Oh, I agree but it wasn't because of the alcohol industry.
How can so many special interests screw the rest of us so completely and get away with it?
That's it right there. Hemp is one of the most industrially useful, if not the most useful, plants there are. Clothes is made from it, it can be used in construction. It can be eaten, actually hemp seeds are one of the most nutritious foods there is. It can be used for oil, and it can be made into fuel. Plastic can be made from it. And that's just the tip.
It's a clear violation of the social contract.
It is that. Actually Thomas Jefferson once said farmers should be required to grow hemp, but he could never propose such a law because he knew that it would violate farmers' rights.
there is the issue you are selling things for consumption...you don't think the FDA will require you to get a distribution license?
The FDA does not license farmer's markets or Farmers markets. Some states do though, apparently New Mexico does. Now that's not to say a license is not needed, a farmer may need a business license to operate such a market.
Beer is doable, but not all that easy to make at home.
Beer sure is easy to make at home. I started making beer, at home, more than 20 years ago.
You have to build at least a minimal apparatus
The minimal equipment needed to brew beer cost about $60 for a compleat kit. You can assemble the equipment for less though.
you have to employ some fairly stringent (for a home environment) anti-contamination protocols.
Again not really. To sterilize the equipment and bottles wash them with a solution of sanitizer like sodium methabiluphite. Unless it's dirty most any home kitchen should be clean enough to make beer.
It takes time, and the end result usually ends up tasting a little better than horse piss.
With the exception of my first batch every batch of brew I made people told me it was good. Those who tried that batch didn't want to try anymore, but did and liked it. Many wanted me to show them how they could make beer themselves. If a brew tastes bad it's usually because the equipment was not properly sanitized, the mash was mishandled, or it was not properly transfered from the primary fermentation vessel to the second or from the second to the bottles. One wild strain of yeast can turn a batch bad.
It's fun (and mine quit tasting like horse piss after a few tries)
It probably got better because you got better with sterilizing and bottling.
but not something that will ever be common
That's how beer and wine used to be made. There weren't any centralized brewing facilities, instead there were literally hundreds, thousands, of what we call today microbreweries. When I was in Germany in the early '80s each city, town, and village had it's own breweries. Sure there were brand name beers but there were also a number of local brews.
Food is food. Apart from subsidies, the growth of food is not very regulated
Ah, if you want to cut government spending cut farm subsidies. I don't know what they are this year but last year the US congress passed a farming bill with nearly $300 million in farm subsidies. Passed it by a veto proof margin.
There are a number of reasons why cannabis was illegalized - and most of the common ones you hear are actually true to one extent or another, but none stand out much on their own. Taxation, immigrant paranoia, easy enforcement results, propaganda, and actual honest public health issues.
There were no health issues when hemp was made illegal. Dr. James Woodward testified before congress for the AMA saying "there is no evidence that marijuana is a dangerous drug". Drug warriors promptly ridiculed him and the AMA.
The only tax I've paid when I make homebrew is the sales tax I pay for the equipment and supplies I use. However the ingredients used are not taxed, as food they aren't taxed.
Food is easy to grow at home, but is legal and taxed in some (many?) states.
I have never lived in a state that taxes groceries. There's no tax on food from grocery stores and I haven't paid tax for seeds. Even if I did though, the tax may only be paid once. As an example I just picked up a paper bag with mustard seeds off the floor I saved from last year. In my refrigerator I have tomato and tomatillo seeds. I won't be paying any tax on the seedlings. Last fall I divided my strawberry plants, starting out in the spring with 4 planted in a hanging planter, they rooted and I was able to separate them into about 20 plants most of which I gave away.
Clothes are easy to make at home, but are legal and taxed in some (many) states.
I'm not sure about cloth here, whether it's taxed or not. However while it's easy to sew clothes it's much harder, takes longer, to spin thread and weave cloth.
while marijuana was something that was first encountered as something brown-skinned people used, and therefore, exotic and scary and somehow more dangerous
Wrong, the first and third presidents of the USA, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their farms. The second president John Adams wanted to use hemp as a cash crop.
