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State Senator Admits Cable Industry Helped Write Pro-Industry Legislation
jamie sends in news of comments by David Hoyle, a State Senator in North Carolina, about recently defeated legislation he sponsored that would have limited the ability of government to develop municipal broadband. Hoyle readily admitted that the cable industry had a hand in writing the bill. We discussed the cable industry's extensive lobbying efforts in that region last year. From the article:
"The veteran state senator says cities should leave broadband to the cable companies. 'It's not fair for any government unit to compete with private enterprise,' he says. In the last legislative session Sen. Hoyle tried to put a moratorium on any more local governments expanding into municipal broadband. When the I-Team asked him if the cable industry drew up the bill, Senator Hoyle responded, 'Yes, along with my help.' When asked about criticism that he was 'carrying water' for the cable companies, Hoyle replied, 'I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community — the people who pay the taxes.'"
Yeah, just look at how the Post Office drove UPS and FedEx out of business.
'I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community -- the people who pay the taxes.'"
So much for the idea, hugely popular with the 'business community,' that taxes are always just passed through to the consumer.
I guess he must be a democrat, right?
PS - it isn't this David Hoyle in case anyone else was wondering...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If I were one of his constituents if I would be impressed with his candor or outraged at being sold out. That and I'm fairly certain citizens pay taxes as well.......
Cable companies should not be allowed to have a monopoly on anything. If you ever think that it's a good idea, look at the mess we have in Canada. There's only a handful of companies, none of them competing with the others. They all have their own territories, just like organized crime.
I'm going to start my own mercenary company, and the U.S. Army won't be allowed to compete for national defense!
When the I-Team asked him if the cable industry drew up the bill, Senator Hoyle responded, 'Yes, along with my help.' When asked about criticism that he was 'carrying water' for the cable companies, Hoyle replied, 'I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community — the people who pay the taxes.'"
Apparently it's business that pays all the taxes in this country and not the citizens!
Wooohoo! All that tax I've been paying every year around April 15 is an error! There has been some huge oversight and I've been being billed incorrectly.
I'll take a check for the balance Senator. Pay me when you can.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It is a great US myth that corporations fund the government. The actual facts are that the people pay more.
Also the citizens vote. So why are the politicals doing the behest of the corporations ?
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/yearrev2009_0.html
2009 Income Taxes
Individual: $915.3B
Corporate: $138.2B
Business can only pay tax on income from spending. Consumer spending is direct from citizens. Government spending is indirectly from citizens.
This guy needs to be reminded as to who pays his pay-check - especially since business pays proportionately a lot LESS tax than they did a generation ago, and the soon-to-disappear middle class a lot more!
At least he's puting his money where his mouth is, by handing the legislative process over to the private sector.
Where I live in Western Mass, I live in a city with municipal run power and our bill is always cheaper than the cities around us with the "business" run power.
I'm very tempted to write up a proposal to have:
Wouldn't it be tons cheaper and better for the people of my town if the city could provide the sorta service this would require ? And new jobs would be created IN THE CITY...
What a concept, huh ?
UPS Sucks
Hardly a secret that industry basically writes policy and law at both the state and federal level. As expensive as Congressional campaigns are, and with free reign to donate to (aka "bribe") any politician they choose, is it any real surprise that they're calling all the shots? Hell, Dick Cheney even gave the oil companies their own secret task force to write U.S. energy policy.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
David Hoyle is... a Democrat
Somehow I suspect that if he was a Republican that would have been mentioned once or twice in the /. Story.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
"I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community — the people who pay for my reelection campaign."
You mean a business doesn't want itself legislated out of existence?
Whenever there's a discussion about privatizing municipal services, private industry's selling point is always that they can do a far better job than government because government is so inept and inefficient.
If this is indeed the case, then shouldn't a municipal broadband should be no threat at all to private industry, and therefore there should be nothing at all for them to worry about.
Only one problem: most municipalities contemplating running their own broadband Internet service are doing it precisely because the cable and phone companies aren't providing the service. It's time to stop thinking about Internet access as a service and start thinking about it as a utility, with the changes in mindset that implies (eg. you don't want parts of your city to be without water or electricity just because the utility companies think it won't be cost-effective to serve them).
Shutting down isn't required, but selling off seems like an awfully good idea for a number of reasons.
Apparently this guy has never heard of Exxon!
Once any business gets large enough, they do creative accounting or move all their "official" offices offshore (do you kow how many businesses are incorporated in Bermuda as a tax haven?) to avoid taxes.
http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/04/07/exxon-says-it-does-pay-u-s-income-taxes/
If the USA could actually collect what it is owed by big business, we wouldn't *have* a national debt!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
in letting Senator hoyle know exactly what they think of his ideas. Office: 300-A Legislative Office Building Phone: (919) 733-5734 Email: David.Hoyle@ncleg.net Legislative Mailing Address: NC Senate 300 N. Salisbury Street, Room 300-A Raleigh, NC 27603-5925 Terms in Senate: 9 (0 in House) District: 43 Counties Represented: Gaston Occupation: Real Estate Developer/Investor Address: P.O. Box 2567, Gastonia, NC 28053 Phone: (704) 867-0822
Politicians serve the money.
America has died.
You probably voted for it, too.
Most utilities are not run by the government but by private companies. As for city buses most are run by a public transportation agency which hires private contractors to actually run the buses so they are in a way run by private companies too. As for public education and postal service, does being the awful inefficient and expensive mess that they are, especially in comparison to private package delivery companies and private schools, make any case at all for privatizing them in your view?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
The feeling is mutual. The politicians want to get rid of you.
Nothing like biting the hand that feeds you.
What's worse is that we keep voting for these idiots.
Translation: I get lots of great kickbacks from these guys, so fuck you, consumer!!!!
Hopefully his constituents aren't asleep and give him the appropriate treatment when his name shows up on the ballot. Business may pay the taxes, but it's the voter that gets to mark the ballot.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I've given up with "Party affiliation" as if *that* matters anymore. They are all crooks, regardless of which side they claim to be on. There is only one "side" in Washington DC, the side that represents yourself, and how much you can take from the country.
There's no politician actually representing "the people", without fail, all these guys are elite, wealthy, went-to-the-right-school, skull and bones club, lawyers or businessmen who only wanted to get elected so they could become part of the corruption process.
And they will do or say whatever it takes to "get in", they will promise you the world, hawk wedge issues, and destroy their opponent, all so that they can get in and take as much of the pie as they can get their hands on. It's all a power game.
None of it is about doing anything for the American People.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Everything else is small potatoes.
Deleted
Because politicians are not really living breathing people, they are just automatons that do exactly what their party platforms tell them to do?
This senator for some reason seems to have forgotten that the sole reason privately owned services are often preferable to public ones is competition. In every instance that I've seen, a private monopoly is always a disaster. Given that private telco's stop at nothing to avoid competing - a public monopoly is the lesser evil. Free market fans like this guy should spend their energy ensuring that private industry keeps competing rather that trying to raise legal fences around markets that are no longer free because they have degenerated into monopolies. Granted there are many telco's - but if it's anything like here (in Denmark), their broadband cable networks are meticulously dug into the ground without any overlap at all, efectively leaving each customer without any choice. And when a municipal broadband appears - the previous local monopoly is always suddenly able to sell a much better product.
Run with the lemmings, and you'll get your feet wet.
If you want to annoy a right winger, ask them why we don't privatize the military. They'll go on at length about all the horrible things government does, and how much better it would be if they didn't---except for the military. Funny how the idea of government educating people, or healing people, or employing people, or connecting people to the internet (in this case) is evil and wrong and immoral, but paying and arming a huge body of men and women for the express purposes of maiming, killing and/or oppressing people is perfectly ok by them.
They'll also fail to notice how, unlike education or health care, the military gets funded well, regularly and uniformly at the federal level rather than through some horrific, balkanized, hamstrung funding structure. It's interesting how they do a good job, then, that the military does considering it's so well funded.
I'm a full socialist, and I think the military does deserve the funding it gets, but I find the hypocrisy to be just a little bit galling.
--srj/mmv
Ya, like with health insurance. Wait. Why isn't it "fair" again?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What city, specifically? Are they paying subisidies to the power companies to provide citizens with "cheap" energy?
Yeah that would be awesome, governments would get a one-time fee. Then they would have to bail out the industries when it became clear that the reason they were public in the first place was that they couldn't make a profit, or that they still had to provide only the unprofitable part of the service. It would be a win-win for taxpayers who bought privatized government entities!
Of course, lose-lose for everyone else.
No matter how you slice it, taxes are money taken out of private hands by the government. As such, private citizens are the ones who ultimately pay those taxes. If you tax a company, well that tax is then a part of their cost and will be structured in as such. It will manifest as increased prices, decreased compensation, etc. If you don't tax the company but instead tax the purchase, again it shows as a higher price to the consumer. Maybe it is listed on a separate line, but the consumer still pays. If you don't tax that at all but instead tax a person's income, then they just have less to spend, and lower prices are a larger part of their total disposable income.
There just isn't any way around it. So trying to say something like "Businesses pay the taxes," is stupid even were it true (which as you pointed out it isn't). Businesses are made up of, and shopped at by, regular people. Those people are the ones who pay the taxes in the end. Now there's nothing wrong with that, the government needs to collect taxes to provide the services we want, but let's be straight about who's paying.
