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NC Governor Allows Anti-Community-Broadband Law
zerocore writes "North Carolina governor Bev Perdue will not veto a bill that will limit small town municipalities' ability to create community broadband when private industry will not go there. 'The governor said there is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having unfair advantage over private companies. But she said she was concerned that the bill would decrease the number of choices available to consumers. The bill would require towns and cities that set up broadband systems to hold public hearings, financially separate their operations from the rest of government operations, and bar from them offering below cost services. They also couldn't borrow money for the project without voter approval in a referendum.'"
How about the Open Source crowd figuring a way to deliver broadband for free or close to free? Why not!
Is there a problem here? If the bill is truly what the summary (read the article? never!) makes it out to be, it sounds quite reasonable.
It sure would be terrible if those huge corporations had to compete with under served communities and their pesky unfair advantages!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
North Carolina governor Bev Perdue will not veto a bill that will limit small town municipalities' ability to create community broadband when private industry will not go there.
Because no service can ever make the transition from "luxury" to "utility". Instead of letting a community decide for themselves if they want to provide the service, those freedom loving NC Republicans will just pass a law to protect that market for ISP's.
Freedom! *
* Except when your freedom impacts the bottom line of one of our big campaign donors. Actual freedom may vary.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Not getting why a community can't build their own broadband, and at the same time allow private companies to compete on the same fiber (or add their own fiber).
'course, this isn't the first time that the cablecos/ISPs have banded together to push politicians to enforce mono/duopoly. See also UTOPIA. Comcast and Qwest raped quite a few cities (and bought more than a few politicians) to keep that network restricted, lest they have to compete on a level playing field...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
do the companies have the right to protect their abusive and unfair practices... Free market anyone? Is it not possible to create broadband associations like there are housing associations? I think company intrusion is reaching dangerous levels.
"I'm taking this loop off." - Jack O'Neill
I live in NC and can't believe this is happening. Making small towns adhere to this convoluted rigamarole discourages innovation as well as competition and actually reduces the number of choices available to people who are sick and f'n tired of paying through the nose for internet and having few other choices (DSL) than Time Warner for non-satellite service. Time Warner realized that the communities who decided to buck the system and maintain their own internet systems were able to offer a better product to consumers for a lot less money. How can they compete with that? Prevent them from doing it in the first place, that's how.
Democracy + Lobbyists = Not a democracy.
The start of the summary and the title suggest that the law prevents the creation of community broadband, the quoted text following seems to merely say that there must be oversight and that they can't use the fact that it's run by local government to undercut private competition. Which sounds fair enough. Besides, if the earlier claim that this will be used to prevent municipal broadband in places "private industry will not go" then that's an irrelevance anyway.
I call TROLL on the whole peice.
I'm having a hard time understanding how it's a bad thing. The proposal should get voter approval in the municipality to be serviced. It shouldn't be run as a government agency, but more of a service to customers. The stipulation of the program not being able to offer services below cost doesn't even seem to be a bad idea. Where is the story here?
Sig not found.
What does that mean? Below the actual cost of the service, or below the inflated costs of the commercial monopolies?
If a town wants to start a new bus line, or double the number of stops, or open a new school, or put water fountains on Main Street, they just hold a vote at a city council meeting.
If a town wants to hang some antennas to offer a public amenity on Main Street, probably costing about as much as the water fountains, they gotta go through the equivalent of a consent decree. This sounds like broadband provider protectionism to me. That a municipal utility can provide better service than a private utility is an open question and a lot of cities do very well with publicly-owned electric grids and traction transit; adding hoops to jump through for broadband wifi in particular is just a way of protecting Comcast's fiefdom.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
It's municipal infrastructure and they payed for it with their tax dollar. Yes, there are three cities with free public wifi next to me so.
"The campaign of Gov. Bev Perdue on Friday forfeited $48,000 for what it said were questionable campaign contributions from nine donors .. The contributors are all linked to Rusty Carter, who owns the Atlantic Corp., a packaging company in Wilmington". link
"NC GOP Shines Spotlight On Bev Perdue’s Campaign Contributions" link
When the private monied interests control the state, that is the definition of fascism. Mussolini said that fascism should better be called corporatism.
Private Companies winning again against small communites, can we just go ahead and have the revolution already? Tired of this shit and we are never gonna get to the moon if we can't at least get broadband to small communities, why are we going backwards?
I am so sick of seeing this happen. The municipal wifi project in my town was canceled by time warner. The end result was that 3 years later there is still no public wifi downtown, half of the surrounding neighborhoods still dont have coverage for anything but dial up and the people living here have exactly 1 choice for internet. My cable/internet bill is $178 a month for basic cable and 5/1 internet service.
I've lived in North Carolina for a few years, and I have visited friends there for
many years prior to living there.
This is easily the worst place I have ever lived. When my work contract ends,
I am leaving. And I'd rather live in hell than live in North Carolina again.
