Slashdot Mirror
30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging
Cutie Pi writes "In a recent Rasmussen poll looking at the public's attitudes toward a possible revival of the fairness doctrine by the Democrats, a surprisingly large percentage of those polled seek fairness doctrine mandates (originally intended for public airwaves) to cover the Internet as well. It is encouraging that a minority of people feel that way, but Democrats say 'hands-off the Internet ... by a far smaller margin than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Democrats oppose government-mandated balance on the Internet by a 48% to 37% margin. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans reject government involvement in Internet content along with 67% of unaffiliated voters.'"
Holocaust denial? Must both sides be given a equal voice by mandate? How about flat-earth theory? Or moon hoax hypothesis? Or is this where the government suddenly decides what is "mainstream" and what is kooky. If they decide that, where will the boundary be for other, much more legitimate ideas that Government may not like. Will it be that they suddenly decide what the bounds of fair discourse is by controlling the parameters?
Why is it that so many people think that the government, a large force with its own agenda, will do a much better job than many individuals not geared around a singular goal/entity? The Patriot Act was not patriotic, and the Fairness doctrine will not be fair.
This is why education is a prerequisite for democracy. Or at least for democracy to work.
Crap like this combined with the evidence from the republicans that people have finally realized they can vote themselves infinite money either has to end now (hey, lets lower taxes and not increase spending, that's a *great* idea, just like a credit card! What could possibly go wrong!), or things are going to get really bad really quick.
It's a horrible, horrible idea and would certainly end up being racist as well, but you really have to wonder if voting shouldn't be a little more... restricted. Like, requiring that you have a history of not failing personal economics in order to have any influence on national economics? Or basic understanding of science to be able to influence science policy? Maybe it's not possible to do this, but you have to wonder if anything else can work in the long run.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
I don't mean typical of Democrats or Republicans either. Typical of people that want to tell you what you think, act, feel, and say through government policy. The Fairness Doctrine was essentially bullshit from the beginning. Regardless of what the proponents of the Fairness Doctrine were trying to accomplish a half century ago, it cannot apply to the Internet.
This policy was originally meant to control content on the PUBLIC airwaves. It required broadcasters to act as "mediators" and notify all parties when an "attack" was made and offer equal time for a response. It was 100% political.
The Internet is not owned by the public. It is a privately owned infrastructure, that interestingly enough, has only a portion of it residing in the US. Any arguments that are based on the fundamental premise of a public owned medium to communicate fall flat.
"Blogging" is an incredibly vague term. It can represent entities from the average citizen with something to say, to corporate sponsored journalists. Some entities could own their own domain and pay for hosting services, while others could merely obtain free hosting through other companies. It is not possible to make the owners of the websites police all of their own content, track down any affected parties, and then donate web space and bandwidth for an opposing view. Attempting to create an infrastructure of control over the medium is laughable at best.
Government controlling content on the Internet is a slippery slope to be sure and is not even practical. In every instance the US government has attempted to exert control, the offending content has merely moved outside of the US.
This is about politically motivated people that want to control speech offensive to them and their position. Hiding their true motivations in an idealogical appeal for fair representation of all viewpoints is just covering the desire for censorship.
If there is an honest desire for fairness here, it should not be accomplished through controlling content on the Internet, but rather by the creation of public resources on the Internet. The government can have it's own resources and policies that govern those resources. Let all the political people go there and demand their 15 minutes each to slam each other.
It is imperative for the freedom and development of the internet that any attempts to impose the so called 'fairness doctrine' on blogs, newsgroups, forums, etc, be smacked down viciously.
Who decides what is and isn't a valid viewpoint? Do we have to give equal time to creationists whenever a scientist talks about the earth being more than a few thousand years old?
Every time some one mentions the moon landing, do we have to give time to some conspiracy theorist saying that the moon landing never happened?
Whenever we mention 9/11 do we have to give time to some nutjob who claims Bush personally engineered the whole thing?
The 'fairness doctrine' should be anathema to anyone who even pretends to support free speech, as it rests completely on the government dictating which viewpoints are and are not 'valid'. Valid opposing viewpoints have to be represented. Invalid opposing viewpoints do not.
It's tyranny and fascism, nothing less.
That is a poor descriptor of a fairly complicated political organization. The real reason that the Republicans haven't been 'conservative' is that the current factions in charge (the neo-cons and evangelists) decided to associate with the Republican Party for its hawkishness and its acceptance of religion in government. There still are factions that fit the normal description of 'conservative,' but they have been greatly outmaneuvered in recent years (and no, I'm not talking about Ron Paul who fits into the very small libertarian faction). The neo-cons and evangelists are probably in the minority in the Republican Party, but due to election demographics, the southern states have vastly more power than their populations would represent. Thus, they are the 'base' to which the Party panders.
If the United States didn't have jigsaw puzzle elections, more moderate voices would gain prominence and the extremists would be pushed to the outskirts. Instead we have people like Michelle Malkin and Anne Coulter that are considered legitimate voices of conservatives in the US. It makes me want to vomit.
Morality is just the frozen ethics of a long-dead half-savage civilization. Ethics is alive.
Blar.
Ironically, those states consistently rank higher than the US in "quality of life" and in fact, are starting to rank higher than the US in "per capita income" as well as economic stability indicators, among other things.
Doh!
States need to start handing out their electoral votes based on results from the individual representative districts, with the statewide winner getting both 'senate' votes. The "winner takes all" rule is so bizarre, and causes certain states (those with a moderate to high amount of electoral votes and razor-thin state-wide margins) to become more important than other states. I live in California, and Republican presidential candidates don't even bother coming here, and Democratic candidates use us as an ATM machine. They both know that all 55 electoral votes are going Democratic. Those people voting Republican in northern districts aren't being represented in the electoral college vote.
Of course, the second people started talking about using this district-based system, the Democrats started whining, because they knew this would cost them around 20-25 electoral votes that they currently don't have to work for.
I wonder what would happen if a state decided to secede without military force. If South Carolina seceded again, but instead of putting up a military, they just stopped paying the feds and accepting help and whatever else they'd have to do, then when the US military came in to stop them, they all just sat down and let the military walk by. If the military were to start shooting people who weren't defending themselves, I'm pretty sure that would be a disaster of epic proportions. In that situation, what could the US do to stop a seceding state? I would guess nothing. Maybe they could try to start a rebellion in the state to get the locals wanting to rejoin the rest, but that's about all.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying the above is a good idea, just wondering.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
And rightfully so. There have been recent attempts here in California to make our electoral votes be distributed proportionally instead of all or nothing. Naturally this was proposed by the Republicans since they would then get 20 or 25 electoral votes they currently have no chance at. Obviously this would unfairly handicap the Democrats since they would still get 0% of the electoral votes from big Republican states like Texas.
On the other hand, I support the national popular vote system where states agree to continue with the current system until states with more than half of the electoral votes are signed on. This is the only fair way to implement a proportional system, and no surprise the Democrats in California's legislature sponsored the bill which has been passed by both houses. All we need is for Schwarzenegger to sign it.
BTW, it certainly is funny that people are for the electoral system saying without it small states would be ignored. I don't follow how small states being ignored is worse then our current system where big states like Californa, NY, and Texas get ignored. Isn't more people being ignored worse then less people being ignored? Small states shouldn't be ignored, but the attention they get should be proportional to their population.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Based upon that Wiki definition the average Democrat is more of a Socialist than a Traditional Liberal. How many Democrats do you see these days trying to LIMIT government? Most democrats these days want more government.
Keep supporting those Democrats Slashdotters!
Sooner or later they will be so powerful they WILL be telling you what you can do with your internet.
I apologize if I'm putting words in your mouth, but I hope you don't think the Democrats are anything like fair and balanced, either. They're actually rather unbalanced.
Hate the middle class? Hmmm. Who wants to raise taxes on the middle class? Obama. Pelosi. People like that. Democrats.
Red Bushies? The Democrats are way more Red than the Republicans. I'm not saying the Republicans aren't Red, but c'mon.
Not that I support Bush. I'm sick of him. I'm also sick of the fact that yet again, the only two candidates with a chance of winning leave me with a choice of picking the one who sucks less (that would be McCain, for anyone confused on that issue).
Circling back to fair and balanced, I don't much care if a given paper, radio station, TV network, whatever, is fair and/or balanced. What I do care about is that so many of them (including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, etc.) *pretend* to be fair and balanced (with Fox explicitly calling itself that) while being nothing of the kind. Agendas are fine. It's hidden agendas that bug me, and I'd like to see all the media declare their allegiances openly. If they do so, fairness and balance will take care of themselves.
There is nothing humble about my opinion. Humble opinions are crap. Of course, there's nothing humble about yours, either. You just lied and said there was.
Bad things happen to good people. People pick themselves up with the resources they have and get moving again. At this point I have enough friends that I could find a job if needed and could help them if needed. None of us are 'rich.' I'm not sure why I should expect the government to help me if something bad happens to me, even if it was out of my control.
I've been there. Growing up we qualified for food stamps and the like, but my parents refused to take them. Instead my dad worked his full time job and then had endless side jobs selling anything he could (firewood in the winter, oysters in season, shrimp, etc...). I often had to help in order to get all the work done. We didn't have central heat or air. It sucks big time waking up and filling a kerosene heater in the freezing cold, but I've done that too. All all this was before I was 14. My parents taught me 3 things growing up. Work hard, get an education, and don't get a girl pregnant (my mom was pretty creative at this lol). So don't tell me I don't know poor or know how to get out of it.
At some point you have to get off your ass and do it yourself. I've written software for call centers. Basically entry level places for people who only went to HS. What's funny is that there is a lot of advancement opportunity and the ability to make good money, but that requires people to actually show up. Once there they can't start fights with one another over 'my babys daddy is her babys daddy.' As a society how do we fix that? It's definitely not a money issue.
I would argue if people don't like being poor they would be more proactive about getting out of it. The first thing they could do is stop popping out kids they can't afford.
There were no voices saying that the previous Republican majority wasn't conservative until after the government failed miserably at everything it tried to do.
That, honestly, is the real difference between the parties. The Republicans are always 'conservative' until they inevitably fail, at which point they've never been conservative.
That's worse than the 'no true scotsman' fallacy. That fallacy, for those who don't know, is when you say 'No true X has the characteristics of Y', and then, when someone finds an X that does indeed have Y, you assert that this X isn't really an X...it's an exception, or a bad example for some reason, and shouldn't be considered an X.
But, with 'conservatives', it's like we've started that fallacy and have managed to eliminate half the population of Scotland, and not found a single one yet. It's like the claim here is 'no true Scotsman is from Scotland' or something, and we've had to discard Every. Single. Scotman we've run across.
The one that hasn't been kicked out of the party, Ronald Reagan, is still a 'conservative' because he didn't fail, despite not actually following any of the characteristics of 'conservativism'.
Meanwhile, Democrats do get called on their behavior. They are constantly accused of being too far to the right by, well, the whole damn internet. The actions they do that are inconsistent with the left are criticized at the time, not later, when they've failed horrible and everyone's looking for a reason to that it isn't their fault.
Just ask Joseph Lieberman. He got kicked out of the damn party. Not for failure, not retroactively, but because he votes like a Republican, period.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
That specific morality "for many" is based on a 2000+ year old religious text in its various incarnations used by Abrahamaic religions and on other religious beliefs. That ancient Greeks, who practiced a different religious system of beliefs before being conquered by Rome, strengthens the argument that the bias is a religiously-based moralistic choice rather than an ethical one.
There are no ethical reasons against same sex relationships. However, due to the higher risk of STD transmission, there are ethical reasons against unprotexted sex with multiple partners (as with hetero sexual sex, but higher due to the higher risk of disease transmission in anal sex).
It depends on your definition of usury. Not everybody is happy with the payday loan people and loan sharking is still not legal. The "any interest is proscribed usury" definition tends to be the religious moral one. The ethical one is that some expectation of interest for the loaning of capital to begin new projects is acceptable, but that the expected return must be proportional to the risk and should not result in de-facto indentured servitude for the lendee.
Generally I would have to say that ethics are derived based on an expectation of fairness and balance between individual and societal needs.
Morality claims to be the same thing - and often coincides - but is imposed by a religious oligarchy who may include their self-interest foremost.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
There are more opportunities for the poor than ever before yet many remain perpetually poor.
Again, you're blaming people for circumstances which are often beyond their control. If you've never been poor and don't know anyone who is, it can be hard to understand the difficulty of getting out of that situation, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.
I was born poor. I came from a low income family, my dad was enlisted in the US Air Force from which he retired, and my mom worked her way through a 2 year technical school to become a lab tech in a hospital. While raising 3 children, I have 2 sisters. Even though we were poor, all three of us went on to college, luckily our mother taught us we could be almost anything we wanted to be as long as we worked at it and encouraged us to get an education. So, my older sister and I went into the military then to college after we got out. My younger sister worked full tyme while attending college. The older sister in now a nurse and the younger one earned her Masters and became a Certified Public Accountant. Not only does she run her own accounting firm, she also owns a few rental properties, including the apartment building I live in now.
People don't stay poor because they like being poor, or because welfare pays better than working
Bullshit! At one employer though I worked full tyme I didn't have insurance, the employer didn't offer it, so I looked into getting my own. Unfortunately because I made only a little above minimum wage and there's no free market in health or medical insurance, I couldn't afford to get any myself. So someone suggested I try medical assistance in the county I lived in. There they told me I made too much but if I quit my job I'd be able to get medical assistance. I would have also been able to get food stamps. Financially speaking I would have been better if I quit however I believe each person has to try to make it on their own and not sponge off of society.
Should there be a Law?
There were no voices saying that the previous Republican majority wasn't conservative until after the government failed miserably at everything it tried to do.
Not true. Many conservatives called the Bush Administration out for No Child Left behind being decidedly un-conservative. Clearly anti-federalist - a big chunk out of state & local rights/control. Beyond that, there were many compelling arguments by conservatives (liberals at the time we very much in favor of NCLB though they later changed) that NCLB was unconstitutional and as a result, at most, participation was optional.
Personally, it's always been about fiscal responsibility money/spending being about as objective of view of government reach as we have. Right or wrong, to some extent, I've always been able to partially justify Reagan's deficit spending because it was necessary for the times and ultimately deserves at least some credit for winning the cold war. Where the circumstances of the times give Reagan some justification (excuse) the Bush administration never had any such reason other than they just liked to spend money.
Vote Quimby.
You talk about UN resolutions that were issued a long time ago (many over a decade ago). The problem is that these resolutions give very little justification for a unilateral response by America.
What we had were very weak legal arguments and an administration eager to flex its muscle before the law could restrain it. I'm not saying the administration made the right or wrong decision (before you accuse me of being partisan).
I am saying that the argument that UN resolutions justified our invasion of Iraq is a very weak justification because the UN resolutions were likely intended to govern multilateral UN actions, not unilateral US actions.