Net Neutrality to Win Big on Capitol Hill? 154
The New York Times has weighed in again on Net Neutrality, this time with a hopeful message of change in the near future due to the shift of power in the House and Senate. The opinion piece takes a look at Ron Wyden in the Senate and Edward Markey in the House who have both promised to lead the charge to pass a net neutrality bill in the coming months. Lessig, on the other hand, has a somewhat more cynical view of the new Congress.
We really should start thinking of the 'net... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We really should start thinking of the 'net... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That doesn't happen in every case. The highway system has not been privatized, for example, as many libertarians would like it to be. Thank god they're not and probably never will be in charge.
Arguably, the phone network would never have been built if not for the subsidies and government-granted monopoly.
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Although your point about the phone network is possible, there are other ways to subsidize than to create monopolies.
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The problem, of course, is graft. I live in California which seems to have the worst roads in the nation. This is especially pathetic because most of California doesn't have the extreme weather problems that account for road problems in much of the rest of the US. F
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I'm not sure that's true, but I'd agree that California seems to have a problem here: I expect that, as you note, inadequate "transparency and citizen oversight" plays a role, not because California is structurally worse, in outline, than other states in that regard but simply because that a state level bureaucracy like Caltrans is inherently more opaque and distant than a structurally identical organi
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What the government should have done is install and maintain conduit, which would have solved the "natural monopoly" problem in the first place by providing ample space for X companies to run N strands of wire/fiber/whatever without the "oh noes, my road is being torn up every three months" syndrome of letting them run the wire themselves.
But hey, this way they could get megabucks from corpor
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Well this is now off-topic but there are private highways near where I live and they are better-maintained and if you added up how much of your income/state/sales/fuel taxes go to roads and such you might be shocked at your return on investment.
Private highways work well in certain cases. The problem is that they want every road in every neighborhood to be privatized. As in, you need to pay a toll to go from your house to the grocery store. A toll back. Basically, since everything would be private prope
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This actually neatly summarizes the problems with Libertarians in a nutshell. They simplistically assume what's a good idea in one case is applicable to every case (e.g., self-defense is good, therefore, personal nukes must also be good. Low taxes is good, therefore, no taxes must also be good. Etc.)
The problem is, you're wrong. Libertarians, in general, and as per party platform, support national defense and support minimal taxation. Most probably support local, community roads. They do not support personal nukes.
As in, you need to pay a toll to go from your house to the grocery store. A toll back.
You already have to do that. The difference is now, if you don't pay, rather than being unable to use the roads, your home is taken from you and possibly your car too. And even if you don't use the roads, you have to pay.
I have no problem with public roads, but neighborhood roads could prob
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This is a double edged weapon as well. I've heard of cases where companies who wanted to raze everything and redevelop the neighborhood into something else managed to buy 51% of the houses in the neighborhood, then used their majority to force the community to repave all the roads. Repeatedly. Until the people who had refused to sell their houses were driven out by hundred thousand dollar bills for the pavement.
privaized raods and Libertarians (Score:2)
Private highways work well in certain cases. The problem is that they want every road in every neighborhood to be privatized. As in, you need to pay a toll to go from your house to the grocery store. A toll back. Basically, since everything would be private property, you have would have no right to travel unless you could afford to pay.
This actually neatly summarizes the problems with Libertarians in a nutshell. They simplistically assume what's a good idea in one case is applicable to every case (e.g.,
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I don't know where this comes from, I have never heard a Libertarian say all roads should privatized. Can you provide a link, or is this smoke?
Right from the Party Platform [lp.org]:
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I don't know where this comes from, I have never heard a Libertarian say all roads should privatized. Can you provide a link, or is this smoke?
Right from the Party Platform [lp.org]:
...
Ah, neither on the snippet you provided nor on the actual page of the link you provided appears either "highway" or "road". I went ahead and searched the LP website using "road" and "privitize" [lp.org] and all I found was a post in a forum wherein a poster writes:
But [lp.org], many of our critics like to accuse us of not living i
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Ah, neither on the snippet you provided nor on the actual page of the link you provided appears either "highway" or "road".
What the platform said was, "ALL public lands and resources, as well as claims thereto, except as explicitly allowed by the Constitution..." The one thing you can say about Libertarians is that they like applying their beliefs in a psychopathically consistent way. The only mention of public roads in the constitution is for postal roads. If they say "all public lands", they mean ALL
libertarians and privatizing the highways (Score:2)
That doesn't happen in every case. The highway system has not been privatized, for example, as many libertarians would like it to be. Thank god they're not and probably never will be in charge.
Not all Libertarians want to privatize the highways, I am one of them. Libertarians want the government to follow the Constitution of the USA and it specifically gives the federal government the authority to run the highway system. There's at least two places it gives the authority, one where it says the governm
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Out of the frying pan, into the fire. (Score:2)
At least now I can maybe choose who I get screwed by: the phone company or the cable company; that's more of a choice than I have about my water or gas.
The solution to a dearth of competition is not to el
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Read up on Enron, and you really wouldn't want the net manipulated in the same way that they screwed with the west coast power access.
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Nobody knows/cares (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a lot of money AGAINT net nuetrality and not enough for it. On an issue that the average person doesn't care about few senator's are going to give up their potential re-election money just for a few informed techies. I am pessemistic about this like Lawrence Lessig, very fews things change in congress.
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There is a lot of money AGAINT net nuetrality and not enough for it.
I agree 100%. I have already made my 2007 donation to EFF [eff.org]. Have you?
Vetos (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because of signing statements (Score:5, Insightful)
More signing statements in history than any other president, including gems such as (paraphrased) "I'm signing this bill into law but I don't like it so it won't be enforced"
I'm probably way off on grammar as the statement shouldn't be in quotes as it's not exact. . . but the gist is there.
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Nope, that sounds like something our president would write.
Re:Vetos (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia says you're wrong [wikipedia.org].
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More or less.
One veto?!? (Score:2)
Wikipedia says you're wrong.
Gee... assuming that article is up-to-date GWB has got exactly one veto to his name so far. I'm not a GWB fan by any stretch of the imagination but this is hairsplitting. GWB may not be everybody's idea of a good president but he has a looooooong way to go before he tops Franklin D. Roosevelt's grand total of 635 vetoes. GWB will have to veto at the rate of almost one bill per day if he want's to beat good old FDR before the 4-11-2008 presidential election and god help the USA and for that matter the whole
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It would be very tough to beat FDR's record, however. FDR was president for four terms, from 1933 to his death in 1945. That's over twelve years. The US Constitution now limits the president to two terms. 635 vetoes in 8 years is very difficult to achieve.
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The is quite interesting if you look at the history. Most of the early vetos were made on constitutional grounds or to protect the constitution.
Now vetos are just for politicking.
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A few more glances indicates:
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(that you know of, anyway)
A little research:
Some Presidents who never vetoed a bill (in months):
Thomas Jefferson: 96
George W. Bush: 62
John Adams: 48
John Quincy Adams: 48
Millard Filmore: 31
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George W. Bush: 62
No longer true as of July 2006:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5193998. stm [bbc.co.uk]
"US President George W Bush has vetoed a controversial bill which would have lifted a ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research."
Add Taylor, Harrison, and Garfield to the "no vetoes" list.
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I'm hoping for a lot of arrests, myself.
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I don't know whether to laugh in your face or pat you on the head and send you on your way, as one would a child who still believes in Santa Claus.... at the age of fifteen.
The Democrats will be doing their "Real Job" with gusto, consolidating and keeping POWER. For Democrats it means creating more dependency on government, enlarging the set of people who 'vote for a living', threatening the c
doing what's right (Score:2)
It all depends upon if the Democrats are serious about their real job; Restoring Democracy, Honor, and Sanity. Or they sell out indictments for pork.
Barf! I don't expect the Democrats to do anything that's not in their own self interests. Republicans didn't and now Democrats won't.
FalconVital to net existance (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA A good reminder that every politician is in someone's pocket, regardless of political affiliation.
Edward Markey (Score:4, Informative)
Money and visibility (Score:2)
So if they d
Why Net Neutrality will remain. (Score:3, Insightful)
They are remarkably good at that, especially with the divided government we have now: remember, it takes 60 senators to pass legislation, and the dems only have 51.
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I'm sure you'll see plenty of legislation passing t
do nothing congress (Score:2)
All that is required for Net Neutrality to remain is for Congress to do nothing.
They are remarkably good at that, especially with the divided government we have now: remember, it takes 60 senators to pass legislation, and the dems only have 51.
That's what I like about the Democrats having taken over congress. Maybe now nothing will get done. I hope we have a lot of gridlocks, and get government out of our hair.
FalconStill not a fan of the idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I am never going to approve of stopping people from doing what we want them to do just to stop them from doing what they're not going to do.
Re:Still not a fan of the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to see how a non-neutral net works, look no further than your cell phone. Chances are it has a camera, and for many users the camera can only be used with your network provider's lame "picture mail" service. You may even access your own email service from your phone, but it still doesn't matter. You have to use their picture mail service to ship the picture to your regular email, then use your regular email to forward it to where you want it to go.
Try getting basic information on how to use your phone to give your laptop network access. Sure, it's on the feature bullet list, but if you call tech support to find out how, you'll get an earful of bad attitude. Seriously, I had to go through several levels of technical support to find out the number to dial to access network service, and the guy I got literally screamed at me as soon as the world "Bluetooth" was out of my mouth. Now at the time I worked for a company that resold this vendor's service, so I called a manager we worked with to report a serious breach of professionalism. As soon as he found out what it was about, his attitude was anybody to tried to access Internet services other than his company's was on their own, even though Internet data access was a listed feature of their cell service.
This shows you what the network provider's natural attitude is towards interoperability, when they start to get into the content business. They want to lock you into their inferior proprietary services, and put road blocks up to your accessing the services you want, then grudgingly allow you to use the services you paid for if you can beat the basic information you need out of them.
A non-neutral net is the beginning of the end of competition in Internet content services. It will soon become like broadcast radio: a wasteland of redundant "formats".
Net neutrality goes on the back burner (Score:4, Informative)
And to think we were so close to having Berman promote himself to where he wouldn't be able to do any damage by chairing whatever foreign relations committee it was he was looking at. We would have had Rick Boucher chairing this committee, which would have been a serious victory for fair use advocates worldwide.
I wonder how much the content cabal paid Berman not to take the better job.
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Now's the time to get very, VERY loud.
Good luck. (Score:3, Insightful)
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First things first.... (Score:2)
So much wrong (Score:2)
Not true. There are certain business practices that are illegal if employed by a company with monopoly power.
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Isn't that what I said? If you don't think so maybe you should read my message again.
Never said that. Either the economies of scale nor the Pro work-duplication
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When I said that "There are certain business practices that are ille
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Also, I would not sa
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Yeah...that's what I thought.
Didn't read past your first sentence...it was tantamount to saying "Until we all win the lottery, we'll always" or "Until we all ${other ridiculous analogy}". There's no practical way to rein in the government or big business. It seriously, literally is not possible to do; not in any meaningful way at any rate.
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Yes, I can see by your answer that you didn't. Too bad really, but then - that is your decision - not mine.
And yes, we can rein in both our government and big business.
About taxation (Score:2)
The reason the tax system isn't as simple as just taking a percentage of earnings is because anytime someone suggests such a thing it is met with howls of how it is "regressive" and what is needed is a "progressive" tax system. What that means, most people don't have a clue but it sounds nice.
The folks complaining about simplified tax systems are concerned because they think rich people should support poor people and people with high incomes can afford higher tax
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Wrong. [fairtax.org]
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This has help up many times in courts.
That is why while BP CEO implemented Kyoto himself, he still refuses to renounce claims to dig up Alaskan frontier.
Profits from Alaska trump the savings from a image makeover.
If you state Profit is the only motive permitted, then expect the corporations to behave t
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It's still that way, it's always been that way, and for the foreseeable future I think I can safely say that we're still not going to trust them enough to let those rascals get together any more often than that.
Government is a puppy: Dangerous when bored. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ironic that although the Founders of this country realized the dangers that having a standing Army presented, they evidently never realized those posed by a sitting Legislature.
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Sorry, but not being a US resident (I am British, for the record) I do not understand this with regards to the army. You have a larger, better equiped armed forces than any other country in the entire world.
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Until more than a century after its founding, America had no standing army. The closest we had were state and local militias. I believe the major changeover happened around the time of the civil war.
Actually the US did have a standing army, the Marines. As President, Thomas Jefferson [wikipedia.org], one of those against having a standing army, sent them on the US's first foreign adventure. He sent the Marines to fight the Barbary Pirates [wikipedia.org] in the Mediterranean based in the ports of Morocco. This was the First Barbary [wikipedia.org]
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Technically speaking the Marines Corps are part of a standing Navy. The extent to which the Marines are a independent land fighting force was at least partly because of the founders fears of a standing Army which became separate from the citizenry.
I can tell you first hand that there are a lot of military families out there who love America, but despise most civilian Americans as undeserving of their freedom. This is the most dangerous type of factional
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To compare with the Texas situation, is Texas not a place where the governor has fairly limited power? I think I'd be concerned for a place with a rarely-involved legislature but a strong powerful executive branch.
In other words, I don't think we should consider scaling back the power/in
Re:Government is a puppy: Dangerous when bored. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the country were only facing Texas-sized problems, this would be a good idea. Unfortunately our real problems are bigger than the ones they have in Texas.
The real problems always seem to occur when you have politicians looking for things to do, to make themselves look useful.
Look at us right now. We currently have a lot of stuff that needs doing. No politician needs to be looking very far. Just think of all the things we need to get moving on yesterday- federal budget deficits, global warming and environmental issues, water shortages, accelerating economic stratification, trade deficits, housing bubbles, energy crises, a pending transition from an oil-based economy, etc. And what has Congress been up to during this time?
This is what the 109th Congress thought was important:
But the 109th Congress shares your opinion that the 110th Congress is best tied up. So they closed their doors after the election without doing their mandated job of closing out their own spending bills. They left behind a half-trillion dollar mess of budget bills so that the next Congress will have to waste time unraveling all of it. Good work if you can get it.
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They did
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I'm sure Bush would agree with you:
an end to those inconvenient checks and balances woven into the Constitution, unlimited power to the Executive.
It's ironic that although the Founders of this country realized the dangers that having a standing Army presented, they evidently never realized those posed by a sitting Legislature.
The first concern of the Founders was to make da
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When you approach politicians with a big guy small guy scheme, you are lost. Because politicians side always have to side with the big guy. And all sympathy goes to the small guy, that is you.
Now Larry Lessig, what if you represent the "big guy"? The big guy is the one who always wins. So tell them that you are the "big guy", stupid
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There is a certain attraction to the idea of a government that governs best when it governs least. The counter example is Katrina, where it became clear we expect government to be prepared to act vigorously.
The less is better recipe for government is faulty in that it suggests that no government at all is best. This was t
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Re:Balance of power (Score:5, Informative)
Please explain to me how legislation to protect equal access and prevent multi-tier implementations that favor big business and big government are a un-Constitutional power grab. After all, conceptually, net neutrality goes far back in US history to the mid 1800's to preserve equal access to telegraph lines with the only exception being made for war or emergency purposes. The purpose was to encourage impartial use of the new resource and promote economic development in a democratic manner. I think that perhaps you are confused about the status of the current proposal to break up limits on net neutrality.
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The FCC? Ah, isn't that part of the government? Who do you want making the regs, some unelected bureaucratic body, or your elected and (slightly more) accountable representatives? Without any special instructions from congress, what do you think the FCC will do, what is best for we, the people, or what is best for
free market and the internet (Score:2)
Okay, so what will prevent companies from abusing tiered service? The free market? There isn't one in telecom and there simply can't be one. Great example of a natural monopoly, no state required.
No there isn't a true freemarket but there is some things that can be done without a new Net Neutrality law. First the landline telcos are regulated as common carriers and can't discriminate based on who the parties are. Then there's isps' clients such as you and me. If my isp tried to throttle some of the we
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It isn't your ISP that's doing it. Let's say you want to load Google. Your ISP has to go through Yet Another Company to connect to them. As long as YAC is only in the business of providing the "tube between your ISP and Google, no problem, all packets are equal.
But what if YAC is also in the content business? Then connecting to their search engine happens right away, but unless Google pays them extra, your connnection to Google slows
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LOL. Is that what you believe? Here's the truth of the matter: Free-trade capitalism serves one valid purpose in our society, and that is to make money for the shareholders of corporations. It has exactly dick to do with improving life, and if success in capitalism comes at the cost of someone else's quality of life or long term wellbeing, there is nothing free-trade capitalism will do about it.
The long-term ratchet effect of unfettered freetrad
Telco competition COULD be reality (Score:3, Interesting)
Agree with the part about a lack of a Free Market. I'm amazed anyone can call two government granted monopolies pretending to fight 'competition.' But you are wrong in that there COULD be competition.
A bold statement, right? Almost every tech savvy type has admitted that telco competition just isn't possible so we are going to have to take it in the pooper from the government, the telcos, big media or somebody. Wrong.
The AT
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Prioritizing traffic can be a good thing when properly applied. For example, VoIP services work much better when there is a guarantee that the packet will make it to its destination in a specified period of time. (A bit like how RTOSes guarantee a time slice to a program.) The only reason why we have a problem is because some telco exec got the bright idea of selling this prioritization service in a general-purpose fashion. (Thus negating the purpose of such a service. Genius, pure genius.) They then trie
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Oops. Typo. There is not, and should not be...
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For example, Skype might pays protection money to Comcast, so their VoIP traffic gets priority, while Vonage doesn't pay them protection money, so their traffic gets prioritized somewhere just below bittorrent downloads. Since neither Skype nor Vonage are customers of Comcast, that sort of behavior would be highly inappropriate, and the people who would inevitably lose in this example would be Comcast's customers. Worse, since most parts of the country are only served by one or two high speed internet provi
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You and the other two people who cared enough to complain would get a polite letter explaining that they do not guarantee quality of service for other VoIP providers, and by the way, would you like to get our VoIP service for only $39.99 per month plus applicable regulatory fees and taxes? :-)
The point is that they'd get several years out of you before their license came up for renewal, during which time, your choice would be to either pay them for degraded service or not get high speed internet access.
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The opposite of progress is congress. Don't let them do anything that can be handled without legislation.
Problem is, internet providers can only exist because Congress lets them. So with that must come strings so that the ISPs have responsibility with their power. The second an ISP can get an internet connection to people by only going through private property and they have negotiated prices and terms with every single owner of the private property, then they can be free without restrictions from congress. But while ever they use public areas, the people will grant them that ability, with a couple of limitati
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The best part is that idiots such as yourself always seem to point at the other side as to why things don't get done, regardless of who controls the government at any given time.
And to make matters even worse you wasted a mod point on your real accoun
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What, exactly are you referring to here?
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Welcome to the kleptocracy. This is of course what many of us have been saying all along. It's impossible to fight the system from within because - gasp - you're PART of the damned thing. You have to fight it from without.
What does that actually mean? It means making yourself as independent from all things govern
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If I were you, I'd quit making sense. You don't want to know what happens to people who make sense and actually get people to listen to them.
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The problem is defective Citizens (Score:2)
Good idea.... but if you plan on trying em out a term or two and send the better ones to higher office, by the time you get to high statewide office you are talking about electing people who won't have worked in the private sector for at least a decade. By the time someone 'worked their way up through the ranks' to the US Senate they would have probably been a politician long enough politics would BE their career.
> Sta
Russ Feingold (Score:3, Insightful)
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Please let me keep my license. I don't want to end up on Ars Technica!!!