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FCC Suspends Net Neutrality Comments, As Chairman Pai Mocks 'Mean Tweets' (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes:Thursday the FCC stopped accepting comments as part of long-standing rules "to provide FCC decision-makers with a period of repose during which they can reflect on the upcoming items" before their May 18th meeting. Techdirt wondered if this time to reflect would mean less lobbying from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, but on Friday Pai recorded a Jimmy Kimmel-style video mocking mean tweets, with responses Gizmodo called "appalling" and implying "that anyone who opposes his cash grab for corporations is a moron."
Meanwhile, Wednesday The Consumerist reported the FCC's sole Democrat "is deploying some scorched-earth Microsoft Word table-making to use FCC Chair Ajit Pai's own words against him." (In 2014 Pai wrote "A dispute this fundamental is not for us five, unelected individuals to decide... We should also engage computer scientists, technologists, and other technical experts to tell us how they see the Internet's infrastructure and consumers' online experience evolving.") But Pai seemed to be mostly sticking to friendlier audiences, appearing with conservative podcasters from the Taxpayer Protection Alliance, the AEI think tank and The Daily Beast.
The Verge reports the flood of fake comments opposing Net Neutrality may have used names and addresses from a breach of 1.4 billion personal information records from marketing company River City Media. Reached on Facebook Messenger, one woman whose named was used "said she hadn't submitted any comments, didn't live at that address anymore and didn't even know what net neutrality is, let alone oppose it."
Techdirt adds "If you do still feel the need to comment, the EFF is doing what the FCC itself should do and has set up its own page at DearFCC.org to hold any comments."
Meanwhile, Wednesday The Consumerist reported the FCC's sole Democrat "is deploying some scorched-earth Microsoft Word table-making to use FCC Chair Ajit Pai's own words against him." (In 2014 Pai wrote "A dispute this fundamental is not for us five, unelected individuals to decide... We should also engage computer scientists, technologists, and other technical experts to tell us how they see the Internet's infrastructure and consumers' online experience evolving.") But Pai seemed to be mostly sticking to friendlier audiences, appearing with conservative podcasters from the Taxpayer Protection Alliance, the AEI think tank and The Daily Beast.
The Verge reports the flood of fake comments opposing Net Neutrality may have used names and addresses from a breach of 1.4 billion personal information records from marketing company River City Media. Reached on Facebook Messenger, one woman whose named was used "said she hadn't submitted any comments, didn't live at that address anymore and didn't even know what net neutrality is, let alone oppose it."
Techdirt adds "If you do still feel the need to comment, the EFF is doing what the FCC itself should do and has set up its own page at DearFCC.org to hold any comments."
We are still a democracy, the problem is that half of us are idiots.
Because he had to. Literally, he had to appoint at least one Republican into this commission by law.
Well since the law requires the president to appoint at least 2 commissioners from the party he does not belong to - Obama didn't have much choice in the matter. Pai was a requirement under the law that created the FCC. Unfortunately when the republicans gave him the list of possible candidates for their seats it was pretty much Pai or "Our dark lord, Lucifer". Obama tried to choose the lesser of two evils (so instead of Lucifer we got the antichrist).
Then Lucifer became president and Pai went "annoying commissioner who keeps saying stupid shit" to "idiot in charge of the agency". Something that makes about as much sense as creating a "Privacy Protection Agency" with the mandate of monitoring inteligence agencies and ensuring they do not exceed their 4th amendment authority in surveillance - and then putting the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover in charge of it.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
There are more than a few problems with the benevolent dictators:
1) People do, actually, have a right to govern themselves or at the very least choose who they allow to govern them - a dictator no matter how benevolent - can never be a legitimate government.
2) The succession problem. Plato suggested the philosopher-king (another form of 'benevolent dictator') was a better choice than democracy because of democracy's vulnerability to demagogues, but the problem with both is - what happens when he or she kicks the bucket. There is no good way to ensure the next person in line will not be an evil and authoritarian dictator. In fact the lesson of history is that this seems inevitable, you go from 'one of the great kings who led his people from strengths to strength and raised standards of living for all" to "bastard king who ultimately deserved the beheading he got" in a generation, in fact you then tend to get between 5 and 10 more of the bastards before you get another smart one (usually one who had no expectation of being in the succession at all).
3) Corrupting influence of power - the longer somebody is in charge, the less honest they tend to be come and the more likely to commit gross abuses of power. FDR is about the closest thing to a real exception there is - and even he ended up doing those Japanese Internment Camps near the end. Democracy lets you institute term limits, so the good guys who get in charge can be kicked out before they BECOME bad guys. Failure to have term limits tend to be a grave mistake. In the 1980s a people's leader led his oppressed countrymen to freedom and independence. He became president - praised and cheered the world over as a true bastion of human rights, liberties and justice - and ultimately as a peacemaker and under his rule the country became the largest food exporter on the continent. Today that EXACT SAME PERSON is known as one of the most brutal dictators on the continent, the country is constantly starving and they've been through numerous waves of hyperinflation. Robert Mugabe is the evidence of the problem: good guys become evil if you they stay in power for too long - and what's worse the dirtier their hands get the more desperate they become to cling to power, after all, losing power will likely mean spending the rest of his life in jail.
So no, the benevolent dictator is a bad idea. That said, democracy is not perfect either. Plato was correct in identifying the real risk that a demagogue could replace democracy with tyranny, the US founding fathers knew their Plato and greatly feared that - as they abandoned the monarchism Plato had inspired throughout Europe - they would risk the same in the new country they were founding. Their answer was numerous checks and balances - including one on the electoral process itself. This 'electoral college' served one key purpose: to ensure that, even if a demagogue wins the vote, he would not get to be president.
Unfortunately the E.C. ultimately became so watered down that - when an actual demagogue ran - not only did it fail to prevent him from becoming president, it actually ENABLED him in an election he had absolutely lost. That was the exact opposite of what the founding fathers had in mind. And the ultimate argument for undoing the E.C. is that it didn't do the job it was created for (and in fact didn't just fail but actually ACHIEVED the very thing it exists to prevent). Perhaps reforming it would be better than scrapping it, I am not sold either way - but the key point stands. Checks and balances, a leader subservient to a constitution with numerous institutions empowered to prevent him doing things he isn't empowered to do - those are the things that make democracy viable.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *