Blog @ MoreWhat.com

This is the second post on ethics reform in light of the vote on S.1, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 on July 31, 2007. The previous post suggested the current activity in Congress related to ethics reform is just another exercise in futility. There has been no evidence uncovered to suggest that the current ethics reform legislation is anything more than a cosmetic makeover of previous efforts to side step the issue.

While one item the Congressional leadership quoted in the previous post focused on the overwhelming bipartisan support for this legislation, they failed to mention the 21 representatives that voted against it or not at all. There were 8 representatives voting no and two of them were Republicans. Two sources are offered in an attempt to explain and highlight possible reasons for their votes. The two voting from the GOP ranks are Reps Joe Barton of Texas and Jeff Flake of Arizona. First, a CNN column about Joe Barton from nearly a year before the GOP lost the majority in November 2006.

Ethics reform, Texas style
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Texas Republicans are now being led Rep. Joe Barton of Ennis, chair of the critical Energy and Commerce Committee. DeLay sits in on their meetings by speakerphone. Barton, just the man for the job in these ethically sensitive times. He’s going to spend next weekend aboard a private train with lobbyists who pay $2,000 for the privilege. After a seven-hour run from Fort Worth to San Antonio, there will be cocktails, an evening tour of the Alamo, dinner and breakfast on Sunday.

One does not have to spend much time wondering why Rep Joe Barton voted no. And if this is not a fair presentation, Rep Joe Barton is welcome to share his thoughts here. What are the odds that will happen?

Next are some news or release items from Rep Jeff Flake’s website. The choice of sources for this post was more a matter of convenience than anything else. But you are free to think it unfair to present a Barton story from CNN versus a Flake release from his own website. So here is the Jeff Flake reference to shed some light on his vote against the ethics reform package. While this blog has posted about Flake before, not all posts were favorable. But he is reasonably convincing on his earmark campaign based on no evidence to the contrary yet found.

Congressman Flake: Earmark Reform Not Adequate
July 31, 2007 - Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today expressed disappointment that Congress has squandered an opportunity to enact meaningful earmark reform. “Until Congress concedes that our own practices contributed to recent scandals as much as … More

Congressman Flake Blasts Bloated Farm Bill
July 27, 2007 - Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today expressed disappointment that the House of Representatives passed a farm bill that raises taxes and perpetuates market-distorting, trade-hampering, and fiscally irresponsible agricultural policies. &nb… More

Congressman Flake Spotlights Egregious Earmark of the Week
July 27, 2007 - Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today highlighted a pork project contained in the Transportation-Treasury-HUD appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006. This week’s egregious earmark: $1,000,000 to the Wheeling Park Commission for the… More

It appears as though the two members of the GOP in the House voting against S.1 probably did for very different reasons which is believed to support the notion that neither party is genuinely interested in ethics reform for its own sake. More likely they only worry about it for their own sakes in terms of job security. The six members from the left side of the aisle may be looked at here next. Wonder why they voted no? Voting yes would have simply been the PC way to vote and hope the discussion goes away again. BTW, there were also 13 who did not vote at all.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

‘Net neutrality’ — no one even knows what that means

By Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas)
Ah totally don’t know what that means, but ah wont it.”
— Jessica Simpson

Maybe you heard Ms. Simpson deliver that line while poking fun at my drawl — oh, sure she was — in a recent commercial for satellite TV. Somewhat less attractive pitchmen use the same rationale for an idea they call “net neutrality.” They “wont” something, too.

Just don’t ask anybody to tell you what it is.

Rep Joe Barton does a nice job of avoiding the issue. Maybe the excerpt from Widipedia will help you.
Stanford Matthews, MoreWhat.com
from Wikepedia:
The term was coined around 2003 in political opposition to the possibility that telecom internet service providers, in the course of implementing proposed new service and content models, might impose selective (and discriminatory) controls on the Internet’s traffic and content. Telecom companies (who currently profit by providing access to the full Internet) have proposed segregating certain “high priority” traffic according to a “tiered services” (TS) model, which they claim will allow them to provide advanced functionality and higher quality for customers. The concern is that telecom companies may try to use this power to discriminate between traffic types, charging tolls on content from some content providers (i.e. websites, services, protocols). Failure to pay the tolls would result in poor service or no service for certain websites or certain types of applications.

Tiered service proponents claim that there are valid uses for a “high priority traffic” model, and that these would not impose substantial bandwidth or quality of service restrictions on the general public. Accordingly, “net neutrality” has been accused of being “a solution in search of a problem” and of eliminating incentives to build new networks and launch next generation Internet services.