March 4th (AKA Unofficial)

Let me say that I am deeply saddened to be missing Unofficial for the second straight year.

As many of you know, the House and Senate passed a two week stop gap for the FY11 fiscal year that cut $4 billion dollars from the budget. Republicans and Democrats are both saying that they benefit from the two-week stop gap. The Republicans consider this a stepping stone into more cuts specifically progress towards their proposed $61 Billion cuts made through November. The Democrats say that they only allowed the Republicans to cut the programs they were going to anyways and nothing really significant was lost. Meaning, in two weeks government has to fight the same battle again.

In regards to Health Care, the issue has been put on the back burner with more exciting news including Wisconsin's and Ohio's union battles, Middle East uprising, Supreme Court Rulings on Privacy at military funerals, and maybe even Charlie Sheen. One significant change in Health Care has to do with Health IT. Right now hospitals are given incentives for switching to electronic medical records. Many hospitals have followed the procedure and reach "phase 1" but still have not received the promised money from the government. Until, payments are made for "phase 1" incentives, hospitals have declared they will not move to "phase 2".

Trade relations with Mexico have improved!! The White House has agreed to allow Mexican Truck Drivers the opportunity to come through the United States in exchange for lower trade tariffs. What effect this will have on illegal immigration is however unknown.....

Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Westboro Baptist Church reaffirming freedom of speech. Westboro Baptist Church is known for their protests of military funerals to communicate their opposition to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". After Marine Matthew Snyder was killed in Iraq, his funeral in Maryland drew members of Westboro Baptist Church. Synder's father sued the Church for inflicting emotional distress on the family. Eight Justices (one dissenting) stated "Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and ... inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker".- Chief Justice John Roberts, in the majority opinion. One dissenting Justice, Samuel Alito, was the only Justice to have military background and felt very strongly about the case.

The ruling is important because of the precedent it sets: Free Speech trumping Private Life. This can have implications on lobbying restrictions, political speech, and congressional activity in privacy area.

Recently, I have entered into work with intellectual property specifically Internet rights and regulations. I will attempt to explain some of the work, but at times it can be very confusing. I will not pretend to be an expert on broadband, cookies, transmissions, wave lengths, or what ever else is defined in Internet jargon. Anyways, apparently in the US the Federal Trade Commission allows 500 MHz of spectrum for Broadcasters to use. The Broadcasters only use about 120 MHz of the spectrum leaving, 380MHz that are left untouched. The FTC wants to turn the extra spectrum into wireless broadband. When government attempts to due something like this, they are met by ACLU with Public Safety Network violations, D-BLOCK restrictions, and Broadcasters wanting a percentage of this 380 MHz. Members of Congress have drafted legislation trying to comprise and is expected to be voted on next session.

That was my week.