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Senators, including Republican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio, have signed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission opposing municipal broadband:
In a rare senatorial act, full-time Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio joined with a handful of fellow legislators on Friday in an attempt to block local municipalities from undercutting big telecom companies by providing cheap, fast internet service.
Rubio, who is raising campaign cash from the telecom industry for his presidential campaign, fired off a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to allow states to block municipal broadband services. The letter was the latest salvo in a long-running effort by the major telecom companies to outlaw municipal broadband programs that have taken off in cities such as Lafayette, Louisiana, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, because they pose a threat to a business model that calls for slow, expensive internet access without competition.
In Chattanooga, for instance, city officials set up a service known as "The Gig," a municipal broadband network that provides data transfers at one gigabit per second for less than $70 a month — a rate that is 50 times faster than the average speed American customers have available through private broadband networks.
AT&T, Cox Communications, Comcast, and other broadband providers, fearing competition, have used their influence in state government to make an end-run around local municipalities. Through surrogates like the American Legislative Exchange Council, the industry gets states to pass laws that ban municipal broadband networks, despite the obvious benefits to both the municipalities and their residents.
[...] Rubio's presidential campaign has relied heavily on AT&T lobbyist Scott Weaver, the public policy co-chair of Wiley Rein, a law firm that also is helping to litigate against the FCC's effort to help municipal broadband. As one of Rubio's three lobbyist-bundlers, Weaver raised $33,324 for Rubio's presidential campaign, according to disclosures. Rubio's campaign fundraising apparatus is also managed in part by Cesar Conda, a lobbyist who previously served as Rubio's chief of staff. Registration documents show that Conda now represents AT&T.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:54PM
There is another problem, which is more visible if you scale down your argument from state-level to smaller groups of people:
The basic principle is in the Declaration of independence: "all men are ... endowed ... with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." In this context I view a government as simply an institution that provides the service of securing rights. It is just if it derives its powers from the consent of the governed, i.e., if people willingly accept the relationship.
A. If some guy, let's call him Smith, is holding 3 people hostage at gunpoint, is it OK for the government to go in and either arrest or shoot him?
Sure. But what the government can't do is make Smith's family and neighbors into its perpetual subjects. The hostages might have a rights-securing institution that would protect them, or such an institution might do such work pro bono. But after Smith is dead and gone (or in jail, or otherwise vanquished), the institution afterward doesn't get to have a monopoly claim on all the surrounding territory.
B. Now let's say that Smith has a few buddies with him, and is holding 12 people hostage. Is it OK for the government to go in and either arrest or shoot them?
Sure. Same answer, and the same for your other scenarios.
I think in practice when you get to bigger scenarios you will reduce your costs dramatically by helping slaves escape instead of going up against an army and trying to liberate everybody within the territory. I would have liked to have seen the north kick the south out of the union, repeal or stop enforcing the fugitive slave laws, and create an insanely porous border for escaping slaves. Lots less death would be one great benefit.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings