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The story of net neutrality as an Obama-led takeover of the Internet has been a key Republican talking point for months, a talking point which has been refuted by internal FCC documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information Act request. These findings were made by the independent, nonpartisan FCC Office of Inspector General an Inspector General. However, the findings were not made public prior to Thursday’s vote.
[...] First, some background: The FCC is an independent regulatory agency that is supposed to remain “free from undue influence” by the executive branch—it is not beholden to the White House, only the laws that Congress makes and tells it to regulate. This means the president cannot direct it to implement policies. In November 2014, President Obama released a statement saying that he believed the FCC should create rules protecting net neutrality, but noted that “ultimately this decision is theirs alone.”
[...] Since 2014, Republicans have pointed to net neutrality as an idea primarily promoted by President Obama, and have made it another in a long line of regulations and laws that they have sought to repeal now that Donald Trump is president. Prior to this false narrative, though, net neutrality was a bipartisan issue; the first net neutrality rules were put in place under President George W. Bush, and many Republicans worked on the 2015 rules that were just dismantled.
What happened, then, is that Republicans sold the public a narrative that wasn’t true, then used that narrative to repeal the regulations that protect the internet.
Internal FCC Report Shows Republican Anti-Net Neutrality Narrative Is False
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:40PM (33 children)
...the more I come to the conclusion that our government is terminally ill. Bills that are thousands of pages long and representatives have 3 days to read before voting on, closed-door meetings to sign international treaties that can override the Constitution, gerrymandering...and that's before we even get into partisan issues.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:58PM (9 children)
As then-Congressman John Conyers put it in an interview with Michael Moore: "Uh, we don't read most of the bills ... Do you really know what that would entail if we were to read every bill that we passed?"
But there's lots of other non-partisan causes for concern:
- Appointments to important positions are made based first and foremost on your political loyalties and sometimes even family connections, and any relationship to competence is purely incidental.
- The government has many many cases of Official Truth that drives actual policy and practice that are easily demonstrated to be utter nonsense, but saying that they're utter nonsense marks you as a dangerous outsider who can't be trusted.
- All areas of public policy are blatantly for sale to the highest bidder. Yes, including matters of war and peace. Nobody even pretends otherwise anymore. And no, that's not a partisan thing, because both major parties are doing exactly that, to the point where about 2/3 of a Congressman's job these days is making phone calls to beg major donors for money.
This is the same kind of dysfunction that doomed the Soviet Union.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:30PM (4 children)
If only it were that simple, we could round them all up, throw them in jail, and launch the key into the sun. But there's a distinction to be made if we are to understand the problem well enough to do anything about it.
Yes, it's (more than) 2/3 of a Congressman's job these days to raise funds for their next campaign. And as long as their opponents in both primary and general elections can do it, the ones that don't spend their time fundraising will lose. Have already lost.
But when they are out shopping, they're not selling votes. They're selling influence. Specifically, influence over themselves. It has to do with that "we don't read most of the bills" comment: they need experts to read the bills for them and tell them what the bills do and how they work.
Where do you find policy experts? You find them in the private sector, because government expertise has been bled dry for decades. Trump's appointment strategy (such as his apparently intentional strategy of leaving a huge number of top executive positions completely unfilled) is helping this along.
So you end up with people going to Washington to be policy experts and essentially writing the legislation that will affect their former (or still current) industries, because they're the only ones that know how to write the bill that Congress wants. But that creates a clear conflict of interest, not to mention putting unconstitutional levels of authority into the hands of unelected experts.
The worst part is that the system has worked this way for so long that even the government experts that remain have been hopelessly corrupted by private sector influence. If somebody does try to do their job, industry be damned, that person's department has a habit of putting them out to pasture and Congress has a habit of making their job impossible. And for those that are perfectly happy within the one true web of corporate influence, they know what they must do to find themselves in a nice, lucrative, cushy job in the private sector when they leave the government.
And yes, I'm coming dangerously close to the Republican anti-expert rhetoric. But the problem is endemic to both parties and all branches of government. Every bill is written by experts, implemented by experts, and tried in court by experts. Why? Because Congress (on both sides) writes more legislation than they can handle. And they're still not keeping up with the need to update outdated laws...in part because every bill passed now tends to generate more problems than it fixes.
So when you say that Congresspeople spend their time whoring out their votes...practically speaking, it's a fair interpretation. But you can't solve it by telling them to stop. You have to a) change the campaign finance rules so that your opponent can't beat you by finding a few super-wealthy donors to back them, b) find more balanced sources of policy expertise that don't skew so hard in favor of corporations, and c) reverse course on collaborating with the private sector and eliminate the revolving door between regulators and regulated industry.
It's what I do if I became despot. But I'm not sure how to make it work within the current system. You can't even elect a guy who promises to "drain the swamp" because he's more likely lying to you than making realistic promises.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:43PM (3 children)
There's a better solution than any of that: Make it so the better-funded campaign doesn't necessarily have a better chance of winning.
And there's reason to believe that's actually happening: Donald Trump had way less money than either Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, and managed to win. Bernie Sanders started with basically no money and came very close to winning.
