ISP Lobbyists Pushing Telecom Act Rewrite (dslreports.com) 77
Karl Bode, reporting for DSLReports:Telecom lobbyists are pushing hard for a rewrite of the Telecom Act, this time with a notable eye on cutting FCC funding and overall authority. AT&T donated at least $70,000 to back Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, and clearly expects him to spearhead the rewrite and make it a priority in 2017. The push is an industry backlash to a number of consumer friendly initiatives at the FCC, including new net neutrality rules, the reclassification of ISPs under Title II, new broadband privacy rules, new cable box reform and an attempt to protect municipal broadband. AT&T's Ryan donation is the largest amount AT&T has ever donated to a single candidate, though outgoing top AT&T lobbyist Jim Cicconi has also thrown his support behind Hillary Clinton.
Re:Vote out the Republicans. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vote out the Republicans. (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, when it comes to telecoms and ISPs, yes the Democrats are MILES better than the Republicans. The Republicans aren't even shy about being in the ISP's pocket, and anyone who reads Slashdot knows that everything they've said about Net Neutrality has been pure, 100% Industry-fed horseshit.
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the only time you get 100% of what you are said to get.
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But the Democrats are not? Right. What other fairy tales do you believe in? The Great Pumpkin?
Donald Trump IS the Great Pumpkin just look at him ,and your right I don't believe in him.
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Mod parent down, he doesn't know shit from Shinola.
Re: Vote out the Republicans. (Score:1)
Sure, sure they are. If you truly believe that, you need to stand back and really look at the politician's actions and the results of those actions, not what the politicians say. If you do this with an open mind, you will find that very few politicians, on either side of the aisle, have your best interest at heart. So please avoid such sweeping generalities, they are just not correct.
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Don't be fooled by the psychopaths, they don't care about you, and in fact many of them take great delight in your suffering.
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Democrats too (Score:5, Informative)
[Republicans are] all owned by corporations and do their bidding.
Have you been avoiding the news recently?
Google Clinton and "pay for play", or Clinton and "foundation", or Clinton and "Wikileaks". (Or just wait a week or so for that last one.)
Here's cash flowing into the Clinton Foundation from corporations benefiting from selling Uranium [wnd.com] to Russia.
Here's cash flowing into the Clinton Foundation from corporations benefiting from selling dual use technology [nypost.com] (private and military uses) to Russia.
Here's $17 million that disappeared [wnd.com] from the Clinton Foundation.
We've complained for years that the political elite is owned by the corporations, and that there's no difference between having a D or R after a candidate's name.
Don't blame corruption on just the Republicans, it's not intellectually honest and distracts people from the true problems.
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I blame corruption on the voters. They're only looking for politicians that will *bring home the bacon*. How else can you account for 10% approval ratings combined with a 95% reelection rate?
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Quite easily, They're called "rigged elections". It's nothing new; during the 1968 presidential election, Hubert Humphrey's mic would randomly and abdruptly cut off in mid-sentence....
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They're called "rigged elections". It's nothing new; during the 1968 presidential election, Hubert Humphrey's mic would randomly and abdruptly cut off in mid-sentence....
Puerto Rico, 1980: A vicious campaign season, which yielded much two great little campaign jingles...
Anyway, the night of the count, the incubment proclaims he's the winner, while the official count had the challenger way ahead.
Then, the power went out at the counting center. The computers crashed. When they came back online, the challenger was up by only 1000 votes, with the San Juan Metro area still to count - an area which favored the incumbent.
Roughly a month later, the results were certified. The in
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In case you haven't noticed, most of our "dual use" technology has been shared with the Russians for a long time already. For example, the decimal number system.
In some instances, we might even consider ourselves better off if the Russians did choose to adopt our technologies, such as fail-safe command and control systems responsible for nuclear we
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Point to a real technology and describe an actual scenario where the Russian military benefits, and then explain how the Russian benefit A) is a serious NATO concern, and B) wasn't going to happen anyway sooner rather than later.
Challenge accepted.
You're misdirecting the reader away from the important point. It's #17 in the Rules of disinformation [cryptome.org].
The real point is that corporate cash flowed to the politician in return for favours.
A lot of the analysis of HRC as SoS shows that these decisions benefited companies while at the same time made the country less safe (by enriching and/or strengthening a potential enemy), did not benefit the people of the US in any way, and gave Hillary more cash to work with.
The point was cash => poli
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You can't even follow your own statements logically. You blamed the democrats, when it's clear the republicans are doing the same and probably much worse.
Reread his post. That's exactly what he said:
We've complained for years that the political elite is owned by the corporations, and that there's no difference between having a D or R after a candidate's name.
Don't blame corruption on just the Republicans, it's not intellectually honest and distracts people from the true problems.
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The entire system is corrupt to the core, I agree. But, it's been rigged in such a way to resemble a sporting event and people will blindly pick a side and then vehemently defend it. I really don't know how to convince people to vote in their best interest. They are completely fixated on voting for "their team". It doesn't matter that said team doesn't represent them, has no interest in representing them and would happily throw them into a tree grinder if it meant they would get re-elected.
GO TEAM!
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I remember farther back. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sigh, I remember when Slashdot used to be a news place for Nerds and not this stupid political bull crap of pointing fingers at one another.
I remember farther back. (Note that I have two fewer digits in my I.D.)
It's always been like this. We may have a few more professional grass-roots trolls now that we have a couple orders of magnitude more eyeballs. But come politics season people's political leanings come out.
Face it: Politics IS "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters".
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You do realize the problem is party-agnostic, right? It doesn't matter what party the congresscritters belong to -- they're bought and paid for. Been like this for ages, but it seems to have gotten real bad in the early 70's.
I wonder... perhaps as payback for the whole anti-war movement? That's part of the Powell memo... the schools are teaching anti-corporate sentiments.. therefore the scools must be silenced or "encouraged" -- via generous "donations" to change their teachings, and the Rabble (that's u
Huh? (Score:2)
The more that ISPs seek to rewrite the rules in their favor, the more likely it is that the citizens will ignore those rules.
I give up. How do we ignore those rules?
Start our own ISPs - and get everything seized by the government for failing to play by their rules?
Hack the infrastructure - and get busted for "stealing service" or "unauthorized access to a computer system" - and get everything seized by the government, plus a felony conviction and the resulting revocation of constitutional rights for the re
$70K sounds pretty low (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't claim to know any political internals, but $70,000 to get legislation that you basically write yourself passed sounds extremely low. Wouldn't this cost at least mid 6 figures? How much are the industry lobbyists and body shops paying Congress to ignore issues with the H-1B program and expand it? I'd guess there's a lot of non-reported money following behind that official $70K figure.
Industry lobbying must be the ultimate blank ticket for a Congressperson. It must be nice to just call up a lobbyist, promise to do something and get whatever your heart desires. I often joke with colleagues about "golfware" products like SAP or Oracle where the salespeople just pump the senior execs full of booze, hookers and blow until they sign the deal, but this must take stuff like that to a whole new level.
A LOT more than 70K (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T alone is in the 4-15M range per year: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... [opensecrets.org]
Telecom has a big lobby.
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That's $70k to just a single congresscritter though. You have to grease multiple others on both sides of the aisles in both both houses. And then you probably should donate to the Presidential Victory Fund for incoming presidents, Presidential Reelection Victory Fund for incumbent president, or Presidential Library Victory Fund for 2nd term presidents.
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I don't claim to know any political internals, but $70,000 to get legislation that you basically write yourself passed sounds extremely low.
Part of the POINT of government corruption is that the cost is low compared to the benefits.
If using the money to actually build something consumers wanted to buy had a better return - and politicians didn't gate-keep and demand ransom ("rent-seeking behavior"), businesses wouldn't spend a dime bribing politicians - or at least those that did would be out-competed and d
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Contribution limits? (Score:2)
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many ways to skin that cat
http://www.fec.gov/pages/broch... [fec.gov]
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And individuals should have no limits either. (Score:2)
Candidates have some limits, but PACs lost those restrictions in the suprime court ruling known as Citizens United.
And ordinary citizens shouldn't have limits for the same reasons - but didn't have the big pockets to argue that in court like the organized lobbyists do.
Campaign spending limits are a bait-and-switch. They pretend to level the playing field by cutting down the big spenders' power. But instead they block the grass-roots' influence - individually or when organizing - while leaving the rich abl
I wish I could purchase laws... (Score:2)
.
But the ISPs, God bless 'em. They are making money like crazy as they continue to purchase laws favorable to reducing competition and increasi
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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."--Anatole France
Likewise, our law, in it's majestic equality, permits the poor as well as the rich to donate millions to their favorite politicians in order to favor their unique interests.
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Try buying local ordinances instead. It should be cheaper than buying Federal laws.
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Error in story (Score:3)
AT&T donated at least $70,000 to back Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan
Should be
AT&T bribed Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan at least $70,000
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Careful! You'll get a lot of politicians and their apologists hemming and hawing and acting faux-outraged that you would suggest that a campaign contribution and a bribe are anything alike. Those major contributions, why don't affect the sort of access a company or individual gets, or what priorities the candidate will focus on, or in any way affect who gets contracts.
It's all true (Score:2)
It seems the only way to change the situation is through violence, but history tells us that that's not a very good solution.
Does anyone have any thoughts?
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Nonviolent revolution (a la, civil disobedience in India) has at least one reported instance of success.
However, the US electorate lacks a suitable cultural stereotype upon which to sustain nonviolence, in the face of government totalitarianism. Eg, when people start getting arrested and destroyed financially, people will either suddenly forget their morals, or will turn violent.
You asked for an alternative, the problem is that it does not look plausible for US culture.
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Disallow corporations from contributing to campaign funds?
Allow donations from private citizens only?
Get rid of the PACs and make politicians work their own campaigns?
Prevent lobbying from corporations?
FYI I'm a kiwi and admittedly don't know much about the US electoral laws - our process is a little different down here
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Is there any doubt left that Commerece rules Gov't (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there even remotely a chance that this insidious cycle can be broken?
Voting party lines won't fix this. This is party-agnostic.
It's time we add something to the Constitution: The separation of Commerce and State. But this will never, everty-ever happen. That relationship predates the US, it predates most of the last 2000 years, and I bet such shenanigans went on before that, too.
Citizen's United made it bloody plain these grotesque hybrid corporation/person abominations have the right to Free Speech, and money is speech. This BS needs to be overturned, it's probably Step 1.
Step 2 may be the Lobbies must be busted. Commerce went on a union-busting binge, we need to go on a lobby-busting binge.
The Soap Box is drowned in a sea of noise, the Ballot Box is broken, the Jury Box is bought and paid for, maybe it's time for the Ammo Box?
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Oh great, now I have this looping in my brain [youtube.com]
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The Soap Box is drowned in a sea of noise, the Ballot Box is broken, the Jury Box is bought and paid for, maybe it's time for the Ammo Box?
Nope, the corporations and state own the ammo box as well. Time to think outside the boxes they've convinced you you're stuck with.