Jobs Bill Funds Safety Network With Spectrum Sale

CWmike writes "President Barack Obama's American Jobs Act would allow the FCC to conduct so-called incentive auctions, in which the agency would share the proceeds of a spectrum auction with television stations that voluntarily give up their spectrum. The goal would be to raise $6.5 billion to fund a nationwide voice and data network for police, fire departments and other emergency responders. Lawmakers and other groups have called for a nationwide public safety network since emergency responders had trouble communicating with each other during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists attacks on the U.S."

Comments

You mean like 700Mhz?

[russotto]

You know, the last time Congress took a bunch of spectrum from TV and allocated some of it to public safety? The D block is still unused, right?

The only thing going on here is an attempt by the Verizons and Comcasts of the world to eliminate competition. (of course Comcast-owned NBC channels would be first to give up their OTA allocations). Public safety is a transparent excuse.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[evought]

Public safety is a transparent excuse.

True. The muti-state "public safety network" here is 6m; Storm-chasers and fire watch is 2m. That's what ARES is for. It's simple, reliable technology and there are good volunteers to run it. Our local Sheriff recently remarked that the feds are trying to shove narrow band digital radios down the counties' throats. The proffered radios are expensive, overwhelmingly benefit one corp, and perform poorly in this terrain (the digital radios tend to be all or nothing; in much of rural MO, you can get a poor but comprehensible analog signal further, at least with current equipment). Switching will either hurt strained county budgets or the strained federal deficit (if subsidized) and will mean other services don't happen.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[Culture20]

The proffered radios are expensive, overwhelmingly benefit one corp, and perform poorly in this terrain (the digital radios tend to be all or nothing; in much of rural MO, you can get a poor but comprehensible analog signal further, at least with current equipment).

But they work in New York City. Do you *want* more people to die from 9/11? That's what Obama is trying to prevent in this Steve Jobs bill. Think of the children's livers!

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[timeOday]

Analog-only radios are awfully limited though. Can they even send text-messages to each other? It could certainly be useful for them to be able to send text, photos, or see a map with everybody's location on it, for example. I don't know if they'll be getting, but it should be, the DoD has paid companies lots of money to work all this out over the years.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[tlhIngan]

Analog-only radios are awfully limited though. Can they even send text-messages to each other? It could certainly be useful for them to be able to send text, photos, or see a map with everybody's location on it, for example. I don't know if they'll be getting, but it should be, the DoD has paid companies lots of money to work all this out over the years.

Yes, you can. Again, hams have done it.

Text messaging - packet radio. Operates on HF, VHF, UHF.

Photos - slow-scan TV. HF, VHF, UHF.

Locations - APRS (really just a special form of packet radio with GPS).

And none of this is new - most are relatively old and simple technology, over analog radio.

The best part is, the equipment is available now, relatively simple to understand, relatively cheap and easily available. Heck, there probably are handheld radios that support all the above with maybe a computer paired with it.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[texas]

Umm... you are aware that packet radio IS digital, right?

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[texas]

No, I'm afraid you still don't understand. Any packet-switched radio, is digital by definition. Not "can be", but "is".

Radio, any RF transmission, is analog by nature. But the information you send has to be encoded somehow. You can do that in an analog manner, such as AM, FM, PM methods. Or you can do it in a digital manner: ASK, FSK, PSK, etc. Packet radio used by hams uses AFSK, as did early dial up modems you talk about, and both are a manner of transmitting a digital signal over an analog channel. Go look it up on Wikipedia if you don't believe me: packet radio and modems. Both pages very distinctly state that these are methods for transmitting digital data. Also mentioned in the original post was APRS, which is also specifically stated as being "an amateur radio-based system for real time tactical digital communications."

If you are sending packets over your radio, you are sending digital data.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[BlueStrat]

Public safety is a transparent excuse.

True. The muti-state "public safety network" here is 6m; Storm-chasers and fire watch is 2m. That's what ARES is for. It's simple, reliable technology and there are good volunteers to run it. Our local Sheriff recently remarked that the feds are trying to shove narrow band digital radios down the counties' throats. The proffered radios are expensive, overwhelmingly benefit one corp, and perform poorly in this terrain (the digital radios tend to be all or nothing; in much of rural MO, you can get a poor but comprehensible analog signal further, at least with current equipment). Switching will either hurt strained county budgets or the strained federal deficit (if subsidized) and will mean other services don't happen.

I think one of the more important yet unspoken priorities behind the governments' push for digital communications for local/state/federal authorities' short-range communications, especially trunked/spread-spectrum/frequency-hopping types, is it's inherent increased difficulty for "civilians" to eavesdrop on/intercept with widely-available civilian electronics as opposed to standard analog two-way radio traffic.

After all, if people can easily listen in on government radio communications they may attempt to flee ahead of the trucks & troops when they're dispatched to their neighborhood to begin the round-ups for the camps & facilities, institute quarantines, seize weapons, or mobilize crack-downs on dissent. They don't want to spoil Granny's priceless "surprised expression" when the DHS storm-trooper kicks in her door and shoves the assault rifle in her face.

Strat

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[drinkypoo]

If current trends continue, they also benefit criminals; you can read the radio stream with a hacked children's toy. Give all cops a bunch of digital radios that are always chatting with the base station and it makes them that much easier to track.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[boyfaceddog]

Yes but "they overwhelmingly benefit one corp". What exactly is the confusion here? Your life, liberty, freedom and government have been bought and paid for by mega-corporations, citizen. Smile and e happy you can serve your corporate overlords.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[Agripa]

Digital radio does not have to be all or nothing. Digital modulation and encoding schemes exist that degrade gracefully but they are usually more complicated and not part of the design requirement.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[Agripa]

In the past couple of years a number of handheld and larger HAM transceivers have gained the ability to do APRS natively. That basically IS text messaging but it is normally machine written and read automatically to transfer position information. Garmin has some GMRS handhelds which do something similar.

What is needed is an open standard for a combined voice and data modulation and encoding scheme. The current HAM radio digital voice standard, DSTARS, is proprietary and protected by patents and not really a replacement for narrow band FM anyway in adverse conditions.

Re:You mean like 700Mhz?

[jseale]

Yeah, but the trick is that you would have to get such equipment down to a size equal that of today's mobile phones. No police force or fire department wants to bother with big, heavy kit just for sake of blasting out text messages.

Here we go again...

[f16c]

Isn't that one of the reasons for the digital TV conversion? I recall that as one of the reasons to change the spectrum layout last time. How much more do they need anyway? The reason for a lack of communication before was a lack of planning as much as anything else.

Re:Here we go again...

[Culture20]

It was the only reason.

Re:Here we go again...

[bjwest]

The reason for the switch to digital TV was to get more people on the cable/dish teat. I live less than 50 miles from my states capital, and can only barley pickup the local channels with a huge ass expensive antenna and signal amp. I can only imagine people in more rural areas and farmers way out in the middle of nowhere.

I'd like to see the figures for the dish providers subscriptions before and after the switch.

Don't need more spectrum

[superid]

I'm an EMT, there are 5 radios in my ambulance. I don't need more ways to talk to people. I need policies, documentation, good equipment, and most of all consistent interoperability training between multiple departments and jurisdictions. I really don't think the fix is more spectrum.

Re:Don't need more spectrum

[Ol Olsoc]

Pah, Want to know the problem? Emergency types seek always to installing infrastructure and process. Interoperability is a buzzword that is often applied to the process and infrastructure.

When in fact, Infrastructure is the least needed part of the whole system. If infrastructure worked, then we already have a great emergency system - Cell phones. Yet the Cell phone system fails quickly in emergencies. What is needed is trained commnicators, and let them do the communicating. Firefighters, Police, and other emergency workers aren't trained in communications beyond mashing of a button and talking.And that isn't to be expected - they have their jobs to do.

But what is the best frequency to communicate across 1500 miles during daylight? 300 miles at night? You need someone who not only knows how to talk, but knows what to send where. ALE systems might work, but is there one on the other end. A trained radio operator who is knowledgeable in electronics is what is needed. Time and again, Ham radio operators figure out how to communicate when the awesome technology goes down. It's like the first casualty of war is the strategy plan.

And yet, what to we have now? The Hams were essential in comms after 9011, and other disasters like Katrina. But instead of figuring out what the Hams did, The emergency folks essentially said Wow, you Hams did great! Now you have to become like us!

Adding more bandwidth won't help, there will just be more infrastructure to fail. Another factor is that the cell phone carriers want more bandwidth to allow their customers to download more awesome apps for their smartphones.

With the ascendancy of digital electronics over old fashioned analog, the world is in dire need of good rf engineers. Because if there is one thing that it seems a lot of people just don't get, its that spectrum isn't infinite.

Re:Don't need more spectrum

[Megane]

ObXKCD: http://xkcd.com/927/

Re:Don't need more spectrum

[slimjim8094]

Also an EMT. Low band VHF (ugh) for our primary radio, UHF for the cops, and a VHF radio for interop. Couple of portables for each.

Recently, a neighboring town went to a trunked system, so now we can't communicate with them unless we do it over a state police channel that they're required to monitor. Not a technological issue, they just won't let us in. And we can still communicate over interop if the sh*t really hits the fan.

I've never quite understood the "everybody talks to everybody!" mentality that these discussions assume. If I need to talk to all those people that I basically never have the need to talk to in normal operations, I probably won't have the time to figure it out. That's why we have dispatch.

Re:Don't need more spectrum

[nickruiz]

I'm an EMT, there are 5 radios in my ambulance. I don't need more ways to talk to people. I need policies, documentation, good equipment, and most of all consistent interoperability training between multiple departments and jurisdictions. I really don't think the fix is more spectrum.

So, what you're really saying is that spectrum is the cowbell of medical response systems. (Oblig. SNL reference)

It's all good.

[FooAtWFU]

The jobs bill is a joke. It's not going to be passed. It exists so that Obama can say "Look, I did a jobs bill, and this obstructionist do-nothing Congress wouldn't pass it!" You could say it's the kickoff to the Obama 2012 campaign.

(I make no comment here on the value of the actual policies contained in the jobs bill, merely on the motives of those proposing it and its chances in Congress.)

Re:It's all good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Masters achieve two aims with one move. It is both a kickoff, and also a reasonable jobs package. Whether Congress passes it or not depends on how desperate Americans really are for jobs, and whether the Republicans can risk being seen as obstructionist in a dire job market.

Re:It's all good.

[FooAtWFU]

Herein I will criticize the jobs package.

There are going to be some tax breaks starting Soon (late 2011) for small businesses and workers. At the end of 2012, these tax breaks will expire. Also, the Bush tax cuts will expire (increasing tax on the bracket from 35% to 42% and the tax on long-term capital gains from 15% to 20%). There will also be another 0.9% Medicare tax on income over $200,000, and a 2.9% surcharge on investment income. Also, the government will raid charity for ~$400 billion (lesser tax deductions). Also,

So a small business owner is supposed to see these 16-month tax breaks and go "Yay! I'm going to create some jobs!"

Also, job training. Do me a favor. Go look up some former job programs like MDTA, CETA and JTPA and see how well they worked (and the current program, WIA) and tell me with a straight face that this is going to help the economy.

Also, more stimulus-style spending. Because the last round worked so very very well, and we know that paying it back in the future isn't going to be a problem at all nosiree Bob.

So the jobs act is a joke, but it would be worse if it were serious.

Re:It's all good.

[Anonymous Coward]

That one saved 100 million jobs. This one being half the size will only save 50 million jobs. Nobody is promising a net decrease in unemployment.

Oh, wait, that can't be right -- unemployment must have dropped dramatically due to the first $800 billion. I presume it will only drop by half as much due to another $450 billion.

No, wait, that doesn't sound quite right yet.

Something else is going on here. Let me think about it.

Re:It's all good.

[Sponge Bath]

... the motives of those proposing it

Amazing how many people delude themselves into thinking they can read minds. I'm constantly hearing attacks on the president asserting intimate knowledge of his motives. "The president hates America, the president is wants to destroy America, blah, blah, blah."

I would like to tell these people that they really can't read minds, and everyone would be better served by commenting on actual policies.

Re:It's all good.

[FooAtWFU]

The difference between "investing" and what the government is doing when it spends money on stimulus is this: when you invest $1, you expect to get more than $1 of useful stuff back - and probably more. You want to get the most bang for your buck. When the government spends $1, they go out of their way to get as little bang for the buck as possible, so that they can spend more. For instance,

In one redolent example, a federal contractor said he was told to use smaller, nonstandard tiles that are harder and more expensive to install in order to increase the cost of the project.

(-- Why the Stimulus Failed, in The Wall Street Journal, c.f. also No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready and Did Stimulus Dollars Hire the Unemployed?)

I'll give you something, through. It's true that the money is "free" until the world economy actually thaws and people demand interest for their money again. But come on -- what are the odds of that happening? :b

Re:It's all good.

[LordLimecat]

How the heck do you measure saved jobs? Someone want to explain that for me?

I DO recall promises that the unemployment rate wouldnt hit certain milestones, and THOSE promises were reneged on.

Re:It's all good.

[LordLimecat]

Most of the criticisms I hear and voice are more aimed at "I think Obama has poor policy decisions". Any issues with that?

Re:It's all good.

[sycodon]

WTF is this even doing in a "Jobs" bill. Wait. I know. It;s not a Jobs bill. It's the annual payoff Democratic donors Bill. A grab bag of Dem pork.

Fuck you all.

Re:It's all good.

[khallow]

Businesses hire people when they NEED more people.

Did you come up with that all by yourself? I notice one little flaw with it. It doesn't tell us why businesses don't hire people. OTOH, my explanation covers that. Businesses that are sitting on money need more people, but they aren't willing to hire them. My observation explains why. Yours doesn't.

And oh, regarding your condemnation of ARRA. The problem with ARRA was that it was not big enough to get a positive feedback loop going as described in the previous paragraph. It created a couple of million jobs but the spark was too small to turn into a big bonfire, it just kind of fizzled. If ARRA had been big enough to help close the output gap, it could have done much better.

Let's not get hasty here. We don't have any evidence other than highly biased claims from organizations like the CBO that the ARRA did anything positive at all. I'd say that the outcome over the past few years points to the contrary, that ARRA didn't create jobs. This matters because making a much larger effort would in my view crater, while you seem to think there would be a "positive feedback" which didn't happen with the ARRA.

I don't buy that there's a magic tipping point threshold for the ARRA that wasn't achieved. In other words, the claim that we didn't try hard enough. There have been mostly unregulated recessions in the past, before the Great Depression, that caused unemployment at the current scale or worse. They all bottomed out and recovered without much help at all. I find it incredible to believe that spending $800 billion (plus a few additional trillion here and there) wasn't enough, when that should have generated a strong measurable difference from the default case of sitting on our duffs.

And, how can the demand be increased in a recessed economy?

Even the simplest of questions hides remarkable complexity. Why should we want to increase demand in a recessed economy? In my view, there is a remarkable ignorance of the benefits of recession, deflation, etc. The US government is not an unbiased party in this either.

For example, deflation means that the massive US debt increases significantly. So even if it were a better strategy for human society or the US, it's not a better strategy for a large debt holder like the US government.

As I see it , the bottom line is that stimulus is temporary and not necessarily productive while the structural problems that currently plague the US economy are more long term. Merely throwing money at businesses doesn't fix the problems with society or the economy.

Re:It's all good.

[khallow]

And what about the poor outcome for the money currently spent? Spending vast sums of money to mildly change economic conditions? If someone applied any sort of engineering or scientific discipline to the study of recent stimulus attempts, why would they conclude that it wasn't large enough rather than that the approach was not effective?

Re:It's all good.

[sumdumass]

That problem has been around forever. It's likely when hope means despair or close to it when people run out of ideas. the rallying cry for fixing schools has been we aren't spending enough money. In some areas, there are schools spending 4 times or more per pupil then in others and aren't doing nearly as well. The answer seems to be, we need to spend more money.

I think of it sort of like what ends up getting gamblers in trouble. They place a bet or spend some money, win some, so they go bigger expecting large results. They lose it all, So they go get more money from the conveniently located ATM, and spend some more. They lose it too. But back in their mind, they remember the one time it worked so they get more and lose it too. Except in this case, the government doesn't run out of money and go home to explain to their wives why they got to pack up and move, they print or borrow more were the gambler goes bankrupt and admits he has a problem.

Re:It's all good.

[kisak]

Not much of a criticizme, just old talking points.

Without the stimulus-spending that Obama initiated between 1 - 3.5 million more people would be out of job today. (According to independent analysis, CBO). That would be a real drag on the economy.

Also, of course you will have to do more stimulus to the economy to be able to pay of debt in the future, since it is the tax money from people actually working that will pay this debt. It is a total waste to let people be unemployed, so you invest to get people working. (You just have to make sure that the stimulus actually create jobs). This is especially true since people like yourself reject the filthy rich should pay more taxes (you know, as much as they did under Clinton and less than they did under Reagan).

Re:It's all good.

[Attila Dimedici]

If Obama gets re-elected the Bush tax cuts will expire. Here is the logic that supports that claim. First, Obama will no longer have any reason to worry about his standings in the polls (he cannot get elected to a third term), so he will be free to follow his ideological bias, which is to raise taxes. Second, if Obama gets re-elected there is no way the Republicans will gain enough seats in Congress to override Obama's veto.
If on the other hand, Obama is defeated, it is likely that the Bush tax rates will be made permanent (although if we are lucky, there might be genuine tax reform resulting in a simpler tax code with lower rates and fewer deductions).

Re:It's all good.

[Attila Dimedici]

Without the stimulus-spending that Obama initiated between 1 - 3.5 million more people would be out of job today. (According to independent analysis, CBO). That would be a real drag on the economy.

Do you know how the CBO reached that conclusion? Did they do it by studying actual jobs and businesses? No, the CBO plugged the numbers about the amout of money that was spent under the stimulus bill into a formula that says that for every dollar the government spends the economy improves by 1.8 dollars then calculating how many jobs would result from that much more economic activity.
That is like me deciding to invest a $1000 in the stock market based on a formula that says that money invested in the stock market increases by 10% each year. Then a year later declaring that I have $1100 without ever looking at the value of the stocks I have. Then when someone points out that the total value of my stocks today is only $600, people like you say, "Yes, but if he hadn't invested in the stock market he would only have $500."

Re:It's all good.

[LanMan04]

No, the CBO plugged the numbers about the amout of money that was spent under the stimulus bill into a formula that says that for every dollar the government spends the economy improves by 1.8 dollars then calculating how many jobs would result from that much more economic activity.

[CITATION NEEDED]

Re:It's all good.

[ultranova]

A common refrain is that government regulation, particularly at the federal level, makes it particularly difficult to hire people. For example, businesses which grow past 50 employees trip a lot of new regulation on health care benefits.

The obvious solution would seem to be to completely socialize healthcare, yet a tiny step in that direction rose a huge storm of cries "Obamacare! Socialism! Wahhh!!!" from presumably pro-business people.

Similarly, the uncertain regulatory climate allegedly means that new investment is unnaturally risky.

Would you care to specify what potential regulations are making what potential investments risky, exactly speaking?

So we have businesses with lots of cash and claims that government regulation inhibit hiring people and making investments.

Yet they don't - or at you didn't - point out what regulations are the problem. I wonder why that might be. Are these perhaps those regulations that eat into profits but are necessary for the society: minimum wage, worker safety, enviromental protection?

Nah, couldn't be; our overlords wouldn't stoop so low as to try and squeeze more from desperate people while the country collapses around them all the faster for that squeezing.

Re:It's all good.

[Attila Dimedici]

Google is your friend.

Re:It's all good.

[khallow]

Would you care to specify what potential regulations are making what potential investments risky, exactly speaking?

Health care "reform" makes hiring people risky. There's a larger cost to firing workers. All these bills have various gotchas hidden in there such as a requirement for restaurants of a certain size to provide ingredient lists and nutrition estimates for their menu.

Are these perhaps those regulations that eat into profits but are necessary for the society: minimum wage, worker safety, enviromental protection?

Minimum wage? Only if you don't want the bottom rung of society to be employable. Someone who has a criminal record or comes from the inner city isn't worth minimum wage. That's probably 5-10% of US citizens right there. And worker safety and environmental protection has been a solved problem since the 70s. I'd like us to focus on real problems now not tighten these nooses.

Re:It's all good.

[khallow]

The obvious solution would seem to be to completely socialize healthcare, yet a tiny step in that direction rose a huge storm of cries "Obamacare! Socialism! Wahhh!!!" from presumably pro-business people.

This reminds me of the adage, "if you only have a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail." The obvious solution seems obvious to you only because you haven't considered other possibilities. It's worth noting, for example, that very few countries actually have completely socialized healthcare.

And that "tiny step" in question is destined to fail hard. Doesn't take an honest economist to figure out that heavy subsidization of health insurance along with expanding rules on what health care that insurance is required to cover, results in massive cost increases.

Personally, I think there's a strong likelihood that the main parts of the "health care reform" were intended by the people who wrote them to create an emergency situation in a decade which would open the door to socialist forms of health care. Not to mention the major encroachment on human freedom provided by a law that punishes people for not buying health insurance.

If this is incompetence, it is incompetence that is indistinguishable from malice.

You have a typo.

[Lead Butthead]

Remember Citizen, your work, your money, your family, your life - all exist merely to further the aims of the Monstrous For-Profit Corporations .

I've taken the liberty to fixed the typo for you.

Spectrum should be leased, not sold

[Solandri]

It belongs to the public. A single entity should not get exclusive access to the spectrum in perpetuity. They should have to pay an annual lease on it to continue using it.

This also prevents companies from buying up spectrum to stifle competition. If they lease large amounts of spectrum which they then don't use, the bid price on the remainder will go up. The government can then use that bid price to raise the lease price for all spectrum in subsequent years, making it too expensive for companies to continue sitting on that spectrum. It's the same concept behind property taxes in real estate - by raising the price to own property in a highly desirable area, you force the owners to do something useful with the property rather than sitting on it as a speculative or anti-competitive move.

Re:Spectrum should be leased, not sold

[Anonymous Coward]

AMEN!

It was theft to give away the frequencies, instead of TV corporations having to regularly renew their permission from the government, which came with restrictions, to use the frequencies.

After GWB gave those national treasures away as presents to those corporations, they rented out subcarriers on the extra frequencies they didn't need, but now owned. NOW, some will be "voluntarily giving up" some of the extra frequencies they didn't need, and they will be sold, and the corporations get to keep half the current sale value of them. And the people who had those frequencies stolen away from them, now only get half the current value. Remember radio spectrum is limited, so will only go up in value. Good thing we are selling more spectrum now, so we can piss it away on short term spending...and then buy, or rent, it back in a generation for 1,000 times the price.

Why aren't people yelling loudly about this?

Re:Spectrum should be leased, not sold

[Anonymous Coward]

Because people are waiting for the TV that uses that spectrum to tell them to what to yell about.

Re:Spectrum should be leased, not sold

[FooAtWFU]

When you actually use spectrum, you have equipment (wireless radios and stuff) that becomes useless if the spectrum gets taken away. You can't just repurpose arbitrary hardware to operate on new frequencies. You need different chips, different antennas, and probably new deployment studies so you know where there's coverage - not to mention the actual work of going out there and reconfiguring or reinstalling everything. Spectrum is much more useful (and valuable) when you can be sure that it's going to stick around for a while.

Besides, at another level, you can convert between income streams and lump sums using the wonders of Economics. A billion dollars in the Treasury is ~$35 million a year in interest charges that the government doesn't have to pay (using recent interest rates for the 30-year Treasury bond).

Still trying

[amightywind]

Obama is still trying to feather the government nest on the backs of taxpayers. We need to slash spending and taxes to revive the economy. The Bolsheviks have failed.

Re:Still trying

[TubeSteak]

Obama is still trying to feather the government nest on the backs of taxpayers. We need to slash spending and taxes to revive the economy. The Bolsheviks have failed.

What the crap are you talking about?
After 9/11 everyone agreed that we needed to get all our emergency services talking to each other on the same frequency...
then nothing happened. We've spent over a trillion dollars in Iraq/Afghanistan, but $6.5 billion for domestic emergency response
is feathering the government nest?

The only mighty wind is the one coming out your ass.

Re:Still trying

[FooAtWFU]

He's talking about the crap that Obama called a "jobs bill" that this spectrum plan is attached to - the one paying for 16 months' worth of temporary payroll tax incentives (woo, comma, hoo) with permanent tax increases (conveniently postponed until 2013, after the general election).

He also refers to Obama's previous stimulus efforts, ObamaCare, and the campaign premise of "spread the wealth around", calling these policies "Bolshevik" - a simple application of rhetoric, comparing these ideas with others who called for redistribution measures, with disastrous consequences.

I mean, if you'd like to dispute those characterizations and the validity of his premises, that's one thing, but if you actually found that confusing, you're probably not smart enough to be talking about politics on the Internet.

Re:Move along, Citizen

[MagusSlurpy]

I haven't, and a quick Google search just pulls up stuff that makes me feel crazy even looking at them. You have any documentation that doesn't require an aluminum foil hat?

Liberty

[gd2shoe]

Oh, I don't know. I think some Democrats actually believe they're taking away our liberty for our own good. That makes them every bit as dangerous and culpable*, just not as numerous. They're not to be easily dismissed.

*(... as dangerous and culpable as money-grubbing Democrats and Republicans. Yes, both.)

Re:Liberty

[Rockoon]

I think some Democrats actually believe they're taking away our liberty for our own good. That makes them every bit as dangerous

No, it makes them more dangerous. A corporation may turns its sights away from us towards greener pastures, but someone that believes that they are "helping" us.. they will never turn their sights away. Its the worst possible evil.

Re:Liberty

[Pseudonym Authority]

Actually, you seem like a pretty chill guy. Shoot me an email. Maybe we can meet up and do some... stuff, if you know what I mean.

We've somehow managed to survive...

[EmagGeek]

... without it for the last 10 years, why piss the money down the rat hole now when we can least afford it? Government make-work jobs don't recover an economy. Real, organic economic growth recovers an economy - that is - production that is based on the laws of the free market and demand. You can build something of little utility that nobody really wants or needs (especially since any police department, fire station, or rescue squad in the nation is a phone call away and any smart phone user can locate one anywhere in seconds).

Then there's the question of why. Why does NYPD need instant, over-the-air access to LAPD? What could possibly be so exigent to warrant the expenditure on such a system?

Good.

[Chardansearavitriol]

But we should be doing many of the things the comission said. But this is a good one especially. If we're going to have emergency services, why would we keep them on a line thats subject to being overwhelmed in the event of an emergency of catastrophic proportions? to superid: You wont be listening to any more radios, unless something along the lines of a massive terrorist attack happens. Then, with those radios being overwhelmed, you wont be left to stramble and make choices with anything but a local view of the immediate situation. Says right in the slashdot summary. Thats the major purpose of the network. Not so people who can already communicate well do, but to bring mor epeople on, without fear of the slew of services that manifest in the wake of a disaster being overwhelmed. Its really, really important if your night suddenly goes from "dehydrated kid with syncope" (by the way, who breaks into a small town EMT center in winter? Cold IV fluids certainly wake you up. jerk vandals.) to "level 5 hurricane" or "large fireball downtown" to be able to communicate in the now heavily used communications networks. Just sayin'

Re:$6.5 billion absolute nonsense

[Culture20]

Spectrum auctions don't seem to get much more than £15 these days

Why buy at auction what sells cheaply otherwise?
http://www.80stees.com/products/Spectrum-MASK-Shirt.asp

Spectrum sale?

[rossdee]

I never owned a Spectrum, it had a terrible keyboard. Back in those days I had a Commodore 64

Problem?

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

Just dial 9.1.1.1!

Or in the IPv6 world, 0009:0001:0001:0001:0001:0001:0001:0001.

Re:$6.5 billion absolute nonsense

[tgeek]

You forgot to add in shipping and handling.

So said C.S. Lewis

[tsotha]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Re:So said C.S. Lewis

[Wildclaw]

The funny part of that quote is how it is misused in US politics to crack down on Democrats.

Which is quite laughable as the "omnipotent moral busybody" pretty much perfectly describes most Republicans who are driven by their ideology and moral believes. (there are exceptions of course, but the mainstream Republican is very much characterized in that way)

Democrats on the other hand tend to be the far more practical robber barons. Economic decisions are made to minimize the chance of rebellion, and the moral decisions they impose tend to be about protecting themselves or those they hold dear. Something any practical robber baron would do.

Re:So said C.S. Lewis

[tsotha]

I don't know where you live, but in my state it's definitely the Democrats that are the busybodies.

When I read the title

[abednegoyulo]

and seing the keywords Jobs, Bill, and networks, for a minute there I thought of a different content of the article.

Re:Move along, Citizen

[GaryOlson]

...and the unsustainable debt accumulated by these companies to purchase bandwidth is backed by Government guarantees of repayment...regardless of how much money we have to print. The inflation destroying the savings accounts of fiscally responsible people is necessary, incidental, and unimportant. The expansion of the economy from the stimulating services created leveraging this expanded spectrum use will enrich everyone.

Jobs? Bill?

[Anonymous Coward]

The jokes practically write themselves!

Re:Jobs? Bill?

[Anubis IV]

I read those two words and immediately thought, "Gates is visiting Steve? And what do they have to do with a spectrum sale?"

Spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

An easier way to raise money would be to deregulate broadcasters and allow them to offer broadband services, similar to what is being done in Europe using a DVB-T2 format. There is already a provision that would provide a 5% ancillary revenue fee back to the government from broadcasters, teh gift that would keep on giving. The problem seems to be that our government wants concentration of certain industries with a few...sounds a bit Fascist, doesn't it?

Jobs are made by new businesses

[Okian Warrior]

Obama and everyone else in the government have it wrong.

Giving money to existing businesses will not create jobs. Existing businesses already have the employees they need to create their product, and if you give them money in a bad economy they will hoard it waiting for the economy to get better. (This is not 100% true in all cases, but as a general rule it works very well.)

You get jobs from new businesses. New businesses grow to accommodate production - once a business can meet demand for it's product or service, growth essentially stops.

New businesses come from innovation on top of infrastructure.

Most innovation is an incremental improvement in an existing product. Your company makes perfusion pumps. If you can make the same pump but 5% smaller, or 5% lighter, or 5% cheaper, or lasts 50% longer - that's generally good enough to start a business.

Innovation:

Patents are largely impossible for the small business right now. They are expensive and don't afford any sort of protection. Patent descriptions are so broadly written and subject to so much interpretation that it is likely that any innovation you make is covered by numerous patents. There are trolls out there ready to take everything away once you've done all the hard work.

Any similarities between your product and an existing product will net you a copyright violation.

Infrastructure:

The criminal laws are so broadly written and subject to so much interpretation that enforcement has become largely discretionary. Local prosecutors are not held responsible for bringing merit-less cases to court, so be sure not to piss anyone off in the government.

The regulatory laws are broadly written and subject to interpretation, and again enforcement has become largely discretionary (viz: Gibson and Martin)

The cell phone network only covers metropolitan areas, and is so unstable that Apple can come out with a popular product (IPhone 1.0) and overload the system, making it impossible to make calls. In Manhattan (!)

High speed internet is only available in metropolitan areas, and is so overloaded that the carriers are implementing rationing (aka data caps).

Our electric system is old and outdated - by some estimates 20% of the generated power is wasted because we can't route it efficiently.

Our postal system is expensive and somewhat unreliable, yet we can't let more efficient companies (UPS and FedEx) deliver mail.

Our air travel rules are so invasive and abhorrent that people refuse to use it. Good luck getting your sales people to other cities, or sending an engineer to work out problems with a vendor.

Our tax structure is so complicated that it requires expert advice and constant vigilance for compliance. With Amazon giving in to external states demands to collect sales tax, expect this to get a lot worse before it gets better. Every cash-strapped state, county, and local town will be all over the net looking for their cut.

About the only piece of infrastructure in the US that seems to be OK is the interstate highway system.

Any single one of these can be considered minor, or could be ignored or dealt with by accommodation. Allocate some funds to hire a CPA, or a lawyer, or patent searcher, or whatever.

Taken in concert, the whole package puts a severe chilling effect on business growth in the US. That's why we don't have jobs any more, that's why the economy is taking so long to turn around.

We just don't have it any more.

Re:Jobs are made by new businesses

[LanMan04]

Our postal system is expensive and somewhat unreliable, yet we can't let more efficient companies (UPS and FedEx) deliver mail.

Want to send a letter to Alaska? That'll be $40 please. Oh wait, it wasn't profitable so we stopped servicing Alaska. SORRY!

You've got it absolutely right

[billstewart]

There's no surprise it's being announced when the Republican Tea Party primary warmup debates are going on. Obama couldn't get the Debt Ceiling deal done without giving away 3/4 of the store, when not doing so would have supposedly caused a Constitutional crisis (it wouldn't have actually caused the US to default, in spite of what Obama and the Tea Partiers said, but would have caused massive cuts in Social Security checks and Federal paychecks.) And he's pretending that he can announce a "Jobs Bill" and expect a Republican House to pass any of it just on his say-so?

Re:You've got it absolutely right

[billstewart]

There's a big difference between not paying your creditors back for money you've already borrowed and either laying off Federal employees or telling them they can keep working at half-salary. Not only is not paying your creditors unconstitutional, but it makes it really hard to borrow more money for them in the future, and until the economy's in good shape, both parties want to run a deficit because they don't have the political will to raise taxes to cover the spending they want.

Radical sudden austerity is really unpleasant, but if you stiff your creditors, then you'll find yourself having to do just as much austerity, and permanently instead of merely temporarily.

Unacceptable

[Space]

I volunteer with a fire department in rural east Texas. None of the area volunteer fire departments want the new networks the cities keep pushing for. There is an 800MHz trunked network used by a few local law enforcement officers. There are only five carrier frequencies on that system and more than five departments using the network. If my department was on that same network and we were in a burning building and needed to communicate with the pump operator we are not guaranteed to be able to transmit. A fire fighter could burn up because the local PD was busy checking a license plate. Unacceptable.

Re:Unacceptable

[DarthBart]

If you're in the piney parts of southeast Texas (Beaumont, Houston, Jasper, Vidor), you'll discover something interesting about 800Mhz. A pine needle is almost the same length as an 800Mhz radio wave and thus they make great RF absorbers. Get into a good dense grove of pine trees and you'll not be able to hear shit.

The folks where I used to live in the Texas hill country got a big hardon once for an 800Mhz trunked system until they discovered they'd have to put in 20ish separate repeater sites to cover the county.

Instead they invested their drug bust money in a system that you could hear all the way down to Corpus Christi but couldn't talk back into from 20 miles away without a 100W mobile.

Re:Unacceptable

[theguru]

You've got pine trees with nearly 15 inch needles there? Holy cow!
Maybe they're closer to 1/4 wavelength, but I'm betting the density of moist organic matter has more to do with it than the length of the needles.

MOD PARENT UP

[White Flame]

Exactly. We have fundamental systemic issues that a bit of "stimulus" spending here & there is not going to fix. Plus, most of the things you mentioned are there due to entrenched assets, with no representation of the opposing side. For instance, who lobbies on behalf of the public domain?

And then there's all the big stuff like health care, social security, and the real estate market black-holing a ton of value.

AT&T \ T-Mobile Merger - Please Kill

[alexander_686]

Yeah!

AT&T says it needs to by T-Mobile to get more spectrum - and now we have a better answer - they can get the spectrum and we don't get a monopoly.

Re:Move along, Citizen

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I followed a tinfoil hat (not aluminum, you know that causes Alzheimers) trail from /. about secret FEMA stuff, I found people desperate to believe that railway auto carriers sighted on sidings were for transporting prisoners and/or slaves. Hydraulic ramps became "modern-day guillotines", tiedown anchor points (with short lengths of chain) became "shackles", and any number of polite posts from people explaining this and in some cases linking to reputable sources about the very real existence of auto carriers were ignored or mocked for their faith that not everything is a gov't conspiracy. Oh, and the same page mentioned (sadly with no concrete data that could be used to figure out what the hell they were on about) those FEMA concentration camps, which these prisoner trains were presumed to be prepared for hauling people to. (Well, the people they didn't guillotine enroute, anyway.)

So at least that particular site was full of 100% nutters. Maybe the FEMA camps are documented somewhere else where sane folks live, but if so I imagine there's also some explanations there. I don't trust the government more than the next /. libertarian, but if it were what they say, that's not the sort of secret our gov't is any good at keeping, ya know? Especially bureaucratic parts like FEMA...

So I really wouldn't worry about it.

Re:Move along, Citizen

[MagusSlurpy]

Actually, after I made that post, I found a PopMech article debunking several of the more popular internet stories.

Jobs Destruction Act

[roman_mir]

PDF

Government Oversight Committee

Obama's Jobs Destruction Act

In his speech Obama didn't say "stimulus" once. He wants to stay away from that word, last stimulus was a failure and unpopular.

Of-course deficits that finance the stimulus destroy more jobs than the tax cuts create.

None of it is paid for, cuts from future increases is not paying for anything, but there is net increase in deficit (and it's underestimated) 450 Billion USD year 2011.

Debt ceiling now will have to be raised again obviously next year, because this is 450Billion that are not accounted for in the last debt ceiling increase.

Tax credit for hiring people who are unemployed for more than 6 months. So now employers will have incentive NOT to hire anybody who hasn't been unemployed for 6 months :)

More unemployment!

7.25 - is minimum wage. 4000USD is given as tax credit, and you have to keep the person for 6 months minimum.
So hiring somebody at 7.25USD/hour and given 4000USD credit reduces minimum wage to 3.40USD/hour.

Minimum wage will be reduced, and so there WILL be more employment, but some people will be FIRED to give more space for new minimum wage hires because of the tax credit.

Bill will make it illegal to discriminate against long term unemployed. So what will happen is that people who are long term unemployed will NOT be interviewed. Who wants to have a lawsuit on their hands?

If anybody is unemployed for 4-5 months, now there is a reason not to hire them right away, to interview them and to keep them on UI for another 1-2 months and then to get the tax credit once they are at 6 months unemployment time.

Of-course fire anybody after 6 months, get new hires. It's all going to be minimum wage jobs, nobody who is hiring people at good salaries will care about 4000USD tax credit.

The 1 year cut in SS payroll tax will make SS that much more broke (it's broke now, but it can be made worse.)

To pretend that there is SS "trust fund", gov't will borrow money, put it into "trust fund", borrow from "trust fund" and spend it on stimulus. Many lies all around.

If you hire a returning veteran, the tax credit is 5600USD. Applied to minimum wage, it makes minimum wage 1.87USD/hour. This creates huge government incentive to have very high turnover.

Payroll taxes will be lost on existing jobs, ha ha. They'll have to print more money.

For returning veterans with injuries (wounded warrior), you get 9600USD tax credit. For a minimum wage job this makes the pay a NEGATIVE ONE :) -1.98USD/hour.

Hire as many wounded warriors as possible immediately and just pay them, but the employer gets 1.98/hour for every new hire. Hire all of them and have the Fed monetize the debt that will be created paying these tax credits.

How do you like them apples?

Re:Jobs Destruction Act

[roman_mir]

Peter Schiff's Testimony to the Committee starts at minute 31.

Then there is question/answer session.

Re:Jobs Destruction Act

[Attila Dimedici]

Bill will make it illegal to discriminate against long term unemployed. So what will happen is that people who are long term unemployed will NOT be interviewed.

Actually, the response to that provision will be to depress hiring even further, because not interviewing the long term unemployed will not be enough to avoid lawsuits. If that provision were passed, any company that hired someone other than someone who had been long term unemployed (as defined by the bill) would be asking for a lawsuit (if there were any applicants who were long term unemployed, whether interviewed or not).
As a result, the only jobs that companies would hire for under this law would be positions that they are desperate to fill or positions which require little more than a warm body (where they can take advantage of some of the tax breaks in the bill without risking anything significant).

Re:Jobs Destruction Act

[roman_mir]

well, somebody would have to bring the lawsuits up, but yes, absolutely, it makes sense today in USA to hire absolutely NOBODY and to try and get rid of as many employees as possible as is.

Thank the Internet for ability to connect 2 interests together - a side that needs a job done, and a side that wants to earn some money doing that job. I just did exactly that over 99designs.com - I hired somebody to do a design. Where is this person from, that did the design for me? Who knows? I don't know, nor do I care.

What I DO care about is the fact that I did NOT have to hire anybody to do the work, I was able to just to get the work done and I paid for it, we "shook" on it, so to speak over the Internet and we went our separate ways.

AFAIC, if there was no Internet and all the opportunities that it provides for the last 20 years, the incredible depression that USA and many other Western nations would have been in by now, would have been just amazing in its magnitude.

The fact that there is STILL some economy left is the testimony to the POWER OF PEOPLE and POWER OF LACK OF REGULATIONS because that's what we have on the Internet - the Freest Market Available today.

Re:Jobs Destruction Act

[Steve Hamlin]

"last stimulus was a failure" False - it stimulated, per CBO and other credible analysis.

"deficits that finance the stimulus destroy more jobs than the tax cuts create." False - not in a liquidity trap, there is no crowding out, and with a trade deficit private savings require government deficits.

"The 1 year cut in SS payroll tax will make SS that much more broke" False - SS contributions were replaced by Federal gov't contributions in the current payroll tax cut.

"it's broke now" False - once the Trust Fund runs out (which is smoothing out a demographic bulge that is currently passing through), it is an annual pay-what-is-collected system that, even with changing population demographics and with no changes to law, is expected to pay 80% of forecasted benefits for the rest of the century. With a shift of less than 1% of annual GDP into Social Security, that system will pay 100% of benefits for the rest of the century. That's not broke.

Summary - learn facts and basic national income accounting (macroeconomics) before speaking about which you do not know.

Re:Jobs Destruction Act

[roman_mir]

"last stimulus was a failure" False - it stimulated, per CBO and other credible analysis.

- Since when is CBO credible? Is it since they release their rosy projections of future spending based on unrealistic growth projections?

GPD is fake.
CPI is fake.
Unemployment numbers are fake.

Dollar per dollar stimulus destroys more jobs than it creates specifically because the spending on government jobs removes investment opportunity in the real economy for jobs that actually could decrease the trade deficit and debt. It's a multiplier effect in reverse, every dollar spent by government is dollar either removed from economy by inflation, which brings monetary destruction closer, or it's money borrowed, which is deferred taxation and it still brings the monetary destruction closer, as short term interest rates will not be allowed to move up, because paying the interest on the debt becomes impossible, but this will blow up in the face, once this beach ball of actual real interest rates comes rushing from under water of the artificially low interest created by federal reserve printing and buying up debt.

SS is bankrupt right now, it was always a ponzi scam, but now it's it's just leaving the space of ridiculous and coming to the sublime, with government trying to pretend there is a 'fund', so it borrows, puts the borrowed money into this so called 'fund', then borrows from the 'fund', all to create an illusion that there are ASSETS in the 'fund'. Government can't pay for anything, it's completely broke and it doesn't allow economy to fix itself by allowing it to have an actual recession, which is the fix the problem, not printing more currency.

SS is broke now, it takes in less money than it pays out. 1.87 fully employed workers in USA are paying to 1 beneficiary - an all time low.

I left a comment earlier describing how Reagan (the biggest disappointment of a POTUS) "fixed" SS by raising taxes (20% on all, 140% on high earners, while means testing and cutting benefits of high earners).

So if that's how you "fix" this pyramid, then you know it's the only fix, the only right thing to do is to allow people to opt out and see how many would.

GDP is fake, it's being in steady decline of about 10% per year for a decade, this is because CPI is fake, it's over 10-13% inflation in reality, and GDP is 70% consumption of goods made abroad (so much for Domestic in GDP).

Summary: there is no difference between macro and micro economics. As I said if you ask Krugman, he'll tell you that wars, tsunami and alien invasion is good, because it "creates stimulus", but if you ask him would he want his own house destroyed to create stimulus, he'd tell you now. Because that's MICRO economics.

What's good for the goose, good for the gander. The difference between micro and macro is BS in economics as much as it is BS in evolution.

Here is what a regulation looks like. Read and weep, this may be the only time you'll have an opportunity to be an 'employer', to hire a babysitter, and if that passes and you are in California, you'll quickly learn why hiring people is so dangerous in USA, why now everybody is trying their hardest not to hire anybody.

Lovechild?

[digitalPhant0m]

Did anyone else read "Jobs Bill" and just assume that Steve Jobs and Bill Gate's had a love-child?

Easy but not profitable

[speedlaw]

As a ham and a person who has to buy new toys for our local govt. Take the radios that are being taken out of service. Dedicate five VHF and five UHF channels within the common bands as emergency channels. Use FM only. for bonus points have one pair of channels used for a repeater with a backup power supply. Other than reprogramming existing equipment there would be little cost. The FCC would have to come up with the ten channels, but surely this is faster than moving entire blocks around. Of course, while it would work, there are no big moneybags to move around (mostly out of our tax dollars to m). you didn't really think this was about public safety or first responders, did you ?

Moral Busybodies

[gd2shoe]

Uh, let me reiterate: "I think some Democrats actually believe they're taking away our liberty for our own good."

Think about it for a moment. How often do they say: "what about _____?" (paraphrased; insert: children, elderly, sick, jobless, homeless, racial equality, women, etc.) They really like taking the moral high road. How are they not "moral busybod[ies]"?

You don't need religion to be moral. It certainly helps, but it's not a prerequisite.