Someone should write an Onion article about states banning/hampering municipal water systems because Coke and Pepsi demand it.
...hold public hearings, financially separate their operations from the rest of government operations, and bar from them offering below cost services. They also couldn't borrow money for the project without voter approval in a referendum.
So, in face, it's not even close to banning community broadband. It just requires real voter approval and financial responsibility.
Preach it brother.
Can't people be content with a genuine internet (not a centralized monstrosity) where people are contributing to websites Peer to peer the way it was designed?
Imagine that, everyone writing articles and blogging in their own sphere of their town. Beautiful. It would be like a wiki but at the town-level. That's what the web should be like.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Right. More public projects should have to comply with requirements like these. Transit systems being an excellent example.
Transit systems are a completely different beast. The cost savings for the city are only found when you look outside the system. More productivity when workers can get to work because they aren't in traffic. less road rage. less accidents. less emergency runs for car accidents meaning police have more time for looking for criminals. less road repair. Firemen putting out fires instead of carrying the jaws of life to cut some guy out of his SUV rollover.
If you don't understand how the system works, go to New York. Or Shanghai, or London. Just try owning a car in one of those cities.
Wouldn't a more free-market solution be for the municipality to take the money that they would have used to provide broadband and offer it as a subsidy for anyone who is willing to provide broadband (with a set list of criteria and possibly a limited term for the subsidy)? This would encourage private companies (who we have seen time and again are more efficient at almost every type of business than government is) to provide the service. If the municipality wanted to, they could even form an independent non-profit organization to initially provide the service which would qualify them for the subsidy, provided other private businesses could still receive the subsidy if they later entered the market.
For every need, from education to medical care to communication, there is a natural God-given right for private entities to collect rents to provide for it. This supersedes a presumed right of people to collectively and voluntarily provide it to themselves.
Eat the crumbs that your corporate masters give you! And not a pittance more!
Where in the constitution does it say business has a right to profit from societies needs?
I call shenanigans on $178 for BASIC cable and internet. I bet any money you have a cable box that is probably a DVR as well as supports HD channels. None of that is basic cable. Your 5/1 service cant be more then $50/month in the US
Good-bye
This type of thing is just wrong! Broadband imterrnet, needs to become a public utility, provided at cost instead of a for profit business. The same thing needs to be done with water, gas, electricity, sewer service, trash pickup etc...
Can we jsut get community wide IT infrastructure labeled as public works please? During the New Deal era, were toll road operators suing to prevent the national highway system? The idea that we should worry about private enterprise profits at the cost of public works is retarded.
Good-bye
Also, it really is a advantage we give ourselves! Over greedy companies.
That's something good!
Essentially, what they are saying is: Don't support your friends, because we shady strangers want your money! :)
I answer: FUCK YOU!
Same things apply to telecommuting. You can also apply the same logic municipalities use for improving infrastructure (attracting business), funding schools (education) and a bunch of other things to installing broadband.
So we either vote on everything, or let the city council make some judgments on their own.
Have gnu, will travel.
...say the opposite of what is happening....
The municipaities would have no unfair advantage at all, but here she is pretending that the unfair advantage she gives to private businesses is making things fair.
Someone please start the shooting where it matters.
in many areas, where people cant even get dialup and are given the choice of dialup or 3g access (then there are those areas that cant get either!) when a municipality wants to provide something that the locla teclo or cable provider wont even bother, they'll come out of their way to block it.
I dont think it's about making money, hell, they could easily get a corrupt city council to give them free access to those lines through some bullshit law or get state legislature to make it so they have the right to take them over, making claims that municipal wifi or fiber should allow anyone to provide a service, kind of like the laws they hate being applied to them.
However, they dont do that, they dont even want that. No, they decided that these areas will go without broadband, and that's how it's going to be because they decided it.
It's about power and control at this point. When a company gains a monopoly over an area, money isnt the name of the game, it's control and power over the people who have no power to deny you anything, people you can later extort and watch begging you for things you will not give them, while feeling empoweredt hat you can make people grovel before you. Many suits are this egotistical these days.
It's all a matter of "how dare they go against our wishes? We said no and it will be no.
WTF is wrong with this country? We don't want you building your own wi-fi because it might be harder for our pre-existing monopolies to come in later? Kiss my fr*ckin ass I hope no community listens to this bullcrap.
any group of people who band together and form a 'company' have the right to privately fuck all other people as they will. and, if they are not even wanting to come to your locale and screw you over privately - you shouldnt do anything - because their right to fuck you whenever they want, however they want should be preserved over what YOU want. crooked ? that's capitalism. until a capital owner decides to fuck you over, you people should just shut up and wait.
Read radical news here
Public hearings - local governments hold these for everything. Proposal to change the date for holding the public hearing on changing the amount of dues for sewage fees? Yeah, let's hold a hearing on that, too.
Financially separate operations - I'd honestly be angry if they weren't separate.
