[HN Gopher] FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
___________________________________________________________________
FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules
Author : throwup238
Score : 514 points
Date : 2024-04-25 17:23 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| lenerdenator wrote:
| What's this thing the government has been doing recently where
| they're no longer content to just let major corporations screw
| consumers?
| tatelax wrote:
| Election coming up
| sigzero wrote:
| 100%
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| Regardless of the winners of said election, expect a return
| to business as usual afterward.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Would you like to make a wager on that? I would be prepared
| to bet money (and give you very generous odds) that, contra
| your claim, if Biden is re-elected in November the FCC will
| _not_ undo this change and remove net neutrality afterward.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Not really. There has been a continuous stream of pro-
| consumer actions out of the Biden admin since day one. Lots
| of anti-trust activity in really critical sectors, for
| example.
|
| You're not paying very close attention if you can't spot
| any substantive differences between the two sides.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Eh... I wouldn't say so much.
|
| I'd expect that if Biden gets a second term, then after the
| election you can basically expect little to no action for
| the next 3 years. Business as usual... ish. Major changes
| will likely happen before the next election just to try and
| keep a democrat in office.
|
| The Trump second term will likely immediately start with
| rolling back things like Net Neutrality. Biden's admin
| likely wouldn't do that as that'd keep them from getting
| cabinet positions in the future and Trump's admin will do
| it right away because it can both be sold as a referendum
| on the previous admin and would help them get future
| positions for the next republican president.
|
| For trump, I doubt he'll do anything at the end of his term
| different from the beginning. I really don't think Trump
| cares about keeping republicans in office.
| hobs wrote:
| It's true that he cares about himself first, but he only
| stumps for republicans (as long as they support him) and
| he packed the federal and supreme court with republicans
| (and they've won important cases about redistricting
| rules and other things that keep republicans in power).
|
| So saying he doesn't care about keeping republicans in
| office makes no sense as he's probably cemented them in
| office in places they have no business being elected for
| another 30 years.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >and he packed the federal and supreme court
|
| I can tell where the hypocrisy starts and the eye roll
| begins.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I can't say this for certain, but my guess is that
| Trump's supreme court picks weren't really him looking at
| potential nominees and instead were done based on the
| advice of his cabinet. (I'm certain that's how it is for
| most presidents).
|
| Trump will likely appoint a republican friendly cabinet,
| for sure, which means their goals and agendas will be
| centered around the party as much as they are for trump.
|
| But that said, I just don't think Trump cares about the
| republican party. He cares about it in as much as it's a
| vehicle for him to maintain power.
|
| Said another way, I don't think trump the person cares
| about the republican party. I think the trump admin does.
|
| If he wins, the only way I really see him personally
| caring about the next presidency is if he decide to try
| and run for a 3rd term (like he's floated).
| Cody-99 wrote:
| Changing government policy isn't always an instant process.
| Most of the FCC rules go through the "notice and comment"
| process that takes quiet a long time. The net neutrality rule
| for example has been in the works since at least January 2022
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/net-neutrality-will-
| make-...
| cal5k wrote:
| All of the new "rules" being proposed by executive agencies
| will be subject to court challenge, and some of them (like
| the FTC's non-compete "rule") will likely be subject to a
| preliminary injunction.
|
| The goal is to get people to think "Yeah! Taking action on
| non-competes is great! Darn politicized courts!", when in
| reality this is not something an executive agency should be
| doing without an act of congress, or it may not even be a
| matter that falls to the federal government at all.
|
| Most employment law, for example, falls to the state in which
| the worker lives, and some have chosen to ban non-competes
| via legislation. This is much more democratic than attempting
| to craft law by executive fiat, even though I tend to agree
| that non-competes are more harmful than good in many
| situations.
| thfuran wrote:
| >This is much more democratic than attempting to craft law
| by executive fiat
|
| What exactly "more democratic" means is a bit unclear to
| me. Is an act of Congress more democratic than agency
| policy because more reps voted on it? Is it more democratic
| because the reps who voted on it were elected rather than
| appointed by people who were elected like over at those
| agencies? Or is a policy democratic based on its alignment
| with the will of the electorate regardless of provenance?
| cal5k wrote:
| > Is it more democratic because the reps who voted on it
| were elected rather than appointed by people who were
| elected like over at those agencies?
|
| The presidency is not an elected autocracy. The extent of
| his powers are strictly limited to those granted by a)
| the constitution, and b) acts of congress.
|
| Attempts to circumvent these limitations through clever
| legal theories are undemocratic, doubly so when that
| circumvention bypasses duly elected state governments. No
| act of congress has ever explicitly banned non-compete
| agreements or authorized the FTC to do so, and the
| plethora of employment law at the state level strongly
| supports the notion that it wasn't even a federal matter
| to begin with.
|
| Would you argue that it's more democratic or less
| democratic when powers previously belonging to states are
| subsumed by the executive in this way? What if the people
| of Texas believe non-compete agreements are important?
| Why not just federalize all laws and tell state
| legislatures to pound sand?
| sophacles wrote:
| Also:
|
| Is it less democratic because unlike laws, there's an
| open comment period for the public to make their voice
| heard? (unlike laws or executive orders)
|
| Is it less democratic because it's policy being
| implemented by people who spend a lot of time thinking
| about the policy and its effects, rather than by some
| blowhard trying to score culture war points on twitter
| than making a policy?
| objektif wrote:
| Administration sees they are losing the young vote.
| Administration checks what can get them more young votes.....
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Which is democracy working as intended and not a cynical
| thing at all.
| triceratops wrote:
| Politicians doing what voters want?! What a radical concept!
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| Funny how they seem to rack up most of these high-profile
| accomplishments in election years....
| triceratops wrote:
| Tell me you've never started an assignment the day before
| it's due.
| Spivak wrote:
| Ahh yes courting the young vote, that group famous for going
| out to the polls in large numbers. The 16-25 age group is
| really into FCC regulation and anti-TikTok right now.
| tootie wrote:
| Not to be glib, but it's just Democrats. They are not immune
| from corporate interests, but they are not wholly owned by
| them. And really, corporate interests are American interests so
| long as they don't needlessly harm citizens.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| FCC rules... The other day it was FTC and banning non competes,
| there's also talk right now on the home page regarding KYC and an
| executive order.
|
| I would love for us to be able to get back to making laws in the
| US. Executive orders and agency rulings are a bad way to run a
| "democratic republic"
| redserk wrote:
| It's worth noting that these agencies and their powers did not
| spring up out of thin air. Various elected Congress sessions
| wrote the laws that created and empowered these agencies to
| create rules.
|
| This is a reasonable implementation of a "democratic republic"
| as Congress still has oversight.
| wtallis wrote:
| The problem with merely having regulations rather than laws
| is not a concern that they may not have proper legal
| authority, but that they are less durable and more easily
| overturned than laws passed by Congress and signed by the
| President.
| redserk wrote:
| I agree, and I'd rather Congress weigh in now that we've
| had this specific issue flip-flop twice. I do not like the
| implication that agency rulemaking is anti-democratic
| though. We have utilized this structure for well over 120
| years, or practically half of the country's history.
| wtallis wrote:
| You may not like it being pointed out, but having rules
| made by appointed regulators rather than elected
| legislators is _obviously_ anti-democratic. Yes,
| delegating powers like this is a practical necessity, but
| having made that reasonable tradeoff does not erase the
| reality that it 's a less than perfectly democratic
| process. So is the structure of Congress itself.
| redserk wrote:
| First, the US is not a pure democracy. We elect
| representatives on our behalf to handle voting on
| matters. So dismissing something as "anti-democratic" is
| not applicable here.
|
| Our elected officials set up a system where a series of
| agencies under the Executive Branch may create rules, but
| the elected officials have oversight authority.
|
| If you disagree, you may petition your state government
| for a constitutional amendment that prohibits this
| practice and advocate for additional states to join in.
| wtallis wrote:
| > So dismissing something as "anti-democratic" is not
| applicable here.
|
| [...]
|
| > If you disagree, you may petition your state government
| for a constitutional amendment
|
| I think you're misinterpreting what's being said here in
| order to over-react. I don't think anyone in this thread
| is saying that executive orders and delegating powers to
| appointed regulators should be expunged from our system
| of government. But they _should_ be acknowledged as a
| _necessary evil_ , and their use minimized when possible,
| and not allowed to completely replace the legislative
| process. Whereas you seem to be defending taking those
| practices to the extreme simply because of historical
| precedent.
| redserk wrote:
| > I think you're misinterpreting what's being said here
| in order to over-react.
|
| If you can point out how I'm misinterpreting, I'm open to
| discuss. From what it appears though, we have a
| disagreement on what we wish to delegate to different
| branches of government.
|
| > But they should be acknowledged as a necessary evil,
| and their use minimized when possible
|
| I disagree that executive agency rulemaking is a
| "necessary evil". Congress can simultaneously be derelict
| in their duties as a legislative body while having a
| executive regulatory apparatus that creates rules under
| their purview.
|
| > Whereas you seem to be defending taking those practices
| to the extreme simply because of historical precedent.
|
| If not for historical precedent and recognizing the
| practices we've been utilizing for 4-5 generations of
| people, what should we prioritize?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > rules made by appointed regulators rather than elected
| legislators is obviously anti-democratic
|
| The people making the appointments are elected. It is
| _obviously_ democratic.
|
| The general population can't get together to vote on
| everything, so we elect representatives to do that job
| for us. Our representatives can't make rules on minutia,
| so they appoint regulators. Don't like the regulators? Go
| talk to your representative.
|
| The opposite is worse: I live in a town that still has
| old-style town meeting where any resident can show up.
| It's tyranny of whoever has time to show up and stay up
| late, because someone will always create an amendment at
| 11PM to overrule a town-wide vote.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| We have always had things like executive orders. Just an
| insane number are issued between the Great Depression and
| WWII, and then we have 100 years of using them as a ham
| fisted tool for policy.
|
| The FTC ruling on non competes... Great, except that
| getting rid of that rule doesn't create its complementary
| law around "rading" (see this about ca law:
| https://www.flclaw.net/is-poaching-employees-illegal-
| califor... ).
|
| And yes we have used this structure for a long time, but
| not to this extent, not as a political football for
| democratic impasse.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| The scope creep of these agencies in recent decades is
| substantial, though.
|
| It's one thing to set rules for dumping that protect
| wildlands, or verify drugs in the medical supply chain
| aren't toxic.
|
| Deciding the rules of commerce? I'm less than thrilled.
| acdha wrote:
| It's not scope creep as much as recognizing that Congress
| is less functional than it used to be. Obstruction has
| been normalized since the backlash to Obama's election -
| think about how often people claim you need 60 votes in
| the senate - and that means anyone who sees a problem has
| an incentive to figure out how to do it without needing
| timely action.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I blame this squarely on the congress. Congress has been
| the weakest it's ever been, passing almost nothing
| substantial. If we had to rely on them to ensure basic
| things like drug approvals we never have anything. They can
| barely get funding passed to fund themselves!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Why do you blame "congress" instead of Republicans?
| gojomo wrote:
| Perhaps because Democrats control half of Congress today,
| and the general trend of Congressional avoidance-of-
| clear-rulemaking has been the same even during those
| periods that Dems or Republicans control both chambers.
| kaibee wrote:
| The filibuster makes this kind of 'control' moot. You
| need a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and a
| majority in the House to actually get anything done (and
| the Presidency, to not veto). 'Control of half of
| Congress' when that half is the house, is meaningless.
| sophacles wrote:
| You'd rather have some idiotic trash that's been elected to
| congress have to decide what a safe dose of a drug is than
| an agency largely staffed by people with deep medical
| training?
|
| You'd rather have such a decision be at the whims of
| political showboating and culture wars than what can be
| proven safe and effective with actual medical testing?
|
| I'd argue that a better use of legislature time would be to
| find ways to reduce the clout of political beliefs in
| people appointed to high level positions in the agencies
| rather than requring the useless fools eleceted to congress
| getting final say in what the rules are.
|
| Seriously do you think the jewish space laser lady should
| have any say in sattelites or forest fires? Do you really
| want the moron that thinks injecting bleach is a viable
| cure to decide what makes for good medicine? Do you want a
| fool who think's an ar-15 with a certain set of cosmetics
| is a scary bad gun, but an ar-15 with hunting stocks isn't
| the exact same weapon to decide firearm policy?
|
| Those are the people you are suggesting should make the
| decisions on specifics?
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| Yet the Chevron decision empowers agencies to make rules
| independent of Congress in cases where the rules don't
| already exist or are unclear.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura.
| ...
|
| Unsurprisingly, Kavanaugh and the rest of the conservatives
| would prefer this approach be relegated to history. Of
| course, the areas of particular interest that he cites as
| examples (securities e.g, finance, communications, and
| environmental laws) just happen to be those where the two
| parties could not possibly be further apart in their
| approaches.
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-
| to-d...
| fallingknife wrote:
| It seems to me that the Chevron doctrine has essentially
| created a fourth branch of government with minimal
| democratic oversight. It feels like an end run around the
| constitution. In many cases the agencies exercise
| legislative, executive, and judicial powers all at the same
| time.
| moduspol wrote:
| Also gun laws. Any firearm enthusiast can tell you how
| inconsistent and incoherent various ATF rulings and
| determinations have been.
| willmadden wrote:
| Not if the agencies have leverage over Congress.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| Agencies are not beholden to Congress; they are beholden to
| the executive branch that creates them.
|
| That is why Nixon created the EPA so that there would not be
| a Department of the Environment that was out of the hands of
| executive power.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Congress created the FCC. Congress passed many laws
| governing agencies. Departments are not out of the hands of
| executive power.
| rascul wrote:
| > Nixon created the EPA
|
| Only because Congress allowed it.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/history/origins-epa
| rsanek wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act
| adrr wrote:
| Congress creates and funds agencies. Agencies write the
| regulations. This is all specified in the law that was
| passed. FCC commission makeup is defined by law and their
| authority is defined by law.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| In case you are unaware, but congress has been DEEPLY
| dysfunctional for the past 30 years, and has been getting worse
| every session. Even this week it was shocking news that a
| bipartisan bill managed to even come to a vote.
|
| This is what happens when the party that doesn't have the White
| House chooses obstruction and enforces the the Hastert Rule.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_rule
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| Yet in functioning legislative bodies (think: parliamentary
| systems), employing something like Hastert doesn't require
| any enforcement at all.
|
| They don't typically require supermajorities to pass laws,
| and those in the minority don't have the means to
| substantively object to bills they disagree with.
|
| A man can dream.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| You may not realize it, but this is exactly how it works in
| the House of Representatives today, and is the exact cause
| of dysfunction.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| I should have been more precise - the Senate's rules are
| garbage and should be hurled into the Sun. More
| generally, my comments come from watching PMQ's in the
| House of Commons and seeing that the party out of power
| really doesn't have many tools to slow down the opposite
| sides agenda.
|
| If such a system was implemented in the US, it would
| force politicians to more carefully consider their
| positions -- no confidence votes and a motion to vacate
| serve the man functional purpose as a stick to get people
| in line, which might not otherwise be possible if they
| consistently took unpopular positions.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| You're fundamentally misunderstanding what is going on.
| There are a majority number of votes to support popular
| legislation. These bills are simply not brought to a vote
| BY THE MAJORITY PARTY due to internal majority party
| politics.
|
| Nothing in your facile proposal would remedy this. What
| would fix the problem would be change to the rules so
| that simple majority could bring legislation to a _vote_.
| This does not exist in any functional way.
|
| And we haven't even touched on the fact that the majority
| of seats are often controlled by a minority of voters due
| to gerrymandering and the constitutional structure of the
| senate.
| asynchronous wrote:
| You really blame republicans like when the shoe is on the
| other foot the other party doesn't do the exact same tactics
| of blatantly stalling bills they don't like and overall
| slowing government to a crawl.
|
| This is politics in the modern era.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Our legislative branch abdicated its power when they stopped
| bothering to pass laws that people actually want.
|
| If the FTC and FCC weren't doing either of these things, they
| simply wouldn't happen. As soon as a Net Neutrality or non-
| compete clause ban bill makes it to the senate floor,
| Republicans will just filibuster it, even though public opinion
| is overwhelmingly in support of both these measures.
| fallingknife wrote:
| While I support both of those things, I don't see any problem
| requiring the legislature to actually legislate to make them
| happen. If the public felt strongly about these issues they
| would just remove their representatives next election.
|
| Just because I happen to agree with the actions of the agency
| in this case is not enough to justify handing legislative
| power over to bureaucratic agencies that do not have any of
| the checks and balances that are supposed to exist in our
| system.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> that do not have any of the checks and balances that are
| supposed to exist in our system._
|
| But they do have the same checks and balances. All of these
| rules are open to judicial review and there is a whole
| process in place due to the Administrative Procedure Act.
| In fact there are _more_ rules for these agencies like
| having public commenting periods after which they 're
| required by law to consider that input when making their
| rules.
| babypuncher wrote:
| One of the things the legislative branch can do is delegate
| their powers to organizations better equipped to understand
| complex issues.
|
| These organizations, which function as part of the
| executive branch, are still subject to checks and balances
| from both the legislative and judicial branches. The
| legislative branch has the power to change the laws that
| govern what these agencies can or cannot do, and the
| judicial branch has the power to determine if their actions
| go against either the laws passed by the legislature or the
| constitution.
|
| Banning regulatory agencies from doing their job would
| hamstring our government's ability to regulate anything,
| which is probably why monied interests like to argue that
| their very existence is unconstitutional.
| unreal37 wrote:
| The congress doesn't seem to be able to pass anything itself
| without it being tied to an increase in the military budget...
| jandrese wrote:
| Congress does not want to have to learn the minutia of every
| aspect of things that are regulated. Delegating responsibility
| to the relevant agencies is exactly how Congress operates.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| This is the equivalent of a CEO/C-suite delegating decision
| making to various teams and leaders below them. They still add
| laws and appoint the leaders of those organizations, but can't
| be involved in every decision.
|
| Can't expect every single item in the government to get direct
| democracy, the world would grind to a halt due to the sheer
| number of decisions needed to be made.
| geuis wrote:
| Here's the FCC announcement (pdf) for those interested:
| https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-restores-net-neutrality
| reaperman wrote:
| I'm looking for full text of the actual action /
| implementation. Like the document containing the text that they
| actually voted on, specifically.
|
| Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40160960
| andy_xor_andrew wrote:
| great, what are the odds they reverse the reversal next year in a
| hypothetical new administration?
| anderber wrote:
| I'd say 50/50
| tootie wrote:
| By "they" you mean voters. This policy isn't top priority for
| very many voters, but the battle lines on this are clear. Trump
| will overturn (he already did once). Biden will protect it. A
| vote for Trump is a vote to overturn.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Obama set the FCC on a course to lower jail and prison phone
| call prices (which is understood to decrease recidivism by
| keeping prisoners in contact with their support systems).
|
| Trump came in and replaced the FCC head with this guy:
|
| https://nypost.com/2017/08/10/fcc-chairman-under-fire-for-
| co...
| paulddraper wrote:
| If there is a new administration, close to 100%.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I'm happy this reversal occurred, but I am exhausted by the
| continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party
| is in charge. Feels like we're stagnating as a nation by going in
| a circle rather than finding commonality to go forward.
|
| Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old
| enough to be bothered by it?
| bgentry wrote:
| It's partly what happens when such important rules are
| determined by who is appointed at an executive agency, rather
| than requiring an act of Congress. The former can be trivially
| gamed by the party in power after each election, whereas
| getting Congress to take action on something can be difficult
| and requires you to first get them motivated to do so at a
| given moment.
| bearjaws wrote:
| I'd flip it and say its what happens when Congress has been
| dysfunctional for over a decade. It's not even possible to
| get a house bill with net neutrality passed without it
| included 99 other things that will inevitably get the bill
| punted on forever.
|
| Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen
| fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen
| fit,
|
| Congress as a whole does not support net neutrality, and
| the reason they have not drafted a simple house bill to do
| it that doesn't include 99 other things is because they had
| no desire to. It has nothing to do with "ideology wars."
| miah_ wrote:
| Have no desire because they've been bribed, I mean
| lobbied.
| jrockway wrote:
| To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2
| government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in
| Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure
| bill.
|
| The reality is, they just don't care about net neutrality.
| I'm still mad that they haven't passed the bill that gets
| rid of DST (or rather, gets rid of standard time). Everyone
| wants it in both parties. Just get it done.
|
| Even more annoying is the whole Section 174 debacle.
| Completely killing the field of software engineering in the
| US.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > They have avoided 2 government shutdowns.
|
| My what a low bar
| jszymborski wrote:
| "They didn't trip on their own feet"
| packetlost wrote:
| > They have avoided 2 government shutdowns
|
| You mean they passed a bill that was necessary for them
| to get their paychecks. I fail to see how this is even
| remotely surprising.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I think their congressional salary is probably not where
| most members of Congress are deriving their main income.
| I think the paychecks their 'other' employers are cutting
| are more lucrative.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It's true but "keep the government from grinding to a
| halt due to pure inaction" is kind of the absolute
| minimum bar for congress that I don't think it's
| reasonable to call it a win.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| And it only grinds to a halt because of _rules they
| created_.
| pavlov wrote:
| "Congress avoided two government shutdowns" is like
| saying "I avoided pooping in my pants twice today." It's
| factually true and objectively a positive thing, but
| there's nothing really commendable about it.
|
| The debt ceiling is Congress's own creation, and Congress
| itself approves the budgets that cause the increase in
| debt. There isn't another parliament on the planet that
| behaves so absurdly, fighting shadow puppets set up by
| itself.
| gmueckl wrote:
| There are plenty of dysfunctional/autocratic/kleptocratic
| governments based on constitutions that are somewhat
| democratic in nature. The US is just a high profile
| example of government structure slowly sliding into one
| of these failed states (faster if Trump gets another
| term).
| graycat wrote:
| > (faster if Trump gets another term).
|
| I didn't keep track and don't have a good list, but a
| guess is that Trump did push through a lot of regulatory
| changes. If the media would publish a well documented
| list ...!!
|
| From all I've seen, I like Trump, but apparently a lot of
| people don't. I wonder where am I going wrong.
|
| Why do some people not like him? A guess is the now old
| collection of video clips from the MSM (mainstream media)
| still at
|
| https://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908
|
| Sooo, recently I watched several videos (still at
| YouTube) of episodes of Trump's old TV show _The
| Apprentice_. (1) From the business world I 've seen, this
| guy was definitely, uh, _different_! In a way, tough to
| criticize since apparently he was very successful. (2) A
| surprise was the propensity of mess ups, in fighting of
| the apparently carefully selected candidates. When I
| think back, yup, I did see a lot of that but guessed it
| was _incidental_ and would go away and wasn 't too bad --
| I was wrong, and Trump's TV show was closer to right. How
| Trump handled (2) was good to see, although maybe some of
| it was just "TV".
| yterdy wrote:
| Kindly read or listen to any long-form work by Sarah
| Kendzior.
|
| But I don't know if the statement you quoted is correct
| either. Trump isn't the politician who has people
| tracking their stock trades because they so consistently
| outperform the market (that would be legislators,
| including Democrats, who trade on insider information,
| but face no consequences because the arbiters of such
| judgment are... themselves). Unfortunately, I'm not sure
| that even a second Biden term will save us.
| graycat wrote:
| > Kindly read or listen to any long-form work by Sarah
| Kendzior.
|
| This is the first I've heard of her. So, just did a
| Google search on her: She has written a lot of stories
| for the "news" on a lot of subjects. Maybe ~10% of the
| stories are about Trump.
|
| There were some lists of story titles with URLs, but the
| URLs didn't point to the stories -- apparently were old
| and now _broken_.
|
| Her stories on Trump I could find didn't seem like they
| were on important issues. Then I saw her story on the
| "Russia" issue. Sorry, I long ago concluded that Trump
| did nothing wrong and, instead, the whole Russia Gate
| issue was a cooked up, made up, pile of nonsense trying
| to _get Trump_.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > From all I've seen, I like Trump, but apparently a lot
| of people don't. I wonder where am I going wrong.
|
| Are you being sarcastic? Did you miss the part where he
| waged an attempted coup against the US government to
| remain in power?
|
| I mean... he was just found by a court to have committed
| rape. You don't see why people don't like him? Be for
| real.
| graycat wrote:
| > Are you being sarcastic? Did you miss the part where he
| waged an attempted coup against the US government to
| remain in power?
|
| I never understood that: I watched his speech. All I saw
| looked reasonable, appropriate, prudent. It seemed he was
| careful to advise no violence. That there was an
| "attempted coup" makes no sense to me. I watched his
| speech and saw nothing wrong.
|
| > I mean... he was just found by a court to have
| committed rape.
|
| I didn't and don't see that.
|
| But, if what you say is correct, then that would explain
| why some people don't like him.
|
| From your post, it looks like there is some deep
| bitterness about Trump. I don't see why, but okay. For
| one explanation there is that old collection of media
| video clips
|
| https://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908
|
| Apparently the media was totally convinced that those
| clips would doom Trump; maybe those clips are why some
| people don't like him.
|
| Watch the clips -- if anything, by now they are
| entertaining! They have much of the largest of the MSM
| (mainstream media) doing a big gang up, pile on of
| "bombshell", "done, no question about that", etc. that
| never happened.
|
| Maybe in low level town and city politics nearly everyone
| interested in politics at all has some really strong
| reasons to like the Democrat Party. If my startup works,
| maybe I'll discover that the local Democrats will do good
| things for me but the Republicans won't. Hmm.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I watched your video -- it's media personalities
| babbling.
|
| You should probably inform yourself about the coup, the
| speech wasn't it. Here is some actual info to start:
|
| The J6 commission report: https://www.govinfo.gov/content
| /pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6...
|
| The Federal indictments: https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfron
| t.net/static/2023/08/trump-i...
|
| The Georgia indictments: https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfron
| t.net/static/2023/08/CRIMINA...
|
| The Arizona indictments: https://mcusercontent.com/cc1fad
| 182b6d6f8b1e352e206/files/fa...
|
| The finding of rape: https://storage.courtlistener.com/re
| cap/gov.uscourts.nysd.59...
|
| "The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she
| was 'raped' within the meaning of the New York Penal Law
| does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump
| 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word
| 'rape,' ... Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted
| below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact
| did exactly that."
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and
| Taiwan.
|
| Aaaannnndd?... You're just going to leave out the banning
| of TikTok while claiming a victory for sending my money
| to other nations for wars I do not want to fund?
|
| And another thing </Andy Rooney>, government shutdowns
| are problems created ENTIRELY BY CONGRESS for never
| operating under a proper budget since 1997. All they're
| doing is fighting each other over a massive shell game of
| sending the right amounts of money to their donors'
| interests to guarantee reelection.
|
| "Infrastructure projects" is just another term for crony
| capitalism. Just look at funding for telcos to build out
| infra, or EV charging stations, or solar panels, or
| anything else they fund as "infrastructure." It's always
| just a massive kickback scheme, and nothing gets built.
|
| They're doing work alright, just not any that I want. Our
| system is nakedly and brazenly corrupt, and we don't seem
| to be able to do anything about it.
| yterdy wrote:
| _> "Infrastructure projects" is just another term for
| crony capitalism. Just look at funding for telcos to
| build out infra, or EV charging stations, or solar
| panels, or anything else they fund as "infrastructure."
| It's always just a massive kickback scheme, and nothing
| gets built._
|
| This is the most baffling one. Everyone seems to forget
| that they also failed to pass the bill that contained the
| provisions that most working and middle-class Americans
| wanted. I've had multiple conversations where the
| counterargument was, "Well, at least they got part of it
| passed." No, that's actually worse. We got all of the
| expensive giveaways without any of the mitigating funding
| and policies. We literally would have been better off if
| nothing had passed.
| graycat wrote:
| > we don't seem to be able to do anything about it.
|
| I thought that, with our democratic structures, it would
| be really easy "to do" a lot about it, but you seem
| right:
|
| I don't _get it_ and have been guessing that
|
| > It's always just a massive kickback scheme,
|
| is correct.
|
| A first problem is some basic vote counting: A politician
| does something, e.g., a "kickback scheme", that pleases <
| 10% of the voters by essentially stealing from > 90% of
| the voters. Soooo, at the next election, the politician
| should lose by at least 9 to 1, but apparently not and
| I'm wrong and the politician, correct?
|
| Uh, maybe the politician partitions the voters into 10
| parts, has 10 schemes, and for each of the 10 steals from
| the other 9 to please the one, and everyone is happy even
| though everyone gets stolen from 10 times?
|
| My guess was, if a good majority, 80%, maybe as low as
| 55%, of the voters would write their Members of Congress
| objecting to the scheme, then Congress would STOP it, in
| a few minutes. But, nope. Apparently tough to get > 20%,
| maybe > 5%, of the voters to write their Members of
| Congress about even a "brazen" scheme.
|
| In simple terms, Congress is awash in powers, e.g., that
| massive one, "power of the purse". So, I have to believe
| that in any 10 minutes, Congress could have gasoline
| under $2 a gallon and falling, but Congress declines to
| do that.
|
| The _blame_ is the media that wants eyeballs for ad
| revenue and, thus, creates divisions, grabs people
| emotionally, avoids exposing the schemes??? Or the voters
| are "apathetic"??
|
| Politics is goofy, inscrutable, and the media is right?
| Uh, ABC, CBS, CNN, ... WaPo are short on money so are not
| really "right"?
|
| Back to something that makes sense.
| bloppe wrote:
| The US trialed permanent DST in 1974. In the first 3
| months, public support dropped from 79% to 42%. It was
| ended prematurely. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylig
| ht_saving_time_in_the_...
|
| Of course, there's no difference between permanent DST
| and abolishing DST but having everyone agree to shift
| their schedules forward by 1 hour. So abolishing DST
| altogether isn't really a better option.
|
| I used to think DST was stupid. Now I think it's actually
| the best we can do.
| tsavo wrote:
| It could be much worse and end up with a system with
| smaller timezones with 30 minute offsets instead of DST.
| Or a single timezone for the continental US.
|
| DST is annoying but it's far from the worst.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| People aren't going to shift an hour. When I've argued
| this with friends it seems to idea is wholly
| incomprehensible.
|
| Standard time is what we should be on. Anything else
| makes it way too cold for kids in the morning in the
| winter, it's better for our sleep cycles (especially
| teenagers), and it just makes sense as far as the sun's
| position. If you want to go into work an hour early so
| the "sun is still up when I go home at night," feel free.
| bloppe wrote:
| The linked Wikipedia page about the 1974 experiment says
| "some schools moved their start times later" in response.
| I agree that trying to get the entire population to shift
| everything on their schedules at the same time would be
| inconsistent at best. But many institutions would adjust
| to the seasons as they see fit. And you want to minimize
| the inconsistencies; people would pick different cutoffs,
| different shift amounts, etc. That's the whole point of
| why it was regulated in the first place.
|
| And DST is demonstrably good during the summer. It lowers
| crime and improves mood and productivity. It's just not
| good in the winter, because people in northern latitudes
| wake up in the cold and dark. It kinda does make sense to
| have seasonal shifting.
|
| So, unfortunately, the best solution in my opinion is in
| fact to just lie to ourselves about what time it is for
| half the year. AKA Daylight Saving.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| > Even more annoying is the whole Section 174 debacle.
| Completely killing the field of software engineering in
| the US.
|
| Elaborate?
| adolph wrote:
| _all expenses, in theory, incurred in connection with
| software development must now be amortized. Many
| technology and software companies will face significant
| increases in their taxable income because they are no
| longer allowed to deduct certain expenses_
|
| https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/tax-and-
| accountin...
| ajross wrote:
| > To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2
| government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in
| Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the
| infrastructure bill.
|
| The euphemization in this subthread is a bit out of
| control. In fact these are 100% partisan issues. The "pro
| shutdown" and "anti aid/infrastructure" camps who had
| been blocking progress are uniformly sitting on one side
| of the aisle, and the progress you are celebrating
| happened when their party split under duress and aligned
| with the other side briefly.
|
| That's not "congress" doing some work. That's a "pro
| work" and "anti work" partisan argument whose answer
| flips due to intra-GOP drama.
| yterdy wrote:
| _> To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided
| 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in
| Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the
| infrastructure bill._
|
| That's just three different ways of saying, "Wrote checks
| to fill the pockets of monied interests, the bill for
| which will be paid for by the generations which
| explicitly oppose such policy."
|
| Talk to me when they pass Medicare For All, the Green New
| Deal, campaign finance reform, and a border/immigration
| bill that finally puts that issue to rest. Until then,
| it's just another round of avoiding addressing the issues
| that are easiest to run on if they haven't been fixed in
| a prior term.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| While I agree Congress is quite dysfunctional, the sheer
| difficulty with which to get a bill written, passed, and
| signed into law is by design. Legislation is supposed to
| take a large amount of deliberation, agreement, and time.
|
| Also consider that this works both ways: If something is
| passed into law by Congress, it's going to take monumental
| effort to undo it just like getting it passed was. An
| example of this is Obamacare, where getting it passed was
| difficult and revoking it has been difficult.
|
| Likewise, the flippant nature of orders authorized by the
| Executive Branch is also by design. Such orders are meant
| primarily to address short-term concerns requiring
| immediate or expedient attention, not long-term concerns
| that require thorough deliberation.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _the sheer difficulty with which to get a bill written,
| passed, and signed into law is by design_
|
| No, the 118th Congress was not how anything was designed
| to operate. This is hand waving mixed with Founding
| Father fairytales.
| redeeman wrote:
| because nobody wants single subject bills, it would semi
| make them accountable.. remind me, who in congress is for
| single subject bills, who is against? (and its very few
| individuals FOR, so not super hard)
| Dig1t wrote:
| Exactly, we never voted any of the people making these
| decisions into office, they didn't have to campaign or
| explain their policies to the public. Having a layer in
| between these regulators and the public (the politicians who
| appoint them) removes power from the common people.
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| This is the tyranny of minority rule. When congress is not
| representative of the electorate and the minority doesn't
| have to compromise to get things done to gain political favor
| and power, nothing gets done.
| Bjartr wrote:
| The supreme court has a long history of overturning its rulings
| years, or decades, later
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru...
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| An implicit assumption of the American political order is
| that a body that makes policy also has the ability to unmake
| that policy. I think that's good because otherwise there
| would be a land rush to create policies that are irreversible
| or have a higher bar for reversal than enactment. These
| policies would inevitably become out of date and reversing
| them could be politically impossible.
|
| The big exception to this was the drafting of the
| Constitution itself, which arguably was easier to ratify than
| it is to amend. The problem of the practical impossibility of
| undoing past policies applies very much here.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The Constitution was very difficult to get ratified. For
| one thing, it was recognized that it had to be unanimous.
| Don't forget it was replacing an existing political order
| of the Continental Congress + state governments.
| granzymes wrote:
| The Supreme Court is poised to decide a case this term, _Loper
| Bright_ , which should help restore more finality to decisions
| like this.
|
| Because agencies receive considerable deference to their
| interpretation of the law, even when that interpretation flip-
| flops every four years, we never get a definitive ruling on
| what the law says. The Court seems likely to greatly reduce
| this deference, leading to more consistency.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This would be an OK way of running things if we had a court
| with any legitimacy. Unfortunately partisanship has ruined
| any hope of that. (And actually, it would be better if laws
| could be interpretable by normal people without an SC case,
| but that would be too sensible).
| huytersd wrote:
| Part of the reason some one like Modi came into power and has
| been able to maintain it (amongst many other reasons) is people
| were disgusted by the continuous reversal of administrations
| and their policies. Nothing ever progressed to completion. That
| malcontent is generally settling into the west as well and
| strongmen are looking more and more attractive. The auth option
| in the US is a regressive dummy, but India, China and several
| African, Latin American and South East Asian countries have
| competent people filling those roles.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| IIRC with Modi a big factor was that the previous prime
| minister was seen as effectively a spineless puppet, kind of
| like how Biden is seen by many. Modi came in promising to try
| literally anything rather than just sitting by and doing
| nothing unless ordered to by the political dynasty leading
| the party, and has largely delivered on that promise.
|
| It has meant lots of controversial legislation being forced
| through, but to many that's better than just letting the
| issues simmer for decades. Especially since many of those
| issues had no uncontroversial solution.
|
| Trump came in promising similar action, but in hindsight did
| absolutely nothing besides further divide the country.
| Unfortunately at the moment neither side seems to have a
| candidate that's actually willing to do something similar.
| Biden will continue to make excuses about not being able to
| do things, and Trump will continue to focus more on PR and
| dominating the news cycle than actual work.
| huytersd wrote:
| Manmohan Singh was seen as exceptionally spineless (because
| he pretty much cowtowed to whatever the Gandhi family
| said). That's not how Biden is perceived. At all. Biden has
| installed more justices than Obama and Trump combined. He
| has done it without the right freaking out about it. He has
| been incredibly effective if you delve past the surface.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| In right wing circles Biden is often perceived as a
| puppet for 'elites', too old and senile to make his own
| decisions. Every other tweet about him seems to get
| people joking about how he had to go to bed early or how
| they had to drag him out to make a speech. I was a bit
| young to carefully follow Manmohan's term, but I recall
| that one of the comments I often heard from adults were
| that he was clearly too old for office.
| vkou wrote:
| It's funny how his speech is an indicator that he is too
| old for office, when his opponent's speech is so
| frequently and completely unhinged[1], that it sounds
| like a self-parody.
|
| ---
|
| > [1] I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to
| have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don't have a
| musical instrument. I don't have a guitar or an organ. No
| organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people
| helping. No we've broken a lot of records. We've broken
| virtually every record. Because you know, look I only
| need this space. They need much more room. For
| basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a
| lot of room. We don't need it. We have people in that
| space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it
| without like, the musical instruments. This is the only
| musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to
| the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the
| mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Yep, it's pretty ironic, the only difference between the
| two (in terms of showing their age) is that Trump is more
| energetic (animated?), but energy doesn't translate to
| coherence.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Its always been this way, but the internet sure has amplified
| the effect of Edward Bernay's theories. So much free PR copy is
| created on your behalf by your army of sheep active on the
| internet. Used to be that stuff was put on car windshield
| wipers and promptly thrown away, now people are engaging with
| it online now that there's a mechanism to talk back to it.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Unfortunately, if you have a contentious issue which is decided
| by fiat of one of the sides being in power and not by mutual
| compromise, there's no reason for the other side, coming in
| power, to not change it back. Since, fortunately, we still have
| a functioning democracy in the US, the sides in power change.
| Since, unfortunately, there seems to be not enough will to
| reach a workable compromise satisfactory to both sides, flip-
| flopping will likely continue in the foreseeable future, until
| either societal consensus moves firmly on one side of the issue
| to the point that makes other side's position untenable, or
| some mutually agreeable compromise emerges.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Unfortunately, if you have a contentious issue
|
| At it's core, it is a technical issue - primarily network
| management. Under NN framework, ISPs would adhere to minimal
| straightforward rules that would disallowed them from
| prioritizing, throttling, capping, purposefully degrading,
| etc wireline networks. For most of 2 decades, this is where
| NN lived.
|
| In apparent response to NN becoming reality, ISP funded
| representatives began echoing the talking points of ISP
| lobbyist groups and contention was born.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I don't think it's a technical issue. The implementation is
| technical, but the implications are societal. Is the state
| allowed to restrict ISPs from certain forms of network
| management? How far the governmental control over ISP
| actions can go? Does such restriction benefit the society?
| I'm sure a lot of people have opinions on these questions,
| but it's not a technical issue and not one that has an
| obvious correct solution. It's not like "is quicksort
| better than bubble sort" (even that is not 100% clear cut
| but let's not get into the weeds) where you can make
| mathematical arguments and tests to establish the
| conclusion. It's a matter of values and policies, and as
| such, it's bound to produce disagreement. I don't think
| it's also useful to frame it as "it all worked super
| awesome and then greedy capitalists stole it from us by
| their dirty tricks". It's usually not how it works and it's
| not what happened in this case.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > ... I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of
| legislation depending on which party is in charge.
|
| By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either one
| party (always the same party) being completely obstructionist,
| even other presidential appointments, or if a rotating villain
| who defects and stops any meaningful legislation.
|
| Power has moved to the courts and to the states. Again,
| entirely by design. In the current term, there is an inocuous
| sounding case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo [1],
| which is expected to overturn a longstanding (~40 years)
| precedent called Chevron [2]. This would gut Federal agencies.
| Chevron set a precedent that in areas of ambiguity courts would
| give deference to Federal agencies. The argument for this is
| that Congress has to be explicit but Congress cannot possibly
| explicitly regulate, for example, salmon quotas and
| inspections. The goal here is deregulation for profit. That's
| it.
|
| For the last 30+ years, every president issues an executive
| order on day 1 either banning or allowing recipients of foreign
| aid to provide counselling on abortion, depending on the party.
|
| The real question here is why did this take 3 years into
| Biden's regime for the FCC to act? The FCC is an appointed
| position. This could've been done in 2021.
|
| > Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting
| old enough to be bothered by it?
