There’s just too much information on the Internet these days, and it’s killing the poor old newspaper. That’s why we need a tax on information technology to reduce the flow of information, according to one proposal.
You heard right. The proposal, put forward by environmental analyst Dusty Horwitt in an op-ed in theWashington Post last week, calls for a “progressive energy tax.” It would “reduce the supply of information” by “making some computers, Web sites, blogs and perhaps cable TV channels too costly to maintain.”
And worst of all, he’s serious. Horwitt is an analyst at the Environmental Working Group, where he “focuses on public lands, energy and transportation,” and was a former deputy press secretary to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), according to the group’s energy-consuming, information-filled Web site. EWG, perhaps best known for its online farm subsidy database, got into some tax trouble a few years back when it was accused of doing illegal lobbying.
Indeed, an op-ed like this is exactly the sort of thing that EWG does. It specifically targets the news media in order to disseminate the group’s messages. In the past, EWG “has also declared war on nail polish, hairspray, playgrounds, portable classrooms and ABC News correspondent John Stossel,” columnist Michelle Malkin wrote in 2002. In 2008, EWG seems to be preparing to declare war on the Internet.
Bloggers are taking eyeballs away from the traditional news media, and this opinion piece would likely be published by any newspaper editor who received it, simply because it points out that fact and proposes a way, however insane, that the newspapers might get their audiences back. After all, there’s too much information, and if everybody can speak and publish, then traditional media outlets like newspapers can’t “educate millions of citizens” (Horwitt’s words) about whatever ideas they’re pushing this week.
“He then goes on to suggest that true social movements have only happened because of the scarcity of broadcast media options, which somehow forced everyone to hear only a single message,” writes Mike Masnick at Techdirt. “This is, apparently, a good thing — because obviously the big professional media only reports on the important stuff, whereas everyone else only reports on bad stuff.”
A proposal like this is music to the ears of most “progressives,” who would love nothing more than to shut down as many sources of speech and press as they can, at least the ones they disagree with. Under this proposal, you can be sure that any source of information they agree with will be subsidized, while sources they disagree with are taxed out of existence. This is the way progressives use the guns of government, after all.
“Who wouldn’t support a policy of higher energy costs to shut up the riff raff and make Americans have to pay more for just about everything?” asks Masnick.
Anyone who’s ever published anything of importance and realized the power of the Internet to place even the smallest publishers, like myself, on par with the largest, like theWashington Post, would be insane to give that up. This article, for instance, may only be read by a few thousand people in the next week (unless you digg it) but many of those few thousand are actual opinion leaders in Washington and elsewhere who can act on it. That sort of reach is within anyone’s grasp today, and that’s what this proposal means to stop you from doing.
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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Joyce
Sep 01, 2008
Aah, yes – the ‘Progressives’. A ‘good friend of mine’ recently was kicked out of such a site that did not agree with the mainstream bloggers hacking away their non-fact based and angry viewpoints.
The power of the (right kind of) blog is huge and cannot be denied.
Jeff Hoyt
Sep 02, 2008
Nothing is more annoying, and eventually dangerous, than a governmental body in search of it’s own reason to exist. In time, failing to find one, it will create one.
Behold the EWG…
Bob
Sep 02, 2008
That kicking out thing doesn’t happen here Joyce. I’m living proof.
This internet stuff has been too free for too long. Too good to be true. Two things are for sure in life-death and taxes.
But have no fear. There is always a way to speak out when you have to. There has never been a movement or an idea that has ever been successfully supressed by anybody except for the ones that we’ve never heard of.
Bob
Sep 02, 2008
You can quote me on that.
Jeff Hoyt
Sep 06, 2008
Okay…
“There has never been a movement or an idea that has ever been successfully supressed by anybody except for the ones that we’ve never heard of.” – Bob
I can’t help but think that some of us have too much time on our hands and not enough creative outlets…
That was a good one, my friend.
Bob
Sep 07, 2008
I start working again on Monday. That will take care of the time on my hands and get me out of Michael’s hair for a while.
The governments of the world will never be able to shut people up. The masses always win at the end of every civilization’s cycle. We can be used and controlled but never mastered.
I read a book one time called “The Great Depression of the 1990’s”. In that book, the author recognized four separate groups of human beings.
Warriors, intellectuals, merchants and the masses. Each group takes a turn at running things during the cycle of a civilization, in the order that I listed them. Right now we are in the transition phase between the merchants and the masses. The masses don’t run things for very long and they usually destroy most of what the civilization was. Then it starts over.
History more or less backs this idea up. The starting point for our present cycle was somewhere between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages.
Food for thought. See you in a week.
Shawn-Earnest
Sep 10, 2008
Wow, they are pushing the envelope again. The Economic class wars.
Bob
Sep 12, 2008
Hey, what’s going on? Nothing new to talk about?
Bob
Sep 12, 2008
I hope you’re not losing your butt on your home and your investments like everybody else, Michael.
To stay on topic, I will say this. Let them tax the internet. We just can’t pay anymore.
“If five percent appears too small, TAXMAN!, be thankful I don’t take it all, TAXMAN!….”
“If you drive your car, I’ll tax the street, If you try to walk, I’ll tax your feet ’cause I’m the taxman, yeahhh I’m the taxman. And you’re working for no-one but me.”
Taxes
Sep 13, 2008
The cops are still stealing people’s property or whatever they own to pay thier salaries or to get things cheap by trying to force people to say they are commiting a crime. Don’t say a word to them. A great deal of them are horrible people. If they don’t get taxes they steal. What is the solution? Thier latest plot is to use the original Zodiac killer’s brother to get money for a false investigation. The original Zodiac killer was cut into 1 million pieces by Shasta College science students. They threw him in the garbage can. His brother is plotting to kill in Shasta lake, California. Everyone be safe and avoid this nutcase no matter what they say or do or thier relatives. Good luck to all.