“He did this,” (holding up his BlackBerry) “Telecommunications of the United States, the premiere innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create, and that’s what he did. He both regulated and de-regulated the industry.” – Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s senior domestic policy adviser
Are you kidding me? Are these really the people we expect to move our country forward in this day and age? Is it even possible that the McCain people are so steeped in their own horsecrap they are intoxicated by it? Is he now telling us that John McCain was looking out for the development of the Canadian economy as opposed to the U.S. economy? What happened to “country first”? And for those who think this is an out-of-the-way gaffe by PR guy Doug, you should reflect on the barage of lies, distortions, disinformation and outright mischief we have been subjected to in the last couple of weeks by the McCain campaign. And if you are in a state of perpetual self-denial about the direction this is coming from and where it is going, all you have to do is read the answers Senator McCain gave to the Science Debate questions. This is getting beyond the ridiculous. In the said answers, let us look at a few highlights that are reminiscent of the “I invented the internet” flap over Al Gore’s claim that he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” because of his role in funding research on the so-called internet in the 2000 campaign. Asked about what he would do to re-assert America’s lead in technological innovation, John McCain said “I am the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The Committee plays a major role in the development of technology policy, specifically any legislation affecting communications services, the Internet, cable television and other technologies. Under my guiding hand, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology that enables Americans to surf the web while sitting at a coffee shop, airport lounge, or public park (emphasis mine)”.
In other words, he believes he has a major role to play in the emergence of cell phones and Wi-Fi. But the good senator conveniently forgot to mention is that when the Senate passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major revision to telecommunications law in 62 years which provided the foundation for much of the cell phone and Internet regulation over the next decade; a bill which passed 81-18 and was signed into law by President Clinton, he (McCain) voted against the act. He dubiously forgot to let us know that in 2002, the “Consumer Broadband Deregulation Act of 2002″ which he authored in an attempt to eliminatethe requirement of the 1996 law that telecommunication companies provide access to competitors failed to pass.
When the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which put in place a moratorium on taxes for activities on the Intenet, was passed in 2003, Senator John McCain was not one of the 11 sponsors. He was among 97 other senators who voted for the bill, so it is a head-scratcher how he was a guiding hand in the passage of that bill.
Of all the pending technology-related legistlation, McCain is not a sponsor of a single one of them, including the “Connect the Nation Act”, and the “Internet Freedom Act”. So one has to wonder where exactly this guiding hand nonsense comes from.