House Votes To Overturn FCC On Net Neutrality

suraj.sun writes with this quote from CNet: "House Republicans voted unanimously today to block controversial Net neutrality regulations from taking effect, a move that is likely to invite a confrontation with President Obama. By a vote of 241 to 178, the House of Representatives adopted a one-page resolution that says, simply, the regulations adopted by the Federal Communications Commission on December 21 'shall have no force or effect.' 'Congress did not authorize the FCC to regulate in this area,' Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.), said during this morning's floor debate. 'We must reject any rules that it promulgates in this area... It is Congress' responsibility to delegate that authority.'"

Comments

No Force or Effect

[Sonny Yatsen]

It's a good thing, then, that a House Resolution, by itself, also has "no force or effect". It seems our current House of Representatives thinks that it is good to waste time and money passing House Resolutions defunding or outlawing everything that they don't like, all the while knowing that each resolution they pass has no chance to get past the Senate or the President. Why are they wasting time with this? Isn't there a governmental shutdown deadline this Friday? Shouldn't they be working on the budget instead of killing time with small-fry legislation that goes nowhere?

Re:No Force or Effect

[Presto Vivace]

It may not have any force or effect; but it is still a very bad sign.

Re:No Force or Effect

[countertrolling]

...everyone should be coming together to support the Rule of Law.

That will require a complete purge of the entire system and starting over. I'm game for that. Otherwise we're in for a bureaucracy that would make India blush, and maybe envious.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

"Obama's thugs"

Yeah, you're not objective at all. Next time say that in the very beginning so we know to write you off as a partisan nitwit.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Danse]

Forget the pros and cons of network neutrality, everyone should be coming together to support the Rule of Law. If you want the laws changed bug your Congresscritter.

I guess it's kind of sad that I read that last sentence as "If you want the laws changed buy your Congresscritter", and it actually made more sense that way.

I don't see this getting past the Senate, so it's probably not much of an issue right now. They do have a lot more important things to worry about. What really annoys me is that for all the Constitution-thumping that the Tea Partiers do, they don't seem to understand that the minority doesn't get to just come in and scream and yell about stuff and then make whatever laws they want.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

It seems our current House of Representatives thinks that it is good to waste time and money passing House Resolutions defunding or outlawing everything that they don't like, all the while knowing that each resolution they pass has no chance to get past the Senate or the President.

Get this: it is now being reported that the most recent "compromise" offered by the House Republicans on the budget is if the Dems agree to an additional $13billion in budget cuts (above the $33 billion already agreed to which was their last demand) and if they agree to provision to the budget bill that will outlaw the use of federal funds for abortion even though it is already federal law that funds cannot be used for abortion, then they will go for that compromise.

It's a hostage situation where the ransom demands keep going up. And "abortion"? Really? I thought this was a "budgetary crisis". Why are they demanding this provision (which is already the law) unless the whole thing is just theater?

Next, they will demand that there be a special provision which makes it illegal to be President if you're black and all muslims required to eat pork chops.

I'm really glad the voters are getting a chance to see this play out. Yeah, most of them are oblivious, but between this "budget battle" and the terms of the new Ryan budget, we're getting a rare opportunity to see the GOP dropping pretense. A rare exposition of the stark difference.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Wyatt Earp]

The Tea Baggers only make up 20 members of the House, so this resolution was supported even by moderate Republicans too.

Re:No Force or Effect

[gewalker]

So, it is magically OK for the FCC to issue regulations for which it has no congressional authority to act? I don't care whether net neutrality is in fact a good idea or not, I don't like unconstitutional power grabs by federal bureaucrats. I think the EPA deserves a rejection of their carbon rules on the same basis.

If congress wants to out-source the research needed to craft a useful and proper bill, they can do that and then take a stand (right on wrong) when they enact the corresponding law, but they should not escape the responsibility for actually making the decisions as to what will become law.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Sonny Yatsen]

The House Republicans kept none of their campaign promises, really. They promised to "repeal and replace" the Healthcare reform bill. The only thing they've managed to do is vote to defund portions of it, which isn't a repeal at all. A repeal requires the Senate and and the President to sign on board, which Congressional Republicans haven't managed to even come close to achieving. Secondly, they've failed to "replace" the Healthcare reform bill with their own reform bill, because there is no replacement bill proposed by the House thus far. Remember, the promise is to "repeal and replace", not "make an attempt at repeal and replace".

Oh, and their other major campaign promise of cutting $100 billion for fiscal year 2011? Yeah, that looks like it's going nowhere as well. Right now, the House Republicans are playing the "lower your expectations game" with their base right now.

Thirdly, laws must be made by the House and Senate - so that the House and Senate must work together and compromise in order to get a law passed. Just because the House passed a budget doesn't mean their role is over and it's completely up to the Senate. Both houses still need to negotiate on the total number of budget cuts to be done, which is what is being done right now, although all indicators point to stalemate.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

Got damn. When I get all worked up I always forget to close my tags.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Locke2005]

Right. That's why Clinton left office with a huge surplus, while G. W. Bush managed to leave office with the largest deficit in history only 8 years later. Way to go with that "responsible parenting" thing, Repubs! Invading another country for no rational reason is something every responsible parent does! Oh, and that TARP bailout -- still trying to blame that on the Democrats, are we?

Re:No Force or Effect

[thaylin]

You do realize in order to repeal a law they have to actually get it past both, and the president, or overrule the president.. Trying and getting kicked in the face does not constitute an actual repeal, it is nothing more then an attempt at a repeal.

Re:No Force or Effect

[jmorris42]

> Currently the democrats control the senate, they're not going to vote for this.

Don't bet on it. When Network Neutrality was attempted the legal way both houses of Congress were in Democratic hands. Didn't pass. And I don't think you can filibuster one of these bills which assert Congressional oversight on the rulemakings of the Executive branch agencies.

Re:No Force or Effect

[DJRumpy]

Only if the Republican party gains more power in the next election. They currently hold a third of the cards, not the whole deck. I agree it's a bad sign but expected. The republican party has always looked out for business interests and this is no exception.

I'm just surprised that they got 10 Democrats to vote with them. That's just as troubling.

Also, wasn't the FCC key in getting the special treatment these broadband companies now enjoy?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20004392-266.html?tag=mncol;txt

Re:No Force or Effect

[Locke2005]

They are pandering to their base of ill-informed extreme right wingnuts. It doesn't matter that they know it will never become law as long as they can tell the Koch brothers, "See, we did what you told us to!"

Re:No Force or Effect

[Nethemas the Great]

The scary part isn't so much the irresponsibility of radicals in the house. I'm certain many are pandering for the Nov. 2012 elections. Either way they have the senate to moderate legislation. However, looking down the road a bit further it scares the hell out of me to consider the strong possibility that many of them will go on to become the next generation of senators.

Re:No Force or Effect

[ackthpt]

The Tea Baggers only make up 20 members of the House, so this resolution was supported even by moderate Republicans too.

How many Moderates do you think are left in the Republican Party in the House or Senate? These flame-brain "conservative" radio commentators and bloggers, who are playing an influential role, are helping the Republican Party move further to the Right all the time. Fascism can't be far off - in some instances it has already reared its ugly head.

Re:No Force or Effect

[thaylin]

Wait so the FCCs job is not to regulate communications, and the EPAs job is not to protect the enviroment? Then what are they for?

Re:No Force or Effect

[stinerman]

Well...that's kind of what happens. The Hyde Amendment is put in just about every appropriations bill, but Republicans still demand each individual law have anti-abortion language in it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next appropriations bill for highway funding has some anti-abortion language in it.

It's all a racket to get votes. If you really believe that life begins at conception (which is a rational view to have), then you have to believe that any abortion is murder and the abortion provider along with his staff and the mother should all be arrested for 1st degree murder and conspiracy to commit 1st degree murder. Abortions performed to save the mother's life should still go to court so that the mother can plead self defense. You can't just take the mother or doctor's word for it. They might be secret libruls who like to kill babies.

You won't get but 10% of the country to believe that, but that's what you have to believe to be consistent.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Nethemas the Great]

Isn't it great when you can act without thinking and blame someone else for the results..?

Re:No Force or Effect

[dch24]

Hate to break it to you, but the entire congress, all parties, are in on the power grab and race to the bottom.

I don't think Congress should have the power to play favorites with the internet at all. To paraphrase: the internet sees meddling as damage and routes around it.

Re:No Force or Effect

[proverbialcow]

Why are they wasting time with this? Isn't there a governmental shutdown deadline this Friday? Shouldn't they be working on the budget instead of killing time with small-fry legislation that goes nowhere?

Because, along with a $6 trillion package of budget cuts, they're forcing the President and the Senate's hand to block them. Then, when they don't get exactly what they want, they can go back to their bat-shit-crazy core constituency and claim that the "liberal menace" is preventing any substantive change in the way the government operates.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no more moderate republicans. The ones you could consider Moderate have been marginalized, thrown under the bus, or left the party in disgust.
Were you paying attention during the last election? Moderates found themselves with new, and aggressively funded ultra-conservative opponents thanks to the effective uncapping of campaign contribution limits.

The party has been purged. All that remains are yes men.

*Preemptive response - No, the Democrats don't do it too you fake grassroots shill.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Wyatt Earp]

Yes, I was paying attention, my Representative, Don Young, won without a problem.

And he is a moderate Republican, as am I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Young#Political_positions

Re:No Force or Effect

[BudAaron]

This drives me absolutely nuts! my email is budchief at gmail.com and I want someone to define the term "net neutrality" for me. It reminds me of Shawshank Redemption when the old con says "I have no idea what you mean by rehabilitated..." Just like rehabilitated I have NEVER had an adequate definition of net neutrality. It's just a made up word!

Re:No Force or Effect

[Snarky McButtface]

The EPA does have the authority to regulate carbon emmisions. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/americas/03iht-scotus.1.5124385.html

Re:No Force or Effect

[fermion]

The D's tried to build a responsible budget. A budget requires two things: Income and expenditure. From 1990-200 these two things were relatively balanced. Bush, Sr rejected the devastating parts of Reagan's tax cuts allowing Clinton and the republican congress to develop an economic plan that lead to a period of prosperity and growth. However, Bush/Cheney implemented even more devastating tax cuts with massive increase in the budget. NCLB cost untold additional billions in local taxes, and expanded the department education to the bloated level it is now, with a budget, at time, double what it was under Clinton. The unfunded war effort, which could have been paid for with increase gas taxes or reduction in other military spending, remains 100% deficit funded. Department of homeland security, which again expanded government, just like department of education, eats an additional 50 Billion a year, or half a trillion since it's inception as a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable. And let's talk about social programs. Medicare part D, which allows pharmcos to charge excessive prices for drugs because who cares when the government pays, costs 40 billion a year, or half a trillion over 10 years. As we say, a half trillion here, a half triliion there, and pretty soon we are talking about big money.

So what is the solution to the runaway budget and big government. A simpler tax system in which the rich pay a little more, the middle class pays a little less, and even the poor pay a little more. A country can't run when half of it's wealth is concentrated in a small minority of the people, especially when the minority refuses to capitalize. Microcredit is not efficient, we need real banks. Cut the size of government. Bring DOE back levels when it advised local education, not mandated what states were allowed to do, in clear violation of the constitution. Get rid of Homeland Security. The US is not a socialist country, and should not have socialist institutions. Cut military spending. If the military admits to wasting $178 billion, cut 300 billion. These things in itself will reduce the size of government and save at least $500 billion, 5X the amount that the coward tea party says they want. Cowards because they will cut Obama programs, not Bush programs.

As an additional measure, one that with small tax increases and a some other cuts can save us a trillion dollars a year in federal budget, cut the funding to states. Limit additional funding to 5% of revenue from the state. There is no reason why states like ID, MT, ND, SD and Alaska should be allowed to rob the federal purse while honest states like NY, TX, and CA suffer. If a state can't live within it's means, then let the local population solve that problem. It should not be up to the federal government to support incompetent local government.

Of course since this has nothing to do with responsible government, and everything to do with panicking white people realizing they are losing their gravy train, none of these things are going to happen. All we will hear about is how great Bonercare is going to be, and how awful affordable health care is, and at the end of the day we will have 30 billion cut from the budget not by any real change, but by accounting tricks.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Wyatt Earp]

The fact remains that the Tea Baggers only account for 17 members of the House, 20 was my mistake, with only 12-13 of them caucusing with the Tea Party and 10 members of the Senate. Thats 27 out of 535 members.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tea_Party_politicians

The House and Senate Republicans are not controlled by the Tea Party Movement.

Re:No Force or Effect

[DJRumpy]

I find it interesting that any mention of 'Republican' is immediately getting modded as troll or flamebait when the article itself points out the fact that this is driven by the Republican party. This only had 10 votes from the Democratic party. Just because you don't like the facts (and they are facts), doesn't make it trolling or flamebait.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Anthony Mouse]

Then the FCC tried to do it anyway and the courts shot them down on the grounds they lacked authority without a law from Congress. So Omaba's thugs just ignored all that and did it yet again.

I don't know if that's really accurate. I mean think about: Why does the FCC exist, if not to regulate telecommunications companies? Moreover, if the FCC isn't the right agency to regulate them then which is? Or should we just have telecommunications companies sprawling corrupt empires across the land with monopoly profits, like the robber barons of old?

The real problem is that the FCC is too deferential to the telcos. They're allowed to regulate them both as telecommunications providers and as information service providers, but they have a lot less authority over information service providers. Which is why Bush reclassified them as information service providers -- because they paid him good money to do it. But there is nothing stopping Obama from regulating them as telecommunications providers instead.

I kind of get the impression that the Democrats want to keep them as information service providers because it's a much broader category (it includes Microsoft, Facebook, etc. as well as the ISPs) and if they can get some history of being able to regulate "information service providers" then they can sink their hooks into those companies too. Which is totally stupid. They need to just reclassify the ISPs as telecommunications providers and get back to doing what they were created to do -- regulating AT&T.

Re:No Force or Effect

[sumdumass]

"Obama's thugs" took nothing away from the intellectual points he made.

While the statement was presented in a confrontational biased light, it still remains factual and correct. Please do not dismiss facts because you don't like who they hurt or how they were mentioned.

Re:No Force or Effect

[sumdumass]

It should be unanimous in the senate too.

The issue is not one of right or wrong with regard to net neutrality here. It's not about protecting the consumer or corporation in the politicians eyes.

It's about a constitutional power given to congress specifically being usurped by the executive and the one thing that congress usually unites on no matter what's at stake, is the retention of their powers.

This really is something that congress will unite on because the underlying fact is not what's trying to be accomplished, but the process that it's being done in.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Antisyzygy]

It still is a great indication of whose interests the majority of the House representative actually serves. Corporations.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Grishnakh]

It seems our current House of Representatives thinks that it is good to waste time and money passing House Resolutions defunding or outlawing everything that they don't like, all the while knowing that each resolution they pass has no chance to get past the Senate or the President. Why are they wasting time with this? Isn't there a governmental shutdown deadline this Friday? Shouldn't they be working on the budget instead of killing time with small-fry legislation that goes nowhere?

No, it's more important to do things that look good, while not really changing or improving anything. That's how politicians show their constituents that they're doing something. Obama's a master of this: just look at all his campaign promises that he's broken or succeeded in. The ones he's succeeded with are small-fry stuff that doesn't really affect many people, while all the ones he's broken are the big things (like oh, shutting down Gitmo, getting out of the expensive and useless wars in a timely manner, etc.). It isn't just the Republicans currently in the House that do this, it's ALL politicians. What's funny about Obama is that his supporters will vigorously defend him and his spinelessness and inaction, usually blaming it on the Republicans (even though they were a minority in Congress for two years, during which time the Democrats should have reasonably been able to get through anything they wanted). I'm sure the Republican voters will do the same for these do-nothings in the House right now.

Meanwhile, while the politicians "fight" over small-fry, inconsequential stuff, the deficit goes further and further out of control, while we continue to waste trillions of dollars on useless wars on the opposite side of the planet, bloated and ineffective social programs that pay people to not work and have lots of kids out of wedlock, hand-outs to giant corporations, and a gigantic "war on drugs" that's repeating all the same mistakes as the first Prohibition including making us #1 in per-capita incarceration, which again is highly beneficial to corporations.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Goody]

Wrong. There's no place for that term in political debate or intelligent discourse. Thugs threaten bodily harm and the characterization is totally repugnant. It pretty much invalidates whatever else he has to say. It's high time more people called out these perverse misrepresentations and fallacies that everyone loves to throw out to infuriate and scare people in American politics.

Re:No Force or Effect

[DJRumpy]

It didn't pass because the Democrats never had a super majority in the Senate. That requires 60 votes and the Dems only had 58 at their highest. It would have required complete unison for every Democratic senator (something that rarely happens) in addition to getting the two independents to vote for it as well. Get 1 squeamish senator and the deal fails.

That doesn't make the reverse true either. The Republicans don't have anywhere near enough support to pass this in the senate at the moment and they definitely do not have enough to get the 2/3'rds required to override a Presidential Veto.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Antisyzygy]

Well, when the government runs out of money it will be interesting to see what happens. Maybe we will get real volunteer politicians in office that actually give a damn about anything other than ways they can screw the average American for their own benefit.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Wyatt Earp]

I never argued that it wasn't the Republicans, I am however arguing the points that all Republicans are Teabaggers, the Teabaggers did this and there are no moderate Republicans left.

Re:No Force or Effect

[AlamedaStone]

Next, they will demand that there be a special provision which makes it illegal to be President if you're black and all muslims required to eat pork chops.

I think facetious and unwarranted accusations of racism ought to be condemned just as harshly as racism itself. Despicable.

Racism has been a powerful tool for Republicans for ... well, ever. Or anyway, at least through the 20th century. Obama birthers are frothing at the mouth based on race, and another fantastic example is immigration debate. I mean, let's be real here: many Americans are pretty effing racist, and Republicans have shown themselves perfectly willing to manipulate their base using any tool available, irrespective of ethical concerns.

Re:No Force or Effect

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

If only more people analyzed issues from that angle. From Supreme Court judges down to regulatory bureaucrats, too many people are more interested in figuring out whether they're "for the little guy" than in whether they will carry out their functions according to the laws society has put in place. The rule of law is foundational to our freedoms -- it's based on the notion that no official is above the rules, and it's erosion isn't doing the little guy any favors in the long run.

Re:No Force or Effect

[AlamedaStone]

The EPA does have the authority to regulate carbon emmisions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/americas/03iht-scotus.1.5124385.html

Quoting relevant passage:

"In one of its most important environmental decisions in years, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 on Monday that the agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions.

The court further ruled that the agency could not sidestep its authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change unless it could provide a scientific basis for its refusal."

Re:No Force or Effect

[Grishnakh]

How many Moderates do you think are left in the Republican Party in the House or Senate?

This should read: "How many Moderates do you think are left in the House or Senate?"

Fascism can't be far off - in some instances it has already reared its ugly head.

I hate to burst your bubble, but we're already a full-blown Fascist nation.

Re:No Force or Effect

[gtbritishskull]

I know you're a troll but I will reply to you anyway...

Libya is about oil? Ghadaffi had no problem selling us oil. I see no way we benefit in the short term from supporting Libya. The long term benefit being that they become a democratic country.

The healthcare bill is terrible. I supported it because it is better than what we had, but I welcome improvements to it. Republicans had all whole year of dragging out the healthcare bill debate to figure out what they wanted to do. So, where are their ideas. I will not support a repeal until I see what they want to replace it with. But you will never see it repealed because they have no idea what to replace it with. That was just them lying to you so you would support the repeal.

Re:No Force or Effect

[gtbritishskull]

The Republicans have done nothing of worth since they were elected besides cut a couple of tenths of a percent from the budget. And in response all you can do is talk about the Democrats. If you want me to argue how the Democrats did NOT go back on all of their campaign promises then I will. But I just want to point out that the fact that you are trying to shift the conversation away from the original debate shows that you know you will lose it.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Grishnakh]

Wrong. You're only looking at particular issues that the Dems have selected to pander to certain groups of voters on, so that they can get elected. The Republicans do the same thing: guns, anti-abortion, lower taxes, etc. Did you see any lower taxes for regular people during the Republicans' reign in 00-06? Nope. Did you see any pro-gun legislation during that time? Nope. In fact, Obama has been more gun-friendly than Bush, as under Obama, you're now allowed to carry a gun with you in National Parks in case you need to defend yourself (from either cartel members or wild animals) and would prefer not to wait a day or two for a Park Ranger to come help you. Did you see any more anti-abortion laws during the Republicans' reign? Again, nope. There were, however, two very expensive wars, which caused giant piles of money to be transferred from the Treasury to defense corporations.

Did you not notice that Obama has appointed lots of people from the RIAA and MPAA to high posts in his administration? You don't call that "pro business"?

And historically pro civil rights? What are you smoking? 50+ years ago, it was the Democrats who were supporters of the KKK.

The whole thing is a farce. Both parties are pro business, they only differ on which businesses they've sold out to.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Mitsoid]

I love politics, it brings out stupidity on both sides

yes, the republicans are 100% in agreement with their stance.... so are democrats... WORK IT OUT, instead of accusing each other of being idiots or uncooperative. As an independent I ignore most politics in congress because neither side views independent voters as people anyway (when it's not an election year)... All I see from here is both sides bickering over a few million dollars when last year congress approved over $40 billion in earmarks... Great, issue one less earmark on the next bill and this budget crisis is solved keeping all currently passed laws valid and funded...

Stop holding citizens in fear (terror), to promote either sides religious, political or ideological goal.... and deliberately target or disregard the safety of civilians unless your sides demands are met (Sorry for the paraphrased plagarism, public editors on Wikipedia)

Pass a budget now.... Then later chip away at the costs/budget going forward by passing laws to remove laws or costs from the budget. Not by financially starving a passed law you don't agree with (in 2-4-6 years, it's going to be reversed, and they'll get payback.... This does not help out country any at all as we're now risking millions of peoples jobs for a political agenda by one party or the other (Remember, I'm independent, I see both parties pull this stunt)

I suspect a shutdown would actually lead to what I am saying they should do anyway.. If one in 5 federal workers risked not getting a paycheck (80% of the government does not get "shut down" in a "shut down" anyway), they would want their party to compromise. Right now there's not enough of it

Re:No Force or Effect

[sumdumass]

I didn't say the term was valid. I said the term did not invalidate anything said.

Please read what was said and not what you want to think was said because a term offended you. Again, I did not say the term or valid, I said the use of it did not invalidate it. I also said do not ignore the facts because you got offended but I guess that was hoping for too much.

Re:No Force or Effect

[TheEyes]

It's about a constitutional power given to congress specifically being usurped by the executive and the one thing that congress usually unites on no matter what's at stake, is the retention of their powers.

Congress created the FCC in order to regulate telecommunications which cross state lines, which does in fact include the internet. Under the Bush administration, the FCC moved to reclassify ISPs as largely unregulated companies, because the Bush administration loved its AT&T campaign contributions and wanted more.

The Obama campaign, however, was paid for far more by small donors (read: not corporations), so he is much less beholden to them (even if he does seem to have a love affair with the banking sector, mostly due to Goldman Sachs being his second-biggest donor). This is why he is willing to go to bat for the people more often, like trying to extend First Amendment protections to the Internet, than Bush was.

Republicans, of course, are not funded by the people, and so they have no interest in what is best for the country. Their funding comes from large, multinational corporations, so they will do what is best for those corporations and assist them in squeezing money from US pockets via tax breaks for the wealthy and deregulation of large corporations, and funneling the profit overseas via "free trade" agreements with countries with nothing to offer but cheap labor, like China.

Re:No Force or Effect

[chartreuse]

If a "moderate" Republican wants to spend $223 million on a quarter-mile "bridge to nowhere" then "moderate" has no meaning.

And there's still the mystery of why he inserted an earmark for a contributor in Florida after the bill involved had passed the House and Senate. That bit of extra-Constitutional law-jiggering was hardly the act of a moderate, Republican or not.

Re:No Force or Effect

[ravenshrike]

Unless you define regular people to exclude anyone who pays income tax then then answer is yes, taxes were lowered. Not by a static amount, but as a percentage of what you paid.

Re:No Force or Effect

[ravenshrike]

Obama's cronies treatment of FOIA requests is much, much more ugly and thuglike than Bush's cronies.

Re:No Force or Effect

[spauldo]

And historically pro civil rights? What are you smoking? 50+ years ago, it was the Democrats who were supporters of the KKK.

That was a long, long, time ago. The Democratic party split up over this issue, which is why states that were largely Democratic since the Civil War (i.e. the south) are now all Republican.

Look up the term "Dixiecrat" sometime if you want the full scoop, but basically, Pres. Truman announced that the Democratic party was going to push for civil rights, and that started a whole mess that ended up with the south going Republican and the urban centers going Democrat.

Ask your friendly local KKK representative which way he votes. I bet it ain't Democrat.

Re:No Force or Effect

[ArcherB]

The fact is that Republicans always look out for business interests over the people's interests, no matter what

BZZZZT!!! Wrong.

Since you said always, I only need one single example of Republicans looking out for the people over business to prove you wrong.

Planned parenthood.

There are others, but I only needed one. So, it appears that the Democrats and Republicans are both equal on this. They both look out for business sometimes, and sometimes they don't.

Sorry to bust your bubble there, Doc, but absolutes really piss me off and show that you ALWAYS side against the party you throw the absolutes at.

Re:No Force or Effect

[sznupi]

The US is not a socialist country, and should not have socialist institutions

It's not socialism when red scared people like the perks or are told to support it.

(and adding to your closing part: of course the whole mess is also generally reminiscent of large parts of population which can't live within their means, with balanced personal budgets. And since govs are largely a reflection of their societies...)

Re:No Force or Effect

[ArcherB]

"Obama's thugs"

Yeah, you're not objective at all. Next time say that in the very beginning so we know to write you off as a partisan nitwit.

You are correct. The correct terms are Pelosi Hippies and Reid's Rebels. Shame Howard Dean isn't bigger or we could call them Dean's Dumbasses.

Re:No Force or Effect

[ArcherB]

The Tea Baggers only make up 20 members of the House, so this resolution was supported even by moderate Republicans too.

I didn't know we had that many homosexuals in the House. More power to them.

Oh! You meant Tea Partiers. I see what you did there. You used a gay sex act as an insult to show that you are bigoted against gays and conservatives.

In that case, don't forget the 10 Democrats that voted for it. I guess it's true when the Tea Party says their members include D's, R's and I's. Who knew that smaller government, lower taxes and states rights would resonate with so many people? I guess that whole "Constitution thing" is finally starting to gain traction.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Chardansearavitriol]

So, just curious, did you know that Allah is simply a translation of "God"? That its the abrahamic god? That they worship jesus as a prophet. Im curious because it seems odd to completely miss the point of that episode (Free speech, not anti muslim idiocy.) So really, youre just a whining crybaby who has no idea how even the most important thing in his life, your imaginary crusade, works. You call them monsters. How many children you stone to death today, with your awful evil bible, telling you to kill women, kill children, take slaves, cut off penises, destroy nations...? More than youd know, doesnt matter if you didnt pick up the damned rock. So why not crawl back under it with your repressive, hateful and completely stupid interpretation of US law? You dont seem to understand how anything works, and in a good world, you'd have starved years ago. Thats all the proof i need to see your god is false: Monsters and Idiots like you exist.

Re:No Force or Effect

[compro01]

Basic definition: All userspace data transfer shall be given equal priority, regardless of source, destination, or content.

But then you need to add in real world factors such as spam, DDOS attacks, latency-sensitive traffic (VOIP, etc.), etc. then it gets complex and debated.

Re:No Force or Effect

[jrroche]

Sorry, care to explain how defunding planned parenthood counts as "looking out for people instead of businesses"? I mean I guess it's neutral to businesses and hurts many, many people, so you could say the Republicans are focusing more on people in that sense.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Grishnakh]

This is all correct, but I was responding to the OP who said, "the Democratic party has historically been ... Pro Civil Rights". Your post directly refutes that. The only thing wrong with your post is the "long, long, time ago" bit. 50-60 years isn't that long, especially when you throw around terms like "historically".

Re:No Force or Effect

[jrroche]

Well, when the government runs out of money it will be interesting to see what happens.

Yes, because that would mean the government has been fundamentally restructured. The government is not a household. It cannot "run out of money," any more than you can run out numbers in a computer. People who don't have the vaguest idea how the federal government works or how it is funded really shouldn't complain about either.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

The ruthless people, not the "best" ones, generally win most with revolutions.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The civil rights act of 1964 was passed primarily due to Republican support, over strenuous objections of Democrats.

That's a misleading half truth - ain't no "primarily" about it. In the house, 152 Democrats and 138 Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the Senate 44 Democrats and 27 Republicans voted to end the filibuster against the bill. Furthermore, votes were mostly correlated with region, not party with southern members of both parties voting against the bill and northern members of both parties voting for the bill.

However, the act was a turning point for both parties with many of those who did vote against it migrating to the Republican party and essentially chasing out the liberal faction. Afterwards Nixon adopted the "Southern Strategy" of race-baiting that has lasted in some form or another ever since.

Essentially any significant republican support for civil rights ended with that vote - most of the people who supported the act ended up being chased out of the republican party and bolstering the democratic party instead. That sequence of events does paint a pretty picture for republican party support of civil rights.

Re:No Force or Effect

[lostros]

so a pretty small point to nitpick, but Obama's approval rate is 51% by the most recent poll. So clearly the public does seem to be at least one bit happy about it.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

The civil rights act of 1964 was passed primarily due to Republican support, over strenuous objections of Democrats

You're talking almost half a century ago.

There certainly were a lot of Southern racists in the Democratic Party back then, but over that time they have abandoned the Democrats. Any that still might be around certainly left in 2008 when a black man became the head of the Democratic Party. Tell me, what self-respecting (sic) racist would be a member of a party that had a black man at the top?

And where do you think all the racists that left the Democratic Party went? Do you think they all moved to Montana to live in the back woods on armed compounds? No sir, the majority of them became Republicans. If you can come up with any other explanation for where the racists who left the Democratic Party went, I'd love to hear it.

Here's a quiz: There were 400+ Republican candidates for national office in 2010. How many of them do you think were black? If they're not the party of white people, then where are all the people of color?

Re:No Force or Effect

[spauldo]

And I'm willing to bet that if he were alive today, your friendly local KKK representative wouldn't vote for him.

One guy does not a political party make, and Byrd seemed to have changed his ways before the end anyway.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Antisyzygy]

The government is funded by our tax dollars and debt. Fundamentally they should have bank accounts, investments, etc. that store tax income and are then appropriate it however they see fit be it in the future, now, etc. If they take out debts, these debts probably have some repayment schedule and this is factored in. If they run out of finances, they will either A) Increase taxes B) Borrow more or C) Print money all of which must be accounted for in the future to avoid catastrophic failure.

I don't know what you mean about computers running out of numbers. They can easily run out of memory, which stores numbers in binary format, and they also have a limited precision of number they can use for calculation at each clock cycle. Fundamental CS deals with something called truncation and truncation error both of which are a result of the finite capacity of a machine to store numbers.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Archangel Michael]

Lining the pockets of political contributors. Duh.

Re:No Force or Effect

[spauldo]

Few Democrats who serve today were serving in office at the same time as Truman or the Dixiecrats. The politics of our nation change as old people die or leave office and take their ideas with them. So historically, yes, your statement is true - but it's irrelevant to the current party or the conversation. If you want to know what a party stands for, you only need look back about twenty or thirty years at the most. That's what the OP was referring to when he said "historically".

Re:No Force or Effect

[sznupi]

Such theater is generally one hell of a useful and "valued" social skill. No wonder its reflected in political life...

(plus: personal deficits of many people are out of control; virtually everybody thinks they're "good", while at the same time likely to make an opposite assumption about "weird" & lesser people (related also to incarceration); most people like perks... and an engineer or worker whining about gov waste would still, when supplying any public-funded project, claim that their services are obviously essential and the price fair (likewise with always honorable military family members, nvm myths they killed for and still believe in... frighteningly large % still thinks Iraq had anything to do with 9/11); people are generally convinced jails are not a problem which can happen to them, and have a need to believe that those who get in are "bad"; you get the picture...)

Re:No Force or Effect

[517714]

No, it is only 47%, but 40% strongly disapprove of his performance and only 24% strongly approve.

Re:No Force or Effect

[sznupi]

what self-respecting (sic) racist would be a member of a party that had a black man at the top?

A black supremacy one?

(maybe some ended as stalinist libertarians, economic means of suppression are as good as any other)

Re:No Force or Effect

[sumdumass]

Unfortunately, the courts do not agree with you. It specifically said that congress did not give the FCC authority over the internet in the way that net neutrality is concerned. Don't confuse a life guard who has authority over a pool areas with the cops who have authority over the city or county. They are not the same.

The rest of your ramblings are insignificant. Who cares who paid or funded by who in this situation. Take your partisan tripe off to wonderland with the rest of your ideal as they don't belong mixed in the the real facts of the situation. The ruling said congress did not give the FCC the power it claimed to have when it made it's ruling against ComCast. That means the FCC needs to ask congress for the power, not try and change a few things and bypass congress altogether in an attempt to grab a power that courts already said the government agency did not have.

This is not about whether you support Net Neutrality or not, whether your a democrat or republican or not, it has to do with an agency of government being told it did not have the power it was projecting, then instead of getting congress to grant it the power, decided to usurp the process altogether. That is not anything you should want any government agency doing at all. It makes about as much sense as the ATF deciding your in violation of a rule because you don't own a gun when they have no power to make that rule.

Re:No Force or Effect

[sznupi]

No, you have it wrong, the true & wonderful life begins only after death! Hm, what would that make abortions... (of course, you'd need somebody to do them & willing for real self-sacrifice of eternal damnation ...the ultimate martyr?!)

And seriously, not far from half of conceptions ends with early natural abortion, woman typically not realizing it. Is that some manslaughter? Even better - at early stages, the mother and embryo essentially fight hormonal war...

Re:No Force or Effect

[Lord Kano]

One guy does not a political party make, and Byrd seemed to have changed his ways before the end anyway.

He quit saying nigger in public, otherwise he was the same piece of shit until the day he died.

LK

Re:No Force or Effect

[CrimsonAvenger]

if they agree to provision to the budget bill that will outlaw the use of federal funds for abortion even though it is already federal law that funds cannot be used for abortion

So? What's the problem here? If it's already illegal, adding a line to the budget making it illegal is meaningless.

Seems to me that if the Dems don't want to add one meaningless line to the budget bill, that they might be of the opinion that the line isn't quite as meaningless as it seems.

Note, by the way, that even if the line were put into the bill, and it became law of the land, it could be overridden by any subsequent bill that included a line saying the opposite. It's not like laws can't be changed from one year to the next. Or one day to the next....

Re:No Force or Effect

[ArcherB]

Sorry, care to explain how defunding planned parenthood counts as "looking out for people instead of businesses"? I mean I guess it's neutral to businesses and hurts many, many people, so you could say the Republicans are focusing more on people in that sense.

Sorry. I was considering unborn children as being people. If nothing else, you could consider the religious right people and since Planned Parenthood is a business, Republicans chose people over business.

Still, if that's not good enough, Republicans in my state are doing their best to block gambling here. Gambling is big business. Those that lose everything to the gambling business are people. (Personally, I'm a free will kinda guy. You lose it all at the casino, that's your problem)

Then many Republicans are against things like public transportation (usually run by or supported by big business), stupid carbon trading schemes (carbon traders are a business), and even against Obamacare, which according to every Democrat I've talked to, is adored by the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Any of these prove the point. Neither Republicans nor Democrats do anything ALWAYS, but partisan little bitches that can't see beyond their own the-other-team-is-always-wrong attitude will ALWAYS say that the side they don't agree with is ALWAYS wrong. We can call them the "extremists". This goes for both sides, btw.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

So? What's the problem here? If it's already illegal, adding a line to the budget making it illegal is meaningless.

"meaningless" is exactly right. So why is it a sticking point for Republicans if the "meaningless" line is not there? Since it's already the law, I mean.

Let's be honest: the whole thing is meaningless. It's a pissing contest. This thing would have been over a long time ago if the teabaggers weren't hell-bent on shutting down the government, not because it's helpful, but because they want to show that they're the alpha dogs in the GOP now.

Man, just wait 'til Tim Pawlenty is running for president and he has to try to balance talking to the hard-core teabaggers in code while making sure the rest of us don't pick up on it. It's going to be like 1996 all over again. Obama will walk to reelection. And instead of having a real discussion, we get teabagger theater like Paul Ryan's budget "proposal" to turn Medicare over to the insurance companies. Pass the popcorn.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

If you really believe that life begins at conception (which is a rational view to have)

"Life" begins long before conception. The question is, when is it a human being.

And as much as it may stick in the craw of the religious folk, choice is still a right.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

A black supremacy one?

Something interesting:

"Black supremacists" don't vote Democratic. "Black supremacists" hate Obama, as shown in the statement from that "New Black Panther" one-man organization that caused the Right to dive under their beds and cry for Justice Department protection.

Re:No Force or Effect

[flaming error]

The government is funded exclusively by debt.

Every dollar spent by the US government since 1913 was borrowed from a privately owned banking cartel that calls itself the "Federal Reserve."

"Our tax dollars" go back to that cartel as loan payments. The "deficit" is basically the amount we are behind on our payments.

Re:No Force or Effect

[zippthorne]

The FCC's job is to execute communications regulations, not to craft and enact them, except by providing expert advice to congress, which is supposed to have the sole authority to create laws. The FCC and EPA are both under the auspices of the executive branch.

Re:No Force or Effect

[dontbgay]

Forever might have been a strong term, but he's not far from the mark in recent times. I guess invalidating a whole argument based on a small inconsistency is rational though. One thing to think about: If the Republicans don't represent the racists, bigots, and xenophobes of the country; another group will.

Re:No Force or Effect

[im_thatoneguy]

And that was also back when Democrats had the redneck hill billy vote. Which as was famously quoted when the civil rights acts were passed (by a democrat) "We have lost the South for a generation". They lost it to the Republicans. The mantle was passed.

It worked out well though... now the "red states" are also the redneck states.

Re:No Force or Effect

[im_thatoneguy]

Yeah he's failed at the big things like Gitmo while only succeeding on the small fry stuff like Health Care Reform, Don't Ask Don't Tell...

Re:No Force or Effect

[im_thatoneguy]

The internet can route around meddling. My connection to the internet on the other hand is beholden to a single router at the ISP. I suppose I could route around it to my neighbor's connection.. but they also throttle the same routes so it would be exchanging one bad route for another.

The only way this wouldn't be a problem is if the entire internet was distributed and peer-to-peer from client to host.

Re:No Force or Effect

[LordKronos]

What's funny about Obama is that his supporters will vigorously defend him and his spinelessness and inaction, usually blaming it on the Republicans (even though they were a minority in Congress for two years, during which time the Democrats should have reasonably been able to get through anything they wanted).

Actually, while the Republicans were a minority for 2 years, it was really only the 2nd half of the first year when the democrats had free reign to do whatever they wanted. Though the republicans were a minority, they were determined to filibuster everything under the sun that came from the democrats (even when it was ideas that they were in favor of themselves just a few years earlier). The only way the democrats could overcome this was with 60 votes. Even including the 2 independents who caucused with the democrats, they didn't get 60 seats until Al Franken was declared the winner and sworn in on July 7. Then Kennedy died on August 25th. He was not replaced until Sept 24th, when a Democrat was temporarily put in his place, and he stayed there until Feb 4, when a republican was brought in as the permanent replacement.

So the democrats only had their 60 votes to overcome the filibuster from July 7 to Aug 25, and then from Sep 25 to Feb 4....less than 6 months total. And that was only if they could get unanimous support of all democrats and independents (which wasn't always the case).

Granted, I am disappointed with some of what Obama has (or rather, has not) done, but I think your 2 specific examples are particularly bad examples to choose. In the case of closing Gitmo, that couldn't be done unless they found somewhere else to house the prisoners, and everyone was all "not in MY neighborhood". Obama was kind of powerless there when no state would step up and take the prisoners. He didn't have the power to force it on anyone.

And as far as wars, I think he's done a pretty reasonable job backing out of Iraq as quickly and safely as possible (though I think his initial timetables were a bit shorter), and as far as Afghanistan, he never said he was going to get us out of that. He actually campaigned on INCREASING our involvement there, which is exactly what he's done. For some reason, people don't seem to remember this, and they always think he campaigned on ending that war.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Grishnakh]

Health Care Reform? You mean that giant giveaway to giant insurance companies that didn't actually decrease prices for anyone? I don't call that "success", unless you're in favor of fascism.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Grishnakh]

Obama was kind of powerless there when no state would step up and take the prisoners. He didn't have the power to force it on anyone.

What about Federal Penitentiaries? I didn't think those were under the control of the States. And of that doesn't work, then he can set them free. Remember that thing called the US Constitution? The part about being tried and convicted of a crime? Or the part about a speedy trial? Keeping people in an offshore prison indefinitely when they haven't even been convicted of anything is unconstitutional, period. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The President has sworn that he will uphold the Constitution, above all else. Keeping Gitmo open is directly against that, and in my opinion is an impeachable offense. It doesn't matter what Congress does, or what the States do. His job is to uphold the Constitution NO MATTER WHAT. If he has to unilaterally create his own law to do so, he can do that (after all, Bush did exactly that hundreds of times with his Signing Statements). Obama is derelict in his duty by not closing Gitmo, and is basically showing the world that we don't even obey our own laws when it's inconvenient, nor do we have any type of position of morality on anything, and we should never be trusted to do the right thing ever.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Danse]

This is not about whether you support Net Neutrality or not, whether your a democrat or republican or not, it has to do with an agency of government being told it did not have the power it was projecting, then instead of getting congress to grant it the power, decided to usurp the process altogether. That is not anything you should want any government agency doing at all. It makes about as much sense as the ATF deciding your in violation of a rule because you don't own a gun when they have no power to make that rule.

It's being told that by some, but it's disputed by others. Not sure how it will play out, but this is a dispute within Congress as to how much power they want the FCC to have, specifically on this issue. Very few of them actually give a damn about how NN will affect most people. They're more concerned with what their corporate sponsors want them to do about it.

Re:No Force or Effect

[TheEyes]

Unfortunately, the courts do not agree with you. It specifically said that congress did not give the FCC authority over the internet in the way that net neutrality is concerned. Don't confuse a life guard who has authority over a pool areas with the cops who have authority over the city or county. They are not the same.

But it does; it just didn't have the power under Title I, where the Bush FCC decided to place the ISPs. See, the FCC decided almost a decade ago that ISPs weren't Title II common carriers, like phones or mail carriers, which require a certain level of scrutiny to prevent the company from interfering with the communications of private individuals in violation of the First Amendment. They instead decided to regulate ISPs as Title I information providers, like a newspaper or a TV station, who are free to do whatever they want on "their" networks because they're not handling other people's communications so much as distributing information to people. In other words, the FCC decided that the Internet is not a network of people talking to each other, but rather a content distribution network where the ISP gives information to its customers.

Back in 2004 this was appealed, and it was ruled that the FCC can choose to do this (even if IMO it makes no sense), but that they were free to change their minds at any time. Now they have done so, and have decided to grant First Amendment protections to people who access the Internet through private networks (that is, everyone). This is what Republicans object to, because in their mind the FCC should keep thinking of ISPs as top-down information distribution nodes rather than neutral information carriers.

Re:No Force or Effect

[gregrah]

I disagree with most of your examples.

Sorry. I was considering unborn children as being people. If nothing else, you could consider the religious right people and since Planned Parenthood is a business, Republicans chose people over business.

Planned Parenthood is not a business - it's a non-governmental organization.

Republicans are against things like public transportation (usually run by or supported by big business)

Public transportation is government public spending, not private business.

stupid carbon trading schemes (carbon traders are a business)

Oil and coal companies, who are also against carbon trading schemes, represent a much bigger and more established business than "carbon traders".

and even against Obamacare, which according to every Democrat I've talked to, is adored by the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Insurance companies were vehemently opposed the new regulations imposed by healthcare reform bill because it makes it harder for them to cherry pick who they want to cover. Pharmaceutical companies were for the bill because they stand to profit handsomely from the increased number of insured Americans.

Any of these prove the point. Neither Republicans nor Democrats do anything ALWAYS, but partisan little bitches that can't see beyond their own the-other-team-is-always-wrong attitude will ALWAYS say that the side they don't agree with is ALWAYS wrong. We can call them the "extremists". This goes for both sides, btw.

So your beef here is that someone used the word "always" when they should have used the word "often"? Ok - I suppose you're correct about this, although I don't think that any readers here were actually confused about this point. Moving beyond pure semantics, can we also come to some agreement that there are indeed fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats?

One of the biggest differences between Republicans and Democrats is in their differing philosophies towards government regulation of business. Republicans tend to believe that government is highly inefficient relative to private business, and that most attempts by the government to regulate the free market will only interfere with economic growth. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that government oversight and regulation are critical if a market it to remain free.

As such, Democrats, more often than Republicans, tend to create legislation designed to restrict the freedom of private businesses, in the hopes of protecting either consumers, the environment, or other smaller businesses. Recent examples here would be the recently passed health care bill, or recent regulations passed to protect consumers from predatory practices by banks and credit card companies. Businesses (especially the "big" established ones) tend to be against these regulations because changing to comply with these regulations frequently costs money. Republicans also tend to be against these regulations because, as mentioned above, they believe that most attempts by government to interfere in private business is likely to cause more problems than it fixes.

So one result of these differing ideologies between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats find themselves at odds with private businesses more frequently than Republicans. And Republicans find themselves aligned with private businesses more frequently than Democrats. What we are seeing here in regards to Net Neutrality regulations is really no different.

So I for one am not at all surprised to see Republicans voting against net neutrality regulations designed to protect consumers. And I don't think that the previous poster's comment that "the fact is that Republicans always look out for business interests over the people's interests" is that unreasonable, semantic issues with the word "always" aside. If a Republican were to take issue this

Re:No Force or Effect

[theillien]

They currently hold a third of the cards, not the whole deck.

Even when they control everything they're not working with a whole deck

Re:No Force or Effect

[Errol backfiring]

To make sure that these things are not done at all?

Re:No Force or Effect

[Rakarra]

Maybe we will get real volunteer politicians in office

Volunteer politicians would be even more beholden to corporate interests than they are now; they would be focused on one thing -- securing a cushy job after they leave the public sector. At least at the moment they can maintain the charade that they'd care about the job itself.

that actually give a damn about anything other than ways they can screw the average American for their own benefit

As long as the job allows for and rewards the screwing over of the average American, it will attract those with ambition and willingness to do just that.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Onuma]

FYI: The Nat'l Park gun laws began well before Obama took office. The NRA/ILA and other pro-gun organizations have been pushing for that for years. It merely went legally into effect under the Obama administration.

Don't attribute something to the wrong person. Obama is still very anti-gun, in that he would love to disarm the masses under the guise of "safety and security for America".

I don't agree with either party. They all seem to be more concerned with getting reelected than actually doing the job for which they've been elected in the first place.

Re:No Force or Effect

[AgentSmith]

Yes. This is exactly their ploy. With the uproar to cut spending and remove "government control" all Republican representatives are playing to what their constituencies asked them to represent. The next election, specifically presidential, they will go back to their states and say "We (Republicans/Tea Party members) tried to represent you and enact your will, but HE (President Obama) and his cronies blocked us in every way!"

  Remember the old adage "No one got fired for buy Microsoft." Well "No one lost an election by playing to the loudest voices."

Re:No Force or Effect

[Attila Dimedici]

However, the EPA is not actually following its mandate for regulating emissions that it finds to be pollutants. The statute calls for it to regulate stationary sources that generate 250 tons per year, but the EPA is planning to (initially) only regulate stationary sources that emit 25,000 tons per year. How does the EPA justify this? Of course the reason that the EPA is setting such a high threshold is that if it regulated any stationary source of 250 tons or more, even someone like you would recognize that the damage it was doing to our economy far outweighed any possible benefit from the regulation.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Attila Dimedici]

The answer would be that if anyone in the Federal government does, it would be Congress. The FCC and the EPA only have the authority to regulate those things that Congress has given them the authority to regulate. The Founding Fathers did not create either the FCC or the EPA and would quite likely question the existence of either one.

Re:No Force or Effect

[phlinn]

I see unprecedented use of filibusters claimed a lot. I see no actual evidence of it. The best evidence I've heard lists the number of cloture votes. Unfortunately, a cloture vote does NOT mean there was a filibuster, only that someone wanted to end debate. They did threaten to use the filibuster, but it's not clear that they are doing so more than dems did when the reps had a majority. Do you have better evidence? Even counts of threats to use it isn't necessarily proof of worse partisanship, IF the republican majority during Bush Junior's presidency threw a lot more bones to the democrats who were in office at that time. I want to emphasize that this is a hypothetical, although I don't recall any extremely partisan republican idea other than the failed attempt SS reform which compares in scale to obamacare. NCLB was probably about as large, but was bipartisan, and a decent example of conceding some things to the opponents who were in fact in power. Pseudo compromise, by including ideas which previous members of the opposition party supported, but continuing to exclude actual contemporary ideas, does not count as compromise.

Re:No Force or Effect

[jfengel]

Only if the Republican party gains more power in the next election.

Which they are likely to. Despite the trend of the last three elections, most elections favor incumbents. (As did the last three, actually; it's only because things are fairly close to balanced that a 10% change looks like a tidal wave.) So it's unlikely that they will lose the House.

And it's likely that they will gain the Senate. The Democrats are defending twice as many seats. Some have already been effectively conceded, enough to put it back to 50-50. With only 10 Republican seats up, it will be easier to play defense, and the Democrats must win all two dozen other races.

Still, the odds are good that Obama will continue to hold the Presidency, so they've got that going for them. Plus, even if they win the Senate, the odds of it being by a filibuster-free margin are essentially nonexistent, and the Democrats can play "party of no" just as well as they can. (Actually, not as well, but well enough, especially with the veto.)

Re:No Force or Effect

[Onuma]

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_obama.html
Read more.

"I am not in favor of concealed weapons. I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations. "

That's just one snippet. There are plenty to be found, including within his voting history while in the Senate. Even his most recent speech about gun control has plenty of language indicating he'd like much stricter legislation.
No tinfoil hat required.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Omestes]

Obama is still very anti-gun, in that he would love to disarm the masses under the guise of "safety and security for America".

Perhaps that needs some evidence? It is quite a claim, after all, and in his term in office so far, I haven't seen a single action pointing to that end.

And, just to add some fuel to the flames, you can be for "gun control" but not be "anti-gun". I know tons of people are for control, but wouldn't dream of actually banning guns. I, for example, think that guns should be at least as regulated as vehicles if not more so, but would be very angry if anyone tried to outright ban them. I like guns. I find them interesting and a useful tool, but I find completely unfettered access to them to be insane.

I don't agree with either party. They all seem to be more concerned with getting reelected than actually doing the job for which they've been elected in the first place.

And here we agree 100%. Right now I find the Republicans to be slightly more insane the the Democrats, but neither of them are doing a very good job of looking out of the American people's interests. I think the re-election thing plays a roll, but also the fact that both sides are infected with bat-shit crazy ideology right now, and would hold that ideology above any human consequences. The only thing going for the Democrats is that they are more fractious and factional than the Republicans at the moment.

Re:No Force or Effect

[dcw3]

if the teabaggers weren't hell-bent on shutting down the government

If you really give a shit about getting things done, you wouldn't use inflammatory terms. It takes two (or more) sides to disagree, so you can't logically pin this on either group.

When exactly did the democrats propose a budget?

Re:No Force or Effect

[Omestes]

The myth that voters vote in their own self-interest has been busted a very long time ago.

I know an ultra-right wing, ultra-conservative, ultra-christian man, who thinks the tea party is the greatest thing in the universe, who probably has a tattoo of G.W. Bush somewhere on him, and who actually sends money to Israel to "immanentize the eschaton" (ahem). His daughter has four kids, and supports them all through welfare, food stamps, and some church handouts, and whose wasted a large chunk of money on failed attempts at college using Gov't grant money. His son is in prison for various drug related charges and has three children while he sits in prison, to an unwed mother, who has another 3 children to other men (she works at Walmart) . He's been milking unemployment since his job disappeared, and admits that he is just waiting for the point he can get Social Security and Medicare. His wife also went to school on the governments dime to be a teacher.

And he votes to destroy the programs that support him and his family. He hates labor, even while his business died because he couldn't compete with businesses who used illegal immigrants to keep costs down. He wants to gut Social Security and Medicare while wanting to benefit from them. He hates Planned Parenthood and reproductive freedom (though it could have saved him from adopting 3 of his kid's kids since they can't support them, and probably never heard of birth control). He supports the war on drugs, even though it got his child in prison the first time (and probably lead to the next two times). He hates welfare and food stamps, though they keep his daughter and her children from starving.

He'll vote for anyone as long as they let him keep his 100 guns, and keep the gays away.

This is the average American voter. Yes, the agenda changes, but it pans out about the same.

Even the "ideologically pure" Libertarians and Greens vote against their own interests by holding an ideology above consequences. In the end they have the same problem as the guy above, they hold a pretty fiction above the actual gritty, shades-of-gray, world, and would force that world, by force, into their silly ideology, consequences be damned. Its for the "greater good", or "they know better".

I'm getting about as much contempt for American voters as I do the politicians we vote in. And continue to vote in even after they screw us the first time. I'm sick of partisanship and people claiming some divine political truth on the basis of what letter they support. I'm so sick of this "us vs. them" bullshit. I'm sick of politics turning into a rerun of Highlander (there can only be one... political party).

Great, you disagree, and sit down and talk about it like adults, and stop acting like idiotic two year olds. And stop thinking that you "won" by shoving something down the throats of the 49% of the population that didn't vote for you to make the 51% happy. Gr... sorry for the rant.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Wyatt Earp]

The Tea Party Movement used the term "Tea Bag" back in 2009, I'm simply calling them what they called themselves.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Onuma]

I'm a huge pro-gun advocate (if you didn't already surmise), but I always appreciate logical argument from the entire spectrum of gun debate. To control guns is, in essence, to limit their distribution and to make more difficult their acquisition. I do think that certain things should require training, licenses, etc.; I've got 8 years of military training, 10+ years of shooting personally owned firearms, and 5 years of defensive carry experience. To limit someone like ME from having access to whatever-the-fuck-I-decide-to-afford is foolish. I've proved my ability to lawfully abide and conduct myself in a safe manner through numerous means, and have the legal documentation to prove so. Why would I be willing to accept any legislation which constrains my RKBA?
I also understand that things like the "Assault Weapons Ban" ideology are purely a device which the media and politicians use to make things sound more extravagant than they are.

Also, cars are far more dangerous than small arms. Think solely about the physics involved: a 2 ton vehicle moving at 50 mph has far more energy than a 200gr (200 grains = 0.0285714286 pounds, according to google) )bullet moving at ~700 mph, and could tear through more people or structural material by far. It takes far longer to train to be a safe driver -- one who is cognizant of his surroundings, maintains proper speed and stopping distances, etc. -- than it does to be a safe handler of firearms. How many laws and rules must you understand just in order to drive a car? There are only 4 major rules you absolutely need to know to handle a gun.
1. All guns are always loaded
2. Only point a gun at something you intend to destroy
3. Consider your target and everything behind/beyond it.
4. Finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.

I'd say that's a pretty easy set of rules to remember.

And here we agree 100%. Right now I find the Republicans to be slightly more insane the the Democrats, but neither of them are doing a very good job of looking out of the American people's interests. I think the re-election thing plays a roll, but also the fact that both sides are infected with bat-shit crazy ideology right now, and would hold that ideology above any human consequences. The only thing going for the Democrats is that they are more fractious and factional than the Republicans at the moment.

Yeah I think the "slightly more insane" portion comes from the fact that they've currently got the majority in the House. SotH tends to be more vocal than the Senate Majority Leader, perhaps since they're a notch up on the food chain (right below the Vice-POTUS, for those that don't know the American system). It's easier to have your one, collectively crazy voice heard as compared to the rabble of a bunch of smaller crazy voices :P

Re:No Force or Effect

[sumdumass]

I'm mostly concerned with Net Neutrality insofar as the consumer gets what they paid for or were lead to believe was what they paid for. I also think that existing consumer protection laws already have a large role in this as you cannot market yourself as a lawn mowing service to get people to buy your service then do nothing but sweep the sidewalks.

That is essentially what is happening with the entire consumer pays for X, even though it's up to X, and the ISP purposely refusing to deliver X or up to X based on a third party payment. They cannot have the luxury of claiming the advantage of the third party, then denying that advantage if it doesn't pay them extra money.

In my opinion, a short and simple couple paragraph law could be made that defines what the internet is (the unfettered communications of computers in a network with other networks) and stating that an ISP cannot posit any restrictions, or have restrictions done on their behalf, due to any payment or the lack thereof, paid by any third party on that service unless they are clear and understandable in advertisements and known when the consumer purchased the service or it's a temporary necessity due to an emergency of the network like attacks or to safeguard it from damage but then it can only be temporary for as long as the threat exists.

Maybe throw in a line or two granting penalties of 10 times the cost of service over the time period in violation paid to the consumer, and they will always get what they paid for.

Now, a lot of congress people see this as this type of situation too. It's not that they are concerned with their corporate sponsors over the public, it's that people have some idea that giving the public more then what they pay for is somehow warranted. Attempts to stay away from that is not very few of them actually giving a damn, it's more like keeping it simple.

Re:No Force or Effect

[Omestes]

I pretty much agree with your stance on guns. I'd say taking a gun away from you (and people like you) is pretty damn silly, unless, of course, you do something stupid to prove otherwise. Thats one of the big ones for me, while you might have the right to bare arms (or free speech, or the various other rights we enjoy), you don't have the right to be stupid. By stupid I mean infringe on other peoples rights. The second you use a right to violate that (be it intensionally or no) your right is in question. If you run over a bunch of people while drunk in your car, you may lose that ability until you prove your responsible. If you misuse a firearm, the same.

I'd say that's a pretty easy set of rules to remember.

They are. And pretty much everyone's father has given them that speech when they first got a BB gun or got to shoot a .22. Sadly most people I know either ignored that speech, or forgot about it. And this isn't just the inner-city youths I've known, but grizzly vets who carry guns all day, and even a couple active police officers I know. It annoys the hell out of me.

Re:No Force or Effect

[PopeRatzo]

When exactly did the democrats propose a budget?

February.

The President presented a full budget proposal mid-February. You can't really have forgotten all the squealing in the media at the time.

Re:No Force or Effect

[dcw3]

Okay, you're talking about Obama's proposal that got no traction with the rest of the party:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/16/obama-budget-proposal-dra_n_823995.html

Has that been it? Anything that they're actually proposing as a party? I did a quick google, and maybe I missed it. While as I stated, it takes two sides to disagree, it takes as many to come to a compromise.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the brinksmanship being played (I'm personally liable to be out of work if they don't pass something). But I'll confess to not having payed close attention to it since that's how political negotiations typically work (or not).

Re:No Force or Effect

[Devoidoid]

Well, as I recall, in February legislation was "introduced to the Georgia legislature by House Republican Bobby Franklin that would make abortion the legal equivalent of murder and require miscarriages to be investigated by authorities ... Authorities would be required to investigate the cause of fetal death in cases where a miscarriage occurs without attendance at a medical facility."

So, to answer your question: yes, very possibly.

Re:No Force or Effect

[dch24]

I do think ISPs are a single point of failure, but really -- people have been finding ways to get access the internet for a long time now. You'd probably do the same: find a Starbucks, set up a wireless antenna, yes, even hook up to your neighbor.

There are degrees between current ISPs and the entire internet becomes completely distributed and fully redundant. But a fully distributed setup would work too -- you can't kill an idea, and the internet is a really, really good idea.

Re:No Force or Effect

[sznupi]

It's better than that though - not only you can assume that virtually all women had an early natural abortion (numbers comparable to the number of pregnancies / it mostly looks like a slightly weird period at most). They key thing: the organism of the mother tries to reject the parasite; it's only after the embryo takes over hormonal regulation that it's 'safe' - and no wonder why it evolved like that; if the defensive mechanisms of the embryo work well at that stage, the risk of other parts of genetic machinery being damaged is lessened & it (and its descendants) have slightly higher probability of being viable, successfully passing genes, and so on... but in itself it's not a "proof" that a rejected embryo was non-viable.

Which means such law would better prosecute (even better: constantly monitor hormones of...) at least every woman who gave birth (or at least 2+), just to be safe ;>

Re:No Force or Effect

[sznupi]

Well, to be "fair", isn't Obama half black, IIRC? That might be enough to them... (not like it matters to many others, with absurd "one drop rule" vs. how we are all black according to it - recent African origin of homo sapiens, and all; not like races aren't absurd generally)

(of course, at my place "religious right" supported an openly atheist, against EU accession of PL (~"EU doesn't need such backward place"), Czech candidate as the head of their coalition in EU parliament... mostly to get even on someone / what such people do is a farce / this one not really visible to their usual voters)

how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[xzvf]

For some reason, conservatives are equating or selling net neutrality as equivalent to the fairness doctrine. What is the connection? or is it just a talking point and they are paying back their supporters?

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[geminidomino]

Why ask the question when you already know the answer?

The minute it got the point where it was up to our corporate whores in DC, the battle was lost.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't bother to find out what it actually means, the term "net neutrality" sounds something like the fairness doctrine. The Republicican base is pretty much defined as those who don't bother to figure stuff out. The GOP knows this, and shamelessly exploits it at every opportunity.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[Dan667]

conservatives get big donations from Big Telecom and they also view it as a way to limit opposition by stifuling the internet. Funny that a lot of their own ability to effectively message to their nutjob supporters will be impacted if they are successful.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[ArsonSmith]

because they were both advancing regulation into an area it wasn't previously and into an area where it was unneeded. Sort of the solution looking for a problem.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[Rockoon]

For some reason, conservatives are equating or selling net neutrality as equivalent to the fairness doctrine.

Citation please. If you cannot provide one, then what does that make you?

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[Rockoon]

Really? He offered his opinion.

No he didn't. He didn't say "I think" or "I believe" or "The way I see it"

He claimed specifically that the conservatives are equating or selling net neutrality as equivalent to the fairness doctrine, and then even asked why that is.

The only clue that it is an opinion is that it isnt based in the reality that I have been observing... more specifically, that he is either completely full of shit living in a fantasy world that bares no resemblance to reality, or that I have missed some rare pundit interview that he is basing his claim upon.

As for the rest of your post... you are obviously so emotionally involved with your own ideology that you feel that you have to defend anyone that attacks its opponents, even if the person making said attack isnt basing any of his claims in an actual demonstrable reality.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[gtbritishskull]

You do realize that your whole argument is "Liberals want this and Liberals are evil so it must be bad", right. That is not a valid argument. Also, you are gonna have to give me some sort of citation that shows that they will use net neutrality to regulate political content. Just because you say it does not make it true.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[Jeremi]

The statements of too many movers in the NN debate that regardless of what YOU might think the plan is, they see it as a key component in their plans to regulate political content on the Internet.

Citation please?

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[sqrt(2)]

Your line of thinking explained in point one seems to suggest that you will always take the opposing position to members of the left. Do you truly hold the opinion that anything a socialist or even a Marxist says is automatically wrong, because they are members of the left without even looking at the substance and reasoning underlying their position? You might find yourself voting against your own self interest if you place 100% faith on party or ideological labels in determining your position.

Net neutrality, the real conception of it (which the FCC ruling is not btw) is hard to argue against. It simply means trading a theoretically deregulated market for a deregulated market in practice. It is a paradox, because if you are a man of the right, which I assume you are, you have to take a stance that is ideologically opposed to your usual thinking (regulation is always bad and detrimental to the free market) in order to cause an outcome that agrees with your underlying ideology (the market should be an even playing field for business and consumers).

There is nothing even close to the "fairness doctrine" in net neutrality, not in intention nor in practice, EVEN IF some on the left who truly want to shut up your team think so. They will be sorely mistaken when they realize net neutrality does nothing to advance their goal of stifling political speech from members of the right. As a member of the extreme left in the US, and proudly a social democrat, I think that's a terrible goal to have, and it's completely incompatible with the core beliefs of my political ideology.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[GameboyRMH]

LOL, Glenn Beck better watch out!

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[GameboyRMH]

Are you saying tiered Internet isn't a bad thing? Because it's here now.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[xzvf]

Listen to Glenn Beck for a week.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[aitikin]

The only clue that it is an opinion is that it isnt based in the reality that I have been observing... more specifically, that he is either completely full of shit living in a fantasy world that bares no resemblance to reality, or that I have missed some rare pundit interview that he is basing his claim upon.

Or that this is Slashdot and nothing without citations in the comments should ever truly be taken as fact...

Shit, where's my citation?! Ah the hell with it.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[jmorris42]

> Citation please?

This isn't Wikipedia and I'm not writing a scholarly article for publication so no. There is something called Google on this here Internet thing, perhaps you have heard about it.

And if you are really needing a citation I have to assume you take no interest in public affairs and probably don't even vote (or at least I hope you don't vote) so again, why bother. Do you get CNN where you live? While most Progs have got the memo now and have shut up, back in the '08 campaign it was pretty common to hear one openly admitting to their desire to 'regulate' blogs to stop all of the 'misinformation' on the Internet. Just a couple weeks ago a couple of the usual retards on Meet the Depressed went off the reservation and started pining for the government to save the republic from the Internet. They really can't help themselves, the legacy media wants the government to save their sorry ass industry.

You might want to start your research by looking into the past of the FCC Chairman and his pet 'Diversity Czar.' When you look up Lloyd you will almost certainly get a lot of hits to Glenn Beck, MIchelle Malkin and such, but go there because those are about the only places with the full unedited videos and it doesn't matter who is hosting it so long as it is the uncut version. Then look up 'Free Press' and use Google to research the background of the principles there. Start looking for a locus where almost all of these people cross paths, and yes there is one. David Horowitz has a great Java based app called "Discover the Networks' that lets you research various entities and see, graphically, the links between them. Better if you do your own research, you won't believe it otherwise because disbelief allows you to keep your comfortable world view instead of having a lot of assumptions questioned.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[jmorris42]

> Do you truly hold the opinion that anything a socialist or even a Marxist says is automatically wrong, because they are members
> of the left without even looking at the substance and reasoning underlying their position?

Of course not. However I do understand the political reality of the day. There are two utterly incompatible world views struggling for dominance, the Progressive movement and Western Civilization. So any position espoused by the enemy is suspect by default since it arose from an alien worldview. Sometimes an idea is sound in both systems of thought, but usually not.

As an example of the typical mush thinking in your camp, let us examine your sig:

> The free market has failed. Copyright is theft.

Copyright is a government granted monopoly. Our Constitution grants the government the OPTION of using them "to promote progress in the useful arts and sciences." In what way does that sound like a free market device whether we agree or disagree on whether they are theft? In your world, everything bad is the free market, everything good is The State. Since you don't like copyright you must assign it to the enemy camp when any fool can see it is more your problem than mine. The reality is copyright, like most things, is a tool that can be used for both good and ill. With modern eternal copyright we are probably in agreement it is doing far more harm than good.

Re:how did net neutral equate to fairness doctrine

[sqrt(2)]

The two sentences in my sig aren't meant to be related. I'm sorry that you made the mistake in feeling that they were. They are two separate issues, although they exist within the same general sphere of problems. The free market failure is actually the failure of deregulated gangster capitalism that dominates America and the world today. Copyright being theft refers to the ever extending copyrights that shackle our culture by keeping works locked up that should long ago have become public domain and part of our common cultural heritage. Two separate sentences, two separate thoughts. No mush thinking, on my part at least.

Odd Paradox

[theswimmingbird]

Hmm. I don't seem to remember giving Congress or the President the authority to exert military force without declaring war. Funny how that works.

Re:Odd Paradox

[MoldySpore]

Actually, The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives the president the authority to send troops for 60 days provided he notifies congress first. This all happens without an authorization of the use of military force or a declaration of war. So essentially the president can send troops anywhere for 60 days regardless of how anyone feels about it, as long as they are there for only 60 days and withdraw within 30 days after that.

Re:Odd Paradox

[TheRaven64]

So essentially the president can send troops anywhere for 60 days regardless of how anyone feels about it, as long as they are there for only 60 days and withdraw within 30 days after that.

Does this include Capitol Hill? If so, I don't think he'd have a problem getting the congressional support he needed after the 60 days expired...

Re:Odd Paradox

[lonelytrail]

I know more forces than the Marine Corps are acting in Libya right now, but I was a Marine and the President most certainly has the authority to exert military force without declaring war any time he wants to.
I also know wikipedia isn't an authoritative source, but here's the WP discussion on the USMC on that topic.

Mission
The United States Marine Corps serves as an amphibious force-in-readiness. As outlined in 10 U.S.C. 5063 and as originally introduced under the National Security Act of 1947, it has three primary areas of responsibility:

• The seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and other land operations to support naval campaigns;
• The development of tactics, technique, and equipment used by amphibious landing forces; and
• Such other duties as the President may direct.

This last clause, while seemingly redundant given the president's position as Commander-in-chief, is a codification of the expeditionary duties of the Marine Corps.

Re:Odd Paradox

[theswimmingbird]

I know. I took AP US History. It's been more than 60 days. 50 years is a lot longer than 40 days.

Re:Odd Paradox

[theswimmingbird]

lol, 60*

Re:Odd Paradox

[MoldySpore]

I believe it only applies to foreign nations in the event of an emergency, or if there is a "threat to the united states", or for humanitarian reasons. Basically it allows the president to deploy troops into non-US areas without the approval of congress, which is why he authorized the strikes against Libya, but is also one of the reasons we can't lead the attacks moving forward, because with Libya it could wind up falling outside of the 60-90 days he has to get in and then withdraw the troops.

Article is wrong

[Goobergunch]

Today, the House voted to adopt the resolution (H. Res. 200) that will allow it to consider the actual resolution to overturn the regulation tomorrow. Note the words "Providing for consideration" in the title of the actual vote.

Granted, the House is still likely going to vote for the measure, but saying it's already passed is inaccurate.

No Difference???

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

To all the people who go on and on about there being no difference between the Republicans and Democrats... SUCK ON THIS. (As if the Iraq War wasn't enough to point this put already.)

Re:No Difference???

[Locke2005]

Right, because no Democrats voted to authorize the war in Iraq! Oh, wait...

The only current difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Republicans currently hold the record for the worst president ever. But that's not for lack of trying on the behalf of the Democrats!

Re:No Difference???

[jmorris42]

> the Republicans currently hold the record for the worst president ever..

On what alternate reality does ANY Republican get close to Jimmy Carter? Or was he before your time?

Re:No Difference???

[hey!]

Carter was better than you remember. He just got blamed for the nasty medicine needed to stop hyperinflation. Once the Fed loosened up the money supply, we got the "Reagan Boom", but if you look at the economic growth figures the boom started in the waning months of the Carter administration and was in full swing in the first year of Reagan, well before any Reagan policies could take effect.

Politically hapless .... Ill grant you. Carter was a modern Adams.

Re:No Difference???

[Grishnakh]

Jimmy Carter didn't start two completely needless and horribly expensive wars. Bush is easily much worse than Carter; Carter's only real problem was he was ineffectual.

But if you want to go for worst president ever, there's at least two that come to mind that are much worse: Andrew Jackson, and Lyndon B Johnson. Woodrow Wilson was up there too.

Re:No Difference???

[Jeremi]

On what alternate reality does ANY Republican get close to Jimmy Carter? Or was he before your time?

Dubya finally managed to jump the Carter bar (or Limbo under it, if you prefer). Carter might have been ineffective and less than inspirational, but an ineffective presidency is still vastly preferable to a rogue one that goes around inventing reasons to start unnecessary wars.

Re:No Difference???

[beep999]

Yeah, he was so bad that he tried to institute a freeze in the amount of oil the country uses and a push for alternate energy sources in the 1970's. If your buddy Reagan hadn't rolled the whole thing back, we would now be completely free of Mid-East oil and would probably not be in two (three?) wars and paying for the lifestyles of the Saudi kings right now... ... and don't get me started on that ridiculous Egypt/Israeli peace treaty that has held for over 30 years, and probably helped lead to the current democracy movement in Egypt...

Re:No Difference???

[Doc Ruby]

There's a difference between "every last Republican" and "some Democrats".

Re:No Difference???

[Desler]

So Carter drove us trillions of dollars in debt over a war to avenge his daddy? Oversaw a total collapse of the banking system? Spent trillions in crony bailouts?

Re:No Difference???

[zippthorne]

Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat, not a Republican. Although the Progressive movement he was a part of had flirted with both donkeys and elephants by that point...

Re:No Difference???

[Attila Dimedici]

I'm sorry, how does the Iraq War demonstrate a difference between Republicans and Democrats? The Democrats in Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the President's use of force in Iraq. Unless you are comparing Iraq to Libya, where in the latter case the President did not even inform Congress before he started using force.

Re:No Difference???

[Attila Dimedici]

Sorry, no President in my lifetime comes close to being as bad as James Buchanan. Jimmy Carter was a bad President. It appears at this point that Obama is worse, but that is still subject to what actions he takes before he leaves office and no final judgment can truly be reached until he is out of office for at least ten years. Even so, I do not see either being as bad as Buchanan was (although Obama still has time to make up ground and he has shown a desire to do so).

slightly off-topic, but

[Presto Vivace]

this is a great video on why usage based billing is a scam.

Re:slightly off-topic, but

[Ichijo]

this is a great video on why usage based billing is a scam.

I can't watch the video right now, but is it a scam due to a problem with a certain implementation of usage based billing or is it due to some insurmountable flaw in the basic concept?

Re:slightly off-topic, but

[FlashBIOS]

this is a great video on why usage based billing is a scam.

I can't watch the video right now, but is it a scam due to a problem with a certain implementation of usage based billing or is it due to some insurmountable flaw in the basic concept?

The concept. The fine video states (correctly as far as I'm concerned) that as bits are not a manufactured physical product, nor are they ever consumed, you shouldn't be charged for usage (i.e. consumption).

It also goes on to state that 1) bandwidth gets cheeper the more people use it, 2) that if ISPs are having a problem because a few ruin it for the many they over sold, and 3) makes allegations that usage based billing is a result of ISPs wanting to charge for content (TV, voice, etc.) that the Internet allows for for free.

This topic can get easily tainted with other issues ("I pay for the electricity I use, and that's fair, why isn't this fair too?") and I feel the video does a nice job explaining the Anti-UBB position.

Re:slightly off-topic, but

[Ichijo]

The fine video states (correctly as far as I'm concerned) that as bits are not a manufactured physical product, nor are they ever consumed, you shouldn't be charged for usage (i.e. consumption).

The bandwidth available to your neighborhood at any given time period is consumed. It isn't infinite. Scarcity is very real in broadband networks. Any time you have scarcity, price is a good way to prevent shortages.

Re:slightly off-topic, but

[FlashBIOS]

The bandwidth available to your neighborhood at any given time period is consumed.

No it isn't. What you are seeing as a slowdown is overselling. Overselling has nothing to do with usage caps and the mythical consumption. The pipes may be full but still nothing is consumed.

If everyone in your neighborhood was _under_ their cap and still got on at the same time, you'd have the same problem.
If everyone in your neighborhood was _over_ their cap and still got on at the same time, you'd have the same problem.

Also, (especially now days) not all types of Internet connections are subject to the whims of your neighbors. As the anti-UBB people are stating the ISPs are simply avoiding infrastructure improvements.

Re:slightly off-topic, but

[Ichijo]

The pipes may be full but still nothing is consumed.

That's like saying if I occupy a seat at a concert, nothing is consumed (because I can't take my seat with me) and so the concert should be free.

If everyone in your neighborhood was _under_ their cap and still got on at the same time, you'd have the same problem.

Unlimited wants, limited resources. Where have I heard this before? Oh yes, in economics class. I even remember hearing how the market eliminates the shortage: the price rises until demand falls to the level of supply, and later other suppliers come in to chip away at the profits.

So why would anyone want to prevent the market from eliminating the shortage and bringing in more competitors?

Re:slightly off-topic, but

[FlashBIOS]

Once again, you are confusing capacity with consumption. Once you realize the difference between the two I have a gold star with your name on it.

Re:slightly off-topic, but

[webdog314]

Except that the concert hall can't expand easily to provide more seats... However, there's nothing preventing the telcos from improving their networks, save for their profit margins.

You obviously weren't paying very close attention in economics, or you would know the difference between "supply and demand" and "artificially inflated prices".

Re:slightly off-topic, but

[Ichijo]

Except that the concert hall can't expand easily to provide more seats... However, there's nothing preventing the telcos from improving their networks, save for their profit margins.

In both cases, it is somewhere between (but not including) free and impossible to provide more capacity. You can't just choose an arbitrary price point and say that usage-based billing inexplicably only works above that point.

Merger of Corporations and the State

[catchblue22]

When I watch the seemingly flagrant way that Republicans seem to turn away from the Public Good these days, for example in network neutrality, financial regulation, or global warming, I am reminded of this quote

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[catchblue22]

Dems are just as bad.

Which is why they brought in the original net neutrality rules in the first place?

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[catchblue22]

Yeah, aha. You do understand that as a result of the last election Republicans got as clear a mandate as any party got in recent history?

You do realize that, unfortunately, there is a sizeable block of voters who premise their voting decisions on their perceived direction of the economy. If the economy seems to be declining, they vote the current party out. If it seems to be improving, they vote for the party in power. Many voters don't have a clue of the detailed political philosophies of individual parties. I am not saying all voters are like this. But there is a large block of voters who seem to vote robotically like this. So when you speak of mandates, I have to remain skeptical.

Furthermore, many voters seem to have very short memories. They don't seem to remember that the decline in American manufacturing began around the mid to early 1980's, when Reagan was in power, and that over the last 30 years, we have seen increasing implementation of right wing economic policy (including during Democratic regimes). Now America has lost most of its manufacturing sector, and the middle class is in decline.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[Grishnakh]

Which rules? You mean the ones that they couldn't even pass when the Dems had control of Congress and the White House? Obviously, they never meant to pass them in the first place. Probably what happened is some tiny minority of Dems thought it'd be a good idea, tried to push it through, and was utterly defeated when mainstream Dems listened to their employers, the media corporations who didn't want NN, and voted it down.

There's a tiny, tiny minority in each party that is OK, trying to make laws that actually benefit the country and the People instead of the corporations. But they're only tiny minorities; the vast majority of each party is only interested in pleasing its corporate masters.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[hondo77]

You do understand that as a result of the last election Republicans got as clear a mandate as any party got in recent history?

With a simple majority in one house of Congress? I don't think "mandate" and "history" mean what you think they mean.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[FatSean]

Meaningless blather. A group of Democrats came up with the rules, but not all Democrats supported it. It's a party, not a corporation. When you say "They never meant to pass them" you lose your credibility. Check the voting record. Only 10 Dems in the House did not support the bill. They used to call them Blue Dogs.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[ATMAvatar]

Also remember that more people vote for American Idol candidates than vote in our political elections. Heavy words like "mandate" should be avoided when less than half of registered voters even participate.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[FatSean]

The only Dems who lost their seats were right-leaning "blue dogs" who lucked into election in 2006. I hardly consider that a "mandate" a'la Jeff Gannon.

These Republicans were mandated to cut spending, but their absurd bills and constant injection of abortion-related riders shows that they don't seem to be taking that promise very seriously.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[sznupi]

Or...

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. -- John Stuart Mill

Hence a fairly reliable voter base...

Generally, regarding such "discussions" - can't we just link to few old ones? (even from this site) They already cover pretty much everything, regarding such trollnews. There's really nothing more to add. Quick search gives one example (I'm linking to thread, that includes especially answers), and another. Or even this and that.

Some pictorial ontopic humor thrown in

PS. Personal observation about how we merely like to convince ourselves into reliability of our memory, how many myths about it & our minds we tend to believe (list of cognitive biases, almost unchanged split-brain patients, mention of one localized brain trauma resulting in people becoming completely blind without them realizing it, popular harmful BS lies / myth of "we're so important, gods love us, more of us live now than have ever lived!" & ignoring 100+ billion dead homo sapiens sapiens (at least we will be similarly ignored very quickly, so there's some "balance"...)); also about how decent and freedom loving people we are (it's a bit sad how our deep need for Just World gets derailed so easily :/ )
How, when people get older, they tend to start believing myths about the greatness of their youth (not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with "frustrating" reality of how much better in fact it is "now", for most cases of "now") ... that approach right here is also at the core of anti-liberalism.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[Archangel Michael]

GE and Obama.

Oh wait, them be (D) so you simply ignore it. Don't be an ass, both sides are in up to their necks in crap, and both sides are spewing a ton of it.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[517714]

It is unlikely that Benito Mussolini made that statement.

Corporatism does not mean what you think it means. Control of corporations was to be wielded by the state, not the opposite as our two dominant political parties seem intent upon insuring.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[Random BedHead Ed]

Dems are just as bad. Notice how the pro-IP people are controlling the President?

You're right that the copyright cartels have a lot of influence in both parties, particularly with the Dems, but having bad copyright and patent policies is not morally or ethically equivalent to having bad financial and healthcare policies. The former bad policymaking pollutes our culture and makes computing less fun, and as awful as that is, the latter policies cost lives and fortunes.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[dcw3]

Very interesting that you would chose to quote someone who was home-schooled, not allowed to play with other kids, and has suffered a nervous breakdown by the age of 20. Okay, we get it, you don't like conservatives, but what's that got to do with net neutrality. Maybe the link was "ontopic", but it doesn't work.

I'd recommend you take a look at your P.S. section, and ask yourself...WTF was I thinking? It's a completely illogical run on rant. "100+ billion dead homo sapiens"?...have there been that many since the dawn of man?

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[FatSean]

Actually Blue Dog seems to refer to Representatives, not Senators: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition

When they focus on bills they can't possibly get past the Senate and/or President, they show themselves to be either incompetent or having no intention of making real cuts.

Re:Merger of Corporations and the State

[sznupi]

Yes, how of all things you decided to directly defend an urban myth is very telling. Out of all things (not seeing their relation to the subject - but still trying to disparage what is clearly just a freehand & compact form - likewise telling) you chose to doubt one which is the simplest to check, being one of the favorite dilemmas of demographers (with basically all serious estimations putting the number at at least 100 billion dead homo sapiens sapiens - just our subspecies, not any "the dawn of man" BS)

And FYI, that quote implies disliking stupid people, not the label (which is valuable in many ways, when it actually takes place according to definition) they mostly flock into and cause it to cater largely to them, largely bring it to their level. Hm, why would you confuse something so simple, in defending the label?... (NVM how telling it is to misrepresent being taught by another not bad thinker as "home schooling"; and approach of "owning" kids is an unfortunate characteristic of... guess who)

I don't understand.

[NeutronCowboy]

Isn't the regulation of an electronic communications medium the entire reason the FCC exists?

*Googles "Defund FCC"*

Oh. Right. Never mind.

Re:I don't understand.

[Dan667]

it is not the telecoms internet to begin with. Big Telecoms were given huge subsidies to build parts of the infrastructure and now they want to pretend that it is their and they can screw all the businesses that use if for their limited benefit.

Re:I don't understand.

[Rockoon]

Well Google certainly doesnt want the FCC to start regulating the internet.

First these rules are applied to providers, but eventually to all services by the very same reasoning. If your provider cannot discriminate content, then it stands to reason that neither can Google.. that Google cannot (for example) selectively discriminate against "low quality" sites (link farms, duplicators, etc..) in its search results.

A simple honest question fore the pro-regulators. Which ISP right now at this very moment needs to be regulated by the FCC, and precisely which regional market are they a monopoly in that justifies your thinking?

Re:I don't understand.

[Alex Belits]

My sarcasm detector seems to be broken today. Is this shit for real?

Re:I don't understand.

[Grishnakh]

Exactly right. In fact, we need to eliminate the FCC altogether, since as you said, it's moronically stupid to regulate industry. We don't need any regulations on radio spectrum; whoever has the higher-power transmitter should be the winner, and there should be no laws against jamming other peoples' transmissions.

Re:I don't understand.

[Lehk228]

TCP/Spark-Gap?

Re:I don't understand.

[NeutronCowboy]

I normally don't reply to ACs, but Atlas Shrugged? Really? That's your reply? The overwrought musings of a philosophical dilettante who couldn't write a concise scene if it sat in her lap, took her pen and held it for her?

Man, either trolls are a dying art, or someone hasn't graduated from High School yet.

Re:Unanimously? Really?!

[LocalH]

"House Republicans voted unanimously today to block controversial Net neutrality regulations from taking effect, a move that is likely to invite a confrontation with President Obama.

By a vote of 241 to 178, the House of Representatives adopted a one-page resolution that says, simply, the regulations adopted by the Federal Communications Commission on December 21 'shall have no force or effect.'

In other words, that 241 includes all of the House Republicans - none of them voted against the resolution.

Re:With all due respect to the Congress

[Presto Vivace]

What I have never understood is why the National Federation of Independent Business, the trade association that putatively represents small business, has not defended net neutrality. Without it costs will rise in a variety of ways, not just in terms of paying tolls so that customers can reach your site, but in increased costs for any ASP and SaaS software that you use in your business. Without net neutrality the cloud computing business model becomes far less economic. There are way too many complacent actors in all this.

Anyone got an English translation?

[Ant P.]

Is the internet Closed or Open as a result of this?

Re:Anyone got an English translation?

[bendodge]

The FCC's version of Net Neutrality is not what you think it is. Slashdotters should be rejoicing that Congress is putting the kibosh on this. We want a law, not an FCC regulatory regime. Why? Because the FCC can change whenever it gets a new chairman. Changing a law requires a vote. Unfortunately, it's also notoriously difficult to get legislation as tricky as Net Neutrality initially passed into law without having it mangled beyond recognition on the way there.

Follow the money

[Locke2005]

How much have Comcast and Verizon payed out in campaign contributions to House members? Can somebody put together an approximate figure on what it cost to have rulings like this blocked by the house? It'll come in handy when I want them to create laws to benefit me.

Not our net neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

The "net neutrality" the FCC is spewing is NOT the net neutrality that /.'ers think they're getting. They're calling something completely different "net neutrality" so that they can regulate free speech on the net.

Re:Don't need force or effect to state the law

[jmorris42]

> So Congress has now taken over the role of Courts, too.

No need, the courts already told the FCC they didn't have the authority to do this. Obama has gone rogue and intends to do this heedless of the cost. This is fast approaching Constitutional Crisis time.

Re:Unanimously? Really?!

[Locke2005]

Yes, just like the Pope is directly chosen by God through a majority vote of the College of Cardinals. And sometimes it takes dozens of rounds of voting for God to make his infallible selection clear to the Cardinals.

I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[asylumx]

I don't think this is the FCC's place, either. They already spend too much time & money deciding what can and can't go on our television and radio airwaves, for example. The FCC should be regulating communication so that providers aren't stepping all over each other's signals and that's pretty much it. Maybe I misunderstand the original intent of the FCC so please correct me if I'm wrong there.

On the other hand, I also don't want Big ISP regulating my internet connection, deciding what I can get and when I can get it. I want an internet connection without artificial limitations. I already pay Comcast far too much for their less-than-consistent service (and the reason I don't switch is because where I am the competitors fastest speeds aren't even close to as good as Comcast's slowest) and I don't need them practically filtering my connection based on how much the company I'm trying to connect to has paid them. I'm already paying Comcast! That's enough!

So... I guess I don't really know where I should stand on this issue. Any advice?

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[nrozema]

The FCC should be regulating communication so that providers aren't stepping all over each other's signals and that's pretty much it.

I see great overlap between this statement and proposed Net Neutrality regulation. One could argue that ensuring Comcast or any other ISP doesn't "step all over" my clear and unobstructed path to various Internet destinations ("channels") is much the same as doing it for the public airwaves.

The question to answer is whether or not we want to treat the Internet as a shared public resource like we do radio spectrum or a free-for-all controlled by government endorsed regional monopolies.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Rockoon]

(and the reason I don't switch is because where I am the competitors fastest speeds aren't even close to as good as Comcast's slowest)

This suggests that Comcast is doing something right.

I'm not a fan of Comcast at all. Didn't like it when I heard they were playing man-in-the-middle and dropping Bittorrent traffic, certainly didn't like it when they started buying up content producers, and absolutely did not like their laughable attempt to re-define themselves as a peer with their ISP (Level 3.) That being said, Comcasts service seems to be equal or better than most providers at this time.

They just dont seem to be that far out of line in the grand scheme of things if their service is better than the competition in your area. The real question is, why is the competition so much worse? Perhaps there you can find some fruit for regulatory justification.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Radical Moderate]

Here's your choices:

Trust Comcast, who wants every penny they can get from you
Trust Congress, who wants every penny they can get from Comcast

At least you get to vote for Congress, so that makes them the slightly lesser of two evils.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Radical Moderate]

The real question is, why is the competition so much worse?

Because satellite is inherently slow, as is DSL, and Comcast has a government granted monopoly on cable. So, surprise, Comcast has the "best" service. Ain't the free market great!?

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[misexistentialist]

Actually they managed to make a technology like DOCSIS 3.0 carry a lot less data per month than DSL, which can't be right.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Rockoon]

DSL goes up to 7 Mbit these days. Thats enough for HD movie streaming.

You wave your hands but say nothing. How fast is the DSL in your area?

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Em Adespoton]

I just had an idea: why not try an experiment with a sunset clause? Allow ISPs to charge the companies we're trying to connect to... and require that the ISP provide its service for free to consumers if they do.

Yes, there are lots of issues with this, but most network traffic wouldn't really change all that much (it would cost comcast too much to charge the small fry), and the big service providers would end up paying to connect to consumers (they would get their access for free too, unless they run their own).

Completely different paradigm than we have now, but it might actually work just as well in the long run, with the downside that all costs would be completely hidden from the consumer (yes, they'd still be there).

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, VDSL goes up to 52M down stream, and VDSL v 2 handles over 100M down and upstream. I know of a provider in my area that averages speeds of ~25Mbps using DSL. That destroys the "15 Mbps" cable modem that I have that never gets above 4 Mbps.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Red_Chaos1]

Lol, why is this at -1? It's informative if nothing else. Sad fact is, DSL is quite capable of very high speeds. The other side of it is that you have to live fairly close (cable-wise) to the office to get that speed.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[Anonymous Coward]

quote from wikipedia:
As specified in section one of the Communications Act and as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (amendment to 47 U.S.C. 151) it is the FCC's mission to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges."[sic] The Act furthermore provides that the FCC was created "for the purpose of the national defense" and "for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communications."[2]

So the FCC making a statement that corporations must not create communication ghettos where only the wealthy get high speed access (that will be the top 20%) and the other 80% get second or third or tenth class access is part of their charter. The FCC wasn't established to support business.

Re:I don't like this bill, nor the alternative...?

[asylumx]

Max 3mbps here.

Spectrum is the only scarce communication resource

[Anonymous Coward]

Allocation and protection of an inherently scarce resource, the radio spectrum, is the reason the FCC exists. Everything else is arguably beyond the scope of federal regulation, except that the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) of the Constitution has over the years been invoked in many ways to nearly nullify the reserved powers language of the Tenth Amendment.

I hope you like walled gardens..

[hairyfeet]

Because that is exactly what you have without net neutrality. look upon my present and see your future! i'm on Cox (perfect name since they're dicks) and the caps are 36Gb residential, 76Gb commercial and the commercial line is nearly $200 a month, any going over? That's $1.50 per Gb please. Oh and Vonage, Linux and Mac updates? They all count against your cap. The "offerings" by Cox and Windows? they DO NOT.

So I hope you like walled gardens ala the old AOHell, because at $1.50 a Gb it doesn't take too many $200+ bills to put your ass in your place. And before anyone uses the old "vote with your dollars!" meme I'd point out my choices are Cox, AT&T DSL that MAXES at 756Kbps and which they've said they have NO intention of ever upgrading, or a WISP whose security is so damned bad you can surf the shares of everyone on a node through network neighborhood (and the head tech is so dim I never could get him to understand why that's bad, he still swears its a "feature") and who has a worse TOS than HughesNet.

So all you Time Warner and Comcast users, better be filling your boots, your time is running out. Once Cox rolls this out nationwide and the others see they get away with it? that's your ass Mr User, you are well and truly fucked. While the rest of the world surfs the information superhighway we are gonna be on the short bus to walled garden shittown. But hell the corps won't be happy until the USA is a third world country, so why not just pull the plug? More profits in walled gardens anyway!

Re:I hope you like walled gardens..

[jmorris42]

And your point would be? The FCC won't stop the caps. The FCC isn't even talking about stopping the caps. Their stated goals are only to make it 'fair' so the Cable company can't kill Netflix in favor of their own video on demand offering or kill Vonage connectivity to push their ownVOIP product.

And they shouldn't stop the caps. People who use more of a resource should pay more than someone who uses less. What they should do is unleash market forces to destroy their monopoly creations but if you believe they would ever do that you are mad. In a free market there would be a downward push on per GB rates such that few people would care about the issue. Our problem is that for most Americans the choice is Government Monopoly Telco or Government Monopoly Cable Co with an occasional wildcard of Governement regulated out the wazoo Wireless carrier. And hint: wireless is never going to compete with wired.

Re:I hope you like walled gardens..

[hairyfeet]

Because without NN they are using the caps to force you to their offerings by "punishing" those who don't take their crap! Do you REALLY think they'd have caps so low if Netflix and anybody else was allowed a fair deal? nope the caps make sure you stay in the garden like an electric fence does to cattle buddy!

The WHOLE DAMNED POINT is that the Internet has had an explosive growth of innovation, which these ISP want TO KILL DEAD because that innovation doesn't line their pockets. Without NN the easiest way to keep you in the garden is simply to cut you off at the knees if you ever leave! Do you think I'd touch Vonage or Netflix now? Nope, any VoIP or PPV will be strictly Cox ONLY, and THAT is the point!

Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Does the regulation allow shaping for largely content-neutral reasons? I favor a little shaping to keep non-netflix flowing--Wikipedia and plain text should always work.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

In whatever forms they eventually take, regulations will be adjusted periodically to allow prioritization of 'pretty packets' (meaning "Important" packets, and packets belonging to large campaign contributors). Latency problems will oscillate every few years from NPR to Fox News and from GE to Walmart.

Indecent, incendiary and potentially infringing packets will be inexorably deprioritized to make room for more of the prettier packets. Everyone's traffic experience will get better and better over time under benevolent, centralized, adult supervision of everyone's traffic management practices. You won't have to think about it personally.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Grishnakh]

Everything should always work, it's just a matter of speed and priority. The only reasonable argument for non-neutrality is that certain services should get higher priority than other services: for instance, VoIP and streaming video (Skype, Netflix, etc.) should have the highest priority because they're very latency-sensitive, while BitTorrent and other P2P should have the lowest priority because they're not and are normally done in the background, and everything else should be in the middle. But lower priority doesn't mean "doesn't work", it just means it takes a little longer to complete downloading.

The problem, however, is that unless this traffic shaping or QoS is done in a completely neutral manner, so that, for instance, Comcast's video-on-demand service doesn't get higher priority than its competitor Netflix, then it's going to be a ripe target for abuse by the ISPs, since the ISPs frequently have their own services they want to plug (like Comcast and its video-on-demand). Even if it were neutral by legislative fiat, how do you enforce that, and what do you do when, inevitably, the ISPs break the rules? When do you ever see corporations get anything more than a slap on the wrist for any kind of malfeasance? (In China, they do: they take their executives to an open ditch and shoot them in the head with a rifle.)

Also, even if it were completely fair and neutral, I can see someone taking advantage of the situation through technical means, by, for instance, making their P2P traffic look like VoIP traffic. All it takes is a few people making P2P programs that look just like Skype, and these programs becoming popular, to wreak havoc.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[GameboyRMH]

In whatever forms they eventually take, regulations will be adjusted periodically to allow prioritization of 'pretty packets' (meaning "Important" packets, and packets belonging to large campaign contributors). Latency problems will oscillate every few years from NPR to Fox News and from GE to Walmart.

Yeah just like what has happened in the past with other government-regulated systems like TV, AM/FM radio, cellular networks, roads, and air traffic.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[peragrin]

And that's just it.
Comcasts Video on demand service, and VOIP don't count toward your 250gb monthly cap.

AT&T is the same way with their services.

if it is their product you get as much bandwidth as you want, but if it is a third party your restricted.

read the fine print of those caps some time, it is pretty scary at what is allowed and doesn't count.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Archangel Michael]

This is why politicization of Net Neutrality is ... bad, regardless of who is doing it, (R) or (D). And no, I don't trust the (D) on this any more than I trust the (R). Harry Reid has proven himself a technological idiot with his comment about GPS system recently, and if you think he can draft legislation regarding Net Neutrality that is workable, you're sadly delusional.

The problem is, it will take a benevolent dictator to run Net Neutrality, and I don't know any.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Silly me. Of course, I only speak of some hypothetical dystopian future. I'm not saying there's any observed tendency of things like making unelected bureaucrats the arbiters of fairness, or enabling them to collect millions for indecency violations. And of course this is America, not some dictatorship like Canada where they might ban a song from the airwaves for sarcastically quoting a politically incorrect statement as a way of criticizing it. And the American government would never try to extend its broadcast control into paid content mediums like XM radio or cable tv either. I guess I'm just being paranoid. People who seek and attain authority are usually content with it; at least they don't continually try to expand it. I mean, when a government starts out just establishing official weights and measures, it is nice that they stick with just that, and they don't go expanding their purview to include food labeling, cigarette packaging (and even what can and can't be used as a brand name) or fat content. I'm also glad nobody tries to enact outright bans on fast food.

I'm sure someday excessive regulatory authority could lead to officials engaging in crony capitalism and abusing their authority in ways that happen to favor political allies, exempt favored groups from the more onerous requirements of their regulations, and/or handicap their friends' competitors, but you're right, that's not the kind of thing that regulatory authority has been known to open the door to in the past.

Sorry for bringing my tinfoil hattery into this.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

The problem is, it will take a benevolent dictator to run Net Neutrality, and I don't know any.

Well put. I frequently hear arguments that start with "Oh yeah? Well if you think the market is so perfect, then...", which is frustrating since I've never argued (nor do I think) that a free market is or ever will be anywhere near perfect. I just don't know of a better mechanism to keep processes from becoming politicized, or sectors from becoming monopolized, or incentives from being rigged to favor bad ideas (e.g. as with ethanol).

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[dryeo]

In the case of Money for Nothing and Canada that was a radio industry association that banned it. I know the station I listen to started playing it almost every hour and a couple of days later they reversed course.
Our radio stations just get told to play a certain percentage of Canadian content :)

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Imrik]

IMO a decent balance between these ideas could be obtained by letting the users flag their content. Things with a high priority flag would go through faster but have lower bandwidth caps resulting in a slower overall experience if you flag everything high priority, making them good for latency sensitive material. Lower priority flags would be good for downloading and other activities where user input is not required.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[rtb61]

No, the reality is, they should not be able to claim to sell what they do not have to sell. If they sell you that bandwidth then they should provide it, not just a fraction of it but all of it. If they want to sell data blocks with no claims of bandwidth then sell data blocks with no claims of bandwidth.

Truth is they want to be able to continue to out market competitors with claims of higher speeds but not actually be able to provide the speeds or anything near those speeds at peak usage times, not total usage as misleadingly claimed but just peak usage, after school/work, after dinner and the start of the work day.

The other thing they really want to do is establish content distribution monopolies. They will simply lock self publishers out of the market by inflating the costs of their uploads and then double dip charging the end user for the download. So publish via the ISP or go out of business and guess who will buy up the major ISPs the MPA* and RIA* gang. Now tie in criminal penalties for children copying stuff and let the greed shine through.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Grishnakh]

Most of this sounds right, except the bit about "self publishers". Yes, trying to run your own website on a residential ISP these days is pretty much a no-go (most of them block port 80 for starters), but these days, doesn't anyone with a "real" web site use hosting from someplace like 1:1, FatCow (my current provider), DreamHost, or GoDaddy (though I wouldn't recommend them unless you think it's OK to kill endangered species and support sociopathic CEOs)?

Web hosts like these companies don't, to my knowledge, deal with ISPs at all, and deal directly with the backbones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any of these guys are affected in the least by ISPs like Qworst or ComCrap. And if you want to "self publish", all it takes is $3-5 per month for a basic hosting plan; they're seriously cheap now. You probably would pay more in electricity to run your own computer 24/7 as a web server.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[rtb61]

Self publish, as in music, movies and games.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[cforciea]

Really? I can't think of a worse system for keeping sectors from becoming monopolized.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[GameboyRMH]

So please, people, TRY the "neutral" internet, before you mandate it for everyone else. Are you afraid you'll find out you wouldn't want to live with this yourself ?

It was in testing up until the last year or two, worked fine for me. Did you have any problems?

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[nahdude812]

This makes me think that even with net neutrality rules in place, that probably won't cover bandwidth allowances for consumers (which are easily defensible for ISP's). If net neutrality goes into effect and doesn't cover allowances, ISP's will simply create different bandwidth buckets.

Imagine an IS such as Comcast offering "Unlimited Tier 1 Connectivity," with some extremely low tier 2 connectivity limit. Anyone who doesn't pay the Comcast tax would have their traffic stuck in tier 2 - competing for an extremely tiny slice of the consumer's allowance and effectively disqualifying video services and so forth.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[GameboyRMH]

What does the fairness doctrine have to do with anything at all, apart from Glenn Beck's nutty Net Neutrality = Fairness Doctrine conspiracy theory?

A sibling comment pointed out that Canada's radio censorship was done by a private industry group. You should also consider that saying "faggot" in Canada is just as bad as saying "nigger" in America, and intent and context has never mattered when it comes to censorship. Otherwise you'd have to allow just about every instance of "nigger" in rap songs since it isn't used in a derogatory or hateful manner.

Censorship of the Internet's content of any kind is not part of net neutrality. And if you're worried about that, well the US government is already unilaterally taking down .com domains on behalf of the MAFIAA, and we all saw the unusual series of unfortunate events that happened to Wikileaks, so the lack of net neutrality isn't stopping them from trying.

Also I find Obama's emissions regulation exemptions disgusting, and if any ISPs were exempted from net neutrality rules, that would likewise defeat the whole purpose of the thing.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[GameboyRMH]

The only ovelap between net neutrality and QoS is that on a neutral Internet, QoS may not be used to differentiate between services from different providers. The concept of net neutrality doesn't cover much on QoS, but allowing the ISP to specify QoS rules would create loopholes big enough to drive a truck though (they could give all VPN services a way higher priority and then offer ComCastVPN accounts to effectively do an end-run around net neutrality), so it's probably best to only allow QoS rules to be set by end-customers. Also QoS is not a huge deal. VoIP works fine no QoS whatsoever.

Net neutrality doesn't cover oversubscription at all. You can oversubscribe all you want as long as you don't break neutrality rules - do it too much and your service will just be shitty.

What changed in the last year or two is that providers are no longer content-agnostic and destination-agnostic - airlines allow free traffic only to participating social networking sites, ISPs allow cap exemptions for Windows updates and participating VoIP services, cell networks allow cap exemptions for participating social network sites...the Internet is very much tiered now.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[phlinn]

I can. Government granted monopolies, or even just blatant favoritism. Like allowing one company to run wires through public property without paying for it and denying the same ability to others who want to compete. Patents, and copyrights. Mandates. Generally, any regulation increases the cost of entry into the market, regardless of it's nominal purposes and even if you think a particular regulation is worthwhile.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[phlinn]

I disagree. Metered billing is the natural mechanism to charge people when only factoring the price of providing service. Pure monthly charges which ignore usage patterns are great for consumers in terms of ease of understanding, and therefore helped a lot as a marketing tool.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Grishnakh]

Oh, I see.

Again, I don't see the problem here. If anything, it's easier than ever to be an independent publisher. I get your point about double-dip charging for downloads (basically because of the bandwidth caps), but those aren't really a problem for games or music, though they could be for movies. Games and music just don't take up that much space, so downloading them won't affect your monthly GB usage significantly. A single CD for instance is only 650MB, and that's if you don't bother to compress it 2:1 with FLAC. Anyone can easily set up a website and sell direct-downloaded games and music. Movies of course are a little worse since they're usually larger, more like 4GB or so for one in h264. Of course, you can always go back to sending stuff on CD/DVD/BD discs in the mail if the ISPs tighten down their download limits, though that would certainly distort the market in their favor.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

First of all, love your sig line, and it's likely prophetic. Also, fair point on the Canadian regulation being from an extra-governmental authority.

My point isn't that net neutrality == the fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine is just one example of what you get when Washington starts seeing itself as being in charge of "communications." Besides, it's not like you can't find people advocating for some sort of mechanism to "balance" or "improve" (by fiat) the political discourse on the `net. The more real threat, though, is that we'll see policing over IP infringement and obscenity (especially regarding its availability to minors).

When it comes to regulating any industry, once you let that camel's nose into the tent, it tends to work its way further in. "Preserving competition" turns into subtle (or not-so-subtle) price controls, and propping up failing competitors. Hell, the FCC is already considering a price control scheme in the wireless sector (not that it's clear it has the authority to impose this). An item on the linked meeting agenda is:

TITLE: Reexamination of Roaming Obligations of Commercial Mobile Radio Service Providers and Other Providers of Mobile Data Services (WT Docket No. 05-265) SUMMARY: The Commission will consider a Second Report and Order that adopts a rule requiring facilities-based providers of commercial mobile data services to offer data roaming arrangements to other such providers on commercially reasonable terms and conditions, subject to certain limitations.

Price controls have repeatedly been shown to create scarcity and raise entry barriers for would-be competitors. You mentioned airline regulation earlier, and that's a great example: We used to treat airline routes as a commons, and the Civil Aeronautics Board actually controlled routes, airfares, and even entry into the marketplace by new airlines. Since deregulation, airfare prices have fallen over 40% in real terms. Safety and convenience have increased dramatically as well (ok, except for all the TSA BS on the convenience score). Death risk during air travel has dropped dramatically since 1978, partially because the increased market has caused airlines to turn their fleets over faster, resulting in newer average aircraft ages.

In short, past experience suggests that a rich, unrestrained market with low entry barriers is the best way to foster rising quality and falling prices. If the government really wants to ensure quality service, it could invest in large, common, shared wiring routes (shielded digital pipelines) that could be leased by anyone with no discrimination whatsoever in price or access. Municipalities could connect to them on the condition that there was no grant of monopoly or preferential access to any service provider. Our power grid needs expansion (especially if we expect electric cars to gain market share), the backbones could sure use it, and if sufficiently built out it could do a lot to break up the oligopoly that would let ISPs get away with consumer-hostile forms of throttling in the first place.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[cforciea]

Generally, any regulation increases the cost of entry into the market, regardless of it's nominal purposes and even if you think a particular regulation is worthwhile.

Bullshit. Explain to me how regulating the last mile gear to my house into a common carrier raises the barrier of entry to the bandwidth provider market. Or how preventing Limit Pricing increases cost of entry. Or any number of other regulations that only preclude anti-competitive behavior from monopolistic or near-monopolistic entities. Also, increasing cost of entry to a market isn't even a bad thing. Is there anyone that regrets the increased costs associated with additional regulation on say the meat packing industry? Did we really want what the free market gave us there?

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[phlinn]

Paperwork. Tracking how you handle any of those limits is an additional hurdle for every company, but is generally a smaller piece of the budget for big ones. Mandating that you share equipment you install is a cost, which requires an internal layer of bureaucracy to handle. Not allowing you to put in your own equipment at all is a major barrier to starting up your own company.

I think you missed my point though. Even stipulating that some regulations are on net good (I may or may not agree with a given regulation) increasing the cost of entry is a cost of those regulations which must be accounted for. Costs are bad, even if the corresponding benefits are greater. I am NOT claiming that all regulation is on net bad, merely pointing out that most of those regulations tend to serve the interests of large companies better than small ones. Anti-monopoly regulation is only necessary as a corrective for other regulations. Non-abusive monopolies aren't problems, abusive monopolies create an incentive to compete.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[cforciea]

Paperwork. Tracking how you handle any of those limits is an additional hurdle for every company, but is generally a smaller piece of the budget for big ones. Mandating that you share equipment you install is a cost, which requires an internal layer of bureaucracy to handle. Not allowing you to put in your own equipment at all is a major barrier to starting up your own company.

That doesn't even make sense in the context of the regulations I listed. What additionally paperwork is generated for an up and coming MVNO by requiring that AT&T let them lease usage of tower equipment? What paperwork is added to a bandwidth provider at a DSLAM selling their services through AT&T lines to my house? Sure, there is extra paperwork for the major provider in these instances, but that has nothing to do with barriers to entry. The sparsity of available spectrum and the natural monopoly inherent in wire easements mean that there is already such a high barrier to entry on the last mile that we're not likely to ever see real competition come to the market in the foreseeable future, but we can artificially lower barriers to entry for the bandwidth/phone service portions of those services by decoupling them from the portions of the service that cause the natural monopoly, and thus do the exact opposite of what you are complaining that regulation does.

Anti-monopoly regulation is only necessary as a corrective for other regulations. Non-abusive monopolies aren't problems, abusive monopolies create an incentive to compete.

This is where the voodoo mysticism shows up in your typical free-marketeer's ideology. The first thing any corporation does when it gets market dominance is to try to close the door behind it. Yes, sometimes this is done (especially in systems like ours where campaign contributions are key to getting elected) by getting their market advantage institutionalized, although I would note that the same people who like to prattle incessantly about the magic powers of a market are frequently the ones advocating against campaign finance reform and are thus the underlying cause for that problem. But there are plenty of other tactics available to a company with enough resources to prevent fair competition, especially in markets with natural monopolies like the aforementioned telecoms. For instance, (the again above mentioned) limit pricing in a region where a potential competitor is gaining steam does wonders for putting them out of business, and if there is a substantial front end investment to creating a new firm in your industry, it is unlikely that you'll have to take the hit on at- or below-cost sales very many times before people will give up on trying to break in. After that point, the only new competition that you'll see is if some other mega-conglomerate moves into your market for which barriers to entry as a startup aren't really relevant.

The problem with the belief that the market will take care of everything, in other words, is that it has it has no nuance. There are some industries that we could get away with regulating very little (like some sectors of software development), but a free-marketeer pretends that all markets can work that way, which is patently false. A free market takes care of monopolies on its own when the industry in question fulfills a specific set of criteria, but a large portion of industries do not meet the requirements. And that's not even looking at cross-industry anti-competitive behavior.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[rtb61]

'ER', you are not in business to sell one CD or one Game or one Movie, you'll soon starve to death. You have to sell thousands, ten of thousands, hundreds of thousands even millions and those caps kill you business plan because paying for the extra data uploads will cost more than you are charging for your content.

Global audience via the internet means you are targeting millions of customers at very low prices. What they are trying force is the apple model. The ISP gets their share, the publisher get their share and the content producer gets screwed, hell what the really are looking at is combining the ISP and Publisher and still pretending they are separate and charging for them.

They are not targeting downloads, they are specifically targeting uploads.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[Grishnakh]

Huh? What data uploads? If you're selling downloaded data from your website, then you only have to upload it once to your hosted server with someplace like DreamHost, FatCow, or 1:1. If your site is busy, you'll probably want to pay extra for a dedicated server though. But unless you're uploading a ton of stuff every month, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, but if it is, it would probably make sense to get hosting from a company that's local to you, so you can just go visit them in person to upload your stuff every week or whenever.

There's lots of independent artists that seem to be doing OK with places like CDBaby and Magnatune.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[rtb61]

That's now, the future without locking is net neutrality is all traffic counts uploads and downloads and they will lock it in on all the major pipes. All monitored, all filtered, all corporate censored, all limited, all of the time.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[phlinn]

The existence of potential competition is what keeps the current supplier from raising prices above that limit price. I.e. prices stay low. If they are low enough to keep competitors out, they are below the marginal cost of production for smaller companies, and thus lots of smaller competitors in place of the monopoly would not have cheaper prices unless the marginal cost of production has an ridiculously steep drop off. Are you sure you want to claim that's an abusive monopoly? Unless you want to claim that making a profit is bad in and of itself, or that dominating a particular market is inherently bad, the limit price is not really a tool of abuse.

I would note that the ones arguing against both campaign finance reform and the institutionalized market advantages also argue against government power in general, which if they actually had their way, would eliminate most of the advantages of campaign financing in the first place. It shouldn't be necessary for growing companies to pay for lobbyists, but it is, and any company which tries to stay uninvolved suffers for it.

Re:Does the regulation allow shaping?

[cforciea]

Lack of competition affects more than just the current price of a product, so yes, dominating a particular market is inherently bad. For instance, if I can keep competitors from entering my market, I don't need a whole lot of R&D to keep ahead of competitors, because there aren't any. So right now consumers get better prices than they could get from a small competitor, but 10 years down the line they might be a whole lot worse off because technology hasn't advanced like it should have.

Additionally, there is a tendency to let limit pricing slide and then re-enact it regionally when competitors pop up, which turns it from limit pricing into predatory pricing. In an industry with otherwise low barriers to entry and loose regional ties, predatory pricing isn't a big deal because even a large firm can go out of business if it has to take losses whenever it needs to put some random guy working from his garage out of business, but again, in an industry with higher startup costs, you don't have to prove you are willing to engage in predatory pricing very many times before people aren't willing to make the investment to try to enter the market.

You can't eliminate the advantages of campaign financing without campaign finance reform. Money wins elections. If a politician does not pander to the interests who paid their way to office, they won't get money next time, and the other guy will, and the system goes right back to where it was. It's like if you have a baseball league where the umpires are selected primarily based on how many bribes they take in from team owners, and they get to write all of the rules for the game. Your suggestion amounts to asking the umpires to pretty please reform the rules they use to draw the most bribes oh and to also please call the game fairly 3 3 :3. It's pretty talk, but it amounts to make believe.

FCC = Federal *Communications* Commission, no?

[zooblethorpe]

While I feel very strongly that content and distribution must be split up somehow with regard to major media control over internet access (hello, intrinsic structural conflict of interest), I cannot speak much to the current round of those pushing for net neutrality legislation, in part due to the copious amounts of obfuscation going on on all sides of the public policy issue, and in part due to the hidden and underhanded way in which legislation is drafted in this country (last-minute riders, for instance).

That said, the FCC *is* the Federal Communications Commission, so I'm a bit confused about how the internet would not fall under its purview just by definition. Bringing up the FCC's past decision to classify the ISP business as different from telecoms seems moot to me -- regardless of whether that decision was right or wrong at the time, the circumstances have clearly changed, and the internet is now a vital communications technology without which the US economy simply couldn't function (without massive and likely painful changes). Properly reclassifying the internet as a telecommunication technology and then just applying the laws already on the books would seem the key -- but for the problems of regulatory capture in the US government.

Ah, well.

Re:FCC = Federal *Communications* Commission, no?

[Rockoon]

That said, the FCC *is* the Federal Communications Commission, so I'm a bit confused about how the internet would not fall under its purview just by definition.

You say "by definition" but are only talking about "title."

"Federal Communications Commission" is a title, not a charter. Did you know that you can actually look up their charter, as defined by law? That, BY DEFINITION, defines what is and is not under their purview.

Money

[DaMattster]

I hear the cha-ching sound of the lobbyists profitting on falsehoods.

flaw in the basic concept

[Presto Vivace]

data is not like tangible commodities, so usage does not make sense. Also, usage based billing is just about preventing us from cutting our cable and using netflix instead. I cannot explain as well as the video, but that is it in a nutshell

Re:flaw in the basic concept

[Jeremi]

data is not like tangible commodities, so usage does not make sense

It makes sense when the ISP's equipment costs are proportional to the amount of data it must transport (which they are). The video tries to sidestep that fact by suggesting that ISP's should have enough bandwidth available for all customers to be sending and receiving their maximum bandwidth at all times... which would be nice, but provisioning enough equipment to support that scenario would be extremely expensive, and pointless since most user's connections are idle most of the time. If ISPs were required to guarantee full bandwidth to all customers at once, everyone's monthly Internet bill would be hundreds of dollars.

Also, usage based billing is just about preventing us from cutting our cable and using netflix instead.

That may be part of it, but UBB by itself shouldn't cause that -- if ISP A is overcharging your for bandwidth, you should (in theory) be able to switch over to competing ISP B which offers a more reasonable price. Eventually, competition would drive bandwidth prices down to slightly more than what the bandwidth costs the ISPs.

Of course, that assumes that there is competition between ISPs. The video says that the big ISPs are using the CRTC's decision to drive smaller ISPs out of business, and maybe that is true. But in that case, the problem is with the CRTC's regulation discouraging competition -- and not inherent in the idea of UBB itself.

Re:flaw in the basic concept

[Ichijo]

Also, usage based billing is just about preventing us from cutting our cable and using netflix instead.

You should consider the possibility that Netflix isn't a wise use of limited network resources, and that efficient usage-based pricing only makes you face that fact.

Re:flaw in the basic concept

[cbeaudry]

UBB only makes sens if the ISP's are actually treated like a utility.

Base monthly connection fee, somewhere between 5 to 10$ max a month.
Then pay per GB at a faire markup, somewhere between .03 to .10 $ / GB per month.

Anything else and its gouging, because the actual cost per gigabytes is less than a penny and getting smaller every year.

Re:Don't need force or effect to state the law

[AlamedaStone]

fast approaching Constitutional Crisis time.

No one seems very interested in that now. Pick-and-choose arguments make great sound bites, but the sheer number of constitutional crises we've encountered over the last 10 years or so haven't elicited much more than a yawn and no more than a single news cycle from MSM (okay, a few papers actually had coverage, but that's about it).

Sorry kids, it's over. I think I'll live to see the whole mess come to bear, but it's still a good while off yet - I'd guess about 30-40 years for the real shit to hit the fan. It's the proverbial frog in hot water - I don't think most people will see it coming as chips flake from the edges of personal freedom. Too much perpetual hysteria to sort out the signal.

Also, telephone poles and streets

[bigtrike]

So, other than the radio spectrum, how are communications providers supposed to reach end users without placing their wires in a public space such as buried in a street or on a utility pole?

Re:Just one question

[StevenMaurer]

I just have one question. Where in the Constitution is the government given the authority to regulate the internet.
Answer: Nowhere in the Constitution.

At first, I thought you were trolling. Nobody could be that dumb, could they?
Then considered FOX news and its fan base, and decided probably so.

Here are a couple of things you might consider:

1. 1. The internet wasn't around when the Constitution was written.
2. 2. Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. Yes, that's written in the Constitution.
3. 3. Internet commerce represents 99.999% of the Internet (and yes, porn is commerce)

Next time, try to buy a clue, okay?

Let legislators experience no net neutrality

[techdolphin]

I have an idea. Any elected officials that vote against net neutrality should be forced to wait 24 hours before any of their e-mail, including staff, is sent or received, and make them wait wait at least 5 minutes for each web page they access. Further, if they are in a car, make them wait an extra 15 minutes to get a real taste of no net neutrality. Of course in Washington, D.C., they may notice an extra 15 minute wait in a car.

Charter not findable; better is 1996 Telecoms Act

[zooblethorpe]

Searching for the FCC's charter turns up no apparent hits. Searching more specifically turns up what seem to be charters produced by various committees within the FCC, as opposed to something covering the FCC as a whole. This page seems to be the most relevant listing of charters and regulations, but again nothing seems to cover the whole FCC, aside possibly from the extremely dense FCC Rules and Regulations links list.

There are a few pages on the FCC site that touch on the internet and the FCC's regulatory role, which mostly just say the FCC doesn't regulate the internet or ISPs, with no explanation for why. Other pages like this one describe future goals of the FCC with regard to specific sub-areas of internet policy.

In the admittedly brief bit of searching I've done so far, though, I can find nothing that either resembles an overall charter for the FCC as a whole, or that lays out the FCC's regulatory scope with explanations for why things are or are not included therein.

According to the About the Federal Communications Commission page on the FCC's site:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.

... and the Internet Policy Working Group intro page:

The Working Group will assist the Commission in identifying, evaluating and addressing policy issues that will arise as telecommunications services move to Internet-based platforms.

From these, I find myself still puzzled as to why the FCC can and does regulate telecom companies, preventing them from engaging in any traffic-slowing, redirecting, filtering, throttling, or other technical hobbling of competing services, and yet this same FCC is not allowed to similarly regulate ISPs.

I do find an explanation in the sleight-of-hand committed in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which classified ISPs as providing "information services" instead of "telecommunications services" (some background here), apparently formalizing some of the FCC's policies to protect little-guy ISPs from big-guy telecoms (more here). This Act seems to have been based on 1) the understanding of the internet at the time, given the early date and the non-technical backgrounds of pretty much anyone in Congress then, and 2) business interests that were very keen to not have to play by the stricter rules applied to telecoms.

While this may have had the intended effect of protecting the little guy and incentivizing innovation in internet services, the rise of media conglomerates that have been allowed to buy up everything from content production through to online delivery services despite the clear and present conflicts of interest, and that have since begun to see what kinds of anti-competitive behavior they can get away with, strongly suggests that this distinction between "telecommunication service" and "information service" might need revisiting -- or at the very least that the FCC (or some other entity) should rework the ways in which these "information services" are regulated.

Cheers,

Re:Just one question

[Anonymous Coward]

The condescending tone of your comment most likely negates the point you're trying to make in the minds of most people. I'm sure you think you're smarter than everyone else, but do you have to be such a magnanimous jackass about it?

Do what you will.

[symbolset]

"If it harms noone, do what you will" shall be the whole of the law.

Why we need Net Neutrality

[EmagGeek]

Let's say your only options for Internet service are to buy it from one of two companies, each of which is also a content provider.

Let's say that you buy your content from an online streaming provider, such as Netflix, and decide not to buy content from your ISP.

Let's say your ISP gets pissed and decides to meter your Internet service, except of course data traffic from their content farms.

This effectively kills all online streaming providers except for theirs. We're dealing with this here where AT&T just put caps on their DSL service in our area. We can no longer effectively use Netflix for movies as it only takes about 5 movies to exceed our cap.

Of course, we can buy cable TV from AT&T UVerse if we want...

See how that works? Net Neutrality, from what I understand, forbids ISPs who are also content providers from making moves such as this, right? Or, do I have it wrong?

Re:Why we need Net Neutrality

[sqrt(2)]

You are mixing up two separate ideas, but they are somewhat related.

Usage based billing is what you described; the treatment of an internet connection as a stream of consumable goods--data. But data is neither consumed nor is it manufactured, so usage based billing does not make logical sense. The more data that is used up to capacity costs the ISP nothing, and when they get to capacity that must be because they have a lot of subscribers, so they can afford to expand. Capacity thus will always be slightly ahead of demand if the ISP has planned properly and is diligent about rolling out upgrades to their infrastructure. In their greed, they instead chose to oversell their capacity, knowing that most customers don't use anything close to what they are promised by the ISP. They COULD use some of their profits to expand capacity, but they are instead choosing to pursue a legislative solution, simply getting government to allow them to charge by usage instead of selling an unlimited connection at a certain speed. This is what we see happening in Canada.

Net neutrality would stop the ISP favoring one content source (usually their own or a company's that has paid them for a fast track) over another (their competitors or companies that haven't paid for priority treatment for their data). The most obvious case would be where an ISP is also a content creator/provider, like what you mention. They realize that, absent any government regulation forbidding them from doing so (Net Neutrality Legislation), they can simply slow down any traffic from Netflix for example, but allow their own video on demand service to reach subscribers at full speed and with no bandwidth cap. Real net neutrality legislation would force them to treat all bits of a certain type the same, regardless of their source and destination. This would NOT stop ISPs from implementing QOS, as it is widely criticized as doing. Different categories of data can be given different priority, as long as data WITHIN each category is treated the same. So all streaming video is treated the same, but streaming video can be treated differently from VOIP (which requires lower latency and thus a higher priority).

Re:Why we need Net Neutrality

[phlinn]

You are incorrect. Bandwidth is consumed. Data is the amount of bandwidth consumed. Depending on rates charged, and the state of networking technology, it's perfectly possible for an ISP to be at capacity, but be unable to afford equipment to expand capacity. Especially if they aren't allowed to run even more wires. Those additional wires may cost a lot more to lay down than they are taking in.

Your argument is like arguing that they shouldn't charge for water usage, only per connection. If the pipes are at capacity, then the water company must have a lot of subscribers, and can afford to add desalination plants/pipes/infrastructure.

Re:Why we need Net Neutrality

[sqrt(2)]

Many places do charge for water that way, I've lived in places like that (in California, if you can believe it), but that's beside the point. Water is a tangible, physical good. The cost to deliver more water scales with how much water you need to deliver. Delivering more bandwidth UP TO CAPACITY costs nothing more. Expanding capacity does cost more, and businesses have been reluctant to do so not because of regulation or inability to act but because they chose to instead oversell their capacity and reap record short term profits.

Re:A quick summary of every past article on this:

[GameboyRMH]

- This isn't really an issue because there is no sign of tiered internet yet anyway

Are you fucking serious!? Airlines giving free traffic only to participating social networking sites, ISPs excluding Windows updates and participating VoIP services from caps, cell providers excluding participating social networking sites from caps, TIERED INTERNET IS HERE NOW.

They're regulating the corporations, not the 'net

[mykos]

Just thought I'd share this in case you run into any anti-neutrality people. Net neutrality is the regulation of corporations, not content. Net neutrality rules seek to bar corporations from tampering with content.

free market fundamentalism at work

[circletimessquare]

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

no, assholes, market forces do not solve all problems in the world. you need REGULATIONS, backed up by enforcement, that you WANT to pay for, if you properly understood the costs of no regulations. regulations whose effects are to make the market FREE. no, that's not a contradiction if you understand the fucking subject matter. no intellectual charity for you: figure it the fuck out on your own time, retards

if you don't understand how regulations make the market free and fair STOP YAMMERING ABOUT A SUBJECT MATTER YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND

Re:Don't need force or effect to state the law

[517714]

Also, as a side note, the President does not directly (or even indirectly) control the FCC. Just because the President and the FCC are both in the executive branch doesn't mean the President can call the FCC up and tell them what to do. So Obama "going rogue" is a total non sequitur in this case, but thanks for playing.

How do you reconcile your statement against this from TFA:

During the 2008 campaign, Obama told CNET that "I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality."

Are you suggesting that Mr. Obama is a liar?

The F.C.C.

[iiiears]

Antitrust legislation to encourage competition is the answer.

ISPs can't "regulate" anything.

[Brett Glass]

There's too much competition. I live in a small, rural town of 28,000 souls, and we have 12 (count them!) facilities-based ISPs and more non-facilities-based ones. ISPs know that if they do anything that riles customers, those customers are history.

On the other hand, every government that's gotten control of the Internet in its country has censored it. Without exception.

Re:ISPs can't "regulate" anything.

[asylumx]

28,000 people is a small town where you're from? The city I live in has 12,000 and is considered one of the larger cities around. Also, we have 2 (yes, two) providers available. That's *it*. AT&T maxes out at 3mbps and Comcast goes up to 16mbps. 3mbps isn't enough for me to do what I need to do, so I have no choice.

Re:ISPs can't "regulate" anything.

[Brett Glass]

Do you have cellular service? From how many providers? All are broadband competitors. Can you see the sky? Then satellite is another. How many WISPs operate in your area? All of them can beat the performance of DSL. It is highly unlikely that you actually have only two options.

Re:ISPs can't "regulate" anything.

[asylumx]

No, cell service is not a broadband competitor. Service is far too slow here. Satellite has terrible lag times so it is also unrealistic -- I've tried it before, it's not as great as you think it is. No "WISPs" here. Not a one.

I appreciate you trying to solve this problem but believe me, I've looked. If you're considering cell service as a broadband option, then you're right, I do have more options, but they are all significantly slower here than the DSL that is offered locally, which I've already mentioned is too slow.

In what language is this "unanimous"?

[borrrden]

Um...sorry but "unanimous" in English means:

1. (of two or more people) Fully in agreement

2. (of an opinion, decision, or vote) Held or carried by everyone involved

So for that particular to vote to be unanimous it would have to be 419-0.

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[proverbialcow]

Don't blame Bush and the Iraq War for the problems either, because obviously the current administration has no problems spending billions on war and "defending" America either.

Why the fuck not? You realize that had he not plundered the Treasury and engaged us in a ten-year (so far) imbroglio in the Middle East, we would be enjoying the second year of budget surplus, right? And that the first half of the bailout was already distributed and spent by the time Obama was even elected, much less took office? So no, I'm not going to play your bullshit game, asshat. If you want me to examine the actual facts, then I will.

Things will have to get far worse

[ThatsNotPudding]

(read: after the next election cycle) before the massively destructive and venal actions of the GOP and their corporate buddies finally penetrate the thick trogoldytic hide of the average US voter.

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[phlinn]

Senator obama voted for the bailouts, and can't wash his hands of them. Also, you are simply wrong that we would have a surplus currently without iraq and the bush tax cuts. The current deficits exceed the maximum possible savings from both combined. Granted, they are a large portion, but even the best number produced by a left wing group show them causing no more than half of the current deficits.

Re:Charter not findable; better is 1996 Telecoms A

[phlinn]

As near as I can tell, the FCC gained authority over wired communications by court decision, not by being granted the authority directly. Arguably, congress had a legitimate interest in establishing the ground rules for a commons such as radio waves, although I think allowing the homesteading style ownership of a channel by being the first to use would have been better. There's a reasonable argument that the federal government does not have the legitimate authority to regulate purely local wired communications, despite the current state of the law.

sounds like a 8 yr old

[LBJLVC]

I think I just read was. wah wah wah, that is mine not yours, even though I am not doing anything about it, but that is mine, mine, mine, mine, mine wah wah wah, Sounded like my old job, a guy would always complain that something didn't get fixed. I coded the fix and he would back it out because that is his job and not mine and then i would get in trouble for it. (there was a total of 20 developers at this shop) a tribunal of federal judges in DC already though out a case that challenged this notion that FCC doesn't have power and threw it out?

Re:Charter not findable; better is 1996 Telecoms A

[zooblethorpe]

As near as I can tell, the FCC gained authority over wired communications by court decision, not by being granted the authority directly.

Interesting. I haven't delved into the history, and assumed it was an outgrowth of their radio regulatory role.

Arguably, congress had a legitimate interest in establishing the ground rules for a commons such as radio waves, although I think allowing the homesteading style ownership of a channel by being the first to use would have been better.

The recent round of auctions makes it clear that this commons is not open to little folk. Perhaps homesteading would have been a better model.

There's a reasonable argument that the federal government does not have the legitimate authority to regulate purely local wired communications, despite the current state of the law.

I certainly agree with you here, though thinking it through, I'd imagine the definition of "local" might need some hammering out -- Is it local only if I have a dedicated line between points A and B (and the line doesn't cross any state lines)? Is it still local if I'm using the phone company's lines to make a local call, only the nearest exchange is a few counties over? Etc., etc.

Cheers,

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

I'm no fan of Bush's budget management (or lack thereof), but his tax cuts -- especially those in `03 -- were exactly the right policy.

Bush's eight years began with the dot com bust followed by 9/11. The years from 2000 to 2003 saw declining federal revenues compounded by rising unemployment. Revenue increases from `03 to `06 were among the highest for any three-year period, and unemployment dropped consistently from `03 - `07. The rate of GDP growth more than doubled after `03. Capital gains revenues doubled over the next three years. Before the cuts, the CBO predicted them to increase only ~26% over that period.

It would have been possible to balance the budget after the Bush tax cuts, but neither he nor congress did anything to reign in spending. If we ever want to see black ink again, we have to attack entitlement spending, corporate welfare, and redundant or counter-productive bureaucracies. Defense spending shouldn't be immune to cuts, and we sure as hell have to keep the feds from bailing out sinking states. That all still isn't sufficient to completely eliminate deficits, but it is necessary and it's a start.

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[proverbialcow]

I'm no fan of Bush's budget management (or lack thereof), but his tax cuts -- especially those in `03 -- were exactly the right policy.

Bush's eight years began with the dot com bust followed by 9/11.

The dot-com bust was already well-underway by the time Bush was elected. Even so, prior to 9/11, we were seeing a tenuous recovery, and it was either the steps taken by Congress during the Clinton administration (since spending measures adopted in 2001 wouldn't take effect until 2002, and Clinton was president for the whole of 2000), steps taken by the Fed under Clinton and/or Bush, natural market forces, the $300 tax rebate or some combination of the four that was causing that. My money is on a combination, but the effects aren't distributed evenly. The tax rebate was simply a pre-mature distribution of the tax refunds that would have been due for the 2001 tax year, and its effects are dubious at best. Maybe the tax cuts were necessary in 2003, but that doesn't make them appropriate now.

The years from 2000 to 2003 saw declining federal revenues compounded by rising unemployment. Revenue increases from `03 to `06 were among the highest for any three-year period, and unemployment dropped consistently from `03 - `07. The rate of GDP growth more than doubled after `03. Capital gains revenues doubled over the next three years. Before the cuts, the CBO predicted them to increase only ~26% over that period.

The years 2000-2003 are something of a special case. The dot-com mess was correcting itself, but just as it was coming out of that, 9/11 cratered any hope of that, and in the wake of the economic impact of the attack, a host of accounting troubles at a bunch of companies (Kmart, Enron, Adelphia, Tyco, WorldCom to name a few) further eroded investors' faith in the companies they invested in, and employees' faith that they had any sort of job security. While doubling the growth rate is impressive, it helps that it was doubling from a low point.

It would have been possible to balance the budget after the Bush tax cuts, but neither he nor congress did anything to reign in spending.

Exactly my point. It's absolutely vital that we curtail spending - when faced with actually having to pay for it, and when it suits the political agenda of the Republicans - but it's "knee-jerk liberalism" to question unwise spending as the original decisions were being made?

I think it's disingenuous for today's conservatives to try to distance themselves from Bush when the rallying cry for many of these same people in 2004 was "it doesn't make sense to change horses in mid-stream." So maybe there's more information about Bush in hindsight, and they're re-evaluating that decision - but doesn't that make them flip-floppers? Because that's obviously the worst thing a person can do, is make a decision on the best information they have available at the time, and then admit later that their decision based on incomplete evidence wasn't optimal in the light of a more complete picture.

People who thought Kerry was a better candidate in 2004 - hell, even people who thought McCain was a better candidate in 2000 - were excoriated by the vicious rhetoric bandied about by the Republicans who supported Bush. I'm willing to listen to a reasoned argument, but until I see evidence that those attitudes have changed, I seriously question the ability of Republicans or those who continue to support them to separate reason from dogma.

If we ever want to see black ink again, we have to attack entitlement spending, corporate welfare, and redundant or counter-productive bureaucracies. Defense spending shouldn't be immune to cuts, and we sure as hell have to keep the feds from bailing out sinking states. That all still isn't sufficient to completely eliminate deficits, but it is necessary and it's a start.

That's a good case, but I would like to see order of operations - let's pop these corrections in the order they were pushed on: end state bailouts, attack corporate welfare, roll back redundant and counter-productive bureaucracy, cut unnecessary defense spending and only then get to work on entitlement overhaul.

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[proverbialcow]

Senator obama voted for the bailouts, and can't wash his hands of them.

Agreed, but neither can the sitting members of the House and Senate who voted the same way. For many of those people to now label them "Obama's bailout" is political posturing at its ugliest, and does little to support their claim that their only interest is in fixing the budget.

Also, you are simply wrong that we would have a surplus currently without iraq and the bush tax cuts. The current deficits exceed the maximum possible savings from both combined. Granted, they are a large portion, but even the best number produced by a left wing group show them causing no more than half of the current deficits.

If that was what I claimed, I would agree. There's also the six years of uncontrolled spending unrelated to the Iraq war or the tax cuts, with nary a thought on how to pay for them. PAYGO expired in 2002, and it would have done a lot towards protecting the 2010 surplus projected in 2000. For the Congress sitting at the time to allow that to expire, and the party in majority at the time to now express outrage at the consequences of that action (as well as the run-up in spending), is at the very least misleading.

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Maybe the tax cuts were necessary in 2003, but that doesn't make them appropriate now.

We agree on much. The problem is that too many conservatives and libertarians argue as if any tax cut will pay for itself or even increase revenues, and too many liberals argue as if any tax increase will increase revenues, some going as far as to predict linear revenue gains.

Neither extreme is true, but it's nearly axiomatic that some form of the Laffer Curve is true. Few would argue that a tax rate increase from 99% to 100% will increase revenues, and a decrease from 1% to 0% will surely lessen them. In between those extremes, there's a valid debate about what the parabola looks like. Presumably, it varies different under different economic conditions. People (and corporations) are probably more prone to try to minimize tax exposure when times are hard, growth is slow, margins are slim or the future looks rocky.

So to have a rational, evidence-based tax policy, we need to start with

• What is the purpose and goal of tax policy in the first place,
• What does the Laffer Curve currently look like,
• Where does today's tax policy put us on that curve (to the best of our knowledge), and
• What net impact is this likely to have -- on the economy and on revenues?

Then you have to look at what the proper function of government is, and whether we're currently overstepping or falling short of that. Another point that often gets overlooked is that giving revenues to an overspending government may be like making loans to a gambling addict. If they simply leverage every dollar they actually receive to borrow eight more, then more revenue might not be desirable. Even after all that people will still have irreconcilable ideological differences about taxation (you could favor anything from sharply redistributive policies to a flat amount tax of the budget divided by the tax base), but laying out something like the above would still go a long way towards separating the pragmatic debate from the ideological one.

I think it's disingenuous for today's conservatives to try to distance themselves from Bush when the rallying cry for many of these same people in 2004 was "it doesn't make sense to change horses in mid-stream."

[...and...]

People who thought Kerry was a better candidate in 2004 - hell, even people who thought McCain was a better candidate in 2000 - were excoriated by the vicious rhetoric bandied about by the Republicans who supported Bush.

I was critical of Bush's lack of fiscal restraint while he was in office, but I still thought (and think) that McCain is the kind of political animal who can be counted on for nothing except to promote himself and seek his own career advancement. I like his efforts promoting pork awareness, but I still would never trust him in the long run. Bush at least tried to create an opt-in privatization option for a small fraction of Social Security, and somebody's going to have to touch that third rail again before long. The market has taken some lumps since then, but even in light of that I think that once the entitlement shit really starts hitting the fan, we're going to wish that Bush had succeeded.

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[proverbialcow]

We agree on much. The problem is that too many conservatives and libertarians argue as if any tax cut will pay for itself or even increase revenues, and too many liberals argue as if any tax increase will increase revenues, some going as far as to predict linear revenue gains.

Linear revenue growth isn't realistic, however, I think that we're past the point where cutting taxes will spur growth in any appreciable manner and have been for a while. If you look at the cycle of money, money flows to/from households, the government and business. For there to be real growth in the economy, ultimately your going to be range-bound to encouraging growth in all three areas. I think the past decade did a lot towards shifting the flow of real, inflation-adjusted dollars into the pockets of businesses, while tax rates fell and the purchasing price of the dollar fell faster than wages grew. That is ultimately unsustainable.

Neither extreme is true, but it's nearly axiomatic that some form of the Laffer Curve is true. Few would argue that a tax rate increase from 99% to 100% will increase revenues, and a decrease from 1% to 0% will surely lessen them. In between those extremes, there's a valid debate about what the parabola looks like. Presumably, it varies different under different economic conditions. People (and corporations) are probably more prone to try to minimize tax exposure when times are hard, growth is slow, margins are slim or the future looks rocky.

I would argue that corporations are likely to minimize tax exposure whenever possible, and while individual tax payers may be inclined to do so, they're a lot less adept at it. People might get more desperate during rough times, but it's not like they volunteer to pay more when they can afford it. The problem is, 28% of someone's $30,000 salary *means* more to them than 15% of a corporation's $250 million in earnings, yet the corporation is more likely NOT to pay $37.5 million than the guy who tries to skate on his $8,400 tax bill. (I used flat taxes for the sake of argument.) And maybe the corporation is going to reinvest the $37.5 million, or distribute it to shareholders, but is that more likely to affect the employees or the shareholder positively? For a typical individual shareholder, the bulk of whose holdings lie in retirement savings, that money won't recirculate for years.

So to have a rational, evidence-based tax policy, we need to start with

• What is the purpose and goal of tax policy in the first place,
• What does the Laffer Curve currently look like,
• Where does today's tax policy put us on that curve (to the best of our knowledge), and
• What net impact is this likely to have -- on the economy and on revenues?

Then you have to look at what the proper function of government is, and whether we're currently overstepping or falling short of that.

The problem with trying to have this discussion is that a lot of the people who are going to join in are going to be just noise, shouting their opinion based on their gut rather than actual fact. Even those who dedicate their whole lives to learning about political science and economics are unlikely to come to a consensus. This isn't to discount the value in seeking these answers - they're all very good questions - but I don't think there's any determinable answer.

Some of them might not even need a definite answer, like the question about the Laffer curve. If we can figure out which side of the apex of the parabola we're on (the question that directly follows), do we really need to know what the curve looks like? We know that the apex is in the ballpark of a 50% rate regardless, plus or minus a few points. It might be useful to know where exactly that apex lies, but as you said, that likely changes based on the situation and could be difficult to track. Can't we just make a rule of thumb that if you're worried about being too close, you probably

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[proverbialcow]

As I stated previously, I'm not going to play your game. You make a bunch of unsupported claims and then dare me to refute them, but place unnecessary restrictions on the facts I'm allowed to use. And, I might add, I'm willing to put my karma on the line to have this conversation, while you troll away as AC.

Go away, fuckwit.

Re:Shutup Bonehead

[phlinn]

I agree with you about other members of congress attempting to distance themselves from the bailouts they voted for. I would agree with you about years of uncontrolled spending, except deficits didn't get out of control during the republican years of controlling the house, even without PAYGO. IIRC, PAYGO was never really followed in any case, and definitely didn't stop the growth of government spending with Dem control of the house from 2006 onward. The biggest complaints about republican spending came from their own base, and republicans are expressing outrage about spending, not the loss of PAYGO per se.