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Congressman Introduces Bill To Limit FCC Powers
An anonymous reader writes "Representative Bob Latta (R-OH) introduced a bill on Wednesday that would limit the FCC's power to regulate ISPs in a supposed effort to keep the internet free. The bill's text is currently not available on the Library of Congress webpage or on congress.gov, but a purported copy has been spotted on scribd. Representative Latta's press release nevertheless indicates that the bill is intended to prevent the FCC from re-classifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II. Latta is one of the 28 representatives who lobbied the FCC earlier this month and were shown to have received double the average monetary donations given to all House of Representative members from the cable industry over a two year period ending this past December."
I don't understand why Congress doesn't run afoul of the conflict of interest laws when they are allowed to write legislation that favors the ones funding their campaigns. It is a clear conflict of interest when you are writing laws that puts money in your own pocket. They should have to recuse themselves just like judges have to when they have a conflict of interest in a case. Can someone explain why this isn't a worse case than judges with a conflict considering how it is the law that judges are supposed to be interpreting?
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Power and Money have no borders. USA, North Korea or Russia makes no difference for oligarchs. They want it all and don't care where the peasants live. As long they are compliant, work hard for a small change and don't ask too much in return. Welcome to XXI century where oligarchs around the world hold hands together.
This has nothing to do with capitalism. It is about legalized bribery. When you have someone profiting off the rules they make that is actually anti-capitalism since it is skewing the playing field for other entities in the market.
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In most european/aust/nz countries, most of asia and good chunks of south america and africa, it would be called "Corruption". Belesconi went down for stuff far *less* brazen than what some congress too.These people belong in prison, not seats of power.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
capitalism != crony capitalism
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I agree that the cable companies aren't as regulated as the telcos however you left out one big thing in your rant above...
Cable companies=telecom=phone company+Internet service provider+Content provider.
They are indistinguishable these days since most if not all cable companies are providing VoiP as well as all the other internet related services. It is called "bundling". And the telcos are doing the same thing especially in the cellular area.
So you are correct that to level the playing field you either should lift the regulation on the telcos or bring the cable providers under the same regulation.
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Be honest now. When you read this, and how a congressman was trying to limit the power of the FCC, the entity that tried to eliminate net neutrality just recently, did you think "yay" or was your first thought "now how is this going to be used to fuck us over"?
Am I the only one who feels like ANY kind of law being introduced today is aiming at screwing the average voter over in favor of the interest of a few corporations?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Capitalism is about free market where all competitors are on the same playing field. If one player can make or change laws in his own favor, it isn't a free market anymore. How dumb are you?
Actually, I just want a fair election for the ones in my district, not gerrymandered nonsense that flies in the face of common sense and clearly shows partisanship.