http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Atlanta_Motel,_Inc._v._United_States The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and the constitution says that the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of laws, and decides how it is interpreted. Someone has to rule on how it is interpreted because, for example, you and I disagree on its interpretation. We need an arbiter, and the constitution says that that is the supreme court.
You said "Because to him the Constitution of the USA is nothing more than toilet paper, to be disregarded when it gets in the way of his agenda."
According to the constitution, it is treason for a senator to disregard the constitution. By claiming he disregards the constitution, you just called him a traitor. But I will take your statement here as a retraction of your previous statement.
You really do not know about the commerce clause? The supremes rules on that decades ago. If the supremes say it is constitutional, then according to the damn constitution, it is. You may not like it, but you do not get to rule on what is constitutional. Your interpretation of constitutionality is only an opinion, as you are not a supreme court justice.
I'm sorry, but an elected politician going against the constitution is treason, as defined by the constitution. While it is your opinion that Obamacare is unconstitutional, you are not a constitutional scholar, and your opinion frankly doesn't matter.
What section grants them the power? It's called the commerce clause, the Supreme Court ruled on that back in the thirties or the forties, I think. And according to the constitution, the Supreme Court are the ones who get to rule on what is constitutional. By definition, if the supremes say it is constitutional, then it is.
Political punditry is also not news, it is entertainment. A pundit is not an anchor. An op-ed columnist is not a reporter. Pundits are not held to any standards because they are not reporting news, they are presenting opinion.
Totally off the topic, but if you think Mad Money is funny, you should hear me fart. I'm sure it will amuse you no end.
I don't know why, but I feel compelled to mention the argument the telecoms used for weaseling out of their agreement. They basically said, this agreement was imposed when we had a monopoly on Internet delivery. Now that the cable companies and wireless are here, we don't have a monopoly anymore, and should not be forced to let our competitors use our lines.
Make of that what you will. It was all "fair" in that one party (the government) agreed to let the other party out of their contract. But we didn't have to. And we can still reimpose such regulations, we have the moral authority to do so because they still use the public right of way.
I'm telling you, we had laws in place for common carriers that stated they had to lease out their lines at internal rates. By "it" I did not mean your exact plan, I meant one almost exactly like it. Not fifty cables, one per ISP, but bandwidth on the cables that were there.
This was nationwide for telecoms, due to the law, but the deal was never imposed on cable companies because they were not classified as common carriers.
Markets apply force to people all the time. You want to eat? You do what the boss man says. Economic coercion is always backed up by the government application of force. Owning property should not allow a man to be lord and master of another man, but when property is distributed so unequally, it does. If we were to redistribute property so that every man had control over his own survival, I would support you philosophy. But everyone would have to start out on equal footing for it to work, and we currently have a very unequal distribution of ownership of the means of production. Your philosophy, coupled with our current outrageously unbalanced wealth distribution, will lead to a new feudalism and a reduction in the freedom of the common man.
Governments are simply groups of individuals banding together to protect their interests from powerful people. I don't think we should get rid of government and allow those who currently hold all the power to have even more control over our lives.
All I need to argue is that the people who laid cable on public property freely entered into a contract that they do not now honor. Among other things, they said they would lease it to anyone, at their own internal rates. Then they weaseled out of that agreement. That was why you saw a ton of little mom and pop ISPs in the '90s, but you don't now.
The only thing keeping us from ripping up their wires is that agreement. As an example, lets say I have a nice garage, and you have an old junker you want to fix. A let you bring it over and do a lot of work on it, but then you leave it there in my front yard. Well, I will have it hauled away, unless you have some kind of a contract with me stating you can keep it there. And if you break your end of the contract, I can remove the car, because the only thing forcing me to keep it there was that contract, which is only valid as long as both sides honor their part.
Well, that sounds nice. But we already tried it. Unfortunately, the telecoms somehow managed to weasel out of their agreements. You see, it used to be part of the deal that, if you laid cable on public property, you had to lease out that cable to competitors at the same rate you charged internal departments. That is, you own a cable or telephone line. You let your ISP division use it. The rate you charge them is the rate you have to charge anyone else wanting to use your wires for ISP service. That was WHY we had dozens of ISPs in the dialup era, and why we don't now.
When a private entity uses public resources, they do so by entering into a contract with a local government. Public lands are not open to all without entering into a contract. Just try to run your own electric cable down a public street and see how far you get. You need a contract. The telecoms entered into a contract, and they should honor it.
It isn't about who built what. It is about who signed what, who agreed to what. That is basic contract law: you do what you agreed to do. The cable companies agreed to government oversight. No one forced them to agree to that. They should not be allowed to weasel out of their agreements.
I just want to point out that you have just accused a US senator of treason without any evidence. Senators are sworn to uphold the constitution, and failure to do so is treason, which is punishable by death. You have just called for the execution of Al Franken, without providing any evidence. Is that really what you meant?
Where is your evidence? Your statement sounds like opinion. When has Franken disregarded the constitution? And for that matter, where in the Constitution does it prohibit socialism?
I'm not trying to be mean here, but you come across as angry and uninformed in your posts. If you provided even one example of Franken acting against the Constitution, you wouldn't sound so juvenile. As it is, it sounds like you are trying to preach to the choir, to convince only those who are already convinced, and what good is that?
Please read about natural monopoly. If you think it is economically feasible for fifty companies to each run wires to every home, you simply do not understand what a natural monopoly is. Thyat is massively inefficient. Only one of those fifty wires will be in use. The rest will be wasted. The companies that put in those wires will go bankrupt. In natural monopoly situations, the free market fails to efficiently distribute resources.
You do realize that most local governments chose a middle path, letting the cable companies have monopoly rights to run the wires in exchange for concessions from the cable companies? Why do you not support the right of individuals to freely enter into contracts?
You and I and anyone can not trivially form a corporation with any power, or marketplace penetration. The elite have raised the barrier to entry. There is no real free market, there is only their market, and if you want to play, you do so by their rules and at their whims.
I suggest that the corporations have already entered contracts with local governments, in order to gain monopoly rights to run their wires, and those contracts offer us some control over their wires. If the cable companies didn't want that, they didn't have to enter into contracts.
I'm not saying the government should have absolute power over everyone's property. I'm saying, the government should have power over public property like roads and sidewalks.
We did require that wire owners who entered into monopoly deals to lay said wire on public property share those wires at the same rate they charged their own internal divisions that used those wires. So, if the companies internal ISP is charged for use of the wires at a certain rate, then anyone should be able to buy bandwidth in bulk at that rate. That was part of the deal the telecos and cable companies agreed to, but they didn't like it, and so they paid to have the law changed to negate their contractual agreements.
You do realize that all cable companies run "their" wires over public lands, right? If they don't want us to have a say, they need to buy up all the land they run their cables over. Otherwise, when they negotiate the use of our public lands, we can demand of them anything we like. We already have the power to force the telcos to do as we see fit. We also have the moral authority to do so, as they negotiated with us for the use of public right-of-ways and public airwaves. Again, if they don't like it, let them buy the property they run their cables over.
This is all just basic contract and property rights. I know you have libertarian leanings, and let me tell you, this is one reason I distrust libertarians. Libertarians seem to be all for property rights and contract law, except when the property in question is held by a group of people they don't like, i.e. "The government." That is to say, a group of people forming a corporation get full protection, but a group of people forming a government do not appear to have any property rights at all under the actual working libertarian philosophy. But a government is nothing more than a group of individuals. I don't understand how libertarian logic works, where one group of people should have absolute property rights, but another group should not.
It has to do with extradition treaties. It is far easier for the US to extradite from Sweden than from, say, the UK. Going back to Sweden means, potentially, being extradited to the US and then being tortured to death.
