Rand Paul Moves To Block New "Net Neutrality" Rules
SonicSpike writes with news about another bump in the road for net neutrality. U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican presidential hopeful, on Wednesday introduced a resolution to block new regulations on Internet service providers, saying they would 'wrap the Internet in red tape.' The 'net neutrality' rules, which are slated to take effect in June, are backed by the Obama administration and were passed by the Democratic majority of the Federal Communications Commission in February. AT&T Inc and wireless and cable trade associations are challenging them in court. Paul's resolution, if adopted, would allow the Senate to fast-track a vote to establish that Congress disapproves of the FCC's new rules and moves to nullify them.
Sock puppet, asshat, dipshit, morally corrupt, and ethically challenged tool. I am sure he is nice to his kids (had to say something nice about him)
A much more fun race would be Paul vs. Sanders.
Effectively 3 parties? That's effectively 2 parties more than we have in the US.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I think people on here forget that he is affiliated with the Tea Party (and pretty much follows the party line on like 99% of the issues).
Looks like ole' Rand here got some good brib... donation money from 'Big Telecomm'! More after this break!
Like most of the accounced candidates for POTUS, Paul is 'fucking clownshoes' as well!
Why would you like this guy? he is a tool, he is showing his value by creating crap for his handlers to screw up your future.
Rand Paul: I want to be president...whats a guy gotta do?
Republican Party: We're glad you asked rand and happy to hear youve considered being a republican brand president. In order to best serve the interests of our constituents, their yachts, and various institutions named in their honour, we're going to ask you to toe-the-line with our conservative fiscal policy and principal of small government. Please select from one or more of the following principles we believe assists in small government and lower taxes:
1. Repealing affordable healthcare for millions of americans and replacing it with a faint mumbling noise.
2. Outlawing homosexual marriage
3. Outlawing abortion
4. obstruct or repeal a meaningful federal regulation: EPA, FDA, FCC.
5. Funnel billions of dollars into a foreign war with no clear objective other than amorphous freedom/patriotism/democracy
6. oppose decriminalization of marijuana and/or prison reform.
as a bonus you may call for a government shutdown but only while affirming 'in god we trust' on the currency.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Right, so, unchecked corporate power takes the place of government regulation.
At least with the government we hold elections. I think there are good reasons Libertarianism has never been fully implemented anywhere.
No, we have two parties here:
1) The rich & powerful
2) Everyone else
But since #1 always wins, it's an easy mistake to make.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Well natch, most people grow out of puberty and become grown-ups.
Funny how the rich are able to get the poor to vote for sustaining their party.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
People think he's the citizenry's friend because he occasionally backs some civil liberties bill that he knows will never pass anyway. In reality, his only real masters are the rich & powerful. He just tosses the occasional meaningless symbolic bone to the public to pretend he isn't just another Republican. "Here, I'll back this civil liberties bill that I know has no chance of ever passing, so you won't notice that my REAL agenda is just abolishing taxes on the wealthy and letting corporations do whatever the fuck they want to this country."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Well...he just lost my vote.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
They confuse the gullible poor with Fox News, NASCAR ads, and loud shouts of " 'MERICA, FUCK YEAH!!" It also helps that they've bought off most of their opposition and that what little of the Democratic Party that's left is a disorganized bunch of annoying hippie clusterfucks.
They are the "Janus" party... two faces of the same organization -- those who want to consolidate power in their own hands.
Certainly the two "branches" of the Janus party each work on land-grabbing *different* areas of power, but look at their donor lists -- they're both consolidating all that power at the behest of the same people.
Think of it when like ... Sales and Engineering have radically different ideas about how something should work.... they both fixate on their personal world-views, but ultimately, they're both part of the same organization and power-structure.
The rich must be awfully good at promoting their own agenda and making it look like it's in the interests of those people.
A little sophistry goes a long way.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I think you also forgot to mention that they confuse the gullible with "gun crime is at an all time high", or outright bribe them with "wouldn't you like this government program to give you back some of the money we stole from you", or "we need to protect you from internet censorship that isn't even happening."
ProTip: Nobody who's going to get a lick of camera time in the upcoming election isn't someone whose "masters" are the "rich and powerful."
They make sure to make it impossible for anyone other than the Janus Party to participate.
"Pick almost ANY topic and the parties are going to take polar opposite views of it."
So long as those two topics are popular yet inconsequential.
The Tea Party is not a grass roots organization. They are corporately funded, organized and supported.
In a free country, businesses don't get massive government subsidies and de-facto monopolies. Also, in a free country, governments can decide no business serves their constituents well and decide to serve their constituents directly.
But that's not the ISP landscape right now.
“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.”
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/415646-politics-is-the-gentle-art-of-getting-votes-from-the
Only the ones that don't matter, but make for good sound bites. On the actual important topics, both halves of our oligarchic regime enthusiastically agree:
And that's just off the top of my head, not anywhere close to a complete list.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
thought this guy was interesting, but this kills it for me...and sours me on any other repub candidates that might sympathize with his position. republicans the party of repressing the people and supporting corporate america.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
However, in all of those examples, what you are describing are the tools of politics, not the policies. They both tend to agree on how to accumulate power, but not agree on what they want to do with it.