|
| No, it's now more obstructionist than it ever has been but it's
| always been more difficult to make changes than not. Previously
| there was more respect for institutional norms. For example, if
| the president nominated someone for a position, that person
| would always get a Senate hearing regardless of who controlled
| the Senate. There is no law that required that but people
| previously accepted the president had a mandate for
| appointments. Now? It's way more scorched earth.
|
| [1]: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/loper-bright-
| ent...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natu
| ra....
| tivert wrote:
| > By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either
| one party (always the same party) being completely
| obstructionist, even other presidential appointments, or if a
| rotating villain who defects and stops any meaningful
| legislation.
|
| Don't pretend like the Democrats wouldn't be just as
| obstructionist if it suited their political objectives.
|
| What we actually have is lack of consensus, and excessively
| polarized factions that are unwilling to budge to create a
| consensus (or rather waste their energy making a great deal
| of noise on non-consensus issues and nonstarters and
| bickering with each other).
| jmyeet wrote:
| > Don't pretend like the Democrats wouldn't be just as
| obstructionist if it suited their political objectives.
|
| So if someone throws a stone at you, you might reasonably
| be tempted to throw a stone back. If called up on this, you
| might be tempted to say "he started it". Legally speaking,
| that might or might not be a defense.
|
| What if instead you throw a stone at someone and justify it
| with "he was going to throw a stone at me"? Would you
| consider that a sound defense?
|
| Take it further. Your defense becomes "he would've thrown a
| stone at me if he had the option so I had to throw the
| stone at him". No reasonable person would respect that
| argument.
|
| So why is the hypothetical "Democrats would block a Supreme
| Court nomination if they had the chance" reasonable to you?
| xienze wrote:
| > Don't pretend like the Democrats wouldn't be just as
| obstructionist if it suited their political objectives.
|
| And this is exactly what they did when Trump was in office!
| Their motto was "#resist" for crying out loud. Sheesh,
| right now TikTok is on the verge of being banned, something
| that they were completely against when Trump wanted to do
| it. Bad idea when Trump wants it, good idea when Biden
| does.
|
| Just be honest folks, it's truly a "both sides" thing. And
| honestly, political gridlock is a good thing. Most of the
| people here on HN quickly forget how valuable it is when
| it's the side YOU don't like ramming legislation through.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > The real question here is why did this take 3 years into
| Biden's regime for the FCC to act? The FCC is an appointed
| position. This could've been done in 2021.
|
| FCC commissioners must be approved by the Senate. Biden
| nominated Gigi Sohn in 2021. Republicans blocked her. Biden
| nominated Sohn again. I don't think he said why. But other
| Democrats believed Republicans would block anyone who would
| restore net neutrality. Republicans blocked Sohn again.
| Democrats took control of the Senate in 2023. Joe Manchin
| said he would block Sohn. Sohn withdrew. Biden nominated Anna
| Gomez. The Senate approved her in September. The FCC started
| the process for this vote a few days later.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > Biden nominated Gigi Sohn in 2021
|
| Democrats controlled the Senate in 2021. Republicans didn't
| block the nomination. Democrats _allowed_ the Republicans
| to block the nomination. The process by which that block
| happened could easily have been eliminated by a Senate
| rules change. There were attempts to do this on other
| issues (eg voting rights) but the rotating villains of the
| Democratic Party at the time (ie Sinema, Manchin) blocked
| it.
|
| Joe Liebermann was previously the rotating villain. He is
| singlehandedly the only reason why 55 year olds can't buy
| into Medicare to get health insurance coverage.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The Senate was split evenly in 2021 and operated under a
| power sharing agreement. And you can't change rules
| easily or not when you don't have the votes.
|
| I reject the rotating villain conspiracy theory. 1
| scapegoat would have been enough. Sinema's choices ended
| her Senate career. Manchin and Lieberman didn't change
| suddenly.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The issue is that it isn't legislation. It's a regulation. Laws
| are both harder to get passed and harder to overturn
| vkou wrote:
| We are flipfloppimg because the legislature is paralysed, so
| only the executive can function.
|
| This is a fundamental issue with the American form of
| government. Parliamentary systems which have the executive made
| up of members of the legislature have way less flip-flopping,
| finger-pointing, and paralysis.
|
| The governments they produce are more reflective of current
| public sentiment, end up with more than two parties, and are
| thus less stable. Minority rule and coalition rule is very
| common... which actively forces either compromise, or a new
| election.
| massysett wrote:
| This "paralyzed" legislature just passed, by large margins, a
| large amount of foreign aid and a very significant provision
| on a popular social media platform.
|
| Before that it spent billions of dollars on covid aid.
|
| Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars
| to keep the government running.
|
| This "paralyzed" narrative is something the press and
| politicians like to push because it serves their ends, though
| for different reasons. It's false.
| vkou wrote:
| > Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of
| dollars to keep the government running.
|
| In no other country is it considered an accomplishment for
| a government to debate a budget, agree on it, pass it,
| spend it, and then three quarters of the way through the
| year _refuse to pay_ for the spending it agreed on,
| manufacturing a crisis that sometimes gets resolved at the
| eleventh hour, and sometimes results in a multi-week
| disaster and government shutdown.
|
| If a company had a department that ran that way, every
| single director and manager in it would be fired after the
| first time it happened. It has so far happened _three_
| times (Including once when the Republicans _fully_
| controlled congress), and has been threatened _every year_.
| massysett wrote:
| > three quarters of the way through the year refuse to
| pay for the spending it agreed on,
|
| At no time did this happen.
| Gormo wrote:
| The two-party system in the US is equivalent to a multiparty
| coalition system, just with the coalitions negotiated before
| the election instead of after it.
| dmorgan81 wrote:
| Congress was destined to this fate when they eliminated
| earmarks. Earmarks, or pork barrel spending, were derided as
| gov't waste, but in reality they were the grease that kept
| legislation moving. A representative could go back to their
| voters and say, "I voted for this thing you might not like, but
| I did it to ensure this crucial local project got done."
|
| Without earmarks there is no incentive to compromise.
| Compromise is actually a liability now, because there is always
| someone who will challenge you in a primary and promise to be
| more "ideologically pure." Without the ability to point to
| money and public works to defend yourself both during a primary
| and an election the best you can do is point to a record
| without compromise.
| favorited wrote:
| Earmarks are back. They were against the House's rules for 10
| years, but the 117th Congress started allowing them again in
| 2021.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| And the past three years have seen the return of
| friendliness and comity unseen for a decade /s
| mrcwinn wrote:
| I think the results are mixed and the lessons aren't clear to
| me.
|
| Perhaps earmarks were the result of an electorate that wanted
| more purity in decision-making (at the cost of stability). In
| other words, earmarks didn't break cooperation. Corrupted
| cooperation led to the end of earmarks.
|
| Earmarks probably do grease the wheels, but it's important to
| remember a step existed before the compromise: a member of
| the congress could hold out until they received something,
| often unrelated to the matter at hand. That is wasteful and,
| to some, dishonest.
|
| Now, did a removal earmarking result in more financial
| efficiency? Surely not. The budget deficit continued to grow,
| mostly because of Obamacare, Covid, wars, tax cuts.
|
| So what of compromise? One might think compromise is dead,
| and yet we live in a world where Ukraine aid is tied to
| social media ownership.
|
| Shruggy dude.
| D13Fd wrote:
| You're absolutely right IMO. When there is no reason to
| compromise and compromise can only hurt you, no one
| compromises and nothing gets done. Earmarks shift those
| incentives in the right direction, and their cost is a small
| price to pay to have a government that governs.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| There are still bill riders on many congressional votes. I
| don't think this is true (regarding elimination of earmarks)
| yencabulator wrote:
| Not wanting to compromise comes largely from the two-party
| system. If a politician had to worry about losing votes to a
| more moderate party, they'd end up with less extreme voting
| records.
|
| Multi-party governments function largely because some subset
| of the parties agrees to compromises to gain a combined
| majority on a specific topic; none of them can do anything in
| isolation.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It used to be the case that Congress actually passed laws. And
| pre-Chevron, the regulatory agencies actually constrained their
| rule making to be within the law, and so laws were more
| specific.
|
| The problem started IMHO with Republican obstructionism under
| Clinton, but got out of control with Obama's shift to using
| executive orders over legislation after the affordable care act
| nonsense. It's definitely a both sides issue.
| Rury wrote:
| Perhaps it's getting worse, but it has always been this way to
| a degree. What few people seem to realize, is that while
| democracy and the separating of powers seem good in principle,
| they also have innately dysfunctional qualities to them. The
| more divided or opposed things are, the more dysfunction there
| is.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Proportional representation, multiple parties, and
| parliamentary system (no legislative executive divide) can fix
| this.
| Gormo wrote:
| Proportional representation is a terrible idea, in that it
| entrenches the role of parties per se, but ranked-choice
| balloting in SMDs would be a massive improvement over the
| status quo.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Nope nope nope. Political parties are _good_. 2 incumbent
| political parties in a permanent grapple is what is bad.
| Politics is a "team sport", by which I don't mean it must
| a facile context practiced by west-wing-loving weirdos, but
| that is is a fundamentally collective effort.
|
| Americans love to think political parties are inherently
| bad, but seriously when are mere individuals reliable? How
| the hell am I supposed to tell who all these down-ballet
| no-names are and what they actually believe in? Much of the
| rest of the democratic world functions fine with parties
| that are not all 150+ years old and ship-of-theseus-ed
| beyond recognition.
| Gormo wrote:
| Nah, parties are bad. They perfectly exemplify the adage
| about people dedicated to the ostensible mission of the
| organization vs. those dedicated to the organization as
| an end it itself. With formalized parties, we often see
| the strategic concerns of the party as an organization
| eclipse any coherent policy goals that are the ostensible
| reason for the party existing in the first place.
|
| Multi-party in particular democracy has some significant
| pitfalls, including the tendency of marginal and
| extremist parties to play kingmaker. The historian Hannah
| Arendt made some salient points about how the multi-party
| structure of Weimar Germany contributed directly to the
| radicalization and eventual total control of the state by
| the Nazis.
|
| Politics will always involve factions forming around
| shared interests or values, but in a situation without
| those factions being calcified into formal organizations,
| or even identities, we'd expect them to be much more
| fluid and ephemeral, and for politicians to be much more
| willing to reach across ideological divides without
| worrying about institutional discipline or being
| ostracized by the party establishment regardless of their
| constituents' opinions.
|
| Ranked-choice balloting wouldn't eliminate parties per
| se, but it would reduce their influence in the electoral
| process significantly.
|
| > How the hell am I supposed to tell who all these down-
| ballet no-names are and what they actually believe in?
|
| I'd expect a reasonable voter to investigate the actual
| candidates on the ballot and make an informed choice, and
| not merely rely on party affiliation as the only
| criterion for casting a vote.
| rchaud wrote:
| Hard problems are considered unsolvable by today's Congress
| (except for military funding bills), so they focus their
| energies on 'red meat' for the voting base (abortion
| resrictions, affirmative action), or for wealthy donors (tax
| cuts, SC nominations).
| mise_en_place wrote:
| > Safeguard National Security - The Commission will have the
| ability to revoke the authorizations of foreign-owned entities
| who pose a threat to national security to operate broadband
| networks in the U.S. The Commission has previously exercised this
| authority under section 214 of the Communications Act to revoke
| the operating authorities of four Chinese state-owned carriers to
| provide voice services in the U.S. Any provider without section
| 214 authorization for voice services must now also cease any
| fixed or mobile broadband service operations in the United
| States.
|
| That seems rather vague. The timing is also rather interesting,
| given the forced divestiture of TikTok.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| > That seems rather vague. The timing is also rather
| interesting, given the forced divestiture of TikTok.
|
| This is just a press release. The actual decision is more than
| 400 pages long and will come out in the next few days. Here's
| the draft of the order released three weeks ago:
| https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf (Of
| course, parts of this will inevitably be vague as well.)
|
| The timing is almost certainly a coincidence. They started the
| process of adopting these rules as soon as they could after
| democrats regained a majority of seats on the FCC last year and
| got them done as fast as they could.
| reaperman wrote:
| I'm not sure that's the order itself or just a very detailed
| "fact sheet" about the orde. It seems like it references the
| content of the order in great detail, allowing someone to
| figure it out, but I don't see the raw text of the rule there
| unless I just don't understand what FCC rules look like. I
| read a lot of FTC rules and court documents, but this the
| first time I'm looking for the full text of something the FCC
| voted on or was something close to it (like an earlier
| version of the exact document they voted on).
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm fully in support of net neutrality, but I'm somewhat
| surprised they're restoring it, as I have not really heard a peep
| about it since it was repealed in the first place. From my
| perspective, nothing about the internet changed since then (my
| experience did not upgrade or downgrade). People stopped talking
| about it, there weren't major protests, news about it even
| largely disappeared from the front page of HN (!). So, I would be
| beyond shocked if this was an election year issue of substance.
| What, then, is the impetus for restoring the net neutrality
| rules, given there is always some political _cost_ to any action
| like this? Has the lack of net neutrality caused issues that I
| just have not heard about?
| notatoad wrote:
| >What, then, is the impetus for restoring the net neutrality
| rules, given there is always some political cost to any action
| like this?
|
| there's usually _some_ principled people in the government, and
| every now an then when an issue is obscure enough they can
| manage to get something done without the other side caring too
| much.
|
| what's the impetus for blocking this?
| dantheman wrote:
| it's not needed, the fcc doesnt have the authority, keeping
| the government away from internet is a good thing
| andygeorge wrote:
| > lack of net neutrality caused issues
|
| given it's all still just regional ISP monopolies, there is
| decided _not_ a lack of issues
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> What, then, is the impetus for restoring the net neutrality
| rules, given there is always some political cost to any action
| like this? Has the lack of net neutrality caused issues that I
| just have not heard about?_
|
| The rule was always going to get reversed eventually. Several
| major factions within the Democratic party are strong
| supporters of net neutrality and they've become increasingly
| more powerful over the last two decades, at the expense of its
| detractors like the media conglomerates and ISPs.
|
| It only took this long because of the Administrative Procedure
| Act [1] which regulates how agencies make rules. They can't
| just flip flop the second a new political party gains power
| because of judicial review - they have to follow a process
| (though they probably also timed this for an election year).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > nothing about the internet changed since then
|
| I had an extended outage and could not contact my ISP. They
| kept sending me to a bot, and I had no idea if anyone actually
| knew about the outage or was doing anything to fix it.
| callalex wrote:
| That has absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality.
| EGG_CREAM wrote:
| If you read the article, it does have to do with the
| ruling. Part of regulating ISPs as a utility is that they
| can regulate/enforce rules on how ISPs handle outages.
| RRWagner wrote:
| I was one of the "peeps" testifying to the California Assembly
| committee that promptly made Net Neutrality a CA thing even if
| not yet Federal.
| romwell wrote:
| Which is why most consumers didn't notice.
|
| CA making something a rule makes it a very strong incentive
| to follow it nationwide.
| Cody-99 wrote:
| >So, I would be beyond shocked if this was an election year
| issue of substance.
|
| Because it isn't an election year issue. This has been in the
| works since at least
| 2022.https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/net-neutrality-will-
| make-...
|
| The rule making process takes time!
|
| >From my perspective, nothing about the internet changed since
| then (my experience did not upgrade or downgrade). People
| stopped talking about it, there weren't major protests, news
| about it even largely disappeared from the front page of HN
| (!). ... What, then, is the impetus for restoring the net
| neutrality rules, given there is always some political cost to
| any action like this? Has the lack of net neutrality caused
| issues that I just have not heard about?
|
| IMO it seems likely ISPs knew the rules were likely to come
| back so they avoided most of the practices that would generate
| outrage (throttling streaming and other popular services unless
| you pay an additional fee). I have no doubt if they could get
| away with it they would haha. Many providers did roll out zero
| rating programs.
|
| As for why this is important just because ISPs aren't currently
| doing it on a large scale doesn't mean steps shouldn't be taken
| to prohibit it. We already know what happens in the long run
| when ISPs are allowed to double dip
| https://restofworld.org/2024/south-korea-twitch-exit-problem...
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > IMO it seems likely ISPs knew the rules were likely to come
| back so they avoided most of the practices that would
| generate outrage (throttling streaming and other popular
| services unless you pay an additional fee).
|
| And several states passed their own laws.
| rixthefox wrote:
| ... and then these same ISPs complained that there was no
| single "law of the land". We heard it would be an
| "unnecessary burden" for these ISPs to have to deal with
| Net Neutrality in a state-by-state basis.
|
| As a group, they sure do love to complain. They voted to
| get rid of the national standard in the first place! Then
| when real solutions are being voted on they love to yell
| and screech about how it's "THE END OF THE INTERNET AS WE
| KNOW IT!!!" yeah... Bunch of whiners.
| tivert wrote:
| > The rule making process takes time!
|
| No, it doesn't take this much time. It's just that net
| neutrality wasn't a priority for the Biden administration, so
| they dragged their feet until the very last minute. IIRC,
| there's been a flurry of rule-making _just now_ because they
| are running up against a Congressional Review Act deadline.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > It's just that net neutrality wasn't a priority for the
| Biden administration, so they dragged their feet until the
| very last minute.
|
| The FCC was deadlocked until September 2023 and started
| this process a few days later. Maybe they could have
| started in 2022 if Biden had nominated someone else after
| Republicans blocked his 1st choice. But Democrats believed
| Republicans would block anyone who would restore net
| neutrality.
| tivert wrote:
| > The FCC was deadlocked until September 2023 and started
| this process a few days later.
|
| I am aware of that.
|
| > Maybe they could have started in 2022 if Biden had
| nominated someone else after Republicans blocked his 1st
| choice. But Democrats believed Republicans would block
| anyone who would restore net neutrality.
|
| And they were proven wrong, and didn't even try to test
| their theory until half his term was over. That counts as
| "not a priority" in my book.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| > The rule making process takes time!
|
| It really didn't have to in this case. It would have been
| perfectly acceptable to crib California's NN law, ctrl-r
| "California" "United States of America" and call it a day.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The FCC has a legally mandated process (see Administrative
| Procedure Act) including a public comment period that is
| open to judicial review. They can't just copy California's
| law and call it a day, they have to actually take public
| comments into consideration. If they don't follow this
| process the courts will overturn the rules.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, literally, there is a legal requirement for certain
| process; debates over whether it was properly followed tied
| the Trump repeal up in court for a while though it was
| eveentually resolved in favor of the Administration.
|
| Not even bothering to follow the clear objective formal
| requirements of that process (the question about Trump was
| more about good faith in the substance) would make it
| trivial to defeat in court.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| They couldn't seat the fifth person (democrat) because the
| GOP was blocking it. As soon as the person was seated, they
| moved forward with restoring net neutrality. Hands were
| tied until then because they couldn't get the 3-2 vote.
| callalex wrote:
| What changed for me is that my home internet provider (Comcast)
| implemented an overly-burdensome impossible data cap that I can
| only get rid of if I agree to use their router with deep packet
| inspection, ad injection, and more.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Fwiw you can set their router to bridge mode and use your
| own. It is probably still doing some traffic analysis but
| certainly no ad injection. This is what I do to get unlimited
| data without paying their exorbitant standalone fee.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| I believe they are only restoring it to enact "security" aka
| more spying. I would like to see what the actual text of these
| policies are. The administration has its tentacles into too
| many tech companies already.
| feoren wrote:
| > So, I would be beyond shocked if this was an election year
| issue of substance. What, then, is the impetus for restoring
| the net neutrality rules, given there is always some political
| cost to any action like this?
|
| It is the right thing to do. That's it. That's the impetus.
|
| I know everyone likes to shit on the idea that _some_ people in
| government might actually _give a shit_ about effectively
| governing. The party that is _not_ interested in governing
| loudly proclaims this fact (and gets rewarded for it), and
| spreads the idea that anyone that _is_ interested in effective
| governance is a naive moron. But there are some people who
| actually care about governing, and those people are all in one
| party (the converse is not true -- not everyone in that party
| cares about governing.)
|
| Just like shithole-dictators love it when you think every
| country is a shithole run by a dictator, so do those who wish
| to destroy our government love it when you think that nobody
| else cares about governing, either.
| bko wrote:
| The proponents of net neutrality thought without it ISPs would
| just arbitrarily block data and require bribes from data
| providers to even serve up their data. In reality, no net
| neutrality would mean things like Netflix not counting as data
| on your mobile plan through some kind of sponsorship, or free
| basic internet like Wikipedia and news at a lower cost.
|
| I don't support legislation that bans something undertaken
| voluntarily unless it proves to be very harmful and the last
| few years have proven that we don't need this legislation.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > and the last few years have proven that we don't need this
| legislation.
|
| Given that large states like California and New York passed
| independent net neutrality laws and there were continuing
| legal battles in almost half of all US states I don't think
| you can draw many conclusions. ISP behavior very likely never
| changed because they knew they were just one decision away
| from having to comply. Sort of proven by this very decision
| we're commenting on.
| bko wrote:
| Here is something I found. Seems like "unfair" since
| they're favoring their videos but as a user its okay by me
| since I get something for free and preventing them from not
| counting their content doesn't mean they'll necessarily
| just drop their data cap.
|
| If ISPs just behave because it's always just a ruling away,
| then I'm fine with that status quo. I don't want unintended
| consequences from invasive legislation that could
| eventually be used to control what ISPs can show us
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2016/02/veriz...
| ryukoposting wrote:
| > free basic internet like Wikipedia and news at a lower
| cost.
|
| I can't comprehend why you think ISPs would feel compelled to
| be so altruistic without any government intervention.
|
| Except, since when was free wi-fi an impossible thing to
| find? Ever been to a coffee shop? Even in the "free shitty
| half-internet for everyone" pipe dream, the costs of such a
| service don't just magically disappear. Either way, someone's
| paying for that free internet, and it isn't the ISP.
|
| Telecoms likely didn't deploy anything because this was
| obviously going to get overruled by the next non-Trump FCC.
| Even Ajit Pai has a long record of advocating for modernizing
| the FCC, which would explicitly involve the regulation of
| internet services. Abolishing net neutrality is only
| universally popular among communities where the underlying
| philosophy is "government is bad, and I'm gonna prove it by
| running it badly."
| aprilnya wrote:
| I have a friend in Texas who had some issues because of net
| neutrality being gone (huge throttling on some sites)
| spamizbad wrote:
| ISPs predicted this would happen and didn't want to have to
| revert back everything.
| mastre_ wrote:
| This reminds me when I got a "survey" email from ERCOT, the
| entity that oversees Texas' "deregulated" energy provider
| racket. I was ready to lay into them hard, but starting with
| the second or third questions, it was clear that all they were
| concerned about was to _sell_ new products -- ZERO interest in
| hearing feedback of how terrible the system for end users, they
| just want to sell some sort of outage insurance product ("would
| you pay $5 to be protected from a 30 minute or less outage one
| time?").
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a less than noble
| ulterior motive behind this push, although I'm hoping for the
| best. Sounds like the main reason it may actually make sense to
| bring it back from their PoV is because ISPs have to deal with
| individual state laws.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| Because California saved it.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Internet_Consumer_P...
|
| If any of the companies that wanted to exploit the lack of FCC
| enforced net neutrality did business with California they would
| have had a big problem.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40159776
| theoperagoer wrote:
| ISPs should be allowed to throttle traffic for services.
| Otherwise, the result is going to be increased costs for all end-
| users.
| wtallis wrote:
| I think you need to provide a lot more explanation and
| clarification of what you mean; your comment as written sounds
| like nothing more than a hollow talking point. What kind of
| throttling in what situations would be prohibited by these
| regulations and how would that cause increased costs?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Maybe DDOS protection? IE: Things that ensure that a
| malicious user can't negatively impact other users on the
| network.
| wtallis wrote:
| Have you ever seen even a draft of a proposed regulation
| that didn't already have clear exceptions for that?
| Cody-99 wrote:
| No they shouldn't. I don't think that logic makes any sense at
| all. No one is paying increased costs because their neighbor is
| watching netflix, youtube, or browsing reddit. Users already
| pay for internet service they shouldn't have to pay again
| because the ISP wants to be greedy and double dip from fees to
| avoid throttling.
| theoperagoer wrote:
| If netflix traffic is straining ISPs to the point of
| requiring hardware upgrades etc., I think it is fair for ISPs
| to ask them to pay _some_ of that cost.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Their customers already pay the cost. The ISPs offer IP
| services. The customers on each end pay for it.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > If netflix traffic is straining ISPs to the point of
| requiring hardware upgrades etc., I think it is fair for
| ISPs to ask them to pay some of that cost.
|
| It is fair for ISPs to ask their customers to pay for
| required upgrades. Netflix's ISPs can ask Netflix.
| Netflix's customers' ISPs can ask Netflix's customers.
| Cody-99 wrote:
| It isn't netflix traffic it is ISP customer traffic which
| they pay for. Hardware upgrade, bandwidth costs, and other
| operating costs are already paid for by the ISP customers.
| The ISP should not be able to double dip by charging
| netflix or the customer a second time.
|
| If the ISP isn't able to provide the service they
| advertised and sold they should be investigated and be
| issuing refunds at the very least. Can't provide the
| service you said you could? Maybe don't advertise and
| defraud customers.
| theoperagoer wrote:
| it's not a double-dip. if a single service is behind load
| problems and causing general service degradation, I think
| it is fair to throttle that service.
| Cody-99 wrote:
| It is a double dip. The ISP customer already pays for
| that bandwidth and internet connection. Asking the
| customer to pay a second time or asking netflix to pay is
| clearly double dipping. Trying to call it something else
| is just silly!
|
| >causing general service degradation
|
| Customers using their internet service they pay for isn't
| causing service degradation. If the ISP oversold or lied
| about being able to provide the service they were selling
| that is another issue. The response to that shouldn't be
| charging more for a service customers already pay for.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Customer pays for say, 1Gbps bidirectional. ISP has a
| total capacity of 1Tbps. They find that the average usage
| rate from users is 100Mbps bidirectional, so they sign on
| 10x as many users as they could truly offer a full 1Gbps
| to, taking a risk. Then new services come along, and the
| customer average usage increases to 500Mbps.
|
| Instead of upgrading their total capacity, reducing their
| user count by 5x or reducing the speeds they promise, the
| ISP decides that it's the service's fault that they can't
| provide the 1 Gbps they're selling. This is obviously
| double dipping. They want to both sell higher bandwidths
| than they can provide, and charge others for making them
| have to provide what they're advertising.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They should be able to throttle across the board to load
| balance. They sell an IP protocol service. They should honor
| the customer's wishes by delivering those packets fairly, not
| necessarily reliably.
| packetlost wrote:
| They can, and they do. It's called QoS and it's not
| effected by net neutrality.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > No one is paying increased costs because their neighbor is
| watching netflix, youtube, or browsing reddit
|
| Increased bandwidth = Increased costs
|
| Who do you think is paying?
| Cody-99 wrote:
| The ISP customers already paid for that. The ISP customer
| already paid for the bandwidth, hardware, and all other
| costs. Not sure why this is confusing for you. The ISP
| isn't paying more because Bob next door decides to watch
| netflix for a few hours a night.
|
| >Who do you think is paying?
|
| The customer..? Are you really confused about this?
| paulddraper wrote:
| > already paid
|
| In some cases. In other cases, it hasn't even happened
| yet.
|
| > Are you really confused about this?
|
| I'm not at all confused.
|
| The ISP spends $X to build and maintain infrastructure
| for Y Gbps internet.