No below-cost service - Again, reasonable. Because doing so would either mean other tax money is being used, or that the government is borrowing to support it. Neither is good.
No borrowing without a referendum - A bit restrictive, but not too much so. Besides, since when has democracy been a bad thing?
I can easily imagine private companies being able to compete with this without absolutely dominating. Community broadband will likely be relatively slow - there's no incentive to go beyond what most people will use. A small business could probably work by providing higher-speed access at higher cost - those who want more speed will pay for it, but those who just need "good-enough" internet will be fine on community broadband.
Now, the one thing I am worried about is potential censorship. Certain highly-conservative communities might try to ban, say, pornography. Hyper-liberal communities might try to limit other things (a gaming curfew, similar to the recent Korean law, might be one of them). As far as I'm concerned, both are completely unacceptable. And also very likely to be tried - American politics tends to be very polarizing, even in homogeneous-party communities. I imagine most courts will throw the laws out, but you never know.
I call shenanigans on $178 for BASIC cable and internet. I bet any money you have a cable box that is probably a DVR as well as supports HD channels. None of that is basic cable. Your 5/1 service cant be more then $50/month in the US
While $178 sounds high to me as well, I have the lowest tier from Comcast in Portland, OR, with NO television and it is ~$60/mo.
Everyone's talking theoretical, when there is practical precedent: waste collection. In Finland, waste collection was privatized, but in most municipalities, with a catch: the market leader is a municipal corporation. In itself there's nothing wrong with this, except when municipalities interpret this so that the municipal corporation has the right to tell where to place different trashcans, and to force each household to pay their rate. In fact, there is a case where a municipality forced a private corporation to remove their sorted waste collection points (i.e. collecting glass, metal, and paper separately) since it was competing with the municipal corporation. The municipal corp's corresponding point was kilometers away. So, the effect was that the municipality forced people to walk miles and miles to dispose of their sorted waste. This is harmful to both the environment - since people won't care about waste sorting if the gov't is hostile to that - and market fairness. The really *wrong* thing about this is that the legistlature and the courts think they have the democratic right to regulate this in this manner. I think that a municipality should have the right to provide a broadband service, but not with special legal protection.
We have reached a point where Internet service should be considered a utility, much like electricity, gas, water, sewer, etc.
Municipalities are allowed to provide these other services to their citizens; why not Internet service? Doesn't make sense to me.
Couldn't the municipalities just build out the fiber and switches and then lease it to a separate entity to provide the "management and service"?
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Basic cable probably refers to the selection of channels not the equipment. Today in a lot of areas you HAVE to get digital cable and a box, it's the lowest option the cable company provides.
There's a blog with more information: http://savencbb.wordpress.com/
It may also be interesting for people to read about the project that caused so much angst among ISPs: http://www.greenlightnc.com/
Sounds like he has the 'triple play'. Internet/Phone/Cable. That would be about right after the promo package has expired.
50-60 for internet, 50-70 for basic, 25-30 for phone. Plus any extra fees, plus any equipment rental charges. You are also hard pressed not to end up renting equipment these days too.
then they have no right being in business.
really, you couldnt come up with something that competes against a base government service, even with the cost advantages that government has?
UPS and Fedex would like a word with you.
Do you seriously want to get your internet service from the government? If the local government provides the broadband, I guarantee no telco is going to bring in their own service and compete with something not under the same market controls they are. So by allowing this you are basically ensuring that your only choice is government supplied internet. If you're ok with that, then fine... I certainly agree that ISPs are pretty much shit nowadays... but replacing them with the government? I just dunno.
I consider Internet access a utility like electricity or water service. If a community doesn't have broadband Internet access, they will be left behind. They will be unable to fully participate in society. If a private utility is unwilling or unable to provide a community with broadband Internet, the community should have to right to step up and do it themselves. If that scares the private utilities, good. It should. If a private utility wants to get and keep customers in an area where there is community broadband, then provide value for money and don't treat customers as cash machines. If you look at communities where there is competition for broadband Internet access, prices go down and speeds go up. Look at Verizon FiOS vs. Comcast or Time Warner vs. AT&T U-Verse. When a utility knows they have a monopoly, they have no incentive to upgrade infrastructure and will just sit back and milk the consumers, because they can. I can currently get 6Mb DSL for $40 or 10Mb Cable for $54.95. I chose DSL because it is less expensive. Some people don't have that choice or even an option for broadband. What are they supposed to do?
To me 'basic' cable is hooking the wire to the tuner on the back of the TV. Anything above that is not 'basic' cable. The era of basic cable having 70-80 channels died around 2003-2005.
Good-bye
$5 gallon gasoline in the summer of 2008 proved that most Americans are willing to pay for $5/gallon gasoline, if forced to. They might not like it, but they'll pay. The fact that SUV sales are still high, and the Prius accounted for less than 2 percent of vehicle sales, show that there is plenty of headroom for the price of gasoline. I bet Americans are willing to pay $15/gallon, and keep on driving.
Seriously, installing infrastructure costs serious money. If the citizens are not willing to vote in a single election, regarding infrastructure that costs $1000 per household to install, then maybe they do not want municipal broadband enough to pay for it.
This is like saying cities can't put in public water treatment plants because bottled water can't compete.
Could you elaborate?
It was the Republic legislature - the first in over a century - that passed the bill on essentially a part-line. The Democratic governor merely failed to either veto, or sign the bill.
Assign credit or blame were it's due. It's almost as if the headline writer were hoping that blame were given to the Democrats.
Did anyone read even the first paragraph of the article?
Community broadband? More like COMMUNISM broadband. Thank God America still have some people like Bev Perdue to protect it from the reds.
I am so sick of seeing this happen.
Then you need to start voting for candidates that will allow municipalities to do this. At first you would think the libertarians would be for this, but then you'll find that they really aren't - even though it's really a local issue. Participate in your local elections. Pay attention to the news and stop with the bullshit cop-out that "I'm not educated enough about the issue."
The Republicans scream free enterprise and small government, when they get voted in, they build regulatory walls to benefit the incumbents, and do this through invasive government regulations that are exactly like the "OMG BIG GOVERNMENT IS TEH EVIL!" statements they cast out every time someone says something about business.
It's also bad for jobs, the city could generate jobs with a fiber build out, and a maintenance crew to take care of it when it's build, but alas, that's not going to happen. Perdue just cost the state millions of dollars in investment and restricted rural communities and outlying suburban areas to slow crappy broadband. Worse is that tech companies will see this and look elsewhere to invest, such as places that have actual high speed broadband.
Tell me about it. I got DirectTV about 3 years ago and at that time I had to buy the DVRs etc. The ensuing questions regarding why I would need to "rent" equipment that I had just bought seemed to bounce around the empty head of the sales guy.
Network connectivity is a utility like water or electric power. If more people and corporations in a city have access to high quality network connections, that's obviously to the benefit of the city as a whole. Why would it be more wrong to have local government in control of network infrastructure, and use tax money to build and maintain it, than to do the same for power lines, clean water and sewers?
I will back the figure up as plausible. I am a resident of central NC and effected by this bill, I am paying $182 a month to Time Warner for 7Mb/768Kb Internet and cable TV. Granted the TV has a full set of movie channels, but at the same time that is the price for the first year, with the second year slated to be higher.
This legislation was written by TWC, for TWC for the express purpose of EFFECTIVELY preventing municipalities from creating broad band service. The regulations are such that they must effectively be profitable by day one and can not leverage any of the advantages of being a public system. In essence they have all the down sides, but none of the upsides.
This bill is bogus as is most of what has been passed by this stinking "Republican" [spit on the ground] legislature. In fact it isn't even the first time they have tried to get it through (search Slashdot for the term North Carolina for reference). In the last attempt, the sponsoring senator even flat out admitted as much. This time the sponsoring senator admitted to being PAID by Time Warner to sponsor the legislation.
Bev Purdue is a Democrat.
I remember the economic argument going something like this for infrastructure with low marginal cost (operating subways/buses that are half to 2/3 full cost about the same as those that are 1/4 to 1/3 full), you build out the infrastructure that a market rate could support but set the actual rate lower to increase ridership while still have close to the same revenue. Removing traffic is usually a sufficient benefit to justify subsidizing public transit. With regard to paying for it once auto-based subsidies disappear, part of the goal is to build up the network (which requires significant lead time) to be able to accommodate increased ridership that could make transit profitable (or could remain subsidized with e.g. property or sales tax paying for infrastructure/capital expenses and fares covering maintenance/operating costs).
Less emergency runs for car accidents. That is another perfect example of government reaching out where it does not belong. People should be taking care of themselves. If someone is in a car accident you pull yourself out of the wreckage and walk yourself to a damn hospital and you better have cash on you to pay for that medical care because i dont want my hard earned money going to fund your damned emergency medical care. end sarcasm.
Perhaps we should just dedicate a big chunk of land lets say Wyoming to all the idiots who think they are libertarian because they complain about taxes and let them run it there own way. Just as long as we have a nice tall border fence to stop all the destitute refugees from fleeing there perfect gulcher society when it implodes into hell on earth.
"there is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having unfair advantage over private companies."
Bail on the USA - it's gone to the dark side.
There's already the Free State Project, but I suspect most internet libertarians are content to just knock other people on internet fora and can't be bothered to really go somewhere and get involved in the civic process, which is admittedly hard work.
I live in a small town a few miles outside the DC Metro area. With an hour's drive or so, I can be to one of the Metro lines. The ONLY option we have for "broadband" here is either 3MB DSL through Verizon, for around $40/month, or DOCSIS2-level Comcast Cable for about $55/month. For years I petitioned for FIOS in the hopes of seeing affordable 50MB connections in my town, but I found a document back from 2007 saying basically "Yeah, residents there are basically brainless country bumpkins that can barely use a rotary phone, so no way in fucking hell are we rolling fiber all the way out there. Lets uh...put it on our long term plan. We'll get it in by oh..2009 or so". Well, now its 2011 and I have the same 3MB DSL and DOCSIS2-level Comcast because business has decided its not worth the cost to give us any infrastructure. Of course, both these companies whined and complained until they got exclusivity agreements in my county, and installed FIOS and DOCSIS3 down where all the councilmen live. I've spoken to my town council and have been told they don't have the resources to go to war with Comcast and Verizon if they wanted to lay their own fiber.
I see a lot of posts around here that "Government is evil, it lets business do evil things because its evil. It also never does anything right", but this is exactly what private enterprise wants you to think. Look at how much in this nation is privatized, from overcrowded brutal prisons to the military-industrial complex, "Oh that kooky Gov't couldn't do anything without us!". Government doesn't work because the people who pay to elect representatives into said government do not WANT it to work. So, they box it up in red tape so that they can go back to their campaign financiers and say "Oh please Mr. Private Industry! Save us from this! Little ol government just can't get it right!", which has the alternate benefit of swaying the populace to believe government is by very nature incapable of doing anything right.
Moneyed private industry is in a WAR with government services. They don't want there to be options. They don't want to compete with anyone they can't buy out or bribe. They want absolute control and they've crippled our entire nation lusting after such avarice. This is why we can't even have a "public option" for healthcare, lest the peasants find out exactly how fucked they are by insurance companies. This is why cities are sued by telecoms when they just want to spend their tax dollars to put in infrastructure that isn't profitable for big business.
However, the most egregious of all recent examples is the Post Office. Talk to your Postmaster if s/he's over 40 sometime and you'll learn a lot. Did you know that the USPS is BY LAW forbidden to have its own fleet of planes for delivering mail? Every single one of those Express Mail/Priority Mail packages, is paying for a seat on FedEx aircraft! Really puts it in perspective when FedEx Overnight is more than twice the price of USPS Express sitting right next to it, doesn't it? In addition,the USPS is the only quasi-government agency that receives NO government money - they are expected to operate like a business and stay in the black, ever since they stopped being the Department of the Post Office. Despite this, they are still saddled with old regulations like a mandate to deliver mail everywhere, keeping post offices in bumfuck, LA open for the 3 people that go there, and it takes an act of Congress for these things to change. Why did this happen you ask? It was a carefully constructed plan of whining via the private couriers UPS and FedEx, who contributed big to campaigns a few years back crying that "Waaaaa we can't compete with the Department of the Post Office. Its so damn efficient and we don't want to change our business plans or offer anything new we just want money WAAA", thus spurring their purchased policy-critters into action. Soon the Post Office was mired in red tape and bullshit and the agency that basically existed since the beginning of the US that "just worked" even when
The bill doesn't limit anything. It just doesn't put the tax payers on the hook for municipalities' possible mismanagement. They can still do it. They just need to make sure it's what the taxpayers of the town (who would be responsible for paying off these bonds) actually want it. The only possible problem might be the line that says they have to offer it at market prices, but if all that means is that someone's land taxes won't be used to undercut competing broadband services of their neighbor, then it's not a problem. Of course, it could create a situation where the muni's service is sooo efficient that it could profitably offer a better service than private competition, but in that case the bill would just force them to be more profitable than the competition by offering the service at the same price as the competition.... presumably, the private one would eventually compete with them by offering a lower price. Which would also lower the "market" price. Really, don't see why the slashdot is knee jerking against this. Sounds like a bill which would allow the private providers to keep operating without having to compete with tax-subsidized services.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I get your point, I really do. If you feel this way about property taxes, how do you feel about eminent domain? How do you feel about easements? What about squatter's rights?
Also, I know of medium-sized towns where every square inch of property in the town is owned by one family. Let me assure you these places are not bastions of freedom where the blessings of liberty apply to all. How would you feel if $some_trillionaire bought an entire state? An entire country?
Also, if the government (government, as in We the People, of by and for) doesn't ultimately control the land, then what is your claim to it? You say this is your acre of land? How? Oh, you paid someone for it? How did they get it? They paid someone for it, and so on? Hmm, Mr. Running Crow here says you've received stolen property, that he was driven off his land by force, by the Government. Just because you paid for stolen property doesn't mean you haven't committed the crime of receiving stolen property, else we'd have to let every professional fence out of jail.
Oh, you live in Europe? In say, Scotland? Clan MacDonald would like a word...
Thank you, Ms. Palin. Yes, you live in Alaska on land so barren no human being has ever laid claim to it, not even the Inuit? This land is yours because you got to it first? OK, so the Moon, or at least the Sea of Tranquility, belongs to the United States? How do you lay claim to this land? Did you make it?
Oh, you claim it because you have lived here so long, and your family has worked this land and has fought for it. Fought for it by serving in the government's army, you mean?
You've stumbled into an old, old argument the philosophers have been chewing over for literally thousands of years. Ultimately, it boils down to this. You own this land by agreement. This is your land because everyone else in the group agrees it is, and if they don't, then the best you have is a house under siege. The ability to demand, defend and grant rights over real estate is in fact referred to as sovereignty, and that is a function of government. Those few individuals on Earth who can claim that they own this land, and can back that claim up without appealing to some other authority, are referred to as "kings."
Like it or not, "private property ownership" is a function of government. Ultimately, this is your land because the guys with the most and biggest guns say it is. The only other logically consistent argument is the one Thomas Paine espoused, basically that no one can claim to own any part of a world that they had no hand in creating.
Yeah, I know, this means Ayn Rand was a spoiled little rich girl who sat around bemoaning the loss of the family fortune and smoking crack. Shocking, I know.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Here it is:
sovereignty
"Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory.[1] It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided."
The first law, of course, if always "This is my land..." :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Now that you've been corrected as to the political affiliation of the perp, your response is?.......
Are you nuts? Government services are subsidized by taxpayers. Do you seriously want all your consumer choices to be controlled by an entity you pick once in 4 years?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This is really about the small town of Wilson, NC and its community project Greenlight. http://www.greenlightnc.com/ It provides broadband, tv and phone to customers in Wilson for less than Time Warner. Immediately time warner and Embarq began lobbying to shut it down. Time Warner was forced to keep prices lower in nearby areas. It has been an ongoing story for years: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/TWC-Embarq-Wilson-Greenlight,7610.html
In all you anti-Bush fever, you forget that government has coercive powers. You think cutting off people who too much bandwidth is bad? Try a town which decided to raise revenue by sending tickets to people who use too much bandwidth. "No one would do that," you say? Sure. Just like NYC would never double parking tickets simply to increase revenues (as opposed to ensure public safety). It would never happen 5 years ago. Nor would your Internet connection be cut off because of a union negotiation.... it is a public service after all. I must be fear mongering because there is no examples of this actually happening to other public services. Never mind that the bill simply disallows undercutting private businesses by using tax money. It DOESN'T ban towns from setting up the services where none exist (read the summary again). This article summary is a prime example of a certain propaganda mechanism propaganda at work. Use some key terms that people don't like (eg, "limit choices") to describe something that actually serves the people. It does limit choices -- bad choices, destructive choices. By using the emotionally-charged terms, you get people to respond emotionally. At that point the reality doesn't matter anymore. Vast majority of the people have already made their knee jerk decision and have become emotionally invested in it. Well, given that this is news for geeks, how bout doing what geeks do: examine the details.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"The governor said there is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having unfair advantage over private companies."
So is this an admission that broadband could be made better if the government allowed it to but it's not being improved because the government is preventing its improvement?
Since when is it the governments job to deter improvement?
I've lived in North Carolina for a few years, and I have visited friends there for
many years prior to living there.
This is easily the worst place I have ever lived. When my work contract ends,
I am leaving. And I'd rather live in hell than live in North Carolina again.
No kidding! I grew up in North Carolina. Most of the people there are complete assholes. The state government does everything it can to rip off as much money from you as possible. The only place that is even halfway decent is the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area (aka Research Triangle).
The people in North Carolina are rude and utterly stupid. You can't trust any of them to do their job, so you basically have to do everything yourself. Even eating out is not a good idea. They'll screw up your order and then act like something is wrong with *you* for asking to get what you paid for.
The state is filled with stupid trailer park trash. Plus, you are either white, black, or you don't exist. And Heaven help you if you are Catholic or (*gasp!*) not a Christian or have a friend whose skin is the "wrong" color. White and black people hate each other with a venom rarely seen (well, except maybe between Indians and Pakistanis) since they are all a pack of hate-filled bigots. But, what can you expect in a place that has a Southern Baptist church (you know, the church that argued *for* slavery, then *for* Jim Crow laws, and *still* says inter-racial marriage is a sin) on practically every street corner.
To Hell with them. I'm glad I left. Even Central Pennsylvania and Oklahoma are civilized bastions of enlightenment by comparison.
Preventing communities from FINANCING the installation of telecommunication infrastructures that will be later used by corporation is a good thing. Even if the way is wrong.
The the town pays to have new fibers installed, telcos usually use the fact that passing a SECOND fiber in the same hole is almost free. Then they compete with the town for their services and the town ended up paying almost everything.
So were are the people who complain about government interference now? Their *other* government is taking away their freedom to act.
This would make sense if there were actual bona fide competitors. But there aren't: one cable company in most areas (and now all the cable franchises are held by the State, so there are fewer protections) and a phone company providing DSL (where I last lived, the choices were either AT&T or Time Warner; "Time-Warner Cable, which has been pushing for the legislation since 2005, has argued that it ought not to face competition from tax-paid sources."--more like they don't want ANY competition). Silliness like this stops my old town, which is going to have lay fiberoptic cable for its stoplights, from actually laying other fiberoptic line or multipurposing its fiber to actually provide competition.
