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House Democrats Shelve Net Neutrality Proposal
crimeandpunishment writes "A compromise on net neutrality appears to be as likely as Google and China becoming BFFs. House Democrats have pulled the plug on efforts to work out a compromise among phone, cable, and Internet companies. House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, who shelved the proposal late on Wednesday in the face of Republican opposition, said, 'If Congress can't act, the FCC must,' and called this development 'a loss for consumers.' Internet companies and public interest groups say the new regulations are needed to keep phone and cable companies from playing favorites with traffic, while those companies insist they need flexibility so high-bandwidth applications don't slow down their systems." The net neutrality debate seems to have fallen victim to the extreme polarization evident in the larger political culture.
As some of you know Xbox Live is getting a cool update called ESPN3. The concept of the app & system is pretty amazing, technology has come a long way to make it so. What you probably didn't know is that to get the deal, Microsoft had to get the ISP's to agree to license the content for Internet Users in order to broadcast ESPN3 over the internet. Not all ISP's bought the license, so not everyone will have ESPN3 - even if you're a Xbox live subscriber.
This is an area where net neutrality should shine. It should protect Microsoft and allow them to license content to distribute and it should protect consumers to not be held hostage to a carrier paying for content as a middleman. I hope this EPSN3 thing can light the fire under the community so they understand how net neutrality can impact them. I know this isn't the "typical case of concern" in regards to p2p or throttling or priority of services, but this just goes to show that Internet Traffic is already beeing bought and sold not just as a commodity itself but something that people have now had to license in order to push specific traffic over that commodity on as a carrier - not just a distributor.
With that said, the app is freaking amazing and i don't even like much sports. The fact you can watch scores, hedge on who will win and i'm sititng in my living room watching HD games on demand or live is pretty awesome. I admire comcast for building out the network to support stuff and maybe, that is what the license agreed to but damn, these backroom deals are dissapointing for the consumer and only pollute the fairness & equality of having broadband now into having to chose a carrior that has the right license deals, not just the best performance.
The party of brave, brave Sir Robin!
Can't even stay in town to address looming massive tax increases for everyone.
"Phone and cable companies insist they need flexibility so high-bandwidth applications don't slow down their systems."
Fine. Let them charge the content producers by bandwidth. The wider bandwidth your content needs, the more you will pay. Low bandwidth content (most web pages actually) would get a free ride, things like Hulu and Youtube would probaby have to open their wallets to help support the inferstructure. Just so long as nobody gets priority over anybody else. First come first serve, but if you take more than average you pay for it.
It would really, really help if we'd explain to my conservative friends just what "Net Neutrality" is. They are convinced that it's some form of Fairness Doctrine for the Web that will limit content.
(The fact that such a "fairness doctrine" might limit Mother Jones and Salon just as much as it does FrontPageMag and World Net Daily, depending on the party in power, doesn't seem to occur to them, either.)
I try to explain to them that it simply means that, if I visit YouTube, I don't want my ISP to limit their bandwidth because Microsoft (or someone else) has paid a premium for priority for *their* bandwidth.
We geeks have several flaws, and one of them is our love of catchphrases and acronyms. We just *assume* that everyone knows what "free software" and "net neutrality" mean. But when you start dealing with the Body Politick At Large(tm), that's not necessarily so. A few minutes to carefully explain just what we're actually talking about will go a long way ...
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Sorry, any legislation crammed through in the last few days of a session is bound to be crap. Which apparently this one was, as it excluded wireless providers from the rules applied to wired providers. I guess one group pays better than the other.
We are already seeing the pull back in wireless, we are losing uncapped plans. I do not doubt that if we had the ham fisted regulation we normally get out of the Fed we would soon see that popping back up on wired plans. If abusers cannot be managed away then everyone will simply get clamped down to limits.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"pulled the plug on efforts to work out a compromise among phone, cable, and Internet companies"
That right there is a perfect example of what's wrong with Washington. This debate, like so many others, doesn't consider the interests of the public, but simply the interests of the industry players directly affected by the new law.
There is absolutely no legitimate reason why the US government should be negotiating with AT&T (or Time Warner, or Comcast, etc). None. If the US government wants AT&T to do something, they can pass a law and/or issue a regulation that says AT&T has to do it. No negotiation required - if AT&T doesn't do it, the US government can then bring them to court. That's what makes the government different from a corporate partner of AT&T, and AT&T is subject to the government of the US as long as it's operating in the US.
However, there's an illegitimate reason why the US government negotiates with AT&T: AT&T is in the running at least for largest campaign contributor in the country.
I am officially gone from
... As a wacko leftist libertarian crypto-anarcho peacenik Commie, the oldest son of a right-wing fringe element religo millennialist rapturizing nut job, I have to tell you: Net Neutrality is the one thing dad and I can safely talk about, and agree on. That, and maybe there are some foods we both like.
We have asshole Republicans who only care about trying to keep their grip on power, and then we have spineless Democrats who can't even achieve their agenda while maintaining a majority and the White House.
Awesome.
Living With a Nerd
Actually, the tax changes for most people will be rather small.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
I agree with the concept that you can't shape traffic to give priority to certain things over certain things, that helps everyone. What I don't agree with in the bill is the subsidizing of broadband and turning it into a "right" that all citizens should have. I enjoy working hard to pay for premium services like quality broadband. As soon as you start giving it away, the losses incurred by the providers of said service will jack up the prices to the people that pay, ala what will happen with health care if the current legislation isn't repealed. I also don't want my tax dollars going to that crap. They need to re-work that part of the bill then introduce it again.
It's sometimes scary to read about Net Neutrality on the likes of Slashdot and Digg, and see so many "informed" people clamoring to have Congress dish out Net Neutrality.
The way to ensure Net Neutrality, by the government, is to have the government step in and wedge themselves into the place where the companies would like to wedge themselves. The government is using Net Neutrality as a means to not only throttle, but to block outright. How can we think a Net Neutrality Act is going to be anything but corrupt, bureaucratic garbage when just the other day (maybe even yesterday?), there was an article describing how the government (in this case, the White House) was going directly to ISPs to block sites it did not like--without any law saying that they have too comply?
Sure, I do not mind when the government asks. But, I mind when the government orders.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
A large part of the problem about Net Neutrality is that there is a complete mismatch of knowledge between those for and those against. People who are generally for Net Neutrality generally are more knowledgeable (although not always true) about why Net Neutrality is an important issue. Those who are against it (at least the lay people and not the businesses involved) generally don't know what Net Neutrality stands for and so they believe it's some sort of shadowy government censorship of free speech or governmental takeover or interference with business or socialism or whatever. Both sides are talking past each other and there is no common grounds of agreement. As long as that's true, Net Neutrality is dead.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Okay, everyone in Congress NOT owned by corporations and rich interest groups please step forward. ...Whoa, not so fast Democrats
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Democrats, Republicans... what's the difference? Neither one cares about the citizenry. This farce of democracy is made so evident by, well, everything they do. Even the idea of calling them "representatives" is a farce, since they don't represent us. Well, I suppose they DO represent themselves and their monied interests.
If you genuinely want to break out of this kind of rule, you need to break it from the bottom. Free software didn't compete with commercial software by asking the corporations if they would mind please changing the way they charge for things. No, free software started by people just doing it, and ignoring the monied interests.
You can do the same thing with governance. All you have to do is contribute to one of the many projects listed there, or to the umbrella group.
Or you can just sit back and whine about how the Democrats and/or Republicans screwed you over again. Here's a tip: it is never going to stop unless you stop relying on them to make decisions for you.
For you maybe. People in my pay range ($70-95K) are looking at Federal tax increases of over $2,000. Might be chump change to you, but not to me.
Yes, polarization between those who receive huge contributions from the media lobbies, and those who don't.
Because liberals still are under the delusion that government has the ability to do good, despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Big business runs our government, and beginning with the upcoming election, it will largely define our government with the huge piles of cash they're pouring into the campaigns of those who will promise to do their bidding. Influence peddling is nothing new, of course, but we are about to witness a sea change the concentration of political power the scale of which is chilling. Not surprisingly, the telecom industry, by some measures, the most powerful lobby (e.g. "buyer of influence") in Washington, is going to get everything they want. We are screwed.
When it comes to providing a service that no one else has. A company has the right to bring in the most revenue it can. If ESPN3 wants to license it's content and pipe it through XBox then it should have the right in a free market to do that. After all that XBox did cost money. If some other sports network wants to do the same through some other box, then it should have the right to do that.
When you get the feds involved in policy making you run the risk of eliminating the right to freely market and sell some value added service or product. Competition will work better than any regulation that has the word "Neutral" in it to control the behavior of a company. After all, unless it is on a hill, a car in neutral is not going anywhere.
Keep this in mind. People offer up free software because they want to. That software competes with software that is not free. An open and free society can only remain that way when government is not allowed to regulate liberties away.
Actually, the tax changes for most people will be rather small.
Yeah, right. $700 billion in tax increases is "rather small".
Bet you fail to see the problem with that, don't you? And I bet you're wondering where the utter bitch-slapping the Democrats are going to take at the polls in a month is coming from.
Get this: Russ Feingold - iconic and very liberal long-term Democrat Senator from Wisconsin - is down 15 points to his Republican opponent.
Two long-term Democrat Senators from California are in fights for their political lives - ultra-liberal California. They're so damn desperate that they're trying a "look, she hired an illegal immigrant" smear campaign. Yep, the party that won't allow the US as a sovereign nation to enforce its borders is pulling a race-and-illegal-immigrant-based smear campaign: "She's a Latina working as a maid - how can you NOT think she could be an illegal?!?!" Nope, no fanti-immigrant FUD/racism there. Oh, no, not from Democrats.
Greedy asshole. I would give $2000 more to be 'burdened' with that tax bracket. Like about 75% of Americans, I make less than that.
...but at least the Republicans stay bought?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Did anyone else see BFF in the summary and immediately think of the "Bernard and Felix Foundation" corporation from armored core 4 instead of whatever the alternative meaning may be?
What's up with the title of this post? "Politics: House Democrats Shelve Net Neutrality" sure make it sound like the poster is trying to imply that Democrats were at fault for this bill failing. But the summary and TFA indicate that it was Republicans who blocked efforts to move this bill forward.
Greedy asshole. I would give $2000 more to be 'burdened' with that tax bracket. Like about 75% of Americans, I make less than that.
Why don't you WORK for it instead of expecting it to be GIVEN to you?
No one but YOU is stopping you from improving yourself.
And calling someone who who wants to keep the fruits of their labors a "greedy asshole" just demonstrates what a petty, jealous, infantile, GIMMEEE GIMMMEEE GIMMMEEE jackass you are.
While the democrats are clearly better on a range of issues at certain times in the nations history and are quite easily the better of the two parties overall (they are the oldest for a reason) it becomes difficult to make generalized statements about them over time. Even my statement, the parties changed so much long ago that its almost like they swapped names.
Right now, on most any issue of importance which conflicts with the corporate powers, the democrats are just putting up an act. -both working for the same master but with a different act. Because the democrats have to sell themselves as opposing some of these forces, they will throw out a bone or two while still licking the boots of their corporate masters. Slight difference, I often think its worse to appease each side with weak measures and flip who is "in power" every few years to keep the public distracted and just placated enough to be inactive.
There are a few good ones in each, but more on the democrat side-- not that it matters who has more decent reps because its STILL a minority. BTW, the GOP is not tolerant of decent and hasn't been for some time, they have just gone off the deep end as far as their purging in the last 15 years. So a decent one has less chance in the GOP these days.
Then you have the moves made by corrupt democrats and nearly all republicans to increase corp/bank influences over them. From the Nixon years to the K street 90s to compromises in McCain/Feingold campaign reform - all increased corp power over them; mostly dems. The latter one undermined union influence over the dems and that vacuum was filled by corps (who's job is not to represent voters, unlike the unions; regardless of "your" beliefs of that concept.)
Net neutrality SHOULD have had an easy time in the HOUSE; clearly the majority fears the loss of MONEY at this time-- the only shot it had was in 2009 and now thanks to the crooks in the S. Court it won't have that chance again.
Then we have the pragmatists... Those who give in to corruption so they do not get crushed with the excuse that they can only pick so many fights and must give in on all the others. Many "honest" people faced with the reality of the situation would cave in and I suspect that over time would slowly become corrupted as well as shorten their list of principles they won't compromise. (Unless, they never make such compromises, like Ron Paul.) You should understand this unless people refer to you as unreasonable. I also find the older people are the more ways they have to rationalize their actions, including convincing themselves (aka lying to themselves.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Absolutely. See decline in rape and pillage, slavery, extortion and murder. Damned government. Why, just the other day I WASN'T invaded. Stupid government army.
Seriously, how stupid are you?
Then maybe you should work a little harder to make it into that tax bracket. Whiny bitch.
From the AP (via Yahoo) (emphasis mine): "House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., abandoned the effort late Wednesday in the face of Republican opposition to his proposed "network neutrality" rules. Those rules were intended to prevent broadband providers from becoming online gatekeepers by playing favorites with traffic."
I'm going to piss some people off by saying this, but the Democrats are pussies. Goddamned balless wimps. For Christ's sake, they have a majority in both houses, yet they're so pussified that the minority Republicans can block them. WTF???
First they say they don't have the bandwidth, then they say they need a "healthy" (read: windfall) profit from their investments in bandwidth. Which is it? Speak of talking out of both sides of your mouth! Is there anybody less honest than a corporate mouthpiece? I have more respect for a crackhead than these evil assholes. At least you know the crackhead is lying when he says he wants twenty bucks "for a prescription".
And the thing is, from the AP story, it's more about Net Neutrality for wireless customers than wired customers. This makes no sense whatever. I have a plethora of wireless choices; competetion makes Net Neutrality Regs completely unnecessary for wireless providers. On the other hand, I and most other people have only one "choice" for wired broadband -- in my case, Comcast. Others have other monopoly providers, but almost all of them are monopolies.
ALL MONOPOLIES NEED HEAVY REGULATION! Where there is a lot of competetion, the free market keeps things in check in most cases. But when there is little or no competetion, the government needs to step in.
Contentious? Huh? The only contention is between giants like Google and Time Warner. Net neutrality is a boon for anyone wanting to USE the internet.
The anti-government sentiment comes from the fact that government (neither major party) has done Jack Schitt for the average working stiff while bending over backwards for sociopaths like Charles and David Koch, who are according to the Jim Hightower article linked, behind the tea party astroturfing movement.
"Opponents who equate" net neutrality "to regulating the Internet" are disingenuous at best. This doesn't "regulate the internet", it regulates the monopolies who deliver the unregulated internet to your computer.
If it comes between the goverment regulating the providers and the providers regulating the internet, I'll take government regulation any day.
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Mods, please read the guidelines.
Free Martian Whores!
No, what he's saying is that if you make >$75K and you're whining about being asked to contribute +$2K, then you perhaps need a little more critical perspective because, get this, you're already quite rich in relative terms.
He's not expecting to be given extra earnings, he's saying you should count yourself lucky that you are making more, rather than making $40K or less instead of expecting sympathy from the majority of society because you're so hard done-by. As a more wealthy person you, by default, use and benefit more from society, so you, as the the more wealthy person, should foot more of the bill for it.
Don't like it? Want to keep all your money? As tired a cliche as it is, perhaps you should move the Somalia? That way you'll only ever have to pay for your own needs, such as the private police force you'll require to maintain the law and order that allows you to keep the money you make.
--srj/mmv
The way the government sees it, they are the public, representatively, so when they negotiate with Big Content, they're really negotiating for me and you. Of course, that's not the way the public sees it. Only 11% of the people trust Congress. They see Big Govt more as an adversary, like Big Content.
It would be better if the government simply set rules that apply to everyone equally, and for the benefit of everyone, equally. Anything less, and you are picking winners and losers. To do that, they don't need to "negotiate" with individual parties at all.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
No, what he's saying is that if you make >$75K and you're whining about being asked to contribute +$2K, then you perhaps need a little more critical perspective because, get this, you're already quite rich in relative terms.
Which is why he used the term "greedy asshole".
And what nether region of delusions do you pull "contribute +$2K" from? There's no "contribute" involved. The government TAKES it under threat of violence.
He's not expecting to be given extra earnings, he's saying you should count yourself lucky that you are making more, rather than making $40K or less instead of expecting sympathy from the majority of society because you're so hard done-by.
Yeah, calling people who make more money then you and who don't agree with you about appropriate levels of taxation "greedy assholes" is a way of calling me "lucky" - as if I'm "lucky" to have WORKED MY ASS OFF to be successful.
Calling people making more money "greedy assholes" is a class-warfare attack on success and an implicit call for wealth redistribution because it attacks the very right successful people have to the fruits of their labors.
So quit justifying class warfare and couching it in more polite terms.
What a load of pie-in-the-sky CRAP you've posted.
As a more wealthy person you, by default, use and benefit more from society,
Riiight. I'm getting literally thousands and thousands of dollars a month more benefits from "society" than someone living in subsidized housing getting food stamps and "free" health care does.
Sure I am.
What planet are you living on?
so you, as the the more wealthy person, should foot more of the bill for it.
Oh, I do. I sure as shit do.
Don't like it? Want to keep all your money? As tired a cliche as it is, perhaps you should move the Somalia? That way you'll only ever have to pay for your own needs, such as the private police force you'll require to maintain the law and order that allows you to keep the money you make.
Straw man much? Besides, if you want "free" health care, move to Canada. You know, the place where provincial leaders fly to Miami, FL, US of A for heart surgery because health care in Canada is so great.
Or, instead of putting up stupid strawmen, like many millions of others are about to do in about a month I could vote AGAINST a party that has run such huge deficits through out-of-control profligate spending that a mere two months of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid deficits could be used to pay for the entire decade of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
I could vote AGAINST a party whose wet-behind-the-ears naif supporters call government-forced taxation "contributions".
I could vote AGAINST a party too chicken-shit to actually vote on a $700 billion tax increase.
I could vote AGAINST a party that uses racist anti-immigrant FUD to defend the sinecure of a Senate seat for a California liberal.
I could vote AGAINST a party with a record of utter FAILURE over the past two years - so much failure and lack of ideas that all they can do is conduct ad hominem attacks on opponents who don't want the government to TAKE hundreds of billions of dollars a month from everyone to "stimulate" an economy that's failed because of the asinine policy decisions they've made.
This is AT&Ts (et al) reward for breaking the wiretapping laws on behalf of the NSA.
The main problem scenario that I see is the big ISPs introducing their own video service and giving it priority over Youtube traffic. Or introducing their own videoconferencing software and giving it priority over skype.
The issue for me is not content-based blocking, but rather ISPs wanting to extort more money for services---"gee, nice app you've got there, it'd be a shame if it got slowed down. You know, for a bit of money we can make sure that doesn't happen..."
People in my pay range ($70-95K) are looking at Federal tax increases of over $2,000.
Even after you figure in the increased tax, your take-home pay is STILL double my (pretax) annual salary -- and I'm well above the median income line for the U.S.
My heart bleeds for you, it really does.
"You're rich enough already" is not a valid argument for tax hikes. The only valid argument is "we absolutely need this and this done, and we don't have anywhere else to take the money from".
I'm sorry, what? In what conceivable way are you kept in slavery?
What, precisely, would you call a class of people who are denied a real education, stuffed into ghettos and barrios, and forced into lives full of working dead-end jobs or languishing on public assistance in "exchange" for the guarantee that they will vote for the political party that the slave-masters tell them to vote for?
How have they lied about improving education?
Despite all the money put into education over the years, has even one Democrat program done anything but spend more money with no repeatable results on any appreciable scale? NO. Even the "stellar magnet schools" and "stellar charter schools" work well for about 5 years before sliding back down into the toilet.
So, I'm confused. You think it's ok to have racially based attacks on people? Or maybe its attacks on gay people that you are ok with?
I don't agree that attacks on anyone are a good idea. But neither do I believe that the punishment should be any different whether you attacked someone because of their skin color, or their sexual preference, or the fact that they were your competition in a drug gang, or because they slept with your wife, or because you wanted to steal their car, or any other reason someone would have to do violence to another human being.
It's the ACT that is to be punished, not the thought. When we start regulating thought, we slide into a very, very, very bad place.
Bush and Reagan have been the biggest contributors to the national debt.
Bush and Reagan's major debt contributions come from times when DEMOCRATS HELD THE CONGRESS. Remember, you idiot, it is the CONGRESS that makes the budget and controls the purse strings - all the President gets is an up-or-down, veto/pass vote.
It would be different if we had line-item veto, but it's not. Reagan passed the budgets he passed that came from DEMOCRATS, because the alternative was to shut down the government. Clinton DID shut down the government because he wanted MORE spending. Bush passed the crap that Pelosi and Reid handed him rather than shut down the government.
Look closely at this graph I am about to link:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1900_2010&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=fy11&chart=G0-fed&bar=0&stack=1&size=l&title=US%20Federal%20Deficit%20As%20Percent%20Of%20GDP&state=US&color=c&local=s
Pay attention. Not just to who was president, but go year by year. What do we find? The correlation in debt increases is not by who was President, but by WHO CONTROLLED THE CONGRESS. This is not a surprise: Constitutionally, CONGRESS WRITES THE BUDGET.
Under Reagan, through Bush, and - here's the important part - THROUGH THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF CLINTON WHEN THE DEMOCRATS CONTROLLED CONGRESS - the debt went up. Only when the Republicans took control of the purse strings did that trend reverse.
Likewise, where is the large spike in debt during the years of Bush II? That's right - 2006-2008 WHEN THE DEMOCRATS TOOK CONGRESS. And the trend continues through Obama.
If you think you can blame any President for the budget, you're a fool. He's the last line of defense, and a pretty fucking weak one absent a line-item veto. When you want to know who fucked us over and increased the debt, you need to look at the Congressional leadership instead!
Checks and balances are not there to prevent a dominant ideology.
Again, you are a fool. Checks and balances are there to counteract ambition with ambition, counteract greed with greed, counteract power with power. The whole point is to stop things that should not be going on. If your entire government is m
The main problem scenario that I see is the big ISPs introducing their own video service and giving it priority over Youtube traffic.
Why don't you stop wasting our time until this actually happens...
No time to address the whole post, but this got me as I actually live in Canada. And yes, rich people here go to the US because they can jump the queue, just as rich people can anywhere.
Tell me, where do poor and middle-class Americans without coverage go again? Can they go to Canada?
--srj/mmv
What newspapers are you reading? The ones I've read say that the Dems want to keep the present tax structure for singles making less than $200k/yr or couples making <$250k/yr while raising folks with earnings above those levels' taxes to pre-Bush levels. Yours will remain the same, just like mine.
My problem with it is that a person who works for $75k/yr pays higher taxes than someone who "earns" $75k/yr playing the stock market. You pay income tax, he pays capital gains tax, and capital gains tax is lower than income tax.
Thank you, Ronnie, for making me pay more in tax than the rich bastards who got my hours cut because of the takeover orgy your capital gains cuts engendered.
Free Martian Whores!
Republicans-Fuck you over directly. Sell your ass to the corporations and then let the Jesus freaks tell you what you can do with it.
Democrats-Pretend that they're going to do something helpful. Roll over and die or, at best, start prevaricating at the slightest hint of an opportunity to actually do so.
Turns out that when it costs millions upon millions of dollars to get elected to any position that's even moderately important and everyone is sponsored by the same corporations that the only differences in policy will come down into what demographic a given party has tricked into giving a shit about them (and even then only insofar as it doesn't cut into anyone's profits). Wouldn't want to put a stop to the -bribes- campaign donations after all...
If you are making more than $70,000 year in the US you are making well above the median income. The median individual income in the US is a bout $26,000 (http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/perinc/new02_001.htm).
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Which is the situation that the US is in thanks to decades of financial mismanagement. At some point this country needs to have a grown-up discussion of taxation and how the public intends to pay for the lifestyle that it enjoys. Sooner or later taxes are going to have to go up or our standard of living is going to go down.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
At some point this country needs to have a grown-up discussion of taxation and how the public intends to pay for the lifestyle that it enjoys.
It makes sense, but it has to come from both directions. As it is, it's both citizens dismissing any new tax outright, but it's also politicians proposing new taxes on anything and everything to pay for their pet projects that aren't all that useful on the grand scale. Given the prevalence of the latter, it is clear where the former attitude comes from - if 90% of all new tax proposals are nonsensical, people will just dismiss all of them out of hand.
The democrats, with a clear majority in both houses and the presidency don't shelve anything because of "republican opposition". They can ram anything through that they want right now.
I suspect the internet will replace cable and we'll all be paying for web access just like we pay for cable now. The only thing free will be personal blogs and company sales outlets.