Slashdot Mirror
Tauzin-Dingell Passes House
TheMatt writes: "The House has just passed
the Tauzin-Dingell telecom deregulation bill. This was previously discussed here yesterday." All of the reports seem to agree that there are enough Senators opposed to it that it's not likely to pass this session.
... they're too with the SSSCA to bother with Tauzin-Dingell.
The article says:
But, according to this page, the vote was 421-7. By the way, the seven who are firmly in the Bell's pockets are:
Corruption taints the body, and cause it to rot form the inside out. Those in power bask in riches for a short time, and then the winds of time will wash all away.
A big hurrah for our "representative" leaders.
But again, this has a strong battle in the Senate, and Hollings was very loud-spoken in stating that this bill won't get through the Senate in a form close to the House version, and he's the one right now with the most power on the Senate treatment of the bill.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Enron marched around waving the concept of deregulation. The bribed a sizable chunk of the US government during the campaign. Enron got it's deregulation and then began to feed on the country.
Now the backbone providers are doing this. It'll be good for the economy, they say, good for everyone.
One would assume that a large company would emit the same values as ordinary men acting alone. After alll, it's just a bunch of humans working together. A corporation should be better than human. But things don't seem to have worked out that way.
If one were to view the actions of a corporation as if they were carried out by an individual, what would that person be like? Would it be someone you would want living next door to you, or near your children? Not me, no fucking way. One word can quite adequetly describe the summation of personalities, the single face that a large company looks at the world through. Reptillian.
Cold, uninterested, entirely self centered and dangerous if left to evolve and follow it's primal urges unhindered.
Deregulation is bullshit. In the ideal world these companies would go about their business in an ethical manner without bribing or poisoning anyone. Everyone would be running around smiling as we all worked together, a big happy family.
But that's not reality. A system without some coherent checks and balances spawns bastards. this whole thing is beyond the debating phase. The theoretical situations have come and gone and we're getting fucked. The heady ideas about unhindered and unregulated business being the path to nirvana have failed. Just as communism failed. Perhaps great ideas to be tossed about in acedemia, but not something to expose living human beings to.
Truthfully, the bill is a good idea. While the telcoms are always looking out for their own pockets, we have to realize that progress is not made without profit. If we want global internet access to all people with infinate bandwidth (sounds good to me), then we need someone to build that bandwidth. Why would they build it? Because they see a profit in it. Why would they see a profit in fixing cable, laying more lines, etc? Because they have control over their new additions, so they're able to charge more. A company has one purpose, to make money. If we don't allow companies to make profits on their actions, then we won't see progress.
I don't see much likelyhood of a opensource fiberoptic laying company coming anytime soon.. "Honey, I'm going out for a few hours, the local ACM is going to lay a few miles of cable today.". If we want big progress, we need to let big business do what it does best.. big projects.
See how your representative voted here. Fortunately, my representative (The Honorable James Moran of Virginia's 8th District - that is, northern Virginia) voted against Tauzin-Dingell. If you don't know who your congresscritter is, you can find out here.
You'd know that several of these men (perhaps even all of them) are members of The Liberty Committee, and that they're about as decent and fair a bunch as you're going to find in the nasty business of politics.
Here's a good piece on the battle this bill faces in the Senate. Those of us in the broadband industry don't expect T-D to survive.
10Brett-T
Oh, bother.