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Obama Picks Net Neutrality Backer As FCC Chief
Ripit writes "President Obama on Tuesday nominated Julius Genachowski as the nation's top telecommunications regulator, picking a campaign adviser who has divided his career between Washington, D.C., political jobs and working as an Internet executive.
Genachowski is likely to continue the Democratic push for more Net neutrality regulations, which are opposed by some conservatives and telecommunications providers. He was a top Obama technology adviser and aided in crafting a technology platform that supported Net neutrality rules."
What I would prefer, is if the Pipes were open pipes. The Recovery package should have included money to buy up all of the laid fiber/cable and open it up to competition.
Here in Utah, Utopia is the open fiber that any ISP can use to give you access, and it works wonderfully. Most fiber is approx $50/month, and if you don't like your provider, you can switch without needing a new wire run to your house. If internet access worked this way, Net Neutrality would be unnecessary, but it doesn't, so it's required so Ma Bell doesn't get any bright ideas about which content it should start filtering.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
Do you know how they got those monopolies in the first place?
It wasn't through their own hard work and superior service, it was given to them.
It was given to them by local governments. At least, around here it was. Comcast had an essential monopoly in Baltimore county for many, many years. It made it impossible for any competing ISP to step in and grab market in this county.
Guess what? The surrounding ISPs/cable companies went out of business because of this.
Food and drug labeling laws made companies actually research drugs, instead of just giving mothers laudanum (opium and alcohol) to treat teething infants. Very effective - they behaved like angels. Until the stuff wore off.
How do you go from "plenty of democrats are opposed to net neutrality" and then turn and say "it's a very liberal agenda"?
I'm not quite sure how you are able to make that statement.
I'm a very liberal person, and I 100% support network neutrality. The idea of networks not being neutral has far reaching implications to our information structure that isn't just about piracy.
We are already seeing the "market" trying to cap internet growth. With recent caps instituted by Comcast and other cable operators, we're seeing competition (in the form of internet streaming services) being held down.
If Comcast could get away with it, they would just charge you extra money for "high bandwidth use" (internet streaming). This cap is their way of instituting this functionality without actually coming out and saying it directly.
Furthermore, what they really want to do is charge the providers of these services. So while Comcast charges its customers, and say, AT&T charges its customers. Comcast wants to charge AT&T's customers to have "priority" bandwidth on their network. And that's where the idea of "network neutrality" comes into play. That all data should be treated equally, rather than separately on tiers.
So this way, Comcast would charge netflix to deliver "priority" packets to Comcast's customers. Netflix's ISP would charge Netflix to have any access to the internet at all. Comcast would charge its users for access to the internet, and then again charge its users for "priority" access to netflix.
Subprime loans were not forced or mandated by regulations. They were sought after by the banking institutions who lobbied for them.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
>>>Did the government tell them to make the loans?
As a matter of fact, yes it did. The Democrats pushed through legislation requiring banks to make "no down payment" loans in order to extend housing to as many low-income Americans as possible, and that idiot Bush signed it. (He also signed the stupid anti-bankruptcy law authored by democrat Biden.) So the answer to your question is "yes".
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You seem very confused. *De*regulation did more damage than the regulation, but as has already been said more eloquently than I could it wasn't really either that was the issue. It was the bank institutions using flawed risk assessment methods in an attempt to make more money for themselves that has lead to this.
Te other reason pay don't pay their mortgages is because they foolishly signed-up with variable rate loans. They could afford the original $300 a month, but when it suddenly jumped to $400 a month, then they were unable to keep up. They were living too close to the edge.
A secondary reason is an unwillingness to sacrifice. i.e. Cancel the TV, cancel the cellphone, cancel the internet & replace it with free dialup, stop eating dinner at restaurants, et cetera. My niece & her husband fit this category. If these persons learned to sacrifice, a lot of them would probably survive.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The government didn't force anyone to make bad loans. If you are a loan officer and you made a bad loan, it isn't because the government held a gun to your back.
Oh really?
"The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.
The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.
All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. "Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor," the Fed's guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as "valid income sources" to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit."
But let's not let those pesky facts get in the way of some good old class warfare, eh?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Agreed. The gov't reduced regulations to give the banks more flexibility - they didn't tell the banks to shoot the country in the foot.
The banking industry complained regulations were too restrictive and they couldn't get people into homes - so the Clinton administration made it easier by pushing Congress to remove a lot of these regulations. The banking industry, & republicans loved this on a business level (more sales, less rules). The democrats loved this on a "we are helping the little guy buy a home" level. Nothing was wrong with that...except as history has proven over and over and over again if you give people the opportunity they will do whatever it takes to gain power/money even at the expense of other people. There are way too many sales people, and their managers who demand this, who just want to "SELL SELL SELL". How many times have we heard this on tv shows or movies "SELL SELL SELL"...you think that is a myth? It's "SELL no matter what" attitude.
There is a local jewelry store (been around for over 30 years) in Philadelphia. They have an insane commercial that says "if you really love her, you can't let the economy stop you. Buy her that diamond because if you love her she is worth it and so is that diamond".... as opposed to saying "You want to get married, the economy is tough, we can help you by getting you and affordable ring. Oh and we can upgrade it down the road for you" Again sales people just want to sell and they don't care about you.
Order of blame:
Banks who abused the system
Gov't who didn't monitor the system
People who got into those stupid loans.
Why do I put "People" on the bottom of the list? It is similar to the Stanley Milgram experiment. Given an authoratative figure people will do what they are told even if it is known to be wrong. Authoratative figure = real estate agent (with a LICENSE) & mortgage officer (with a LICENSE) in nice suits telling their customers "don't worry we know what we are doing with years of experience and fancy computer programs that say you CAN do this."
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Regulation is the damping of a process. Compare with Watt's steam machine. The regulator is needed to make sure that the system does not blow itself up.
However, in order to get a good regulation, you should first understand the process and be able to show that there is a possibility of run-away, and then create a regulator for the process.
First off, your source is not appropriate for a serious argument. It's an op/ed by a columnist with accusations of plagiarism to his name, not a news article.
The loans that caused the vast majority of the current mess were issued by mortgage brokers (firms like Countrywide Financial, Ameriquest Mortgage, and Ditech), not banks. Brokers are not held to the CRA standards. The idea that the CRA caused this mess has been debunked repeatedly by every study done on the subject. If you want some real sources on this, I'd suggest studies put out by a university, the Federal Reserve, or the US Treasury Department.
Some real reasons behind the arguments about the CRA:
1. Banks have hated the CRA for a long time. They were trying to dodge it or get rid of it back in the 1990's as well.
2. Conservatives oppose most government regulation on principle.
3. By blaming the CRA, it absolved the bankers of any role in creating the problem.
4. It creates an image of a foreclosed subprime homes is owned by a black person in a bad urban neighborhood. In reality, the areas with the most subprime loans are in suburbs near LA, San Diego, Denver, and Miami. In short, racism.
I am officially gone from
You should see the mess that is the ATM (Automated Teller Machine) processing industry. If you wonder why ATM fees are so high, you have to know that there are several links in the processing chain and that everyone in that chain pushes their small fees that ultimately amount to large fees. If the internet were to adopt this model, you'd be paying $2/hr to post on slashdot.
I did an intern for a company that processes whole-sale lockboxes for major banks. This gave me some pretty neat stories, & documentations into different areas like ATMs.
Back when ATMs first came out the gov't mandated that nobody could charge fee's. This was so people would start using the system (hey if you've always gone to your bank teller to get money, why would you now use a machine and have to pay a fee?). Eventually, once ATM's were mainstream the gov't dropped these regulations and BAM Citibank was the first to charge ATM fee's. This continued & escalated until today. As of the year 2002 (when I did my internship) the ATM fee's, per transaction, is 4 CENTS on both sides. Meaning your bank Plus the other bank pays 4 cents per transaction COMBINED! These numbers are obviously on average - high volume atms have a lower cost/transaction while low volume atms have a higher cost/transaction. The charging $1, $2, 3$, $5, $10 is just to try and get people to pay and see how much they can..or as 100% pure-pro capitalism people love to spout until they realize what they are talking about "What the market will bear".
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Well he was wrong about the bill but right about the time.. The mortgage crisis is the fault of government but not just one party..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
The Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.[1][2][3] Community activists had lobbied the US Congress to pass the Act in order to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining.[4]
The Act requires the appropriate federal financial supervisory agencies to encourage regulated financial institutions to meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered, consistent with safe and sound operation. (See full text of Act and current regulations.[1]) To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions.[5].
The original act was put through by carter and the Democrats back in 77' but changes have just made it worse and worse:
In October 2000, in order to expand the secondary market for affordable community-based mortgages and to increase liquidity for CRA-eligible loans, Fannie Mae committed to purchase and securitize $2 billion of "MyCommunityMortgage" loans.[20][21] **** In November 2000 Fannie Mae announced that the Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD") would soon require it to dedicate 50% of its business to low- and moderate-income families." ****
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
I'm not sure I like the way you're phrasing your argument. You're not asking for the right to freedom of speech as historically considered, but rather the freedom to be heard. I don't believe that you, or anyone, should have that right. Rupert Murdoch does not need a clearly defined right in order to deserve the full use of the airwaves which he paid for. If you believe that the airwaves are being auctioned improperly, well, that's a different matter. Even so, I don't believe the government should be deciding the distributionof the airwaves based on political opinion.
>> ...it is ludicrous to declare that it's not the president's job to uphold campaign promises.
I never said anything about Obama upholding his campaign promises. I said what he's doing goes against the first amendment freedom of speech. It's wrong for the government to try and silence anyone. Period. End of story. The free flow of information is the most important thing ever. When we start regulating what people can and can't say, we limit ideas and that can lead to wrong choices in policy, experimentation and happiness.
>> An honest question, though it will surely sound loaded: do you believe that Rupert Murdoch has the right to MORE freedom of speech than I do, simply because he can afford the antennas?
I believe the free markets have a way of balancing out ideas. Let's take your scenario for Rupert Murdoch. If Rubert Murdoch bought an antenna and espoused that white poodles are vicious animals that should all be locked up in a cage, there will be those that disagree because obviously white poodles are nice dogs. Eventually, people will be turned off by this agenda and look elsewhere for more accurate opinions of white poodles.
Now let's flip the scenario. Let's say Rupert Murdoch espoused that crocodiles are vicious creatures that shouldn't be kept as pets for fear they may turn on their owners. This makes sense. If the government intruded on Rupert's message and required equal time on for someone to say that crocodiles are harmless, lovable creatures that every household should own, we'd have a mixed message of the truth.
In one scenario, the listener can make up their mind, back the appropriate broadcaster thus elevating the truth whether it be continuing to listen to Murdoch or listening to a competitor. The listener has a choice and that choice will set the truth free. However, when the government intervenes, what we have is a sustained disruption of truth. No matter where a listener goes, he/she will receive false information. We should advocate preserving freedom of speech. The government shouldn't be in the business of determining what's truth and lies. The people are much better at this. Eventually, the truth always prevails without government intervention. Our founding fathers knew this and that's the reason they founded the first amendment. Please don't let the government censor information.
Not all markets are the same, that's why they behave differently.
The optimum production level of a car company or electronics manufacturer doesn't satisfy the demand for cars or electronics, for instance.
In the case of operating systems, you have what is officially called monopolistic competition, where the differences between the 3 OSes are far more than just price.
Competitive markets aren't competitive because we want to eliminate monopolies, in most cases. They're competitive because the markets they're in don't lend themselves to being monopolies. For instance, in the North End of Boston there are about 20 Italian restaurants in a 4-block area. If it were profitable to do so, they would buy each other out. It's not, so they don't, and you end up with a competitive market.
I am officially gone from
One of the real problems is local municipalities. Many of them have signed exclusive contracts for Cable TV services. For example in many Chicago suburbs Comcast has exclusive 'media services' access to the cabling right of way, in exchange comcast has to be able to service all residents within the municipality (in many towns without these agreements they only wire the middle and upper class areas).
This actually caused a bit problem when AT&T wanted to lay fiber for TV, internet, and phone. Comcast argued that AT&T was encroaching on their 'media rights'
I wish I had mod points. Thank you for being a voice of reason among a throng of boisterous idiots.
For those people who disagree, I'd like you to do a few things for me.
If congress allows the FCC to regulate speech, then they have defacto created a law abridging the freedom of speech. They are actually forbidden to do that, too. Check out, for instance, Taylor v Smithkline Beecham Corp and Field v Clark for the case law that covers this.
Explain how "the freedom of speech" is the same as "the freedom of speech in any medium you want, even one that isn't owned by you"
Because if not, it's an abridgment. Also, you don't own the airwaves, either, so why would you have a right to equal time? How about this: what this really comes down to is *funding* for speech. It's not like Murdoch (or anybody else, other than maybe Soros) is digging into his own pocket to fund FCC licenses and broadcasting equipment.
Without talk radio, AM radio stations would no longer exist. Leftist talk radio has been tried, but there wasn't enough listenership to fund it. So what you are asking for are speech subsidies, which seems, at the least, unbalanced.
Show me where the Constitution mandates a pure market economy
The Constitution doesn't madate any market forces, other than claiming the exclusive right to coin money to the United States, which is the point. It limits the authority of government and guarantees individual freedom, ensuring that power is vested in the people, not the government. It also allows the Federal government to regulate interstate commerce (commerce between the states, which implies some form of open market).
It also includes the phrase: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.", which basically disallows the United States to mandate any kind of market, leaving it to the states and the people to decide for themselves.
Thank you.
You're Welcome
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I'm not sure if you are just dense, or perhaps all this talking about ISP's has made you forget there are other people that have something to do with what is on the internet.
Net neutrality is so that *suppliers* of data over the internet can be competitive.
If the ISP's can agree with a big existing supplier to deliver only their data at a speed whereby the service (such as video) works, a new supplier of a competing service has no chance, as end users will get an unusable experience with them. There is nothing the new supplier can do to make themselves competetitive with the existing one.
Now you can certainly argue that net neutrality has other negative effects and thus it's downsides outweigh the competitive benefits. But I think it is pretty obvious the reasoning why it might help competition.
Net neutrality encourages competition between content providers. Consider: Google pays a bunch of money to all the major ISPs to ensure that their web sites get top priority when routing traffic. Somebody comes along and creates a better search engine, but it loads slowly because they can't afford to bribe all those ISPs like Google can. People continue using Google, because it loads faster.
Net neutrality also encourages competition between ISPs. Let's say Google, Microsoft, NBC, and a bunch of other content providers are all paying large chunks of cash to all the major incumbent ISPs. The ISPs can use this cash to reduce customer prices. If you want to start a new ISP, you're not going to be receiving any of that cash from content providers, so you have to charge your customers full price. Nobody will sign up with you, because your service costs more. Of course, once you've gone out of business they can raise their prices and pocket the difference - most of them are local monopolies anyway.
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Wow, I find it amazing that your actually willing to spew this shit outside of your little I hate Bush Camps. Did you forget where you are or are you really that stupid to think your misconceptions would remain unchallenged at a site that is known for the frequent association of smart people.
First of all, the constitution stops the freedoms of it's citizens from being trampled on by it's governments. I hope you understand that because a lot of other countries don't have near the same freedoms and the constitution does nothing to give it to them. In fact, it doesn't give freedoms to anyone in the US either. "We the people of the United States" does say we the people plus those terrorists or we the people plus our enemies or we the people of the entire world. It has already been ruled on by the courts that the constitution doesn't extend to foreigners unless a law makes it so. On that same note, a law can also make it not so. And yes, the law your referring to didn't include citizens that weren't involved an act of war against the US would constitution Civil Rebellion by definition.
Actually, that would be conservatives in both cases. Don't confuse one with the other just because you saw one that was both. Don't let your own ignorance punish your image by making such stupid statements.
This is the part that I read and realize you were so brainwashed that you needed to be put in place. The vast majority of the "tazing" police incidents happened in towns controlled by democrat leaders and by local police under their control. The Politician speaking tazing incident was John Kerry's, a democrat not a republican where the security staff tazzed a student repeatedly for asking fucking questions. I think on the paramilitary issue, you are going to find the same answers too, democrats are behind them just as much as any other political entity. You are a damn fool for attempting to claim it was a one sided issue and you are a damned idiot for believing it yourself.
Ad for Clinton's "budget", it was held together by gimmicks and smoke screens unique to several specific years of his administration. The 2000 budget would of had us balanced for the next 10 years too if shit didn't change. Your also wrong about the "8 years of nearly unfettered Republican rule" There has only been 2 of those 8 years that the republicans control the house, senate and the executive and of those 2 years (2003-2005 and of that majority, it was only one by one senator. The entire idea that republicans controlled everything is nothing but a fallacy created by the democrats to excuse themselves of the behavior they are supposedly against. In your enlightened way, you swallowed it hook line and sinker.
I'm kind of curious how you managed to assume that the President is trying to implement the Fairness Doctrine. Yeah, I know Wikipedia is not a definitive source of fact, but still:
In June 2008, Barack Obama's press secretary wrote that Obama (then a Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois and candidate for President) "does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters", but that he "considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible", adding, "That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets." [34] In February 2009, a White House spokesperson said that President Obama continues to oppose the revival of the Doctrine.
Moreover, the Senate has just added the Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2009 to a bill allowing the District of Columbia a House Rep. The Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2009 specifically forbids reviving the Fairness Doctrine, or anything like it, and is likely to be supported by the President.