Verizon whips out Big Johnson to lure FCC into axing US states' net neutrality, privacy rules Verizon is leaning on America's broadband watchdog to stomp out any hope of state governments rolling out their own rules on net neutrality, privacy protections, and other internet regulations. The telecoms giant this month wrote to the FCC urging the communications regulator to overrule various attempts by US states to …
9 out of 10 richest communities in the US are in the Washington DC metro area. It has been said that the US has the best money government can buy.
Truth be told, a politician's two jobs are to be elected and re-elected. Our wants and needs are a distant third. Elections are not cheap. Hillary Clinton spent $1.2 billion (thousand million) and the Donald spent $600 million. Where did the money come from? Anonymous donations? Royalty checks? Wise business deals? Mr. Trump made a lot of money as a businessman, but he didn't make $600,000,000 from it. They made this money from lobbyists. And why do lobbyists give money? Because they like the politician? I can't think of two more unlikable people than Hillary and Donald. Lobbyists give money because they want favors. Political favors. Follow the money, politicians only throw us a bone every once in a while.
And along those same lines, I know a man who was a card-carrying Democrat. About 30 years ago, he went to a local Democrat rally. He said that every word out of their mouth was, not what they could do to make the country better, but how they could beat the Republicans. He left the meeting and never voted since. I will bet money it has gotten nothing but worse since then. I never met anybody who told me they went to a Republican rally, but I am quite confident that every word out their mouths would be how to beat the Democrats, and no words about what is good for the country. And I also would be quite confident if such an attitude held true in most political parties all over the world.
And yet some residents of these 9 out of 10 richest communities in the US would complain about taxation without representation (I can't recall if this was bumper sticker or a t-shirt). "Democracy" and "lobbyists" surely do mix for the benefit of the few.
"Taxation without Representation" is the tag-line on the Washington DC license plates (or at least was). No Senator and a non-voting representative in the House make that pretty accurate - they even have an income tax there (not all states do).
But the referenced communities aren't in DC itself, they're in the surrounding areas in Virginia and Maryland.
Republicans believe in states rights and local control, unless the states or localities do something they don't want. Another example of this is multiple republican controlled states who have slapped down cities/counties that raised their minimum wage above the federal & state minimums by enacting laws to make that illegal. So much for local control!
Democrats are equally hypocritical about their so-called "core" beliefs, of course. Politicians will always find an excuse or loophole to go along with what those giving them the biggest bribes er... kickbacks er... campaign donations want regardless of their so-called principles.
Only (partial) solution is a constitutional amendment reforming campaign finance, ending gerrymandering, and limiting congressmen to a maximum of two terms so half are always retiring and don't have to be beholden to what those holding the campaign pursue strings may want. It is amazing how much more independent of party dogma those who are not running for re-election seem to be...almost as if they suddenly care more about the country than their cushy job!
If you want to stop this you can support groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU and Free Press who are fighting to keep Net Neutrality and Privacy.
https://www.eff.org/
https://www.aclu.org/
https://www.freepress.net/
https://www.fightforthefuture.org/
https://www.publicknowledge.org/
https://demandprogress.org/
also you can set them as your charity on https://smile.amazon.com/
also write to your House Representative and senators http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state
and the FCC
https://www.fcc.gov/about/contact
You can now add a comment to the repeal here
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/filings?proceedings_name=17-108&sort=date_disseminated,DESC
here a easier URL you can use thanks to John Oliver
www.gofccyourself.com
you can also use this that help you contact your house and congressional reps, its easy to use and cuts down on the transaction costs with writing a letter to your reps.
https://resistbot.io/
also check out
https://democracy.io/#!/
which was made by the EFF and is a low transactioncost tool for writing all your reps in one fell swoop.
The real counter to this is going to be from the even bigger bullies.
The ISPs want to charge Netflix and Amazon for bandwidth then they can charge ISPs for access.
So the govt says that Facebook and Google are media companies ? Then the cable providers can pay the same for access to gmail, google search and youtube that they currently pay for HBO and ESPN.
Verizon, how much is your business worth if your subscribers suddenly can't get Facebook, search or you-tube?
"It's just not fair <sniff> people hand over their whole lives to Facebook to slice and dice and sell to advertisers at massive profits and these state politicians want to stop us getting our slice as well."
That is what they mean, if not what they are saying, is it not?
I remember in Montana they were pushing for a law where Feds couldn't arrest a Montana citizen without a sheriff standing by. I understand the Feds think they were big pants but the states laws still over-rule federal law and always have. It's just these sill george soros globalist punks that try to interpret differently.
I've been involved in infrequent discussions about whether the States in Australia need their own government separate to Federal. I was a bit neither here-nor-there about it until relatively recently when it's been the States doing their own thing on renewable energy pretty much diametrically opposed to what the Federal Government is pushing for.
The end result is that the States are being progressive whilst the Fed are being classical conservatives.
Whilst the topic of renewable energy is a divisive one, it's the example that made it clear to me. I'd probably be annoyed if the situation was reversed (Feds pushing renewables and States stalling), but the point is the overall 'balance' provided by having two layers rather than one.
Ironically, but also entirely predictably, the power players that politicians think they are will keep each other in check to a certain extent lest they submit to the 'power' of the other. Disagreement because agreement may be seen as weakness. /cynicism.
It's one of those rare situations where two wrongs make a pretty-much-right or a best-that-we-can-expect.
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