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In a country like Liberia with its poor transportation systems I think the 101st Airborne Division with their helicopters and skilled pilots is one of the things you need to deliver material and personnel in the area. From the Whitehouse Fact Sheet on the response:

Scaling-up the DoD presence in West Africa. Following the completion of AFRICOM’s assessment, DoD announced the planned deployment of 3,200 troops, including 700 from the 101st Airborne Division headquarters element to Liberia. These forces will deploy in late October and become the headquarters staff for the Joint Forces Command, led by Major General Gary Volesky. The total U.S. troop commitment will depend on the requirements on the ground;

So out of at least 3,200 troops only 700 of them are from the 101st Airborne and the other units are yet to be specified. It makes sense to jump start the transportation system so the guys that follow can hit the ground running (or at least jogging ;). If there are 100 choppers and pilots it probably takes the other 600 to support them. You need mechanics, airfield personnel for things like fueling and air traffic control, a kitchen to feed 700 people or more, a medical unit and the officers to manage it all.

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment

SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperateamong themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

I'll see your Drupal and raise you one better: how about using Drupal/OpenAtrium?

You may recall the previous Presidential administration made headlines by replacing the Clinton administration's IBM/Lotus Notes Domino email/groupware servers with MicrosoftExchange (and presumably SharePoint also, but I'm not gonna go there).

The current Presidential administration of course had to ditch that Microsoft crap as fast as it possibly could. Obviously, continuing to use it would become a political and legal liability. They chose to use Drupal/OpenAtrium. Using OpenAtrium2 on Drupal 7, you too can enjoy a smartphone-enabled responsive intranet, with a minimum of development and budget.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a Drupal OpenAtrium developer (and am looking for my next project, so am available for private discussions). In fact at the same time it went public that The White House uses OpenAtrium for their project management and collaboration requirements, I delivered a similar collaborative project management intranet to NYSE Euronext. It was used by teams at the Amsterdam, Paris, and New York Exchanges while I was there. Before others also realized, I ascertained my assignment put my development efforts (and bug-tracking/feature requirements) in direct competition with Atlassian JIRA, so I took JIRA head-on. Just before Christmas a meeting was held, and I was told a Sr. VP at NYSE had decided my OpenAtrium development of a few weeks was superior and thus more desirable than JIRA, and I won(!) the competition. I was told then NYSE would use my OpenAtrium, and ditch JIRA, because my OpenAtrium Atrium development after only a few weeks could clearly beat JIRA requirement per requirement, while being much more user-friendly, and with a (dare I say) sexier GUI.

Alas, it was not to be (for me), and ultimately JIRA won, and I lost, and was soon out of a contract also. But still! I was a contender, dammit! All I got to work with was a bunch of Microsoft Office tools, Windows, and we were graced to also use FireFox. I delivered a Drupal application to NYSE overnight using my own VPS at Linode, with zero budget out of fear of job-loss. Previously, NYSE loved their 2-D spreadsheets and email, for project management. I requested early-on to be allowed to import their spreadsheets into a 3-D relational MySQL (drupal) database early on and was told "No". After several weeks passed, of no progress made by me to answer the report-requirements/questions posed of me by NYSE bean counters despite my best efforts with Microsoft Excel and %$#@! pivot tables, I asked my boss again, can I import the data into MySQL? I was then told yes, because that info was due weeks ago, was very late, and I was otherwise about to be fired. I worked all night and less than 24 hours later, all was imported into Drupal and I was able to report on and answer every question posed upon me. A week later, that Drupal database became a Drupal/IOpenAtrium intranet, and evolved into a very popular project management and collaborative tool. The #1 feature was: MULTITASKING. No longer did all my colleagues have to take turns updating the single spreadsheet, one at a time, with their totals at 5 o'clock, before they could go home! This was a huge hit from the staff. Meanwhile NY loved the spreadsheet import/export feature I implemented for them (HAD to have that to get approval). The Drupal (spreadsheet) sheetnode module is better (and sexier) than Google Docs IMHO. NYSE thought so too. For awhile there, I beat JIRA at NYSE using Opentrium, and I'm very proud of that.

FWIW, I have code for responsive video content-types about 85% finished, based upon the video.js open-source player.

That discrepancy skirts zero a but it conspicuously never flips around the other side.

First, about this claim, you're just Wrong. Don't make claims you can't back. Construction workers & supervisors, painters, teachers, bakers, bartenders, servers... all jobs that women make more than men. Though "hooker" is not listed in Forbes, I'd guess female sex workers make more than men too.

It is true that women make less than men, but the OP very specifically stated opportunities, not outcomes. The salary rankings are outcomes. The Pew Research Center produced much different numbers (.84 up to .93 per 1.00; .93 is for younger women) than the white house (.77 per 1.00) just by ranking hourly wages instead of weekly wages. This brings in all the part-time workers and full-time workers that work 35+ hours into the same boat as those that work 40 hours+. Furthermore, what research like the white house study fails to account for is things like: 39% of women took a significant amount of time off work to care for their family, 42% have reduced their hours for the same, 27% have quit altogether; while only 24% of men have taken a significant amount of time off work for family. You don't even need the research that shows large breaks hurt your salary. Anybody that has taken a break from work knows that. Perhaps that is why the .93 cents per dollar for younger women; they haven't yet had the chance to drop work for family?

Obviously I have not proven the OP claim, that there are equal or more opportunities for women, the hopefully I have shown that the issue is not so open & shut as you think. Nobody, to my knowledge, is counting Opportunities. Nobody here has even defined them. But with 42% of women not taking full advantage of their opportunity to work full time once they have a job, compared to only 27% percent of men, the argument seems plausible enough to warrant some thought.

So, let's say this passes...What do we do then? How can I continue to fight this?
How can I start a campaign to eject Tom Wheeler from his chair if he doesn't listen to the overwhelming response from the public?
`A concerned internet user.

This?

A quick check of https://www.irs.gov/ and https://whitehouse.gov/ failed SSL Certificate validation (for different reasons.)

And https://www.healthcare.gov/ is using SHA1

As if we don't already have enough corporate executives running the white house.

As if we don't already have enough corporate executives running the white house.

As if we don't already have enough corporate executives running the white house.

Time for a petition to repeal executive order 12333. Be interesting to see what happens if the petition reaches the action threshold, since there's no way the administration can say it's not within their power.
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

I'm pretty sure that doesn't make any sense. How, exactly, will allowing foreign nationals to move to the United States and seek employment cause harm?

Ultimately, these arguments usually come down to something like this: if people from less developed nations move into the United States and seek employment, the increased supply of labor will reduce the average cost of labor within the country and increase the burden on our public services. This is bad for the people who already live in the United States, so those people should stay in their less-developed nation, where they will have a lower quality of life but they won't reduce our own quality of life.

In other words, it's nationalist bullshit that places greater importance on the quality of life for U.S. citizens, simply because they were born in this nation and those other people weren't born in this nation. We're willing to let people outside of our borders starve to death, as long as it means that we won't suffer even the most marginal decline in our own quality of life. It's selfish, and the entire process of thought relies on an "us vs. them" mentality which places a lower value on the life of someone who lives outside the arbitrary borders of this country. Ultimately, allowing people to move more freely between countries will foster a greater emphasis on the importance of global welfare, instead of taking this "us vs. them" mentality that places the utmost importance on the welfare of our own citizens and is indifferent to the suffering of the global population.

I might add that a huge portion of this country used to arbitrarily belong to Mexico, but we conquered that territory in the Mexican-American War, taking over huge sections of territory that weren't even part of the initial dispute over the exact location of the Texan border. Now, in the modern era, immigrants traveling to the United States from Mexico is a huge cause for concern in the U.S., with people concerned that they're going to "take our jerbs", when in reality, those people are just trying to migrate into territory that originally belonged to their nation in the first place, before we took it by force of arms.

