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Colorado Denied Its Citizens the Right-to-Repair After Riveting Testimony:
Colorado’s proposed right-to-repair law was simple and clear. At 11 pages, the legislation spent most of its word count defining terms, but the gist was simple: It would let people fix their own stuff without needing to resort to the manufacturer and force said manufacturer to support people who want to fix stuff.
“For the purpose of providing services for digital electronic equipment sold or used in this state, an original equipment manufacturer shall, with fair and reasonable terms and cost, make available to an independent repair provider or owner of the manufacturer’s equipment any documentation, parts, embedded software, firmware, or tools that are intended for use with the digital electronic equipment, including updates to documentation, information, or embedded software,” the proposed bill said.
Right-to-repair is often spoken of in the context of broken phone screens, but it doesn’t just affect people’s personal devices. Agricultural and medical equipment are increasingly impossible to fix because manufacturers want to maintain a monopoly on repairing the product. These issues can make the right-to-repair literally life and death.
The Colorado House Business Affairs & Labor committee met to consider the law on March 25. Twelve legislators voted to indefinitely postpone considering the bill. Only one voted for it. “I still have a lot of questions. I still have a lot of concerns,” Rep. Monica Duran (D) said at the end of the committee hearing. She voted no on the bill.
[...] It was a stunning statement given just how many people testified on behalf of the right-to-repair legislation and how few questions the committee asked them.
Here's just the first of the many cases cited:
Kenny Maestas, who uses a wheelchair, drove this home in his testimony before the committee. Maestas spent a long time in the hospital and when he came home, his mobility was restricted. An electric wheelchair helped him get around, but it was broken. The right arm of the chair was broken and the battery would no longer hold a charge.
“Both my son and brothers were capable and ready to do whatever needed to get done...I called on the 14th of December,” he told the committee. “I was told the next time a tech would be in my area would be the 18th of January. As a rural resident of Colorado I’m used to a regional delay, but 35 days seemed excessive.”
Maestas said that the electric wheelchair company had the battery and spare parts on file to fix his chair, but the company’s procedure required a technician to first inspect the chair before making a repair. It was another 28 days after the tech first arrived before Maestas was mobile again. It was more than 60 days before his chair was working again.
“It’s never appropriate to make a human being with a critical care need wait over two months for a repair that could have been completed in two days,” he said. The committee asked Maestas no questions.
The story concludes:
[...] Bill sponsor Brianna Titone (D) told Motherboard she plans to keep fighting.
“I was particularly frustrated by a committee member who said they had ‘so many unanswered questions’ yet didn't ask any during the committee,” she said in an email.
[...] Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington are also considering right-to-repair laws. Colorado’s fight is a preview for what to expect as legislators prepare to consider those bills.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @04:34AM (2 children)
The one single bad presidential action: bump stock ban
The wall is of utmost importance. Half the illegals come via hopping the border. Those are the people who are unable to obtain even a tourist or farm worker visa because they have criminal records. Money was not diverted from more important projects because such projects do not exist and haven't existed for 75 years.
There was a tax cut for most tax payers. It does expire for the middle class, for annoying constitutional reasons, but republicans made an offer to prevent the expiration. (see the Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz exchange on Twitter) The similar situation with Bush tax cuts ended with the middle class tax cuts being extended, so this was a reasonable hope. Now that democrats have complete domination, we can see that they truly are uninterested in helping the middle class. Democrats are keeping the tax cuts for the rich, of course.
Handling of the COVID 19 crisis was done very well. Trump shut down China travel immediately. Remember that democrats opposed that; clearly they wanted a viral disaster to unseat the president.
Pulling out of the Paris Climate accord is another thing done to make America great. Why do you hate America? That agreement was just a way to shovel money from the USA to other nations, who would all be permitted to dramatically increase emissions. It was a plan to hobble to USA.
Pulling us out of the Iran agreement was fine. That was a really foul agreement. No, it didn't bring peace and harmony.
Alienating out allies mostly didn't happen, and some "allies" are sometimes worth alienating. The job of the president isn't to unconditionally kiss European ass. At times Trump applied pressure, and foreigners bitched about it. Oh well. Trump did great for the USA.
The trade war with China has been going on for decades. You hadn't noticed? It's still a war even if you don't return fire. We call that "losing". I prefer winning. FYI, an analysis of the tariffs by the Europeans showed that China was paying more than 80% of them, via lowered prices. Prices had to be lowered to keep factories from going idle and then failing to pay back loans. The technical reason that China paid over 80% of the tariffs is "elasticity of supply" and "elasticity of demand" for the countries involved. The tax on transactions will change the price signal; it does not matter which party hands over the cash.
I wouldn't call a bunch of literally communist Kurds our "allies". In any case, abandoning them brought more peace.
That government shutdown might be something to be proud of. When shut down, the government doesn't do as much awful shit. Credit goes to the democrats though, who refused to cooperate with out president.
Taking credit for anything Obama did is fair play, since Obama took credit for the first 3 years of Trump's amazing economy.
30,000+ verified sarcasm is fine. Trump didn't lie in any meaningful way.
He was handed a bad economy, and he did fix it. He deregulated, wiping out 2.5 regulations for each that was created.
Washington state does not need disaster funds.
Fauci lied about Covid. (no you don't need a mask, masks are useless for normal people) China lied about Covid. (totally under control and it came from the US military)
Playing golf is less of a big deal if you OWN THE DAMN COURSE. Trump mainly played at his house, which happens to be at his golf resort club. Trump was also doing legitimate things like negotiating with Xi.
8+ hours of 'executive time' to fuck his supermodel wife is fine with me.
Being a "Gold Star family" doesn't exempt you from being a piece of shit that earns dishonor.
Dishonoring our service members didn't happen. That story is made-up shit, coldly calculated to affect an election.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:28AM
“Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
“That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”
“Nobody wants to see [wounded veterans].”
And the one that may have cost him the election, "I like people who weren’t captured.”
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday April 09 2021, @12:33AM
In hindsight, I'm not so sure about the bump stock ban... because that was overturned by the 6th Circuit, which makes it that much harder to re-institute such a ban. And no doubt that possibility was discussed before the ban.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/25/bump-stocks-not-machine-guns-and-not-subject-atf-b/ [washingtontimes.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.