have been lobbying, and lobbying hard, for the ability to control access to web sites, much like cable and satellite t.v.  Big bucks if they get away with it.

But we have had a couple of decades now of not just free interstate internet, but of truly interplanetary internet.  We are horrified at countries like Iran and China that seek to control that freedom.

So who would we trust to control our internet connection?

That's right, big business.  Cable companies like Comcast that make you pay $60 and up a month for 8,000 cable channels, only 3 of which you will ever use.  Corporations like AT&T and Verizon, who can't even give us reliable cell phone signal, but charge a premium and we should be thankful for that.

And even though we should know by now that bigger isn't better, we are going to allow our legislators to sit by while the telecom industry grows even more mammoth, swallowing and merging until, like the health insurance industry and Wall Street banks, they are really just one behemoth -- no competition, no bargains, no rights.

What they will do for us, besides make us pay for what was once free, is control who we can connect to, by allowing us easy connections to those who pay up, and slow or no connections for all those others.

This terrifies and infuriates.  Why don't we know better?  Why do we keep allowing our government to let these behemoths control the quality of our lives.  At stake right now is the true freedom to speak and reach out on the internet that we now enjoy.

Here in South Carolina, in the rural area where I live, I have a land line.  Like a third world country, I have no cell phone reception, so I have been helpless as my phone bill has gone up and up, and unable to afford a cell phone and a land line.  The cost of cell phone service is outrageous, and could be much cheaper, but without regulation, we are at the mercy of the telecom giants.

Feeble attempts to provide free wireless accessibility over large areas in this country are easily defeated by corporate lobbyists.

We need people in Congress to stop voting for their corporate sponsors.  Their corporate friends are in it for profit, and power.  And so are so many members of congress.

We need to vote out the powerful, who are backed by the greedy.  We need to send Jim Demint back to his ad agency, where we don't have to buy what he tries to sell.

Support Alvin Greene:

www.alvingreeneforussenator.com