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You managed to talk trash like you know something about electric generation but you failed to mention how coal is somehow subsidized. You even managed to insert Bush and McCain in there.

Tax breaks are given for coal mining. And it's not just some environmental website saying that. Even the CATO Institute, a Libertarian think tank, says coal is subsidized. Bush has proposed subsidizing clean coal as well as nuclear power. McCain has pledged to provide $2billion for clean-coal.

I'm waiting for the Obama will save us all line. I actually think it is funny how people claim the army protects this

I find it funny, actually stupid, when people "ass"ume I support Obama. In fact as of now I'm voting for the Libertarian candidate Bob Barr and during the last presidential election I supported Michael Badnarik. Actually since 1988 when Ron Paul ran for president as a Libertarian Party candidate I voted for the LP candidate except in 2000. As far as I'm concerned both Democrats and Republicans are half right and half wrong. Democrats what to control businesses whereas Republicans want to control people's lives, especially Christian Conservatives. And both are parties to the War on Drugs.

The bottom line is that prices are the way they are based on a history that stretches far beyond your age.

And how do you know how old I am? You can read minds? I doubt it as you "ass"umed I supported Obama.

Nothing unfair is going on here.

It is unfair when you have to compeat with an industry that receives government subsidies but you don't, or receive more than you do. I won't go over the rest because you're so good at reading minds to think I don't support a free market.

Falcon

As of last July, 34 states had laws requiring consumer notification. Some are triggered directly immediately upon the loss, others only if the data is considered "at-risk". It's hard to take TFA seriously when it can't even get basic facts correct that can be found in less time than it took to write this comment ...

Since California is still the only state with disclosure laws, incidents are difficult to analyze fully.

To pretend that people can vote with their feet and just embrace alternate ISP's is ludicrous. Businesses can do this - I can buy a T1 from plenty of providers. Consumers generally can't because Congress repealed the unbundling of local loop services. Unbundling was one of the key provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and this specific regulation successfully promoted competition. Look at the huge growth in small, DSL and dial-up ISP's in the late 1990's. But the re-bundling of local loop and telecom services allows ILEC's who own the (publicly subsidized, monopoly-fueled) phone lines to kick out their competitors. Bye Covad. Bye SpeakEasy.

Since the telecoms killed the regulations *allowing* competition in the baby bells' wiring closets, and all the major telecom providers are merging from a fear of being too small, your small-ISP options are going to evaporate (assuming they're not already gone). That leaves the cable companies, who are rapidly consolidating, and the bigger, post-merger, debt-and-infrastructure-heavy, incumbent telecom providers to choose from. Unfortunately, they all have the same business plan now: milk the infrastructure and perpetuate monopolies and oligopolies, just like the pre-Internet days.

I live in a dense suburb of a major American city. If I want broadband, I can get it from Verizon, Comcast or RCN. Or I can pay a 100% monthly premium for a slower-than-cable SDSL connection from an independant DSL provider. Maybe I'll pay extra because I have some applications which benefit from unfiltered ports, and better upstream bandwidth, but I doubt it. And can I really expect my non-technical friends and family to do the same? For a principle, which almost never gives them any benefits?

Public Interest Research Group has some good analysis of the consumer-unfriendly results of telecom mergers.

http://www.pirg.org/consumer/media/reports.htm

When someone tells you "The Market will determine the optimal solution for consumers," they usually mean "The monopolies created by deregulation will be very profitable and the consumers get what they deserve." If it's a corporate spokesperson, they're buying (and writing) the legislation to re-shape the market. Why do you think these guys try to block all municipal ISP programs? They're allergic to competition. Look at SBC - they've built or bought all the infrastructure they care to build and now it's time to raise the prices and cut service levels. They could never do this with a truly competitive telecom market.

Why wouldn't you try to get your elected representatives to oppose such legislation? What other avenues are left? Start your own telecom business and compete with Verizon or SBC for those lucrative local phone customers? Not likely - the barriers to entry are too high. Sure, there's lots of dark fiber out there, but there's no excess capacity in the last-mile, local-loop side of things.

