Slashdot Mirror
FCC Internet Grant Decision Riles Congress
museumpeace writes "The FCC, with no advance notice to congress, effectively made substantial cuts in the funding for the program that subsidizes provision of internet connection to libraries and poorer school systems. This was not small potatoes: 2.5 billion buys a lot of connection. [confess your real identity to them and the ]
NYTimes will tell you all about the uproar. The ostensible cause according to FCC officials, who annoyed congressfolk by dodging the inquiry, was an attemp to control possible fraudulent spending in the program but FCC actions then went far beyond fiscal oversight. FCC deference to phone companies by way of reducing the amount they were required to contribute to the program has compounded its financial woes according to Technology Review which also covered the story. [and which will also require a "free" registration]"
The E-Rate Program was incredibly corrupt with lots of companies getting illegal kickbacks. They had to restrict it so they could at the very least clean it up. I don't see how allowing things to continue as they were was a good idea.
Internet Grants Cut, and F.C.C. Scolded
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: October 6, 2004
ASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - The Federal Communications Commission came under sharp criticism in Congress on Tuesday over a series of decisions that have led to the suspension of a $2.25 billion program that pays for telephone and Internet services at public schools and libraries.
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The suspension, which began without notice two months ago, has caused hardships in many school districts and communities, which have had to postpone paying bills or take money from other projects. By one estimate, as much as $1 billion in expected grants could be suspended by the end of the year.
The company that administers the program issued a suspension on new grants as it wrestled with new accounting standards and tighter spending limits imposed on it by the F.C.C.
A hearing Tuesday before the Senate Commerce Committee had originally been called to examine waste at the so-called E-Rate program, which administers telephone and Internet services for schools and libraries. But three of the four senators present focused instead on the F.C.C.'s decision to impose tighter spending restrictions.
The fourth senator, John McCain of Arizona, the Republican chairman of the committee, pressed the witnesses about what steps were being undertaken to monitor the program in light of a series of fraud cases involving telephone companies and equipment makers over the last few years. He expressed irritation that Congress had not been notified about the suspension of the program.
Frank Gumper, the chairman of the Universal Service Administrative Company, the nonprofit organization that oversees the E-Rate program, told lawmakers that the F.C.C.'s decision last week to order a quick sale of more than $3 billion of the program's investments had resulted in a loss of almost $5 million.
Guidelines for making those investments had been approved in July by top officials in the office of Michael K. Powell, chairman of the F.C.C. But the investments had to be liquidated after the commission later concluded that they impinged on the company's ability to make payouts to schools and libraries.
Commission officials, who declined a request by the senators to appear at the hearing, have said that spending changes were necessary to audit and monitor the program more effectively. The officials have said they imposed the new restrictions in consultation with the White House budget office. But late last week, administration officials began distancing themselves from the changes, noting that the budget office has never issued a formal opinion on the matter.
At Tuesday's hearing, lawmakers and an executive of Universal Service said that many of the most significant changes would not make it easier to perform audits or root out fraud and waste.
That acknowledgment prompted concern from the lawmakers.
"It's really difficult to understand why these changes were made,'' said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican who helped draft the legislation that created the E-Rate program in 1996.
Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, also criticized the tighter regulations, which have led to a cash squeeze at the program, and the recent quick sale of the program's investments.
"I fail to see how these series of events have led to a more efficient management of the funds,'' he said.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat, criticized the F.C.C.'s decision to reduce the contribution level by telephone companies and their customers by $550 million this year, only to find that the E-Rate program, under the new rules, is likely to suffer from a cash squeeze and may need to increase tariffs later to pay schools and libraries.
He and Ms. Snowe also criticized the commission's decision not to send any officials to the committee who could explain the decision to tighten the spending rules.
"I'm very disappointed that the F.C.C. declined to
Since the FCC is worried about government overspending, they should be rewarded with an equal amount of reduction in funding for them.
The reduction can be used to then pay for the libraries (and underprivileged) to get internet access.
I remember hearing about how this program was providing funds to school districts that really didn't know what things cost. I think it was the El Paso school district that wound up being sold a few $million worth of Cisco gear that was never installed because it wasn't part of the IS architecture plans, drawn by the same people that sold the gear.
All in all, this is a program that should have started really big to make initial investments in hardware, but cut back a little to just maintain.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
Yeah, those day laborers who work 14 hours a day for 50 bucks are such a bunch of layabouts!
They should be a hardworker like us and sit in an air conditioned office reading slashdot!
Fuck You Very Much the FCC!
schools do not NEED interent connections or computers, with a large % of people coming out of school illiterate, I would think that schools need to concentrate on the basics first!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
It's true man.
Ever go to an American library and try to read about the workd? Most of the books are old propoganda crap from the Cold War era. They tell you how the chinese and vietnamese are enslaved by our enemy and that we must help free them from evil. Seriously. It's rather pathetic.
So, the FCC has stopped paying out- Yet it's still on my cell bill, where are the funds piling up? the FCC coffers? or the telco?
fwiw, I have no problem subsidizing a telephone to a city of 200 in W VA that can't run at a profit.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
IIIRC, a few months ago, Microsoft got to pay their fine in computer and software equipment for the above mentioned educational structures, now, if these get their technological fundings cut, then it means that Microsoft might have to pay in cash.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Just like cell phones and calcculators, having the Intarweb in schools is a mistake. How is anyone supposed to learn anything with all those distractions? Don't even bring up the dress code, or rather the lack of one.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I'm taking bets on whether or not the telcos lower their universal fund fee now that they don't have to pay as much to the FCC.... ;-)
So it's okay for the FCC to create a new tax without congressional oversight, but if they ever decide to get rid of that same tax, there's an uproar?
I actually worked on an E-rate project in a large urban area. Graft and corruption do not begin to describe the money sucking machine that was E-rate. So I speak with some authority on the subject when I say that we are all better off without it.
Why editors still don't point to BugMeNot, instead of just complaining about the compulsory registration?
There's even a nice Firefox extension. Last time I checked, it was not on the official extensions page anymore, but you can grab it from the original homepage. It's working here, with the latest (0.10.1) version of Firefox.
I've read of massive hardware installations and billing done at small schools, all by unscrupulous companies and oblivious administrators, at the public expense. Any time you have this kind of blank check, and any time its 'for the children', you're going to get this kind of graft. The only solution is to stop taxing long distance bills (read your phone bill some time), and make local communities fork over the cash - they will buy what they can afford or what they need, no more, no less. It will spark creative ways of managing networks, combining services with adjacent communities, community involvement, and basically return the $$ spent back to the local vendors (with the exception of the hardware cost). Inject Gubmint monopoly money, and of course the costs will explode - look at the medical industry in the US for an example.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The problem with government programs is that they have to be run as a bureaucracy. As long as you can produce a plausible piece of paper, the clerk who processes your application will do so. The chances for fraud are huge. The days of thousand dollar toilet paper dispensers are not past. Look at the mess in Iraq with Haliburton.
Having said the above, the government needs to spend money to do things that won't get done by private enterprise. It has to control its inevitable losses just the same way a business does. For instance try to imagine a store that has no shoplifting or employee theft. Theft and fraud are a cost of doing business for all organizations.
Senators on both sides are upset with the FCC. The New York Times article makes mention of 3 Republicans and 1 Democrat.
The FCC MUST be abolished.
This
Now 3.5 billion is a nice slush fund.
For 3.5 billion you could give 29 million students dialup for a year and they don't have to share.
Or 1.1 million schools could have a dedicated high speed cable connection with static IPs and no bandwidth cap year round.
If either of the above was actually done with the money it was well spent. But I don't think it was.
The executive agencies have a responsibility to cut off public funds when they have a very good reason to believe they are being subject to fraud, waste and abuse. GSA, the General Services Administration, does this sort of thing all the time when it does internal criminal audits of how Congressionally-allocated funds are being used. One of their jobs is to bust up slush funds and take down those who were using them. Do you honestly think they let someone just spend all of those tax dollars all the way through the investigation?
The Congress desparately needs to have its spending and law-making powers curtailed by a few good constitutional amendments. The President needs the power of line-item veto, the Congress needs to have every bill address only one subject with all riders to the contrary automatically ruled unenforceable and deficit spending when the Congress has not issued a formal declaration of war should be unconstitutional.
I applaud the FCC, it's about damn time that an executive agency told Congress to take responsibility for where it spends tax dollars. The Congress spends our money, which it confiscates by threat of prison time, like a bunch of rich old white businessmen at a Vegas strip club. As long as the FCC just keeps the funds tied up, it shouldn't have any legal trouble. Since it is saying that it is merely tying up the funds to prevent them from going to what evidence shows is most likely an illegal use, it doesn't have to ask the Congress for permission. The Constitution doesn't say that the executive agencies have to actually spend money for purposes known to be illegal under federal law....
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The plus side to this mess is that the FCC is going to so thoroughly piss off Congress that it could mean good things in terms of the Broadcast Flag and the EFF's argument that the FCC is overstepping its Congressionally-granted bounds in that matter. This certainly isn't the first case where Michael Powell found himself at odds with Congress.
Where was Slashdot when all the fraud was being reported?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I finally had to go look this up, as I've never heard an actual person, no matter how technologically impaired, use this term
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=int arweb
As I suspected ... another* opportunity to feel all superior over an imaginary person. Good lord ... can't /.ers find any real people to feel superior to?
* ala Saturday Night Live versions of Bush, etc.
When there is proper oversight. For the last 5 years I have been directly involved in wonderful education projects that would not be possible without E-Rate funding. Many, many schools in the state where I live would not even have Internet access were it not for E-Rate funds and most would be stuck at ISDN speeds for hundreds of students per school. I have seen first hand the power of distance learning in cooperation with Universities, use of web resources for students such as Atomic Learning and NetTrekker, online teacher recertification training to be compliant with NCLB, and the ability for districts and states to modernize a significant portion of their daily administrative tasks such as attendance reporting, Free and Reduced Lunch tracking and centralized student information systems by bringing them all online. The savings in administration overhead are significant by themselves. All of this is possible because of E-Rate.
What people don't seem to realize is that most school districts are poor. They have very restricted budgets with little lee-way. E-Rate allows them to bring modern technology into the hands of students who most likely don't get to utilize it at home and educational resources that they most certainly wouldn't be able to use or even access at home.
A properly managed E-Rate fund with proper accounting and oversight is essential to the education of our future. The sensationalist examples of waste given in response to this article are exceptions and not the general rule. NASA had the same types of problems years ago. NASA wasn't abolished or suspended. Instead, they were forced to get their act together and perform proper accounting and oversight. That's the right way and what needs to happen here.
Omeganon
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
The descriptions and extent of fraud, waste and corruption involved in the implementation of the E-Rate program would fill so many volumes that would take a fair sized library to hold the output.
Schools spent millions upon millions of dollars on Technology they couldn't use. In many cases they did wholesale annual replacement of perfectly functional equipment.
This accounting is a long time coming and it will be a long time gone.
Personally, I do not see much reason for the local library to have Internet connectivity for visitors. I always went to the library to get books and media, not sit there and type on some nasty public keyboard.
While I understand there are some unfortunate souls out there who can not afford a computer and 'net connect, I do not see why I am in charge of providing them both.
I might be missing something major here; Feel free to jump in and tell me if I did. The way I see it, I'd rather that money be spent on the library's inventory.
E-Rate is a scam and a government boondoggle from the collective liberal euphoria of the first Clinton administration. Millions are lost to corruption, and the paperwork is mind-boggling. It is corporate welfare at its worst. It should be instantly destroyed and replaced with a single-form block grant.
If the FCC were so principled:
1) They would appear before congress to defend their actions.
2) They would appear in *some* open forum to defend their actions.
3) They would publish a public document to defend their actions.
But they did not.
Instead they acted in a manner consistent with Michael Powell's long history as a corporate puppet -- they slipped the knife in under cover of night.
A vote for Kerry is a vote against Powell.
Randy
Way to go with the backwards swastika, dumbass.
I'm deeply hurt now, because my sense of entitlement promised me more, not less.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
...decide not to spend money until they have it. This *is* government, after all.
"The President needs the power of line-item veto, the Congress needs to have every bill address only one subject with all riders to the contrary..." We'd never get anything accomplished with this sort of system. We need bills to pass with multiple subjects in order to appease people of different parties. Compromise makes the political world go 'round: you approve this, I'll approve that.
Doesn't fix the problem. Check.
Arrogant and secretive. Check.
Hurts American children. Check.
that the kids and librarian's weren't using the internet access exclusively for browsing http://www.georgebush.com/
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
What ever happened to the FCC and government in general looking out for us?
FCC Chairman Michael Powell has said on several occasions that he doesn't know what the public wants and votes however his lobbyists want. The same thing happened with de-regulation (which allows bigger media monopolies than we have today).
The FCC is archaic and corrupt and something needs to be done.
The Bush administration consistantly acts without regard to the Justice Department or Congress. It is supposed to administer laws, not write its own. He's managing to even piss off his OWN party. Jerry Falwell on the news the other day was talking about how "the neo-conservatives have taken over the White House and are 'nation building' in Iraq" contrary to his campaign pledge and the desires of Falwell's wing of the Republican Party.
anytime anyone cuts back the public funding gravy train, it's a good thing. What makes Congressmen so high and mighty? The fact that a few people -- who's ability to choose what they really want has been eroded by Democrats and Republicans restricting political entry and monopolizing the market -- voted for them? So what. 9 people can get together and "vote" to murder the 10th person. Big deal. That hardly makes said act legal, just, and moral.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
As a former Director of Technology for a school district in Missouri, I had to deal very closely with the e-rate system. In concept, e-rate/universal service fund was supposed to level the playing field for poor districts whose tax base could not support the kind of technology enhancements that would allow students in those districts to compete with those in districts with a higher tax base that could afford the services if they wanted it.
The problem as I see it is the Administrators don't know when they are being taken for a ride by the "consulting companies" that they bring in to do the work. I was one of the few administrators who was a technology professional to begin with. Most districts I had contact with just add the technology planning and administration to the duties of a Math, Science, or Business teacher. They don't traditionally have the information technology background to form a plan of attack for the district to follow, and instead just let the "consultants" tell them what to do. That gives the consultants the needed loophole to overcharge and under-deliver.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Corrupt Corrupt Corrupt Corrupt
You libertarian twits and Republican dweebs never miss a chance to bash government whenever a corruption scandal makes its way into to the news, do you? If you weren't so blinded by your idiot ideologies, you'd see the cause of the corruption didn't stem from lack of oversight from the government, but from the non-profit Universal Service Administrative Company which adminsters the program for the FCC. And guess who makes up the Universal Service Administrative Company? Why it's the telecommunications companies, that's who. They're the ones that has allowed the financial abuse to go unchecked. In other words, it's corporation who failed to police themselves, and it's corporations that ripped off the taxpayers. So it isn't governmental corruption that's present here, it's the business-as-usual corruption of corporations.
Executive agencies have a responsibility to ensure tax monies are spent in a responsible manner, not arbitrarily cut off needed funds when they fail in their duties. Michael Powell's FCC real successes are in being whores to corporate interests, this is just another example of their religious mantra "let the free market decide". The FCC, where nepotism and corrupt values meet.
No, this is all because Al Gore invented the Internet. Bush needs to destroy it before he is fired, to be "fair and balanced".
--
make install -not war
"Are you going to deny them technology too?"
I didn't realize that schools are denied technology.
Or did you mean that schools have to pay for their own pr0n connection to the internet?
I'm with the other guy; I'd rather see the money spent on more books, teachers and classrooms.
New York, NY
The Grand Musicians Union (GMU) which represents live performers has sued 14,000 recording industry executives for "copying" their intellectual property and thereby undermining their right to work.
"These microphone devices are simple theft of our labor, and by suing the recording industry, we aim to put the world on notice that borrowed copies of the sounds we make will not be tolerated" Said GMU president George Brush.
"Microphones" he went on, "Are intended to reproduce copyrighted material, and are therefore misunllegal, along with kites, under the Digital Mullenelum Copyright Act."
The Recording Industry could not be reached for comment, but a recording on their answering machine in what appeared to be the voice of Ronald Reagan seems to be saying.
"We will develop this technology, and then we will share this technology with the Soviets"
AP
We verge off topic here, but since the issue is on our minds...As communication and information technologies evolve, a neverending crop of new avenues of abuse are offered. If your ethic is "If I can steal that which only costs me exposure of an email identity then steal it I will", you are either judging that anonymity is an adequate cloak and excuse for petty larceny and are no different from the looters in a riot or you are judging that privacy policies have no meaning and all who merely wish to know who is taking their wares harbor nasty plans for that information. You may have no idea what it costs to field reporters, pay writers and host websites carrying the stories but you can't possibly imagine the publishers are getting rich when market and technological developments have forced them to give you the content and make what they can by convincing the advertizers that you did read it. These publishers have not started out by assuming all internet use is a [sometimes not so] genteel form of thievery but are, bit by bit, driven to lock up more content as they run out of readership evidence for their sponsors. /. and generally, all of us would be the poorer for it if we had to get publishers permission to quote entire features to which we had personal registered access were those publishers to begin locking the content with real password protection instead of some of the various "open sesame" URL args many now accept.
I would be able to post far fewer stories to
The honor system is the least expensive choice for all concerned, always has been. Don't break it!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
The inner city schools are not substandard because of LACK OF MONEY. Most of these schools receive higher dollar amounts per students than surrounding schools and still do poorly.
Why? Simple. Bureaucratic abuse. The inner city schools are run by politics and croynism. Atlanta city schools are a perfect example. They have long been a place for corrupt mayors and city officials to put family members into jobs they had no business having. Just like they abuse the airport here.
How are they able to get away with this? Simple, no accountability. As soon as you raise the issue they scream racism and proceed to belittle anyone bringing along facts.
E-Rate was highly abused in Georgia by companies connected to the same politicians who filled the administrative sections.
Crime pays if your in the Government. Students are secondary to city schools, hell they may even be lower than 2nd.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It falls under "interstate commerce". (US Constitution: Article I, sec. 8)
For example, I am currently writing this post in one state, which will appear on a server in another state, & in response to a post written in a third state, & this post will be read be people in other states or outside the U.S.
To make all of this possible, it has to be carried over fiber or copper cables that are maintained as the result of people making money -- which is clearly the meaning of the word ``commerce".
The fact that the Feds are enabling schools & libraries on a local level connect to the Internet is no more germane than the fact most purchases take place on a local level: they are still effected by Federal regulations in some manner.
And although the Feds have extended this subsidy, it does not pre-empt state or local jurisdictions from providing their own subsidies or regulations.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
It's hard work promising all those education budgets, then refusing to spend the money once it's allocated to the programs.
I think Michael Powell is sometimes judged unfairly (yes, even on here /.)
What I recall hearing Powell say on NPR was that it didn't make sense to him to treat cable channels 99 and 101 differently just because one is a retransmission of OTA programming, but that's the way the law is written and his job is to enforce the law. I think he'd say about the media consolidation issues for which he's taken so much heat, and possibly this and other issues -- it's not his or the FCC's fault if the law is bad, and they are obligated to enforce it.
That said, he seems to have been born with a faulty political gene -- everything he does looks arbitrary and the powers that be never seem to have been consulted or even informed.
What's a sig?
Free internet access available in our public schools and libraries strengthens the association in the publics' mind between first ammendment rights and internet publication and access rights.
i ndex.html.
. pdf
The problem is that alternative news sources don't respect the "talking points" and propaganda that are so essential to the so-called "war on terror". How can the owners of our socitety herd us in the direction they believe we need to go when there is a grass-roots movement on the internet to poke holes in the false rationals we're being given?
For this reason I believe the near future we will see efforts to make it more difficult to access or publish alternative news on the internet, especially if Bush is re-elected.
Just take a look at what the mainstream news media didn't bother to tell you last year: http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/
Alternative news sources on the internet were all over these stories. For example take a look at what Michael Ruppert (editor of an internet news site) had to say on the subject of Project Censored's #1 censored story of 2004: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/PDF/Commonwealth
Its the most imporant 50 pages you will read all year, but the mainstream news media has ignored it.
One! ... ...
Two!
Three!
FUCK THE FCC!!!
I mean, seriously, have they done *anything* that this community, and society as a whole (if they were properly informed) like in the last two years?
Maybe Congress will reform them next after they get done shaking up the intelligence community...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
US politics, or maybe just USA Stuff, since that's the only thing that we've seen from it so far.
Oh yeah, and the fact that politics is somehow synonimous with the US flag.
Well, I suppose it is "flamebait" after a fashion. But only in the sense of wanting to point out that FCC may have had the right idea here.
Obviously 2-7 are purely speculative and 8-9 are silly. What we should ask is why the original submitter didn't write, "FCC finally cracks down on E-Rate abuses despite foot-dragging by Congress."
Instead, the submitter took the approach that FCC was the bad guy in this with lines like "no advance notice" and "ostensible cause". Is such an angle justified? Or is this FCC action just good governing?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If we didn't do it on the federal level, doing it on a city-by-city level is not the only other alternative: states could do it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Washington, D.C. spends a huge amount of money per student (among the largest in the nation), and their schools still suck. Throwing money at the problem doesn't fix it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
My high school had internet access, and guess what? We never used it. Just about everything you're supposed to learn in high school can easily be done with books and offline computers.
Giving kids who can't afford home internet access a way to access it is fine, but I'd do it through public libraries. It's not necessary at school.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Amendment XVI
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
A blog about stuff.
Apparently an educated electorate is too dangerous for the FCC and their conservative backers.
...try to use it once in awhile.
Bush may be an intellectual lightweight as far as US presidents go, but Bush can't be blamed for everything wrong with anything to do with the USA.
The whole point of the article is that an unelected regulatory body mande an unaccountable, arbitrary descision regarding a major budgetary issue (how to spend billions of dollars). The FCC overstepped its bounds considerably and is under BI-PARTISAN scrutiny. The program in question was spearheaded by Republicans and supported by both parties. The program was well underway before GW Bush was even President. As far as not being informed...do you expect congress and the President to be psychic? If they aren't informed about a programme that THEY approved, provided funds for and assumed was in operation was being suspended until it started receiving complaints from recipients what are they supposed to do?
Last I checked, the S in USA did not stand for "Soviet", so I highly doubt Bush personally or the White House oversaw the execution of this programme as if the country was run like a centrally planned authoritarian state. It is not the role of the President to guide the execution of every damn project the govenrmnet embarks upon--he makes the decisions and those below must run with them.
I don't hold Bush, congress, etc at fault for this...that falls squarely on the shoulders of a bumbling, unaccountable FCC. What I DO shame congress and the President for is inaction--ignoring the need for fundamental reforms and letting the telecoms industry fester in the status quo. I can only hpoe the FCC will be swiftly taken to task once and for all. However, this isn't a partisan issue--the Clinton administration was equally inept in this matter. There is little incentive for change, however, because of the large number of government representatives that are in the pockets of the original monopolies. And, given a tight election is looming, nothing is going to get done fast.
Why do we give a shit about a measly $2.5 billion when we're throwing $120 billion ($200 billion projected) down the bottomless pit of Iraq?
Bush may be an intellectual lightweight as far as US presidents go, but Bush can't be blamed for everything wrong with anything to do with the USA.
Yes, but as a rabid, enraged liberal, it's my duty to at least try to blame him. As for intellectual lightweight, the guy's a freakin' neutrino- virtually massless.
Just like the largely under-funded Bush mandate
of "No Child Left Behind". So why is this any
surprise? Funds earmarked for reconstruction
in Afghanistan by an act of Congress was diverted
to the runup to the war in Iraq. Funds earmarked
for reconstruction in Iraq has been largely (96%)
unspent there (to be diverted to, where?).
King George II and his regent (puppetmaster)
Cheney has been running the USA like Imperial
Rome. The shroud of secrecy (even from the
GOP-controlled Congress) over their edicts by
fiat (Executive Order) spells the death of
democracy in the USA. What's really missing
(historically) is a "Brutus" and a ticked-off
"Senate" to finish Caesar off. Especially so
if Dubya steals another national election.
As you can see from the next quote, unless an item is enumerated in the constitution Jefferson felt there was no right for the federal government to spend money on it :
"I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by consent of the States, necessary [for certain objects of public improvement], because the objects now recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:424
Thus, federal funding of E-Rate and many other items would be according to Jefferson unconstitutional...
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
The executive agencies have a responsibility to cut off public funds when they have a very good reason to believe they are being subject to fraud, waste and abuse.
. . . too bad the same standards aren't being applied to contractors in Iraq, for instance. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If they get Internet access, it'll just detract from all the fine work we're doing with FOX NEWS!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The right wing has been cutting school funding for decades, and this is just another cut.
Their goal is an electorate that has no skills in logic, no ability to tell fallacy from truth, and no practice in learning any.
And it seems to be working to the point that now blatant lies by right-wing politicians are accepted as true simply because they come through the television, and Hitlerite chief executives can not only be elected (albeit by SCOTUS fiat) but re-elected.
It may be time for a Revolution.
FCC deference to phone companies? How is it 'deference' to alleviate the burden of what amounts to a giant tax on the low and middle class American consumer? The whole program was a boondoggle from Day 1 and we should acknowledge it as such and pray that each day brings us one step closer to the program's demise.
Please... use google news and find reg free sites instead.
/etc/hosts and added the following entry:
I agree 110%. If people don't stop with the registration BS, soon you won't be able to click on anything without having to fill out a form with 20 elements, then sit by the email client until your password arrives.
When I saw that Technology Review requires reg. I instantly opened
0.0.0.1 www.technologyreview.com
In firefox on linux, it won't open the link and there won't be any error. You stay on the same page you were on.
As far as I'm concerned www.nytimes.com is pulling a microsoft, they're only doing this because they can. If they were a smaller site trying to this, they would probably be out of business.
And to you apologists likely to respond: yeah, yeah, blah, blah, your likely the same person in the convenience store buying two lotto tickets and pack of cigs with a debit/credit card.
So by your thinking, it is pointless to struggle against the growing power of the federal government even when it exceeds its constitutional authority? I'm sure that will be a comfort when the bill of rights goes away. Face it - the struggle between the governed and the governing is NEVER over. Government grows in power as long as the people let it. The same argument was made that the subjects of England had given over not only their rights, but the rights of their descendants in perpetuity to the king. With your line of reasoning we'd still be a British colony.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Who cares, kids need to learn what a BOOK is someday. Kids not have grown up with the internet may mean less children interested in a computer field in the future... What does that mean? JOB SECURITY YOU SHMUCKS. Let it be, polotics mean nothing and so does voting. It's all called 'propaganda' to dumb it down for the people not knowing what a BOOK is, let alone a dictionary, it's bullshit...
Bhad tonghue..
Shorrie...
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
You quoted Jefferson to say "The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption"
However, Jefferson also warned about the chilling effect of the "dead hand of the past" upon the implimentation of the Constitution by future generations. And he was also not the only one: James Madison kept the minutes of the Constitutional Convention out of print for a many years with the express intent of permitting this document to be understood free of that same dead hand.
And frankly, the interstate commerce clause has a lot of case law defining its use & reinforcing its relevance both here & elsewhere. This is no theoretical point: you are matching 2 quotations from speeches Jefferson delivered (which only express his opinion, & perhaps not accurately on the topic of "interstate commerce") against thousands of pages of binding legal judgement delivered by hundreds of other people. If you don't like that fact, then agitate for an amendment to the US Constitution.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p