To make matters worse, for its population, NC has a very low population density; it was also the last state to go from mostly rural to mostly urban (in the 1980's). And you have a lot of situations where some one lives "too far away" and the cable company refuses to provide service unless the prospective customer pays for the cable to be run. Meanwhile there are inferior phone cable installations where the DSL is either slow or not available (e.g., only two of four phone wires terminated for an RJ-11). And cell coverage can be iffy at best in places; you don't have to go very far out of decently populated (for what passes for large municipalities in NC; it is the 10th largest state by population but even Charlotte is only the 17th largest city in the US, and the next, Raleigh, is 43rd)) to encounter topographical issues causing weak cell signals without another tower that won't be built because the population density is too low. And as for satellite...well good luck if you're in the wrong place and the horizon is blocked by trees or topography.
In short, the purpose of this bill is to keep a poorly functioning market from functioning any better and to keep municipalities out of the game (or at least make them take ten years to actually get something done). Maybe this bill would make sense if some other company would come in, but let's be realistic: it isn't going to happen any time soon. And Purdue didn't veto this bill because it's not worth the effort to veto a bill that has a reasonable chance of getting overriden by the General Assembly. She's going to save her veto for a bill where it's important enough or might make a difference.
No, I don't want my taxes to pay for someone else's broadband. No, I don't want my city government to go into debt, use city government network infrastructure, or rely on slush-funds or state and county grants to allow private citizens to surf the web. I guess that makes me a robber baron elitist.
Where does the idea that government bodies can't compete or outcompete with the free market? That's the whole point of having government, to pool resources together to get something we couldn't have otherwise. Nearly everything in British Colombia that went from Crown Corporation to Private Entity became absolutely horrid to deal with. The funny part of this is that this is caused by companies NOT WANTING TO TREAT the areas in question, who suddenly complained when the populations got fed up and started doing it themselves.
Don't want competing private security forces using mob justice?, bam, public police force.
Don't want competing fire fighting companies, (who wouldn't put out a fire from a non-protected house), bam, public firefighting force.
Want highspeed internet, where no carrier with reach you, oh, wait, no, you can't compete with companies that are robbing their customers blind, enforcing their own political oligarchy, and, it does need to be said once again, NOT WILLING TO SERVICE YOU.
I believe NC is a red state. And she's probably a Democrat in name only.
It will take one or two citizens to open a company to do what the town wants to do. The shareholders may be funded by the town buying shares as an investment, or by guaranteeing the loans of the private company. Where there is a need and there is a will to do something, there is a way.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
If the community sets up a private corp, and there are volunteers to run it, the costs would be very very low. A Verizon type of company, where 34-50 cents of every dollar goes to marketing is the reason for their high costs, but if there is no marketing and there is diligence about expenses, it should be possible to comply with the law and also serve the community.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Thank you for pointing out what should have been made know in the article. I've read two stories about this today on web site; neither one bothered to mention her political party. If she were Republican, it would have been (properly) affixed after her name in brackets. And the person who responded to you that she's "probably" a Democrat in name only is just trying to justify his own world view.
Financially separate operations won't require separate billing systems at all, just a different line item for IP services, a separate bank account, keeping monies separate is part of what double-entry bookkeeping is all about.
It's like paying multiple taxes with one return/check. No problem, the form tells them how much money goes to each tax...
I can't do that with Comcast anymore. It sucks. One more fucking remote that sucks. Yeah, I suppose I could go purchase a universal remote for all 3 TVs but I don't want to do that. Why should I? My TVs came with perfectly good remotes that take advantage of ALL their features, not just volume and power.
I do pay for one box which provides HD (the other "free" boxes do not support HD) and a DVR but only because I'm not going to waste a 50" on non-HD.
I've downgraded my cable service several times of the past few years and haven't noticed a significant difference in my bill. I'm still a cut above "basic". I think every time I downgrade my package, they just increase their fees. I just reviewed it again and found out if I downgraded again I could get NatGeo and Science channel which I don't have anymore and do miss, but unfortunately I would also give up all news channels.
I've seriously thought about going antenna but the HOA would never let me put one on the roof so I'm stuck with indoor antennas and those don't look promising where I live. I *might* be able to get PBS with one and maybe a couple of other channels, but I won't know until I make the investment and go through the trouble of setting it up.
I pay Comcast way too much for what I get. They simply don't provide the service I want at a price-point I consider reasonable.
If there were some way to introduce true competition I'm sure things would be better. Dish and Direct both want 2 year contracts and I hear nothing but horror stories about them and I know they don't work in bad weather. The worst advertisement for them was when I went to a bar when it was snowing and every single TV in the place displayed their logo and "Searching for signal" (don't remember which one it was but it's basically the same technology AFAICT).
