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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."
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.
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.
bob@Osprey:~>
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.
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.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
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.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I never owned a Spectrum, it had a terrible keyboard. Back in those days I had a Commodore 64
Just dial 9.1.1.1!
Or in the IPv6 world, 0009:0001:0001:0001:0001:0001:0001:0001.
"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."
and seing the keywords Jobs, Bill, and networks, for a minute there I thought of a different content of the article.
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.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
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.
I Don't Work Here
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?
You can't handle the truth.