But there is also the dick factor. As in, Julian Assange appears to be a royal dick. I know, astounding! Unbelievable! How can someone who is a royal dick do anything good? As I think we all know from popular literature, television, and movies, people are either wholly good or totally evil. The idea that someone could be a dick, potentially even a sexual offender (I refuse to use the term rapist) and still fight for truth and freedom, why that is just stupid. It can't happen./sarcasm
Well, you do not deny that she blogged about revenge. I will point out here, that was a year before this whole mess. But I'm saying, some people think about revenge, some think about forgiveness. I had my left eye taken from me by a mugger. I do not want revenge. I have never once discussed revenge online. That is just not the kind of person I am, and I am a bit suspicious of people who are motivated by revenge.
What if you are too poor to own a car, the bus system in your city sucks, and you have no choice but to patronize ShittyGrocery? This happens all to often in the real world, which is why upscale grocery stores tend to have better deals, and why ghetto grocery stores are more likely to overcharge at the register.
Money allows you to accumulate power. Power allows you to accumulate money. More and more wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The barriers to starting any business are simply too large for most people to overcome. No one in the Shitty Neighborhood has the capital to start a competing grocery store. The margins on a fairly run grocery store are vanishingly small. Why would a rich person want to invest in a fairly run grocery store in Shitty neighborhood, when they have much better investment opportunities available?
Telecommunications are a natural monopoly. either they use the public airwaves, or they use wires, and if they use wires, the cost of entry into the market precludes any second party from competing against the first entrant. And those wires run over public lands.
Lousy companies are more profitable than good companies, at least at first, until people find out. With modern public relations management, a company can be quite shitty but still look good to the public. Companies hide and distort the truth all the time. PR firms practicing image management can make even murderous firms look good.
What's more, an evil corporation can take the profits from doing evil and use those profits outside the market, putting extra-market pressures on their competitors, suppliers, customers, and workers. Worker complains? Fire him. Customer complains? Sue them for libel. Suppliers want more money? Buy out their other customers, or cut deals with the other customers, to put the complainer out of business. Competitors doing too well? Buy out their suppliers, or just undercut them until they fold and then double your prices to recoup the losses.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/08/julian-assange-rape-allegations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_clause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Reorganization_Bill_of_1937
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcia_v._San_Antonio_Metropolitan_Transit_Authority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Atlanta_Motel,_Inc._v._United_States
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and the constitution says that the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of laws, and decides how it is interpreted. Someone has to rule on how it is interpreted because, for example, you and I disagree on its interpretation. We need an arbiter, and the constitution says that that is the supreme court.
You said "Because to him the Constitution of the USA is nothing more than toilet paper, to be disregarded when it gets in the way of his agenda."
According to the constitution, it is treason for a senator to disregard the constitution. By claiming he disregards the constitution, you just called him a traitor. But I will take your statement here as a retraction of your previous statement.
You really do not know about the commerce clause? The supremes rules on that decades ago. If the supremes say it is constitutional, then according to the damn constitution, it is. You may not like it, but you do not get to rule on what is constitutional. Your interpretation of constitutionality is only an opinion, as you are not a supreme court justice.
I'm sorry, but an elected politician going against the constitution is treason, as defined by the constitution. While it is your opinion that Obamacare is unconstitutional, you are not a constitutional scholar, and your opinion frankly doesn't matter.
What section grants them the power? It's called the commerce clause, the Supreme Court ruled on that back in the thirties or the forties, I think. And according to the constitution, the Supreme Court are the ones who get to rule on what is constitutional. By definition, if the supremes say it is constitutional, then it is.
Political punditry is also not news, it is entertainment. A pundit is not an anchor. An op-ed columnist is not a reporter. Pundits are not held to any standards because they are not reporting news, they are presenting opinion.
Totally off the topic, but if you think Mad Money is funny, you should hear me fart. I'm sure it will amuse you no end.
No. The law related to DSL, which was available in the nineties. To me, the dialup era was the eighties.
I don't know why, but I feel compelled to mention the argument the telecoms used for weaseling out of their agreement. They basically said, this agreement was imposed when we had a monopoly on Internet delivery. Now that the cable companies and wireless are here, we don't have a monopoly anymore, and should not be forced to let our competitors use our lines.
Make of that what you will. It was all "fair" in that one party (the government) agreed to let the other party out of their contract. But we didn't have to. And we can still reimpose such regulations, we have the moral authority to do so because they still use the public right of way.
