I know that if and when I move next, one of my primary considerations will be "What kind of internet access is available here, and who is the provider". When I last did in 2008, that was a major consideration in buying in the current town (Cox/Fios both available) as opposed to the next county (Comcast only).
I think we can reasonably agree that the government, as a proxy for society as a whole (which is what government is, and why it is important that government be representative of the people), ought to have some say in how you raise and treat your children. For instance, you can't abuse your children, starve them to death, or refuse to educate them. That question was settled a long time ago. What's changing is the definition and degree of what constitutes that, and that's the conversation we should be having - like whether allowing your children outside unsupervised constitutes abuse or neglect (it should not).
Because not everyone can get vaccinated, for health reasons. For instance, a child that is too young to receive the vaccine can still contract, and die from, a disease like measles. Others have weakened immune systems, or medical allergies, that may make it difficult to immunize them. These people rely on herd immunity, where enough other people are immunized that the disease can't gain a foothold and spread. If one child in a classroom isn't vaccinated, they're not going to catch it from their classmates, but when 5 or even ten children in a classroom aren't vaccinated, the risk increases dramatically.
It's called inflation. It's why if my pay remains constant, year after year, I'm making less money, because that money won't buy as many things.
If it cost $1 million to buy a drone last year, and the government spent $100 million on drones, they bought 100 drones last year. If they spend the same amount next year, when the price of drones goes up to 1.1 million each, they're only buying 90 drones. Now, maybe you think that we shouldn't buy that many drones, or any drones at all, but that's another argument.
For one thing, Comcast/ATT/etc can no longer claim that crappy DSL is a viable alternative, so in many areas, they are now officially a broadband monopoly. We've always known that they were, but they've maintained the fiction under the old rules. No more. This could have impacts on both mergers like the proposed Comcast/TWC one, as well as on the hopefully impending reclassification of ISPs under Title II of the Communications Act.
Pushing for state/local regulation blocking Google Fiber/etc? They're doing that anyway. Title II/Common carrier won't make them more likely to do it. If anything, Title II/Common Carrier would help protect Google and any other would-be competitors from *exactly* those sorts of shenanigans, by requiring things like equal access to rights of way and utility poles, as Google themselves noted in their comments to the FCC.
No, the existing incumbents have no incentive to compete, any more than they did before, right up until the point where someone new comes into the neighborhood. Funny how quickly the incumbents in Austin started offering vastly better options once Google started building out.
A lot of it really will depend on the details. Title II contains a lot of stuff, and the FCC doesn't have to implement all of it for internet service. A lot of it would probably help, and some of it might cause more problems than it solves. Hopefully the FCC does it intelligently.
I have a 25mb download here, but I have to pay for a business-class account at something like $110 per month. On the upside, I do get better service and other benefits, since I do actually use it to run a server, but I'd certainly be much happier if it were better/cheaper. For that kind of price today, in a major metropolitan area, I would expect at least 100-300mb down if not more.
Possibly the better analogy would be if you had a safe in the closet in your house. They have a warrant to search the house, and that warrant covers the safe (or they get a specific warrant to search the safe). The question then becomes whether they can compel you to open the container, or provide the passcode.
With a safe, though, they can always threaten to physically break it (no safe is completely secure, they're rated by how long it takes to break them). With robust encryption, that's generally not plausible (or even possible). Furthermore, what happens if you produce the wrong password - either deliberately or because you forgot? What if the data locks/erases/irretrievably scrambles when the wrong code is put in?
At worst, they can hold you in jail for Contempt of Court, dependent on the judge. I suppose a lot of it comes down to how good of a job you (and your lawyer) can do of convincing a judge that you really did forget, or get it wrong, rather than did it deliberately. I know I can barely remember my home router's password, or any number of other ones. Hopefully I'm never in that situation.
On the plus side, having Google in the neighborhood (or even just actively building) introduces much-needed competition. It's funny how quickly some of the other players started improving their game in Austin once Google was coming to town. Ideally having Google in town means you'll actually get a choice of their services as well as actually tolerable bandwidth/speed from the current incumbents.