One thing about the HOA. By federal law they cannot prevent you from putting up an antnenna except in special circumstances. Here is a link http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html
Good-bye
Cities and Towns are public interests. People are not meant to serve as economic Masai-cattle for economic exploitation by the politically connected and economically corrupt.
Private companies that oppose the public good are public enemies. Private Companies that gouge the public are a threat to the people's economies - savings, healthy consuming, investment and spending.
If private companies' interests are deemed superior and prior to the people's, then the East India Company, Virginia Tobacco and indentured servitude are back in force.
Cities and Towns do not "compete" with private companies, unless the private companies are kidnapping public services, instead of complementing and extending them.
This is the "company store" system in full force - serving isolation, obscurantism, archaism, and economic parasitism.
Poor USA. Not only sliding into the pit, but doing it so eagerly. Appalling.
You feel your opinion is correct. Of course you do. Here's why you feel this way.
You feel you have an inherent right to exist, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," etc. You have that self-evident inalienable right, you absolutely do.
Whether you've articulated this or not, you have an instinctual understanding that Life on Earth springs from control of real estate. Crops, meat, minerals, literally all wealth of any kind ultimately comes from the agriculture and mining of land. "Intellectual Property" is just "I'll tell you a funny story or count up the bags of corn if you'll give me some."
You have a right to live. To live, you need some access to land either directly or by proxy.Therefore, you feel you should be able to have some land that no one can ever take away from you.
Here's your dillemma.
If you're like most people in America, you were born without property. This means you need to trade labor to live, either as a janitor or a surgeon. Now, this often get framed as "You need to be willing to work and not be lazy," but that's not entirely true. Being willing and able to work doesn't get you anything, as our current armies of the overqualified and overeducated unemployed will tell you. What you need is to get a job, and this has two problems. First, there aren't enough jobs to go around, and second, needing a job makes your life subject to someone else's approval.
Yes, yes, yes, this is the time some 17-year-old Horatio Hornblower will barge in and say "Start your own business in your garage." This of course assumes you have a garage, but more importantly, most small businesses do nothing more than give local employers an excuse to peg you with a 1099 instead of a 1040. When people talk about small businesses being the engine of employment, what they overwhlemingly mean are franchises which are "independent" only by sophistry. I've been an "independent contractor." I've even run a small business that was wonderfully successful until the local major employer moved operations to the third world and I realized I'd been laid off just as surely as my customers had.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I'm not saying Tony Stark couldn't build something from nothing. I'm just saying that the people who could are so rare they end up in the comics books. Most genius inventors today end up like Preston Tucker and Philo Farnsworth, not Thomas Edison. Our drunk and bitter friend the Betamax would like to to know that business doesn't choose the best technology -- it chooses the best "connected" technology, and I don't mean networking. OK, OK, J.K. Rowling and Dean Kamen do exist. Tell you what, let's call the few geniuses "outliers" and concern ourselves with the 99.9% of the population who can't sit down in a coffee shop with a blank stack of paper and write themselves a billion dollars like Stephen King.
We can agree you have a right to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit..." even if you're not a genius, yes? Good. Here's what's bothering you. If someone doesn't agree to hire you -- whether that's your fault or not -- then you and almost all Americans are homeless within 18 months. It's actually illegal to be homeless in pretty much every square inch of America now, so life as a bum is unpleasant. Yes, it's even illegal to sleep in your car. Let the highway patrol catch you twice at a rest stop and see what happens.
Now, you and I want to be able to tell ourselves, "Well, then I'll just grow crops and hunt deer on my land," which is exacly what my grandparents and father did as a boy. 30.06, a hoe and a line in the water, and that's good eatin'.
Property taxes screw that up. You can't pay property taxes with the racoons and possums my grandpa ate. Property taxes kick that feeling of "A Country Boy Can Survive" right to the curb, and it's no end of unsettling to realize that it'll be the local Sheriff come to your house with a shotgun to tell you "Git off mah lan'."
Of course, it's even worse than that. Hunting and fishing licenses came into being specifically beca
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Basic cable like that hasnt existed in my area in years...the lowest package they offer is $65 without the box, $85 with the box, I have 2 boxes one in the living room and one in the den, the internet package I have is the "upgraded option" at 5/1 the basic one is 1.5/512.
yes its triple play...the most obscene thing about it is that after your 2 year contract runs out they automatically "renew" the contract for you unless you call 2 months before the contract is about to expire and completely cancel the service. The new contract is at a higher rate and when that one expires they again do you the favor of renewing it...im now in a situation where after 6 years as a customer I have to pay an $250 termination fee to get out of a contract I didnt sign in the first place.
Wilson, NC already has municipal TV, Internet, and phone - Greenlight, which is the reason for this legislation. Based on what I've read, the cable and phone companies in NC have been trying to use legislation to fight Greenlight since its inception. Greenlight does not use tax payer money to pay for the services they provide. See http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/greenlightfaq/ They have some of the best rates I've seen. Their site is http://www.greenlightnc.com/