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Ajit Pai Faces Heat Over Proposal To Take Away Poor People's Broadband Plans (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Democratic senators yesterday asked Ajit Pai to abandon a proposal that the senators say would take subsidized broadband plans away from "millions of Americans." The Federal Communications Commission chairman's plan for the Lifeline subsidy program would force most users of the program to find new providers. But such users could have trouble finding replacement plans or similar prices because Pai's proposal would prevent all telecom resellers from offering Lifeline-subsidized service. "Your proposal impacts over 70 percent of current Lifeline-recipient households by eliminating their wireless providers from the program, leaving less affordable and fewer Lifeline options, while making it more difficult for the companies trying to serve Lifeline customers," Senate Democrats wrote in the letter to Pai yesterday. "Instead of cutting the program, we should ensure Lifeline reaches more Americans in need of access to communication services." The letter was written by Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Cory Booker (D-NJ).
Give me a break...
The library is often not open during hours where people who worked 7am to 6pm can go there. Libraries are cutting back due to funding cuts. Got to fund wars, Homeland Security theater, and mass incarceration after all.
And, practically, the Internet is a necessity these days if you're looking for a (better) job.
I'm with you, I think investing in the betterment of society as a whole is for retarded cucks. I got mine and like you, I live in a vacuum, so my neighbor's well-being or lack thereof doesn't effect me one way or another.
..on the poor, poor put-upon ISPs, to have to give a discount (yes, I know, such an obscene word, I might get censored for using it!) to people just because they couldn't manage their lives properly and afford full price! Only smart White people really deserve the Internet anyway, what would a bunch of minorities (blacks, latinos, brown people, you know, non-white people) do with it anyway, they couldn't possibly understand it! It's not like it's possible for them to become educated by using the Internet, and since we don't want those people voting in our lilly-white elections anyway, there's no need for them to have any source of information about candidates or ballot issues anyway, it'll just confuse them! Also no need for them to have news sources, either, that'll just get them all upset when the Police and ICE enforce the Law of the Land on non-whites who forget their place in society! Nope, these people don't need Internet anyway, at least not until they learn better (and they never will, LOL!).</sarcasm>
I'd post this under my login, but I know damned well it'll get modded down as (-1, Uncomfortable Truths), and I'll get flamed to ash by the racists, white supremcists, bigots, other Trump supporters not previously mentioned, and so on, so why bother? Anybody with two eyes can see what the play is here: more profits for fat, price-gouging ISPs, and more side-channel attacks on voting rights by way of preventing people from having access to information sources; keep the poor people poor and stupid, so they're easier to control, and keep the best stuff for Rich White People, because they can. Fuck Rich White People (and I AM A MIDDLE-AGED WHITE DUDE so STFU), fuck the ISPs, fuck Ajit Pai, and fuck the entire gods-be-damned Trump Administration for the systematic destruction of everything that's good in this whole damned Country.
Yep. Keep the un(der)educated poor people poor and un(der)educated cradle-to-grave, because poor and dumb is easier to control, especially when they don't have access to a wide selection of news sources to keep themselves informed. It's a very old authoritarian tactic.
there's folks in the rust belt for who that $9.25 subsidy is the difference between eating that week and not. If you're in one of the blasted out cities in America where the manufacturing base moved to Mexico post NAFTA it's not uncommon. If you're lucky you work 20/week at a burger king for just enough money to keep the lights on. Should they have internet? A lot of them do so their kids can do their homework. They skip meals for it.
If anything we ought to be doing more for these people. And to devil with religious objections and let's just give them free birth control already.
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I grew up without broadband also, BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST. Today it is basically a requirement for job searching.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
There are a TON of places you can get free wi-fi...just because someone can't afford broadband, why should I have to pay for it? I can't afford a bunch of things, but I'm not asking for anyone else to pay for it. The problem with these programs, the ones that REALLY could benefit from it, aren't the one's TAKING ADVANTAGE of it!
could not be confirmed
So, what you're saying is that we need to confirm everyone and we're good? Damn, that sounds like a plan to me.
Of course, that's not what you are implying, is it? Why is that?
Apparently you failed economics class.
The rich are rich because somebody created more wealth than they took and the rich were able to siphon enough in order to become rich. Honestly, it's not that hard, or do you really believe that Bezos, Gates and Buffet are that much more effective at working than the typical people working for minimum wage?
The rich themselves don't create jobs because that would make no sense. They're net takers from the economic system so if it were just them, there would be a continual drain on the economy until it fell apart completely. The reason for new jobs to be created is that somebody is willing to pay for the good or service that the job provides.
Places where that's not the case wind up like Venezuela where the economy has more or less ground to a standstill as all the profits are being siphoned off by a handful of very powerful individuals.
I don't believe it is my responsibility as a taxpayer to fund wars in other countries. Suck it up snowflake. The entire budget it the cost of one fighter jet.
So, the "solution" is to remove access for the poor, rather than actually implement control mechanisms for the companies involved who are actually the ones who are committing the fraud your referring to?
Braincells? Hello?
your lack of empathy is built on the asumption that they are poor because they didn't try hard, yet circumstance is the most significant factor in determining an individuals wealth and even after that it can be easily modelled probabilistic. It's a common fallacy for anyone with any kind of success, they attribute it to personal effort and skill (not that substantial success can't be done with either, but they alone are not enough).
I did not mention any solution, just like the people who wrote the original article. I just put out the reason why Pai is looking at solutions, unlike what the original did.
There are a couple of other solutions and some actual criticisms about the Pai is putting out, but those were reasonable and came about around two weeks ago when this first came out.
Ajit Pai would only be interested in "investing" in public WiFi if Comcast and Verizon were interested in rolling it out as some sort of paid expansion to their customers existing service plans. The guy is their corporate plant, remember?
You forgot the tax cuts making the 1% a whopping 82% of the cuts as profit
Because a society with some degree of equality and opportunity for everyone is about a million times better than the fifth world nations that have been taken over by warlords.
The USA can go one of several ways. Currently it's going the way of the police state, but some of us would rather see it go a different path. Paying for some degree of public good with your taxes is, really, a trivial price to pay for a smoothly-functioning society.
Why do you pay for roads that everybody can use and some may be using more than you? Is this a serious question?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.