|
| Mobile carriers do the same.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Yes, and then they charge $Z dollars for a certain
| bandwidth allotment to each of their customers. It does
| not cost the ISP more money to route a MB/s to Netflix
| than it does to route a MB/s to Reddit.
| Cody-99 wrote:
| >In some cases. In other cases, it hasn't even happened
| yet.
|
| ..? By the point ISP customers receive internet they have
| either already paid for the service, paid a deposit, or
| agreed to pay for it the following month like other
| utilities. In all of these cases by the time the user
| makes use of their service they have already agreed to
| pay for the internet service which includes data,
| hardware, and other infrastructure fees.
|
| >The ISP spends $X to build and maintain infrastructure
| for Y Gbps internet.
|
| EXACTLY. You are proving my point! The customer of the
| ISP has already paid for that. It doesn't cost the ISP
| any more money if I make use of my service by sending
| data to netflix, reddit, or whoever! If I watch netflix
| 12 hours a day it costs the ISP exactly $0 extra dollars.
| Asking me to pay more money or be throttled is
| ridiculous.
|
| Hell, if you have one of the largest ISPs they pay
| nothing for any amount of data transfer over their
| networks anyway so your argument is even weaker lol.
| acdha wrote:
| The ISP's customers pay for their costs. The problem
| started when those ISPs decided they weren't satisfied
| with 15-20% profit margins and started finding other ways
| to generate revenue like selling their customers'
| activity data to advertisers, injecting ads, or by trying
| to get popular services to double-pay their operating
| costs.
|
| You can tell it's not a real barrier to the business in
| two ways: one is that it only affects MBA-infested
| companies - small ISPs and municipal broadband never
| seems to have a problem providing better service for less
| money - and the other is that they're not asking their
| customers to pay more. If their cost of providing service
| had actually gone up, they'd have been open about that
| and own the claim that a few Mbps costs more than it used
| to despite all evidence to the contrary. Keeping as a
| back room deal lets them try to hide all of the details
| behind NDAs.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I already paid for my bandwidth.
|
| I bought a 1 gigabit connection. If the 10-20 mbps data
| stream from Netflix is overloading my ISP, then my ISP is
| not providing me with what I paid for.
| bee_rider wrote:
| ISPs should throttle for network health if necessary. This
| should occur in a fashion that is fair to users, some services
| might get hit disproportionately because they consume a lot of
| bandwidth, but no services should be given an exception just
| because they happen to be, say, provided by the ISP.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I feel like this is positive, but it doesn't really go far enough
| to have an impact on the internet as it exists today. The network
| itself being neutral doesn't make much difference at all to the
| average user when the majority of internet usage is through
| private platforms that are not bound by any such rules. We need
| to have some utility style regulation for the large web platforms
| too.
| richwater wrote:
| Remember when the Internet freaked out and "when dark" to protest
| how the lack of NN would ruin the internet?....and then nothing
| changed?
|
| The boy who cried wolf...again.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| You're being down voted for telling the truth, which is
| extremely inconvenient. Notice all the debate in this thread is
| about partisan score keeping and no one is able to explain why
| they want these rules back after all their predictions of
| terrible doom failed to happen. They need them back so they can
| claim doom was just around the corner if they hadn't been
| passed. The longer they went without being in effect, the more
| difficult it would be to explain why the doom never came to be.
|
| It is 100%, Grade A partisan score keeping to preserve future
| doomsaying without being called out on this absolutely failed
| predictions. Looks as bad for the doomsayers as a Bush
| administration's doomsaying about Weapons of Mass Destruction
| piling up in Iraq, ready to attack the US if we didn't invade.
| Incredible what people will let their partisan brains twist
| reality into. Of course, when this is used against them in the
| future, they'll scream like banshees, claiming it's
| unprecedented. This is the power of a brain addicted to
| partisanism.
| amelius wrote:
| This is a bit like removing a traffic light from an
| intersection and then after a day saying "see, nothing
| happened, we don't need regulation from traffic lights".
| Laissez faire, everything will be alright.
| richwater wrote:
| > and then after a day
|
| It's been ~5.5 years since "the internet was doomed" by the
| FTC[0]
|
| How long are we supposed to wait for your doom prophecy to
| realize?
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet-
| exclusive/ex...
| kaibee wrote:
| ISPs don't exist in a vacuum. Why would Comcast spend
| millions of dollars implementing some anti-NN consumer
| ratfuckery when they'd have to revert it once the next
| administration came into power? If Comcast knew that it
| wasn't going to get overturned, then they would take
| advantage.
| richwater wrote:
| > If Comcast knew that it wasn't going to get overturned,
| then they would take advantage.
|
| So now our logic is based on a crystal ball? Do the
| goalposts ever stop moving?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| California stepped up and passed its own net neutrality
| law, which effectively killed any widespread adoption of
| anti-net neutrality practices.
|
| It's not unreasonable for the federal government to step
| back in to regulate an issue that is firmly within their
| purview.
| skeaker wrote:
| > How long are we supposed to wait for your doom prophecy
| to realize?
|
| We shouldn't have waited at all, and in fact shouldn't have
| allowed it to be repealed in the first place. We have been
| extraordinarily lucky to have not had to deal with any
| nonsense from ISPs in all this time. California having
| their own NN law helped a lot. Now that we're back on track
| we can call it crisis averted, no harm no foul.
| guptaneil wrote:
| The fight for net neutrality may not have been as public
| anymore, but it kept going over the last 5 years. Plenty of
| court cases challenging the FCC's ruling have been ongoing and
| California even passed their own net neutrality law. Congress
| attempted to pass a bill that would enshrine net neutrality as
| well, though of course the Republic majority never allowed it
| to get to a vote.
|
| All this is to say despite net neutrality technically not being
| federally required between 2018 - 2024, it wasn't feasibly for
| ISP's to roll out metered plans that would go unchallenged. I
| suspect most were stuck in a "wait and see" stage, and likely
| expected this eventual rollback anyway given the landscape is
| still so rapidly changing.
|
| So the protests and constant pushing back against NN did have a
| positive impact on our eventual outcome, even if it's not
| obvious or a direct line from reddit blackouts. Like most
| things, the truth is complex.
| exabrial wrote:
| I mean great. I don't really want the things it's trying to ban,
| so good?
|
| But this is sorta like plastic straw bans: 0.0000000001% actual
| impact, all while making HUGE headlines, while doing absolutely
| zero to solve root systemic issues: Entrenched Local Monopolies
| by telco providers.
|
| So yeah, good, glad my Nebula won't be slower than my YouTubes,
| while all along I just wanted to ditch the assholes in the first
| place and use a different ISP.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > glad my Nebula won't be slower than my YouTubes
|
| To be fair, wouldn't this still be the case? Google peer with
| many ISPs, and have a _lot_ of server / networking prowess, so
| the YouTube experience is normally pretty good across the
| board.
|
| Nebula, on the other hand, is a fairly new player from my
| understanding.
| mdasen wrote:
| Yes, YouTube might have better CDN solutions, but ISPs can't
| unfairly discriminate against Nebula. Nebula is a new player,
| but presumably they're using CDNs with good reach.
|
| The point isn't that Google can't build a better CDN. The
| point is that we don't want ISPs creating a situation where
| they've inked a deal with Google to prevent good performance
| from YouTube competitors. We don't want a situation where
| "YouTube is the exclusive 4K video provider on ISP-X."
| Zenzero wrote:
| As much as I support the decision are we just going to keep
| playing this game flipping back and forth across administrations?
| ImJamal wrote:
| Yes until the congress actually does their job and passes a
| law.
| tbeseda wrote:
| https://archive.li/ITyf1
| martinbaun wrote:
| Thanks
| feoren wrote:
| This flip-flopping happens because there is no commonality to
| find. One of the only (effectively) two major political parties
| of the United States is completely uninterested in governing.
| They have no policy. They have no plan for governing; they don't
| _like_ governing. Their only goal is the piecemeal selloff of
| government powers to the highest bidder, and they convince their
| stalwart followers of this by making sure they get their daily
| dose of _other people suffering_. As long as others are
| suffering, their base will support the wholesale takeover of
| government by the rich.
|
| The other half is pretty bad at governing, but at least they _try
| to govern_. So when they 're in power, the first thing they have
| to do is try to build back up the institutions that have been
| disabled or dismantled by the party of government-cannibals.
|
| Don't ask me which half is which. You know.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| > They have no policy. They have no plan for governing; they
| don't like governing.
|
| This is an unfair analysis, and is either naive at best or
| disingenuous at worst.
|
| I'm not a registered Republican, but I AM strongly against an
| all-powerful centralized body of government that continues to
| expand exponentially. I would rather focus powers in a more
| decentralized direction closer to the individuals and the
| States themselves. e.g. "Think globally - act locally."
|
| The parent's comment is the EXACT problem that comes with a
| central government that is too powerful: you have to be mindful
| that "your party" will not be in "charge" about ~50% of the
| time.
|
| For a concrete example, I don't like expanding Presidential
| powers nor extensive use of Executive Orders because likely
| there will be a president I don't support in that position, and
| I'd rather her/him NOT have that type of power.
|
| States and local communities are more knowledgable about what
| their constituents need, and the more local you go, the more
| homogeneous that group becomes - leading to a higher degree of
| success for those policies. For example, I have never lived on
| a farm, nor have every lived remotely _near_ a farm...so how
| can I properly empathize with their needs or considerations in
| a fair way?
|
| States and more local forms of government also provide solid
| grounds for the greatest real-life A/B test of policies in the
| world: if you are living in an area that doesn't align with
| your values and/or needs, you have _so many_ other options to
| consider settling. e.g. if you like living in California where
| virtually all the policies and politicians are left of center,
| then great! You can live there and it doesn't impact me in any
| way over in where I live.
| slantedview wrote:
| > They have no policy. They have no plan for governing; they
| don't like governing.
|
| > This is an unfair analysis, and is either naive at best or
| disingenuous at worst.
|
| It's fair given that the party literally produced no platform
| ahead of the last presidential election.
| struant wrote:
| I would say that is unfair because their actual platform is
| deliberately sabotaging any kind of functional governance
| and refusing to change any government policy that is
| clearly broken and in desperate need of change. Obviously
| they won't admit that. But that is what they have been
| doing for decades. They wouldn't want to accidentally make
| things better for people because then they can't campaign
| on fixing the problems.
| sircastor wrote:
| I recall reading or hearing that a bunch of senior GOP
| leadership got together immediately after Barack Obama's
| election and agreed explicitly that their approach was
| going to be obstruction.
|
| And that worked, but then the next generation of elected
| party members seemed to be obstructionist only. So much
| so that in 2017 when they held the executive branch and
| both houses of congress, they couldn't get _anything_
| done.
|
| We're all sleeping in that bed that they made.
| feoren wrote:
| Homogeneity also comes with its own problems -- smaller, more
| homogenous governments are much more likely to discriminate
| against the "out group", for instance.
|
| Government grows because _what we do_ grows. We didn 't need
| legislation on airspace and radio waves and net neutrality
| and cyber bullying when our Constitution was written. In many
| cases, powers simply come into existence, and I'd rather the
| government have those powers than a monopoly or oligopoly of
| private rich entities.
|
| Rather than limited Government, I'd rather see an Open
| Government -- one that is accountable to, accessible to, and
| made up of _us_. Then why does it matter if government gets
| big? Government _is us_ , after all. At least we can work
| toward that. Maybe?
| s3r3nity wrote:
| > Homogeneity also comes with its own problems -- smaller,
| more homogenous governments are much more likely to
| discriminate against the "out group", for instance.
|
| I discriminately support my family more than my neighbors.
| You probably do too.
|
| I also discriminately support my circle of friends more
| than the random stranger. You probably do too.
|
| I also don't think a random stranger can come into my home
| and get equal footing with myself as the homeowner simply
| because the other person was "out". You probably do too.
|
| Hell, even at the broad government level, US citizens are
| prioritized over non-citizens - like literally every single
| country that has ever existed.
|
| This isn't a real problem.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Sounds good in theory, but we are more intertwined on private
| sector levels.
|
| As an example, the cost of natgas on the east coast after
| California's rules limiting coal for power generation. People
| in nearby states with different COL pick up part of the tab.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| > after California's rules limiting coal for power
| generation.
|
| Great example & case study for the beauty of the US
| Constitution's "interstate commerce" clause, and one of the
| areas the federal government _SHOULD_ focus its attention.
| al_borland wrote:
| >because likely there will be a president I don't support in
| that position, and I'd rather her/him NOT have that type of
| power.
|
| I wish more people had this perspective.
|
| The topic of packing the Supreme Court comes to mind. There
| are people who want Biden to do this, but if does it, what's
| stopping the next Republican from doing it too... back and
| forth until the court is so big it can't function. These
| easily won "victories" can just as easily work against a
| group as they can work for them. It's very short-sighted.
|
| The only reason the courts are getting involved as much as
| they are, is because Congress can't get anything done. They
| make the law, the court interprets it. We need a functioning
| Congress to avoid the courts needing to give their best guess
| on what the law currently is for issues that aren't well
| defined, or not defined at all. Packing the court as a
| solution is solving the wrong problem.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Congress had _decades_ to make actual abortion laws, and
| both sides had times where they were fully in power - not
| that they shouldn't have compromised on something like 12
| or 15 weeks instead like most European countries.
|
| As far as people's opinions of the court goes, it really
| grinds my gears how most people assume the Supreme Court is
| there to essentially make or strike down laws on their own
| whims. That's not how it's supposed to work. I'm no
| judicial scholar but it seems to me the current court is
| doing the best job of what they're actually supposed to do
| than they have in a long time.
| redserk wrote:
| The Supreme Court decides which cases it wants to hear
| and there are many cases brought into the legal system
| each year. That _practically_ gives it the power to make
| (well, re /interpret) or strike down whatever legislation
| it wants, as long as there's a relevant-enough case.
