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| Question for karl Why are you Pro Muni? | |
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| My parents were both killed by an SBC remote terminal, setting me on a path of vicious righteousness. I'm still working on a costume.
Kidding.
I'm really not. I don't see municipal broadband as a panacea by any means.
I am anti muni-bans. They're miserable anti-competitive greed based initiatives that fail to serve joe consumer in any way. I think communities should have the right to decide these issues for themselves. | |
| Remember this is election year they will do anything to gain points or endorsed. | |
1 edit | reply to Karl Bode
said by Karl Bode:I am anti muni-bans. They're miserable anti-competitive greed based initiatives that fail to serve joe consumer in any way. I think communities should have the right to decide these issues for themselves. I agree with you on this. It's not that I have any love for government doing something that could be done more efficiently and for less money by private enterprise, but what we have here is a case of the greedy bastards at SBC, Comcast, Verizon, and other similar companies who in many cases don't want to offer broadband service to a community until they are damn good and ready, and when they do finally decide to provide it, it will be on their terms (which means probably about two or three times what it would cost in a truly competitive market).
Very often these smaller communities realize that broadband in the 21st century is like the railroad in the 19th century - if a neighboring community has it in their town and your town don't, it can put your town at a serious economic disadvantage. Just as the smaller towns sometimes helped build "feeder" railroads to get themselves access to the nationwide rail system, today the voters of some communities want to be able to construct their own broadband systems, so the people of their communities have speedy access to the communications backbone of our nation.
Unfortunately, it appears that SBC, Comcast, et. al. are taking a page from the railroad baron's handbook, and think they and they alone should decide whether and when a community gets broadband access. While the lack of broadband may not have the potential to turn a town into a "ghost town", the economic consequences may be similar. Towns without affordable broadband will have a very hard time attracting or keeping any significant business enterprises. People may still live there (the ones that can live with slow dialup access, or who don't use the Internet at all), but businesses (along with the people who consider broadband access important for themselves and their families) will seek out areas where there is good connectivity.
The question is, do we want the baby Bells and large cable companies, and their stooges in Congress, conspiring to shut out certain communities in favor of others the way the railroad barons did back in the days of the "iron horse?" Seems that true corruption never dies, it just changes form.
One other comment, seems that some people haven't yet figured out that there isn't really any significant difference between Republicans and Democrats. They may do a lot of public posturing as to what they favor and what they are against, but in the end they are all right there whoring themselves out to the big corporations and whoever else will throw money their way. I don't think an honest politician could even get elected to any state or national office anymore.
OT: I didn't save the web page address (unfortunately), but I read something not too long ago that proposed that just as we now (supposedly) have separation of church and state, perhaps what we really need is a law or amendment establishing separation of corporation and state. The idea was that at the time our constitution was written, in many places organized religion had too much control over local and national governments. Well, we still have that problem in some places in the world, but in the U.S. an equal threat is that of the large corporations gaining far too much influence over our lawmakers. Major corporations were virtually non-existent when our Constitution was written, but if they had been, the thought is that their influence would have been limited in the same way that the influence of organized religion is (supposedly) limited. And for the nit-pickers, I am aware that the phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Bill of Rights, but the courts have inferred the principle from the First Amendment - which of course has led to endless arguments over whether organized religion has too much or too little influence over government, but at least most of us agree that there is a limit somewhere, and there should be a similar limit on corporate influence.
Edit: After posting the above, I found the article I'd read. It was actually an entry in a blog called "Minding The Planet":
August 05, 2003
On the Separation of Corporation and State
Should there be a formal separation of Corporation and State that is similar to the separation of Church and State, in our Constitution? This is a subject I am thinking about a lot lately. It occurred to me while I was listening to President Bill Clinton's speech at the 2003 Fortune Brainstorm conference in Aspen last week...
Imagine what our nation would be like if there were no Separation of Church and State? This basic principle has ensured that our American democracy has remained unbiased toward any particular religion; it has also protected religions from getting overly involved in politics. When our Constitution was formulated it made sense to add in this protection, because the Church was one of the main political forces of the time and posed a very real threat to democracy. But when our Constitution was designed corporations had not emerged as a major political force. For this reason no protections were added to the Constitution against manipulation from corporate interests.
However today we live in a very different world, a world of giant global corporations with billions of dollars to lobby with. Is the integrity of our democracy threatened by the influence of corporate special interests? Are our national decision-makers being influenced by corporate entities? And if so, is this really democratic; are We The People really being represented fairly in this process? It may be time to introduce the notion of a formal Separation of Corporation and State to protect our democracy from being overrun by corporate influence. I have written a full article on this subject which, if it doesn't get published elsewhere, I will post to this Bog. | |
stridr69
join:2003-05-19
San Luis Obispo, CA
1 edit | Hmmmm..
The movie "Rollerball" comes to mind here.
And I mean the orginal with James Caan back in 1975.
Bring on the Coporate Wars, baby!!!!!
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