There's even a reason why that might be happening: Blanketing the airwaves with campaign ads only works if your targeted voters watch TV and don't skip the ads, which is a dwindling number of people.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:01PM (2 children)
Your examples are exceptional politicians taking advantage of a temporary situation. Most politicians aren't exceptional, and most of those are not self-delusional enough to believe they are anyway. They know that their message is their party, and they're too dumb and/or lazy to forge a path for themselves.
That's the majority of Congress. And they're not going to win a campaign against a much better-funded opponent.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by schad on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:41AM (1 child)
You mean too smart. Forge a path for yourself and you get called a RINO or DINO and lose your next primary, because so many of the people who bother to vote in primaries are extremists who would never vote for a centrist no matter what.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday December 20 2017, @06:45PM
Trump and Bernie are far, far from being centrists. Those were the examples I was referring to. It might be fair to say that most politicians are centrists who are just playing the partisan game. But even such politicians probably have a few unorthodox positions that better match their district than the party line.
On the Dem side, they're called Blue Dog, not Dino. And they are elected in Republican-leaning areas where the primary voters are "smart" enough (or experienced enough) to know that somebody they would like more could not get elected.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @12:08AM (1 child)
"This is the same kind of dysfunction that doomed the Soviet Union."
Your description of the Soviet kleptocracy is correct, but the Soviet system also had to arm itself into bankruptcy thanks to American defense spending. The Joneses were impossible to keep up with.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @02:57AM
the Soviet system also had to arm itself into bankruptcy thanks to American defense spending
Yup. (You forgot to put "defense" in quotes.)
USA has been a aggressor nation for over a century.
...but it wasn't USA alone on the offense.
A Major Cause Of The Failure Of Socialism In The USSR Was The Military Threats From Capitalist Countries [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [counterpunch.org]
[1] Kinda like "jumbo shrimp".
Actual Communism, as described by Marx, is international in nature; the brotherhood of Workers doesn't fight each other.
...and USA.gov didn't stop its militarism when the WWI armistice was signed.
It simply redirected that against anything that wasn't Capitalist/Oligarchical in nature.
USA.gov Kept Fighting After WWI Was Over In Order To Destroy The Nascent Soviet Union [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [counterpunch.org]
...joined by Britain, France, Japan, Canada, Italy, and others in breeching its borders. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [criticalenquiry.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)
If we want to get pedantic, maybe the representatives themselves don't read the bills, but somebody on their staff damn well better be reading everything.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @07:17PM
> but somebody
on their staffdonating money damn well better bereadingwriting everythingFTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:59PM (5 children)
That is a commonly-repeated myth. Treaties cannot override the Constitution; it is the highest law of the land.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:52PM (3 children)
Perhaps you should read the constitution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @12:20AM (2 children)
It is simply incorrect. While a treaty may give the federal government some power, it cannot override the Constitution itself. If a treaty's terms required that the government blatantly violate the first amendment. that would not suddenly be constitutional.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:26PM (1 child)
There are a number of things that are blatantly unconstitutional, but they aren't legally so unless the Supreme Court says so.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @07:17PM
An unconstitutional law is null and void from its inception, and must be resisted fiercely at every turn and by any means necessary. The People should ignore such laws. Juries should refuse to convict people who violate such laws. Police should refuse to arrest people who violate such laws. And so on. If the Supreme Court upholds such a law, then they are traitors. It's too bad the Constitution doesn't include enough measures to deal with those sorts of traitors, even after the courts finally do recognize a law's blatant unconstitutionality. We need more legal methods of dealing with domestic treason committed by judges, politicians, and others who swore to defend and uphold the highest law of the land.
And I don't see what that has to do with what was said anyway. Even our foolish courts would not claim outright that treaties can override the Constitution, even though they often incorrectly judge unconstitutional laws as constitutional.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday December 20 2017, @05:27PM
Read the Constitution. Search for "law of the land". In fact search for "Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land".
Here's a place to look: https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A6.html [usconstitution.net]
I'll grant that there are ways of reading that which place the US Constitution on the same level as treaties, but I can't come up with a reading that doesn't place treaties as high as the constitution, and the simple reading places them higher.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:05PM (6 children)
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the /republican/ government :) democrats could as well say now "vote
for us because we are not sociopathic freaks; we are pretty lousy at
our job, but at least most of us are well-intentioned. the opposition
party champions sociopaths who advocate bringing back american-style
slavery and rescinding the nonman's right to vote. vote democrat: not
completely bat-shit insane xoxoxoxo" seriously though, what is going
to happen to the republican party in 4 years time?
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:22PM (3 children)
> seriously though, what is going to happen to the republican party in 4 years time?
They're going to win some elections, and lose some. As usual.
The sheer insanity of the party hasn't hit a lot of their voters, and probably never will. In other countries, that's when the moderates would give the win to a different party appealing to their conservative views, without the (most-recent) batshit baggage. Ain't happening here. Look at the support, and very narrow defeat, Republican Roy Moore got.
Fox News and other right-wing screamers, the War on Truth, the War on Reality, really, Gerrymandering, one-issue voters, one-round two-party elections, the inability of the D side to point out in simple words why simple words slogans are terrible policy... The R side ain't dead, far from it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:32PM
No, only the USoA are. They just don't know it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:07AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:26PM
demographics? yeah, nothing to do with lurching off the right-wing cliff
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @12:46PM (1 child)
If the Democrats continue to blame everyone but themselves for losing the last election, and refusing to admit that having the worst candidate (out of two shitty ones), and running a campaign that was basically "it's her turn to win" while refusing to even talk to anyone that wasn't a guaranteed D voter is what caused them to lose, the republican party will be celebrating another 4 years of Donald the Orange.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:29PM
Donny Orange will go to prison but it could be Pence the Virtuous? Not sure if he could win an election though... I doubt he even grabs his own pussy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:06PM (9 children)
It's *been* terminally ill since Ford pardoned Nixon. That was the watershed moment, the one that proved "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal" is truer than true; it proved that there are no lasting consequences for the President, and inevitably, any other powerful government figure. Accountability was stabbed in the heart and Ford was holding the knife, and the stupid bastard didn't even know what it is he'd actually done.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:09PM (3 children)
One can see the reasoning behind it, though. It's the same reason Hillary conceded before all the results were in; not doing so leads to a messy, controversial situation that is likely to accomplish little more than widening the partisan divide.
But it's ultimately the same argument as what was behind bailing out the banks that caused the 2008 recession. "Too big to fail" means that their failure causes bigger problems than we care to deal with. And there's the problem: anybody so embedded into our well-being is not just unaccountable on a case-by-case basis. They are fundamentally unaccountable to anything.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:11AM (2 children)
That was Gore. (Dumb bastard deserved to lose.)
Hillary actually won the popular vote.
...and there were some votes in the Electoral College in 2016 that challenged the winner-take-all thing.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by meustrus on Wednesday December 20 2017, @06:39PM (1 child)
My point was not about who would win. My point was that there was controversy that threatened to destabilize the country. But yeah, SCOTUS picking a 2000 presidential victor out of their ass was done for the same reason.
And now to take the bait.
Not sure why Gore deserved to lose. He would have been a more competent president than Bush, and a competent president could have:
And I'll be the first to admit that Obama did nothing to fix half of those problems, even making some of them worse. But Gore, having had more experience and not being from notoriously corrupt Chicago, would have been better than Obama, I think. Not to mention that certain something about Obama that emboldened the other side to refuse to cooperate.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @09:26PM
Gore (a senator's son) volunteered for military service during the USAian assault on/occupation of Vietnam.
(He was in the propaganda corps.)
I don't think he would have been better WRT military aggression in the Mideast.
USA hasn't elected a non-Neocon (non-warmonger) since 1960[1] nor a non-Neoliberal (not worker-hostile) since the Donkeys got creamed in 1972.
Even if elected, Gore would have abandoned any Progressive tendencies.
...and BTW, by 2000, Glass-Steagall was already dead. Thanks, Slick Willie.
...and Killery would have been another data point along that pattern's quasi-straight line.
[1] Carter's actions weren't overt, but he was also into covert pro-Oligarchy regime change, supporting coups in Latin America.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Troll) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 20 2017, @04:20AM (4 children)
I don't see Ford pardoning Nixon as the watershed moment. By then, Nixon was already history, powerless and completely disgraced, and had no further role of any significance to play in politics. The pardon wasn't for Nixon's sake, no. Nor was there anything left to cover up. In the 4 decades since, nothing new about that has come to light, most of the principles are dead now, and I think it safe to say there aren't any further revelations to come.
The watershed was the Southern Strategy in the 1960s. When the Democrats under Kennedy and Johnson dared to flip and confront racism and end Jim Crow, albeit with lots of prodding from MLK and friends, and alienated their racist voters, the Republicans in one of the most shameful "Realpolitik" decisions ever swooped in to court those voters by appealing to their racism, however veiled. Should have left those attitudes to rot. Ever since the Civil War, the Democrats had been the party favored by racists and Confederate sympathizers. It was the Republicans under Lincoln who ended slavery and won the Civil War. And then 100 years after the war, they traded places. The fool Republicans embraced the rot and now are badly infected. I mean, wow, the party of hard nosed realism and practicality, the more scientific and learned party, has really gone astray in throwing science, learning, and fact under the bus.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 20 2017, @04:42AM (3 children)
J-Mo posted a long diatribe somewhere in this thread, IIRC, where he gets this shit *completely* ass-backwards, and at considerable length as well. He also admits to being on Gab and reading the Daily Stormer in it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @06:08AM (2 children)
That was the other political story, but yes it was nice to see him finally out himself. Can't believe it took a whole year of Trump for him to get comfortable enough to stick his head out.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 20 2017, @07:18AM (1 child)
It's not like we needed him to explicitly say it though, is it? I could tell from almost the first time he posted here.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @10:20PM
Oh for sure, but some of the moderate conservatives may not have seen it. At least now there is no wondering. Please bookmark his comment, it will be required for future references ;)