One group dominates the second round of net neutrality comments
sunlightfoundation.com
sunlightfoundation.com
“We’re pleased that the Sunlight Foundation is finally confirming that American Commitment and Americans opposed to regulation of the Internet won the FCC comment period. Better late than never,” said Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment.
http://www.americancommitment.org/content/conservatives-oppo...
Note how they say they 'won' the comment period, as if each letter or email counted as a vote and the FCC is obliged to treat the input quantitatively rather than qualitatively. This sort of lobbying is a win-win for the advocacy organizations that engage in it (across the political spectrum): either the government does what they want and they declare victory, or the government does not in which case they fulminate about 'the will of the people' being thwarted and do another round of fundraising/PR on the back of that. You can make quite a nice living running a 'nonprofit' like this - $175k/year is a decent salary for booking adverts using donors' money.
http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/452/4526005...
Regulating the Internet would be a job killer. All those who are employed as tech support, companies that make and deploy servers, routers, coax and fiber-optic cable will suffer job losses if the FCC chases billions of dollars of investments away by regulating Internet services as if they were a public utility. Every time Washington bureaucrats have grabbed massive new powers for themselves, they have created economic and human wreckage in their wake. Obamacare regulations on the healthcare system have cost millions of Americans their health insurance, and raised the cost of insurance and deductibles to millions more.
That's just an outright lie. Here's a rhetorical question. If a DDoS is classified as an attack because the client consuming server resources doesn't actually care about the resource, then what is flooding a comment board with identically wrong and manipulative letters?
The point about telecom jobs isn't a lie either. What was the impact of local-loop unbundling, which made investment into DSL unattractive, on DSL installers? The mechanics of the telecom industry aren't any different than that of Silicon Valley: people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential for a big payout at the end. Companies like Verizon are already under the gun from investors for the billions they spent deploying fiber. Making it less attractive to be in the business of building infrastructure isn't going to increase the amount of investment and jobs in the sector.
Now, you could argue that Title II might nonetheless be beneficial on the net, but it's not a lie to point out the things that could be hurt by the Title II regulations.
[1] It's very profitable when your users generate your content for free, and you can shift tax liability overseas.
It's a lie in the sense that it takes all the benefits out of the fact. The ACA will cost many people more money, especially if they were not paying for any health insurance to begin with, but it will also help many more than those that will have to pay more be healthier. Same with telecoms: regulating last-mile networks as a dumb pipe isn't going to magically take all the profits out of consumer internet service. Verizon has been using their utility privilege (public right of way and private property allowance) in rolling out FiOS since their regulated landline falls under Title II, but their broadband falls under Title I, yet both run over the exact same wire. Moreover, cellular voice was put under Title II in 1993 with forbearance from regulations that applied to landline service, and that industry is not struggling to keep it's doors open, nor is it encumbered from some draconian price cap. Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act already gives the FCC the capability to impose price caps on broadband providers to encourage network infrastructure growth as a means to an end, not as the end. The only harm that could come about from Title II to the carriers is the interconnect methods (peering), but when the FCC drafted reclassification in 2010, Section 251 was noticeably absent, and there has been no mention of that from the FCC since.
[President Obama Urges FCC to Implement Stronger Net Neutrality Rules|http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/11/10/president-obama-ur...]
The fact of the matter is most people don't understand a lot of the nuances behind the issue. They don't understand the telcos actually leverage various forms of local, state and federal regulation to reduce competition and they cry to the public about excessive government regulation when anybody threatens their duopoly benefits.
It also seems to play on the narrative that people who are against expanding regulation are not rational individuals, they are instead reduced to mere tools controlled by a pair of Koch villains intent on destruction of earth and society to make themselves richer.
This army of people does often mobilize as a single unit, dictated to through the likes of Fox News. Talk about how black people want free "X" and you can get lots of people to fill out a form letter without trying.
We're a Republic for the very reason that it was known that en-masse, often times people are irrational and do go against their own benefit for ideology.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/29/working-class-v...
Yes, that's called having principles.
This is a laughable statement. Let me address each point directly.
During the last election, 33% of Hispanics voted for the Republican party[1]. 44% of women voted Republican[2]. And "mostly lower to middle class"? I though the Republican's were the party of the rich? Who do the rich vote for then?
I strongly suggest you take a more open-minded approach to politics.
[1]http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/11/07/hispanic-voters-in-the... [2]http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/10/22/poll-wo...
I also invite you to understand that 33% in politics is a huge minority. 67% of Hispanics voting Democrat, in an election, make the Democrats the clear winner of that particular demographic.
Finally, the "rich" are the top 10%, or 1%, or even 0.1% based on what particular income inequality chart you're looking at, leaving the entire bottom >=90% available for the demographics I mentioned.
Hispanics, as you noted, are over a 30 point spread.
So politically speaking, having only 44% of the female vote and still winning requires a very large (political) majority of voters voting Republican to be male. Add to that age, and again we're seeing clearly that old white men are the key demographic. [1]
It's not that you and I see percentages differently. It's the political significance of the margins that define the argument.
[0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_preside...
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/05/as-gop-celeb...
"During the last election, 33% of Hispanics voted for the Republican party"
What percentage of voters were Hispanic?
"Who do the rich vote for then?"
Statistically, it doesn't matter. There aren't that many of "the rich".
[Warning, .RTF file download since Imgur is down, page 196:] http://www.shareholder.com/visitors/activeedgardoc.cfm?f=rtf...
Excited to see which new donors show up in their 2014 financial filings.