As the Net Neutrality debate gets closer and closer to a legislative solution, the topic has inevitably become more and more partisan. As featured in today’s Washington Post (”Neutrality On the Net Gets High ‘08 Profile: Tech Issue Gains Traction in Election“), Democrats and Republicans are setting into their party stances, supporting or condemning the Net Neutrality provisions on fairly straightforward party lines.

This may be cause for concern. It’s no secret that partisan ideas now dominate American politics (and maybe today’s entire American culture as well), so it’s only natural for this debate to be framed in traditional “left vs. right” language. But we’d like to encourage all of our customers to look at the bigger picture, and try to see beyond party lines. The Washington Post article may help us to do just that:

The debate’s partisan nature has surprised and disappointed some advocates … The Christian Coalition of America, in its policy statement, said net neutrality is “extremely important to America’s grassroots organizations and those Americans who want to ensure the cable and phone companies controlling access to the Internet will not discriminate against groups like Christian Coalition of America.” Michele Combs, a spokeswoman for the Christian Coalition of America, said that net neutrality is a nonpartisan matter and that “the conservative side has not been educated on the issue.”

MoveOn.org officials agree that net neutrality should transcend political lines. “There’s a growing online people-powered movement that has increasing relevance in our politics,” said Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn.org. … “Every Republican and Democrat who uses the Internet is threatened by corporations that want to control which Web sites people can access.”

(Please take a look at previous blog entries for a quick recap on the Net Neutrality issue, and the stance Aplus.Net has taken.)

Hi all. Just a quick head’s up to let you know that Aplus.Net’s customer newsletter for February is up at our website. For those of you who don’t receive the newsletter via email, feel free to cruise over to our website and check it out. You’ll also find all of our recent back issues there.

See the latest newsletter here.
Check out our back issues here.

Remember, we try to load the newsletter with great info that we hope will help you the most in your business endeavors. Our “Small Business Corner” is especially designed to provide small business owners with a “web’s eye view” of resources available on the Internet. Likewise, our “Customer of the Month” feature singles out those partners of ours who’d like to share their success with other Aplus.Net customers.

What do you think of the latest newsletter, or our customer outreach attempts in general? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Knowing that Aplus.Net’s primary customer base is America’s small- and medium-sized business owners, we’re wondering what your take is on Congress’ recent efforts to raise the national minimum wage.

It’s been a controversial issue, with the general conservative political stance being that a minimum wage increase will cause serious damage to the national economy by cutting into small business revenues. The counter-argument is that the economy will actually be stimulated by providing a wage increase to so many consumers.

What do you think? Do you feel that a minimum wage increase will have any impact on your business? Do you worry about being able to afford the rise in wages you’ll now be responsible for? Or do you already pay your workers such a wage? (For example, Californians consider this somewhat of a moot issue, since the state minimum wage here is already above the national standard.)

There’s been a lot of media attention to this story; check out recent articles in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Feel free to post your comments, below. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue.