The Misleading Fliers Comcast Used To Kill Off a Local Internet Competitor 250
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes In the months and weeks leading up to a referendum vote that would have established a locally owned fiber network in three small Illinois cities, Comcast and SBC (now AT&T) bombarded residents and city council members with disinformation, exaggerations, and outright lies to ensure the measure failed. The series of two-sided postcards painted municipal broadband as a foolhardy endeavor unfit for adults, responsible people, and perhaps as not something a smart woman would do. Municipal fiber was a gamble, a high-wire act, a game, something as "SCARY" as a ghost. Why build a municipal fiber network, one asked, when "internet service [is] already offered by two respectable private businesses?" In the corner, in tiny print, each postcard said "paid for by SBC" or "paid for by Comcast."
The postcards are pretty absurd and worth a look.
Get used to this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Get used to this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Making wildly exaggerated claims always has been legal. Imagine if it were otherwise: you'd have to arrest whole advertising companies, and political parties, and organized religions, and the people who send me forwarded emails...
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My only issue is that we haven't heard of this, though it has been happening for months.
The damage is done, it's too late to do much other than complain.
And, this was 2004. This is an eternity in business years. I can't even complain to SBC because they don't exist as of 2005 legally, I think.
What is the action here? Should I hate Comcast because they did something a decade ago? Do I oppose something that Time Warner wants because their partner to be blames a nonexistent company? Do I complain about som
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... which is soon to be overruled once some corporation notices and decides to challenge it, citing Citizens United as precedent, I'm sure.
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Truth and Advertising laws have already been tested in court.
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But was that before or after the Supreme Court decided corporations had free speech rights? If it was before, then the situation has probably changed (in the current Court's insane opinion, anyway).
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The idea that they don't is plain silly to begin with.
Imagine stating a business and incorporating it. You soak ypur entire savings into it and it is bearly making money. Now imagine the government wanting to ban dihydogen monoxide because it is evil and you cannot say anything to sway public opinion because all your money is tied up in your compamy and because you incorporated and corporations have no speech rights.
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If you don't want corporations to be considered people in terms of freedom of speech, fine, lets pretend that's the case. Only real people have freedom of speech, done. What a roadblock for comcast! Why, they would have to give money to some real person in order to have THAT person exercise their freedom of speech in the form of misleadin
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Besides, you don't want to run the risk of getting cancer from municipal broadband.
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Assuming you're against that notion, let's carry it to some logical conclusions, shall we?
One thing that corporations cannot do is vote. And yet they are taxed heavily, at the Federal level. Is that not taxation without representation? Yes, I know; they get all the representation they are due, and then some, as per TFA. I'm against that; are you? Every time you tax them more, you empower them more in this way.
Now, the politician *MUST* take the corporation's "views" into account when she is voting on legisl
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No matter how much space you take up with your PR waffle it is still PR waffle. Corporations are owned by shareholders and the shareholders have representation for the business vehicle they own, the corporation and thus taxes should be paid. If corporations do not pay taxes then every rich shit head will shift all their income into a corporation and not pay any tax (their PR=B$ plan). Another tax bracket is required for income in excess of 1 million dollars a 50% tax bracket. All taxes should be charged on
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These sort of things are legal now. Corporations are people, and people have free speech, and spending money is speech.
More fundamental than that, this is an example of the free market at work. The natural monopolies are "free" to do anything they fucking want to make sure that their monopoly is protected. So shut up all you whining communists. This is a great day for American capitalism. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Re:Get used to this... (Score:5, Informative)
No, he's associating it with Citizen's United v. FEC [wikipedia.org]
Re:Get used to this... (Score:4, Insightful)
he's associating it with Citizen's United v. FEC
Yeah. If only Citizens United hadn't happened then Comcast/SBC couldn't have done this — 10 years ago — six years before Citizens United.
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I believe he's referring to the Citizens United ruling - unless Comcast and SBC have a religious objection to competition (A real possibility, I suppose).
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As has been made clear, and you should have known, the narrative in this case is Citizens United.
Thing is, this should have failed miserably for SBC and Comcast. I have no trouble seeing through corporate fear mongering. The fact that it worked says a lot more about the voters than it does about any court ruling. So that's where I put the blame; stupid fucking sheeple.
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It's pretty insulting to the democratic process to accuse the winners of being "[expletive deleted] sheeple" when you don't agree with a result.
I have no trouble seeing through corporate fear mongering.
I suspect there are a lot of people who feel the same way. Some of them may have participated in the vote and not voted
Re:Get used to this... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's pretty insulting to the democratic process to accuse the winners of being "[expletive deleted] sheeple" when you don't agree with a result.
When they vote against their interests, they're not being clever.
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When they vote against their interests, they're not being clever.
You mean when they vote against what you think their interests ought to be, you don't think they are "clever".
Not everyone believes that a government run ISP using taxpayer dollars to make up revenue shortfalls and to deliberately undercut the commercial providers is "in their interest".
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Re:Get used to this... (Score:4, Funny)
Why wouldn't I insult the democratic process? The only inherent value to it is that it tends to screw up slightly less, slightly slower, and slightly less impactfully other forms of government. It screws up plenty often. This is one such case.
For instance, democracies suck when voting on a question of fact. If something is better and cheaper when supplied by the government, why shouldn't the government supply it?
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For instance, democracies suck when voting on a question of fact. If something is better and cheaper
Neither of those are fact. "Better" is a purely subjective term, and there is no evidence that a government-run anything will be automatically cheaper. When you say "cheaper", you mean it may cost direct users less. That's not the total cost of the product, however. A "company" that can simply dip its hand into the general fund of a city when revenues don't cover expenses isn't worried too much about keeping costs down and those costs wind up coming from people who have no desire to be subscribers. A gover
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"Here in Oregon we've just lived through the Cover Oregon fiasco. A government-run website that was supposed to allow people to sign up for health insurance."
You myopic asshole. The site was contracted out to a private company. The 'gubbmint' didn't do the coding, didn't build the pages, didn't accept $134 million in payment and then deliver a turd pile in return. Individuals employed by a COMMERCIAL ENTITY fucked over the website. AND the taxpayers.
And let's not forget to mention the crony that ORACLE CORP
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In Project Management, procurement management involves advertising and bidding contracts, selecting sellers, writing up the statement of work, quality guidelines, etc., then continuing with performance reviews and metrics to track the quality of work and determine if it meets the contract and the project needs.
Obviously, that didn't happen.
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You mean, I did not bother to provide evidence for either one of those in this case. But you didn't provide contrarian evidence either. What I said was, this case has a correct answer. Unlike your example of education, internet service has objective measures of success - uptime, bandwidth, latency, peering. All the upstream connections were provided by members of the duopoly, so those features are identical. But the last mile would have been cheaper, according to all the res
Re:Get used to this... (Score:4, Informative)
"Better" is not a purely subjective term. Something with higher quality and lower cost is objectively better.
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I have no trouble seeing through corporate fear mongering.
I suspect there are a lot of people who feel the same way. Some of them may have participated in the vote and not voted the way you wanted them to.
Ding! This. 100x this.
Going WAAY off topic here, I think this exact thing is the cause for a bunch of angst, worry, and anger: The ever-so-simple and plain, obvious "FACT" that I'm right. If you agree, then you're smart. If not, then you're either a dumba** or a corporate tool.
This can be seen in Religion, Reps vs Dems, Political Correctness, Climate Change, _any_ kind of "truthers", cigarettes, and even Flat Earth.
And I'm sorry, all we've got to go on is science. If not that, the fallback is
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"Just because a lot of people didn't vote the way you think they should have isn't proof that they were coerced by people who disagree with you."
Just because someone is talking about manipulating the voters in a vote that did not go their way does not mean that they are citing merely that outcome as the sole evidence of the manipulation... especially in the comments on a article that is *specifically about the hard evidence of manipulation*.
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Didn't you overlook working Benghazi in somewhere as well?
Appropriate punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
A fine large enough to cover the costs of rolling out fibre in the 3 cities involved.
The money from the fine can then be used to roll out fibre to the 3 cities.
Everyone wins, except SBC and Comcast.
Re:Appropriate punishment (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Appropriate punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
Fraudulent advertising, perhaps?
I'm sure some highly-paid lawyer type could find something to stick on them.
Re:Appropriate punishment (Score:5, Informative)
Fraudulent advertising, perhaps?
They were not stating *facts*, but rather their opinion. "Disinformation" is rarely out-and-out fraud.
Re:Appropriate punishment (Score:5, Funny)
Did you look at the fliers?
There's this quote:
I'm pretty sure referring to Comcast as a "respectable business" is about as fraudulent as it gets. I'm surprised these fliers didn't burst into flames before the shills could hand them out.
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It's not about "advertisement space." It is about slander and libel. You can, in fact, sue people for making untrue statements that negatively effect you.
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It is about slander and libel. You can, in fact, sue people for making untrue statements that negatively effect you.
In general, you can sue anybody for pretty much anything. Winning a lawsuit is another matter. And neither slander nor libel is applicable in this particular instance.
Slander is the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation. Libel is the action of publishing a false statement damaging to a person's reputation. Whose reputation was damaged in this case?
Re:Appropriate punishment (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not their lawyers that are protecting them. It's their lobbyists and officers who decide on political donations.
We're in a brave new Citizens United world now. Makes no difference that a very large majority of people disagree with Citizens United and corporate personhood. Until Antonin Scalia and/or Clarence Thomas go to meet their judgement, we're stuck with it.
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Not quite. A corporation is not an assembly of people. By definition, it is an aggregation of capital. This is why you can have corporations that are entirely owned by another corporation, with the only human involved being the notary in another state who serves as the registered agent (at arm's length).
As you know from your thorough study of the writings of the Founders, especially the Federali
Nonstop comcast rate hikes (Score:3)
The only broadband nightmare I have is the reality of continuous non-stop rate hikes of 10-15% every 6 months. No other "utility" even comes close.
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No other "utility" even comes close.
No, but my health insurance (individual, not through my small-business employer) goes up about 30% per annum... but I digress...
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No, but my health insurance (individual, not through my small-business employer) goes up about 30% per annum...
That would be about a 400% increase in a 6 year period..
Works fine (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Works fine (Score:5, Funny)
My hometown has municipal broadband, it's had it since 2000.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your postcards.
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My hometown has municipal broadband, it's had it since 2000.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your postcards.
When I finally moved back a few months ago, the technicians who set me up kept raving about how awesome it is to work for my town's municipal broadband. We have municipal electricity, TV, and phone too!
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is that what communism is really like?
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are you a communist?
is that what communism is really like?
No. This is socialism. The community provides services, but we still can own our own businesses.
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On the other hand, you have touched the damned dirty communism, and now have cooties.
Explains some things (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe these fliers were honest, and Comcast just believes the investing in an ISP is a money-losing venture. It would explain some things.
I guess the only sensible response is to sell your stock in Comcast. They view their own business as a money-pit and a disaster waiting to happen.
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From one of the postcards:
"What private investors will spend money on a project that has only one stated financial goal- to break even?"
The audacity of the government to try and do something for what it costs and no more! Why I never!
better understand propaganda (Score:3)
This highlights the need for citizens who would set up municipal broadband to better understand the techniques of propaganda (marketing in the US) and communication - and to not forget to utilize those techniques to further their own agendas. A technique isn't evil or good - it's just a technique, and an advantage if it's a good one.
Some understanding of cognitive science and political science wouldn't hurt either.
News Flash FUD works! (Score:5, Insightful)
FUD works folks, that's why you have spin doctors constantly shaping news headlines with press releases and carefully worded speeches. Couple that with a litany of non-profit organizations to get the word out and you have your own fact machine. Really, facts don't matter because people's perceptions are more important than mere facts. This might have been a great idea, a municipally based service without all the baggage that a big carrier brings to the table but hey, why let facts get in the way of myth?
Dirty tricks in business have been around for centuries and nobody should be surprised that Comcast and SBC(AT&T) did this.
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Perception is reality. Sucks sometimes because "the truth is out there" (my son's middle name is Fox for a reason, primarily because I got to name him, my wife named his twin sister...).
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Well that's better than naming you kid CNN
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Unfortunately she wouldn't let me make his last name Mulder...
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It's not necessarily the FUD that worked. Read the presentation - the proposals were killed by a State senator that was bribed to make a law that said "no office in this state can sell high speed Internet"
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I was referring to FUD/Spin in general and yes it is associated with TFA. All you have to do is watch Sunday morning news programs and it's full of shit talkers who have nothing better to do than try and convince you that their position is correct. Likewise DC is full of lobbyists whose job it is to cloud the issues with FUD to the point that you and I, much less the lawmakers, can figure out what the truth is. Couple that to 24 Hr. News programs who don't do journalism but just 5 to 6 minute sound bites
The advertising is okay (Score:3, Interesting)
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The government of Chattanooga [chattanoogagig.com] seems to be doing just fine. Probably more fair to say that it's the people who run government that is the issue, not government in general.
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We paid Comcast to bring broadband to us in the first place. That they haven't done it yet means we'd only have to pay twice to get it if we went the municipal route, whereas we won't get it at all from Comcast.
Even if we did "get" the broadband, they've shown perfect willingness to simply refuse to upgrade their networks to allow bandwidth to flow from Internet companies they don't like. (*cough*Netflix*/cough*)
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The questions raised in the advertising are pretty good ones. If the city bungles the fibre network and loses a lot of money, you'll be forced to pay for it in taxes. If Comcast fucks up and their costs go out of control, you at least have a choice to opt out. As much as I don't like Comcast and AT&T, I have no faith in government to be an ISP.
Opting out means living without internet access for several years. Is that a realistic option?
All government is not the same. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no faith in the federal government to run an ISP. They would be worse than Comcast, and would probably never get it running until they have spent a year's GDP.
I have slightly more faith in a state government to run one. Not as many people to pay-off around most state capitols as there are around DC.
I would have a lot of faith in a local or city government to get it done. They live right there amongst their customers, typically have to work within a budget, and have a vested interest in doing it right the first time.
This is reaaaaaalllly old. from 2003 (Score:2)
Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles Illinois. I was a member of the committee that worked on getting this initiative through each community. One of the members posted this interview with Broadband Reports back in the day....
http://www.dslreports.com/show... [dslreports.com]
because it's not... (Score:3)
> ...when "internet service [is] already offered by two respectable private businesses?"
Because it's not. Respectable, that is. And I could make arguments against "private", as they're a government enforced duopoly.
Re:Comcast should run for office (Score:2)
Nah, why go through all that bother of making speeches, kissing babies, and politicking? Just buy the candidates and then yank on their shorthairs so they vote for you, mischief managed!
Uneducated, lazy consumers (Score:3, Insightful)
People didn't look, or think, they just reacted from their gut. Sounds like perfectly trained American voters/consumers.
Who's the villain here?
Good lord... (Score:2)
I WAS THERE. IT'S ALL TRUE. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nice of you to offer your knowledge! A few question since I did not know about that effort.
1/ Was a local ISP ever created?
2/ What would be your advice in creating a local (either city funded or privately funded) ISP?
3/ Are there other communities that managed to pull it of?
4/ A major argument at the time appeared to be that a tax-payer funded ISP was anti-competitive, is there a easy way around it? What about one time city grants to fund a non profit?
Thanks for your expertise!
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Thanks, Pete. I lived in Geneva when this went down and it really really sucked. The post cards that came in the mail (I don't remember the Comcast ones, but the SBC ones were AWFUL - really? a guy eating a rat?) fed on people's worst fears. The kicker is that the referendum came up on an "off-year", so turnout was horribly low, old, and uninformed. I really think it would have had a better shot if it had come up during a presidential year when turnout was better.
no shit (Score:2)
Truth in Advertising (Score:2)
Call the FTC. [ftc.gov]
Not that they can actually do anything about it.
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Re:Comcast should run for office (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, but why bother when you can just rent the current occupants and save the hassle of campaigning and having to actually show up in DC a few days a year?
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If a corporation is a person, can it hold a government office?
Were a corporation a person, it certainly could hold public office.
However, the people who make up corporations and who retain their civil and Constitutional rights despite being part of a corporation can, and sometimes do, hold public office. On our local city council, we've had people who work for the local newspaper, the local university, the local large manufacturer, and other corporations.
Re:If... (Score:5, Insightful)
What this means is that people have absolutely no idea what the internet is, how it works and how any of it affects them. Computers are still magic to most people. I used to hope that as more and more people grow up with computers, computer literacy would improve. Nothing of the sort happened. These people use computers more, but they accept them as quasi-intelligent/magic devices. They don't even understand the fundamental difference between Facebook/Twitter and the open web, even though that's hardly a technological thing. They perceive big businesses as relatively safe havens. Diversity and choice in a field where they can only make random decisions based on no understanding is plain scary. They don't want choice, they don't want freedom. They are not equipped to handle it.
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Unfortunately, "the people" is shorthand for a large number of individuals. Yeah, the stupid people got what they deserved, but in no sense did the people with functioning intellects get what they deserved.
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For a while now:
http://www.eatthismuch.com/foo... [eatthismuch.com]
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You could make voting conditional on passing a test. Not a straight IQ test, although that should be a part of it. Pose some questions on postulated issues and synthetic candidates, and try to find those too liable to being gulled by clear hoodwinking.
Also, and this one is going to be hard to do for a number of reasons, prevent those who are personally turning an overall profit at the expense of the commons from voting. Let there be no stigma to accepting welfare, no matter what the hell you call it (e.g.,
Re:And this friends, is why buying a voice is wron (Score:4, Insightful)
You could make voting conditional on passing a test. Not a straight IQ test, although that should be a part of it.
Yeah, so the oh-so-trustworthy people in our government can have an easier way to oppress segments of the population. Also, IQ tests are absolute nonsense.
And I'm sure these tests would be perfectly unbiased, not at all ambiguous, and would vastly improve the situation. If we can't even get standardized tests right, how the hell do you propose we create tests that will determine whether or not someone gets access to a fucking fundamental right?
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I think you have indirectly made the point that corporations should have no input ( speech or money ) into politics.
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How long do the bailouts for Wall St. prevent finance-employeed individuals from voting? How far down the corporate chain do you go before oil-company employees can vote? What about all the guys who only pay 15%...do they lose the vote... after all they benefit from subsidies on investing?
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And the South shall rise again!
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In theory, voter tests would rule out the gullible. In practice, voter tests would rule out the black / gay / poor / jew / undesirable-group-du-jour.
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Only when they are designed [slate.com] to rule out those groups instead of ruling out people who have no business voting (for example, people who don't understand how plurality voting can lead to someone getting elected with a minority of the votes).
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In other words, "only" 100% of the time.
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Another knee-jerking noted.
How is a government limited oligopoly that admits no competition any better??
Clearly it's likely worse.
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My local DMV gets me in and out of the office in a few minutes. I've never encountered any time when their computers weren't functioning properly. I could, of course, use the BMV website instead of going into the local office, but I'm old fashioned that way. What state do you live in, so I can make sure never to move there?
Re:Missing the headline (Score:5, Insightful)
If you take people who believe that government doesn't work and put them in charge of a government and it doesn't work, you haven't proven that government doesn't work.
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I don't remember exactly but I seem to recall that I participated in at least five debates with these two groups. Again, TFA refers back to 2003 and some things are lost in a decade. We did fairly well with the referendums but ultimately, comcast and SBC spent around $2.1 mil in advertising IIRC and we were only able to raise around $40k for our side. It was a good fight but we just couldn't overcome the robo-calling with do you still beat your wife type questions and the full page ads in the local papers e