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/yearrev2009_0.html
Where is the 'Democrats' tag? Where is the party affiliation in the summary? And where is the donkey icon? If he was a Republican can anyone here seriously say that there would not be a 'Republicans' tag, the word 'republican' in the summary and the elephant icon?
This part:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Corporations are not people. Giving corporations the right to influence the political process skews the will of the people.
I totally never seen this coming! Here I thought that they were supporting these corporations for absolutely no reason at all.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
That will never happen on most issues. You'd have permanent grid lock, if applied at the national level.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
If you want to annoy a right winger, ask them why we don't privatize the military. They'll go on at length about all the horrible things government does, and how much better it would be if they didn't---except for the military.
How strange. When I ask American right-wingers I know why they don't privatise the miltiary they go on at length about how the founders never wanted a standing army and the whole thing should be shut down and replaced with a citizen's militia.
Perhaps you're confusing right-wingers with Republicans, who mostly seem to be just a different brand of socialist.
If you really believe Slashdot is naming party affiliation of Republicans and not Democrats, you should be able to provide a few examples.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
FTFY Mr. Hoyle
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Legally they *ARE* people. This is the major problem in the U.S. today. They get all the advantages of "personhood" without any of the disadvantages plus a whole pool of money, so making corps. people legally essentially gives them more rights than anyone else.
I am really confused... why am I the only one that thinks we should have a constitutional amendment to end Corporate Personhood? No one ever mentions this... especially not in our media. Hmmm... I wonder why.
Republicans are usually the ones honest about it... The democrats are the same, they just keep it quieter.
I think they should rename Senators to Senatwhores
They should give SenatWhores 30 Day Terms and put them in charge of pandering to the lobbyists.
Every Senatwhore can be bought for 50 million dollars and will sign their name on 1 bill in any way shape or form per term.
Every vote from a Senatwhore costs 100 million dollars and will only cast 1 vote per term.
This allows common tax payers to compete against large megalobbyists.
if 100 million tax payers contribute $77 to the fund we could effectively write and pass our own laws that we the people decide.
And pay taxes as well and raise 7.5 billion in taxes as well. We should of course give a total of 1% to be split amongst the senatwhores for all their hard work. (or $750k max each)
anyone that calls anything about our government "socialist" is simply a troll whose opinion means nuts.
We live in the most pro-corporate state in world history. It doesn't matter which "side" is in control of the U.S. government... whoever is in charge is on some lever a corporatist right now. Socialism is a buzzword to whip shallow thinking people into and uproar.
I see this posted fairly often on any vaguely political story around here. I see a number of problems, but they basically boil down to two. How will you deal with:
1) Horrifying gridlock on all but the simplest decisions. Let's look at the Health Care bill. Agree with it or don't isn't the issue here, just look at it's level of complexity. 1000 some odd pages, and compromises everywhere to get first a majority of the 535 members of the House and them a super majority of the 100 members of the Senate to agree with it. It was a very well publicized operation, you have to figure that if it were opened to a "national vote" there'd have been at least 10% of the population looking to get in on it. How are you going to get 30 million people to read and understand a 1000 page bill, let alone figure out what compromises would cause more than half of them to vote for it? No law more complicated than "Don't kill people (unless you need too)" would ever get passed, and then we'd have to try to figure out what qualifies as "needing too".
2) Tyranny of the majority. It's one of the things that the Constitution was designed to combat (and while it doesn't do a perfect job, it's pretty good at it). People aren't always nice. If it were a matter of pure popular vote I'm not sure homosexuality wouldn't be illegal in this country. Or paganism. Or any number of other unpopular but generally harmless ideas. How is this prevented?
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I'm not American, hence the reason I didn't say "Republican". Not that it matters in the US: the political choices run the gamut from the Right to the extreme Right anyways.
That said, it's pretty safe to make such an assumption. There aren't many actual libertarians, but a heck of a lot of greedy, curtain-twitching, closet-authoritarians in the most countries' political right.
--srj/mmv
It has nothing to do with subsidies; it has to do with regulated business delivering service at cost + 10% profit rather than at market price. Properly regulated utilities produce cheaper products than their unregulated ('competitive') counterparts.
I just can't get over the fact that a state senator (or a US one, really) knows that Gunga Din was a water bearer. Maybe US education is better than I thought.
The bought and the for sale.
Most utilities are not run by the government but by private companies....make any case at all for privatizing them in your view?
Most utilities are regulated. Those that are regulated provider cheaper power than their unregulated counterparts because their prices are based on average cost rather than marginal cost. The states that deregulated their power generation now have higher electric rates. This American belief that unchecked competition automatically produces cheaper products simply isn't true, especially with infrastructure.
Pretty hard to say that's not the case without actually knowing the city in Western Mass he's talking about, which is why I'm curious.
Your assertions provide no data to support them, so I'd be interested to see any case studies you have to support your argument, too.
I am not arguing it is impossible, I am actually asking for information out of genuine curiosity as to how the local governments make it work.
David Hoyle: 'It's not fair for any government unit to compete with private enterprise,' -
But its not fair that private enterprises are not delivering internet access at reasonable prices (otherwise local governments wouldn't dream of
getting into providing broadband).
I think the keyword is FCC
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
Is that business taxes can end up being unfair. For one, businesses can avoid them more easily, like all the off shore companies we deal with these days. Also those that can't be avoided will generally be handed down as price increases. That of course hurts the poor more than the rich.
I'm not saying businesses should face no taxes, land usage (property tax) is a pretty well established tax and one that is really hard to avoid and makes sense as the more property you have, the more resources you use. However income wise it seems to make more sense to tax individuals than businesses. You can have a more progressive tax structure, and it is harder to avoid.
Public education, I'll grant you, is a bit of a dog's breakfast in the US -- school quality can go from stellar to fecal. I was one of the lucky bastards, and went to a public school that was actually pretty damned good, but I know hellholes exist.
Meanwhile, private schools are not necessarily much better. There are certain structural issues when it comes to the education marketplace that can get in the way of free market ideals -- two of the most obvious are simple geography, and capital expense. I've seen and worked in, and my wife has seen and worked in, private schools of varying quality. Just because it's private doesn't guarantee that it's good.
Many of the entrenched issues I've seen in any particular school seem to have much more to do with the local community -- be it the municipality for public schools, or simply the community of employees, parents, and other involved parties for private schools. Public schools in big cities seem the most likely to be bad, as education policy gets caught in the crossfire of city politicking, and any sense of "community" on a more human and personal scale gets lost.
But the USPS seems to do a pretty good job -- YMMV and all that aside, I've had FedEx and UPS both lose packages on the one hand and fail to deliver in the stated time on the other, whereas anything I've sent or had sent to me via the good ol' Post Office has made it to its destination in a timely fashion. And the regular mail tends to be cheaper for most purposes to boot.
And as an aside about utilities in general, I was living in California during the whole Enron debacle and saw my electricity bill more than double for unchanged usage, with rolling black/brownouts included. The one place in CA that rode through the whole mess with equanimity was Los Angeles -- largely because the city had never privatized its power plant.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
When asked about criticism that he was 'carrying water' for the cable companies, Hoyle replied, 'I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community — the people who pay the taxes.
You can call me Naive but, isn't it the responsibility of the government to protect the people. Not the industries...
Here in Wisconsin, two years ago ATT came to the Capitol with more than a dozen lobbyists and started handing out campaign contributions. They picked a conservative Democrat and a Republican from the Senate and Assembly who would play ball. They handed them a "bill mill" draft of how they'd like to revamp Wisconsin's cable television laws. They did not invite anyone else to the meetings. They didn't invite the over-the-air broadcasters, they didn't invite the cable industry, they didn't invite the community television stations. They listened to ATT. They removed local city control and oversight of cable franchises and replaced it with a state-level franchise system with little to no oversight. They assigned minimal regulatory powers to the department of financial institutions - not the existing Public Service Commission that handles all other telecom. The only powers they assigned were to accept the annual $5,000 franchise application. They were not given any powers to reject any applications. They sunset the ability of cities to assign a surcharge on bills to fund their community television operations. All this, in the name of allowing ATT to be able to cherry-pick which neighborhoods would get U-Verse, without having to offer it to entire communities.
Curator of the Jefferson Computer Museum http://www.threedee.com/jcm
With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?
Big business owns them all - the only difference is the stuff that makes them feign outrage.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Agreed. I'm drawing the distinction between fact (Corporations are NOT people) and the legal treatment, which as you point out is that they get a lot of benefits people should, and not all the drawbacks. I suppose we do need something. I was tempted to say we just need competent judges and legislators who recognize this, but if it were that simple, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Know how I now David Hoyle is a Democrat? Because the summary didn't mention his party. If he'd been a Republican, it'd have been noted at least twice in the summary.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Flash!!!!!
Senator admits [Industry of Choice] Industry helped write Pro-Industry Legislation.
Film at 11
God... what morons we are....
We live in the most pro-corporate state in world history.
The USA, up to ~130 years ago, was vastly more pro-corporate than what exists today.
I say 130 years because that's about when the government began regulating and cracking down on the trusts/monopolies that pervaded the business landscape.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Ah, yes, but now the Supremes have made it all the clearer that corporations are people (enshrining in law the principle that "money talks"), so really, the government is just doing it's job here. </cynicism>
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Since when were we under any obligation to be fair to private enterprise?
In the first one, the Democrat was named but her 14 cosigners were not. Many were Republicans.
In the second case, there was no malfeasance by Alan Grayson.
In the third case, again, no malfeasance.
In the last case, we have a legitimately bad law proposed by a Democrat.
Congratulations! Your job is now half done. All you have to do is show a similar story where a Republican's affiliation is mentioned. Otherwise, all we have is evidence that Slashdot does not usually name anyone's party affiliation.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Isn't the real problem that a State Senator wants to take away the right of municipal governments to decide for themselves if they want to get into the broadband business or not? Surely the residents of a particular locality should be the ones deciding this on a case by case basis, not someone in the state senate.
Is your municipal power also provided by a dam on the Connecticut river? That would explain the cheap power, not some municipal vs. private business distinction.
You haven't shown evidence of the second part of your hypothesis: that Republicans' affiliations are mentioned.
Are you really this bad at constructing logical arguments, or do you assume your readers are idiots who won't see through your transparent
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Indeed; here in Springfield, IL we have CWLP, owned and operated by the city. We have the lowest electric rates in the state, and the least amount of outages. And the city makes a tidy profit selling excess power to private power companies.
IMO any necessary infrastructure like water, gas, electricity, roads, bridges, sewers, should be run by local government. Otherwise you're just letting some monopolist steal the citizens' money legally.
Free Martian Whores!
So if you are to be free, that means you need to be free to choose your career path. You need to be able to decide what sorts of things you'd like to do, where you'd like to work, and to be able to change your mind on that. Fine, no problem. However there also needs to be an incentive for you to work, and to do well at work. If you simply pay everyone the same regardless of what they do and if they work, well then many will elect to not work. Also you'd have a problem finding people for some jobs, those that require a lot of effort and training, or are unpleasant. If they paid the same as anything else you'd find it difficult or impossible to get the people you need.
So you discover that you need a system like capitalism. You play people's greed off their laziness. If you want more money, you have to work for it, and generally the higher paying jobs require more effort, more talent, or both.
Even countries that are considered much more socialist than the US still have a capitalism at the heart of their economy. It is just the only economic system we've found so far that works well on a large scale. Doesn't mean it should be unregulated or anything, but the fundamentals are there.
Other systems, well they don't work for a free society. Like say you went with the real hardcore communist idea "From each according to his abilities." You test and determine what people are good at, and then set them to work doing it. Further, you enforce quotas to make sure they are working hard. That could work in theory (though hasn't worked well in practice) but takes away your freedom.
You actually have 4 points here so I'll start with zero to address the first point and leave the others with their own numbers:
0) There was nothing inherently contradictory about my two points. The first point is gridlock, the second point assumes that you have solved gridlock in some sort of reasonable way, and then wonders OK, now what about this. Ignoring the second point doesn't answer it. If it's not about rule of the majority, and it's not about rule of oligarchs, then what is it about and how does it address the real threat of tyranny of the majority?
1) I understand that it's not per se about the United States, but the United States and similar entities is what you will have to deal with to implement the idea. Unless you expect the US Government to simply accept small communities simply breaking off to do their own thing by themselves. Eventually forming larger and larger groups. You can't just replace city, county, or state governments with your own alternate constructs. For one thing the current constructs have their own laws and law enforcement which will likely look askance at attempts to rewrite laws without their involvement. The only way that such a scheme could succeed without blood would be to elect leaders who then vote themselves out of power by redesigning city charters and such for group governance.
Those cities would still be under the state government and in turn the federal government until sufficient momentum was gained to have THOSE entities self disolve. Even *then* you'd be stuck getting no larger than national level until the movement spread to other countries which then had *their* governments self destruct. Even *then* the whole concept only works for representative democracies, because, say, the government of China or North Korea isn't elected in any meaning full way, so you'll never elect candidates willing to pull the government down. So while you're not per se talking about the US, you will have to work within the structure of the US or a similar country unless you can find a place to build your little Utopia.
2) Put simply, yes, budget legislation must be passed every year. Not matter how small a budget you're working with it must be spent in a reasonable and productive way, all the time. New laws must be passed to deal with new situations all the time. Does our government over-regulate? Almost certainly. Would virtually non-regulation serve better? Unlikely. Food and drug inspections, education for those who can't afford it, law enforcement, and yes building bridges all must be done and paid for at whatever level it gets done and paid for. Whether the county or the feds build the bridge, it must get built. Complicated contracts have to be written and signed by competent people. Cost must be controlled. All this must be done, and the larger the community the harder it is to get consensus.
