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Rural Oregon Leads the Way for Large-Scale WiFi
atkulp writes "While cities and incumbent telecommunications operators are fighting it out over municipal WiFi, it looks like rural Oregan is leading the way for large-scale deployments of WiFi and WiMax." The privately funded $5 million dollar wireless network services a modest 700 square miles and seems to be the only show in town.
Doesn't anyone care that our politicians accept bribes (aka; campaign donations) to pass laws that are against the interest public interest (ie; the people the politicians are supposed to represent)?
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
Rural Oregon? I need my rural California broadband. I've got the slowest DSL physically possible! I'm about 25 minutes away from civilization, but I'm still 3 miles from the SBCs central office. Speakeasy.net, please bring me "broad"band, notice the broad part. Although, it is nice to see that areas are snubbing the broadband providers and bringing in their own broadband. It's aboot time.
Campaing donations are not bribes, and therefore not unconstitutional.
Also, if somebody passes laws against the public interest, we have the power to vote them out of office.
"Internet service is only a small part of it. The same wireless system is used for surveillance, for intelligent traffic system, for intelligent transportation, for telemedicine and for distance education," Uhhh, I don't know about this. I don't like the idea of the feds using my internet traffic for "surveillance".
No Sigs!
Is that anything like a number #2 pencil? Or a 10% percent raise?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Wanted: $5 hundred million dollars.
I am willing to offer:
five hundred million dollars or $500,000,000.
Please send all electronic e-mail messages to user@user.comdotcom.com, thank you.
"it looks like rural Oregan is leading the way" let's spell it Oregon
From what I've seen, normal Wifi (802.11b and 802.11g) can suffer denial of service fairly easily, even with simply misconfigured clients. I'm not sure if WiMax addresses this, I hope so, but TFA says that the wireless network will cover surveillance presumedly for the chemical depot(s) as well as the shipping yard, and also that various emergency signs can be controlled by WiFi. Assuming they've got these devices and monitoring/control [sub]nets setup securely, it seems that they're still quite vulnerable to a simple denial of service attack. Taking out traffic lights and/or jamming radios is not a new idea to Bad Guys (and Bad Girls), it seems this makes it fairly easy to accomplish criminally-intented DoS with OTS components. I hope there's more to it, possibly a followup article from Wired, which has gotten so damned fufu in recent years.
Yay Oregon!
-IDkrysez
Was it a bat I saw? Racecar. Stack cats. A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal--Panama!
I agree, but it still is good to see people making it work, even at such a small scale. I've used wireless since it became cheap enough, using a/b/and now g and better. It has never really been that speedy but, once setup works quite well. The more people who get involved the better it can become.
A bribe in my dictionary is something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person's views or conduct.
The case in point: a law maker makes a law in return for campaign contributions. The law maker would not have made the law without the contributions. The contributor would not have contributed without getting the law.
That is bribery.
HTH
threadeds blog
Disclaimer: I am a farm boy... arguably a hippy but not dirty... anymore.
:)
still IDkrysez tho
Was it a bat I saw? Racecar. Stack cats. A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal--Panama!
My town is in the same situation. I have developed the equation for political drag on wifi:
Dp[wifi] = n/(1/2pU^2A*Re)t^S
where S stands for stupidity factor, and n is the number of telecoms, p ~ politicians, U ~ potential userbase factor, A ~ land area/size, Re ~ Retardation number, and t ~ reasonable time expectation
There are several community wireless networks that do very well and the one in seattle is larger than this if you count all the hotspot's and their square footage of coverage.
Maybe for a privately owned pay for use, but not for existing wireless coverage.
and the funny part is the community wireless projects are done without wimax. 802.11 point to point works very well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah this brings us back to Bill Gates quotes paralleling my pr0n res hypothetical to be good enough to suit us (like the 640KB did), but, I mean, c'mon, won't that video quality suffice?
The answer is yes, until the market fully adopts 3D holograph pr0n that will require some more zeros and ones.
I mean, c'mon.
On tv shows such as 24 and Spooks, you know how when a bad guy uses his credit card at a gas station and they can immediately pull up the CCTV footage of him doing it? Even though CCTV kind of means that it's tv on a CLOSED CIRCUIT? I think that's what the article means when it says the cloud can be used for "surveillance" - it makes this commonly used artistic license a reality. In the future, I have always hoped there will be wireless internet pretty much everywhere, for free. I'm not sure of a way for the providers to make back their money other than taxes, but I'm sure there will be a solution.
the Borg run on WiFi?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Ronald Reagan had this to say: "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." which along with another statement he made, "The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other." gives an apt description of the process of government.
Makes one wonder how much you'd have pay, say, George Bush, to say make him say something, like say, abortion, is alright by him.
I happen to have a copy of Black's Law Dictionary here, so I decided to look it up:
Bribe:
Any money, goods, right in action, property, thing of value, or any promise or undertaking to give any, asked, given, or accepted, with a corrupt intent to induce or influence action, vote, or opinion of person in any public or official capacity.
abbreviated, that would be:
Any money given with intent to influence action of a person in any public or official capacity.
Given the legal definition of a bribe, I'd say that any incident where a politician accepts campaign contributions from a lobbyist and changes stance on any particular issue or votes favorably towards the cause of the lobbyist should be suspect.
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
The general figure that is thrown around is that 90% of cases are settled through plea bargains.
There have been court cases which have called 'leniancy' and 'plea bargains' as the bribery that they are, but if those decisions were allowed to stand, the criminal justice system would grind to a halt under the caseload.
here's some guy's book/rant, where he brings up the topic of total immunity. Pretty much the ultimate bribe: We'll forgive your past crimes if you tattle on someone else.
Immunity, by the way, is a holy grail of sorts in the law making biz. Various industries are always trying to get language slipped into a bill that will grant them immunity from lawsuits.
Bribes make the world go round
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
According to the article, this county has roughly the same population that my county has (my county has a little over 12,000 and no traffic lights, compared to the one in the story with 11,000 and no traffic lights). The only difference is that my county would likely put up a fight over having towers scattered all over the place, regardless of what service they were providing.
This county also blocked a coal-burning power plant, so the people who wanted it moved it 2 miles, just across the county line, and got it built.
And blocked a landfill in a remote section of the county.
I'm not sure that a project like this would face such opposition, especially if the towers could also provide cell phone service (which is also very poor in the county). I know that everyone I talk to that can't currently get high-speed internet is always saying "oh there has got to be a way!" especially considering that the phone lines in much of the county are so old that connections above 28.8kbps (that's a 3K transfer rate) are rare.
I have heard that the school system wants to do something like this, but I know the admin who thought it up, and I don't really want to use something he runs. I heard something about "free but filtered" and I almost said "don't bother" right then and there.
Doesn't anyone care that our politicians accept bribes (aka; campaign donations) to pass laws that are against the interest public interest (ie; the people the politicians are supposed to represent)?
Speaking as a Euroweenie, it always amazes me how blind many Americans are to the corruption in their system. I find you get one of three responses:
1) Everything is transparent, so its all ok.
2) It's not illegal, and so it must be ok.
3) You're a European and everyone knows Europe is more corrupt than the USA so shut up.
A couple of yearss back I started looking into using an alternative ISP for my DSL service. After checking into several that had packages that more closely suited my needs I quickly discovered that the rates that the few providers that offered service in my area were 2 - 3 times higher that what I was already paying for with my telco based ISP. It seems that the FCC regulations that required telcos to open their networks to regional ISPs at discounted rates applied to everyone except Verizon. Economic legislation should only be used to encourage competition not stifle it as we see with any legislation promoted by the Bigs (like the DMCA an the idea of software patents). My hat's off to Mr. Ziari and the people of Hermiston, Oregon for getting this set up on their own.
"Never limit what you know to what you do", Me
What would the latency be at the fringes of the 700 mile area? Can they limit bandwidth to the "free" public user? How high are the towers in the area - tall enough to cover people behind small hills, etc?
/.ers in the know? Any /.ers in that area? Any /.ers traveling through to give a report?
Any smart
Living in a largely rural area of Ohio, I am not surprised that a rural area in oregon is leading the way. Outside if the the cities, there are many fewer layers of beurocracy- and as such, decision can be made more quickly. There is less political bickering, which leads to quicker decisions. Just my two cents. (Sorry for the spelling- it is 40 degrees here, and my heat isn't on yet, so my fingers are stiff...)
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
So, 2 years ago an Iranian immigrant comes to this tiny rural county with an idea to set up a wireless network that would allow all sorts of surveillance of any transactions or other data sent over it by those that set it up. Oh, and by the way, this tiny rural county that has this Iranian immigrant creating a wireless network that is privately funded (yet they never mention who exactly is funding it except to say that it was at Ziari's expense) just happens to have one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons in the US.
Is it just me, or does this coincidence sound like the beginning of a 24 season?
Time they applied this to themselves.
Equal funding of ALL political parties. Equal media access to ALL political parties. People implicated in bribery get charged with treason.
that I can now get in touch with a doctor when I'm on 'The Trail' (as they call it in Oregon) and Hannah comes down with dysentery?
If you read about it, the U.S. government is far, far more corrupt than the average person thinks. Huge amounts of money are borrowed and embezzled. Some people say the money is not stolen, but it somehow makes it to the pockets of the rich, making the rich richer.
The U.S. government is very violent: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories. The violent way is preferred because it is more profitable: Ike Was Right About War Machine. ("Ike" is former President of the U.S. and former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower.)
Here is the same video, but with no transcript, and it requires watching a commercial: Andy Rooney on the Iraq War. Here is an MP3 file of the same broadcast: Andy Rooney on the Iraq War. Here is a transcript from the publisher: Ike Was Right About War Machine.
The U.S. government is for sale to whomever has money: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
From reading about the U.S. government, I've found that many agencies operate efficiently and sensibly, but that the corruption caused by the military-industrial connection is more than one person can completely understand, there is so much material.
I think it's more like: "Stop talking politics! What happened on Big Brother last weekend. OMG look what the girl is wearing!? Fat people SHOULD NOT be wearing Abercrombie and Fitch!?!" Wow. (Sorry, OT rant...) (Most) Americans are elusive and close-minded when it comes to politics. We have the big guys patting us on the head saying, "Everything will be ok. Don't think. Don't question. Go about your regular daily routine and everything will be fine." I met a 26 year old last night that said, "The President will pass the law for Christians. He can do anything!" My response: "No, he is not a dictator. Bills must be passed through the H.O.R and the Senate first." Her response: "Who are they!?!?" She could probably tell me Tom Cruise's foot size and what Jennifer Aniston had for breakfast on the second Monday in August though... Anyways, it looks like its starting to hit the fan finally with Rove, DeLay, Brown and all these other morons. About time. I thought the checks and balances system was done for. These people need to be strung up, cause the little guys are always footing the bill. (Now if I could just figure out a way to get high-speed from a non-conglomerate...) BTW, I'm from Dayton, OH--I think it was more like 45 degrees this weekend Alex...!
Imagine the goatse implications of that. Think of the children!
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
It's fairly rare that they change their views following a campaign contribution. Rather the contributors give money to those that already support (or would be logical to support their activities). It is quite a bit more diffucult to make bribery charges stick, when Sen. Longshore has always supported Unions and after getting a union campaign contribution votes for a bill favoring unions or Rep. Timber has likes the timber industry, got timber contributions to get elected, and votes for bills favorable to the timber industry.
Shady and improper, sure, but bribery and illegal, that is more of a stretch.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I'm not sure how people would feel about their tax dollars going to the Nazi party.
So does this mean I can sneak a spycam into the live sex shows and broadcast it out over WiFi?
And for the Hermiston Police Department, having squad cars equipped with a wireless laptop means officers can work less overtime by being able to file their crime reports from the field.
Nothing in this article mentions safety or security, and the question must be asked:
How safe is this network? Can anyone intercept data running through it? What happens if your data is stolen because of it?
Just a thought.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Setting aside the lamenting of corruption and bribery that you and other posters have articulated well, I'd like to point out that there is a more realistic, though somewhat less treacherous, interpretiation of:
"Similar wireless projects have been stymied in major metropolitan areas by telephone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative bills aimed at discouraging such competition."
Perhaps the telephone and cable companies "poured money" into hiring an army of lobbies, who kept much of that money for themselves, but spent the remainder on preparing copious reams of industry-serving reports and statements, that were then thrust under the noses of every politician that would give them the time of day.
Again, this is slightly more realistic and minutely less evil than rampant public bribery, albeit very minutely.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/ 10/17/BUGT5F8K4U1.DTL&type=tech
Article about WIFI security in the SF area.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Doesn't anyone care that our politicians accept bribes (aka; campaign donations) to pass laws that are against the interest public interest (ie; the people the politicians are supposed to represent)?
Obviously the telecom companies don't sell their viewpoints as being "against the public interest".
Creating an environment where only private companies may provide internet service is not against the public interest. It "supports local economies". It "minimizes government intrustion into private matters". It "creates jobs".
I'm on Slashdot! There's this little hillbilly town, a couple miles from my hillbilly town, is one of the ones being talked about in the article. Neato.
The only way to address this is to stip all parties of all funding, and then allocate money for campaigning from tax revenue.
Do we really give the same amount to every party (wasting my tax dollars on everybody from the Socialists to the Reform party) or do we give more money to the more popular parties (thus writing the current Republicrat party oligarchy into law)? It sounds like you're in favor of the former - what prevents me from starting my own "Ilikemoneycrat" party tomorrow? It would be great to rant on TV commercials instead of Slashdot comments.
Do we prevent people from publishing their own political statements with non-tax-dollars (thus infringing everyone's freedom of speech) or do we only prevent people from giving money to others to have political messages published (thus infringing everyone but the rich's freedom of speech)? I can't afford to buy a TV commercial right now, but I can find a hundred people willing to combine our contributions to buy one. If you limit our ability to pool that money together, all you'll do is limit political advertisements to the people rich enough not to need anyone else's money.
When you equalize "media access", how are you going to determine what gets counted as access? Does a documentary about the unibomber have to be balanced with one about abortion clinic bombings, so we don't unfairly show too low a ratio of right-wing to left-wing nutjobs? If a news show's guest economist says that the President's Social Security plan is horrible, does that count as "access" for all his challengers? If so, then the big media conglomerates can game the system by burning up airtime on weak support for candidates they dislike. If not, then the big media conglomerates can own the system by being the only corporations with unlimited influence on mainstream political discussion.
But for that matter, how do you define "media"? Do Daily Kos and Little Green Footballs balance each other out, or do each have to give "equal access" to opposing viewpoints? Could you or Slashdot be in trouble if your own globally published comments are too partisan? If so, what does that do to your freedom of speech? If not, wouldn't that be a great loophole for paid hordes of astroturfers to slip through?
Everybody's got their own pet solution for half of the world's problems (I'm no exception - in the political arena my hobby horse is Condorcet voting), and nobody can foresee every one of the unintended consequences which their proposed reforms would bring, but please at least try! You'll quickly see just how hard a problem campaign finance reform is. It's not as easy as calling all the money "bribery", because it isn't being spent on fabulous mansions for Congressmen. It's being spent on political speech, and any restrictions on political speech can only exacerbate the problem or replace it with something worse.
Because the Nazi's did that? Or you're just talking out your ass? If we the people decided our politicians had to be completely open with us about their investments and potential conflicts of interests, then that would be our decision to insist happen. Then people who didn't want to reveal their finances wouldn't go into politics. Just like we don't let 70-year-olds pilot airliners. It's just the rules.
If people weren't so eager to leverage the power some parties have (the two major business parties--the Democrats and Republicans, for instance) to keep other parties and independant candidates off the ballot or out of widely-viewed "debates", then I'd say they should have no problem hearing what the Nazi party has to say.
We should not be interested in stifling the speech of people who hold views we don't like. Let them air their views and be torn down by well-constructed logical arguments to the contrary.
Digital Citizen
This part of eastern Oregon is a very heavily farmed area, Columbia river water and all. If you have hundreds of people wandering around farm land, a wide wireless network would be ideal. I am not surprised that Hermiston is the area where this happened. Ever buy a Hermiston Melon?
When this happens in Malheur/Harney county, then "rural" Oregon is getting the internet. There are places there that , except for the road you are on, there is no sign of human activty, no fences, tracks , powerlines, radio towers, nothing.
There is no way to make representation in any way equal for every candidate. That's why we should spend our time and energy making voters more educated and reasonable. That will minimize the advantage billion dollar campaigns have, as well as decrease the likelihood that companies can bribe officials and avoid having the public find out.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
4) You're a European so shut up.
Canada recently made an improvment in political funding: every vote translates into a set dollar amount given to that party from the Elections Canada pot. This means that 3rd parties can get funding to compete in the next election, at least in theory.
0 4_news_releases/sasktel_announces_communitynet_dep loyment_schedule.html
http://www.communitynet.ca/
http://www.sasktel.com/about_sasktel/news_room/20
Are two links that are on topic to a provincial government/corporation providing access to wireless internet over a wide area.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
if you plan to leave the most important part out
"with a corrupt intent"
You left that out of your oversimplified "definition" and it is central to what bribery is.
The media has been proven to be biased, it's not just an accusation. When the vast majority of what they report is negative about 1 candidate and positive about another it's a clear case of bias.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/graham200411 040834.asp
The news media is more than welcome to report on candidates, the more we know about them the better. But when they start putting their own political spin on it and start creating news as much as reporting on it then we have a problem. Are we supposed to expect the voters to ignore ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/FOX and somehow do their own research, or should be hold the media to a high standard of honest un-biased reporting in the first place?
