Ajit Pai Offers No Data For Latest Claim That Net Neutrality Hurt Small ISPs (arstechnica.com) 211
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: With days to go before his repeal of net neutrality rules, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued a press release about five small ISPs that he says were harmed by the rules. Pai "held a series of telephone calls with small Internet service providers across the country -- from Oklahoma to Ohio, from Montana to Minnesota," his press release said. On these calls, "one constant theme I heard was how Title II had slowed investment," Pai said. But Pai's announcement offered no data to support this assertion. So advocacy group Free Press looked at the FCC's broadband deployment data for these companies and found that four of them had expanded into new territory. The fifth didn't expand into new areas but it did start offering gigabit Internet service. These expansions happened after the FCC imposed its Title II net neutrality rules. (Title II is the statute that the FCC uses to enforce net neutrality rules and regulate common carriers.)
Telecom shill Ajit Pai tells yet another NN lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Telecom shill Ajit Pai tells yet another NN lie (Score:4, Insightful)
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Engaging in whataboutery only serves to admit your argument is defenseless.
Re: Telecom shill Ajit Pai tells yet another NN li (Score:2)
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There are tons of them. Try going to one of the broadcast network's streaming services (such as AMC [amc.com] or USA [usanetwork.com]), and try to watch one of the full episodes of a show. To do that, you have to prove you have some kind of cable subscription. There are the big ones listed up top (Verizon, Comcast, Cox, Dish, etc.), but you can look at the full list. It's a VERY long list. Sure, a few are only TV only, but the vast majority are also ISPs. And, yes, most of them are small ISPs.
no small isps left (Score:5, Insightful)
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What small ISPs? The only people who are "small" are resellers as nobody can access the last mile.
Exactly. This talk of increasing ISP competition is smoke and mirrors because the big ISPs have their oligopoly already, and in some areas regions it's a monopoly. They own all the lines and get paid no matter who sells the customer the service. But honestly, that's fine by me... they put in the investments, it's inefficient to have multiple competitors laying separate fiber lines in the same streets, so I'm fine with letting them continue to deliver that vital service and reap the profits. But, instead of
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Because it fits his narrative? Ajit Pai doesn't care about small ISPs. His sponsor Verizon is probably coming in right after him offering to buy those guys out.
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Because it fits his narrative? Ajit Pai doesn't care about small ISPs. His owner Verizon is probably coming in right after him offering to buy those guys out.
FTFY
Re:no small isps left (Score:5, Interesting)
In Japan we have this thing called FLETS. Basically, one company puts down the infrastructure, and they own it, but once laid, they have to allow anyone to use it, for a fee of course. What this means is that basically, anyone can start an ISP. You negotiate fees on a per customer basis. I set up my ISP for my local community. I pay $20 per customer I sign up back to the infrastructure owner. The infrastructure owner has a database of ISPs that are registered with them. So in the user's modem, it has username@isp.domain. The infrastructure owner looks it up, replies with weather it's a valid ISP or not, then hands off the authentication to the ISP's authentication server. Once the customer is authorized, the ISP hands the routing back to the infrastructure owner and boom. The customer is online, subject to the rules put in place by the ISP on things like bandwidth, traffic shaping, etc. The infrastructure owner isn't allowed to run it's own ISP, so it forks off a subsidiary and competes with the other ISPs using the same method. You may have multiple dozens of ISPs available to choose from, and switching, is a simple matter of changing your login information on the modem once you have a contract in place with the respective ISP. It's simple, it works, and since pretty much all the ISPs charge within a couple dollars per month of each other, they compete on features, like bandwidth, caps, email plans, and whatnot. The infrastructure owner makes their cash off the fees to the providers and the ISPs are free to charge the customers whatever they want on top of that initial fee. Easy peasy. Really wish they would do that in the USA.
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Look, this is the good ol U. S. of A. which is a CAPITALIST society. This means that competition reigns supreme, so take your--oh, wait.
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The reason that Japan does it this way is, the Telecom monopoly breakup occurred AFTER the internet. The incumbent (NTT) had already built internet infrastructure, later it was forced (through deregulation) to provide ISP's with competitive access. AND the rules made it so "the infrastructure owner isn't allowed to run it's own ISP".
This model will not work in the USA, because the rules keep that coveted 'last mile' in private hands. Phone companies in the USA were forced (through deregulation) to provid
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There are tons of small ISPs. Try going to one of the broadcast network's streaming services (such as AMC [amc.com] or USA [usanetwork.com]), and try to watch one of the full episodes of a show. To do that, you have to prove you have some kind of cable subscription. There are the big ones listed up top (Verizon, Comcast, Cox, Dish, etc.), but you can look at the full list. It's a VERY long list. Sure, a few are only TV only, but the vast majority are also ISPs. And, yes, most of them are small ISPs.
Meanwhil
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If one distinguishes between an ISP and a reseller, as the above poster did, then most of the people on your list are resellers.
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The last mile is a natural monopoly, you dipshit. Nobody wants to run multiple cables to their house.
There are already companies that do exactly that. They are called "overbuilders" and I've worked for a few of them. The problem is the initial investment to run the infrastructure is high and there is no guaranteed return because their business depends on their ability to steal customers away from the incumbent carrier.
It costs much less to roll out the lines in decades past than now. Executives at these companies tell me it's actually cheaper to buy an existing market from a carrier than string one from sc
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Do you even remember the good old days of dozens of DSL resellers?
Yes. And I remember that they were GOOD days. Those were days of ISPs trying to woo customers with features they wanted, rather than fucking them over because the ISP captured the market.
I don't remember the ISPs being horrible, like you're trying to imply. They were about the same as big boys when it came to routing packets. I -DO- remember the big boys had tons of fuckups with network links to backbones back then as well.
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I remember my local ISP having a disk crash and wiping out my (first!) web site. Then they admitted that they didn't keep backups, and "we should be able to re-create the [web sites] from the original source data we should still have on file". IOW, "we don't keep backups, and if you don't either that's your fault".
On the plus (?) side, I went to recover some data from an old hard drive, and when I opened Thunderbird it automatically tried to retrieve my e-mail from that ISP and got over 10K messages five ye
That's because he's Lying (Score:5, Insightful)
Plain and simple.
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Q: How can you tell if a politician (or a telecom lawyer) is lying?
A: His lips move.
Artificial Scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Pai is only concerned with the investment returns of the telcoms
Yes, that's how it works. The FDA protects the pharmaceutical industry. The DOJ protects the corrections industry. Treasury protects the banks. And so on...
Unless the house is swept clean next year, don't expect much to change.
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Unless the house is swept clean next year, don't expect much to change.
Can I have some of whatever it is you're smoking?
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Unless the house is swept clean
I think you meant to write "drain the swamp", no?
small ISP worker here (Score:4, Interesting)
How would having our upstream providers throttling us help? This guy doesn't care about the truth. He is the type to make his truth up as he goes. The net is going to be a huge piece of shit after this.
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Correction: A huge piece of propaganda pushing shit. Remember Citizen's United? Guess what these big ISPs are going to be doing during elections once NN is repealed.
Comcast: "Comcast customer service."
Customer: "Uh, yeah I can't access CNN anymore."
Comcast: "It is our view that CNN is fake news and is no longer tolerated on our networks."
Customer: "Wait...what?"
Comcast: "We do however offer full access to Fox News as part of our news providers package for $19.99"
Customer: "I don't want Fox News. I don't lik
Re:small ISP worker here (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes! We regularly had trouble with certain protocols due to a upstream provider throttling them. So yes, it was a piece of shit for us. The day they took those rules off of us was a good day indeed. We lost 20 seconds of latency also. This is simply a way for the jerks to squeeze more money out of the same resources.
Re: small ISP worker here (Score:2)
"...across the country..." (Score:5, Informative)
"...held a series of telephone calls with small Internet service providers across the country -- from Oklahoma to Ohio, from Montana to Minnesota..."
Just FYI, for those without a map handy, that covers 8 out of 50 states, all in the midwest:
Montana to Minnesota = Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota.
Oklahoma to Ohio = Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
Again...just FYI.
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There's always a literalist in the crowd. This is probably just two alliterative pairings.
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Considering his political motivations, I'm going to posit that Mr. Pai contacted ISPs only in the states he mentioned - avoiding the heavily-populated coastal regions and covering large swaths of land in
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"...held a series of telephone calls with small Internet service providers across the country -- from Oklahoma to Ohio, from Montana to Minnesota..."
Just FYI, for those without a map handy, that covers 8 out of 50 states, all in the midwest:
Montana to Minnesota = Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota.
Oklahoma to Ohio = Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
Again...just FYI.
He is, of course, attempting to be poetic, and thus sound clever, as he lies.
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Only Hope (Score:5, Interesting)
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At this point, the only thing I can hope for is that the RIAA and MPAA start going around suing ISPs after Net Neutrality is abolished. If Net Neutrality doesn't exist then the ISPs are no longer a common carrier under the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
It's a sad day for the internet indeed when our hopes rest on that.
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At this point, the only thing I can hope for is that the RIAA and MPAA start going around suing ISPs after Net Neutrality is abolished. If Net Neutrality doesn't exist then the ISPs are no longer a common carrier under the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
It's a sad day for the internet indeed when our hopes rest on that.
And a vain hope. Comcast, the most hated company in America, is owned by NBC Universal. They won't sue their own property. Instead, they will exploit their own property's window into the viewing habits of their subscribers. And of course, extort every last one of them for $29.95 + tax or your Netflix is throttled to 64 kilobits per second.
And there is fuck all any Comcast subscriber can do about it. What are you going to do, switch to another ISP? There isn't one. Suddenly, cordcutting stops dead in
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At this point, the only thing I can hope for is that the RIAA and MPAA start going around suing ISPs after Net Neutrality is abolished. If Net Neutrality doesn't exist then the ISPs are no longer a common carrier under the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Which will be their explanation of why they had no choice but to cut off all these sites and protocols.
Small ISP example: (Score:2)
Google for Brett Glass and Lariat.
Re: Small ISP example: (Score:2)
Here (Score:2)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
Ajit Pai, as many in this administration, is just trying to co-opt the narrative and build some alternate reality that agrees with his own agenda. It's just sad that some people still listens to their garbage.
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" But I'm going to add that usually the desperate ones are desperate because they are discovering they are wrong and that they are losing the fight because of it."
I guess you think the Native Americans 'discovered they were wrong' and THAT explains their desperation on the Trail of Tears? Try again with your dumb over generalization buddy. This one flies as well as lead balloon.
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However, this logic:
they are wrong and that they are losing the fight because of it
Doesn't hold. You are being far too optimistic if you think that being right and winning are related.
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He's a nerd sellout who is trying to reconcile with his need to root for the same team as his BBQ friends.
A weak worm
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Everybody's tired of this, it's not just you. A lot of the outrage here stems from the fact that most of us thought this bullshit was over two years ago.
Ah quite... So you are now realizing that a government that rules though this kind of regulation is a danger to all. Rules should not be made this way, with faceless nameless "administrators" who are not elected make (or unmake) such significant rules.
Only NOW you are upset? Yea, cry me a river. It was good enough when you where getting your way, but now it's a corrupt system? Please.
This is the "I have a phone and a pen" legacy, which is getting rolled back the very way it was created, behind the sce
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This is not a good argument. You can't elect every public official, there are 22 million public employees in the united states. How many of those are managerial-level, with decision-making power? You're intending to have elections for all of those? It's perfectly reasonable for congress to delegate responsibility for tasks which they can't handle, either because they don't have the time or because they don't have the expertise. That is what they have done here and, for the most part, that is what they do every time they handle anything.
Further, by framing it this way you're implying that this as a failure of government. The FCC is working exactly as intended: these commissioners were nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican senate. For some reason, Network Neutrality has become a partisan issue and Republicans are on the side of wanting to kill it. So this result is a predictable one, as a consequence of last year's election.
Congress can overrule the FCC any time they want. The Senate also could have rejected Pai's nomination, or the other commissioners, if they didn't want to see net neutrality killed. It's not like this is a surprise, we knew that Pai was going to do this and they knew that Pai was going to do this too. So the grandparent is spot-on here: if we're looking for people to blame for this, it starts with the commissioners, but it's also the people who appointed them (the president and senators), then the people who appointed them (the voters), then the people who are really in charge of all of this (the ISPs).
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But this puts the cart before the horse. Congress shouldn't have to intervene to avert the miscarriage of regulation by the likes of the FCC. Congress should have to actually pass laws that the FCC is tasked with administrating. Sure the FCC can write prospective bills for Congress to pass and serve as the subject matter experts for congress and the executive branch to consult with, but congress should be passing these as laws using the constitutional prescribed means.
What happened is Congress got lazy a
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Congress does pass laws which the FCC is tasked with administering - they passed a law giving the FCC the task of classifying services. They also passed a law giving the FCC the task of administering common carrier rules for telecommunication services. When the FCC classified ISPs as telecommunication services, and then required them to act as common carriers, they were carryin
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This is not a miscarriage of what congress wanted them to do, this is exactly what congress wanted them to do. That is the point.
Yes, that's my point. Congress abrogated their responsibility to make laws. They got lazy. Now we have a process that side steps the founders intent and it's resulting in a mess of regulations which are oppressive and unnecessarily complex.
Congress needs to undo this and clean up their mess.... Eventually the states may take care this if congress doesn't, but I don't think having to use the article 5 constitutional amendment process is the best way to fix this.
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Are you not hearing what I'm saying then? Yes, congress did this, they abrogated their responsibility, by delegating to these government agencies.
You may not like my choice of words or my implication that Congress *shouldn't* have done this in my view, but that doesn't change what they did.
Abrogation is an act where an entity gives up their authority by choice. Or... Where an entity evades their responsibility. Congress did both of these when they created these laws that allow the FCC (and other federa
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Who's crying.. I'm getting my way here.. ;)
I'm just not naïve enough to not understand that what goes around, comes around. Someday the shoe will be on the other party who can have it their way too. I want this fixed, permanently, and that takes congressional action, so this is fixed and takes more than another party appointing new commissioners to get their way again.
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What do you want fixed? The existence of executive orders? Net neutrality upsets you somehow? I'm not American, I don't understand how this is a partisan issue.
Do you not like the Internet?
The only reasons I heard to oppose Net Neutrality would be summed up something like:
The Internet is a 30 year old experiment which must end in its current form because
- it is a tool for foreign propaganda (Russia, China ISIS)
- It is a tool for foreign agents to attack citizens' computers
- it is a tool for
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Net Neutrality is not what the name implies... It was passed along partisan lines and will be repealed on partisan lines.
I don't think the rule was necessary, it is certainly not effective and it would be very disruptive to innovation in some ways so I'm glad to see it go. But that's just my opinion based on my reading of the rules.
But the political debate here is how the rule making of federal agencies is done, outside of the constitutional mandated legislative process, bypassing Congress and the presid
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I hope you go sterile from all your fence sitting. This is just an attempt to reconcile your tribalism with what you know to be true.
Fucking sellout.
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I'm definitely on one side of the fence bashing those on the other. You obviously either don't understand what I said, or don't like getting bashed.
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Oh dang I have a bit of egg on my face. Still you're doing a little fence sitting here.
The crazies are actually the best thing. Somewhere there is a total fucking nut on disability who hasn't left his house in years. He's been sitting there watching days of our lives, dragon ball Z, and spanking it to my little pony over bittorrent. Safe and sound where we never have to deal with him.
I hope one such person gives that smug fuck a creampai to the face in public for closing his psychic bond to twilight sp
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A rope?
ADSL works over wet string [www.revk.uk], but it doesn't mean that a rope is the best way to get broadband internet access, neutral or not.
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Simply prove it. Please because simply everyone thinks the opposite. Simply
Simply all the proven facts show that we'll be developing telepathy and the internet will be obsolete soon, this is the simple truth as trends show. Where are you hearing this stuff? You seem to be dumb with lots of firmly held misconceptions.
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You do know that broadband providers are entering new markets all the time, right? You may not have had as many choices 10, 5 or 3 years ago, but you will have more as time goes on. That's simply the trend.
I moved into my current apartment in Los Angeles (90025) less than six months ago (but checked again just now to see if anything had changed). No (serious) choice here. I can go with TWC ("Spectrum" now) or DSL/satellite ("Up to 25Mbs!"). You could technically say there's competition, but 6Mbs-25Mbs is not going to work for us.
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Seriously, anonymous coward, you need to take it down about 10 notches. We survived before net neutrality and we'll survive if the two-year-old rules are removed. There is such a thing called "competition" that drives the market, and I fully expect some providers to undercut others. This isn't the end of the world or far, far worse -- according to the rhetoric out there -- the Internet.
Competition? 40% of Americans have but one provider to choose from. The mega-corps will eventually buy up the rest of the market and collude together on tiered internet pricing, much like we saw with cellular services.
If you told the addicted masses today that every one of them would have to pay a $10/month surcharge just to access social media platforms, 99% of them would pay it. Ajit Pai (token corporate shill whore) knows this. Those that will benefit the most from dissolving NN know this. And you're
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I challenge you to explain why we're going to be ok?
It always sounds smart to be the naysayer whenever someone says the sky is falling, because usually you're right but this time you're not. Think of every time our society regressed. There was always some ignorant guy like you telling people to chill out.
We had natural net neutrality before and last time they tried to violate it we had 4chan sending pizzas to houses, hacking emails, and prank calling guys like Pai until they gave up. Net neutrality was co
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don't be foolish. the incumbents will do everything in their power to prevent competition from springing up.
Netflix would never have gotten off the ground if Comcast was floating their own video on demand service, and allowed to fuck up a competitors traffic. The reason we have the internet as we know (knew?) it is because it was actually open, and all these fun services were allowed to compete in an open space.
It's really quite masterful, almost to the caliber of the 'the big lie' -- you take legislation
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Yes, yes. Anyone who's not screaming that the sky is falling is a Russian operative or a shill for the far right.
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Yes the majority of extremely stupid loud people are actually paid shills. It's a fact, it's simply what the trend shows.
I'm sorry if you're actually stupid and someone mistook you for a shill sir.
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Actually, we have several in the Boston area, and they're constantly cutting rates and offering faster speeds.
Hopefully, competition will come to where you live soon, too.
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The complex owner should be suing AT&T for damages if they destroyed $150k worth of equipment. Unless destruction of that equipment was part of the original exclusivity contract of course (which it might have been you never know..)
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Well now that's some unnecessary vitriol. Someone piss in your cornflakes this morning?
And no actual human beings don't require "proof." Courts require "evidence," which is not the same as proof. Actual human beings frequently don't even require that -- if they did, religion wouldn't (and couldn't) be a thing. We're pretty good at believing whatever the hell we want to believe, regardless of evidence never mind proof.
Re:Neutrality hah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't change the current question of "is he biased" or "Is he working for the best interest of the consumer." That's obvious. The problem though is the forces that led him to this action, the GOPs religious belief in the gospel of deregulation, and/or blatant corruption, those forces are still at work across all government levels.
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This is the true downside of Trump as President: it's not HIM, it's all his cronies who have come to power to help themselves to the levers of power to suit themselves and their greedy pals.
It will take some time to undo all the damage that they are doing at many levels and across many disciplines.
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Ajit Pai is a man on a mission. Always thinking about his future, post FCC. I imagine him looking himself in the mirror each morning, adjusting his tie and mumbling "what do I need to say and believe today"?
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.. If only it were a joke.
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IKR. We never got to see the raw data that the EPA was trying to use for their power grab, either.
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IKR. We never got to see the raw data that the EPA was trying to use for their power grab, either.
Or the cancelled baksheesh checks either. Logic and common sense cannot stand up to a good old fashioned bribe.
Re: Faith (Score:2)
Til trying to avert a deadly catastrophe using a 30 year old law is a 'power grab'.
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I would have never believed that I'd regret telling people about the internet and helping them get on.
Next time we have something nice, no lamers allowed.
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Not to nitpick/derail too much, but how did modern evangelicals lose the spirit of folks like Aquinas?
One can have a scientific mindset, while still have faith. They aren't automatically mutual exclusive.
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Not to nitpick/derail too much, but how did modern evangelicals lose the spirit of folks like Aquinas?
I would argue that modern evangelical religion in the American sense is not really a religious movement, but a scam to seperate suckers from their money, and it seems to work pretty well on the whole.
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Not to nitpick/derail too much, but how did modern evangelicals lose the spirit of folks like Aquinas?
When they wholeheartedly bought into the Spirit of Roy Moore.
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You've given zero reason to place any degree of faith in government, and you misunderstand the nature of understanding. Yes, the amount of total data, laws, and models we have is very much incomplete, but we're "Good Enough" for us to understand things like social power dynamics and patterns of corruption.
In fact, a major component of the US government's structure is a built-in distrust for elected officials.
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Re:Kinda like the death-tax hurts farmer lie (Score:5, Informative)
Unless your farmer has >$5M in assets, the estate tax does not apply to him. And the reason behind the estate tax is to avoid the increasing accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few. Whether or not the government is incompetent at handling the cash is besides the point.
Yes, the "Death Tax" is a lie! (Score:2)
Ummm. It's not a "death tax." It is not money that is double taxed. It's a tax against the income your benificiaries receive. You can't give infinite money to your children when you are alive without them paying taxes on it, because it's income to them. Just like game show or lottery winnings. There should be no difference in the transfer of assets to children after you are dead. They should pay taxes on those assets at standard rates without getting a basis adjustment at the time of your death. Which brin
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I doubt there's many family farms that even have a positive net value, let alone a high enough taxable estate to meet the limit.
Regarding the normal millionaires, think of it as a "pitchforks and torches" tax. The level of wealth held by the very small minority who would pay the estate tax only exists because of the social stability and protection the government provides. Without that stability and protection, they would have been deposed by pitchforks and torches long before they could reach that level
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Because they haven't earned it and paid taxes on it?
It's not really difficult. It might sound like it's being double-taxed but it isn't, because what is taxed isn't actually money, it's movements of money. This is exactly the same as if you go to bar and buy a beer; the owner pays tax on his profits, and when he spends the rest on a new garage th
Re: Kinda like the death-tax hurts farmer lie (Score:2)
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I think it's to do with the notion of the nuclear family. They are one entity. Everybody contributes toward the family in their own way and everybody shares in the rewards. Dad's just the collector.
In a family that earns just enough to live comfortably, the wife might stay at home and bring up the kids to release the husband to engage in work that optimizes the family income. It would be a long stretch to say the money the wife spends is a second income.
Yes there's obviously a difference between that and fi
Re: Kinda like the death-tax hurts farmer lie (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll give you the reason Thomas Jefferson gave when he first proposed an estate tax: to protect America from the tendency of society to develop aristocracies.
Re: Kinda like the death-tax hurts farmer lie (Score:2)
Why don't you have a username? (Score:2)
People are still confused about net neutrality... but let's stop crying about it so that in 10 years when we have to watch porn metered by the minute through AOL cableboxes... we can look back fondly on slashdot's twilight and remember that that all the articles were about bitcoins and sexual harassment.
So what exactly about your post keeps you from signing in to show us your username?
Probably because you don't have a username.
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I sure wasn't on AOL. I thought that was a disaster, and basically worthless.
Re: Enough already (Score:2)