Ahm, libertarianism at its core is the desire to have power for themselves and trample others, with the focus being on preventing government from protecting those weaker than themselves.
Pick almost ANY topic and the parties are going to take polar opposite public views of it.
FTFY
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Yeah, but they only actually effect a very few people, whereas both parties are totally gung-ho about having minimum wage retards finger-fuck 87 year olds in airports.
He never was the Libertarian messiah. Anyone who thought he was just wasn't paying attention. He has a marginally more interesting back-story than most congresscritters (Joker killed his parents and then he spent his teenage years spanking it to Ayn Rand novels,) but he's really only qualified to be a Fox News android.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's difficult to have a functioning market when local municipalities grant monopolies to individual companies and then turn around and get the state to ban municipal networks entirely.
In theory, the FCC shouldn't need to regulate the internet at all, but because other government has created a wholly fucked up system, I agree that it's necessary at this point for them to step in.
Paul is just blindly sticking to principles without considering the reality of the situation. If he wants to block the government from regulating the internet, first he needs to remove the roadblocks that prevent such government regulation from being necessary. You can't have a market-based solution when there is no market and the chances of having one have been made practically impossible.
When you can afford the very best (and totally amoral) marketing ...
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
'Threatened' gun rights are a red herring
As someone who has had to divest myself of lawfully owned property to accommodate new gun-control measures - no, they are not a "red herring".
And 'gun rights' are, to a large extent, the corporate interest of gun and ammo manufacturers, by the way
No, they're not. They've existed since the 18th century, long before there were corporate interests of gun and ammo manufacturers.
The proportion of the electorate that needs gun rights to extend to the building of personal arsenals is minuscule (well, maybe not that minuscule), but the outrage machine manages to get the whole gun loving cohort on board.
The proportion of the internet users who "need" Net Neutrality is minuscule, but the outrage machine manages to get the whole internet on board.
So, assuming you favor net neutrality, and are reading this thread because you want it preserved
Definitely assumes facts not in evidence.
The Democrats' agenda is far less corporatist than the Republicans'.
Nonsense, they just get funded by different corporations. I'll remind you that unions are corporations, too.
Who do you think is more likely to fix that...?
Anarchists. Would you like one of our fliers?
Libertarianism is about the correct amount of regulation and no more.
Which is where they go off the rails because there is no such thing as "the correct amount of regulation". There is a range of regulations that work and beyond it they don't work. There is no one right answer. You can have a more socialist country or a more capitalist one and both can work just fine. This isn't supposition on my part - there are plenty of real world examples of both. There is a range of what works. Some amount of regulation is absolutely required for a society to function. Beyond that there is a range of quantity of regulation that works. Further on you can over-regulate things to death.
The problem libertarians frequently have is they tend to confuse less regulation with being better. Sometimes that's true but frequently it isn't. It's the same mistake a lot of conservatives make regarding taxes - thinking less always equals better when that is demonstrably not true. Sometimes the regulations we have exist for very good reasons but some let ideology get in front of what actually works. You might prefer less regulation to more and that's a fine viewpoint to have but when one gets to the point where you are screeching that all regulations are bad then you no longer are arguing the facts.
If you think all regulation is bad, congratulations, you are an Anarchist.
Exactly. And thinking all regulation is good is just as stupid.
Support of large corporations: check
Support of big government spending: check
Support of intrusive government surveillance: check
Poor understanding of economics: check
Favor policies that benefit the rich: check
Support of gerrymandering: check
They look pretty similar to me.
In general if you look at the donor list, they all come from the same strata of society but represent opposing cultures within that strata. Granted, picking either party is a vote for the wealthy controlling the country, but they are still a fairly diverse bunch and you can pick and choose who's goals align with your own.
Yeah, either you can vote for the Democrats, who create new regulations to freeze competition out, or you can vote for the Republicans, who give away corporate welfare to freeze the competition out. That's why it always makes me laugh when people say libertarians are for big business, when libertarians would be the first to eliminate regulatory barriers to entry & corporate welfare. The reason corporations are so powerful is because they're propped up by the government, but most people just don't get that.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Replacing the government boot, which has to at least pretend to care about me, with the corporate boot, which is legally obligated not to care, doesn't seem like a good trade.
So, as of this point, neither of the parties is currently Left enough for you?
That's pretty much it. The United States has two major political parties: a right-wing party, and a far right-wing party.
No, the Democratic party isn't a left-wing party because overall they aren't really socialist at all, despite what Fox News repeats ad nauseum. Most Democratic politicians like to claim that they are so that they can get some votes, but their actions rarely match their words.
Keep in mind that authoritarianism is an orthogonal concept; you can have right-wing authoritarians (e.g. most current Republican politicians), and you can have left-wing authoritarians (usually what most people think Communism is, such as the USSR). As always, I point people to Political Compass.