Is the phonetic spelling here. You even see it on bumper stickers.
The high desert around Hermiston also happens to be the home of one of the nation's largest stockpiles of Cold War-era chemical weapons. Under federal guidelines, local government officials were required to devise an emergency evacuation plan for the accidental release of nerve and mustard agents.
This would not have happened if not for the weapons incinerator in Hermiston. For anything other than emergency alerts, there just wasn't demand. So don't go thinking your podunk town in Iowa will have a wifi cloud this time next year...unless you get lucky like us "Oreganians" and get force-fed the risk of a chem/bioweapon catastrophe extravaganza!
Likewise, Unwire Portland wouldn't happen except for the fact that they are structuring it so that only large players can provide service on the network == profit. The $40 million up front cost keeps local providers out. It's not yet known whether it will be a "walled garden" with access only to regional websites, or a "drinking fountain" with trickle-speed Internet-wide access. Public benefit also has too small a value in the RFP, IMHO. The city's main stated reason is to save money on parking meters that currently use batch credit card processing over a cellular link -- Visa changed the rules so that such transactions are flagged "card not present" and subject to higher fees. It's an interesting proposal, to be sure, but...
I just haven't seen a municipal wifi plan yet with a model that strikes me as egalitarian and sustainable. Maybe a reader here can point me in the right direction...
Will
*Tin Foil Hat*
This supposed 'rural' area of Oregon is home to a huge US military dump of chemical nerve agents. -- over 7.4 million pounds. It is also conveniently located next to the Columbia river and has access to two major interstates and several railway lines that intersect next to the dump.
Now (surprise surprise) there is a huge broad band infrastructure there as well. I'm thinking they didn't do this all for the onion farmers. :-)
It's called lobbying. It's done at every level of government. While it might seem unfair, it's simply the way the government is run here. Bureaucracies are the problem. See politicians at all level have pretty much one thing on their minds at all times. Money. How am i going to get my (state, country, district, school..etc) more money? Then everyday they're approached by lobbyists with a blank check all for the price of their vote. Sure they'll vote against something the people would probably want, but in return they get someone else to vote for something they want. It's just a give and take game that we pretty much know nothing about on a daily basis but it really affects our lives in the form of which bills pass and which don't.
Politicians don't give anybody who isn't a direct voter or campaign contributer the time of day- and that's where the bribery charge comes into play, with the second.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
700 sq. mi! That's like, what, less than 1% of rural Oregon?
"Rural Oregon", now that's a redundancy in terms.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
If the Sierra Club gives money to a pro-environmental candidate, is that bribery? How about the NRA to a politician that is already anti-gun control?
Now, what if campaign contributions aren't bribes? What if they are extortion payments? Make this payment or we won't protect you.
Case in point: Microsoft.
Microsoft did very little lobbying and gave very little campaign cash. And then DoJ came after them. I am not of fan of what they did. I believe the DoJ was justified to come after them. But I'm pretty sure there lack of playing the political game enabled that.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
An interesting side note on this is that Hermiston, OR is where Umitilla Ordinance Depot is located. For those who aren't familiar with this facility, this is one of two places in the United States where chemical weapons are destroyed, the other being in Arkanasas. About 12% of the US stockpile of VX and GB (nerve agents) and HD (blister, or "mustard" agent) are stored as liquid in various types of munitions and containers, including rockets, bombs, projectiles, mines, bulk containers, and aerial spray tanks.
You can find information on this here:
http://www.deq.state.or.us/umatilla/
Maybe it's time to take Google Earth for a spin.
Huh? I'm not sure I understand your response. What the parent was saying was that people might not feel good about having their tax dollars go to funding the campaigns of parties that they disagree with -- which is a necessary consequence of a publically funded campaign strategy. He was using the American Nazi Party (which exists, in real life, today) as an example of an organization which would have to receive funding under such a system, which most people probably would have a problem with.
I think his point is a good one. It is, in fact, a deal-breaker with any plan to publically fund campaigns. Such a system would last right up until the right-leaning voters of the U.S. found out that some of their tax money was going to help the campaigns of pro-choice candidates, and left-leaning voters found out that some of their tax dollars were going to fund racist populist Holocaust-deniers. You'd manage to get one interesting result out of such a system: you'd instantly unite the most disparate portions of the political spectrum into one powerful force aimed at dismantling public campaign funding overnight.
It's just not a workable system given how strongly some people feel about politics in general and some political issues in particlar. Also, I think a lot of people (myself included) would take issue with public funds being used for campaigning in any respect, viewing that as simply being outside the intended scope of Government in this country.
I think a better route to go would just be to bar campaign contributions of any sort, in any amount, for any purpose or via any intermediary, by any for-profit corporation. The only entities which would be allowed to make campaign donations (or otherwise attempt to influence legislation or elections) would be natural persons, or non-profit political action organizations whose sole income comes from the donations of natural persons and meet strict criteria for fiscal transparency. No corporations, no unions, no foreign governments; no one, basically, with any profit interest in the outcome of the election other than living, breathing people.
If you did that I think you would clean up the political system in this country practically overnight (and probably change the landscape quite dramatically). It wouldn't be perfect, but it would beat the hell out of our current system and be vastly preferable to any sort of quasi-socialized publicly-funded system (which would fall apart as inherently unpalatable to Americans).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This assumes that taxing everyone to provide "free" wireless internet to everyone who wants it is in the public interest.
I don't believe that taxing everyone to pay for "free" cable tv for everyone who wants it is in the public interest; nor is taxing everyone to pay for "free" DSL for everyone who wants it. I don't know why taxing everyone so some people can get "free" wireless internet is supposed to be different.
Yeah, it sure is nice not to have to pay for something, but when you add up all the taxes for things you don't have to pay for, you wind up paying real money for things you don't necessarily want or need.
I'm guessing: You have done no reading. You are using verbal devices to avoid seeing that your government needs serious attention from you.
even at such a small scale
Small scale? Were you referring to the network that the story is about? I guess it depends on how you define "small".
Coverage of this 'small' network in Oregon: 700 square miles.
Area of city of Los Angeles: 469.1 square miles.
P.S.: For those keeping track, this story is a dupe.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
You just described the lobbyist job application... Maybe, hhmmm, maybe they should be all locked away in a vault somewhere and I know just th place! http://tinyurl.com/a5fvy
Politicians don't give anybody who isn't a direct voter or campaign contributer the time of day
I think the truth is somewhat less binary than that. Politicians, to my observation, will generally give the time of day to the two entities you listed, plus anyone who can conceivably help advance some agenda dear to their hearts. This agenda need not be, and rarely is, limited to retaining votes or garnering compaign contributions. Unfortunately, it is more commonly a hidden agenda, and any congruence to the mainstream public's welfare is usually coincidental at best.
Back to point, I would argue that most politicians love/hate affair with the media is an excellent example of a nonvoting, noncontributing relationship.
Regardless, we seem to be in agreement that politicians generally suck, so we're really only debating about the amount of air we feel rushing past our heads.
mms://wm.bbc.net.uk/news/media/avdb/news_web/video /9012da680028d30/nb.wmv
l
yea, but
I won't addres each of your points, as my response to all is basically the same:
Democracy requires freedom of information. You can't put a limit on which information is available and which information is inaccessible. Even if you think that one particular point of view is invalid, a waste of time / money, or positively evil, it is our responsibility to each other to make sure that that point of view is accessible as any other. Otherwise what you get is a leading ideology hogging all the media, conversation and mindshare, and everything else either seems irrelevant, or worse yet, it invisible.
Put it like this: what are people willing to pay for democracy? Are we so cheap that we can only afford 1 point of view?
Another point is that there is no need to have an extravaganza such as a US political campaign to get your point of view out there. In fact, this extravaganza is an incredible barrier to entry to competing ideas. We should drastically lower the campaign budgets of the 2 main political parties, while at the same time drastically increasing the budgets of all others. I would say that in the end, this would actually turn out cheaper than the current setup. Of course, the people would pay for it instead of big business. I don't consider this a problem. It's a small price to pay to remove the incredible corruption that we currently call a democracy.
How would people feel?
Who knows?
How should people feel?
They should on the one hand feel disgusted that parties such as the Nazi party or the Republican party exist, but they should feel a hell of a lot of comfort that the Nazi, Republican parties, and friends are now to open their campaign funding books to the public, so we can all see what's going on. It's either that, or let them do deals behind closed doors.
As I replied to another poster in this thread, you mightn't like the Nazi party, but achieving a democracy is more important than preventing the Nazi party from getting some funding. Look at it this way - if there was some real political choice and not just a 2-party system, people wouldn't be drawn to wackos like the Nazi party - they'd be far more politically aware and would see through their bullshit. Don't go chasing small fries like the Nazi party. Take on the 2-party system.