Lily Tomlin might not have thought she was predicting the future, but her Laugh-In sketch about an omnipotent phone company with access to all our financial information rings pretty true 45 years later.

It is is a pretty large cap, but it’s clearly designed to profit from high-bandwidth users. There’s nothing inherently wrong with charging bandwidth hogs for their capacity; plenty of businesses charge on such a consumption model. The issue comes when this directly affects the ability of video-streaming sites like Netflix to carry out their business model, because of the cost-prohibitive nature of the service for individual users. Just three hours of HD video on Netflix would wipe out the entire 150GB monthly limit, for example.

The FCC allowing AT&T and friends to write the new rules for Internet access recalls what happened when California handed the pen to Enron and friends in writing rules for electricity markets. Deja vu all over again

AT&T and Verizon are now blocking Wikileaks sites internally, too. Maybe we can just find out who is spying for the government based on which companies implement these kinds of blocks on Wikileaks?

It’s like a party for the Corporate Axis of Evil, and Obama’s throwing a kegger.

I just hope this stupid iPad data compromise makes the Masters of the Universe with their new 3G iPads think a little bit about all the ways AT&T sucks.

Fortune magazine calls the weak employer mandate an “unintended consequence.” That’s nonsense. The logic of this producing a system that encourages companies to drop coverage is clear. If you look at the people who helped President Obama design this law, they all oppose the employer-based system and wanted to eliminate it. The Administration also did not try to get a strong employer mandate. I strongly believe the incentive for a massive dropping of coverage was part of the plan and not a bug.

At present we have an inefficient federal legislative branch with members chosen on the basis of geography and population. What is needed is a bold refashioning of government — a constitutional amendment to replace our present gridlocked mess with a far more elegant and effective system based on the proven efficiencies and priorities of The Market.

The NYT Business page reports that AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Company and many other large corporations are complaining that the new health reform law will strip them of a large tax subsidy. But the provision is a corporate scam for looting taxpayers and raising drug prices.