I'm telling you, we had laws in place for common carriers that stated they had to lease out their lines at internal rates. By "it" I did not mean your exact plan, I meant one almost exactly like it. Not fifty cables, one per ISP, but bandwidth on the cables that were there.
This was nationwide for telecoms, due to the law, but the deal was never imposed on cable companies because they were not classified as common carriers.
Markets apply force to people all the time. You want to eat? You do what the boss man says. Economic coercion is always backed up by the government application of force. Owning property should not allow a man to be lord and master of another man, but when property is distributed so unequally, it does. If we were to redistribute property so that every man had control over his own survival, I would support you philosophy. But everyone would have to start out on equal footing for it to work, and we currently have a very unequal distribution of ownership of the means of production. Your philosophy, coupled with our current outrageously unbalanced wealth distribution, will lead to a new feudalism and a reduction in the freedom of the common man.
Governments are simply groups of individuals banding together to protect their interests from powerful people. I don't think we should get rid of government and allow those who currently hold all the power to have even more control over our lives.
All I need to argue is that the people who laid cable on public property freely entered into a contract that they do not now honor. Among other things, they said they would lease it to anyone, at their own internal rates. Then they weaseled out of that agreement. That was why you saw a ton of little mom and pop ISPs in the '90s, but you don't now.
The only thing keeping us from ripping up their wires is that agreement. As an example, lets say I have a nice garage, and you have an old junker you want to fix. A let you bring it over and do a lot of work on it, but then you leave it there in my front yard. Well, I will have it hauled away, unless you have some kind of a contract with me stating you can keep it there. And if you break your end of the contract, I can remove the car, because the only thing forcing me to keep it there was that contract, which is only valid as long as both sides honor their part.
Well, that sounds nice. But we already tried it. Unfortunately, the telecoms somehow managed to weasel out of their agreements. You see, it used to be part of the deal that, if you laid cable on public property, you had to lease out that cable to competitors at the same rate you charged internal departments. That is, you own a cable or telephone line. You let your ISP division use it. The rate you charge them is the rate you have to charge anyone else wanting to use your wires for ISP service. That was WHY we had dozens of ISPs in the dialup era, and why we don't now.
When a private entity uses public resources, they do so by entering into a contract with a local government. Public lands are not open to all without entering into a contract. Just try to run your own electric cable down a public street and see how far you get. You need a contract. The telecoms entered into a contract, and they should honor it.
It isn't about who built what. It is about who signed what, who agreed to what. That is basic contract law: you do what you agreed to do. The cable companies agreed to government oversight. No one forced them to agree to that. They should not be allowed to weasel out of their agreements.
I just want to point out that you have just accused a US senator of treason without any evidence. Senators are sworn to uphold the constitution, and failure to do so is treason, which is punishable by death. You have just called for the execution of Al Franken, without providing any evidence. Is that really what you meant?
So we should just make it official, is that what you are saying?
The government owns the land, yes, that is salient.
Where is your evidence? Your statement sounds like opinion. When has Franken disregarded the constitution? And for that matter, where in the Constitution does it prohibit socialism?
I'm not trying to be mean here, but you come across as angry and uninformed in your posts. If you provided even one example of Franken acting against the Constitution, you wouldn't sound so juvenile. As it is, it sounds like you are trying to preach to the choir, to convince only those who are already convinced, and what good is that?
Please read about natural monopoly. If you think it is economically feasible for fifty companies to each run wires to every home, you simply do not understand what a natural monopoly is. Thyat is massively inefficient. Only one of those fifty wires will be in use. The rest will be wasted. The companies that put in those wires will go bankrupt. In natural monopoly situations, the free market fails to efficiently distribute resources.
You do realize that most local governments chose a middle path, letting the cable companies have monopoly rights to run the wires in exchange for concessions from the cable companies? Why do you not support the right of individuals to freely enter into contracts?
You and I and anyone can not trivially form a corporation with any power, or marketplace penetration. The elite have raised the barrier to entry. There is no real free market, there is only their market, and if you want to play, you do so by their rules and at their whims.
I suggest that the corporations have already entered contracts with local governments, in order to gain monopoly rights to run their wires, and those contracts offer us some control over their wires. If the cable companies didn't want that, they didn't have to enter into contracts.
I'm not saying the government should have absolute power over everyone's property. I'm saying, the government should have power over public property like roads and sidewalks.
We did require that wire owners who entered into monopoly deals to lay said wire on public property share those wires at the same rate they charged their own internal divisions that used those wires. So, if the companies internal ISP is charged for use of the wires at a certain rate, then anyone should be able to buy bandwidth in bulk at that rate. That was part of the deal the telecos and cable companies agreed to, but they didn't like it, and so they paid to have the law changed to negate their contractual agreements.
You do realize that all cable companies run "their" wires over public lands, right? If they don't want us to have a say, they need to buy up all the land they run their cables over. Otherwise, when they negotiate the use of our public lands, we can demand of them anything we like. We already have the power to force the telcos to do as we see fit. We also have the moral authority to do so, as they negotiated with us for the use of public right-of-ways and public airwaves. Again, if they don't like it, let them buy the property they run their cables over.
This is all just basic contract and property rights. I know you have libertarian leanings, and let me tell you, this is one reason I distrust libertarians. Libertarians seem to be all for property rights and contract law, except when the property in question is held by a group of people they don't like, i.e. "The government." That is to say, a group of people forming a corporation get full protection, but a group of people forming a government do not appear to have any property rights at all under the actual working libertarian philosophy. But a government is nothing more than a group of individuals. I don't understand how libertarian logic works, where one group of people should have absolute property rights, but another group should not.
Fuck off, race troll.
It has to do with extradition treaties. It is far easier for the US to extradite from Sweden than from, say, the UK. Going back to Sweden means, potentially, being extradited to the US and then being tortured to death.
But there is also the dick factor. As in, Julian Assange appears to be a royal dick. I know, astounding! Unbelievable! How can someone who is a royal dick do anything good? As I think we all know from popular literature, television, and movies, people are either wholly good or totally evil. The idea that someone could be a dick, potentially even a sexual offender (I refuse to use the term rapist) and still fight for truth and freedom, why that is just stupid. It can't happen. /sarcasm
Well, you do not deny that she blogged about revenge. I will point out here, that was a year before this whole mess. But I'm saying, some people think about revenge, some think about forgiveness. I had my left eye taken from me by a mugger. I do not want revenge. I have never once discussed revenge online. That is just not the kind of person I am, and I am a bit suspicious of people who are motivated by revenge.
What if you are too poor to own a car, the bus system in your city sucks, and you have no choice but to patronize ShittyGrocery? This happens all to often in the real world, which is why upscale grocery stores tend to have better deals, and why ghetto grocery stores are more likely to overcharge at the register.
Money allows you to accumulate power. Power allows you to accumulate money. More and more wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The barriers to starting any business are simply too large for most people to overcome. No one in the Shitty Neighborhood has the capital to start a competing grocery store. The margins on a fairly run grocery store are vanishingly small. Why would a rich person want to invest in a fairly run grocery store in Shitty neighborhood, when they have much better investment opportunities available?
Telecommunications are a natural monopoly. either they use the public airwaves, or they use wires, and if they use wires, the cost of entry into the market precludes any second party from competing against the first entrant. And those wires run over public lands.
Lousy companies are more profitable than good companies, at least at first, until people find out. With modern public relations management, a company can be quite shitty but still look good to the public. Companies hide and distort the truth all the time. PR firms practicing image management can make even murderous firms look good.
What's more, an evil corporation can take the profits from doing evil and use those profits outside the market, putting extra-market pressures on their competitors, suppliers, customers, and workers. Worker complains? Fire him. Customer complains? Sue them for libel. Suppliers want more money? Buy out their other customers, or cut deals with the other customers, to put the complainer out of business. Competitors doing too well? Buy out their suppliers, or just undercut them until they fold and then double your prices to recoup the losses.