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Cory Doctorow Draws the Line On Net Neutrality
Nerdposeur points out that Cory Doctorow has a compelling piece in The Guardian today, arguing that network neutrality is not only crucial for the future of the Internet, but is what the ISPs owe to the public. He asks, "Does anybody else feel like waving a flag after reading this?" "If the phone companies had to negotiate for every pole, every sewer, every punch-down, every junction box, every road they get to tear up, they'd go broke. All the money in the world couldn't pay for the access they get for free every day... If they don't like it, let them get into another line of work — give them 60 days to get their wires out of our dirt and then sell the franchise to provide network services to a competitor who will promise to give us a solid digital future in exchange for our generosity."
Yes, a black flag in my case.
No. I feel like marching in protest. That didn't make me feel more patriotic. It made me feel more willing to express my frustration with the telcos.
Unless he meant a white flag. In which case I have to say, definitely no. That did not make me want to surrender. Of course, I'm not a telco -- maybe reading that would make them want to surrender -- price-gouging surrender monkeys that they are.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
As long as a competitive, free market is ensured, this won't happen.
If a ISP starts filtering, people will move to the next.
Of course, things may turn out very different if we allow dominant market positions to be built in the ISP market.
(But this won't happen, right? Just as we never let any dominant market position arise in the OS market, or in the microprocessor market. Now sorry, gotta rush back to my cave).
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
Not sure what kind of flag he's talking about, but I'm thinking a red one?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
How about the opposite... how anout as municipalities, we band together and start charging them rent on our ditches and land that they are running the cable through. They want to screw us on the received end then we will screw then on the intake valve. If we stand firm enough, the fear of being charged billions to use their own lines will put the fear of some sort of ancient evil from beyond the stars into them.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
No idea what the flag remark is about but I certainly applaud what he is saying.
Ridiculously high upfront cost, is a waste of resources to make multiple sets of them for each competitor, internet cables, like roads, seem like the perfect thing to have under government control. We can have private companies competing for the services they can provide over these lines.
I don't think I've ever heard an argument that was serious for the other side of this issue. Am I just ignorant? Or is this a non-issue that people like to discuss?
Regardless, censorship is a scary thing. Fortunately, the internet is probably bigger than most blacklist-based censorship attempts, and I don't think we're in such a bad position that people would tolerate anything more restrictive (whitelists or graylists). The great firewall of china is obviously the exception to this.
Cory Doctorow is working his ass off to come out of obscurity.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/14/why-publishing-shoul.html
It's a shame that he's turning into a loudmouthed pundit rather than an author I'd care to read.
I drove down the highway today and was stuck in traffic for a long while. There were lots of cars zipping in and out, but the main problem was a group of long-haul trucks taking up a mile of roadway. The amount of road we have is finite, so the addition of these large trucks is fine for a few, but once you start getting more than a handful of trucks on the road, all traffic is affect.
But Net Neutrality is a tough issue. Yes, clearly, as users we want as unfettered a line as possible. However, the ISP also needs to balance the needs of all the users against the needs of certain special users.
If it weren't for some users flooding the network with massive filesharing packets, this would all be a non-issue. Actually, for most users it still is since most users are not affected at all by bandwidth strangling.
Right...because the Democrats aren't sold out to the telcos.
Didn't Google buy up all the dark fiber lines to build out a monopoly when the economy turns around?
This is ploy to sell shovels. The rumor has it that he's been piling up options on Ace Hardware shares.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
If this is about phone companies, then I think I'd rather just end the monopoly they enjoy anyway. Asking a committee or government to decide what forms of Internet access are equal to others (and thus require neutrality) is just asking for trouble.
End the monopoly and let me pay my own way.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
The only sucker around here is the one that thinks that either one is better than other.
The both have sold out. Blasting one and supporting the other is height of foolishness.
And if we're talking about .0001p vs .002p? Same factor difference, but nobody cares about spending .002p.
A few points to consider:
(1) If you treat Cory Doctorow like he's relevant, then he will believe he is.
(2) Yes, it is important to preserve NetNeutrality, but I'm surprised anyone is writing up an article so late in the game.
(3) "Finally, there's the question of metered billing for ISP customers." This has nothing to do with net neutrality. I don't see what the problem is. He's arguing that people don't know how much internet they're going to use. But, please don't try to fool us into thinking that we have *no idea* how much internet we use. The only way you're going to end up in the top 2% is if you're downloading massive quantities of information (not webpages!) Metered access to the internet isn't much different than cell-phone minutes. (Oh! We have NO IDEA if we're going to use 10,000 minutes a month, or 50 minutes a month - therefore telecoms can't charge us by the minute!) How absurd. I'd be pretty unhappy if they started changing a lot per MB, but in the real-world, I don't see this being much of a problem at all unless you're uploading/downloading Gigs of data. And, isn't this how companies pay for internet service anyway? A company's internet usage will vary significantly based on factors like "number of employees". So, they simply charge by bandwidth.
because we would still be using telegraph if we had to rely on the government to improve communications infrastructure
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
You're half right. If you had said "Fuck the Republicans AND Democrats" I could agree with you 100 percent.
Whereas today's hottest technologies are texting and Twitter. Stop. Which are very different from the telegraph in... some way. Stop.
I dislike Cory. I hate Creative Commons. I detest copyright, public-use rights, public utilities, and anything related to non-market forces for real property. Intellectual property is a dying term, long dead in my dictionary (note, I am a writer and I get paid to write).
I want to see municipal allowances for duopolies destroyed. Let residents who own property rent it to whoever wants to take the time to rent it. Let competing companies, even at the local level, battle for access to the last mile. They'll get good international uplinks, they'll battle each other on service and price and performance.
Today, we have public funding across the board, regulations that restrict competition, and people afraid of seeing 500 internet lines over their house (note, they won't).
Cory should roll over and retire. He's a geek's dream, and a capitalist's nightmare. Capitalism will save the web, net neutrality won't.
If you treat brit74 like he's relevant, then he will believe he is. Just saying...
I think like clockwork the network use will more or less fill the available bandwidth. Add more bandwidth and you can add more customers but eventually they will saturate whats available, period. As more bandwidth becomes available, new tools will arise that take advantage of it.
This is just ISPs looking for one more way to scratch more money out of my wallet. Of course the MAFIAA/RIAA will be all over this since it would allow then ISPs to throttle any access to Pirate Bay or its cousins down completely. It gives commercial entities the ability to censor our access to information - and if a corporation can turn a buck then it will generally do so and screw the customers. I don't want my access on the web limited in any way should I choose to access something that Shaw Cable decides is undesirable (or which a competitor has paid more for superior exposure etc).
Because the government is terrible at managing things, has no competition, and little oversight.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
From the article:
"Telcoms companies argue that their responsibility is to their shareholders, not the public interest, and that they are only taking the course of maximum profitability."
We really need to find a way to recharter these corporations as not-for-profits. This would take away the incentive to squeeze every dime out of the customers, while still allowing a private industry to provide a service instead of the government.
I've long thought that we could fix a lot of the problems with health care in this country by doing a similar thing to insurance companies. Since theoretically a corporation is chartered for the good of the public, we should consider that if a corporation is providing a critical public service is that service more important than the actual generation of new wealth? If the answer is yes (as in the case of health insurance or communication), then we should not let such entities become incorporated because they are actually dangerous to the smooth functioning of society as a whole.
Thoughts?
Two sides of the same coin.
>Whereas today's hottest *diversions* are texting and Twitter.
There, fixed that for you.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
As I see it. If an ISP has X customers with each having Y bandwidth but does not have XY of total possible bandwidth than ISP soled things it does not have. Selling what you do not have ... there is a name for that. now that people are catching on (the fraud was going on while ISPs sold early dial-up too) the ISP are trying to find a scapegoat for their own actions.
"give them 60 days to get their wires out of our dirt and then sell the franchise to provide network services to a competitor who will promise to give us a solid digital future in exchange for our generosity."
What generosity? The city owns the land they're using, not you.
In exchange for the huge capital outlay of installing the infrastructure, the city gives them certain rights. It's a win-win.
Let's see if I can summarize the gist of most Slashdot articles recently:
- Screw any internet provider that wants to cap any users or charge a lot more for heavy users.
- Screw any internet provider that wants to give more weight to some traffic over others.
- Give me my P2P
Sorry, something has to give. It's basic economics.
Cheap internet. Open internet. No usage caps.
Pick 2.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Cory, phone companies do negotiate for all that joint use. I know. I work for one. Get your facts straight before blathering away.
In 1994 I worked for a company setting up an ISP. We called in the phone company to order 50 lines. (Dial up was all there was then ). The company was not happy, especially that we were ordering business lines, with a low cost, 15 cents for each outgoing call but no cost for incoming calls .
As an ISP we only had incoming calls. They had no choice, since phone systems had to sell lines to anyone ( oh the joys of regulation! ). Had the phone version of net neutrality not been in place, the phone companies would have throttled or taken over the internet - and we would not have the open net we have now.
Bookwormhole.net -- over 11,000 published book reviews.
Where do you live where it is possible to just "switch" to a different ISP?
Everyone I have lived (save one place) has only had one option for high speed internet. One cable company which was granted a sanctioned monopoly to service the area. If you didn't like the way they did business your options were limited. DSL for a majority of locations is not nearly as fast as cable- if you live close enough to the service station at all. If the only other option is dialup and you are protesting slow speeds on non-affiliated sites.. what's the point? The entire internet will be as slow as the original ISP throttling (if you do this solely to make a point to the ISP and can live with those speeds- kudos to you).
The problem is these ISPs have been given sanctioned monopolies over certain areas. The consumer does not have a choice. The unfiltered internet will not win because consumers cannot switch to it. The unfiltered internet can not win because it won't have the budget to break into those monopolies, because the monopolies will be collecting money from their affiliated preferred business partners, and the unfiltered internet will not be.
And finally, the unfiltered internet will not win because it will be more expensive than the filtered internet- and Americans refuse to pay an extra 2 cents for a safety airbag that will save their lives.
www.GrenadeHop.com
You lost me at "Cory Doctorow"
telegraphs didn't have message size limits.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Parent was referring to the somewhat recent Google April Fool's joke, not actually trolling. See: http://www.google.com/tisp/
My God Slashdot, have we gotten to the point where people just mod as "Troll" anything they don't understand?
--bornagainpenguin
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
Does anyone know of an ISP that is actually blocking a competitor's site?
Careful! Some QoS is good! I *want* my ISP to QoS VoIP traffic. If they QoS their internal VoIP traffic, but not traffic that goes outside their network, it that their fault? Will stupid laws prevent them from providing quality VoIP services within their network? What if the ISP routes VoIP traffic to special links? Is this a form of QoS that violates the spirit of the Internet?
I think it is unfair for me to have to pay more for my bursty usage just because some guy wants to torrent 24/7. If you want more expensive Internet service, then by all means, pass a law that prevents capping. The funny thing is that a law like that will just help the big telcoms that have plenty of peering. The smaller, local ISP's will die because they won't be able to support the costs of their transit links.
I understand the sentiment, but the correct answer is "I will never vote for any politician who puts corporate interest ahead of the welfare of citizens and neither should you."
This covers many Democrats and all Republicans. Unfortunately, it also seems to cover most Libertarians.
Corporations are the enemy of Democracy. Not because it's a necessary part of doing business, but because they've have chosen that path.
The only solution is to take all private money out of the election process. There needs to be iron-clad, enforced limitations on campaign finance, with a Justice Department squad whose only job is to make sure that a brand new set of campaign finance laws are enforced without exception.
The notion (put forth by corporatist SCOTUS judges) that MONEY=SPEECH has been the single most destructive opinion put forth by the Supreme Court of the United States in our history. We will never again have fair elections, accountable office-holders or a strong middle class until we have reduced the influence of money in our political system.
Term limits aren't enough. Campaign finance "reform" isn't enough.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's a matter of principle. If you let people realize that corporate controlled cables is a bad idea, then it is not long before the public begins to question other corporate domains too. Corporate banks? How is that mortgage crisis working out? Corporate health care? Um.. yeah. Corporate railways? Works fantastically in Britain. Corporate auto manufacturers? Which has to be bailed out by the state when no one buys their products?
Football Odds
I fail to see how a 'tiered' Internet is even possible, based on how it works now. If someone could explain it to me that would be great
My feelings are based on this: When I visit Google from My ISP (ISP A), the packets are routed by my ISP over to the network for Google's ISP (ISP B) as fast as possible (at the closest peering point). When Google sends me a reply starting on ISP B's network, it is routed back to ISP A's network at the first opportunity to make it's way to my house.
So... Say that Google pays their ISP (ISP B) for 'high priority' consideration. If I am in Boston and Google is in the Bay Area (over simplified I know!) the 'priority traffic' will help the tiny web request that I am making get from some peering point near Boston across the country to SF nice and fast. When Google sends me back a much larger reply, however, that packet is going to leave ISP B's control very quickly and most likely make it's way back to me on ISP A's network. How am I (or Google) going to see a benefit from the tiered approach? Wouldn't Google need to pay EVERY ISP to elevate the priority of their traffic for them to see a benefit for their customers?
Please explain this to me!
because we would still be using telegraph if we had to rely on the government to improve communications infrastructure
What about
sounds like we'd still be using a glorified telegraph without the government to me.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It is the result of having a corporate-controlled government.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I didn't scan the title to your post, so I didn't know what party you were referring to. And a little part of me whispered, "How neat -- an apt commentary on the political system by launching partisan invective that could be aimed at either party" and then I chuckled because I've heard the same invective uttered about both major parties in the US.
:(
And then I read the subject of your post and realized you're spewing meaningless invective at the Republican Party, and while I agree with you, there was absolutely nothing of meaning included in your post.
Frankly, I'm disappointed.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If they are going to sell service for xxx MB/sec up and xxx MB/ sec down, then that's what they need to provide. They can't tell me that the service is too much for them. If they don't plan the network for higher usage, if large amounts of people go get on for some crazy reason at once, the network chokes anyways. Long story short, if I buy service from you, provide it.
Because the government is terrible at managing things, has no competition, and little oversight.
Not true, no matter how much it's the cornerstone of libertarian thinking. It's just that the stuff that the government does manage really well hardly ever gets noticed. Examples include municipal water systems, fire fighting and prevention, traffic controls, and park systems. Municipal power companies also tend to do at least as well as their private competitors in the next town or city over in terms of providing cheap and efficient service to their customers.
I am officially gone from
And that's a valid reason to vote Republican?
Some progress is better than no progress. After a while, maybe the Republicans will get a clue and become even more progressive than the Democrats!
But even if that never happens, it's still better to choose the party of least corruption (unless, I suppose, you are a purveyor of corruption).
Two sides of the same coin.
With one side facing backwards and the other facing forwards...
And I'm pretty sure most of us could tap out morse-code faster than typing on those sorry excuses for keyboards on these new phones.
Because the telcos are terrible at managing things, have no competition, and little oversight.
There, fixed that for you.
hahaha Nice one:)
But even if that never happens, it's still better to choose the party of least corruption
That is generally going to be the party out of power. So it's actually not a bad idea.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
And his article isn't THAT compelling, but he does bring up a point that telcos and cablecos would like us to forget: their physical plant makes use of public roadways and rights of way to route their wiring to their customers. If they refuse to invest sufficiently in their networks to provide adequate service to all their customers without traffic shaping shenanigans, then government should replace them with someone else who will.
I think telco and cableco ISPs are classic examples of "gatekeeper" organizations who feel entitled to a cushy income by merely existing and having the power to exact that income. In Michael Heller's recent book "The Gridlock Economy" (highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the harm that "gatekeeper" organizations and their sense of entitlement can do to the economy) he relates the history of the so-called "robber baron" castles along the Rhine River in Europe who exacted heavy tolls on all river traffic. There were so many castles and so many tolls to pay that river commerce became largely uneconomical. The economy of the time suffered until the advent of railroads which could bypass the river toll collectors.
Telcos and cablecos are by no means the only gatekeepers who hold back the economy - there are many other good examples. Net neutrality legislation is a good way for us to cut down the power wielded by these modern robber barons and freeing the Internet economy from their tolls.
As a note, after privatisation of the UK's (formerly state-owned) railways the service become considerably worse and the prices went up, not the other way round.
I agree with your general statements but I do take exception with the statement "This covers many Democrats and all Republicans. Unfortunately, it also seems to cover most Libertarians."
That statement regarding republicans and libertarians is part of the current liberal myths.
See this: http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/blio.php
Look here: http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/DonorDemographics.php?cycle=2006
See that the Dems got the $10k and the $95K plus donation lead categories in even the 2006 cycle. IIn 2008, they smoked it by business.
Democrats got paid by business more than the Republicans. The MSM likes to say the Republicans are bought off more but it is not supported by the facts.
I'm not sure public campaign financing will work however. Do you really want to give these people more power to vote themselves more money to promote themselves? I do think it is a free speech issue and I would rather see a laws around TOTAL DISCLOSURE DOWN TO THE PENNY!!! Every penny, every donor, every time I believe would work better. Money should not equal access rather than saying money=speech is the problem. If I want to buy a billboard for my candidate, it is my money and I should be able to spend it as I see fit. It just should be fully disclosed and any quid pro quo should be obvious. That use to be what the press did but...
p.s. I'm not a republican or a democrat.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Consider this
a small isp, only provide web access, no mail, no torrent, no ftp
But the rate is a lot lower, is it good?
a local isp, only provide connection to local hosts, the rate even lower, is it evil?
net neutrality: are we paying someone 's bill?
The truest form of "'Net neutrality" is for We the People to force the telcos - at gunpoint if necessary - to sell us back the "wires" and shared public infrastructure that they built for us. Cory seems to have *almost* identified the problem, but not quite, and so doesn't identify the correct solution.
The telecom industry should have been nothing more than contractors to the public interest, just as road construction crews are contractors; we don't allow road crews to retain ownership of the asphalt they lay down, and neither should we have allowed AT&T and its imitators to own the telegraph wires and everything else that has followed. We should have paid them ONCE for that work, and then perhaps kept them on as maintainers of that network, but at no point should they have been allowed to own the wires. That is where we screwed-up. Those wires belong to all of us, just as do the roads and the "airwaves" and the air we breathe. Those are all things shared by everyone that lend themselves perfectly to a bit of socialism... in this case public or (*gasp!*) "state" ownership.
The result of public ownership of the wires would be the inability of the telcos to blackmail us - or each other - for right of access. We the People would be in the driver's seat; if we didn't like the antics of one or more telcos, we could use our ownership of the wires to force them to shape up or ship out.
"Corporations are the enemy of Democracy"
Corporations are simply large businesses, structured that way for better profit and efficiency. While they can be powerful, they're no more an "enemy of democracy" than other large entities, including our own elected government. Furthermore, I'd like to see you live without corporate products for awhile. Come back and tell me what life is like for you when you can no longer buy cars from Toyota, computers from Apple, burgers from McDonalds, fly on planes from Boeing, or take antibiotics from Merck. You get back to us on what it was like to try and build your own cars, grow all your own food, and make your own clothing.
"The only solution is to take all private money out of the election process."
Bull. We need more private money in elections. We should be able to give whatever amount we damn well please to candidates and causes as long as a donor's list is publicly available. This is one thing I absolutely hated about John McCain, this stupid naive notion that government limitations on campaigns would make campaigns cleaner. All he and Feingold did was muck up the works and insure that new dodges and work-arounds would be created.
When you limit what people can give in a campaign, you limit their voice, because everything in a campaign... travel, TV commercials, everything costs money. What you're arguing for is government enforced limits of political speech. Screw that. McCain and Feingold were wrong about this, and so are you.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
These are all examples where the technology changes very slowly over time, where the size of the organization needed remains small (or medium-sized), and where there's little customer service required. American-style government corruption will merely make the services you list a bit more expensive, not fail to function.
Realisticaly, I think that last-mile connectivity does fit this pattern. While the technology at the end of the line evolves quickly, and you want it under competitive business control, that's not a barrier to the idea. The actual lines in the ground change very slowly, technology-wise, and the government could hardly be less responsive service-wise than a cable company.
As long as there's still a non-governemnt way to get a T1 line or equivalent, so if you personally need to upgrade the last-mile technology regardless of expense, you legally can, this sounds like the right way.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yea, that thing about 'progress'.
It can mean 'for the better', but often it means progressing to socialism or absolute rule. I kind of have a problem with that.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Only if the Republicans have complete turnover of their members in the House and Senate and all their aides. Otherwise, just because the guys that rolled over for Bush abuses are now changing their tune while in opposition after getting pwned in the election doesn't mean you should trust them any more than you did on November 1, 2008. Just because they have fewer opportunities to be corrupt doesn't mean that they are any less corrupt (or more competent) than when they were in power.
The only solution is to take all private money out of the election process.
I disagree. There are other solutions. My preferred one is to strip the government's power to give handouts, aid, favor, etc to corporations. Matter of fact, limit the government's power to little more than the ability to protect our rights. I think you'll find that, when the government's power is limited, there is much less incentive for corporations to spend money to control it.
There needs to be iron-clad, enforced limitations on campaign finance, with a Justice Department squad whose only job is to make sure that a brand new set of campaign finance laws are enforced without exception.
So you're suggesting that we create a new arm of an already corrupt government that has the power to decide how campaigns can be run? An arm whose sole purpose is to make subjective decisions on what does and does not constitute political speech, and, effectively decide who gets to win an election? I'll pass.
And prior to that the Repubs got more. Maybe business saw that there wasn't a chance in hell McCain/Palin was going to win, and wanted to put there money where it was more effective (which is indicative of the problem, just looked at the opposite way).
And the straw man argument comes out.
Where the hell did I suggest voting republican? I know the average /. denizen failed that argumentative writing class in college (or only passed because they were banging the hot female TA), but I never suggested voting for Republicans. I never mentioned them. This makes your post the DEFINITION of a straw man argument. Logical fallacies are so you.
Now to be fair, I'm slightly guilty of the same, as the GP never said he was voting for Democrats, just that he wouldn't vote for Republicans.
Some progress? Like how Obama rubber-stamped continuing warrantless wiretapping? I knew the Democrats were full of BS when they complained about the PATRIOT Act and similar legislation. As soon as they achieved power, it's just business as usual.
Democrats AND Republicans are generally corrupt, ethically bankrupt scumbags who will do whatever it takes to keep their constituencies scared of each other and running and back and forth between the false dichotomy of the duopolostic political system. The reaction of both the Bush administration and the McCain campaign to the beginning of the recession was telling. The steps they took and the policies they outlined were virtually identical to the Democrats own ideas. It doesn't matter who is in power, every year government still grows out of control.
I stopped voting out of fear. People say voting for 3rd parties is a waste, but at least my conscious is clean, and there will never be any change until people stop worrying about 'wasting their vote' and start worrying about signing on to yet another backstabbing bandwagon.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I wish I could mod the parent informative. I wish it so hard it hurts.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
No competition?? They have a pageant every two years..And the preliminaries are wide open.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
And that's a valid reason to vote Republican?
Sure. It's as valid any. Ever heard of a single issue voter? Maybe that's his single issue.
But that's what's wrong with our political process. You don't actually need a good reason to vote for someone. A lot of people just for the guy they think is going to win. It's like American Idol, but with -- well, I was going to say "old white guys," but I guess that changed recently. ;)
The mostly old white guys then win by taking money -- some from people, most from corporations -- and then use that to market themselves, the way record companies market Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood. In return for the bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions, they make certain promises.
So the most corrupt people get in by popular consensus, and, just like with American Idol, they serve their corporate masters.
$DEITY, I love this country, don't you?
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Instead of renting out the dirt, have municipalities own the actual wires (by imminent domain, if necessary), and allow each resident to decide who gets to push bits down it.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Someone should register a "Disapproval"/"Disillusioned" party - a party with no policies of it's own. The idea of the party is to provide a box to tick to say "Both major parties suck, and third parties are some form of extremism that I don't support" - as is the general feeling for a good portion of people I've spoken to (YMMV). Perhaps the party could promise to offer leadership to the minority party (whichever that is) in the event of winning a seat (unlikely), so that the majority party doesn't have so much of a stranglehold. Or maybe it could make each candidate have to fight (barefisted, in a public arena) in order to get the Disapproval Party to support their bills. If nothing else, it would at least have the advantage of hurting politicians, which is never a bad thing (it's not like they could be any MORE brain damaged).
The mostly old white guys then win by taking money -- some from people, most from corporations -- and then use that to market themselves
I'm trying to figure out if you meant to say "the mostly old, white guys" or "the mostly white, old guys"...
Seriously though, our political system is jacked up and there's no fixing it. The reason is similar to what we discussed the other day related to some other story - the people who would make good politicians (the ones who know things about relevant issues) are people who avoid politics like the plague, leaving us with these charismatic mostly old white guys (mostly white old guys?) to take charge.
I work for a cable company. Do you have any idea what goes into maintaining that infrastructure? While it may seem inconvenient having to wait a few days for an appointment for your service provider, imagine if you had to deal with your local municipality who could care less if you remain a customer. The telco would be hard pressed to maintain something it has no control over either so don't expect them to if its considered a municpality infrastructure. Your service quality would actually degrade with the prices considerably. Its a lose lose situation. You either pay more for your current service or pay less for horrible service. As for the fiber... if you think your bills are expensive now, just wait until they include the cost in maintaining EXPENSIVE fiber optics and the people they have to pay to do it all the way to your home. It will sky rocket.
And the straw man argument comes out.
Where the hell did I suggest voting republican?
It's implied. The theme of the post you were replying to was that he wasn't going to vote Republican. If you reply in a manner that comes across as a rebuttal, you can't be surprised if people assume you are refuting the main theme.
I never suggested voting for Republicans. I never mentioned them
You knew they were implied. Knowing this, and still choosing to omit them, you cannot come back and say, "I never mentioned them!". They were already mentioned. If you don't think they should be voted for, you should have included that in your post, lest people make the logical connection.
This makes your post the DEFINITION of a straw man argument. Logical fallacies are so you.
Actually, no. A straw man fallacy is only a fallacy when it's used to disprove (or prove) some other thing. My "straw man" isn't a distraction, isn't a stand-in, it's the main point. That, by it's very definition, precludes it from being a straw man fallacy.
Now to be fair, I'm slightly guilty of the same, as the GP never said he was voting for Democrats, just that he wouldn't vote for Republicans.
No, you're not "slightly guilty of the same", you're exactly "guilty" of the same. You assumed based on what was implied. The assumption could be wrong. The implication could be misleading or imagined. But you made a reasonable connection.
Yea, that thing about 'progress'.
It can mean 'for the better', but often it means progressing to socialism or absolute rule. I kind of have a problem with that.
In the present context, it means towards more socialism and away from absolute rule.
It wasn't implied--I've never voted for a Republican in my life, so it seems unlikely that I would ever implicitly advocate such a thing. Unless you are one of those who think the author's opinion of what he meant is irrelevant.
Your straw man is just that because no, I was not advocating voting for republicans.
Someone should register a "Disapproval"/"Disillusioned" party - a party with no policies of it's own. The idea of the party is to provide a box to tick to say "Both major parties suck, and third parties are some form of extremism that I don't support"
That's actually the best idea I've ever heard from an AC.
I was in a bind in the last election, since McCain was a wet potato, and Obama looked like he'd do what he ended up doing, and all the 3rd parties are weird in their own way. I ended up holding my nose and voting Libertarian, since it's the only party for limiting the power of government these days, but the Libertarian party is "whacky", to put it mildly.
Some progress? Like how Obama rubber-stamped continuing warrantless wiretapping? I knew the Democrats were full of BS when they complained about the PATRIOT Act and similar legislation. As soon as they achieved power, it's just business as usual.
Really? Obama moves forward on dozens of issues, but all you need to do is find one where things stay the same (or at least, similar) and all of a sudden there's absolutely no difference between Democrats and Republicans?!
I stopped voting out of fear. People say voting for 3rd parties is a waste, but at least my conscious is clean, and there will never be any change until people stop worrying about 'wasting their vote' and start worrying about signing on to yet another backstabbing bandwagon.
The only correct thing in that statement is that your conscious is clean. The rest is nonsense. The national political system in the US is set up to be at equilibrium with two parties. It's not the voters' faults, it's the system's.
Here's a clue:
You could run millions of simulations of our political system. You could start with one party, with two parties, with a million parties. But every single run through your simulation will end up, in a short period of time, with two parties.
The only way for a third party to take hold is for there to be some extraordinary circumstance in the nation, as happened around the Civil War. But instead of ending up with three parties, one of the two previous parties goes away. Unless there is continual civil unrest at levels similar to that leading up to the Civil War, you're always going to have, for the long run, only two parties in power at a time. You'd have to change the design of the system for it to work otherwise.
