Maggie's Farm

Below is the translation from the Chinese government's first-ever White Paper on the Internet in China. Part Three of the six-part document is titled "Guaranteeing Citizens' Freedom of Speech on the Internet."

China Internet watcher Rebecca MacKinnon reports:

I've heard from several journalists and policy analysts (not people based in China, for whom such cognitive dissonance is normal) who at first glance thought they were reading The Onion or some kind of parody site. How, people asked me, can a government that so blatantly censors the Internet claim with a straight face to be protecting and upholding freedom of speech on the Internet? The answer of course is that China's netizens are free to do everything... except for the things they're not free to do.  The list of the latter, outlined in the next section titled Protecting Internet Security is long, vague, and subject to considerable interpretation:

...The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting the safe flow of Internet information, actively guides people to manage websites in accordance with the law and use the Internet in a wholesome and correct way. The Decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee on Guarding Internet Security, Regulations on Telecommunications of the People's Republic of China and Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services stipulate that no organization or individual may produce, duplicate, announce or disseminate information having the following contents: being against the cardinal principles set forth in the Constitution; endangering state security, divulging state secrets, subverting state power and jeopardizing national unification; damaging state honor and interests; instigating ethnic hatred or discrimination and jeopardizing ethnic unity; jeopardizing state religious policy, propagating heretical or superstitious ideas; spreading rumors, disrupting social order and stability; disseminating obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, brutality and terror or abetting crime; humiliating or slandering others, trespassing on the lawful rights and interests of others; and other contents forbidden by laws and administrative regulations.

Other than that, people are totally free. What's more, the use of the Internet by the people to "supervise" public officials is praised. As long as - in the process of said supervision - state power is not subverted, "state honor" is not jeopardized, nobody is humiliated or slandered, and no "rumors" are spread. The rise of Twitter-like microblogging services is even praised. (Twitter itself is blocked by the "great firewall," though tens of thousands of Chinese Internet users are believed to access it anyway through third-party clients and circumvention tools).

Rebecca MacKinnon is a must read for those who try to keep up on China’s increasing censorship of the Internet.

The Hill, chronicler of doings in the US Capital, left a word out of its report that the “Senate bill to repeal health reform lacks backing from GOP leaders”, the missing word being “yet.”

The report makes clear that the GOP leadership “support repealing the Democrats' health care law and then replacing it with alternatives that lower costs while improving access.”

However, the political question is when to do that, and the reality question is whether it can be done.

Politically, it would probably be useless now. But, all GOPers should anyway sign on to the proposed legislation now to repeal ObamaCare.  It’s already clear that the repeal legislation is going no where under current Democrat majorities in the Congress. To allow the liberal media and politicians to use some GOP leaders’ hesitation in order to denigrate and divide Republicans is as unfavorable to the GOP 2010 chances as being forthright may also turn off a few waverers. But, those wavering who might be influenced are from those usually voting Democrat anyway, and many are likely to return to old habits anyway in the 2010 elections. The polled majority still favor repeal now, 60-36%. So, all GOPers should endorse repeal legislation, now.

Last February, my op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “No GOP Ideas?: Try These 10” summarized a 2-week earlier blog post of mine, “Republican Health Care Plan? 10-Steps, Post-2010.”  The op-ed emphasized that the 10 could and should be dealt with each as separate legislation, with no harm to the others, instead of in a multi-thousand page omnibus bill that no one understands and that contains much dangerous as the Democrats rammed through Congress.

The blog post, also, pointed out that for 2010 electoral purposes and for reality of getting passed,

Congressional Democrats and the liberal media would use a Republican alternative as an opportunity to shred Republicans as uncaring or not doing enough to meet their visions, and delusions, that there is a magic bullet that solves all real and purported problems.

However, after 2010, there is still a problem, as I wrote:

Washington is still Washington, regardless of party, and lobbies would again kick into high gear to tilt to their own narrow advantage Republican proposals.  Enough Republicans, like Democrat politicians, would be swayed, and Republicans as a whole would be tarred and Republicans’ most energetic base be turned off by smarmy politics as usual in Washington.

That’s why I proposed the 10 discrete improvements, after the 2010 elections, that could be acceptable across the political spectrum, except by those die-hard for universal medical care or  die-hard for no-government-in-healthcare.  You can see the 10 at either of the links above, to the op-ed in condensed form, or more broadly in the blog post.

So, GOP leadership is being political and cagey.  Only Obama and Congressional Democrats are hoisted by their own petard, and I say let them swing.

FYI, last year there was a Republican counter-proposal to ObamaCare, scored by the CBO, that actually reduced federal deficits and average medical premiums. That’s $2.5-trillion not spent by the Democrats to put us all and future generations in smothering debt, and preserve the high quality and access to medical care that over 80% enjoy. The major difference from ObamaCare: the CBO said it would increase coverage for about 3 million Americans, versus for 26 million supposedly with improved coverage under ObamaCare. There may be more we may choose to do, affordably, some of which is in the 10 I propose, but there is clearly no excuse for reducing the quality and access to care of the other 80+%, and of succeeding generations’ medical and fiscal health.

Thanks Anchoress.