Does the FCC have the right to tell a state or town what to do with local calls? That is the root of this. It's a given that they can regulate interstate, but historically intrastate has been the rights of the states.
Each personal project I work on is technical primarily, but each requires me to involve myself more in the political process by design. Technology alone will not change things, so I must get better at the people part of the process to enact the change I wish to see.
It made sense in a time when people lived in same state their whole lives, rarely traveled outside the state, and rarely communicated outside the state. Their whole lives unfolded within a few hundred square miles.
That's not the case anymore. You can't subdivide the interests of American citizens by state anymore. What does it mean to be from Ohio vs. Indiana? Almost nothing.
Whatever happened to "celebrate [and protect] diversity"?
The biggest difference was the cost of a pack of cigarettes, when I still smoked. Now the biggest difference is the weather, which I gather varies quite a lot just within CA.
My coworkers are variously local and transplants like myself, and I wouldn't be able to tell except for being told.
One of the effects of the last half-century of mass media is the wholesale homogenization of American culture. I'm fine with this, and I wish our political structures would adapt accordingly; I happen to think American norms of 2015 are considerably better than North Carolina's norms circa 1965.
Strange that you pick that example since that happens within a single state too. In fact it seems like there is a much larger difference between urban and rural regions within any given state then there is between urban regions (or rural regions) across different states.
That's not a criticism of states' rights; that's a criticism of not agreeing with you. Join the club :-p
My point was that we already have examples where there are exceptions to federal law on a state-by-state basis. What I've been saying all along is that we should codify that system.
>It's probably time to give up on the ridiculous sanctity of states' rights.
isn't an opinion? I'm lost.
However, in the case of states, there is a organizing body that can, and is increasingly governing in their stead -- the federal government. And as many people believe the federal government has on average done a better job, that is why there are calls for the retirement of the 'states rights' concept.
When that testing happens, as it does now, the determining factor shouldn't be "states vs federal rights". It should be, "Does this state have a good reason to differ from the rest of the country?"
In this case, where inmates' families are being harmed, there is no reason for Hawaii to differ from Mississippi.
I'm not saying I believe that argument, but I don't live in Mississippi, I don't pay taxes in Mississippi, and I'm extremely unlikely to ever end up in a Mississippi prison. Maybe it should be the job of Mississippians to weigh the pros and cons of these things?
The federal government should be able to say, "No, sorry Mississippi, you aren't going to run your prisons on the backs of the families of inmates."
Why should someone have to pay extortionist prices to speak to a loved one? They likely had nothing to do with the crime (or the criminality of the inmate), and it's not fair to punish them just for being unlucky enough to love someone who becomes a convict.
- OK to lock someone up in a cage.
- OK to charge them $0.11/minute to talk to someone outside of that cage.
- NOT OK to charge $1/minute to talk to someone outside of that cage.
Yes. That how treating humans humanely works.
Keep in mind this wasn't a ruling by SCOTUS citing the constitution. It was a ruling by the FCC meaning that ultimately it WAS a community voting on them. The only debate here is the size of the community that should get a vote.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
I think ultimately the federal government gets what it wants because it holds the biggest purse-strings and that's all that matters at the end of the day.