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the 442nd Infantry Regiment, formed in World War II almost entirely of Japanese-Americans. It's the most decorated unit in U.S. military history, despite the fact that many of them had families in the internment camps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4...
That's not to say that all of the internees had the same reaction, of course. It merely underscores just how short-sighted and stupid the policy was.
Speaking of soldiers in difficult situations who skipped opportunities to press the 'launch' button, we should all be grateful to former Soviet Lt. Col Stanislav Petrov:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
On September 26, 1983, he was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile was being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm, and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.
It's also not just the one time deal. It's about an established relationship. The money you make in politics/government is never made IN office, it's mostly made AFTER. Sure, there are the book deals, but those pale next to the speaking fees, the seats on corporate boards, or the amount of money that will simply be thrown at you because you know people, and people know you. If you're part of the elite and the in-crowd, you reap those rewards later. It often doesn't even need to be stated, it's simply a given. Maybe you find a plum lobbying job, or become the head of an industry association, or sit on the board of Comcast, or get invited to head a powerful interest group. It's the revolving door, and the higher up you are, the bigger the payout gets... if you have friends after you get out. They remember, and if you were on their side, they'll take care of you.
The best proposal I heard was to require members of Congress to wear the emblems of their major sponsors, the way Nascar Drivers do. At least then we can easily see who's paying for them.
It was part of a series of contingency plans, each labeled with a different color, for various potential conflicts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_color-coded_war_plans
Some examples: Green - Mexico Orange - Japan Black - Germany Gold - France Yellow - China
Probably the most interesting (and dangerous) alternate history was War Plan Red-Orange, which postulated a war against Britain and Japan, who were allied at the time.
The most appropriate for this subject, though, would be War Plan White, which dealt with domestic uprising and civil disturbances.
The problem is that right now, the US has effectively defined Freedom of Speech to allow some people to yell so loudly that they drown out others. Oh, certainly those others aren't being gagged, but their voices are drowned out. I can pretty much guarantee that this was never what was intended. And yet it will persist as long as we equate money with speech.
And to some degree there's a valid concern that if the government can block or limit expenditures on speech, then at some point the government/powers-that-be could be the only ones able to drown out everyone else. I'm not sure what the best solution is, or if there is an easy solution other than the institution of and enforcement of norms of behavior.
On another note, I'd be interested to hear from some of the Canadians and others who live where the right is to Freedom of Expression, rather than Freedom of Speech. I'd like to hear their take on how it differs and whether they think it's better or not.
Your point undercuts your conclusion. Imagery intelligence in the early cold war was limited and poor, and it led to a lot of mistaken analysis - see the "Missile Gap" that Kennedy made a point of his 1960 campaign. It was the use of spy satellites that finally disproved the notion.
As for letting everyone know and how, you apparently don't realize that's exactly the last thing you want to do in Intelligence work. Why? Because when the target of the collection knows what, how, and when you can collect, they can take measures to prevent you from collecting, or feed you false information. It could be something as simple as making sure a secret prototype airplane isn't outside when the satellite passes overhead, or something as complex as the D-Day deception operations - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Quicksilver_(WWII) .
Look, I know it's popular right now to hate on the NSA/CIA/etc, and there's certainly no shortage of abuses we've heard about recently. Even if you think it's bad enough that everyone presently in the business should get fired, that doesn't mean the USA can afford to get out of the intelligence business entirely. I can assure you no one else is going to do so, nor should you trust them if they say they will. Moreover, by decrying the entirety of it as evil and immoral you're discrediting the very argument against those abuses in the first place, and abetting their defenders who want everyone to think that it's one and the same with the legitimate intelligence activities those agencies are supposed to be conducting.
Part of the problem from that originated because of a lack of information. Some of it, too, was pure political spin - IIRC it was a Kennedy '60 campaign talking point. It was only with advances in imagery technology that U.S. intelligence realized the estimates were off. What was it that consituted those advances? Replacing/supplementing the U-2 with... spy satellites.