| sanderjd wrote:
| From this comment it is clear that _you_ have a policy and
| plan for governing. But it isn 't clear what that has to do
| with the portion of the parent comment that you quoted.
|
| The implication of the way you wrote your comment is that
| it's unfair and naive or disingenuous to say that the
| Republican party has no policy, because what you outline is
| their policy. But the rest of your comment just ... isn't
| their policy. (Which is, presumably, why you aren't a
| registered Republican.)
|
| For instance, you say you don't like expanding Presidential
| powers. But the leader of the Republican party has a suit in
| front of the Supreme Court, right this moment, attempting to
| expand Presidential powers all the way to "immune from the
| rule of law".
|
| Now, it could still be true that the policy of the Republican
| party is in disagreement with the desires of that person who
| is the leader of their party - that totally happens! - but
| unfortunately at _this_ specific moment in time, "the
| desires of that person who is the leader of their party" is
| exactly as close as you can get to defining the party's
| policy.
|
| It's a sad state of affairs! But I seem to frequently see
| this kind of wishcasting based on what people think the
| party's policy _should_ be, except it has nothing to do with
| the clear policy of the party in actuality. (Note that this
| wishcasting thing is not actually unique to the Republican
| party.)
| dsr_ wrote:
| It seems fair to me, because I've been paying attention to
| state and national politics for the last thirty years.
| jahewson wrote:
| Neither party is interested in governing - have you seen the
| border right now? The out of control spending?
|
| Instead we have a crusade against the number of Doritos in a
| bag https://news.yahoo.com/elizabeth-warrens-shrinkflation-
| rant-...
| da_chicken wrote:
| I think they have a clear plan in two parts.
|
| 1. Since the opposition seeks progress in many forms, blindly
| obstruct them in all cases.
|
| 2. Legislate the country back to 1953. When that is
| accomplished, legislate the country back to 1853.
|
| The only part I'm unsure about is whether they're interested in
| renaming the nation "Gilead."
| redeeman wrote:
| if you're just halfway serious, perhaps its time to seek some
| medical help
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| That's a bit of an extreme comment "seeking medical help"
| but to be fair I'm only aware of the "to 1953" legislation
| and not the additional "to 1853" legislation.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Are you aware that Arizona recently reinstated an
| abortion ban from 1864?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/us/arizona-abortion-
| ban.h...
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| They published the plan and its pretty much what the parent
| comment said.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
|
| The GOP wants fascism everywhere
| lolinder wrote:
| This comment isn't directed at OP, it's directed at anyone
| reading this who might be tempted to get swept up in OP's
| stereotypes without thinking critically about them. I'm writing
| this as a left-leaning moderate who grew up among staunch
| conservatives and understands their philosophy very well.
|
| Conservatives _sincerely_ believe that government bureaucracies
| are less efficient than a free market economy. That 's not a
| cover or a motte and bailey, it's legitimately and literally
| true. Conservative politicians dismantle government when given
| the opportunity because that's what their base wants them to do
| because, again, _their base sincerely believes that the
| government is bad at most things it does_.
|
| It's true that Republican politicians (like most politicians)
| are mostly charlatans who are intentionally creating
| circumstances that reinforce the belief in the ineffectiveness
| of government, but OP's stereotype of conservative voters as
| simply wanting a "daily dose of _other people suffering_ " is
| baseless, wrong, offensive, and _extremely_ counterproductive.
|
| This stereotype is a misrepresentation of the other core tenet
| of conservative philosophy, which is that what is right and
| wrong is not up to humans to decide, it comes either from God
| or from long-standing and proven traditions. Conservative
| opposition to LGBT rights and similar have _nothing_ to do with
| wanting to see people suffer, they have to do with their deep-
| seated belief that some things are simply wrong because
| something greater than us has said so.
|
| They can be wrong in that deep-seated belief, but it's unfair
| of OP to characterize it as sadism.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Part of the reason liberals hate conservatives and vice versa
| is that they think the government is actually representing
| their opponents. The reality is that influence is severely
| concentrated on every "side," and things that average people
| believe are only used to _justify_ actions that a truly
| influential coalition wants to take. Your disagreeable family
| relations are as powerless to get a new issue introduced as
| you are, but they 're going to be blamed for whatever
| advances the oligarchs who are opposed to your oligarchs have
| recently made.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| On the contrary: most liberals (or anyone else who doesn't
| identify as a [neo]conservative) are _painfully aware_ that
| the democratic party is failing to represent them. We just
| know that that failure is less damaging than what the
| Republican party is up to.
|
| The Republican party is the party of unification and
| engagement. The Democratic party is the tent for everyone
| else. The presence of the former demands the existence of
| the latter.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| I hate to tell you this, but if you can believe it, they're
| for the second time now, electing _the most_ sadistic
| candidate to represent their party. This guy has promised to
| deport millions of people, put them in "camps", use the
| military to quell "woke" protests, etc.
|
| The sincere Conservative electorate had every opportunity to
| choose a less-sadistic option. They chose. OP's
| characterization is perfectly valid.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Trump supporters resonate with that rhetoric because the
| rent is too high, groceries are too expensive, and
| inflation doesn't seem to apply to wages. The causes of
| unrest haven't changed in thousands of years, but they can
| be convenient to forget.
| StillBored wrote:
| Well, then, maybe they should consider solutions for
| solving those problems rather than yelling "big
| government"/etc at every opportunity and further eroding
| the protections the previous generations put in place to
| keep things like this from happening.
|
| AKA, a lot of this is the result of generations of poor
| education, an education system that is strongly biased
| propaganda based on provably wrong economic models that
| tell k-12th graders that the best and only choice is the
| one where the free market runs roughshod over anyone who
| can't afford the rent, etc because that's simply
| "capitalism" and all the other choices are worse.
| lokar wrote:
| And Trump (and his sycophants) seek to take advantage of
| this feeling. Using the age old approach of blaming "the
| other" and seeking not any real improvement in
| conditions, but a consolidation of power in their hands.
| PawgerZ wrote:
| I just don't understand how, if their problem is rent is
| too high and inflation doesn't apply to wages, they vote
| for Trump. He has made money his whole life by jacking up
| rent prices and paying people as little as he's legally
| allowed to (or less than that).
| whatshisface wrote:
| Think of it like a riot. What does smashing windows have
| to do with anything? Yet one follows the other.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Maybe? But how is Trump or the Republican Party planning
| to address any of these?
|
| Remember, Trump successfully pressured the Fed to lower
| interest rates while the economy was strong. Think that
| contributed a bit to the inflation we've been dealing
| with?
|
| Are they recommending corporate tax increases? New
| marginal tax brackets? No? Did they add tax loopholes for
| private jets and yachts while they were last in power?
| You bet!
|
| No, what they're doing instead is trying to scapegoat
| things like "woke" college students and immigrants.
| Retric wrote:
| Don't confuse talking points with the underlying reality.
| Trump supporters existed when inflation was basically non
| existent. His support is really independent of the
| economic situation.
|
| It's going to be interesting to see what happens in this
| time. He barely beat one of the least popular candidates
| in decades and then got crushed the next election cycle.
| Opposition candidates tend to do well when the economy is
| doing poorly, but he's got a lot of baggage and the poles
| are dead even right now.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The camps rhetoric is new. If anything that's further
| evidence that it's caused by the times rather than the
| personalities.
| jl6 wrote:
| In this thread we see the iron law of 21st century American
| polarization and the uttermost death of nuance. I'm sure
| someone will come along to argue how nuance is a luxury we
| can't afford in the face of these communist/fascist maniacs.
| lokar wrote:
| I agree with your statements, and they were true until
| sometime between Newt taking over and Trump being elected.
|
| They used to have a a coherent positive viewpoint and policy
| to support it. And they sought to advance that policy through
| normal democratic means: convincing a majority of voters.
|
| That has stopped being their approach. They no longer seek a
| genuine popular majority. They are turning inwards, adopting
| ever more extreme positions disconnected from genuine ideals.
| They seek only the power to impose their worldview on others.
|
| They no longer feel constrained by long standing traditions
| and institutions. Any act is justified in their minds.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Republicans either want the suffering directly, or - what is
| most often the case - they want the system that guarantees
| that suffering will happen, and will refuse any alternative
| whatsoever out-of-hand.
|
| My parents don't want trans people to suffer: they want trans
| people to find happiness through the impossible avenue of
| _just not being trans anymore_. My parents don 't want
| illegal immigrants to be incarcerated or murdered by border
| authorities: they want illegal immigrants to find liberty
| through the impossible process that is _just becoming a legal
| immigrant, or living peacefully in whichever failed country
| they were born_. My parents don 't want people with substance
| abuse disorders to live and die on the streets: they want
| people with substance abuse disorders to overcome them
| through the impossible avenue of _simply curing their own
| addiction without any outside support, safety, or
| encouragement whatsoever_.
|
| I cannot convince them that any of this is the case. On the
| other hand, people like Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, and
| Glen Beck can convince them of just about anything. Why?
| Because right-wing talking heads have a foot in the door:
| _belief_. They abuse every belief that a conservative holds
| dear, and turn it into _engagement_. Critical thought has no
| air to breathe in a world made of belief.
|
| It doesn't matter what people want. It matters what people
| _do_.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| This is sort of a democrat neolib explanation that's only
| possible if you ignore the corrupting effects of capitalism and
| the unending class struggle between workers and capital,
| regardless of party.
|
| The GOP isn't some weird guys who can't govern, but an
| incredibly powerful group that works almost exclusively for the
| capital owning class and uses social issues to empower that
| class. The GOP caters a bit to the workers class but not a lot
| and is actively radicalizing them to believe they have the same
| interests as the capital owning class. The culture war is by
| accident. If the GOP could do this all without the culture war,
| selling hate, etc then it would. These are merely tools for an
| end.
|
| The Democrats are almost as bad, but also are beholden to some
| level of will of the working class, but generally default to
| the whims of the capital owning class as much as practically
| possible. The Dems need to get the working class on its side to
| continue to exist. The pure capital owner party is the GOP and
| they can't compete against them without this rhetoric. Hence, a
| lot of Dem ideology being lip service for populist worker
| issues and actual change from Dems is very rare, and when it
| happens, its under the approval of the many/most capital owners
| (see Obamacare being a mandatory private insurance program
| instead of a Euro-style socialized medicine program.)
|
| The better governing of the dems is by accident. If the dems
| govern better its only by accident due to the strong influence
| of the middle-class dependent on good government to survive,
| and if the dems could maintain power with more corrupt
| governing, they would.
|
| This is your classic conservative vs liberal divide that
| defines nearly all modern capitalist nations.
|
| The difference between the two parties isn't that strong. Under
| capitalism, the government is a capitalist government and is
| nearly fully corrupted by it, regardless of party. The only
| real fix is to replace capitalism with socialism, but neither
| party will allow that, so here we are with the usual back and
| forth and hiding issues with workers class and capitalism under
| whatever social issues of the day best distract.
| smallerfish wrote:
| > The difference between the two parties isn't that strong.
|
| That's the kind of thinking that led to Bush in 2000. Say
| what you like about Gore, but his administration would have
| done a great number of things differently from how it worked
| out.
|
| Additionally, you wouldn't see e.g. Trump's EPA turning up
| the pressure on coal power plants. In fact hundreds of
| effective EPA staffers left (/were purged from) the EPA in
| 2017/2018.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| To the working class who under Both Bush/Trump and
| Obama/Biden sent their kids to die in the war on terror and
| under both fund a destructive foreign policy that has led
| to incredible civillian deaths wordwide especially in the
| middle east, a "well one guy might make cleaner coal" is a
| cold comfort.
|
| To the working class who labors under inflation with no
| guaranteed vacation or maternity or pension, its a cold
| comfort that the one guy "likes ice cream and is friendly."
| To the working class who can't buy a home, its a cold
| comfort that one guy has better diction and vocabulary than
| the other. To the working class that can't retire and will
| die at their desks, its a cold comfort that one guy said
| something nice about labor unions. To the working class who
| are watching the global south be exploited and the
| pollution there blowing upstream to the "clean EPA driven
| USA" its a cold comfort. To the working class who can't
| afford to have children, its a cold comfort that one guy
| has given lip service to LGBTQ issues.
|
| etc, etc.
|
| Neither can or will address the fundamental problems of
| capitalism that causes nearly all these issues. The working
| class will continue to suffer under any pro-capitalist
| leadership. One guy just has nicer window dressing than the
| other.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I don't think you're being very fair. We can see stark
| difference between Democratic and Republican controlled
| states, especially when looking at the South. In terms of
| women's rights, they are second class citizens in the
| South while their rights are protected in states with
| Democrats leading the charge. In states where Republicans
| have complete control, they've asserted full control over
| women. That's a real difference between Democrats and
| Republicans that I hope you can appreciate.
|
| In the South they are banning DEI, queer books, and trans
| participation in public life. This is not happening in
| Democratic controlled places, and that's not just lip
| service, that's for real. People's jobs are being
| impacted by this, teachers are fleeing Republican
| controlled states.
|
| You look at rate of infant mortality, pregnancy
| complications, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, opioid
| addiction, childhood poverty, poverty in general, and it
| all looks better in Blue versus Red states. That's real
| data we can look at which tells us the parties are
| different. Under Democratic administrations, access to
| healthcare is expanded. Under Republican control, it
| contracts. I know it's not your preferred solution, and
| I'd like a better one too, but when it comes time to vote
| I'm damn for sure voting for the party that causes
| healthcare access to expand.
|
| And Trump's problem isn't that he has poor diction or
| vocabulary, it's that what he says is literally insane
| and psychopathic. The SC case today was evidence of that,
| where he argued in court that he deserves the power to
| assassinate his rivals and to order the military to stage
| a coup without fear of prosecution. Democrats are not
| arguing this position in court.
|
| Yes both will not address the fundamental problems of
| capitalism, and the working class will continue to suffer
| under both, but the data say they will suffer more under
| Republicans compared to Democrats.
|
| We are not talking about window dressing we are talking
| about measurably less suffering. I understand that's not
| the "no suffering" benchmark you'd like to achieve, but
| how about we not let perfect be the enemy of better?
| whacko_quacko wrote:
| >The only real fix is [...] socialism
|
| And that would be a first, because no one has tried "real
| socialism"(tm) before, right?
| elteto wrote:
| This time around it will work! You just wait and see!
| skyfaller wrote:
| I have to disagree that the Republicans do not have a plan.
| They have a very clear and public plan:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
|
| Yes, they spend a lot of energy on obstructing the government
| from functioning, and creating a naked kleptocracy to use the
| government to funnel money into their own pockets. But they are
| also moving openly towards a fascist dictatorship with very
| specific ideas about how society should function, and how (and
| when) people should be permitted to live.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| > But they are also moving openly towards a fascist
| dictatorship
|
| Democrats have been calling on Biden to increase his power
| through just writing Executive Orders to act on their
| platform, and bypass all other branches of government...but
| THAT's not dictatorship?
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| Nope! That's called doing your job with the tools you've
| been given.
| redeeman wrote:
| funny, thats definitely not what it was called when trump
| issued executive orders, there we had to endure things
| like the definition of dictator which tends to include
| "rules by decree" etc, as proof of him being a dictator
| :) oh how the winds are fleeting
| xbar wrote:
| Every President is equivalently, and rightly, castigated
| by the opposition party over their executive orders.
|
| Every executive order by every President is an abuse of
| power, as far as I'm concerned.
|
| 55/yr for Trump? 44/yr for Biden? No one should be proud
| of their side.
| lokar wrote:
| Bypass all other branches? Have you seen him defy the
| courts? Threaten judges?
| PawgerZ wrote:
| Trump wrote 220 in 4 years, averaging 55 EOs/year
|
| Biden has written 138 in 3.25 years, averaging 42 EOs/year
| magicalist wrote:
| > _calling on Biden to increase his power through just
| writing Executive Orders to act on their platform, and
| bypass all other branches of government_
|
| Executive orders are one instantiation of what's literally
| the job of the executive branch: executing the law.
|
| Executive orders operate within the authority granted by
| the legislative branch as judged by the judicial branch,
| and that authority can also be removed by the legislative
| branch.
|
| You can say an order is unconstitutional or unlawful, but
| it's still not dictatorship.
| noahtallen wrote:
| If you look at the number of executive orders per
| president, republicans tend to have slightly more over the
| past couple decades. (Bush more than Obama, Trump more than
| Biden.)
|
| I don't think executive orders are _that_ concerning when
| the legislative body has problems getting shit done. It's a
| normal political tool that both parties use (relatively)
| evenly. What _is_ concerning is gravely anti-constitutional
| movements to overturn the results of democratic elections.
| bedhead wrote:
| Remember when there was no net neutrality and
| everything...worked great?
| sophacles wrote:
| That was before the people most opposed to net neutrality
| had started lobbying local governments to give them
| monopoly access and to make it illegal for local
| governments to try and encourage competition.
|
| Basically I find a good rule of thumb to be: if comcast is
| against it, it's probably going to improve the lives of
| everyone via some form of competition between businesses.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| Remember having net neutrality and everything...worked
| great?
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| ISPs knew this would happen if Trump lost in '20, they
| never acted on it's repeal in the first place. We'll almost
| certainly get to see what the no-neutrality internet really
| looks like if Trump wins this year...
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| I'd argue that they planned:
|
| 1. Installing a conservative super-majority to the Supreme
| Court. [Criminalized abortion in half the US. Blocked student
| loan relief. Gutted voting rights. Environmental protections.
| Health mandates. Firearm restrictions.]
|
| 2. Indiscriminate obstruction. [Months of crucial Ukraine
| aid. Blocked voting rights bill. Immigration reform. Firearm
| safety. Tax relief.]
|
| It's honestly difficult to pick the Greatest Hits, given how
| much damage they've done.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| I recommend looking at your motives. Thinking that people who
| disagree with you politically want nothing else than other
| people to suffer, while being unfair and inaccurate, probably
| betrays your own desires.
| hathawsh wrote:
| Don't you think that is a very cynical view? The party or
| parties you disagree with may not share your views, but they do
| have many things in common with you. In order to build bridges
| with other parties, it's important to believe that the majority
| of people who get involved in government, regardless of party,
| are motivated primarily by the desire to serve their neighbors
| and their country; otherwise they would find better ways to
| spend their time. Without that belief, it will be near
| impossible to form agreements across the aisle.
| Aloha wrote:
| it is cynical - but its not wrong either.
|
| Nothing will change until average Americans are fed up with
| the status quo, and force change - that goes for basic things
| like making the parties work together.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Look, I'm not saying the Republican Party are Nazis. But
| let's just imagine they were. Would we still have to believe
| they were good-faith actors just trying to improve their
| country?
|
| I do not believe the majority of Republican politicians today
| are trying to improve the country. I think the majority are
| self-serving, self-interested, and corrupt. This isn't the
| party of George Bush--who I disagree with about virtually
| everything, but seemed genuinely interested in trying to do a
| good job. This is now the party of Donald Trump, Jim Jordan,
| Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, James Comer, Ted Cruz,
| and so on. There is no equivalent to any of these characters
| on the left. There is no compromising with obviously bad-
| faith actors like this.
| iaaan wrote:
| As a trans person (and you can substitute pretty much any
| identity that is commonly understood to be marginalized and
| the point stands), there is no middle ground to be found
| working with republicans. I'm either allowed to exist,
| work, own property, access healthcare, etc., or I'm not.
| I'm either being discriminated against or I'm not. I'm not
| interested in compromise here.
| lokar wrote:
| I mostly agree with you, but disagree on one point:
|
| What is a party? I think there still is a Republican Party
| that fits your description. I meet them in every day life all
| the time. They are reasonable, agree on many things, and are
| willing to seek compromise. I hope they are the majority, if
| not the voting majority.
|
| But they are not well represented by 90% of the current
| Republican office holders.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| That's a wonderful perspective, and largely shared by one
| party! If you can make the other party act like adults, we'll
| be in business.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I won't believe that after seeing the overwhelming evidence
| to the contrary.
| bityard wrote:
| The poor state of democracy in the US is not a one-party
| problem, it's a two-party problem. My proof is the fact that
| each party holds almost exactly 50% of the mindshare of the US.
| As far as I can tell, this was achieved through gerrymandering,
| one party automatically and consistency taking the opposite
| view of a contentious issue the moment the other adopts any
| particular stance, and backroom deals among congress and senate
| members ("You support my bill for X," spin it to your
| constituents as good for them, and I'll do the same for your
| bill Y.")
|
| Neither party wins elections based on which candidates are more
| suited to the job, they win based on who can out-trash-talk the
| other side. If this was not true, negative campaign ads would
| not be the main form of advertising during election season.
|
| I predict that if one of the parties fails and dissolves due to
| severe missteps, there will be a period of severe democratic
| instability, followed by a split of the surviving party into
| two major factions, each of which settles out at around exactly
| 50% of voter mindshare again.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > I predict that if one of the parties fails and dissolves
| due to severe missteps, there will be a period of severe
| democratic instability, followed by a split of the surviving
| party into two major factions, each of which settles out at
| around exactly 50% of voter mindshare again.
|
| I actually see this too. The Republican party is on the verge
| of collapse not because of anything Democrats have done, but
| because of what Trump has done to the Republican party
| apparatus. He's redirecting all funds to his legal bills
| instead of electing candidates. He's causing them to lose in
| red districts because of abortion by previously unseen
| margins. He's telling everyone that voting is fraudulent so
| Republicans aren't voting.
|
| I mean, Trump has never been the head of a non fraudulent,
| successful company in his entire life. Why would we not
| expect him to similarly destroy the RNC?
|
| So if the Democrats are left standing, I see them cleaving in
| two, with one half being the Biden/Manchin/Romney axis. The
| other party would be more like the Warren/AOC/Bernie axis.
| MAGA types would be left in the political wilderness.
|
| I would actually be fine with either of those parties in
| power.
| electrondood wrote:
| Me too. At least we'd have people on the playing field who
| agree to the fundamental rules of democracy. Rules like
| "when you lose an election, you concede and transfer
| power."
| nullc wrote:
| Your comment works from an assumption that bad governing is
| superior to not governing.
|
| I don't agree.
|
| I think particularly at the federal level a deadlocked
| government that is only able to accomplish a few things that
| can achieve broad consensus is preferable to one that governs
| badly and will invade the autonomy of the public who is, by the
| large part, capable of governing themselves.
|
| Political gridlock is, from that perspective, a feature. Not a
| bug.
|
| In terms of revealed preferences, clearly the bulk of the US
| agrees. :)
|
| I think a point that gets missed is that in terms of capacity
| for causing great evil, money hardly moves the needle. People
| do-- of course-- intentionally perform minor evils for money,
| or negligently do somewhat greater evils because of money.
| Worse than money in terms of ability to do evil is shame and
| gross incompetence combined with power. But to do grandiose
| evil, the kind of evil that murders tens of millions, requires
| someone who wants to "do good".
|
| So to many, a party that wants to "do good" but is
| transparently incompetent or beholden to irrational views is a
| lot more troubling than someone who wants to sell things off to
| the highest bidder and otherwise keep themselves out of
| trouble. Selling things off to the highest bidder is evil, but
| evil in bounded, largely predictable, and often recoverable
| ways.
|
| If you really think that the public in general are rooting for
| other people's suffering in a meaningful way then I think you
| need to get offline and go spend time in person with the people
| who you believe are doing that. I am confident you will find
| that they aren't.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40160755.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't start tedious political flamewars on HN. It's not
| what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mvkel wrote:
| The quote "markets can stay irrational for longer than you can
| stay solvent" comes to mind.
|
| Governments can stay irrational longer than you can stay
| vigilant.
|
| It's frustrating that a decision can be made at great effort in
| support of net neutrality, only for a new bill to easily be
| introduced that undermines it yet again.
|
| I guess that's a feature of democracy, not a bug. But I can
| imagine these battles gets harder and harder to win as time
| progresses.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| The whole net neutrality discussion seems pretty hypocritical in
| hindsight, since huge portions of people who furiously supported
| NN stayed silent or encouraged censorship after 2016 (including
| the sitting president of the united states) on Facebook, Twitter,
| IG, etc.
|
| Why would someone only advocate for an open, unrestricted
| internet at the hardware/ISP level? The whole point of NN was to
| ensure ISPs couldn't act as gatekeepers, yet people are fine with
| trillion dollar tech companies (that hold enormous market share)
| gatekeeping certain content now?
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| Makes sense to me.
|
| ISPs acting like a utility service should not offer special
| deals to some companies in a way that harms competition.
|
| A social media site enforcing their terms of service appears
| entirely different.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| If ISP's are the utility pipes, platforms are the water and
| control what flows through them.
|
| The whole point of NN is to stop ISPs from "playing
| favorites" since they hold too much power over what we can
| access. But if you ignore the fact that a few big tech
| companies (which hold a MUCH bigger market share compared to
| comcast/other big ISPs) basically decide what gets seen and
| what gets hidden, it's the exact same problem in a different
| disguise.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| ISPs are roads, and websites are businesses and homes.
| Majora320 wrote:
| These are categorically different situations. In many
| places, people literally only have 1 or 2 choices for their
| ISP - not so for social networks. The degree to which the
| logic of neutral platforms applies depends on the
| availability of other options and the cost to switch; in
| the ISP case, the options are very limited and the cost is
| monetary and very high, and in the case of social networks
| the cost is low and purely social and there are many
| available options.
| StuffMaster wrote:
| Comparing Facebook to an ISP is highly disengenuous.
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| What a huge waste of time, effort and resources
| MiguelHudnandez wrote:
| Remember when Comcast throttled Netflix to ISDN speeds
| because... hey... no net neutrality? Those were good times.
|
| Comcast's perspective was that Netflix was using "their pipes"
| for free. Those "pipes" are what their paying customers are
| paying for. Not to mention the hefty government subsidies that
| go to cable companies to establish internet service in the
| first place. A google search today reveals plenty of VPN
| providers offering workarounds Comcast's throttling which is
| still going on today.
|
| ISPs should deliver bits in a way that's fair to their paying
| customers. Period.
| surge wrote:
| The FTC chair and this honestly is the best reason to vote for
| the Biden Administration (I feel like at this point whose in
| office largely doesn't matter 98% of the time, they're too old
| and or self absorbed to be heavily involved). Really just voting
| for the people they put in charge of everything below them, which
| was always the case, just more so now.
| quasse wrote:
| This has generally been my opinion on the office of the
| President. The actual quality of the administration comes from
| the level underneath the chief executive and I have been very
| pleased with the people in this administration.
|
| The FTC, Department of Interior and FCC all seem like they have
| very competent (and non-corrupt!) people running them. Can't
| say I have strong feelings on Biden but I think he's shown good
| sense in who he appoints to actually manage the Executive
| Branch.
| surge wrote:
| Now if only Buttigieg was a more than a do nothing position
| and the FAA/FDA, etc stopped acting like captured agencies
| and do their jobs.
|
| Boeing is like what, our one major airline manufacturer and
| because they're part of the military industrial complex, they
| get a free pass and get to murder whistle blowers after
| asking them to stay an extra day in town.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I agree for all departments except the state department which
| seems to be as incompetent as they come
| vampiresdoexist wrote:
| I'm very surprised by some of the comments here questioning the
| value of restoring net neutrality. Times have changed.
| ostenning wrote:
| This battle has been happening for a better part of a decade and
| won't seem to go away. Every time it's defeated it seems to pop
| back up.
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