US House Subcommittee Votes To Kill Net Neutrality 607
angry tapir writes "A US House of Representatives subcommittee has voted in favor of a resolution to throw out the US Federal Communications Commission's recently adopted net neutrality rules. The communications subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 15-8 along party lines for a resolution of disapproval that would overturn the FCC's rules."
It does what, now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Walden added. "These regulations will cost jobs," he said.
I know, this is the standard-issue republican response to anything they don't like, but really could we have an explanation this time? Exactly how would net neutrality kill jobs?
Which one is left-wing? (Score:1, Interesting)
> you fools gave your houses to the right wing party.
Does America even have a left-wing party? Surely you don't mean those center-right Democrats?
Once you admit your an idiot... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Once you admit your an idiot... (Score:4, Interesting)
So... He shouldn't have his way, and you would make him be in charge of something he doesn't understand?
Why in blazes would we expect people in government to be omniscient? It won't be. That's why we decided it shouldn't be omnipotent either, except that something like 50% of people have completely forgotten about that idea.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>The left wing are in liberals, they're in favor of change
You should not have been modded informative, since you're flat wrong. It is the "left wing" like Obama, Pelosi, and Reid who are bending over backwards to protect the "old guard" of record companies and hollywood from Downloaders and new Internet competition (like hulu). They've now made it crime even to search torrent sites (the FBI will suppeona your ISP records and investigate anybody they find suspicious). The left-wing government has also send-up a 1-800 number (advertised in walmart and on radio/tv), so you can report anyone you suspect of copying.
Looks like the left wingers are as "sold out" to corporations as the right wing. Oh and it's also a mistake to think "conservative" means fear of change. I am a conservative, but I think we should legalize marijuana, make same-sex or multi-partner sex legal, and break-up the internet monopolies (Comcast, Verizon) to replace them with true competition. That's a heck of a lot of change!
What we DO want is less nanny state. We don't think D.C. is qualified to tell us what lightbulbs to buy, where to send us to school, what minimum size our oranges should be (an idea imported from the EU), and so on. We prefer to make those choices ourselves.
- registered Republican
Lifetime Libertarian party member
Re:You overlooked something... (Score:5, Interesting)
His point was not that they have different party names, but that their policies are all but indistinguishable. Which is how it looks to me, too.
As a New Zealander, I have to say that the Democrats are more right wing than our current ruling right wing party. You have nothing as left as our left wing Labour party, who are not especially leftist, by NZ or world standards. I'm not sure I that most Americans appreciate just how right wing, conservative, pretty, ill-educated, reactionary, selfish, jingoistic, partisan, anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-reason US politics appears from the external point of view. I look to politics in the UK, Australia, France, Germany. I understand what's going on there, it looks similar to what's going on here. I look at US politics and I'm thinking "What the.,..."
I really don't understand how a country that purports to be a democracy has allowed its political discourse to be so railroaded into one tiny spectrum of ideas. You have two parties which are largely indistinguishable. You change the name of the party in charge, but the ideas don't change. You guys really need to ditch first past the post elections - most of the rest of the world has already figured this out.
Why is the government involved? (Score:2, Interesting)
Which brings me to the biggest "what if..". What if those companies in trying to compete with each other had made a determined effort to show that their network was free of viruses and malware? What technologies would they have developed? With the internet being "free" and everyone using the same protocol, there is no competition to see who can build the best network.
People often point to the internet as an example of the benefits of a government sticking its fingers into everything. But think the internet would be better if the government had not gotten involved.
Re:Enjoy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it would make for a statement that is accurate. His entire point is that American politicians and rhetoric are shifted far to the right relative to much of the western world overall.
But he didn't say that. He made an absolute statement. Further, I find that a lot of statements about left versus right seem to be based on feeling rather than fact and in near complete ignorance of the tribulations and constraints that the politician faced. For example, someone might claim Obama is right wing because he triangulated to catch the center or didn't try to implement a single payer health care system. They didn't ask what a left wing politician, who wasn't a total waste of oxygen, would look like in context. Answer is that they probably wouldn't do anything differently.
My view is that Obama would be a very left wing politician in an European country. But he's not in such a country so he can't act that way and get elected.
As I see it, back in the 17th through 19th centuries, immigration to North America generated an ideological split that has lasted to this day between the US, my home country and Europe. Partly, it was that the more adventurous and criminal-minded ended up in the US and partly that the revolution that formed the US pretty much worked right the first time aside from notable, but temporary problems. We had the early failure of the Articles of Confederacy which was resolved within a decade with the current federation. And there was the conflict over slavery and North/South economic competition which ended with the "Late Unpleasantness". Since the end of the US Civil War, the US has been remarkably unified with a flexible society and democracy unlike those in most other countries. We didn't have to go through half a dozen republics.
So it is with some bemusement that I consider the statements of many Europeans who might have a culture going back millennia, but a government going back at best half a century, perhaps even a mere 20 years in the case of the Eastern Bloc countries. So where does this great political wisdom come from?
Wouldn't a European roll their eyes if am American were to boast about the 150 year old outhouse that his town has? How then are US citizens to take the similarly provincial claims of people from Europe who boast of their governments (particularly such things as services and cost of governance) given the extreme youthfulness of most of the governments in question? Sure, if you're from Switzerland or England, you can back that boast with some of the oldest governments in the world. But France? Germany? Italy? Spain? Greece? etc. There are a lot of braggarts who back young, untested governments.
Re:You overlooked something... (Score:2, Interesting)
You know what? We have a Communist Party (and plenty of other likeminded organizations). It has members. It has a newspaper. They can meet publicly or privately and disseminate their ideas the same as anyone else. I don't see where you get off criticizing our democracy for being "railroaded into one tiny spectrum of ideas." As if it's necessary for a bunch of us to veer wildly left to match the New Zealand political demographics.
I admit I like the irony of calling us "jingoistic" simply because our culture does not fit your own political conceptions. You happily rattle off other Western European countries (and one former colony of the same) to support your framing of the ideal way to be. The vast majority of the world does not fit into your narrow framework, but with your handpicked few you have magically defined a cultural ideal for .all of us to strive for. Btw, did you know that if you sum up the populations for every country that you mentioned, you get about 3/4 the sum population of the United States? You don't even have a democratic majority and you still want to lay out how the culture should be on another continent.
Yes we have a culture that is more conservative than yours. Most of the world does. There is a whole multitude of reasons the U.S. has the politics it does: if I wanted to be simplistic I might say that we are simply much more individualistic. This has its problems but it also has its benefits. Unlike Germany we have freedom of religion. Unlike France we have complete freedom of speech. Unlike the UK we have a right to defend ourselves, and much more privacy. Unlike Australia we do not criminalize/censor publications.
Now, I'm sure there are tonnes of things we get utterly wrong. I'm sure there are plenty of things you get utterly wrong as well (and are completely blind to because of your cultural heritage, just as we are). If you want to engage things we get wrong at the level of logically debating their individual merits, fine. However, if you just want to snobbishly compare cultures and declare yours superior, well, at least tone down the irony. And maybe read up a bit on where your iPad, Internet, and space age materials come from before you decide our whole country is anti-science.