And, just to be clear, this was the intent of the founding fathers. Some of them wanted a two party system, and that's what they got.
That tickles! Stop. Ouch, you're on my hair! Stop. I do not enjoy Dutch Oven! Stop.
It wasn't implied--I've never voted for a Republican in my life, so it seems unlikely that I would ever implicitly advocate such a thing. Unless you are one of those who think the author's opinion of what he meant is irrelevant.
Your straw man is just that because no, I was not advocating voting for republicans.
Your opinion is relevant, but it's not available to me except for what you've already written at the time. Based on what was written, my assumption about what was implied was rational.
A straw man goes like this:
A. X is true!
B. Y is not true, therefore X is not true! (where X is not dependent on Y)
For this to be a straw man, there has to be some X I was trying to disprove by assuming you were defending the idea of voting Republican. Please, demonstrate the X I was intending to disprove.
You do not know what the straw man fallacy is, sorry. It doesn't mean "making a false assumption".
In the present context, it means towards more socialism and away from absolute rule.
Kinda hard to have it both ways.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
....it's still better to choose the party of least corruption ....
Which by definition is NEVER the party in power at the moment.
All theory is gray
.....Democrats got paid by business more than the Republicans.....
That sounds very reasonable to me, since Republicans are generally wealthier than Democrats and don't need money as badly. However, is there any proof that this is true, that Democrats get paid off more than Republicans? I suspect it is an individual thing and cannot be said across the board for either party.
All theory is gray
True. But this applies just as equally to telco's, with the added bonus that you can't vote them out.
and move to a secluded refuge in a valley of Colorado?
Whoever wrote this article is truly ignorant.
Nothing to see here, move along!!!
Examples include municipal water systems, fire fighting and prevention, traffic controls, and park systems.
And Internet in certain parts of Canada.
As a Canadian with a Crown Corporation ISP it never ceases to amaze me how "libertarians" in the US with "open markets" receive so much less service and pay so much more for it, and rail against the type of service I have because "it never works".
Distilled to its essence, net neutrality is nothing more than price controls. It's the government telling private businesses what they can or cannot charge for their services. Anyone with more than two days of economics education knows that price controls lead to supply distortions. Yet the geeks are demanding it because they don't care.
Competition works well in most areas related to the internet, but those areas where it does not can be directly attributable to past government actions, primarily in the handing out of communications monopolies. Government isn't the solution, it's frequently the cause of the very problems we want it to solve.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Lots of anti-party sentiment on /. and for good reason. Question is, as law abiding citizens of the US (and other countries with similar problems), what do we do to solve the problem.
It's easy to gripe but griping does no good. May I suggest that we start looking for a solution rather than just complaining about the problem.
There is no doubt in my mind that when a private company is offering a service, that company has sovereignty over what and how they do it, even if they are ISPs - that is one of the basic tenets of Capitalism, isn't it? So when people complain about net neutrality in the name of freedom, while at the same time defending Capitalism in the name of freedom, we have reached a point where a decision has to be made: what freedom do you actually want?
In my view all important infrastructure should be publically owned - roads, electricity grid, water supply, information networks - paid for through the taxes, and possibly through usage fees as well. "The Public" belongs to all of us and therefore has a clear duty to be neutral in all political, religious etc respects, but I don't think we can reasonably demand that private companies are, unless it makes business sense - which it all too often doesn't.
I know the average /. denizen... ...only passed because they were banging the hot female TA...
Wow, if that's not a non sequitur, then I don't know what one is. :)
Corporate health care? Um.. yeah. Corporate railways? Works fantastically in Britain.
A word of caution - I wouldn't say that on a crowded British train station. People might disagree violently, after all they have nothing to do while they wait for the train that doesn't turn up.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Power is corruption. To have as much power as governments and corporations have over people is itself a corruption. And we all step into line, everyone of us.
Only for Americans.
Stop tearing up the ground. Save everyone money and move to WiMax.
The only sucker around here is the one that thinks that either one is better than other.
The both have sold out. Blasting one and supporting the other is height of foolishness.
And the low is believing the side that echos your mindset.
Third party anyone?
I understand the sentiment, but the correct answer is "I will never vote for any politician who puts corporate interest ahead of the welfare of citizens and neither should you."
This is why the founding fathers were drafting well respected citizens to share the concerns of the public ABOVE PERSONAL GAIN! Sorry for the shout but it is something we need to revisit lest we fall into the path of history.
What? A cliche Libertarian "Dems and Reps all suck equally!" comment modded all the way up? In my Slashdot?!
Ah, the insightfulness of overly broad, generalist and ideology-based comments.. You can't go wrong with those now can you?
You just got troll'd!
The Libertarian party's platform is pretty reasonable. But man there are so many people involved in that party that remind me of the callers on Art Bell. LP seems to attract the tin foil hat crowd.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It may be cliche, but generally people have been very disappointed with performance of politicians on the federal level. Not counting the nuts running right wing talk radio or the hollywood liberals.
Asking for better representation is not clinging to an ideology at all. Even the most pragmatic ought to at least ask for good choices, if not out right demand them.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
There is nothing in the Constitution about parties. The founding fathers, furthermore, wanted a no party system.
George Washington, for instance, said these things:
"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally."
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."
"The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."
John Adams:
"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
Thomas Paine:
"It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle."
Thomas Jefferson wasn't so much positive or negative about parties, as he was resigned to believe that they were inevitable. The important thing to take away is that parties were not part of the original design. Thanks to the First Amendment among other things, there simply was no way to prevent their formation and effect on the government. Once the parties were established, they passed various laws about how ballots could be constructed that keep the major parties in and the minor ones out.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Yeah, as the AC said, only for Americans.
Socialism and totalitarism with socialistic elements (a.k.a. comunism) are totally different, yet somehow many people confuse them.
Taking current state to extremes, Sweden is socialism (having large taxes & personal freedom), while USA is fascist (small taxes & lack of personal freedom).
Yes, Sweden is THE nice poster boy for a welfare state which was able to maintain economic freedom at a high level. But its a one in a million scenario. Denmark also comes to mind. But these Nordic countries are the exception, not the rule.
I still think Hayek is gonna have the last word there, though.
Oh, and taxes in the US aren't small by any measure. 35% corporate taxes? Probably the 'fascist' element means that favored companies get some slack, but to everyone else, it's pretty steep.
In Sweden it's actually lower. Go figure. :-)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
My problem with tiers is that they're inevitably structured so that its inconvenient or impossible to use my connection for entertainment without hitting their overage fees.
Actually, the whole concept of "overage fees" is retarded.
When someone reach the cap, their speed should be downgraded instead.
Using that approach, everyone can always read mail, low-usage consumers always have the speed they expect, and heavy users will get no surprises, just slow torrents when the cap is reached.
If one need more bandwidth for a month, buy quota increase. If one need more every month, upgrade the subscription.
I lost my sig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-socialism
http://mises.org/books/socialism/contents.aspx
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I know the average /. denizen failed that argumentative writing class in college (or only passed because they were banging the hot female TA)
With a straight face, even! Never play poker with this guy, folks.
The reality is that network usage follows a standard statistical distribution, the "Pareto Distribution," a power-law curve in which the most active users are exponentially more active than the next-most-active group, who are exponentially more active than the next group, and so on.
You can't have a population that doesn't have a ninety-eighth percentile.
There's no reason why any resource usage has to be based on a power law like that though. As an example, think of the average speed of drivers on a motorway. The top x% do not drive "exponentially faster" than the next x%.
The notion (put forth by corporatist SCOTUS judges) that MONEY=SPEECH has been the single most destructive opinion put forth by the Supreme Court of the United States in our history.
I disagree. More damaging would be the notion that CORPORATION=PERSON. Combine it with the MONEY=SPEECH issue you mentioned and we get a lot of the current bullshit elction system, plus plenty of problems on its own.
*Ahem...*
I will never vote for that country ruining party and neither should you.
Never again.
They fucked up the country, so don't vote for them ever again.
They fool the gullible with lies and half truths.
Don't get suckered in to voting for them.
I think many people miss the real danger here. Yes, if your own ISP is doing stuff you don't like (filtering, throttling, prioritising, spoofing, whatever) then you can change them -- in a fair market, at least. So that sort of thing generally won't be in their interests.
But what if it's not your ISP? What if it's a backbone provider, or some other middleman?
Suppose an upstream provider threatens to throttle traffic bound to/from Amazon (say) unless Amazon pays them a big fee. If neither you nor Amazon have a direct business relationship with them, then neither of you can work around it by choosing another provider. How can a competitive market fix that?
The real problem, as I see it, is not discriminating against packets based on their type (email, P2P, web, whatever), which some might consider fair and reasonable, or at least justified; it's discriminating against packets based on their source or destination, which can never be fair or reasonable. That's what we need legislation to prevent.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
s/government does manage really well/government CAN manage really well
Governments can provide some services fairly efficiently, compared to their private sector counter parts. But while trying to do so, they can completely screw it up. I've heard horror stories about the insides of municipal water systems (hundreds of years old wooden pipes), and have seen the effects of communication issues between highway authorities.
It comes down to whether or not you can trust your government to not screw up what you want to see implemented.
...much as some would like. Aside from giving small independent ISP's and VISP's short shrift, Doctorow is ignoring providers like Earthlink, AOL, Netzero, etc., who don't get access to the broadband wires for free (or in some cases AT ALL), not by a long shot. He might as well be a shill for Comcast or Verizon here.
Now, if you were a small ILEC, whose mere existance was basicly an indulgence from Bellsouth, and the FCC had let you off the hook on access to your DSLAMs, you might understandably not allow anyone else to offer DSL over your wires, given a cable internet franschise and wireless broadband in the same city, and the looming specter of VOIP.
Conversely if I were a small ISP in the same area I might then consider you a profiteering glutton abusing a monopoly nonetheless, especially if you used that position to muscle in on the PC repair business and city council seats in town as well. Talk about your cartels. The words sub-rosa prior restraint (cf. the fed troll the other day wanting to know if we'd "help host" material detrimental to a PD), tortuous interference, and rackeetering would come to mind as well.
Unless, of course you didn't kick if I used one of my neighbor's CPE wireless routers in a non-commercial manner, as unobtrusively as possible, until I could afford to get at least a couple of T1's installed, now that your line leases have fallen into a reasonable ballpark. Strictly hypothetically speaking, of course.
I have nothing to add to the other comments on Doctorow's main argument.
Would that be the libertarians or the greens?
Then your initial "because the Democrats aren't sold out to the telcos." was itself a straw man - because the OP never even mentioned Democrats.
Trying to play the "straw man" claim when your initial post was a straw man is ridiculous.
If your point wasn't to compare Democrats to Republicans, then what on earth was your point?
Someone should register a "Disapproval"/"Disillusioned" party ... and third parties are some form of extremism that I don't support
Does that include the Disapproval"/"Disillusioned" party?
Trying real hard to find comments about Net Neutrality here but only getting stuff about CD...
It always fascinates me, the way grown men retreat to ...
Wait, wait, wait... stop right there. That's one assumption too many. Who says anyone here is a grown man? And if they happen to be so foolish, I challenge them to cite evidence... evidence sufficient to counter 99.97% of all /. posts ever.
[Ego]out
While it may seem inconvenient having to wait a few days for an appointment for your service provider, imagine if you had to deal with your local municipality who could care less if you remain a customer.
Yeah! Similarly, my government-run power is always going out, and my government-run water supply never works! No... wait... that's not true at all.
You can be damned sure a government-run ISP would care about their customers. Remember, those customers are also *voters*, and if there's one thing you can say about politicians, it's that they like to get re-elected.
Businesses support whoever is going to win. Smart, wealthy businesses support both sides to cover all of their bases. They don't care who they're supporting so long as they get a few favors in return.
We need more Russ Feingolds and Ron Pauls, and less Nancy Pelosis and John Boehners.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I've said this in the past, and it's nice to see it being said by in something more mainstream. A while back I wrote a journal about this (earliest one in my list), where I said that a redeeming thing about the data infrastructure being run by a private monopoly is that a company will probably have less motive to filter than a government.
Seeing everything we've seen over the past few months, I now recant that. The monopolies have shown little to no resistance to filtering, mucking about with connections when the RIAA comes calling. Then they're looking for the nebulous "infringing materials" which coincidentally helps their own video offerings. If these crappy decisions are going to be made, I'd prefer they be made within a bureaucracy, where they at least have to pretend to be accountable. The cable/telco duopoly will never be accountable because they can easily work together for things that they both want.
How about a Constitutional amendment here in the US, prohibiting any government within the US from granting any monopoly, intellectual or otherwise? It shifts the monopoly from legislation to bidding for contracts. Hmm. An amendment prohibiting any contracting to the government. Now that I could get behind.
To be fair, ATT currently offers, at least to my area, a bandwidth meter. I haven't measured my own usage to verify their meter, but their numbers seem reasonable.
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
With the emphasis on "coin" since that is all either side cares about anyway..
> "If the phone companies had to negotiate for every pole, every sewer, every punch-
> down, every junction box, every road they get to tear up, they'd go broke"
Well, if you let them take off the gloves, they could just say to this or that farmer who didn't want towers or a station (or demanded an unreasonable amount, knowing they were the last link to be bought out) that, "Ok, you make us go around you, then we just won't attach this service to your house. Ever."
Some will say, fine with me! And that's the way it goes.
Remember it was politicians in cahoots with businessmen who ginned up the rhetorical device that "some things are too hard for business to do -- so let's get government involved", to which business quickly attached, "...and there shall be one and only one company to run that utility," for reasons obvious to the rhetoriticians.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You must not have lived in California back when the power was privitized:
Industries that can totally screw you over if they stop working (utilities such as power and water) are traditionally under government control because we know the free market ideas of supply and demand do not work for these situations.
Electronic communications infrastructures in the US are many years behind those in other industrialized areas precisely because those areas (Japan and the EU) treated e-communication as a utility and we left our communications infrastructure to the "wisdom" of the free market.
Just to be clear, I agree with P and disagree with GP. The California energy crisis was caused by the privitisation of part of the electric system. ENRON, et al., screwed over people and businesses in California in order to make a few more bucks for themselves. Unfettered Capitalism is just as bad as unfettered Communism. Put starkly: Communism assumes greed does not exist while Capitalism assumes greed is a virtue. What is needed is a system that allows for human greed but that does not elevate it to a virtue. Or as John Kenneth Galbraith once said:
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I think that was the point :)
Nick
Industries that can totally screw you over if they stop working (utilities such as power and water) are traditionally under government control because we know the free market ideas of supply and demand do not work for these situations.
Mmm... violent agreement. I'd suggest going back and re-reading my post while paying special attention to the implicit sarcasm tags. :)
In Canada, back in the good ol' socialist days of a Single Phone Company, if Bell did something greedy and stupid, all you had to do was call up the CRTC, (the Canadian Radio & Television Commission) and lodge a complaint. I'd done it a couple of time, and the problems magically vanished. That was back when I didn't mind paying taxes quite so much, because my government was actually doing something useful.
Then the Public Relations people for some greedy corporate start-up told everybody that a single phone system wasn't competitive and that we were in danger of all becoming communists or some stupid air-head shit, and the idiot masses were manipulated into pressing for Bell's system to be opened up to the glories of competition. And because people are fucking stupid in large numbers, easily swayed by emotional messages, I now have several awful phone services to choose from all of which charge too much and calling the CRTC no longer holds the kind of wonderful powers it once did.
Overarching governmental powers don't fit well for every situation, and in some cases they are downright bad. But when it comes to vital systems, like communications and medical care, I want a really big hammer to smash greedy, lazy, stupid assholes with. I USED to have that big hammer AND an efficient, affordable phone system, and now I don't. So thank-you very much for making my life that much more crappy with your stupid social experiment which I told you was going to fail back when you first jumped on the bandwagon in the heady, wide-eyed days of your first year at some ass-hat university where your young minds were molded. You know who you are.
-FL
P = Parent = Abcd1234
GP = GrandParent = Anonymous Coward
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
As a frequent rail traveller I'll take issue with that. Whilst prices have increased massively, the quality of service has improved on the West Coast Main Line. Of course that probably has something to do with the billions of pounds of public money that have been pumped into the private operators and Railtrack (now Network Rail). If British Rail had seen that amount of state funding I bet they could have done at least a good a job, if not better.
Nick
And I'm pretty sure most of us could tap out morse-code faster than typing on those sorry excuses for keyboards on these new phones.
This article came to the same conclusion.
Yes, reading it again I think I must have been sarcasm immune this morning.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
The data shows that in 2004, the Republicans got more. if you look one more cycle back, you will see the Dems got more. So in 3 out of the last 4 cycles, the Dems had more high dollar donors. There is not much difference between them anyway, they are all bought off. As a citizen, I would like to see who is paying and what they are buying for their "donation".
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
>>But man there are so many people involved in that party that remind me of the callers on Art Bell. LP seems to attract the tin foil hat crowd.
Yeah, that's what I mean. And the other half of the party just votes libertarian since they want drugs to be legalized, and are nutty in their own way.
Seems reasonable to me to tax drug abusers to help pay for rehab instead of spending trillions on enforcement and having little to show for it, except for profitable organized crime rings.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I will never vote for an Idiot like Obama.
realestate