-Don

PS - What, exactly, is the ideology that takes the SBC chairman's statements about preparing to gouge consumers and turns that into "Consumers win! Everybody wins!"?

a report by the California Student Public Interest Research Group entitled "Ripoff 101"... several practices that force students...

"Ripoff 101" could also describe Public Interest Research Groups.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,80925,00.html

Nader Scams College Kids

Thursday, March 13, 2003

By Radley Balko

Each semester, Meremac Community College in St. Louis, Mo., charged Crystal Lewis for a service called "MOPIRG." "I hadn't the slightest idea what it was," she says. The fine print on her bill read: "If you opt not to support MOPIRG, please deduct this amount from your payment." So she did. But she still wasn't sure what she was no longer paying for.

She was paying for a myriad of causes and advocacy efforts sponsored, endorsed and overseen by Ralph Nader. And if you're in college or have kids in college, the odds are pretty good that you're supporting Ralph Nader too. You probably didn't know that, did you? And that's just the way Nader and his nationwide network of Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGS) would like to keep it.

The PIRG idea was born in the late 1960s, but really caught on through the 1970s and 1980s. It has again picked up momentum in the last few years, due mainly to the publicity that accompanied Nader's presidential campaign. The scam varies from campus to campus, but it basically works like this:

Each time a college student registers for classes, he or she is automatically billed somewhere between three and eight dollars, all of which goes directly to the local PIRG chapter. There, it's funneled directly to the state chapter, where it's used to lobby state legislatures on issues like tougher emissions standards, campaign finance reform and a bevy of other environmental and anti-corporate causes. Very little if any of the money actually stays at the campus where it's generated.

It's also used as "seed money" for more fund-raising campaigns. And about 10 percent of the money goes to USPIRG, the national chapter, where it's used to lobby on the federal level.

The standard procedure for start-up campus PIRGs works like this:

First, they attempt to institute mandatory, nonrefundable "contributions" from the student body either through a student referendum, a petition drive or by going through school administrators. The University of Wisconsin requires all of its students to donate to the local PIRG chapter, as does the University of Oregon, and about a third of the state colleges in New York's SUNY system.

If that doesn't work, PIRG chapters attempt to institute a "reverse check" system, where each student automatically donates to PIRG each time he registers for classes, unless he specifically knows to look for an already checked box asking for his support -- and "unchecks" it.

If they can't win support there, PIRG groups will attempt a "refundable fee" system, where each student is automatically billed, but can request a refund by taking the bill to the university registrar or bursar's office, filling out some paperwork, then taking the form to the local PIRG's campus office to get the money back.

Such systems rake in millions for PIRGs because they put the burden on college students to educate themselves about each line item on their tuition bill, or to go to great effort for a comparatively small refund, particularly unlikely when mom and dad or Mr. Perkins and Mr. Stafford are paying for college anyway.

Craig Rucker is executive director for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, an organization that's been fighting the PIRG scams for years. Rucker estimates that Nader's causes take in somewhere between $10 and $20 million annually from college students, most all of it unwittingly.

What's remarkable is the blatant, tran

"Great idea, pick on the starving students, who use to give all their allowence to the music corps, and surly will give money from their paycheck later, and now that they have no money to buy CDs or defend themselves in court, its the perfect time to sue"

Maybe they're starving because they're up to their eyeballs in credit card debt. Anyway don't do the crime if you can't handle the time. Or the 2002's version. Do the crime and hide your trail so you don't get busted.

Partially true.
Debit card facts

Credit reports tend to have inaccurate information, see
this, a report that found seventy percent of all credit reports contain serious errors, such as false delinquencies, incorrect demographic information, missing account information, or failing to note closed accounts

that tree will have 95 more rings before Sonny's copyrights expire.

I doubt it. Chuckle :)

-

have you actually watched free to air recently. It is really bad and most ads just insult your intelligence.
I would complain to yahoo - except I had to cancel my account when they would not agree to the Nader privacy letter.
I like NPR and the ABC (in Australia) - I guess I am in the minority here though.

FYI This is to stop the credit bureaus from releasing information about you for pre-approved credit offers. (888-5-opt-out) 1-888-567-8688 is the number to dial.

For more information about this number, please see this site.



PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more about this, please email me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com.