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FCC To Halt Expansion of Broadband Subsidies For Poor People (arstechnica.com)
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced today that the FCC will be "dropping its legal defense of a new system for expanding broadband subsidies for poor people, and will not approve applications from companies that want to offer the low-income broadband service," reports Ars Technica. The Lifeline program, which has been around for 32 years and "gives poor people $9.25 a month toward communications services," was voted to be expanded last year under FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. That expansion will now be halted. Ars Technica reports: Pai's decision won't prevent Lifeline subsidies from being used toward broadband, but it will make it harder for ISPs to gain approval to sell the subsidized plans. Last year's decision enabled the FCC to approve new Lifeline Broadband Providers nationwide so that ISPs would not have to seek approval from each state's government. Nine providers were approved under the new system late in former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's term, but Pai rescinded those approvals in February. There are 36 pending applications from ISPs before the commission's Wireline Competition Bureau. However, Pai wrote today, "I do not believe that the Bureau should approve these applications." He argues that only state governments have authority from Congress to approve such applications. When defending his decision to revoke Lifeline approvals for the nine companies, Pai said last month that more than 900 Lifeline providers were not affected. But most of those were apparently offering subsidized telephone service only and not subsidized broadband. Currently, more than 3.5 million Americans are receiving subsidized broadband through Lifeline from 259 eligible providers, Pai said in today's statement. About 99.6 percent of Americans who get subsidized broadband through Lifeline buy it from one of the companies that received certification "through a lawful process," Pai wrote. The remaining 0.4 percent apparently need to switch providers or lose service because of Pai's February decision. Only one ISP had already started providing the subsidized service under the new approval, and it was ordered to notify its customers that they can no longer receive Lifeline discounts. Pai's latest action would prevent new providers from gaining certification in multiple states at once, forcing them to go through each state's approval process separately. Existing providers that want to expand to multiple states would have to complete the same state-by-state process.
The only way to get a robust solution is to build one that is self-reinforcing; that is, the only way is to build a solution that is *profitable*, so that there is an incentive to maintain and improve it.
So it's all toll roads and for-profit prisons in your world-view?
Look, I get it, government is not always the answer. But by your logic, it is also never the answer, and that just is not true.
WE do.
It's called, TAXES.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
When that "stuff" is a luxury yacht, or three month-long vacations in luxury resorts every year, okay.
When the "stuff" that the poor get less of is the very "stuff" that enables everyone to be more productive, participate more fully in our culture and democracy, find and get better jobs, develop more marketable skills, learn new things, then you're not just being callous and cruel, but also self-destructive and anti-freedom.
Throwing procedural hurdles in front of the disadvantaged is even more salt being rubbed into the open wound.
Let them drink Starbucks!
Seriously, I think local access (rural vs. urban) is a bigger issue than rich/poor. There are lots of free options if you're in an urban area, you only have to expend a little effort.
Think 1930's rural electrification. And, that's coming from a (small "l") libertarian. If ISPs want to make profit from using public resources (RF spectrum, physical rights-of-way), make them build extended networks. Otherwise, let them negotiate with every landowner (including governments big and small) whose property their services cross.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The lifeline subsidy does not come from your income taxes, but from a fee charged to telephone subscribers. This is used to make sure that poor people can call 911 and can participate in our society sufficiently so that they can get a job, go to school, and make use of government services that were formerly only available by phone or personal visit.
These days, getting a job requires use of the internet and you can't really hang around the library for the entire time you're trying to get work. So, it makes sense to give poor people some basic connectivity.
I believe the actual motivation behind this move is the same one that is behind making it more difficult for poor and disenfranchised people to vote - even though there is no evidence of significant voting fraud in the USA: Poor folks and minorities might vote Democratic. Suppression of the Black vote has historically been an important part of Republican strategy, this is just one of many reports on that issue. Having gerrymandered them into the most odd-shaped electoral districts, it becomes time to make sure they can't get news online or participate in democratic discourse.
Bruce Perens.
..."and to provide for the general welfare"...
That clause alone justifies laws. regulations, and taxes aimed to improve the lives of the poor. It makes economic sense too because keeping poor people poor does not benefit the wealthy. A rising tide raises all boats.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It's like politicians don't understand that poor people vote too.
Of course they do. That's why they gerrymander districts, "steal" Supreme Court nominations, and attack access to voting rights under the pretext of near non-existent voter fraud.
Poor people are poor for a reason. They are red-lined into neighborhoods of poor people. They and their children are raised to execute suboptimal reasoning. That makes them manipulable voters, and ineffective in protecting their self interest. Then they knock up the local poor girl, and the cycle perpetuates itself.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
If a poor person needs to use high speed broadband (they have computers, right?) then they can go straight to the public library and use it. For free.
Because public libraries are funded by money that poofs into existence?
When did regulate ever mean "to make regular". The word "regulate" comes from the Latin "regula" which means "to rule", and even as early as Middle English, meant "to direct, to make rules". You're just inventing a fake etymology to further a false argument about what the framers of the Constitution intended.
"Regulate" meant the same in 18th century English as it does today.
"regulate (v.) Look up regulate at Dictionary.com
early 15c., "adjust by rule, control," from Late Latin regulatus, past participle of regulare "to control by rule, direct," from Latin regula "rule" (see regular). Meaning "to govern by restriction" is from 1620s. Related: Regulated; regulating."
http://www.etymonline.com/inde...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The problem I'm having with your argument is that I can't come up with a natural reason for this to be a State rather than Federal issue. What I've heard before is reference to intents of the founders or the 10th amendment. The 10th amendment argument generally takes an originalist view of the Constitution. Given originalism, we'd not have women's suffrage or racial equality, so much for originalism.
If we look back to when social policies like this were enacted in the Federal context, it's when we've had the problem that some states have been dragging their feet about racial equality (and essentially any other social issue of the last century). The Federal government thus saw a need to step in.
Bruce Perens.
If you think government is required to build roads (to support cars offered by the free market) or to build power plants (to support devices that require electricity also offered by the free market) or to regulate some aspect of life you think is unfair (because you didn't read the fine print) there is nothing I can say that would convince you.
Those are rather interesting examples you lay out. The US Government was the one that created our interstate highway system. Private industry repeatedly demonstrates failures in managing nuclear power plants and our power grid is deteriorating because no one can be bothered with upkeep. Regulations have proven themselves necessary in the face of businesses defrauding or otherwise harming customers, employees, and the public at large.
Uh, I'm not sure you actually got what is going on. FCC is going to cave on it's previously-ongoing legal defense of an extension to include broadband in the lifeline communications subsidy. FCC will stop approving broadband providers who wish to participate in the program and will instead allow states to make this decision. States don't actually have the constitutional responsibility to govern communications, that is given to the Federal government by Congress in the Communications Act of 1934. States are unlikely to have a program to approve broadband lifeline subsidies in place at present because it's a Federal responsibility, and even given the FCC Chairman's odd justification states aren't necessarily going to be eager to take this on.
Bruce Perens.
No, the founders who raped their slaves were not Democrats. The founders had a "Democratic-Republican" party, which is also referred to as "Jeffersonian Republicans" or "The First Republican Party" and isn't the Democratic party, and the other party at the time was the Federalist party.
Each of the amendments started out with the decision that the intent of the founders wasn't going to matter any longer. Any future amendment must do so as well.
Well, that's really bad. But the Democrats wisely decided to stop doing those things. In the years that the Democrats cut their ties with the segregationist portion of Southern voters, spanning from the Goldwater to the Nixon campaigns, the Republicans took them up. So we're now in the position that the Republicans are the political heirs of the 1964 Democrats. So having taken over the bad stuff the Democrats used to do, you are not in a good position to revile us for our past sins.
Bruce Perens.
Anything ? No. Not at all.
But some things ? Yes.
And there is a class in between which is could be done either way but turns out better when it is done with public funding.
Farming food ? Historically government is bad at this.
Building roads ? Historically government has been the best way to do this, toll roads only work in certain very narrow conditions. And we all benefit when everybody can use the road without paying for use.
The internet fits in that middle group. Lots of large private networks were built around the same time - but they didn't take off like the internet. The internet did exactly because it LACKED an owner. The web followed a similar pattern. It's been said that in the early 1990s every company was wondering "How can I make the web mine" while Tim Berners-Lee was asking "How can I make the web yours". Designing the technology was not the hard part, in fact some of those large privately owned networks had technology that was, arguably, far more advanced than the internet technology at the time. Yet they didn't become the internet - because to BE an internet you needed a hands-off approach, and a willingness to let everybody use it and evolve it and expand it in all sorts of ways without trying to make money out of them all. A central controller or owner would have prevented it from succeeding. The internet was the exact OPPOSITE of a tragedy of the commons - it was a technology that couldn't happen UNLESS it was a commons.
You need some sort of public funding to establish a commons - that may or may not involve a government but it has to be public and devoid of profit motive.
Profit-seeking companies can make use of the commons AFTER it's established (and provided it's either designed or managed in such a way that they cannot in the process take control of all of it) - but they cannot establish it. Well maybe they could - but they never would, there's no visible way to profit from it.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Internet access in our society is now a need because more and more official documents are sent by mail, official information is only available through internet and job offers are more and more only on internet. Now, you say that a family who can barely buy enough food to feed them should throw 29.95 a month (~1 week of food for a poor family of 4) to be able to find jobs and communicate? Get out of your mom basement and look out what it mean to being poor. Go to your nearest association who help poor people and ask them and you will see that even a 9$ internet connection is weighting a lot in some poor family budgets.