Slashdot Mirror
$6 Billion Proposal For High-Speed Internet Grants
witherstaff writes "House Democrats have proposed $6 billion in Internet investmentsas part of a sweeping economic stimulus bill that the full House is expected to vote on next week. The $6 billion is considered a down payment on efforts Obama will make in this area over the next several years. Of course let's not forget the $200 billion broadband scandal that the large telecommunication companies have been paid but never delivered on."
As long as we get some return on the investment I'm all for it, but as the FS says: we've sunk a lot more than $6bn into this same thing already and got nowhere.
Fool me once, shame on you...
ANYthing you pay to any private telco company, will be pocketed. pockets will be so deep that you wont be even finding a nickel when you plunge your hand in. Remember how did the money given to banks vanished just 1-2 months ago ?
well. these are telcos. they have numerous times tried to scam/suffocate public in terms of cash and choices and even freedom of information before.
it would be stupid, stupid to trust them with anything.
Read radical news here
Any chance we could look to put some REAL oversight into this round of spending?
If the oversight committee was a total of 5 people with backgrounds in actual accounting that ended up costing $1 million a year, but prevented the "loss" of billions in funding, I'd say it was money well spent.
Obama, you could prove your salt here by putting some REAL Common Sense behind MY money.
So, okay, we got soaked for some two hundred billion in tax writeoffs. If the Feds really want to make good on that, just allow for actual competition in the national broadband market. No incumbents holding onto their last mile monopoly by hook-or-crook, make it clear that if you enter a region you must serve everyone in that region (outlaw cherry-picking) and see what these guys can do when forced to go head-to-head. Right now, for example, I'm in an area that was previously served only by Comcastoff. In fact, my townhome complex signed an exclusive deal with Comcast a couple years ago, ostensibly to get better rates. Of course that didn't happen: I ended up paying more for my service than people only a half mile away who were not in the complex. Something smelled there, let me tell you.
... wish me luck.) Last Monday in the mail I received a postcard from U-Verse confirming my installation date, which was cool. Hilariously, there was also a postcard from Comcast boldly proclaiming that they had doubled my download speed FOR FREE! Really!!! Nevermind that I'm getting more speed for about half the price from U-Verse, for now.
... competition is good for consumers and ultimately good for providers.
So, now AT&T U-Verse is in the area (I'm switching: I'm about fifty feet from the local VRAD box and I'm shooting for the 18 Mbit/sec tier
Don't let the FCC fool you
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
After all, the big bank bail out is not by just giving money to the banks. The government has bought loans from the banks.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The $6 billion is considered a down payment on efforts Obama will make in this area over the next several years. Of course let's not forget the $200 billion broadband scandal that the large telecommunication companies have been paid but never delivered on.
I'm so glad that the Democrats are so generous with MY money. Of course, the Republicans before them were basically the same, as were the Democrats before those Republicans, and so on going back quite a ways.
Seriously, why is the answer to mismanagement of money (tax payer or private money as the recent market troubles have shown) always to give away tax payer money?
School run out of money? Here is more tax payer money. Spent too much building your pro sports team's venue? Here is some tax payer money. Make bad choices in the marketplace? Here is some tax payer money. When is this going to stop? When we've mortgaged how many generations' future earnings on today's ridiculous growth of government?
When the government invests X billion into something, they should come up with a list of specific items to be accomplished by the investee, put it into the contract, and send auditors to check up on the progress on a regular basis.
Anything else is just charity.
Well, dust of the Resume, perhaps AT&T (or Verizon, there are only two left) will be hiring soon.
You know how FiOS is just about everywhere along the east coast? Well, everywhere except Boston.
Why? Because in MA, each town decides if it wants to grant a franchise for cable TV. Not internet- just TV.
Verizon doesn't like that, but the burbs are the best customers- they have lots of HDTV sets, they like the packages, and they don't do annoying things like share their Wifi connection to 6 other people in a apartment building.
Well, guess what? Verizon has been rolling out FiOS to damn near everywhere in the state, even west-nowhere places like 500-person towns out near Worcester nobody has heard of...yet still no FiOS for anyone in Boston. It's even been in the papers- THREE YEARS AGO- about how Verizon was cherrypicking. A year ago, someone asked Mayor Menino what the fuck was going on, and he pointed the finger squarely at Verizon. Not that I trust him, but in the meantime, some hick represetative from the western end of the state gave Verizon tens of millions of dollars to roll out services in the western end of the state...with no requirements that they provide service to the city.
Meanwhile, we're stuck with really crappy DSL offerings, Comcast's throttling and misleading advertising (go on, try to find the real speed, not the "powerboost" speed which you get for all of about 10MB of transfer), or RCN's overall shittyness. Worse still- Comcast has just started getting really nasty about incoming SMTP and HTTP; they've shut me off twice, despite best efforts to sneak under their radar. I suspect they're enforcing their ToS to try and catch small/home business owners saving $50/month (yes, you read that right- $100/mo for internet service for businesses.)
Please help metamoderate.
The is no doubt a direct result of intense lobbying by representatives of Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner et al. Don't think for a second that this type of spend directed at a specific industry happens unless those folks are doing some heavy-duty knob-polishing.
It's sad that it's that easy for our government to spend BILLIONS of our money with that little oversight, process, or public input or debate. People really deserve the type of government they receive.
Full House, eh? Three Democrats and two Republicans?
/not complaining. Sorry.
It's been "live" in the Dallas area and suburbs for at least five years now, I know seattle just announced it too. Stringing fiber might not be that complex, but it's more complex than stringing electrical wires and underground coax.
moox. for a new generation.
As if the economy isn't in bad enough shape, let's redirect billions towards another thing that's completely unnecessary. Who cares, we won't have to pay for it, our grandkids will. Since reckless spending and investment was the problem, let's do even more of it see how well that works out. /sarcasm
When will people learn there is not an endless supply of money for the government to spend? There are limits to how much you can steal from the future.
if they had given it all to abba, at least we'd have some music now ...
Read radical news here
Some cities (i.e.: Worcester, MA) have horrible choices: 5Mb/.7Mb Charter with their copious outages and soon-to-be-reborn NebuAd or (about) 2.5Mb/.7Mb Verizon while Cape Cod enjoys 30Mb/2Mb cable access. Reason: old "last mile" wiring.
Remember us in the cities too please?
Nobody in the private industry seems to want to open their pocketbooks. Consumers aren't in the mood either.
Somebody has to do it... the only entity that really can is the government. Would you rather they do nothing and let our economy sink into a huge downward spiral?
I'm curious what your idea is to get our economy moving?
We need to get the providers out of the last mile. Any new housing developments, larger than 20 homes, should be required to star wire single mode fiber to all homes from a common equipment vault. Let the providers give access at that point and contribute to a local maintenance pool.
Of course let's not forget the $200 billion broadband scandal that the large telecommunication companies have been paid but never delivered on.
So... you say they got paid 200 billion bucks for a scandal but didn't actually deliver one?
Just as any network designer would! Lets beef up our infrastructure while we can.
Yes this money needs deep accountability though. Force the ISPs to spend it quickly, & on upgrades.
-screw the roads, lets get more telecommuting going on.
Kill your TV
Here goes a massive transfer of wealth to the politically connected. I bet Clearwire's name is going to come up....
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
However, I don't see the benefit. If everybody is responsible for the access point then nobody is. If there is no ultimate responsibility, the finger pointing would be staggering.
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
i remember first half was dispatched to 'get the credit system working' again. around 330 or 370 bn or so.
Read radical news here
I've come to terms with the fact that our government has no conscious about spending ever increasing amounts of taxpayers' hard earned money. What I don't understand is how this could be considered economic stimulus. Sure, it'll help in certain marginal ways, but the only thing that can fix the US economy is if the government quits taking half of what everyone earns and lets the earners of the money figure out the best way to spend it.
If you give tax breaks to the lowest earners, they buy more tv's and mcdonald's... give the tax breaks to the middle and upper class, and they end up investing in new business and current business expansion. If the greedy bastards in DC would quit thinking of tax revenue as their "income" and just cut taxes across the board, including corporate and capital gains taxes, I'd bet you a non-free beer that you would see IMMEDIATE stock market growth, followed by strong GDP growth, dropping unemployment, and REAL opportunity.
The govt can't grow the economy by spending tax revenue on infrastructure (the most deserving of tax dollars). If you allow more of those tax dollars to stay in circulation, the private sector CAN create real, sustainable growth.
J
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
Here's something for the audience to chew on. If access to the Internet is the end and not the means? Then why should Universal Broadband be the means instead of a Universal connection to the Internet? In other words why can't a subsidized slower speed connection be pushed instead of High Speed this, and High Speed that? The former exists, is nearly universal, already paid off, and it works. The latter is neither, and has issues coping.
Telecom *services* are not a natural monopoly. Telecom *wires* are a natural monopoly. What we need to do is separate the service providers from the wire provider.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Haven't lived in Western MA in roughly 6 years, but as a former "hick" from the "western end of the state" I can feel confident that my family still in the area would like me to tell you to go F*ck yourself.
Western MA has been getting screwed by Boston since before there even was a United States of America.
Western MA, didn't want to ratify the consitution so the politicians in Boston redrew the district lines.
We footed the bill for the majority of the MA turnpike and had to fight for 5 years to get the tolls removed from our end, which was promised when they first started construction.
how much does Westfield, Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, etc. benefit from burying the highway in downtown Boston? Hell, since all of the contractors and politicians involved are from east of Worchester, we didn't even get our share of the kickbacks.
Far more tax money is spent in and around Boston than is actually collected from there. All that graft, and public works money is collected from the whole state and spent in your back yard. So forgive me if I don't feel sorry for you that you have to deal with the same ISP that my parents have, but have a slower connection. If you are running a business out of your house, shell out the $50 each month b/c I can guarantee you lose more money when they cut you off then you save by gaming their system.
1.Force any provider wishing to service a given region to service every customer. Regions would be defined by the government and the FCC. (so it might be "all customers in " or "all customers in ")
There would be an exemption for co-ops (e.g. a group wanting to run a fat pipe into one members shed/barn/etc and then run something from there out to the rest of the co-op). Municipal efforts run by a local government would be required to service the entire local government area.
2.No provider (cable, DSL, fiber, wireless, whatever) would be allowed to have any monopoly agreements with anyone (state, local govt, residents association, owner of townhouse complex/apartment complex/etc). No authority (state, local govt, residents association, owner of townhouse complex/apartment complex/etc) would be allowed to have any kind of rules/laws/by-laws/whatever that granted monopolies to anyone. Oh and providers would be prohibited from making any kind of complaint or legal action (to the courts, to local authorities, to state PUCs or whatever) in an attempt to stop someone else from providing service. (no more "I dont want to provide service in because its not profitable for me but I dont want someone else running service either because it might become profitable for me in the future" like we have seen from some providers)
3.New rules would be put in place that define what constitutes "broadband". (with minimum speeds set at say 1.5Mbps) For rule #1, the requirement would be that everyone in the area be served by "broadband" as defined by this rule (so no running 256Kbps DSL to some customers and 20Mbps FTTH to other more profitable customers in the same city or town). ISPs WOULD be allowed to apply traffic shaping and bandwidth quotas (i.e. "you get 50GB per month on your plan, once thats gone your speed gets cut back for the rest of the month unless you pay more money"). Net neutrality law would ensure such shaping didnt discriminate (so no shaping of YouTube or BitTorrent whilst allowing CNN videos or netflix movie downloads at full speed)
I admittedly did not vote for Obama but the submitter is _assuming_ he'll be around for several years? I don't think Obama's evil or anything but can we at least see how the first 6 months go before we start thinking that way?
Quote from the original Cringley article: >Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it. Exactly the sort of funny math and vague accounting that the MPAA or RIAA uses when it comes up with it's latest round of looney toons figures about piracy and its impact on their respective industries. How the hell can Cringley possibly know the value of accelerated depreciation on a telecom's network? And yet I've heard it quoted for years with no other sources than the Cringley article. I've got no doubt that something seriously fishy went on, but we'd be all over that 200 billion claim if someone else were to make it.
Where in the Constitution does it grant Congress the power to do this?
Libertas in infinitum
I note in the article he says telephone companies NOT cable companies. They both may be evil but it does no good to muddy the waters by mixing up the two when discussing broadband.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I have no problem with the idea itself, what I do have a problem with is what will actually happen to the cash. The major teleco's are going to snap it up and we know where the money will end up and it is not in infrastructure. Internet access in even most small towns is not a issue, you get out into the countryside and that is another story all together.
I work with a small wireless isp and he is the only available option in the rural area's in which I live. I would like to see grants given to these last mile providers, he could service darn near everyone but it is just not possible from a business standpoint. Some areas are really sparsely populated and he would be investing in equipment with no possibility of payback in a reasonable time frame. In fact I would like to see the money disbursed as equipment vouchers only that have to be used in rural non serviced areas.
But we all know this is not what is going to happen with our money.
Got Code?
I can appreciate that many rural areas do not have access to broadband internet, and I certainly don't prejudice rural residents, but I don't see the dire necessity of faster internet where it already exists. Is this the time to be spending $6B on supplementary services which otherwise are not economically viable?
I can tell you why previous financial incentives did not achieve the intended results - they have better things to spend the money on! So does the US government!
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
It didn't work last time, let's just throw more money at it.
Your Thundering Herd of Dumbass (Congress) at work as usual.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
the telcos repeatedly do anti-compeditive practices, suing municipalities that try to put in their own fiber-optic lines, etc. The only solution is to give it directly to the governments and make sure the governments and the people own the fiber.
It can either be done by communities, by users, or by governments but the telos will only rip people off.
If the telecos do it we will never reach 2 fiber lines that will be nececcary to not be riped off, if the people do it or the governments, then we only need 1 line to every person.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Funny--last time I checked, the President didn't have a f*cking checkbook. It was the liberal senators that took over in the last 2 years that passed the bailouts.
The poster wasn't talking about TARP, he was talking about our misadventure in nation building known as the Iraq war.
Although it's worth noting most of congress, including the Democrats, went along.
Although Bush doesn't get off scot-free--he didn't veto the f*cking thing.
Not only did he not veto it, his administration (primarily the Treasury folks, headed by Goldman Sachs alumni Paulsen) basically went to Congress and said "The economy will die within weeks (if not days) if you don't give us this program." So, again, you can fault the Democrats for not having the backbone to tell them to go to hell or even that they had better damn well be reporting back weekly for approval, but placing primary responsibility on them is incorrect.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Barack Obama.
All of the world's problems, solved.
In five minutes flat.
Dear Politicians,
I work for a small, but growing, ISP, so bear with me, as this subject annoys me to no end. Not every problem can be solved by simply throwing a bunch of money at it and hoping for the best. All the wrong people are going to end up with that money, either corrupt individuals, or large carriers who are more interested in squelching small competition so they can continue to shaft their customers left and right. They don't want to improve, improvements cost money, big cable wants to maintain the status quo. Either way, none of this money is going to be used to service undeserved areas. Keep the money, please, don't give anyone a single dime.
You say you want to see internet delivered to the undeserved? Have you looked around? Some of us are doing just that. We are using part-15 spectrum to deliver 5+ megabit service to residents with no cable or DSL service available. Do you know what part-15 of the spectrum is, in reality? It is the useless chunks of the airspace that no one else wanted, 900 mhz, 2.4 ghz, 5.8 ghz, and a few others. Despite the severe limitations imposed on us all by the FCC, we have delivered magic to customers and businesses in these so called undeserved areas. We have used the crap airwaves no one else wanted, served the customers that big telco called profitless, and we are financially solvent. Keep the money, we don't need it, and the big companies don't deserve it.
So, I hear this tremendously useful band of data is going to be free from use soon, and that its fate is largely undecided. I have already mentioned that we have taken some of the worst air space in existence, and delivered an amazing service to our customers. What do you suppose would happen if you let us use that band to deliver broadband? Interference free, crystal clear transmissions of a massive amount of data to every nearly home that wanted it, Keep the money, give us the spectrum.
So you want to see the entire nation lit up on the broadband map, who do you think is going to do that? Verizon? Comcast? AT&T? If they could have, they would have done it by now, lord knows, you have thrown enough cash at the big players already, and I still get phone calls from happy new customers, glad to have service, because no one else offered it. No, broadband is going to come from the small business, there are thousands of us out there, we call ourselves WISPs, and we are doing what the Bells have told you cannot be done: We brought broadband to rural America. We have delivered affordable, quality service with a smile, with the worst tools we had to use. Now, imagine what we could do if we had 700 mhz. I am not asking you to give it to just me, I am not asking you to hand it over to only small companies, no, let all internet service providers have a fair crack at 700 mhz, and watch us deliver. Let Capitalism rear its blind, careless head, and watch the strong survive, and the weak fall. I already know I can win my own spot in the national broadband market, because I have been beating the telecom giants at their own game for 5 years, and winning. Keep the money, give us 700 mhz!
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Why can't we put that kind of money into making fiber available more, especially here, where Comcast bought out the politicians... The consumer will never win this war at this rate.
Daniel's blog: http://webs.neumont.edu/dstafford
Why does anyone still believe Cringely and quote him? This is the guy that makes things up as he goes along. I mean he went around lying about the fact that he was a Stanford PhD and Professor http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1998/11/11/DD94762.DTL.
Take this claim from Cringely that this post links to. "And the upshot is that I could move to Japan and pay $14 per month for 100-megabit-per-second Internet service but I can't do that here and will probably never be able to"
That's nonsense when you look up the actual prices in Japan. http://flets.com/english/opt/index.html. If you're looking for regular 100 Mbps service in a single family home, they charge 5460 Yen which is $61.47 and that does NOT include the separate ISP charge. Cringely's quoted $14 is probably just the ISP charge and not the connect charge.
I'm not criticising the OP but rather this particular thread which has, once again, turned a technical issue into a political slanging match without debating the benefits of the proposal.
Not being an American, it is not my place to comment on either party but I did hear Obama's speech. Do you recall the bit about 'everyone contributing' and 'all working together' to try to sort out the current mess? Have you even considered it, you know, like cooperating with each other rather than acting like little children and pointing fingers and blame at the kid that sits on the other side of the class?
The election is over, Obama is president. Deal with it. Can we please move on and try to discuss geek issues like adult geeks?
Oh yes, I think that a country that can deliver mail to every home, has roads that criss-cross the country and ensures that everyone can have a telephone of some kind or another, should be more than capable of meeting the challenge of getting broadband to everyone so that your businesses can compete, so that your kids can have access to information, and so that everyone can have a choice where they shop and thus bring back competition to bring down prices. Six billion seems more of an investment rather than a waste of money.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
where's the compelling state interest that justifies taking money from me to do this?
Sigh.
My son is going to live in a bankrupt country.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I'd just like to point out the absurdity of how outraged people get when the government spends a huge sum of money on them for a change.
RTFM
"This is about making a system that will bring both faster and cheaper internet to all US residents. Those residents save money and get better services which opens up new business opportunities. It's pretty hard for NetFlix to get customers in paces where there is no high speed internet. Ditto for Amazon and for tons of new businesses. A small investment in infrastructure can result in new telecos offering access and expanded markets for all those businesses. This is good for citizens (because they have better access and are not falling behind technologically) and it is good for the economy. Best of all, it can be paid for with taxes on the very wealthy, redistributing wealth to the lower half of our economy and countering the wealth consolidation that caused the recession."
Funny how much people got bent out of shape when Eminent Domain was used to seize their property in order to benefit business. But when the same is done with their money they're all too willing.
If this new and improved network will benefit a businesses bottom line then let them pay for it?
As far as the wealthy causing the recession. I seem to remember a lot of the "lower half" taking out mortgagees they couldn't afford. It was also the "lower half" that ran up credit card debts just to live like the Jones, then defaulted on the principals. The "lower half" before the shit hit the fan had the lowest savings rate in the free world.