Furthermore, all of this anxiety that immigrants are going to ruin our economy is essentially unfounded in the first place, and is repeated ad nauseam by people with little understanding of economics who are making policy arguments that are based on ideologies that have been spoon-fed to them, about issues that they don't know anything about. The National Economic Council, the Domestic Policy Council, the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and the Office of Management and Budget published a joint report in 2013 which explains why immigration reform will ultimately strengthen the economy.

I'd like to see this happen to them instead.

This would be cool.

I'd like to see this happen.

https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

Maybe petitions, work,maybe not. But doesn't it feel good to click your signature and feel like you've done something? Please go the address below and click it to stop H1-B Visas! Much love! https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

i think you'll like my petition: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/end-h1-b-visa-program/KK2xf5lJ

The one they set up at my work had a 'what are you doing?' question, but it wasn't searchable... so if you wanted to try to find people who might be working or have expertise in a given field ... you got nothing.

It likely doesn't matter anyway -- due to how tasks are broken down, it's not like everyone wanted to advertise their skills. I've got a lot of experience that I don't list on my CV, as then I get people asking me about how to fix things all the time. As I'm a contractor, that puts me into awkward positions where if I help people from other projects, I can't charge time to their tasks ... but the company I work for requires me to track & bill every hour. The prime on our contract had suggested the it / sysadmin have a mentoring system, but to the best of my knowledge, they've never worked out how we'd change our time for it as we're divided up across 200+ tasks.

Proof of Sasquatch's existence

He posed an imminent threat to the US. We should have details about this threat, and about what impending attack his execution halted.

Taxpayers in the red - that means losses

Since its creation it's lost $800 million

Energy Department projects $2.9 billion in losses

I can provide many more if you like - because the program hasn't made a dime. It's lost billions (and it was planned to lose even more billions, but the program's not done yet - there's still time to lose more. Dywolf's link showed nothing about a gain. It said losses were less than expected - but still losses. I can't find anything that says the program is making money - it's all losses. And if you want to dig further, read the White House's independent review of the program where it states we're on the hook for 30 years, we have inexperienced people managing it, poor oversight, no planning, no accountability, and no goals.

I hope she understands what she'll compromise if she releases them, but I doubt it. There's a reason there are very few Original Classification Authorities, and why it's at such a high level of approval to designate something as classified. Here are the instructions for intelligence information. However, to understand how some information in a document will disclose classified information, you have to understand what information contained in it or revealed by it (e.g. by omission) is classified, and who has the authority to determine that. If she has not studied the subject in detail, which is likely, she runs a high risk of compromising information she is unaware is sensitive.

PST files usually are the local store for some other storage system, like Exchange which should have had an archive/backup system in place. The excuse that "her PC broke" is bullshit. There are backup tools that handle it just fine and ways of exporting the data, it's not exactly a dark art.

All major corporations have e-Discovery teams and tools that capture these kinds of things. This is because in the public sector lawsuits are common and these kinds of tools and techniques are there to preserve evidence. All it takes is a missing record or e-mail and a judge won't have any sympathy for a defendant. Since it's the IRS, the biggest of the jackbooted Fed Thuggeries we have and they seem to not need to adhere to e-mail preservation and not adhering to the presidential directive to do so. How convenient, just what I'd expect from corrupt scumbags. Of course the average American goes along blissfully unaware that an organization that can seize your assets without due legal process is incapable of keeping track of an important person's documents. The IRS has to operate beyond reproach and work to the highest ethical standard, unfortunately with the 501c fiasco, it's clear that the Obama Administration is trying to cover up the situation either by culpable acts or by gross incompetence in the IRS. In either case the American public should be screaming.

Most of us have no sympathy whatsoever for the people who have initiated widespread surveillance of us.

Thankfully, our current President is both technologically-savvy to understand the problem and committed to openness and transparency in government to want to fix it. Is not he?

Bushitler wouldn't be in office forever. Hoping for a change, we finally have a real chance of electing a President, who is both technologically savvy and committed to open government!

Oh, wait...

The White House already responded to the petition and refused to comment on his specific situation, despite the fact that over 270K people signed the petition, making it one of the most (if not the most) supported petition yet on the site.

It was NOT the House Republicans who publicly stated their goal was to stop Obama... it was Senator Mitch McConnell and you guys even take THAT out of context as a talking point and a political tactic. How about this little gem:

"Why should we put a plan out? Our plan is to stop him. He must be stopped. " - Nancy Pelosi (Dimwit, CA), about Bush in 2005 interview

Of course, she frequently complains that Democrats NEVER treated Bush harshly (Ignoring things like Democrat Dennis Kucinich filing over 30 Articles of Impeachment against Bush, her own pledges to stop all his policies and force him to adopt all her policies, etc). What's HILLARIOUS about all the Democrat whining that Republicans want to "stop Obama" is - and ANYBODY can verify this via Google - NEARLY EVERY LEFT-WING WEBSITE AND ORGANIZATION spent the Bush years demanding that Democrats "Stop Bush" and Pelosi and Reid did everything they could to stop Bush (including blocking every budget and nearly every proposal he made after they took over congress in 2006)

The Republicans do NOT oppose everything Obama does - they have confimed many of his appointees, and have given him the money to run ALL of the government (including things they oppose, like planned parenthood and Obamacare) even though this outrages thier base supporters. The fact that a party opposes policies that are completely contrary to its principles is a PRINCIPLED opposition, NOT blind reactionary opposition or "racism"

Allow me to point you to The Obama Administration itself for proof that they Republicans have cooperated on many things - not one of these laws would have reached Obama's desk as bills to be signed had they not been supported in congress by the GOP. The funniest of all is the Ted Cruz bill about Iranian "diplomats" which Obama signed into law WITH A SIGNING STATEMENT saying he would not enforce it (EXACTLY the hypocrisy he denounced in his 2008 campaigned, and promised to never do.

Remember MCI? Yes, tell us all about how much less competition we'll have when you're forced to compete on service instead of in disservice. Blow it out your interconnect. We've already been down this road. ISP definition of "competition" is how much more they can over charge for shit than their competitors without actually delivering service. Thus the throttling unless the endpoints pay even more for the shit they already paid for.

ISPs are quadruple dipping: The website pays for access, the end user pays for access, OK, but then they charge extra for non-NATted IPs (hello, IPv6 exists) and unblocked ports ("business" class), and now they want to sell the websites "faster" access to the customers when we both already paid for that speed of access to each other, AND they want to put caps on the number of bits downloaded -- Hint: That's not how it works. They have to have the hardware to handle peak load, it doesn't matter if I suck in tons of gigs during off-peak time, caps are not about congestion, they're just yet another way to monetize. Not to mention "bursting" plans where they allow the first n-bytes of a download to come in fast, then throttle the shit out of it. "Up To X MB/s, (minimum 0 BAUD, yes Zero)", WTF. Damn, that's more that quadruple, but I lost count of how many dippings that is.

Visit OpenCongress and locate your congress critters via zipcode. Politely call each of them and say, "I want the FCC to classify broadband Internet services providers as common carriers", and have them repeat it (a real person will answer, and they'll have written down your words). I also mention that it should be considered illegal anti-competitive business practices for municipalities to granted ISPs monopolies, and that breaking up said monopolies will allow new competition to flourish. You can leave a comment on Issue #14-28 via the FCC Comment Filing System. Contact the FCC by Email: openinternet@fcc.gov, or call the FCC comissioners (but remember they're not beholden to voters). The most effective thing to do is write a letter to the editor mentioning your congressman's name and the net neutrality issue and send it to your local news outlet, that really gets their goat -- they care about the newspaper for some odd reason, maybe because old folks read it? Here's a petition, but these don't do shit, really it's just the illusion of shit-doing.

P.S. Here's a vid explaining the net neutrality issue. Here's another more sarcastic and long winded vid on the subject. and here's a video from an actual honest ISP. (NSFW, for brutally honest language).

Protip: Use a download accelerator to open multiple connections to the same file and trick the ISP into allowing you a faster speed. When the D/L starts getting throttled (hover to view the speed graph), pause it then unpause it and the speed goes back up (new connections = new "bursting" counter).

There is a White House petition to remove Wheeler

"Now the only question is how long before carbon fiber vehicle construction becomes as common as aluminum?"

It will become as common in new vehicles as steel is now within eleven years, by 2025. The Obama E.P.A. has mandated a 54.5 mpg for cars and light-duty trucks by Model Year 2025 (link). Forecasts now are for a switch away from steel body and gasoline-burning engines in the U.S. to carbon fiber, aluminum, and high-strength steel frames with a mixture of all-electric and diesel propulsion in 2025 to reach the mandate.

There will be some benefits: Prices for this now-exotic technology will drop with mainstream adoption. Vehicle operating costs drop with higher gas mileage. There will be some costs: Vehicle prices will inevitably be higher than now. There is no reason to expect reduced fuel consumption as a result of greater fuel economy and consumption could increase as a result of the mandate.

It is an open question whether the mandate will be a net benefit over the alternative of letting consumers decide. Though it is doubtful that evaluating public policy in terms of "net benefit" is even reasonable because there will be different benefits and costs for different groups, with no objective basis for interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing. For the single guy earning $140K/year the aluminum-frame-carbon-fiber-composite-all-electric-sports-sedan will be super-cool and made more affordable with his government subsidy. Woohoo! If the fuel mileage is twice what he he gets with his 2014 BMW then he can drive twice as much at the same cost. For the single-earner family with a an annual $60,000 income the new family sedan will be no longer affordable. So some will benefit, some will lose, and how that is summed up into net social benefit depends upon who is doing the summing.

As a consequence of low to mid-income buyers being priced out of the new midsize vehicle market expect high growth in sales of rebuilt or remanufactured vehicles of an older vintage, with associated growth in the car parts market. The trend to avoid fuel-economy mandates by commuting in heavy-duty trucks will accelerate.

I thought all the hyper-gullible young-uns who fell for the Obama machine's propaganda gimicks had awakened by now (after FIVE YEARS of empirical evidence) but apparently at least one of you still exists.... get thee to a museum, quickly!. We need to preserve at least one of you as a warning to future generations of exactly what mouth-breathing, drooling, vacant gullibility looks like and the sort of disasterous results it can lead to.

The white house petitions you idiots fell (and apparently continue to fall) for are as substantial and productive as Obama's economic policies. They are a gimmick; there is NOTHING that obligates the Obama people to do anything in response. If you all "sign" one in low numbers, the administration does nothing and smiles knowing you all "feel" like you've had some input and will keep supporting them even as they ignore you. If you all "sign" one in high enough numbers and if it's a policy they support anyway, then they do it (uninfluenced by the petition) and they know you all are more supportive having deluded yourselves into thinking you had a role and they were "responsive". If you all "sign" one in high enough numbers but the administration does not want to do it, they don't do it and they tell you they could not (for some reason that may have nothing to do with why they did not) but they know you'll be happy you had "input" and you might even be more supportive of them as co-victims if they can offer-up some "bad guy" (like the Koch brothers, Fox news, Glenn Beck, etc) as the excuse (even if the advertized "bad guy" had no power to block the action).

In NO situation, does the administration change its behavior in response to one of these petitions. These online "petitions" were nothing more than a voter outreach, voter data gathering and "social media" tool for team Obama in the age of dumbed-down Gen-Y and millenial voters...they were part of a highly-successful political campaign, but they are not actual methods for citizens to influence government. Heck, when they got too annoyed by you and your "petitions", they even arbitrarily changed the threshold number (to make it easier to ignore you) making it twenty times harder to reach, while ignoring petitions that had resched the threshold and they propagandized THAT action as a "good thing" (which their sycophant followers gladly and gullibly swallowed...). Like Facebook, team Obama convinces you that their gata gathering program is actually something done "for free" for your benefit...

We need one more big surge of traffic, ideally starting Monday or Tuesday morning at around 10 AM Eastern, to get the Net Neutrality petition to 100k votes on time. I've been tracking the vote rate and it runs fastest on Tuesday, during the work day. We will get the most traction if as many people as possible promote the petition on their social network channels starting early this week. Please consider raising the issue and the petition on your social network channels to help generate the final surge in traffic we need to hit 100k signatures. The petition may not have as much legal authority as we would like, but at least it is a potent rhetorical device for Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn, the two FCC commissioners who are already raising opposition to allowing a fast lane.

Exactly. Bush wrote his Executive Orders in such a way that subsequent Presidents cannot undo them. This is 100% his fault and until Congress acts with a 2/3 majority, the NSA cannot stop it. Blaming Obama, who did not create this can cannot stop it, is unproductive. He has said many times that he does not support this. Why include him in your scorn when he agrees with the public that it should be stopped? That is unless you're a Republican, and you're trying to irrationally blame him.

What the hell are you talking about? President Obama nullified Executive Order 13,233 He also reversed GWB's policy on stem cell research And he reversed E.O. 13201 Which was also an EO signed by GWB. I could go on, but it would be pointless, I'm sure

It's very easy to include the president in anyone's scorn on this subject. One of the topics he campaigned under was the premise that EO abuse must be stopped. And yet if things aren't going the way he wants, or as quickly as he would like them to, all of the sudden use of the executive power is somehow warranted.

Like most/all politicians (both democrats and republicans) he agrees with the public when it's convenient. People in this country really need to get over this "us vs. them" mentality. It doesn't matter if you are a democrat or a republican. Black, white, yellow, red or purple. Gay, hetero, both, or neither. We are all americans. It's really sad to see us all at each others throats. We have been comfortable, and extremely safe (barring a few blips) for so long that we have started turning on each other. And our "leaders" have not helped the situation for quite some time now.

While we're at it. A couple things you can do to help is sign the petition (yeah I know). https://petitions.whitehouse.g... And contract the FCC by calling 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322) voice or 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-835-5322) TTY; faxing 1-866-413-0232; or writing to: Federal Communications Commission Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Consumer Inquiries and Complaints Division 445 12th Street, S.W. Washington, DC 20554 Let them know you want ISPs to be classified under Title II and that true Net Neutrality is important to you as a citizen.

Just to throw out a few other things that you can / should do:

A petition to sign.

An email address that the FCC has set up for public comments on this issue.

Contact information for your congressional representatives.

Just be clear about what your position is. As in the parent example - ask for ISPs to be reclassified as common carriers. If all you do is say that you're in favor of a neutral Internet, or network neutrality, they'll be free to interpret that any way they like.

You know how the US Postal Service is basically going bankrupt? The White House basically blames this on the shift to email. So, in an effort to continue its basic mission of enabling citizens to communicate quickly and reliably with each other, how about we make the USPS a nationalized internet common carrier at the Federal minimum definition of broadband? This will allow existing ISPs to continue to remain unregulated by the common carrier rules, but will provide a meaningful alternative to the (literally) entrenched monopolies? Comcast will be unable to reasonably argue that a 4/1 connection is unfair competition when their top tier services are more than 10 times that speed.

Yesterday, the net neutrality petition passed the halfway mark, with 18 days left to go. The FCC request for comments is still live and looking for your feedback, and Mozilla has an alternative in the offing.

Keep the pressure on, keep posting these things on your social networks, keep telling your friends. The only thing less effective than telling the government what we want is not telling them what we want. It is a double edged sword; either they do as we say, or we get one more bit of documentation to support reforming the government.

It's also important to keep the pressure on via the official channels, even if we're skeptical whether it will work. Documenting public sentiment and the government's consideration (or lack thereof) is a critical step on the path to better government. Please sign the net neutrality petition and reply to the FCC request for comments, and promote them on your favorite social networks.

The petition is almost up to half the needed signatures in about one week, but the signature rate has been slowing down with the weekend approaching as peoples thoughts turn to beer and barbecue. Please help give it a boost, and/or light it up again Monday or Tuesday, to keep the momentum going during the more active weekdays.

These petitions have been mostly worthless in the past. See this previous petition about net neutrality:
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

The FCC is nominally an independent agency so the best way to make yourself heard is to file a comment on Proceeding 14-28 at:
http://www.fcc.gov/comments

Also please take a minute to promote the petition for net neutrality and the petition for common carrier. Promote them on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or wherever you normally put such things. The signature count was climbing fast last week, on track to hit 100,000 within a week, but over the weekend they fell below the fold on most of the news and social networks. We need to get the traffic numbers back up.

Also please take a minute to promote the petition for net neutrality and the petition for common carrier. Promote them on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or wherever you normally put such things. The signature count was climbing fast last week, on track to hit 100,000 within a week, but over the weekend they fell below the fold on most of the news and social networks. We need to get the traffic numbers back up.

Would classifying broadband providers as common carriers not be an effective solution to this as well? There's a WhiteHouse.gov petition circulating that so far has surprisingly little support.

The one question I've never seen anybody ask. (so, I'll ask it) Do you trust one company to know all of the following: (and who will they share that with? and how much money is that pile of data worth?) 1. What time(s) your TV set(s) are turned on/off 2. What channels you watch (and with multiple sets, your families viewing habits too (each cable box is uniquely identified) 3. How do your viewing habits compare to your neighbors? 4. How do your viewing habits compare to your extended family? 5. How many children are in your home, and what time of day are they there? 6. Based on your street address are you likely to watch (FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Al Jazeera, RFD-TV, BBC)? 7. What is the correlation between your web surfing habits and your TV viewing habits? 8. You have been observed at https://whitehouse.gov/some_sp... on your Safari browser while 1 TV in your home was tuned to the annual State of the Union address. 9. You just watched an advertisement for Viagra on NBC , national news, commercial break 3. You open your web browser on your iPad and start surfing midget porn. The next week you begin receiving spam related to "news junkies who have ED issues resorting to midget porn and there's an app for that". 10. With silly season 2014 almost underway and sillier season 2016 just around the corner, do you really want any political party, special interest group, PAC, or mega company knowing when you wipe and what brand of TP you prefer?

If that's a real question: I created this petition because I thought one was needed. I have since seen the other and signed it, but frankly, and I realize I'm biased here, I think mine is better. The other petition lacks specificity - all it's asking for is "true neutrality," which the FCC and the ISPs can (and have) defined to mean whatever they want. There's also some weird language about an invading military... I don't know what that guy was thinking there.

There's no reason you can't sign both though, and you should. Here's another one that another poster in this thread mentioned:

https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

Please note that this is a new petition, specifically stating The People's requirement that data carriers be reclassified as common carriers. Yesterday's petition only identified the need for net neutrality. I believe both are valid expressions of the best interests of our society, and have signed both.

Please note that this is a new petition, specifically stating The People's requirement that data carriers be reclassified as common carriers. Yesterday's petition only identified the need for net neutrality. I believe both are valid expressions of the best interests of our society, and have signed both.

After signing that first one be sure and sign this one - its alot further along:

https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

It's symbolic, as has been shown with many other petitions that the president has ignored, but here goes:

https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

Yea, maybe if y'all keep whipping it, one day that dead horse will get up and ride...

It's symbolic, as has been shown with many other petitions that the president has ignored, but here goes:

https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

I also did a petition with some different wording: here. I don't get why he's bringing up the military either, but the petition objective is still good. There's no reason why you can't sign both.