As the link you provide goes over it wasn't just, or even mainly, because of alcohol that hemp was made illegal. Hemp was seen as a threat to a number of rich and powerful industrialists.
I always thought that marijuana has never been legalized, is because no one can ever remember where they left the petitions!!!
Hemp AKA marijuana was legal to begin with in the US. Many of the USA'a Founding Fathers were farmers who grew hemp. The first three presidents of the USA George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all grew hemp on their farms. Thomas Jefferson once said farmers should be required to grow hemp, however he couldn't propose such a law because he knew that it would violate the farmers' rights. Hemp was only made illegal with the passage of the Marijuana Tax ACT of 1937. Yet even then it wasn't compleatly illegal. During WWII the federal government's Department of Agriculture produced the movie "Hemp for Victory" and showed it to farmers to encourage them to grow hemp. Besides the oil from hemp seeds, hemp was used to make cloth, cords, and rope.
I have yet to hear/see a rational reason why marijuana is still illegal.
There is no rational reason marijuana is illegal. The reason it was made illegal, via the Marijuana Tax Act or 1937 was because hemp was a perceived threat to some rich and powerful industrialists. MIT did a study in the '30s on using hemp as a source of pulp for paper making. An acre or hemp will produce as much paper as one acre of forest. It concluded an acre of hemp would produce much more paper than an acre of forest. So newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who also owned 100s of thousands of California forests he logged to make paper saw hemp as a threat. Plastic was originally made from plant cellulose, which hemp is a good source. Then in 1935 DuPont was awarded a patent on making the plastic Nylon from petroleum. Dupont and DuPont's chief financial backer Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh saw the competition from hemp as a threat.
Petroleum was also threatened because of alcohol and Diesel. Henry Ford designed and built an auto on his Iron Mountain estate that used hemp he grew on the estate as a source of fuel. The hemp was made into alcohol which the auto used. The interior of the auto also used hemp, the paneling, dashboard, and other parts were made from hemp. Before Ford's use of hemp to make alcohol Rudolph Diesel, the designer of the diesel engine, used vegetable oil as fuel, including oil from peanuts. At the Paris Expo when he realized there was not enough peanut oil he used hemp oil as fuel for his engine. This threatened Rockefeller's Standard Oil and Rothschild's Shell Oil.
There were others who saw hemp as a threat as well. When congress was "debating", which was no debate, the Marijuana Tax Act only one doctor testified about hemp and whether it was a threat. On behalf of the AMA Dr James Woodward testified before congress saying "there is no evidence that marijuana is a dangerous drug". In return the AMA and he were denounced. The fact is though is that medical professionals did use hemp as a drug effectively. However Harry J. Anslinger, who was appointed as the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) by his uncle-in-law Andrew Mellon, of the Mellon Bank, who was the Secretary of the US Treasury.
All together hemp AKA marijuana was not made illegal because it was a dangerous drug but because some powerful people saw it as a threat to their wealth.
Thanks for the link, I haven't seen that article before. I am interested in and have done some research into neurogenesis because I am a surviver of a Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI.
Obama isn't a classical liberal, just like the GOP aren't classically conservative. On the modern US political spectrum Obama is more liberal than Bill Clinton.
That's right, it is semantics, the meaning of words is important. If no one uses the same meanings for words nobody will understand each other.
when you're born into the lower class and have zero wealth, borrowing is your most realistic way to get ahead
Yes, borrowing responsibly can improve economics, but not irresponsibly.
Borrowing money to buy a house is a smart move.
Buying a house you can afford is smart but buying one you can't afford is not smart, it's stupid.
The problem being, it also destabilized the economy because the people at the top were born with the capital and they're the ones profiting from all the interest you have to pay (they also profit if you rent because they were born with the property.
There is such a thing as being upperly mobile. Even those born at the bottom can reach up and climb out.
Socialized healthcare
Socialized medicine either leads to increased health care cost or to rationing. What will lower health care costs is a free market in health care. And please don't say we have a free market in healthcare now, because we do not. Let's start with health insurance. Employers get a tax write off for offering health insurance to employees. However if someone buys their own insurance, they do not get that tax write off. That is not a free market. Then there are regulations such as zoning laws. Even if I wanted to I doubt I'd be able to open a walk-in health clinic in my neighborhood. If I could though there's probably regulations saying X number of doctors are required when Physician assistants and Nurse practitioners can do as good a job under the supervision of a doctor but does not cost as much.
Best of all, it can be paid for with taxes on the very wealthy, redistributing wealth to the lower half of our economy and countering the wealth consolidation that caused the recession.
Redistribute wealth? It's better to create wealth than it is to redistribute it.
Some areas are really sparsely populated and he would be investing in equipment with no possibility of payback in a reasonable time frame. In fact I would like to see the money disbursed as equipment vouchers only that have to be used in rural non serviced areas.
However it's not just rural areas that don't have access to broadband. There are areas of the Big Apple, New York City, that do not have access.
Fact is, ISPs like Verizon, Comcast, Cox, AT&T and others currently pick and choose and only service the most profitable areas. There has to be some way to stop those ISPs doing that (since if you force the big boys to roll service out everywhere, you make broadband available to all the people who cant get it but want it) in a way that doesn't hurt the little guy.
Actually all this would do is make sure no one had broadband. Why should a business pay to install broadband everywhere when it's not profitable? On the other hand however, when these companies have been paid to build out broadband then they should be forced to do so. And these companies have been paid already.
Did you not read the terms of the contract? Did you not understand them? If you think that they are unreasonable, then you should either not have signed up in the first place, or you should get a new ISP now. If more folks start jumping ship, then your current ISP will have to do something. Don't delude yourself. This is the only tool at your disposal.
Yes, it would be nice if there were competition however most people only have two choices, broadband from one provider or no broadband. A few others have another choice, broadband from the cableco or from the telco, or no broadband. Very few have more than this.
a commercial enterprise's primary concern is profit. they're obligated to their shareholders
Actually a corporation's primary responsibility is to improve the public good. The first two businesses granted corporate charter were the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the British East India Company in 1604. Both were shipping businesses and shipping was a risky business to be in. The British and Dutch thought shipping was a common good, so to encourage shipping these companies were granted limited liability. If a ship sank because of bad weather or was attacked by pirates the ship owners were liable for the loss. The owner could lose everything including their home. So liability was limited to just what the corporation owned. A person could own stocks in the corporation and the most they would loose is the amount they paid for the stocks. If a corporation no longer served the public good then it could have it's corporate charterrevoked.
However generally corporations are no longer held accountable to the public good. Instead as Thomas Jefferson warned of we now have a corporate aristocracy.
If there was 1 Gbps fiber available, open wlreless and municipal wifi would never work....
Actually it would work as it would cost too much to lay fiber everywhere. Fiber can be laid to central points from which wireless providers can tap into the fiber. Wireless is afterall cheaper. Many people who build off the grid use solar or other energy sources for power because it's cheaper. If you build a home a few miles from the closest power line it can cost more to have the powerlines installed than a PV system will cost. The last I heard, to lay 1000 feet of powerlines can cost something like $1000 so one mile would cost more than $5000. And fiber cost more.
Related to this a few years ago IEEE's "Spectrum" had an article about how a group of US engineers setup radio towers to provide wireless access to a village in Southeast Asia, in Cambodia or Viet Nam. It was the cheapest way to provide net access.
The most logical structure for telecom networks is to have the government own the physical infrastructure...
There's no legal authority for that, at least on the federal level.
True, while there's no constitutional authority for the federal government to do it state and local governments can. If their constitutionals allow it. However the federal government does a lot of things it is not authorized to do.
The most logical structure for telecom networks is to have the government own the physical infrastructure (which is a natural monopoly) and then allow any private company that wants to to provide services (Internet, television, phone, whatever) over that infrastructure.
This is what a group of communities did in northeastern Utah. Governments there banded together to finance and build a Broadband Utopia. These communities built it then allowed whoever wanted to offer services it could deliver whether broadband access, cable tv, or phone service. If they wanted they could provide all three.
Of course the existing telecom companies have lots of lobbyists, give lots of money to both parties, and are quite happy with things just the way they are, so this is unlikely to ever happen.
Because of it Comcast was forced to reduce it's prices in the area.
All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives.
Presidents can and do send spending proposals to the House.
New song, same as the old song.
Yeap. The only difference between Democrats and Republicans is what part of government will get money. Democrats want to fund social programs whereas Republicans want to fund law enforcement and the military.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
What is needed are Citizen legislatures. I'd like congress to be like the Texas Legislature. They only meet for regular sessions every other year and the regular session does not last longer than 140 days. This is set by the Texas Constitution. Members of the legislature actually worked for a living and so didn't want to spend a lot of tyme in session. Now if someone serves 10 years in congress, in the House and or Senate, they automatically get retirement benefits including health insurance. For instance even though former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has been convicted of a crime because he spent more than 10 years as senator he will get millions of dollars and free healthcare the rest of his life.
Slashdot Mirror
TFA said he had a bumper sticker saying "Powered by 100% vegetable oil."
Is that usually considered to be legal grounds for Officer Obie to pull someone over?
While I disagree the USSC has ruled that law enforcement can setup roadblocks and pull everyone over. And that's what was happening here.
Falcon
It's a conspiracy, man.
Oh, I agree but it wasn't because of the alcohol industry.
How can so many special interests screw the rest of us so completely and get away with it?
That's it right there. Hemp is one of the most industrially useful, if not the most useful, plants there are. Clothes is made from it, it can be used in construction. It can be eaten, actually hemp seeds are one of the most nutritious foods there is. It can be used for oil, and it can be made into fuel. Plastic can be made from it. And that's just the tip.
It's a clear violation of the social contract.
It is that. Actually Thomas Jefferson once said farmers should be required to grow hemp, but he could never propose such a law because he knew that it would violate farmers' rights.
Falcon
there is the issue you are selling things for consumption...you don't think the FDA will require you to get a distribution license?
The FDA does not license farmer's markets or Farmers markets. Some states do though, apparently New Mexico does. Now that's not to say a license is not needed, a farmer may need a business license to operate such a market.
Falcon
Beer is doable, but not all that easy to make at home.
Beer sure is easy to make at home. I started making beer, at home, more than 20 years ago.
You have to build at least a minimal apparatus
The minimal equipment needed to brew beer cost about $60 for a compleat kit. You can assemble the equipment for less though.
you have to employ some fairly stringent (for a home environment) anti-contamination protocols.
Again not really. To sterilize the equipment and bottles wash them with a solution of sanitizer like sodium methabiluphite. Unless it's dirty most any home kitchen should be clean enough to make beer.
It takes time, and the end result usually ends up tasting a little better than horse piss.
With the exception of my first batch every batch of brew I made people told me it was good. Those who tried that batch didn't want to try anymore, but did and liked it. Many wanted me to show them how they could make beer themselves. If a brew tastes bad it's usually because the equipment was not properly sanitized, the mash was mishandled, or it was not properly transfered from the primary fermentation vessel to the second or from the second to the bottles. One wild strain of yeast can turn a batch bad.
It's fun (and mine quit tasting like horse piss after a few tries)
It probably got better because you got better with sterilizing and bottling.
but not something that will ever be common
That's how beer and wine used to be made. There weren't any centralized brewing facilities, instead there were literally hundreds, thousands, of what we call today microbreweries. When I was in Germany in the early '80s each city, town, and village had it's own breweries. Sure there were brand name beers but there were also a number of local brews.
Food is food. Apart from subsidies, the growth of food is not very regulated
Ah, if you want to cut government spending cut farm subsidies. I don't know what they are this year but last year the US congress passed a farming bill with nearly $300 million in farm subsidies. Passed it by a veto proof margin.
There are a number of reasons why cannabis was illegalized - and most of the common ones you hear are actually true to one extent or another, but none stand out much on their own. Taxation, immigrant paranoia, easy enforcement results, propaganda, and actual honest public health issues.
There were no health issues when hemp was made illegal. Dr. James Woodward testified before congress for the AMA saying "there is no evidence that marijuana is a dangerous drug". Drug warriors promptly ridiculed him and the AMA.
Falcon
and taxed
The only tax I've paid when I make homebrew is the sales tax I pay for the equipment and supplies I use. However the ingredients used are not taxed, as food they aren't taxed.
Food is easy to grow at home, but is legal and taxed in some (many?) states.
I have never lived in a state that taxes groceries. There's no tax on food from grocery stores and I haven't paid tax for seeds. Even if I did though, the tax may only be paid once. As an example I just picked up a paper bag with mustard seeds off the floor I saved from last year. In my refrigerator I have tomato and tomatillo seeds. I won't be paying any tax on the seedlings. Last fall I divided my strawberry plants, starting out in the spring with 4 planted in a hanging planter, they rooted and I was able to separate them into about 20 plants most of which I gave away.
Clothes are easy to make at home, but are legal and taxed in some (many) states.
I'm not sure about cloth here, whether it's taxed or not. However while it's easy to sew clothes it's much harder, takes longer, to spin thread and weave cloth.
Falcon
I have no clue how anyone found out he was burning soy oil
M
TFA said he had a bumper sticker saying "Powered by 100% vegetable oil."
Falcon
while marijuana was something that was first encountered as something brown-skinned people used, and therefore, exotic and scary and somehow more dangerous
Wrong, the first and third presidents of the USA, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their farms. The second president John Adams wanted to use hemp as a cash crop.
Falcon
It is often assumed that, in the US at least, marijuana was made illegal to protect alcohol profits. here is one link: http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html
As the link you provide goes over it wasn't just, or even mainly, because of alcohol that hemp was made illegal. Hemp was seen as a threat to a number of rich and powerful industrialists.
Falcon
I always thought that marijuana has never been legalized, is because no one can ever remember where they left the petitions!!!
Hemp AKA marijuana was legal to begin with in the US. Many of the USA'a Founding Fathers were farmers who grew hemp. The first three presidents of the USA George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all grew hemp on their farms. Thomas Jefferson once said farmers should be required to grow hemp, however he couldn't propose such a law because he knew that it would violate the farmers' rights. Hemp was only made illegal with the passage of the Marijuana Tax ACT of 1937. Yet even then it wasn't compleatly illegal. During WWII the federal government's Department of Agriculture produced the movie "Hemp for Victory" and showed it to farmers to encourage them to grow hemp. Besides the oil from hemp seeds, hemp was used to make cloth, cords, and rope.
Falcon
I have yet to hear/see a rational reason why marijuana is still illegal.
There is no rational reason marijuana is illegal. The reason it was made illegal, via the Marijuana Tax Act or 1937 was because hemp was a perceived threat to some rich and powerful industrialists. MIT did a study in the '30s on using hemp as a source of pulp for paper making. An acre or hemp will produce as much paper as one acre of forest. It concluded an acre of hemp would produce much more paper than an acre of forest. So newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who also owned 100s of thousands of California forests he logged to make paper saw hemp as a threat. Plastic was originally made from plant cellulose, which hemp is a good source. Then in 1935 DuPont was awarded a patent on making the plastic Nylon from petroleum. Dupont and DuPont's chief financial backer Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh saw the competition from hemp as a threat.
Petroleum was also threatened because of alcohol and Diesel. Henry Ford designed and built an auto on his Iron Mountain estate that used hemp he grew on the estate as a source of fuel. The hemp was made into alcohol which the auto used. The interior of the auto also used hemp, the paneling, dashboard, and other parts were made from hemp. Before Ford's use of hemp to make alcohol Rudolph Diesel, the designer of the diesel engine, used vegetable oil as fuel, including oil from peanuts. At the Paris Expo when he realized there was not enough peanut oil he used hemp oil as fuel for his engine. This threatened Rockefeller's Standard Oil and Rothschild's Shell Oil.
There were others who saw hemp as a threat as well. When congress was "debating", which was no debate, the Marijuana Tax Act only one doctor testified about hemp and whether it was a threat. On behalf of the AMA Dr James Woodward testified before congress saying "there is no evidence that marijuana is a dangerous drug". In return the AMA and he were denounced. The fact is though is that medical professionals did use hemp as a drug effectively. However Harry J. Anslinger, who was appointed as the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) by his uncle-in-law Andrew Mellon, of the Mellon Bank, who was the Secretary of the US Treasury.
All together hemp AKA marijuana was not made illegal because it was a dangerous drug but because some powerful people saw it as a threat to their wealth.
Falcon
There was a study that suggested that Cannabinoids increases neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells) by up to 40%.
Thanks for the link, I haven't seen that article before. I am interested in and have done some research into neurogenesis because I am a surviver of a Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI.
Falcon
Obama isn't a classical liberal, just like the GOP aren't classically conservative. On the modern US political spectrum Obama is more liberal than Bill Clinton.
That's right, it is semantics, the meaning of words is important. If no one uses the same meanings for words nobody will understand each other.
Falcon
when you're born into the lower class and have zero wealth, borrowing is your most realistic way to get ahead
Yes, borrowing responsibly can improve economics, but not irresponsibly.
Borrowing money to buy a house is a smart move.
Buying a house you can afford is smart but buying one you can't afford is not smart, it's stupid.
The problem being, it also destabilized the economy because the people at the top were born with the capital and they're the ones profiting from all the interest you have to pay (they also profit if you rent because they were born with the property.
There is such a thing as being upperly mobile. Even those born at the bottom can reach up and climb out.
Socialized healthcare
Socialized medicine either leads to increased health care cost or to rationing. What will lower health care costs is a free market in health care. And please don't say we have a free market in healthcare now, because we do not. Let's start with health insurance. Employers get a tax write off for offering health insurance to employees. However if someone buys their own insurance, they do not get that tax write off. That is not a free market. Then there are regulations such as zoning laws. Even if I wanted to I doubt I'd be able to open a walk-in health clinic in my neighborhood. If I could though there's probably regulations saying X number of doctors are required when Physician assistants and Nurse practitioners can do as good a job under the supervision of a doctor but does not cost as much.
Falcon
Best of all, it can be paid for with taxes on the very wealthy, redistributing wealth to the lower half of our economy and countering the wealth consolidation that caused the recession.
Redistribute wealth? It's better to create wealth than it is to redistribute it.
Falcon
Some areas are really sparsely populated and he would be investing in equipment with no possibility of payback in a reasonable time frame. In fact I would like to see the money disbursed as equipment vouchers only that have to be used in rural non serviced areas.
However it's not just rural areas that don't have access to broadband. There are areas of the Big Apple, New York City, that do not have access.
Falcon
Fact is, ISPs like Verizon, Comcast, Cox, AT&T and others currently pick and choose and only service the most profitable areas. There has to be some way to stop those ISPs doing that (since if you force the big boys to roll service out everywhere, you make broadband available to all the people who cant get it but want it) in a way that doesn't hurt the little guy.
Actually all this would do is make sure no one had broadband. Why should a business pay to install broadband everywhere when it's not profitable? On the other hand however, when these companies have been paid to build out broadband then they should be forced to do so. And these companies have been paid already.
Falcon
There's hardly any consensus in many things, this is especially true when it comes to economics.
Falcon
Did you not read the terms of the contract? Did you not understand them? If you think that they are unreasonable, then you should either not have signed up in the first place, or you should get a new ISP now. If more folks start jumping ship, then your current ISP will have to do something. Don't delude yourself. This is the only tool at your disposal.
Yes, it would be nice if there were competition however most people only have two choices, broadband from one provider or no broadband. A few others have another choice, broadband from the cableco or from the telco, or no broadband. Very few have more than this.
Falcon
a commercial enterprise's primary concern is profit. they're obligated to their shareholders
Actually a corporation's primary responsibility is to improve the public good. The first two businesses granted corporate charter were the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the British East India Company in 1604. Both were shipping businesses and shipping was a risky business to be in. The British and Dutch thought shipping was a common good, so to encourage shipping these companies were granted limited liability. If a ship sank because of bad weather or was attacked by pirates the ship owners were liable for the loss. The owner could lose everything including their home. So liability was limited to just what the corporation owned. A person could own stocks in the corporation and the most they would loose is the amount they paid for the stocks. If a corporation no longer served the public good then it could have it's corporate charter revoked.
However generally corporations are no longer held accountable to the public good. Instead as Thomas Jefferson warned of we now have a corporate aristocracy.
Falcon
If there was 1 Gbps fiber available, open wlreless and municipal wifi would never work....
Actually it would work as it would cost too much to lay fiber everywhere. Fiber can be laid to central points from which wireless providers can tap into the fiber. Wireless is afterall cheaper. Many people who build off the grid use solar or other energy sources for power because it's cheaper. If you build a home a few miles from the closest power line it can cost more to have the powerlines installed than a PV system will cost. The last I heard, to lay 1000 feet of powerlines can cost something like $1000 so one mile would cost more than $5000. And fiber cost more.
Related to this a few years ago IEEE's "Spectrum" had an article about how a group of US engineers setup radio towers to provide wireless access to a village in Southeast Asia, in Cambodia or Viet Nam. It was the cheapest way to provide net access.
Falcon
The most logical structure for telecom networks is to have the government own the physical infrastructure...
There's no legal authority for that, at least on the federal level.
True, while there's no constitutional authority for the federal government to do it state and local governments can. If their constitutionals allow it. However the federal government does a lot of things it is not authorized to do.
Falcon
The most logical structure for telecom networks is to have the government own the physical infrastructure (which is a natural monopoly) and then allow any private company that wants to to provide services (Internet, television, phone, whatever) over that infrastructure.
This is what a group of communities did in northeastern Utah. Governments there banded together to finance and build a Broadband Utopia. These communities built it then allowed whoever wanted to offer services it could deliver whether broadband access, cable tv, or phone service. If they wanted they could provide all three.
Of course the existing telecom companies have lots of lobbyists, give lots of money to both parties, and are quite happy with things just the way they are, so this is unlikely to ever happen.
Because of it Comcast was forced to reduce it's prices in the area.
Falcon
FDR's spending wasn't the only thing that ended the great depression, but it sure helped.
Actually a study by UCLA economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian concluded FDR prolonged and made more sever the Great Depression.
Falcon
If you think Obama is a liberal you're being fooled. Obama is not a liberal. Whereas liberals want small government Obama will increase government.
I wouldn't count on it, but if we're lucky we'll see surpluses before Obama gets out of office even with his massive spending.
I'm with you, while I hope we have surpluses soon I doubt it.
Falcon
All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives.
Presidents can and do send spending proposals to the House.
New song, same as the old song.
Yeap. The only difference between Democrats and Republicans is what part of government will get money. Democrats want to fund social programs whereas Republicans want to fund law enforcement and the military.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
What is needed are Citizen legislatures. I'd like congress to be like the Texas Legislature. They only meet for regular sessions every other year and the regular session does not last longer than 140 days. This is set by the Texas Constitution. Members of the legislature actually worked for a living and so didn't want to spend a lot of tyme in session. Now if someone serves 10 years in congress, in the House and or Senate, they automatically get retirement benefits including health insurance. For instance even though former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has been convicted of a crime because he spent more than 10 years as senator he will get millions of dollars and free healthcare the rest of his life.
Falcon