Who is Bruce Patterson ? And why all bloggers should be worried !

Good day one and all. I hope this Memorial Day weekend was restful and enjoyable for you good folk. I also hope that you got to spend some time with your Bar B Que and a veteran as well. I have taken some days off as well after the Holiday so I have good news and Bad News. The good news I will be spending alot of time here at HP. The bad news , I will be spending lots of time here at HP ! :

Our subject matter today should be of concern to anyone mainly who blogs for a living. Or for that matter people like me who have a job but like to blow the whistle on the cheats and thieves who we call Senators and Congresspeople. Before I get to the meat of my subject matter I would like to give you a little background on where I am headed. As anyone not living in a cave knows we have a couple of really lame concepts being spearheaded by the more liberal of our representatives in office, and they like to dress it up with really benign verbage and call it " The Fairness Doctrine " and " Net Neutrality ".

Now these concepts in and of themselves seem reasonable enough. I mean I like the concept of fairness too. I believe any reasonable human being would. But in the usual bait and switch the essence of both of these concepts boils down to one thing , CENSORSHIP. And by that I mean the control of Information that you and I depend on to formulate our opinions on laws and decisions by our Government that affect our daily lives. Now I find it no surprise that Obama has a guy named Cass Sunstein in office who is a big proponent of " Net Neutrality " and controlling all forms of Information on the Internet as well as mainstream media. And I am sure that it is no coincidence that now we have a candidate for Supreme Court Justice named Elena Kagan who is a big supporter on limits and control of free speech. After all if their is one tenet of socialism that liberals insist does not exist ,that concept would be that you control the Information you control the people ! China has been doing it that way for years.

Now I want to give you a little more Info here. Since 2007 one of the largest Internet providers Comcast has been going toe to toe with the FCC on the Issue of " Net Neutrality ". Now the details of the lawsuit verbage are far to complicated for me to try to elaborate upon , but I will be happy to boil it down to simple terms here. The FCC the supporter of " Net Neutrality " was trying to take over the Internet. They wanted to put it under control of the Government. More Big Government right ? Well in the first part of April the FCC lost their case on appeal. So of course now they are trying other means upon which to take control of the Internet. I say good ! I don't even want the Government trying to do anything for me quite frankly !

Now we are getting to the meat of the story. Bruce Patterson a Republican State Senator out of the seventh district in the state of Michigan on May 11th introduced a bill that would make it a law that all journalist will have to be licensed. Mr. Patterson wants the law to set up a bureaucracy that would review anyone who reports news on any media source to check their credentials for said job. They have to be of good moral character with ethics and have at least three years of reporting experience. These are just some of the criteria upon which they will be measured. Because Mr Patterson believes that there are to many sites out there giving misinformation. Why is this a big deal you ask ?

Most of us have a favorite source for our news whether we want to admit or not. Most are gonna be of the Fox News or MSNBC variety and I feel inspite of my disagreements with both from time to time they are established news services and are probably pretty safe from this type of proposed legislation. However Mr. Patterson has opened up what I believe to be a very dangerous can of worms here. And I say this because we also live in a time where citizens are more wary and skeptical of the Information that they are being fed by syndicated news services and quite frankly most big newspapers anymore.

And in the new millineum with the advent of the Internet we have been given one of the most powerful new sources of Information available , the citizen journalist. We now live in a time where we have a microscope on our elected officials and are monitoring their legislative actions as well as their less then upstanding actions as well in real time. And I propose the availability of the Information we have on them Is directly proportional to the dissatisfaction Americans of all political stripes feel with Government at all levels be it local , state or federal. And this seems to be reaching a boiling point. Town Hall meetings last year and tea parties as well as other protest have confirmed this. Now this has made many an Incumbent pretty damn uncomftorable as they realize that the power and privilege of their position is on more precarious terms that at any time in recent memory. Ask Arlen Specter and that Senator from Utah ! And quite frankly I say most of the Information people are getting on these guys is not because of the mainstream media , but because of the little guys on the Internet where most people spend more and more time now. I did not even own a computer 5 years ago !

Most of these people are not what one would call hard news reporters. But there are many on the net who are whistle blowers. Of course you have the ones who try to post pictures of UFOs over Tokyo and Bigfoot living large in Las Vegas at the Sands Hotel and playing Blackjack with Elvis. And any person with an IQ over 50 can figure legitimate Info from the guys wearing aluminum foil hats ! But you see Mr Patterson wants to help you and cherry pick what Info is good for you and what is useless and who is qualified to share this information with you. I thought Republicans were supposed to be about smaller Government ! Of course we have slime on both sides of the aisle so when I see slime I gotta tell ya !

This sets a dangerous precedent because now I see a bureaucracy who will eventually cherry pick what news is suitable for us , what websites we are allowed to see. And monitor what political opinion goes out there. Depending upon what party is in power who do you think they would license ? I think both parties would find me extremely annoying and I would have to stick with gardening tips , fishing lures, and a series on my favorite dirty jokes. However I do not know for sure if it will get that extreme as for one I am a small fry and rank about Page 1,156,243 on Google and barely register here at HP !

At the time of this writing Mr. Patterson is having difficulty getting support for his bill and I think that is great ! However I know there is some bureaucrat out there who thinks this is a fabulous Idea. And if this bill fails might be willing to redress it as the warm and fuzzy love bill to have anybody removed from the Internet who is not spreadin warm and fuzzy love ! And this is the primary cause of my concern most of us here at HP are not journalist but we do have our thoughts about the machine and how its operating. What if you had to get a license to do that ? And do you really think you could obtain one ?

And when it comes to Government stepping in do you really think it would stop there ? Besides I like the conspiracy theories , UFOs and Bigfoot pictures !