The pre-existing "private space industry" was only private in that it was private companies doing work for the government. We're talking about big defense aerospace contractors. You couldn't just go up to Boeing or Lockheed and pay them to launch a payload into orbit. They only sold their rockets to the military/NASA, and if you wanted a payload to go up, you had to get the government to do it. The difference now is that private companies such as SpaceX and Orbital are not just building the rockets, they're launching them too. While the government still has a certain regulatory/oversight involvement, that's hardly the same thing as before. No, the commercial rocket-building business isn't new, but the commercial rocket-launching business certainly is.
To make an analogy, it would be as if the government previously had been the only purchaser and operator of airplanes in the U.S., even though they were made by Boeing; but now you could go to a private company and fly on an airplane run by them.
And why are spy satellites inherently bad things? Spying is not inherently bad, and can do some very good things for everyone. It can certainly be abused, but all that means is that we need meaningful oversight and checks against abuse. Even Snowden argues that the NSA needs to refocus on its core mission, not that it needs to be abolished entirely.
To give an example of Spy Satellites that are an unmitigated good, how about Nuclear Launch Early Warning Satellites? I think I'm pretty glad those are up there, because that's the sort of thing that can help calm jittery politicians that might otherwise have erred on the side of something really really bad.
Furthermore, when there has been monopoly interference, the Government has also stepped in there, albeit in an overly cautious/belated manner (Microsoft and the bundling of IE, for instance). If Apple or Samsung becomes a solid monopoly, for instance, I would expect some kind of action to counteract that. Monopolies are generally bad, and action is required to moderate/mitigate them, but that shouldn't equate to the government also stepping in to protect your crappy failed business that wasn't able to compete in a reasonably fair market.
In fairness, it's also an immigration issue, so it's not entirely antithetical. If you note, though, he makes the statement about H1-Bs and Green Cards, too, which is somewhat indicative. If anything, that's where I part ways with him, because I think that if someone really is that good, and US companies are that interested in hiring them, and they'll compete on the same salaries and same conditions, on top of all the money the company spends to cover the Green Card, well, hell, I'd rather have them here. The worst abuses of the H1-B system are about the non-transferrable indentured servitude style crap.
That doesn't mean he isn't right that the "shortage" of workers is largely a bunch of crap. It's a "shortage" of people willing to work for third-world pay.
There's no one logical coherent worldview that covers ever possibility, on either side of the aisle (or even outside the building for that matter). I don't know how many cases there are of "Well, in theory we usually support X, but in this case X is associated with Y which the other side favors, so we're against it". Things like Democrats who are for equality and the poor unless we're talking about Wall Street bankers, or Republicans who are for keeping the Government out of your private life unless you're (weed smoker/female/etc), and so on. Certainly this isn't all of them, it's a generalization. It's safe to say that there are some for whom certain priorities in things take precedence. In many cases, I can find a lot of faults for Republicans who scream about border enforcement but turn a blind eye to employers filling shops in their districts with undocumented workers paid peanuts, just as I can for Democrats who talk about the need to reform the current immigration system, while at the same time proposing to expand the completely FUBAR H1-B system.
You're making the mistake of taking a Manichean view. "Left leaning" can include a pretty wide spectrum of things. I state it that way because I'm not a member of the Democratic party, and there are issues and candidates that I don't and would not support them on. I would certainly agree that some sort of Marxist utopia is ridiculous, unrealistic; but at the same time, that doesn't mean we have to take the complete opposite approach. Unfettered and unrestricted capitalism is equally unworkable. I'd much prefer a society where people can compete and get ahead, but where failure isn't accompanied by a threat of starvation, homelessness, or anything similarly bad. I would prefer we do away with the Calvinist notions about work and productivity, and instead encourage people to work and create. I think something like Milton Friedman's idea about Basic Income would be a reasonable starting point.
As for Obamacare, I think it's a horrible Frankenstein's Monster of a law, that is a massive giveaway to the insurance companies... but that's what you get when one political party cares more about scoring points in the power game than in actually proposing solutions to the problems at hand, or just flat out denies the problems that most people would like addressed. One party legislation is bad, but the answer isn't just handing things over to the other party - that's just as bad, if not worse. I'd much rather see a sensible system put in, but I'm not holding my breath for anything remotely close at this point. Likewise with the ISP market, I'd rather we had reasonable proposals from both sides for solving the problem, because we'd likely get a better overall ending.
So yes, please, give us proposals for market based solutions! I'd love to hear them. I'd love to hear the Republicans putting forth actual measures to increase broadband ISP competition. That isn't what they've been giving us though - instead they give us steaming turds like the bill TFA describes, where they try and lock in the current anti-competitive situation and bundle it in Orwellian language.
I'm pretty sure that the US does not consider "hacking" by itself an act of war. The response to allegations of North Korean responsibility by the US Government have been economic sanctions, not any sort of bombs being dropped. The US indicted a bunch of Chinese hackers that were accused of breaking in to stuff, presumably on behalf of the Chinese government or companies, but we haven't bombed China. No, I'm pretty sure the US considers hacking to just be a new method of doing the same stuff, or at least I would hope so. Hacking for espionage purposes is... shockingly, espionage, and should be treated the same way.
Where things may get tricky is when you start hacking to do something kinetic, like some of the crazy movie-plot ideas about shutting down the power grid or stuff. Would that be an act of war? Setting aside all questions about how feasible something like that would be, I think it's safe to say that if you could do something via network exploitation that would be considered an act of war if someone did it the old fashioned way, then it would be if done via hacking, too. That's what really scares me, is when these claims of attribution start carrying repercussions far more severe than cutting off Kim Jong-un's personal supply of margarita salt.
He was formerly a Democrat. They kicked him out after the scandal broke (as well they should). He ran as an independent in the special election, and won, because voter turnout in minor state special elections is ridiculously low, and he had two opponents splitting the rest of the vote.
The bottom line is though, you can't blame this on party affiliation any more than you can any other scandal, because the sort of people that are drawn to political power tend to be far more likely to be narcissistic assholes and sociopaths than the average person. This is true regardless of party affiliation.
Incidentally, these exactly are the sorts of people (State Legislators) that the Republicans in Congress think ought to be setting the rules on broadband. Who thinks that's a good idea? Oh, right, the incumbent ISP monopoly/duopolies.
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I know that if and when I move next, one of my primary considerations will be "What kind of internet access is available here, and who is the provider". When I last did in 2008, that was a major consideration in buying in the current town (Cox/Fios both available) as opposed to the next county (Comcast only).
I think we can reasonably agree that the government, as a proxy for society as a whole (which is what government is, and why it is important that government be representative of the people), ought to have some say in how you raise and treat your children. For instance, you can't abuse your children, starve them to death, or refuse to educate them. That question was settled a long time ago. What's changing is the definition and degree of what constitutes that, and that's the conversation we should be having - like whether allowing your children outside unsupervised constitutes abuse or neglect (it should not).
Because not everyone can get vaccinated, for health reasons. For instance, a child that is too young to receive the vaccine can still contract, and die from, a disease like measles. Others have weakened immune systems, or medical allergies, that may make it difficult to immunize them. These people rely on herd immunity, where enough other people are immunized that the disease can't gain a foothold and spread. If one child in a classroom isn't vaccinated, they're not going to catch it from their classmates, but when 5 or even ten children in a classroom aren't vaccinated, the risk increases dramatically.
It's called inflation. It's why if my pay remains constant, year after year, I'm making less money, because that money won't buy as many things. If it cost $1 million to buy a drone last year, and the government spent $100 million on drones, they bought 100 drones last year. If they spend the same amount next year, when the price of drones goes up to 1.1 million each, they're only buying 90 drones. Now, maybe you think that we shouldn't buy that many drones, or any drones at all, but that's another argument.
For one thing, Comcast/ATT/etc can no longer claim that crappy DSL is a viable alternative, so in many areas, they are now officially a broadband monopoly. We've always known that they were, but they've maintained the fiction under the old rules. No more. This could have impacts on both mergers like the proposed Comcast/TWC one, as well as on the hopefully impending reclassification of ISPs under Title II of the Communications Act.
Pushing for state/local regulation blocking Google Fiber/etc? They're doing that anyway. Title II/Common carrier won't make them more likely to do it. If anything, Title II/Common Carrier would help protect Google and any other would-be competitors from *exactly* those sorts of shenanigans, by requiring things like equal access to rights of way and utility poles, as Google themselves noted in their comments to the FCC. No, the existing incumbents have no incentive to compete, any more than they did before, right up until the point where someone new comes into the neighborhood. Funny how quickly the incumbents in Austin started offering vastly better options once Google started building out. A lot of it really will depend on the details. Title II contains a lot of stuff, and the FCC doesn't have to implement all of it for internet service. A lot of it would probably help, and some of it might cause more problems than it solves. Hopefully the FCC does it intelligently.
I have a 25mb download here, but I have to pay for a business-class account at something like $110 per month. On the upside, I do get better service and other benefits, since I do actually use it to run a server, but I'd certainly be much happier if it were better/cheaper. For that kind of price today, in a major metropolitan area, I would expect at least 100-300mb down if not more.
Randall Munroe did, for one. Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/504/
Possibly the better analogy would be if you had a safe in the closet in your house. They have a warrant to search the house, and that warrant covers the safe (or they get a specific warrant to search the safe). The question then becomes whether they can compel you to open the container, or provide the passcode. With a safe, though, they can always threaten to physically break it (no safe is completely secure, they're rated by how long it takes to break them). With robust encryption, that's generally not plausible (or even possible). Furthermore, what happens if you produce the wrong password - either deliberately or because you forgot? What if the data locks/erases/irretrievably scrambles when the wrong code is put in? At worst, they can hold you in jail for Contempt of Court, dependent on the judge. I suppose a lot of it comes down to how good of a job you (and your lawyer) can do of convincing a judge that you really did forget, or get it wrong, rather than did it deliberately. I know I can barely remember my home router's password, or any number of other ones. Hopefully I'm never in that situation.
On the plus side, having Google in the neighborhood (or even just actively building) introduces much-needed competition. It's funny how quickly some of the other players started improving their game in Austin once Google was coming to town. Ideally having Google in town means you'll actually get a choice of their services as well as actually tolerable bandwidth/speed from the current incumbents.
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the 442nd Infantry Regiment, formed in World War II almost entirely of Japanese-Americans. It's the most decorated unit in U.S. military history, despite the fact that many of them had families in the internment camps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4... That's not to say that all of the internees had the same reaction, of course. It merely underscores just how short-sighted and stupid the policy was.
On September 26, 1983, he was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile was being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm, and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.
It's also not just the one time deal. It's about an established relationship. The money you make in politics/government is never made IN office, it's mostly made AFTER. Sure, there are the book deals, but those pale next to the speaking fees, the seats on corporate boards, or the amount of money that will simply be thrown at you because you know people, and people know you. If you're part of the elite and the in-crowd, you reap those rewards later. It often doesn't even need to be stated, it's simply a given. Maybe you find a plum lobbying job, or become the head of an industry association, or sit on the board of Comcast, or get invited to head a powerful interest group. It's the revolving door, and the higher up you are, the bigger the payout gets... if you have friends after you get out. They remember, and if you were on their side, they'll take care of you.
The best proposal I heard was to require members of Congress to wear the emblems of their major sponsors, the way Nascar Drivers do. At least then we can easily see who's paying for them.
It was part of a series of contingency plans, each labeled with a different color, for various potential conflicts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_color-coded_war_plans
Some examples:
Green - Mexico
Orange - Japan
Black - Germany
Gold - France
Yellow - China
Probably the most interesting (and dangerous) alternate history was War Plan Red-Orange, which postulated a war against Britain and Japan, who were allied at the time.
The most appropriate for this subject, though, would be War Plan White, which dealt with domestic uprising and civil disturbances.
The problem is that right now, the US has effectively defined Freedom of Speech to allow some people to yell so loudly that they drown out others. Oh, certainly those others aren't being gagged, but their voices are drowned out. I can pretty much guarantee that this was never what was intended. And yet it will persist as long as we equate money with speech.
And to some degree there's a valid concern that if the government can block or limit expenditures on speech, then at some point the government/powers-that-be could be the only ones able to drown out everyone else. I'm not sure what the best solution is, or if there is an easy solution other than the institution of and enforcement of norms of behavior.
On another note, I'd be interested to hear from some of the Canadians and others who live where the right is to Freedom of Expression, rather than Freedom of Speech. I'd like to hear their take on how it differs and whether they think it's better or not.
Your point undercuts your conclusion. Imagery intelligence in the early cold war was limited and poor, and it led to a lot of mistaken analysis - see the "Missile Gap" that Kennedy made a point of his 1960 campaign. It was the use of spy satellites that finally disproved the notion.
As for letting everyone know and how, you apparently don't realize that's exactly the last thing you want to do in Intelligence work. Why? Because when the target of the collection knows what, how, and when you can collect, they can take measures to prevent you from collecting, or feed you false information. It could be something as simple as making sure a secret prototype airplane isn't outside when the satellite passes overhead, or something as complex as the D-Day deception operations - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Quicksilver_(WWII) .
Look, I know it's popular right now to hate on the NSA/CIA/etc, and there's certainly no shortage of abuses we've heard about recently. Even if you think it's bad enough that everyone presently in the business should get fired, that doesn't mean the USA can afford to get out of the intelligence business entirely. I can assure you no one else is going to do so, nor should you trust them if they say they will. Moreover, by decrying the entirety of it as evil and immoral you're discrediting the very argument against those abuses in the first place, and abetting their defenders who want everyone to think that it's one and the same with the legitimate intelligence activities those agencies are supposed to be conducting.
Part of the problem from that originated because of a lack of information. Some of it, too, was pure political spin - IIRC it was a Kennedy '60 campaign talking point. It was only with advances in imagery technology that U.S. intelligence realized the estimates were off. What was it that consituted those advances? Replacing/supplementing the U-2 with... spy satellites.
Yes and no.
The pre-existing "private space industry" was only private in that it was private companies doing work for the government. We're talking about big defense aerospace contractors. You couldn't just go up to Boeing or Lockheed and pay them to launch a payload into orbit. They only sold their rockets to the military/NASA, and if you wanted a payload to go up, you had to get the government to do it. The difference now is that private companies such as SpaceX and Orbital are not just building the rockets, they're launching them too. While the government still has a certain regulatory/oversight involvement, that's hardly the same thing as before. No, the commercial rocket-building business isn't new, but the commercial rocket-launching business certainly is.
To make an analogy, it would be as if the government previously had been the only purchaser and operator of airplanes in the U.S., even though they were made by Boeing; but now you could go to a private company and fly on an airplane run by them.
And why are spy satellites inherently bad things? Spying is not inherently bad, and can do some very good things for everyone. It can certainly be abused, but all that means is that we need meaningful oversight and checks against abuse. Even Snowden argues that the NSA needs to refocus on its core mission, not that it needs to be abolished entirely.
To give an example of Spy Satellites that are an unmitigated good, how about Nuclear Launch Early Warning Satellites? I think I'm pretty glad those are up there, because that's the sort of thing that can help calm jittery politicians that might otherwise have erred on the side of something really really bad.
Furthermore, when there has been monopoly interference, the Government has also stepped in there, albeit in an overly cautious/belated manner (Microsoft and the bundling of IE, for instance). If Apple or Samsung becomes a solid monopoly, for instance, I would expect some kind of action to counteract that. Monopolies are generally bad, and action is required to moderate/mitigate them, but that shouldn't equate to the government also stepping in to protect your crappy failed business that wasn't able to compete in a reasonably fair market.
In fairness, it's also an immigration issue, so it's not entirely antithetical. If you note, though, he makes the statement about H1-Bs and Green Cards, too, which is somewhat indicative. If anything, that's where I part ways with him, because I think that if someone really is that good, and US companies are that interested in hiring them, and they'll compete on the same salaries and same conditions, on top of all the money the company spends to cover the Green Card, well, hell, I'd rather have them here. The worst abuses of the H1-B system are about the non-transferrable indentured servitude style crap.
That doesn't mean he isn't right that the "shortage" of workers is largely a bunch of crap. It's a "shortage" of people willing to work for third-world pay.
There's no one logical coherent worldview that covers ever possibility, on either side of the aisle (or even outside the building for that matter). I don't know how many cases there are of "Well, in theory we usually support X, but in this case X is associated with Y which the other side favors, so we're against it". Things like Democrats who are for equality and the poor unless we're talking about Wall Street bankers, or Republicans who are for keeping the Government out of your private life unless you're (weed smoker/female/etc), and so on. Certainly this isn't all of them, it's a generalization. It's safe to say that there are some for whom certain priorities in things take precedence. In many cases, I can find a lot of faults for Republicans who scream about border enforcement but turn a blind eye to employers filling shops in their districts with undocumented workers paid peanuts, just as I can for Democrats who talk about the need to reform the current immigration system, while at the same time proposing to expand the completely FUBAR H1-B system.
You're making the mistake of taking a Manichean view. "Left leaning" can include a pretty wide spectrum of things. I state it that way because I'm not a member of the Democratic party, and there are issues and candidates that I don't and would not support them on. I would certainly agree that some sort of Marxist utopia is ridiculous, unrealistic; but at the same time, that doesn't mean we have to take the complete opposite approach. Unfettered and unrestricted capitalism is equally unworkable. I'd much prefer a society where people can compete and get ahead, but where failure isn't accompanied by a threat of starvation, homelessness, or anything similarly bad. I would prefer we do away with the Calvinist notions about work and productivity, and instead encourage people to work and create. I think something like Milton Friedman's idea about Basic Income would be a reasonable starting point.
As for Obamacare, I think it's a horrible Frankenstein's Monster of a law, that is a massive giveaway to the insurance companies... but that's what you get when one political party cares more about scoring points in the power game than in actually proposing solutions to the problems at hand, or just flat out denies the problems that most people would like addressed. One party legislation is bad, but the answer isn't just handing things over to the other party - that's just as bad, if not worse. I'd much rather see a sensible system put in, but I'm not holding my breath for anything remotely close at this point. Likewise with the ISP market, I'd rather we had reasonable proposals from both sides for solving the problem, because we'd likely get a better overall ending.
So yes, please, give us proposals for market based solutions! I'd love to hear them. I'd love to hear the Republicans putting forth actual measures to increase broadband ISP competition. That isn't what they've been giving us though - instead they give us steaming turds like the bill TFA describes, where they try and lock in the current anti-competitive situation and bundle it in Orwellian language.
I'm pretty sure that the US does not consider "hacking" by itself an act of war. The response to allegations of North Korean responsibility by the US Government have been economic sanctions, not any sort of bombs being dropped. The US indicted a bunch of Chinese hackers that were accused of breaking in to stuff, presumably on behalf of the Chinese government or companies, but we haven't bombed China. No, I'm pretty sure the US considers hacking to just be a new method of doing the same stuff, or at least I would hope so. Hacking for espionage purposes is... shockingly, espionage, and should be treated the same way.
Where things may get tricky is when you start hacking to do something kinetic, like some of the crazy movie-plot ideas about shutting down the power grid or stuff. Would that be an act of war? Setting aside all questions about how feasible something like that would be, I think it's safe to say that if you could do something via network exploitation that would be considered an act of war if someone did it the old fashioned way, then it would be if done via hacking, too. That's what really scares me, is when these claims of attribution start carrying repercussions far more severe than cutting off Kim Jong-un's personal supply of margarita salt.
He was formerly a Democrat. They kicked him out after the scandal broke (as well they should). He ran as an independent in the special election, and won, because voter turnout in minor state special elections is ridiculously low, and he had two opponents splitting the rest of the vote.
The bottom line is though, you can't blame this on party affiliation any more than you can any other scandal, because the sort of people that are drawn to political power tend to be far more likely to be narcissistic assholes and sociopaths than the average person. This is true regardless of party affiliation.
Incidentally, these exactly are the sorts of people (State Legislators) that the Republicans in Congress think ought to be setting the rules on broadband. Who thinks that's a good idea? Oh, right, the incumbent ISP monopoly/duopolies.