Keynesian economics has been discredited every time it's been tried.
1970's "stagflation"? Keynesian approaches flopped.
1990's Japan? The Keynesian approach flopped again.
The House Joint Economic Committee has a very nice, scholarly and correct paper explaining why Keynesian economics don't work in a recession and why it'd be a bad idea to rely on them to fix this recession http://www.house.gov/jec/Research%20Reports/2008/rr110-32.pdf/
"Implicit in the theory is that there is no efficiency difference between government and privately managed production and investment. The size of the government sector is not thought to matter, because private and government funding are presumed to be fully interchangeable." Anyone who's worked with the government for more than a few months knows they're much less efficient when spending money than private enterprise.
Another nice section that ought to be required reading for every Senator or Rep voting to give money to the US "Big 3" car manufacturers: "The problem with [the Keynesian] view is that the definition of productive capacity relates to the past, not to what needs to be produced or how it should be produced in the future. Reductions in output--recessions--occur because too much has been produced too fast or the wrong things have been produced, which may occur either due to errors or unforeseen circumstances. A market economy will stop producing products that go unsold or that are too costly; it will reallocate resources and employ them in new ways. During the adjustment process, output will be less than nominal capacity and income may decline. If the government intervenes to support continued generation of unwanted output, it keeps the economy on the wrong path and hinders its progress toward a new production frontier."
There is this great This American Life episode about an electrician who thinks Einstein was wrong. He teaches himself some physics and maths and writes letters to famous physicists imploring them to see the genius of his ideas. Most throw his stuff in the garbage after a glance - it is amazing how many lunatics write things like this - but a few politely point out some of the areas where he is wrong and suggest that he get beyond college prep math. The latter always regret it. In his own mind the electrician is not wrong, the staid academic community just cannot grasp his revolutionary insights. So he writes back again. And again. And again. Until people beg him to stop wasting his and their time.
Meet Sumdumass, the Slashdot electrician of politics, economics, FISA, law, or whatever shiny object has caught his fancy this week. He'll tell you the same things you can hear from any guy who is half in the bag down at the end of the bar but he'll occasionally throw in some tangentially related link and scream about how it proves his point - even if no one else can see it. He's a genius, really! He's just misunderstood. Only the chosen few can see just how bright his light shines. And Rhino, my boy, aren't you oh-so-lucky to be one them.
As for the war, your just showing your ignorance. The war was needed back when Clinton was president
Now you're showing your ignorance. War wasn't needed, Iraq had no WMDs when Bush invaded. When Saddam did have WMDs as presidents both Reagan and Bush Sr supported Saddam. Back then he could use WMDs against anyone and it was alright. Iran? Check. Kurds? Check. Marsh Arabs? Check. It was only after Saddam invaded Kuwait, a sheikdom not a democracy, when the support stopped.
Having said that many people don't know why Saddam invaded Kuwait. Why did Saddam order the invasion of Kuwait? Because Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Why did you say It was the liberal senators that took over in the last 2 years that passed the bailouts" then? Here you are singling out "liberal senators", none of which are really liberal. A real liberal believes in liberty and small government.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The unforgivable sin of the Bush administration (or at least, one of the first) was taking the country from surplus to deficit when the economy was relatively strong.
While I blame Bush for turning a surplus into a big deficit, the economy was already souring when he became president. What Bush did was make the deficit bigger than it would have been otherwise.
Remember, the first round of tax cuts for the rich?
When people including the rich have more money they can and will invest and or spend more.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives.
Presidents can and do send spending proposals to the House.
New song, same as the old song.
Yeap. The only difference between Democrats and Republicans is what part of government will get money. Democrats want to fund social programs whereas Republicans want to fund law enforcement and the military.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
What is needed are Citizen legislatures. I'd like congress to be like the Texas Legislature. They only meet for regular sessions every other year and the regular session does not last longer than 140 days. This is set by the Texas Constitution. Members of the legislature actually worked for a living and so didn't want to spend a lot of tyme in session. Now if someone serves 10 years in congress, in the House and or Senate, they automatically get retirement benefits including health insurance. For instance even though former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has been convicted of a crime because he spent more than 10 years as senator he will get millions of dollars and free healthcare the rest of his life.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you think Obama is a liberal you're being fooled. Obama is not a liberal. Whereas liberals want small government Obama will increase government.
I wouldn't count on it, but if we're lucky we'll see surpluses before Obama gets out of office even with his massive spending.
I'm with you, while I hope we have surpluses soon I doubt it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
FDR's spending wasn't the only thing that ended the great depression, but it sure helped.
Actually a study by UCLA economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian concluded FDR prolonged and made more sever the Great Depression.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
a commercial enterprise's primary concern is profit. they're obligated to their shareholders
Actually a corporation's primary responsibility is to improve the public good. The first two businesses granted corporate charter were the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the British East India Company in 1604. Both were shipping businesses and shipping was a risky business to be in. The British and Dutch thought shipping was a common good, so to encourage shipping these companies were granted limited liability. If a ship sank because of bad weather or was attacked by pirates the ship owners were liable for the loss. The owner could lose everything including their home. So liability was limited to just what the corporation owned. A person could own stocks in the corporation and the most they would loose is the amount they paid for the stocks. If a corporation no longer served the public good then it could have it's corporate charter revoked.
However generally corporations are no longer held accountable to the public good. Instead as Thomas Jefferson warned of we now have a corporate aristocracy.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Did you not read the terms of the contract? Did you not understand them? If you think that they are unreasonable, then you should either not have signed up in the first place, or you should get a new ISP now. If more folks start jumping ship, then your current ISP will have to do something. Don't delude yourself. This is the only tool at your disposal.
Yes, it would be nice if there were competition however most people only have two choices, broadband from one provider or no broadband. A few others have another choice, broadband from the cableco or from the telco, or no broadband. Very few have more than this.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There's hardly any consensus in many things, this is especially true when it comes to economics.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Fact is, ISPs like Verizon, Comcast, Cox, AT&T and others currently pick and choose and only service the most profitable areas. There has to be some way to stop those ISPs doing that (since if you force the big boys to roll service out everywhere, you make broadband available to all the people who cant get it but want it) in a way that doesn't hurt the little guy.
Actually all this would do is make sure no one had broadband. Why should a business pay to install broadband everywhere when it's not profitable? On the other hand however, when these companies have been paid to build out broadband then they should be forced to do so. And these companies have been paid already.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
when you're born into the lower class and have zero wealth, borrowing is your most realistic way to get ahead
Yes, borrowing responsibly can improve economics, but not irresponsibly.
Borrowing money to buy a house is a smart move.
Buying a house you can afford is smart but buying one you can't afford is not smart, it's stupid.
The problem being, it also destabilized the economy because the people at the top were born with the capital and they're the ones profiting from all the interest you have to pay (they also profit if you rent because they were born with the property.
There is such a thing as being upperly mobile. Even those born at the bottom can reach up and climb out.
Socialized healthcare
Socialized medicine either leads to increased health care cost or to rationing. What will lower health care costs is a free market in health care. And please don't say we have a free market in healthcare now, because we do not. Let's start with health insurance. Employers get a tax write off for offering health insurance to employees. However if someone buys their own insurance, they do not get that tax write off. That is not a free market. Then there are regulations such as zoning laws. Even if I wanted to I doubt I'd be able to open a walk-in health clinic in my neighborhood. If I could though there's probably regulations saying X number of doctors are required when Physician assistants and Nurse practitioners can do as good a job under the supervision of a doctor but does not cost as much.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Obama isn't a classical liberal, just like the GOP aren't classically conservative. On the modern US political spectrum Obama is more liberal than Bill Clinton.
That's right, it is semantics, the meaning of words is important. If no one uses the same meanings for words nobody will understand each other.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Telecom *services* are not a natural monopoly. Telecom *wires* are a natural monopoly. What we need to do is separate the service providers from the wire provider.
The wires aren't a natural monopoly, traversing the distance is. I think government-owned conduit in the ground solves lots of problems. That's basically all water and sewer are, just add one for power and one for data and call it a century.
I think some cities already do this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)