3) OK, so what scale is reasonable? Let's look at the smallest possible entity, the city. But to make matters fun we can't use any city, we'll use New York. Now I think we can agree that New York can't be broken down into smaller organizational units (the Burroughs are too tightly interconnected), but that's 8.4 million (opinionated, outspoken, and thoroughly stubborn) people who have to be brought into some sort of reasonable agreement on all laws, budgeting, taxes, etc. I suppose it's easier to get roughly 50% agreement out of 8.4 million people than 330 million, but realistically I think once you get past a hundred thousand or so you're probably just spinning your wheels.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Utopia. It would be great if we could all live in harmony under a fair and just system. The idea you're proposing just doesn't seem fleshed out or reasonable though. A lot of your answers seem to involve a sort of organic evolution of government structures that would require either an armed revolution or some sort of earth shattering cataclysm that left most of out electronic infrastructure intact while destroying most of our cultural infrastructure. Even in that event I'm not sure it would scale. Not even to New York City let alone the world.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Hoyle replied, 'I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community — the people who pay the taxes.'"
So I guess he's not a big believer in democracy. He plainly believes that legislation should go to the highest bidder and feels no obligation whatsoever to the people that government derives it's power from.
Jonathan Aitken 18 Months
Jeffrey Archer 4 years
for considerabley less dodgy stuff
if a companys in limbo bit dificult to sue yoru employer
How are you going to get 30 million people to read and understand a 1000 page bill
Congress, composed mostly of lawyers whose full time job is is do so, doesn't, so it can't really be that important for a more democratic electorate to (though it has millions of idle lawyers to help). Negotiations could occur through a series of votes on different proposals, and these votes could be completed in the time it takes some geriatric politician to stand up and begin his bombastic speech to "persuade" his colleagues who have already worked out the votes with backroom deals
Tyranny of the majority
Congress is not exactly filled with independent thinkers. Legislators would burn their own children if it made them appear "patriotic" or "working class/middle class" long enough to get reelected. They also constantly pass blatantly unjust laws favoring a tiny minority, laws which the courts should and sometimes do overturn, since the Constitution demands consistency and establishes a system of checks and balances to attain it. The same process that controls Congress would control a popular legislative body.
No, Socialism is correct. An example is freeways in the USA, which are owned and maintained by the government.
Fascism also applies, where fascism is defined as private ownership but government control of the means of production. For example, municipal requirements that tell businesses how much of their property must be set aside for parking.
We are all socialists and fascists whenever it benefits us.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Most water systems are run by municipalities. Try not paying your water bill and see how long your "free" water service lasts. Not all city services are paid for by taxes, but that meme always gets trotted out in any discussion about municipal anything.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Cities and counties often give exclusives to cable companies causing death off all competition. Since cities will not allow dozens of companies to be available to every address it is fair enough that cities provide free net services.
The roads work great - everybody has some complaints but they WORK and they are everywhere and benefit the communities that have them beyond their cost. Business wouldn't go to a city without roads. The argument for citywide internet is GREATER than a football or baseball stadium - although those have plenty of corrupt power pushing them forward at the expense of the citizens.
I can't imagine comcast managing and building roads even half as good as government. We have officials get into trouble over roads and something happens we also sometimes have an actual VOTE on some aspect of it-- with a monopoly we get no input and there is no accountability at all.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The US system was based around the concept of dividing powers; not only the isolation of government power into separate but equal branches but also in terms of representation, where location and population were separate but mostly equal (the senate has a little more power - but then it used to represent state government; therefore, it should have lost its edge when it stopped representing the states.) Then we had state and federal separations. They broke up power to keep it from its naturally corrupting nature to a minimum. Term cycles and later on term limits also are a result of this thinking. The 4th branch was defined as being nearly immune from government to the point of not structuring it or properly defining it (if they had kept going it may have been) - they even went so far as to put 3% of the GDP into subsidizing the press and the post office was used to deliver the media as well.
The reason power limitation was so central to their design philosophy was due to a dictator with near absolute power they just had a war with.
Inheritance tax was created on the SAME BASIS in order to prevent an elite class who owned everything creating Feudalism (which was enforced by military and not literally by land rights not that a variation based upon land rights indirectly enforced wouldn't amount to the same thing.)
Corporations had no real power and individuals were more susceptible to accountability. The civil war is when the system broke down and it has never recovered and power has accumulated in the shadows --- ever since creating new loopholes and growing to be more powerful. Until we have today where the democracy functionally powerless and the republic exploited by the plutocracy. Its been going on rather brashly since Nixon but until Bush 2 most people were ignorant of it. Possibly a majority still are...
Anyhow, high taxes on the wealthy were put in place to limit individual power and corporate regulations and taxes attempted to do the same but neither was strong enough after the civil war so like a leak in a dam -- it grew bigger and bigger; the outcome is easily predictable. In fact, Ben Franklin understood this well and gave a great ending speech at the constitutional convention (the end part is usually left out because its too realistic.)
We stopped learning civils in any form in the USA. Don't think this was for any other reason than the powerful found it troublesome and convinced people it was not needed. You see the problem is when you let power accumulate some of those people are clever enough to leverage that power in ways that are not obvious to the public so a majority does not get upset enough to oppose it. Power is worse than money - you never have enough.
Democratic systems always fail when the majority starts letting things slip bye and then fester over time corrupting the system and the populace itself; we don't have the Roman distractions for voters - we have so much more powerful distractions we don't need their primitive entertainment and terrorism. We also have well studied methods from history and psychology on how to manipulate the masses - not that we need to excel over what was done in history - the public isn't any less susceptible now than back then.
Obviously I left out a bunch from this posting... there is a lot going on over a long span of time; some is planned and most is emerging patterns based upon the environmental conditions of the time. I can easily predict the next crash like I did the previous one, because the groundwork is all there and I'm not a believer in the preaching that goes on or entertained by the distractions. Both parties for the most part are distractions on top of distractions.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
No mention of party affiliation in the title or summery.
That is a REQUIREMENT if the person is a conservative, republican, or a republicrat.
No brain, no pain.
Go against the powerful forces who are benefiting from the system they manipulate results in the whole sphere of their influence going against you! The only way to have a lot of power is to do what the powerful want and want to continue to do it-- as long as you don't go against the flow in any major way they will let you along for the ride. This is why Bush appeared to have so much power and why Obama has so little but can get some work done because he is tacking against the wind (arguably he is still losing ground overall) and people like Alan Grayson get popular and that is about the extent of it.... unless they run for president and get shut down like Howard Dean did.
Ever notice how Dean seemed to get pushed out of his DNC spot? They had a push against him even getting the position and I doubt he could get it again today - his timing was perfect for when he squeaked in. The new guy has been influenced in the past to break from the law so I don't trust him any more than Steele over at the GOP (who's not as much of an idiot as he appears. Some of his plans will prove to be successful long term.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Private capture is when the government still calls the shots but instead of performing the job itself is pays someone else to do it. This often makes things more expensive because the contractor needs to make a profit and generally rigs the deal so it doesn't have to compete. And the company is often in the position of lobbying for more business -- private prisons and mercenaries are examples of this. Private prisons are just as bad, if not more insidious lobbyists than prison guard unions, for which private prisons were supposed to be the cost solution.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
If you want to annoy a right winger, ask them why we don't privatize the military. They'll go on at length about all the horrible things government does, and how much better it would be if they didn't---except for the military. Funny how the idea of government educating people, or healing people, or employing people, or connecting people to the internet (in this case) is evil and wrong and immoral, but paying and arming a huge body of men and women for the express purposes of maiming, killing and/or oppressing people is perfectly ok by them.
The military is the collective right of self defense. You have the right to defend your person, therefore people have the collective right to defend themselves which will be required to defend themselves and their families against others who would try to take their property or liberty by force. What I find interesting about socialists is that they believe they have the right to enforce their preferences on others and even impose debts on their children who may not have the same preferences who had no say in the matter.
Also, I found it ironic that you ask why defense hasn't been privatized when the Iraq War has largely fought using mercenaries.
If a politician is willing to throw the public interest under the bus for $400K what makes you think they would behave differently for $40M?
From my non-US POV what is wrong with US politics is that the public service is dysfunctional because lobbyists have been allowed to infiltrate and bypass them on a routine basis, when people hear the same propoganda from corporatized media and government entities it's little wonder many have been convinced to vote against their own interests. Of course the problem is not limited to the US but it does appear much to be much worse in the US than in most of the other western nations.
For an example of how dysfunctional the process is you need look no further than Senator Inhofe, a rabid anti-environmentalist in the pocket of the coal industry who just happens head up the senate environment committe. However there is no more tragic an example of what happens when vested interests bypass the normal checks and balances of the public service than The office of special plans
Sure organisations should have the right to petition the government but it should be totally unacceptable for them to "own" politicians or force feed them misinformation, fix that by cleaning up and empowering the public service to put lobbyists back in their box and many of the systemic problems in the US will melt away.
Having said that, it's also apparent that a strong public service is by iteslf not a silver bullet.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
To be accurate, at the moment Inhofe is only the Ranking Member of the minority. Barbara Boxer is the Chairwoman of the committee at the moment. That could change though in January 2011 if the R's regain control.
Do it. Please. The more success stories like yours, the more likely it is for the rest of us to benefit from someone doing the same.
(Former NEsterner here, shipped to the Mid-West. Do it up!)
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
To further your point, in many places around the country electric power is delivered by Public/Municipal Utility Districts and from what I've heard most of the time they are less expensive and provide better service than for profit utilities.
What I find interesting about socialists is that they believe they have the right to enforce their preferences on others and even impose debts on their children who may not have the same preferences who had no say in the matter.
I guess that makes the Bush administration and the Republicans more socialistic than the Democrats. After all "borrow and spend" imposes higher debt on the children than "tax and spend".
Thanks for the correction, was Inhofe the head in the past?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Can't we trust our legislators to have the wisdom to craft their own laws and bills without using someone else's cheat sheet? Didn't they pick up the business ethics and anti-plagiarism in high school?
So cities shouldn't provide water and sewer then?
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
President Abraham Lincoln - Gettysburg address
Someone send this corporation guy back to school..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Yes he was, until the D's took over. And he will be again if the R's take over. Personally I think they will gain some seats this year making the US Senate even more dysfunctional but probably not enough to regain the majority. We'll see. If Inhofe does regain the Chairmanship we'll probably see numerous trumped up investigations of climate scientists.
I guess that makes the Bush administration and the Republicans more socialistic than the Democrats. After all "borrow and spend" imposes higher debt on the children than "tax and spend".
As much as I like to slag on Bush, Obama spends a lot more than he raises taxes which has resulted in record deficits. The red vs. blue trap you've apparently fallen into, still talking about Bush is kinda weak sauce though, don't you think?
Forget the running of fiber. Just run the conduit. Cities already have experience running pipes to every home. Ours runs sewer and water to the home, and storm drains to most neighborhoods. They work in concert with PG&E who runs pipes for gas. By running the conduit to the homes, they can rent out the space to all comers, they don't have to be worried about being sued for competing in the broadband industry, they can foster competition, they can stay out of a technology that they are inexperienced at, and they won't have to dig up the roads when the next big thing in data transmission comes along.
Unfortunatly, many cities are like mine and think that wifi is the future.
Why is it possible for companies to donate to political parties?
That is the source of most of the political corruption in the US.
The US has become a legalized oligarchy where the people doing the bidding on behalf of the oligarchs are elected by the general population.
In no few ocassions companies donate to both parties (it is quite convenient for corporations to have only 2 parties, that way the amount of contributions is minimized while maintain a modicum of democratic accountability in issues that don;t affect corporation's interests).
As long as the US populace don't dismantle this system of patronage they will alwys be recepients of legislation that is not on thei best interests when the interests of big conglomarates are affected.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So what else is new? The oil industry prepares policy for the oil industry, to the peoples expense, the banking industry writes policy for the banking industry, and the people pay for that to the tune of trillions of dollars. The auto industry ensures its incompetency is rewarded, once again to support its own interests. Should I continue with big pharma or conglomerate farming? I would like to know when the voters and their taxes will be heard? All politicians should serve three terms , two in office, one in prison which has a time length twice as long as both political terms in office. This is the only way to break the unending cycle of - office - lobbyist group - special interest group - office.
Bought dogs need to be put to sleep.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
You're right, Obama has increased the national debt by $3 trillion or so. But the TARP program was enacted before he took office (but I think he voted for it as a Senator). In his defense though I will say that most economists will say that during economic downturns (and this is the worst since the Great Depression) it's a good thing for the national government to take on more debt to pump some money into the economy and keep it from continuing to spiral downward. If Obama hadn't spent some of that money we well could have 15% unemployment nationwide by now.
If you look at the US national debt as a percentage of GDP, it was around 35% when Carter left office. By the end of the Reagan and Bush I presidencies it was around 65%. Clinton got it down to around 55% at the end of his 2 terms. Bush II brought it back over 60% 6 years in and in the last 2 years it ballooned to over 80%. Under Obama it's risen to around 95% and is expected to go over 100% of the GDP but the bulk of that spending increase has been a response to the current recession and it would have become a depression in my estimation without it.
So, in the past 30 years R's have added far more to it than D's.
By that same logic, a seller can't just go to their customers and increase prices, the customers will laugh them out the door and shop someplace else.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
http://wizbangblue.com/2009/06/24/fox-news-lies-and-calls-republican-gov-sanford-a-democrat.php
Or you could google for 'fox news calls republicans democrats,' there are a ton of cases. In fact, it seems your phrase actually refers to one single solitary instance, blown out of proportion in order to provide a false sense of balance to the phenomenon of Right Wingers doing this for the last decade or so. In the case of Faux News, it has happened literally dozens of times. But only when the Repug in question has done something heinous.
Now back under the troll bridge with you, fascist.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton