Wisconsin Public Internet Struggles Against Telecom, Legislature 259
An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from Ars Technica:
"The University of Wisconsin's Internet technology division and a crucial provider of 'Net access for Wisconsin's educational system are under attack from that state's legislature and from a local telecommunications association. At issue is the WiscNet educational cooperative. The non-profit provides affordable network access to the state's schools and libraries, although its useful days may be numbered unless the picture changes soon. Under a proposed new law, the University of Wisconsin system could be forced to return millions of dollars in federal broadband grants that it has already won, spend far more money on network services, and perhaps even withdraw from the Internet2 project."
Well you see... (Score:5, Interesting)
AT&T won't provide the services or will do so at triple the prices paid now. This is also a very convenient way of shorting the school system what they need, and thus have more ammo to go after them for not providing what our kids need. Thus making schools the root of all evil again. Most voters will go along with it, and the GOP in Wisconsin gets more of what it wants.
Campaign donations (Score:5, Interesting)
THis makes perfect sense when you figure that ATT is set to profit big time from this legislation and they were/are a huge campaign contributor to Scott (I'm a Douche Bag) Walker. For those of you following along, this is the second time he has done this, the first was a 23m Fed giveback that would have replaced the sub par Badgernet service.
Re:The GOP's bright idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Privatize everything.
Except brutality and suffering; those will be available to everyone camped outside of the enclaves.
There has been a concerted war on the public interest in Wisconsin (and a few other states) for the past several months. IIRC, Wisconsin is where three legislators are up for recall elections, three more have the signatures filed but not validated yet, and steaming mad voters are counting the days until they can start a recall effort on the governor too.
So when are the ISPs going to pay up? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, does that mean the telecoms are going to return the BILLIONS in subsidies and tax cuts they've received?
Competitive? (Score:2, Interesting)
Taking tax dollars from 49 states and using it to undercut local providers isn't competition. It appears that this legislation is simply preventing WiscNet from receiving public funds from UW-Madison, which it is doing in order to do an end-run around the existing state-supported network, Badgernet.
If WiscNet, a non-profit organization, can't provide service at lower prices than a for-profit corporation like AT&T without forced revenue from tax subsidies, then I'd say that AT&T is competitive.
All they are doing is crying "Thanks to the tax money we take from you we can give away more service than we could otherwise pay for. If you take that away, then we'll need to charge market rates for the service we are providing!"
Re:Presidential Posturing from Wisconsin Gov ... (Score:5, Interesting)
His union-busting went well enough for his purposes
If WI laws allowed it, he'd be facing a recall vote along with the 6 Republican senators that are already being recalled. And I'd be shocked if he doesn't face a recall when he becomes eligible for one in January. He pissed a lot of people off and if his goal was to weaken support for the unions he failed miserably. A lot of people who started out against the unions watched the unions agree to a pay cut, a benefits cut, and even a temporary moratorium on collective bargaining. There are people angry with the Democratic senators for their walk out, but even that anger isn't directed at the Unions. In the end, it was the unions who looked reasonable; while the Democrats looked petty and weak and the Republicans looked like card carrying villains.
I think he'd be hard pressed to explain his behavior on a national stage to anyone other than anti-union Republicans. Not to mention that there are about 100k people in WI that have shown themselves ready and willing to take time off from work to stand in the literally freezing rain just to show their displeasure for him. Sometimes the "Would never vote for" column is just as important as the "Would vote for" column in polling, because it shows how active and engaged people would be to someone who is opposing him.
FTFY (Score:0, Interesting)
the University of Wisconsin system could be forced to return millions of federally borrowed Chinese dollars
UoW is building a quarter billion dollar football stadium, but needs federal grants to fund their Internet pipes.
Okay!
Re:The GOP's bright idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Such networks were a boon to local businesses and consumers alike, allowing many to have Internet service who otherwise would not have had it.
Re:Presidential Posturing from Wisconsin Gov ... (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of people who started out against the unions watched the unions agree to a pay cut, a benefits cut, and even a temporary moratorium on collective bargaining
Sadly that doesn't matter to many people. The unions have become the new multipurpose boogeyman for any number of groups and causes. Go take a look at the recent story hear about an Apple Store employee who wanted to form a union, and look at how many slashdot people jumped up to bash unions in response.
I think he'd be hard pressed to explain his behavior on a national stage to anyone other than anti-union Republicans.
There are a lot of people in this country with strong anti-union feelings. And there are plenty of people who could be convinced to feel the same way as well. Explaining this to enough people to win the GOP nomination is trivial.
Besides, with our current conservative POTUS in office, the republicans have to go even further to the right in order to make any distinction between what they want and what Obama has already done. Anyone who isn't rabidly anti-union will be labelled as "soft left' as the kindest.
Re:Just surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
That trend has been forming for quite a while now. Until not long ago, politicians were far more sneaky when trying to dismantle public institutions to shift more power to their "friends" in various businesses. But when they noticed the general "meh" attitude that spreads in the population, I guess they felt a bit let down that we didn't even honor their attempts to veil the sellout to corporations. And now they're pretty much blunt and blatant about it. Simply because there is no public outcry. We've learned to expect that from them, we pretty much expect our politicians to screw us over. And, bluntly, why should they veil it? It's not like we have a choice. Republicans or Democrats, hanging or shooting, Kang or Kodos, it's not like there's really a difference.
And please don't start something like "then run yourself" or "vote for another candidate". Please. At least be sensible. First, people are too stupid for democracy to really work, they're too caught up in petty bickering about how much party A is the hell spawn and if they don't vote for B the apocalypse is going to happen the day after the election. And second, the amount of money required to do something like this is crippling, it's like telling someone to open a competing telco if they're not happy with the AT&T service.
So why should they be sneaky about selling us out? It's not like we can do anything about it anyway.
Re:Presidential Posturing from Wisconsin Gov ... (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't run a public transit system that caters to 1-2% of the population and only serves that number. It doesn't work without massive funding from the government, which people have consistently voted against.
When I was in Chicago in the 1960s the buses and electric trains there had plenty of riders and ran 24x7. Unfortunately, the result of a lot of government programs created the "inner city" mess that everyone should be familar with. It was no longer safe to ride public transit, so if you didn't absolutely have to, you did not. Ridership dropped. Fares increased because of this, so ridership dropped some more. They ended the 24x7 service because there were too few people to make it practical. The removed station attendents and got rid of every single person in the system they could do without. The trains became less and less safe to ride.
The end result of all of this is the train routes have been reconfigured, stations closed and buses cut way back. It is now something that is usable during rush hour and absolutely nobody goes anywhere near unless they have to. There have been attempts at bond issues for funding the CTA and every single one has failed. It is viewed that if it can't survive as an independent company, it shouldn't survive at all.
In other places rails that were used for trains have been torn up and the land used for something else. The rail lines aren't coming back - the land is tied up now. That decision was made in the 1950s and has just finally gotten around to being noticed.
End result is public transit is pretty much dead in the US. What was needed was massive government investment in the 1940s and 1950s to offset the investment in roads. It wasn't done, so public transit became less and less relevant to the people in the US. Sure there might be some people that it would be nice if public transit worked for, but they are far too few to support the system. It would now take the government spending billions of dollars each year in every major city to have a functional public transit system and for the most part it would be empty - except for the 1-2% that absolutely require it. It would still be a haven for crime and unsafe, but that is how we seemingly want to have inner cities.
You might be OK with that level of government spending, but apparently very few voters are. I suppose an alternative might be to tear up the highways that have been built over the last 60 years or so and force people to use the unsafe, crime-infested public transit system. It might get enough ridership to reduce the crime level then. But it would take that kind of thing to make it work. And that would cost hundreds of billions.
By the way, the US is broke and unless China wants to sponsor public transit in the US (maybe some nice Chinese buses?) we're not spending anything on public transit.