Republicans Create Rider To Stop Net Neutrality 528
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes
"Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) submitted a rider yesterday to a bill on military and veterans' construction projects. The rider would, 'prohibit the FCC from using any appropriated funds to adopt, implement or otherwise litigate any network neutrality based rules, protocols or standards.' It is co-signed by six other Republican senators. We all knew this was coming after the last election removed most of the vocal supporters of net neutrality and supplanted them with pro-corporate Republicans."
Re:Not pro-corporate (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes and no.
First off, AT&T and other telecoms are larger campaign contributors than Google, Apple et al, so this is pretty much a done deal, will of the people be damned.
Secondly, all corporate players generally recognize that a net neutral Internet could become potentially democratic (small d intentional here), which is not in their best interest. They'd much rather the Internet be a somewhat more interactive broadcast medium like television than they would have it be a truly horizontal distributed network, because the more broadcast-like it is the easier it is to control what is said or heard on it, and the harder it is to compete with established players.
Thirdly, most Republicans and Democrats could accurately be described as pro-corporate.
Re:Vocalize (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit, I used to call all the time. Not letters call. You get some staffer who does not care and an email that says they agree with you and support $the_opposite_of_what_you_said 100%.
These assholes are bought and paid for. They should at least wear patches like race car drivers so we can clearly see who they work for.
Re:Still cant believe you guys have riders... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's worse actually. In the simpsons skit, they vote down the bill over the rider. Very few real life congress critters have the integrity to do such a thing, no matter how ludicrous or unrelated it may be.
Without riders, there would be no way for politicians to get their selfish and/or unpopular bits of legislation passed. Thus, the rider problem never gets fixed. Riders are a tool of corruption IMO. As long as corruption prevails, riders will continue to be tacked on to otherwise useful bills. Since governance is power and power corrupts (or at least draws the corrupt), I expect riders will be a problem until some form of major upheaval pushes these individuals out.
Re:You thought the GOP/TP represented regular peop (Score:5, Interesting)
> Look at the post-war period. The period of greatest economic growth at all levels of society occurred during a time when the Democrats controlled the Presidency and at least one house of congress.
Look at the rest of history. The period of greatest economic growth at all levels of society occurred during a time when we were on a real hard currency, and neither republican nor democrat congresscritters could give away money that wasn't theirs by asking the Fed to print it. During those times, prices went down while wages went up.