Tragedy Troy

Well, the State of Georgia just put a scumbag down. Personally, I think this was a mistake. Not because I think Troy Davis was 'innocent', but because I have changed my mind on the Death Penalty. Brian Nichols was on video killing people in the Fulton County Courthouse and he got life in prison. Troy Davis should have got the same.


So between the Amnesty Hippies and the "Fire Up Sparky" crowd, lets take a look at the actual case:


Problems for the prosecution:

1) A big problem for the prosecution was the fact that evidence from a search of Davis's mother's home was thrown out as the police were unable to prove that they acted with probable cause (no warrant). This evidence involved a pair of shorts found in a dryer in the home, as well as anything else.

2) Some have claimed that there was "no" physical evidence. This is not the case.Shell casings recovered at the scene matched the casings recovered from a previous shooting earlier in the evening to which Davis was present for.

3) Proving motive. During testimony at trial a family neighbor Jeffrey Sapp testified that Davis had confessed to the shooting to him. Kevin McQueen a fellow inmate Testified that he had also confessed to him. Stating that he had shot MacPhail for fear of the officer connecting him to the shooting earlier in the evening

4) Additionally based on crime scene reconstruction and testimony at trial, Officer MacPhail upon coming to the aid of Larry Young ran past Sylvester Cole, One could conclude that Davis the only one of those two with a motive to shoot MacPhail. Some of wondered if Coles shot MacPhail? However, the question remains why would he have done that?

5) Sylvester Coles himself was a problem for prosecutors. He admitted at trial that he too owned a .38 caliber, but had given it to another man earlier in the evening. That is a big, big problem for the prosecutors case. Where is the gun?

If one were to argue there is questionable evidence that Davis is guilty, there is even less that Coles is.

Problems with Davis's defense:

The issues with Davis's defense were plenty.

1) Davis's trial for killing the officer was clumped in together with being charged with shooting Cooper and the beating of Larry Young. His defense atty should have objected, as the other alleged crimes would taint the jury against Davis effectively making it look like 1 crime. .

2) Davis fingered for being at the scene of two shootings/three crimes on the same night. The shell casings from both shootings matched. They came from the same .38 caliber. Common denominator: Troy Davis.

3) Davis was also at the scene of the beating of Larry Young, the homeless man in the parking lot the night of MacPhail's death and the person he was trying to assist.

4) Taking off for Atlanta the same night as the shootings. So it is just a coincidence that he flees to Atlanta the same night of the two shootings. Atlanta is a 4 hour ride from Cloverdale (where Davis is from) some 248 miles. If you didn't do anything or weren't involved at all where are you going?

5) The fact that the cop was shot twice implies intent to kill. This isn't a case of a gun mistakenly going off in a struggle. This goes back to the prosecution's argument for motive. Whoever shot MacPhail wanted to be sure he was dead. These things matter to a jury.

6) For the Davis defense and this applies mostly to the appeal process. How reliable are the reenactments of the previous prosecution witnesses? Were they lying then, now or have memories simply faded.

7) How much does their change of testimony reflect the pending execution and how much of it reflects them actually telling the truth "this time". An 80% reenactment rate is rather incredulous. Either there was some massive conspiracy involving cops, neighbors, friends and inmates to convict him or memories are really bad.

8) Some argue that some witnesses were intimidated my police, as some witnesses later stated. However, what about the neighbor Jeffrey Sapp or Kevin McQueen? Why would they lie about a confession? What about the other 20% who stuck by their testimony.

The Verdict:

This focus on this case by people and the media is about the death penalty and that alone. I see signs that say "Free Troy Davis". Even if his execution was commuted he would not be set free.

Even at trial, if the jury had come back without a conviction they would have said "not guilty", not "innocent".

Given the preponderance of albeit circumstantial evidence, I suspect he is guilty.

I suspect that upon realizing Davis would be executed people recanted testimony not because they had lied before, but to keep him from being executed.

Would I commute the execution? Probably, since there are some unknowns. Davis made a choice to shoot MacPhail the second time, which is what seals it for me. However, it just isn't as air tight as I might like for death penalty case, but I do think he is guilty of the crime just the same.

That being said, Troy Davis is not innocent.





Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis_case#Shootings_and_arrest
http://legalcases.info/troydavis/
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/troy-davis-executed-parole-board-denies-clemency-131916604.html
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/opinion/stories/2008/10/21/lawtoned_1021.html?cxntlid=inform_sr
Edited 2 days ago Report Abuse

'Fair Taxation'

Here is a novel idea on 'fair taxation'...First all taxes have to be repealed and replaced by a single fee on transactions in US dollars.

My rate is .49%, so a dollar is tax-free. A penny on a two. Two on five, nickel on ten, dime on twenty, quarter on fifty, Kennedy half on a Bennie.

For every single time that some amount, counted in USD that trades hands (excluding CASH) has a fee that goes to support the monetary system.

If it was the worst idea in the world and the economy tanked by 50%, it would still bring in $10 Trillion in revenue.


Imagine ten of them. Our GNP is only $15 Trillion. No magic at all.

Except in breaking the spell of the way it has always been and everyone thought or were taught.

That's enough to send every citizen a check for $1200 a month.

Fund government at all levels at current budgets.

And still run trillions in surplus that would pay the debt off in a decade.

The mystification comes when people understand millions versus billions versus trillions versus quadrillions, which is what we have to use to count all the money changing hands in USD every year.

But most of it is the big players. Those who use the monetary infrastructure at the greatest scale, pay the most tax. Totally voluntary in that if you don't want to pay the tax, don't make the purchase.

Once the national debt is paid, we could cut the rate by half.

I keep the challenge open for anyone to prove my math wrong on this.

It is the only fair tax, because it doesn't discriminate against any class of transaction, nor does it give special treatment to any particular activity or purchase or investment. If you think it's what you want to do is use USDollars to transact some business, that costs half a percent fee to fund the system (and the government, too, incidentally).

You are paying into the income fund, which kicks out a base income for every man woman and child for the sole reason that they are beautiful human beings that are alive and among us on this planet.

Everyone gets a base wage no matter how worthless and lazy and self-destructive they may be. People who were only working to freaking pay for a place to stay while they worked on their masterpieces no longer are taking that job from someone who really wants one.

We do away with the minimum wage, and instead install a regime that simply pays poverty off. Cheaper than fighting crime, hunger, disease, urban decay and the whole nine.

And to make it fair, everyone gets it.

What would people do? You think some of them might go spend that money into the economy for things they want and need? Does that seem like a good stimulus package? Do you think that would help unemployment?

It is this sort of setup that scares the powers that be to their core. Because now wages are going to have to rise in a lot of cases because half the underpaid workforce just quit to just live on their check.

The rest are much happier, because they are no longer really all that afraid of losing their job. If they do, they at least know they'll have their citizen's dividend coming in every month. And lots of places are hiring in this environment.

The only inflation that I have found to be virtuous is the inflation that occurs when wages are rising.

Maybe they wouldn't rise. When the sum total of taxes that it costs to employ someone is .49%, then wages have room in current budgets to rise, or like the fair tax is talking about, giving the employer the discretion as to how to allocate that massive tax cut.

The industries hit the hardest by this alternative taxation method is those who move the most money.

But here's the sneaky thing. When I go buy a loaf of bread and pay my penny tax, just like sales tax, it was never the grocery store's money to begin with. They end up spending that penny when they make a deposit. When they pay the bakery who baked the bread, they have to pay that penny to that company. Maybe the bakery accepts an electronic transfer to the bank it uses that is in Oklahoma. The bank transfers that money, consolidated with other pennies paid in bread transactions to the baker's bank on an interbank transfer network.

This is where taxes are collected. There are very few of these networks, and they move a ton of money. One of those entities, incidentally, is the federal reserve, because they still have the check clearing framework. This is where the pennies are siphoned off to the treasury, to pay our dividend.

And it is the data from those networks that I use to make my calculations. The Bank of International Settlements publishes some very rough estimates of the volumes and values of transactions that occur over various digital networks.

The DTCC processes most securities, like stocks and bonds and foreign exchange transactions, over a quadrillion dollars worth a year. Their current fee for this service is like .0015% per transaction. Now it would be the never unpaid .49% plus their fee, with the treasury receiving the .49%.

Large interbank transfers are on the fed, or SWIFT. Very few entities handle nearly all the money at some point in time. Other entities could register an account with the treasury and set up a business running a payment network of some sort that used USD.

The volumes of dollars that these primary fat money pipes do every day is astounding. If Congress directed those entities to collect a .49% fee on every transaction, they could repeal all the other taxes and have more money in the treasury than they could possibly imagine.

We keep the federal reserve, but remove its power as the national debt enabler. Implement a 100% reserve requirement for all new lending. Those who want to earn a return on their money may invest in their bank's lending program. The current hegemony of pushing reserves up the pyramid is done. The reserves are held by the lending bank. They may no longer lend money they do not have (creating it out of thin air like they do now). The Fed no longer sets interest rates, because your local bank can do that.

The states could piggyback the same system and eliminate all their own taxes, pulling any funding that would normally come from the federal level before the fee hits the national treasury.

I have no idea whether I get anywhere with all this, because it seems a bit too good to be true. I can't say what all the various things the economy might do once the distortions of the current tax regime are no longer relevant.

There are a lot of transactions that are currently untaxed. Those are mainly in the financial sector. I couldn't think of a better bunch of bastards to dump a tiny little tax on than those folks. They would scream bloody murder and pull out all the stops on the propaganda channels and politicians they own. But they are sorely outnumbered, and after all, it's the fairest tax ever devised, only in recent times technologically possible, and nullifying the control-freak, social engineering weapon of tyranny that taxation has become.

another HBO Doc in the Box

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100909/REAL_ESTATE/100909881

Once again HBO Documentary Films has created another suspect tear-jerker, 'No Contract No Cookies', which, if you have HBO is in the 'on demand' section. I encourage everyone to watch it.

The film chronicles the year long strike and culmination of the Stella D'oro Cookie Company. Here is How HBO describes the 'synopsis':



http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/no-contract-no-cookies-the-stella-doro-strike/index.html#/documentaries/no-contract-no-cookies-the-stella-doro-strike/synopsis.html


And here is the accompanying whine bar retort from our Tin Foil Friends at Huffpo:

"The new HBO documentary, No Contract No Cookies: The Stella D'Oro Strike, premiering on HBO2 tonight at 8pm, tells the story of a beloved Bronx bakery, founded by Italian immigrants in 1932, that now lies shuttered, like so many factories all over America. The saga of how the company went from a thriving family-owned enterprise to a gutted equity fund acquisition is a success story only if you're rooting for our modern day robber barons. For the dwindling middle class and the unwashed masses, it's an American tragedy that's being repeated all over the country.

No Contract No Cookies puts a poignant face -- or 138 faces, to be precise -- on the massacre of manufacturing jobs that CEOs routinely commit in the name of prosperity. At the Stella D'Oro factory, folks from 22 different countries worked convivially alongside New York natives and gained a foothold in the American middle class, only to be kicked off the ladder when Brynwood Partners, a private equity fund, bought the company. In 2008, when the workers' contract expired, Brynwood demanded a 30% pay cut."

Ahh, yes. The storyline defines itself: picture the nameless, faceless, evil corporate overlord raider known as Brynwood Partners, or as I will refer to them BP.

The bakery was founded in 1932 and the immigrant family that owned the factory sold it to Kraft Foods in 2002( CHA CHING!) . After 4 years, Kraft food sells it to BP. BP operates it from 2006-until fall 2008 ( when the econimy went in the sh*tter ) and goes and tells the Union bosses in the Bronx "hey, we need to cut costs. Were taking it in the pants. Help us out here. Were paying 18$-22$ an hour for unskilled labor with 9 weeks paid leave! Lets back that down for 5 years until we get out of this slump. Is that reasonable?'

The Union Bosses say 'Say What? Your talking going from 18$ and hour to 13-14$? And less paid leave?! Hells to the No. Why dont you show me your books so we can see how much a 'jam' you are in ,and then we will talk'.

Show me your books, please. Where have I heard that one before?

So at this point, the strike in on. Now your the Union Boss: your job is to look out for the laborers. I get it.

And I also see BP's dilemna. They were already not showing 'good enough profits' and with the strike they werent making any more. The scabs could not produce what the Union Laborers could do. So now the brand and the bottom line is starting to feel it. And c'mon. 9 weeks paid vacation and 23-24$ an hour? Its UNSKILLED LABOR that can be performed by those without a significant grasp of the English language, as per it's founder. I know, it's the Bronx, but that is an incredibly sweet deal!! Right? What to do?

Well, the way HBO and the director Jon Alpert look at it: BP is out to 'screw' the laborers. And they do this with heartfelt imagery, of the immgrant founder to the 130 odd non native born workers. The Greek mechanic that dines with the Vietnamese machinist ponders his life here and curses the picket crossers.

And the music swells, the juxtapositioning of stills and people tearfully leaving thier job for good should be a harbinger for industry in the Northeast. After a long, long strike the laborers agree to the 'deal'. BUt in that time, the company's worth and projected profit had taken a nose dive. So, BP sells out to King Cracker: Lance Corporation from good ol' North Cackalacky.

Lance then decides to repay the striking workers by shuttering the damn thing, sending up trucks to get thier equipment out of there, loading up and moving to Ashland Ohio, where there is no Union.

Now, since the doc has come out the Union won a decision against BP that it had 'negotiated in bad faith' and will probably get a couple million dollar settlement. Thats going to mean alot of Union Atnny fee's and Union recompense so in the end the workers that went on strike will get paid what they would have made had they not gone on strike for a year or so. But the 'job' is long gone. The factory that had been an integral part of the Bronx is now empty, and a nice new facility in Ohio is employing slightly less. And still putting out those Swiss Fudge cookies that the Orthodox Jews up there die for, they arent made with butter or milk.

The interesting thing to me is how the documentary filmmaker declines to show the ugly side of the Union that helped bring on the factories demise. It really is glaringly obvious to the naked eye. No follow up on the 'new non union' employees in Ashland Ohio, only focusing on the mostly immigrant class that ends up losing thier 'bread and butter', so to say. To be sure BP is not guilt free here, but they are made to look quite Darth Vader-ish.


Watch the doc and read the signs:

'Boro Jobs Before Profits'?! For real?

'My Job is my Right'? Your WHAT?!

'Taxpayers and Workers OWN Stella D'oro'. Okay stop right there.

How would you deal with these idiots? I would do exactly what they did. Close up and move to where the employees arent that 'special'.

How how did it all work out?

So what has happened to the people in the documentary?

Some found other work, and some are on the dole. In an interview the director said about 35% of the workers were still employed. The rest retired, or went on assistance.

Lance is now making the cookies, just not in the Bronx anymore. As long as they turn a profit, they will be around for years to come.

The Union bosses still got paid thier high salary, and the lawyers made thie hours, the original owner made $$ and sold it, BP broke even and sold it, and Lance Crackers now runs it.

The only losers here were obvious to see.

this parade of fools

Pawlenty: Puh-lenty of crap. Out of the race.

Herman Cain: his answer to the Iran problem proved he is only capable as a cabinet
level position. If he honestly thinks we can defeat the shieks and militants by energy independance, he is mistaken. Time is against us. We do not have the infrastructure nor the political will to pull it off. Sorry, Cain your not Able.

Huntsman: who-man? Do we really need another holy underwear crusader in the mix? Good grief. We need to run screaming from the religious crazies like they were on fire.

Bachmann: which brings us to her. Her husband's 'wide stance' and her Palin-esque non mastery of simple history and facts will bury her. If this is the best the Tea Party (tm) can come up with, give it back to the British!

Newt Gingrinch : Newt? Not. A Prayer. Need I go on?

Rick Santorum: You know, he's not that bad fiscally, but he is another bible thumper. His views on same sex marriage dont jive with me. I'm just not that concerned about the 'state of marriage', and even if I was, I doubt I would want this guy as it's Representative. So, that leaves......


Rick Perry: Honestly, I dont know much about him. My first impression is he is Bush-like, even though there is no love lost between them.If I have to choose a Texan then I guess I go for...

Ron Paul. Well, I'be been one of those 'Paul-tards' a 'Ron-Bot' and I admit I have bias. He EASILY wontthe debate and came in 2nd in the straw poll. Best of the litter.

Dishonorable mention: Trump and Palin. Enough already!

Honorable Mention: Gary Johnson. He is getting 'Ron Paul Screwed' this time. He should be heard, but it is his time in the barrel.

That's my 2 cents.

Could the London Riots happen here?

It is very unlikely that anything similar would happen here. I credit Hollywood, community colleges, and improvements in policing. Guns, the death of "mom and pop" retailing, poorly developed public transportation, and a strong black-market for drugs should probably get honorable mentions.

Hollywood sells the dream, quite effectively, that you too can be Jennifer Lopez or Snoop Dogg, Snooki. If this is the prevailing notion, its more difficult to collect enough hopeless youth to make a riot. Moreover, fantasies are not the only dreams being sold. Community colleges take everyone, are affordable, and help lift folks, including those who once dropped out of school, and create a sense of success in a population that might not feel it otherwise. Finally, our police departments more and more do reflect the populations that they police. Look at the London pictures. If their police department is substantially integrated its not coming across in pictures.

Secondly, we are not tremendously mobile. The U.S. is a big place and if you don't have a car you cannot get to Walmart very easily to loot or riot, and even if you do, how will you get home? And if you do have a car, you probably worked hard enough to get it that you don't want to risk it by rioting. Certainly there are smaller shops in large cities. Many such shops were targeted during the L.A. riots--including many operated by unarmed Koreans and other Asians. Think they're still unarmed? That is one big difference in this country: thieves have as much or more to fear from the gun behind the counter than from the police. Could they bring their own guns? Sure. But it takes a different level of brazenness to rob at gun point than to help yourself to wine while everyone stands aside. At minimum, any rioting here would be a lot more deadly, even if fewer people were involved. That alone, I think, would discourage wider participation.

Finally, have you watched the Wire? Do you know how much work it is be a criminal? This country has a lot of industrious folks who are not represented in our employment and unemployment numbers.

Whatever the numbers say about a growing divide in wealth, Americans do not sense this very strongly. Everyone here is a potential millionaire if not billionaire. Who wants to destroy that?

If there are riots they will only occur in downtown areas and wont be spread out like London.

I could be completely wrong...

Bereaucracy Now!

check out this clip from Judge Judy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuCKkOkQcHY&feature=player_embedded#at=351

NOw, imagine if the situation was reversed. A hot, 22 year old girl who is attending college moves in with a man who is 30, has a job but covets her company. NOw, if she gets 'rent' $$ for going to school, but it's covered because the 30 year old troll likes her, then she would not get crap for using her rent money to go to the gym and buy makeup. But if it's a guy and a 30 year old fat chick: different story, huh?

And this: is just too perfect. Having dealt with neighbors and city codes, this is right up may alley. H/T American Thinker

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/balusters_and_bureaucrats.html



By David Workman
Having purchased an old house, a friend of mine, John, was informed that the house had a number of code violations. Specifically, the railing on the porch, at only twenty-one inches, fell considerably short of the city's required forty-two. This is a safety issue, he was told. Apparently, in 1901, when the house was built, children were only half the size that they are now -- or perhaps twice as aware of their surroundings. In any case, he was going to have to replace the porch railings.

So he did. He found a carpenter, who lathed out new balusters in the same style, which was expensive. John could have purchased ready-made uprights, but it was important to him to keep the porch looking as it had. It was while the balusters were being installed that the trouble started.

The trouble arrived in the form of Joyce, a representative of the Historic Preservation Society. She had noticed that the old balusters had been removed from the porch and was, she said, surprised that her office hadn't been informed. John didn't see why he should have to inform anybody that he was bringing his home up to code, and he told her so.

John isn't entirely diplomatic. One might characterize his attitude as dismissive, but since he really did want Joyce to go away, such an attitude seemed appropriate. It did not seem so to Joyce, who didn't care to be casually rebuffed in her efforts. She began to make her case.

The house, as I said, was built in 1901. Up until the year 2000, the previous owners could have done anything they wanted to it, including improving the porch to meet code requirements. But in the year 2001, the house turned 100 years old. The Historic Preservation Society took an interest, and voilà: here was Joyce, trying to exert some authority over John's property.

While Joyce recognized that the porch was not up to code, her only solution was to replace the balusters in their original style and height and add an additional railing at the prescribed level. John declined this suggestion. The carpenter, who had stopped in his work and was listening to this exchange, was informed that he should continue, and Joyce was informed that the code enforcement officer would be on site the following week to certify that the dangerous porch railing had been replaced. John invited Joyce to meet with him then, although the nature of the invitation left no room for doubt that her presence was not eagerly anticipated.

When Roger, the code enforcement officer, arrived the following Tuesday, it became clear that Joyce had been lurking nearby, for she arrived hard on his heels. She again stated her case, which John had already heard and rejected and which was of no interest to Roger whatsoever.

After measuring the height of the railing, Roger was ready to sign off on the improvements. Joyce persisted. Roger still did not care and explained that his concern was simply certifying the improvements. John then inquired as to the repercussions of ignoring the building codes. Roger informed him that a fine of $500.00 could be levied each month, and the building could be deemed uninhabitable. John then asked Joyce what the repercussions of ignoring her demands. When he was informed that she could issue only a single fine of $200.00, John wrote a check, handed it to her, and asked her to leave.

In a perfect world, this would be the end of the story. John was happy that his home was inhabitable, consistent with the code, and still exhibiting the style that he had first found attractive. Roger had done his job, which consisted of taking a couple of measurements, but which we can assume will spare untold numbers of incautious children and intoxicated adults from pitching off the porch. The carpenter earned his pay and later got a recommendation when another friend of John's was looking to have some windows fitted. Sweetness and light all about, one would guess.

But this story includes a minor-level bureaucrat who had been spurned. At the next meeting in City Hall, Joyce stood to speak to the councilors. She might have pointed out that the regulations of two city agencies were at odds, and that some clarification was in order. But she didn't. She might have suggested a review board capable of making a ruling when two different mandates conflicted. She didn't do that, either. What she desired of the City Council was the authority to fine homeowners $500.00 per month.

To Joyce, and the other one million, eight hundred thousand civil servants in America, the problem isn't that there are too many regulations, and those too contradictory, that overburden the citizen who attempts to comply. The problem is that one agency enjoys a prerogative some other agency does not -- that agencies are not equal in their ability to coerce. Since the real problem -- the reconciliation of contradictory regulations -- was never addressed, the next move is almost certainly that Roger will seek his own privilege to impose greater fines.

Though our politicians are constantly in the spotlight, it's these little exchanges that truly make all the difference. More than anything, it's these petty bureaucratic arms races that impact our daily lives, punish the citizen, degrade privacy, and erode the value of personal property.

Taxes are low?

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip



The first problem with the article is the misplaced importance of Tax Rates, as opposed to Tax Revenue. Regardless of whether tax rates go up or go down, the deficit is a result of Tax Revenue falling short of government spending.

And while Tax Rates may be at a 60 year low, Tax Revenue is up. In fact, Tax Revenue as percentage of GDP is above 20 year, 40 year and 60 year averages. Why didn't the USA Today article point out this fact?
1) Was the journalist not aware of this fact?
2) Is it because the article didn't want to highlight the point that tax rate cuts can actually increase tax revenue?
3) Is it because liberals will use the historically low rates as a means to justifying a tax rate hike?
4) Some combo of the above?

The second problem I have with the article is the loose connection between low tax rates and the Tea Party Movement's concern about high taxes. Granted, the article does state that the Tea Party is worried about excessive gov't. spending, but those on the left are jumping to the conclusion that this article is some sort of proof that the Tea Party doesn't know what it's talking about.

The third problem I have with the article is the use of average income and average tax rate. It only tells part of the picture. Why didn't the article include median income and median tax rates? May favorite sentence in this article is as follows:

“That means a $3400 annual tax savings for a household paying the average national rate and earning the average national household income of $102,000.”

The first thing that ought to jump out at you as a huge red flag (or red herring in this case) is the $102,000 average annual income.

While I have no reason to doubt the average income in the US to be $102,000, the 2009 median income in the US was roughly $50K (I’ve researched median income from several sources and the numbers range from $46.5K to $52K). Median income simply means that 50% the households in the US earn less than $50K and 50% of the households earn more than $50K. In fact, if you look at the distribution of income across the US, less than 20% of the US population makes $102K or more. So, something like 4 out of every 5 American households make less than the published average. The reason economists have always chosen to use median income instead of averaage income is to avoid the discrepancy below.

But what makes America sound wealthier?
1. An average income of $102K?
2. A median income of $50K?

The fourth problem I have with this article is that is does nothing assess government spending. To reiterate, the deficit is a result of Tax Revenue falling short of government spending.

Obama targeted tax increases for the rich, and he defined rich as households earning $250K per year or more. Are we to assume that the multi-trillion dollar deficit will be recovered by taxing the rich. Only 1.3% of the households in America earn $250K or more per year. Wake and smell the math problem. There simply is not enough of a tax base to recoup that level of spending.

Y2K even later on

The Year 2000 problem (also known as the Y2K problem, the millennium bug and the Y2K Bug) was the result of a practice in computer program design that caused some date-related processing to operate incorrectly for dates and times on and after January 1, 2000. It turned into a major fear that critical industries (such as electricity or financial) and government functions would stop working at exactly midnight, January 1, 2000, and at other critical dates which were billed as "event horizons". This fear was fueled by the press coverage and other media speculation, as well as corporate and government reports. All over the world companies and organizations checked and upgraded their computer systems. The preparation for Y2K had a significant effect on the computer industry. However, no significant level of computer failure took place when the clocks rolled over into 2000.
Background
Y2K was the common abbreviation for the year 2000 problem. The abbreviation combines the letter Y for "year", and k for the Greek suffix kilo meaning 1000; hence, 2k means 2000. It also went by millennium bug because it was mistakenly associated with a roll-over of the millennium.

The term was coined on June 12, 1995 in an e-mail sent by David Eddy, a Massachusetts programmer . He later said, "People were calling it CDC (Century Date Change) and FADL (Faulty Date Logic). There were other contenders. It just came off my COBOL calloused fingertips."

It was speculated that computer programs could stop working or produce erroneous results because they stored years with only two digits and that the year 2000 would be represented by 00 and would be interpreted by software as the year 1900. This would cause date comparisons to produce incorrect results. It was also thought that embedded systems, making use of similar date logic, might fail and cause utilities and other crucial infrastructure to fail.

Special committees were set up by governments to monitor remedial work and contingency planning, particularly by crucial infrastructures such as telecommunications, utilities and the like, to ensure that the most critical services had fixed their own problems and were prepared for problems with others. It was only the safe passing of the main "event horizon" itself, January 1, 2000, that fully quelled public fears.

In North America the actions taken to remedy the possible problems did have unexpected benefits. Many businesses installed computer backup systems for critical files. The September 11 attacks destroyed hundreds of offices in the World Trade Center, potentially crippling vast segments of the economy; however, most of the offices had purchased backup servers in New Jersey and elsewhere, limiting the devastation of the attacks. The Y2K preparations further had impact on August 14, 2003 during the 2003 North America blackout. The previous activities had included the installation of new electrical generation equipment and systems which allowed for a relatively rapid restoration of power in some areas.
The programming problem
The underlying programming problem was real, but more subtle than many realize. The practice of using two-digit dates for convenience long predates computers, as can easily be demonstrated by visiting an art museum. Saving scarce memory was only an issue for a very short part of the computer age, but since that age happened to fall near the middle of a century users and programmers became lazy. The fundamental issue is that humans can use context to disambiguate: we look at an Impressionist painting signed "Monet '73" or an abstract painting signed "Picasso '39" and we know one was done in the nineteenth century while the other in the twentieth; computers don't recognize context.

In the 1960s, computer memory and storage were scarce and expensive, and most data processing was done on punch cards which represented text data in 80-column records. Programming languages of the time, such as COBOL and RPG, processed numbers in their ASCII or EBCDIC representations. They occasionally used an extra bit called a "zone punch" to save one character for a minus sign on a negative number, or compressed two digits into one byte in a form called binary-coded decimal, but otherwise processed numbers as straight text. Over time the punch cards were converted to magnetic tape and then disk files and later to simple databases like ISAM, but the structure of the programs usually changed very little. Popular software like dBase continued the practice of storing dates as text well into the 1980s and 1990s.

Saving two characters for every date field was significant in the 1960s. Since programs at that time were mostly short-lived affairs programmed to solve a specific problem, or control a specific hardware-setup, neither managers nor programmers of that time expected their programs to remain in use for many decades. The realization that databases were a new type of program with different characteristics had not yet come, and hence most did not consider fixing two digits of the year a significant problem. There were exceptions, of course; the first person known to publicly address the problem was Bob Bemer who had noticed it in 1958, as a result of work on genealogical software. He spent the next twenty years trying to make programmers, IBM, the US government and the ISO care about the problem, with little result. This included the recommendation that the COBOL PICTURE clause should be used to specify four digit years for dates. This could have been done by programmers at any time from the initial release of the first COBOL compiler in 1961 onwards. However, lack of foresight, the desire to save storage space, and overall complacency prevented this advice from being followed. Despite magazine articles on the subject from 1970 onwards, the majority of programmers only started recognizing Y2K as a looming problem in the mid-1990s, but even then, inertia and complacency caused it to be mostly ignored until the last few years of the decade.

Storage of a combined date and time within a fixed binary field is often considered a solution, but the possibility for software to misinterpret dates remains, because such date and time representations must be relative to a defined origin. Roll-over of such systems is still a problem but can happen at varying dates and can fail in various ways. For example:
* The typical Unix timestamp stores a date and time as a 32-bit signed integer number representing, roughly speaking, the number of seconds since January 1 1970, and will roll over in 2038 and cause the year 2038 problem.
* The popular spreadsheet Microsoft Excel stores a date as a number of days since an origin (often erroneously called a Julian date). A Julian date stored in a 16-bit integer will overflow after 65,536 days (approximately 179 years). Unfortunately, the Windows versions of the program by default start at 1900 and the Mac versions by default starts at 1904 (although this can usually be changed).
* The Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program also had a very elementary Y2K problem: Excel (in both Windows versions and Mac version, when they are set to start at 1900) incorrectly regarded the year 1900 as a leap year. In addition, the years 2100, 2200 and so on were regarded as leap years. This bug was fixed in later versions, but since the epoch of the Excel timestamp was set as January 1, 1900 in previous versions, the year 1900 is still regarded as a leap year to maintain backward compatibility.
* In the C programming language, the standard library function to get the current year originally did have the problem that it returned only the year number within the 20th century, and for compatibility's sake still returns the year as year minus 1900. Many programmers in C, and in Perl and JavaScript, two programming languages widely used in Web development that use the C functions, incorrectly treated this value as the last two digits of the year. On the Web this was a mostly harmless bug, but it did cause many dynamically generated webpages to display January 1, 2000, as "1/1/19100", "1/1/100", or variations of that depending on the format.
* Older applications written for the commonly used UNIX source code control system SCCS failed to handle years that began with the digit "2".

Even before January 1, 2000 arrived, there were also some worries about September 9, 1999 (albeit lesser compared to those generated by Y2K). This date could also be written in the numeric format, 9/9/99. This date value was frequently used to specify an unknown date; it was thus possible that programs might act on the records containing unknown dates on that day. [1] It is also somewhat similar to the end-of-file code, 9999, in old programming languages. It was feared that some programs might unexpectedly terminate on that date. The bug however was more likely to confuse computer operators rather than machines.

Another related problem for the year 2000 was that it was a leap year even though years ending in "00" are normally not leap years. (A year is a leap year if it is divisible by 4 but not divisible by 100 unless also divisible by 400.) Fortunately most programs were fixed in time.
Public reaction to the problem
As the decade progressed, identifying and correcting or replacing affected computer systems or computerized devices became the major focus of information technology departments in most large companies and organizations. Millions of lines of programming code were reviewed and fixed during this period. Many corporations replaced major software systems with completely new ones that did not have the date processing problems. It was reported that corporations had already experienced minor Y2K problems due to date look-ahead functions in code and embedded systems, but it was and still is not clear what the full cost and seriousness of these problems were.

In some countries public apprehension was growing. Some individuals stockpiled canned or dried food in anticipation of food shortages. A few commentators predicted a full-scale apocalypse, among them computer consultant Edward Yourdon, televangelist Jack Van Impe, religious commentator Gary North, and economist Edward Yardeni. In discussion groups devoted to the issue, this position was referred to by the acronym TEOTWAWKI for 'the end of the world as we know it', and those who held it were called doomsayers.

Another group of commentators argued that few or no problems would emerge, and that the appropriate policy response was not large-scale attempts to make systems Y2K-compliant, but a "fix on failure" response for all but the most critical systems. These commentators were often labelled Pollyannas.

The dominant view, which determined policy in the United States and other English-speaking countries, and to a lesser extent in the rest of the world was that the problem was sufficiently serious to justify a large-scale response, but that such a response should be sufficient to resolve the problem.
Documented errors
Before the year 2000
* In 1999 HSBC issued 10,000 card swipe machines, manufactured by Racal, to retailers, but a Y2K flaw prevented them from reading expiration dates properly. The stores had to rely on paper transactions, as they do when there are power failures or phone line failures, until replacement machines arrived. [2]
Midnight
When January 1, 2000 arrived there were problems generally regarded as minor. Problems did not always have to occur precisely at midnight. Some programs were not active at that moment, and would only show up when they were invoked. Not all problems recorded were directly linked to Y2K programming in a causal relationship; minor technology glitches occur on a regular basis, as anyone who ever had to reboot a personal computer will recognize.

Reported problems include:
* In Ishikawa, Japan radiation-monitoring equipment failed at midnight but officials said there was no risk to the public. [3]
* In Onagawa, Japan, an alarm sounded at a nuclear power plant at two minutes after midnight. [4]
* In Japan, at two minutes past midnight Osaka Media Port, a telecommunications carrier, found errors in the date management part of the company's network. The problem was fixed by 2:43 a.m. and no services were disrupted. [5]
* In Japan, NTT Mobile Communications Network (NTT DoCoMo), Japan's largest cellular operator, reported on January 1, 2000 that some models of mobile telephones were deleting new messages received, rather than the older messages, as the memory filled up. [6]
* In Australia, two states had bus ticket validation machines fail to operate. [7]
* In the United States, 150 slot machines at race tracks in Delaware stopped working. [8]
* In France, the national weather forecasting service, Meteo France, said a Y2K bug made the date on a webpage show a map with Saturday's weather forecast as "01/01/19100". [9]
Was the expenditure worth the effort?
The total cost of the work done in preparation for Y2K was $US 300 billion. [10] There are two ways to view the events of 2000 from the perspective of its aftermath:
Supporting view
The vast majority of problems had been fixed correctly, and the money was well spent. The lack of problems at the date change reflect the completeness of the project. Indeed many computer applications would not have continued to function into the 21st century without correction or remediation. This view was adopted by most of the (fairly limited) official examinations of Y2K projects undertaken after their completion. It has also been suggested that on September 11, 2001, the New York financial infrastructure was able to continue operation because of the redundant networks established in the event of Y2K bug impact. The terrorist attacks and the following prolonged blackout to lower Manhattan had minimal effect on global banking systems. Backup systems were activated at various locations around the region, many of which had been established to deal with a possible complete failure of networks in the financial district on December 31, 1999. Had the emphasis on creating backup systems to deal with Y2K not occurred, much greater disruption to the economy could have occurred. Decentralization of infrastructurehelped keep banks up and running.
Opposing view
There were no critical problems to begin with, and correcting the few minor mistakes as they occurred would have been the most efficient and cost effective way to solve the problem. This view was bolstered by a number of observations.
* The lack of Y2K-related problems in schools and small businesses, many of which undertook little or no remediation effort.
* The lack of Y2K-related problems in the Third World, which in general had not devoted the programming resources to remediation that the industrialized West had marshalled.
* The absence of Y2K-related problems occurring before January 1, 2000, even though the 2000 financial year commenced in 1999 in many jurisdictions, and a wide range of forward-looking calculations involved dates in 2000 and later years. Estimates undertaken in the leadup to 2000 suggested that around 25% of all problems should have occurred before 2000.[11]. Critics of large scale remediation argued, during 1999, that the absence of significant problems, even in systems that had not been rendered compliant, suggested that the scale of the problem had been overestimated.[12]
Facts, Figures and Folklore
Facts
* The United States established the "Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act", which limited the liability of businesses who had properly disclosed their Y2K readiness.
* Insurance companies sold insurance policies covering failure of businesses due to Y2K problems.
* Attorneys organized and mobilized for Y2K class action lawsuits (which were not pursued).
* No major failures of infrastructure were reported in the United States or even in many places where they had been widely expected, such as Russia.
* The Long Now Foundation, which (in their words) "seeks to promote 'slower/better' thinking and to foster creativity in the framework of the next 10,000 years", has a policy of anticipating the Year 10,000 problem by writing all years with five digits. For example, they list "01996" as their year of founding.
* One of the founders of the Long Now Foundation, Danny Hillis, was one of the few commentators who publicly predicted that Y2K bugs would cause no significant problems (see "Why Do We Buy the Myth of Y2K?", Newsweek, May 31, 1999).
Rumors
These are unreferenced anecdotes and urban legends.
* The Y2K problem mainly affected countries that follow the Gregorian calendar (Saudi Arabia, for example, uses the Islamic calendar).
* One theory has it that the Federal Reserve increased the money supply in 1999 to compensate for anticipated hoarding by a frightened populace. The populace, however, was not frightened, and the flood of new money fueled a stock market high tide that went out on January 14, 2000 when the Dow Jones Industrials fell from the all-time peak.
* Speculatively, the Y2K spending on information infrastructure caused a slowdown in information technology spending in the year 2000 and 2001 and may eventually lead to higher productivity in future years.
* Univision news reported that on the evening of December 31, 1999, a couple in Peru had committed suicide, for fears of what Y2K would bring.
* A few (but not many) computer systems did'' actually fail on January 1, although some of those did so on a yearly basis. An almost amusing postscript to the Y2K problem was the fact that a number of computers not set up for leap years actually failed the following February 29.
* Contrary to widespread warnings that personal computers should be powered down during the Y2K moment, some computers (e.g. those running Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system) handled the change properly if they were running, but needed to have the time and date reset if they were not.
* Items rented from Blockbuster prior to January 1st, 2000 and returned after January 1st were reportedly marked for astronomical late fees ($91250), as though the items were 100 years overdue. [13]
* In Germany the coordination system of the fire brigade in Berlin showed the error "named pipe closed", but the system kept working. A reboot of the affected machines renders the system unusuable. Emergency coordination had to be done via cellular phones.
* In the United States, it is purported that a series of callboxes failed along Interstate 87/the Adirondack Northway in New York [14]
Quotes
* "We may not have got everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end." – Parodic science fiction author Douglas Adams, in an advertisement for Apple Macintosh personal computers, which even on date of release could accurately render dates to the year 2020 (that threshold has since been extended by over 60 millennia)(Gaiman 2003)
* "Computing consultants laughing all the way to the bank." – Popular catchphrase used by the Australian media on the First of January 2000.
* "The Y2K problem is the electronic equivalent of the El Ni̱o and there will be nasty surprises around the globe." РJohn Hamre, Deputy Secretary of Defense [15]
*"I'm one of the culprits who created this problem. I used to write those programs back in the 1960's and 1970's, and was proud of the fact that I was able to squeeze a few elements of space out of my program by not having to put a 19 before the year. Back then, it was very important. We used to spend a lot of time running through various mathematical exercises before we started to write our programs so that they could be very clearly delimited with respect to space and the use of capacity.It never entered our minds that those programs would have lasted for more than a few years. As a consequence, they are very poorly documented. If I were to go back and look at some of the programs I wrote 30 years ago, I would have one terribly difficult time working my way thorough step-by-step." [Testimony by Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve before Senate Banking Committee, February 25, 1998 ISBN 0-16-057997-X]
Y2K in popular culture
* Y2K: Year 2 Kill was a movie about a gang of criminals taking over a town after Y2K.
* In an episode of The Drew Carey Show, Drew and his friends prepare for Y2K by setting up a bomb shelter. After the Millennium Bug took effect, much of Cleveland was in ruins, and Drew was the only survivor left in the bomb shelter. As he prepares to relax with a pornographic magazine, he sneezes and his glasses fall off and break. This is also a reference to the Twilight Zone episode Time Enough at Last in which a similar situation occurs.
* Professional Wrestler Chris Jericho used the Y2K problem to his own advantage creating a parody of it, Y2J. He did so to get his gimmick over with the fans in the company he was working for, World Wrestling Entertainment..
* In the 1999 movie Office Space, the main character's job is to rewrite bank software to use dates with 4-digit years instead of 2.
*The Halloween episode of The Simpsons for the 1999–2000 season, Treehouse of Horror X, contained a sketch fittingly entitled "Life's A Glitch, Then You Die". Homer's failure to check Y2K preparedness at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant results in a global technology-related catastrophe.
* An episode of King of the Hill featured Y2K.
* The Family Guy episode "Da Boom" (aired December 26, 1999) featured the Griffin family surviving the end of civilization, caused by the Y2K bug. At the end of the episode, it is revealed in a Dallas parody that the episode was all just a dream. In the same episode, a man in a chicken costume tells Peter that the whole world is going to end, Peter then replies saying, "Y2K?, what are you selling? Chicken or Sex-Jelly?".
* The flashback portions of the episode "11:59"' of Star Trek: Voyager (aired May 5, 1999) takes place on December 31, 2000, where an ancestor of Captain Kathryn Janeway, Shannon O'Donnell, claims that "the Y2K bug couldn't even turn off a single light bulb."
* A popular computer prank by RJL Software represents a Y2K compliance checker that is crazy. It does stuff like flashes the screen, opens the CD drive, chatters the floppy drive, plays sounds, and more. At the end, it says that your sound card is not compliant, and to fix it, it says you must flip your hard drive on its side for all of 2000.
* The NewsRadio episode "Meet the Max Louis" had a subplot in which the station's electrician Joe Garelli dealt with the effects of him programming the computer system to Jesus' "actual" birth-date. The episode was filmed in 1998, so they were experiencing the year 2000 problem two years early.
* In the episode "Y2K"of "Dilbert", Wally is given command to fix the company computer systems for Y2K. He fixes them, only finding out that the millennium starts on January 1, 2001.
*Several different movies with the title Y2K were made: Y2K (1999) and Y2K: The Movie (1999) (TV).
* The popular web comic Kevin and Kell had several story angles relating to Y2K. One of the primary characters, Fiona Fennec, was granted magic powers by "aliens" (really the "Great Bird Conspiracy") to fix the problem on a global scale.
* The 1999 film Entrapment, presented the two thieves, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery, to synchronize their plans according to the turn of the millennium, taking advantage of the technical problems.
* Jennifer Lopez's music video for her 1999 single Waiting for Tonight featured a power failure during a party held on the beginning of 2000.
* In the "Weird Al" Yankovic song "It's All About the Pentiums", Weird Al says "I ain't afraid of Y2K."
* The webcomic After Y2K was started in February 1999, with humorous predictions of what would happen after major systems, including computers, broke down. The archives of the comic are still available on the creators' website, at geekculture.com.
* In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the Y2K problem is said to be a conspiracy for the US government to distribute and run a worldwide content filtering system.
*In the 2000 anime film, Digimon: Our War Game, the villainous Diaboromon is a personification of the Y2K bug. In an exaggeration of some expected events, he cuts off the phone networks and launches a nuclear missile at Tokyo.
* In Season 2 of Sports Night, the episode 'Kafelnikov', originally aired on Tuesday 2 November 1999, on ABC, is devoted to Jeremy's attempts to prove the studio is Y2K compatible, resulting in complete power loss. It later transpires that the power loss was due to him hitting the panic button, as the electric board had been rewired without relabelling it.
* In Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories, the Y2K bug is used by the Ammunation guns shop as an advertising campaign to sell weapons to confront its apocalyptic effects.
* At the end of The World Is Not Enough, Q's assistant, R, pulls the plug on a thermal imaging clip from a satellite depicting James Bond with Christmas Jones and blames it on a "premature form of the Millennium Bug".
* In 1999 Steve Jackson Games published GURPS Y2K, role-playing game sourcebook containing ideas for developing Y2K-related game scenarios, as well as other "near future" disaster scenarios. Coincidentally, the GURPS game itself suffered from an Y2K bug of a kind: year 2000 marks move to next Technology Level, and many of the predictions related to that have not yet come to pass. The most recent edition of the game solved the problem by making 1980 the threshold year, marking the beginning of the 'Information Age'.
* In 1999 the show The Angry Beavers the two beavers have a new years party for the year 2000 as the clock is on midnight they are in a place that is pitch black and get to change the world.
* In a flashback episode of My Name Is Earl, Earl, Randy, Joy, Darnell, and Donny assume that Y2K will wipe their criminal records and let them start clean. At midnight, their power goes out (because Donny's sister likes to screw with the electric company) and they assume the New Year's fireworks are guns and grenades going off. The next morning, they believe they are the last humans alive while the town is at the New Year's parade. The gang then breaks into a store, where they establish a new world order, but the new world crumbles when the store opens on January 2nd.
* Loudon Wainwright III has a song called Y2K on his album Social Studies. [16]
* Many radio stations ran contests for the best Y2K song, one of which can be heard here. Y2K Song
* On the Homestar Runner website, Strong Bad creates a candy bar whose advertising jingle includes such "feel-good" lyrics as "livin' in the gutter with grandma" and "Y2K turned out all right," both in reference to the anxiety over Y2K and what "effects" might result.
* On Sky One's "50 Terrible Predictions", the Millennium Bug came first.
* In Futurama, Philip J. Fry's father is obsessed with the Y2K bug, during the flashback in the episode, "Jurassic Bark".
* In Mad About You, Paul had a dream about Y2K bug solution and when he wakes up he tries to remember it and to put it into effect.

Net Neutrality?

Let’s bring some perspective here. People have become hysterical. They are DEMANDING Net Neutrality. Now. Right NOW. But, wait a second… they already have it. Right now, we all enjoy a neutral net. It’s here. It exists. It’s alive. And it’s fucking fantastic.

Bless their hearts. Net Neutrality advocates have good intentions. They are typically very intelligent, sophisticated, and they obviously care enough to get involved in bringing about a better world. I hope that this article will help some of them realize that they are fighting to destroy their own goal. They are fighting for their enemy.

Our Enemy. We all have a common enemy here, because we all have a common goal. Everyone on all sides of this debate wants the same thing, an open and free Internet.

Just like Castro’s army and Lenin’s army gathered followers blissfully marching for their future freedom and prosperity only to later become shocked in horror, Net Neutrality Advocates will soon realize that they are marching and singing in support of The Boot. This boot stomps without precision, without emotion, without representation.

My friends, now is a time to stop and reflect. Before we continue fighting, let’s briefly go over this issue so we can understand the perspectives.

There is no truly free country left on this planet. That’s becoming less of a problem, because, we have the Internet. The Internet, as it is right now, is humanity’s last bastion of pure freedom. We plug in, we say what we like, we view what we like, we play, we connect, we share, we learn, we grow.

It is incredible how much the Internet has already changed our lives. And the possibilities for the future are astonishing.

The Internet is currently completely unregulated by our government. There’s no government regulating our content, our activity, or our Internet connections.

So what is Net Neutrality? And why is it so important?

Senator Al Franken has said that “Net Neutrality is the most important free speech issue of our time.”

FACT: The Net Neutrality cause is a response to a hypothetical problem. We’ve never had this problem. It’s a hypothesis, by those who are simply afraid of business. They’ve confused a ton of people and got them all riled up.

So… greedy companies “might” restrict us from things, or they “might” prioritize content delivery to the highest payer. We need to give the government the authority to regulate the Internet for the first time ever in order to protect us from what alarmists think companies “might” do.

So the logic for Net Neutrality legislation is that we need to regulate the Internet in order to keep it free. Yes that is the logic.

Yes, that really is the logic. This IS NOT a debate about whether the Internet should remain open and free. WE ALL want that. This is ONLY a debate about whether control over our access should be in the hands of Internet Service Provider companies (ISPs) or… the Government.

Let us explore that, shall we?

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
— Voltaire
ISPs VS Government

ISP companies provide access to the Internet. They’re profiting, so many assume they’re only out to rip us off and take our money.

No one needs to explain how valuable internet access is to our lives. But let us remember a few things:
Remember when we actually had to print out flyers and make a bunch of phone calls to throw a big party?
Remember driving without Nav-Traffic on our phones because we had to go to the news stand to get magazines (!) for current info on our favorite topics?
Remember when the only way you found out your friend also loves Pink Floyd is when he actually told you?
Does anyone remember making mix tapes, before we had online access to music, videos and pictures, games and fun interesting sites and blogs (like Hustle Bear)?
And of course, how much less productive were we all way back when, even before 28k dial-up, without email (remember the fax?), online research, and collaboration tools?
Rather than disconnecting us, commonly available internet access has enabled us to become tremendously more connected to each other, tremendously more productive, and tremendously more entertained than anything else in human history. The ISPs have set us all up with a sweet bargain.

It’s amazing how some of the most intense internet users are unwilling to give ISPs credit for anything. At great expense of Billions of dollars, ISPs have laid down and installed cable to our homes. Almost everyone now has access to simple high speed broadband for $20 to $30/month (I pay $45/month for higher speed cable access, and it’s soooo worth it). One problem with the diagram above is that our homes are not connected to just one big ISP. The FCC’s own data shows that as of June 2008, 98 percent of zip codes have at least 2 broadband providers, and 88% of zip codes have at least 4 broadband providers. You can even still get unlimited slower dial up internet access for like $10/month if you’ve got a home phone line. And most people have access to 3g wireless internet, and very soon even higher speed 4g wireless internet.

What is with the vilification of ISPs? Has everyone totally forgotten that none of us would have internet access if ISPs didn’t invest the billions, the energy, and the years of coordinating to bring us all internet access conveniently and cheaply?
ISPs ARE NOT our enemy. They certainly should not be feared. Thank god for them. Really. Think about it.

What we need to understand is that while ISPs aren’t currently regulated by the government, they are already severely regulated. Not by government. They are regulated by YOU. You are their customer. You are the boss. You hold the checkbook. ISP companies are regulated by profits. That’s right, profit is the regulator. Like every company that is in business for profit, they have to answer to their customers. All successful businesses are constantly sniffing; trying to figure out what customers want. Profit makes them care about you. Customers will only voluntarily hand over money if it’s worth it. Right now we have de-facto Net Neutrality, because that’s what you want. That’s what we all want. We have to understand that the Internet has evolved by virtue of the decisions of billions of users and content creators. If you are on Facebook, you are a content creator. ISPs have responded to our needs and continually invest tremendous money and resources to provide better options. They ARE answerable to you, and thus they ARE highly regulated by you.

As demonstrated by the history and progress of America and other (even more) free market economies, these fears against businesses seeking profit have shown themselves to be unfounded. Profit seeking is our protection. If customers want a neutral net and an ISP attempts to block access, the ISP will suffer until they’ve learned their lesson. Comcast DID briefly attempt to slow down illegal file sharing (via BitTorrent protocol) that was overwhelming their cable lines with massive traffic. Comcast caved to increasing consumer complaints and bad press well before the FCC issued any order. De-facto net neutrality was restored. That’s the power of a free market.

The government… they don’t bend so easily

If we can’t trust people with freedom, how can we trust them with power?
- Anonymous
As for the FCC, they haven’t given us access to anything. They’ve only spent our money. On what? Well, they were formed to license out our limited radio spectrum to radio stations. They’ve since overstepped that authority and moved on to censoring radio, and then TV. They have no authority to regulate the Internet, but that’s where tech is obviously moving. If they don’t step into internet regulation, their agency will be rendered useless in short time. So this small body of bureaucrats will be downsized out of business soon, but can keep their jobs if they start making decisions about the future of the Internet. I don’t blame them. When your options are fuck or die, what are you going to do?? The FCC is not in the business of making profit. They get paid whether they do a good job for you or not. They don’t have to care about you, or all the customers for that matter. Forcing bureaucrats to respond to our requests is SO MUCH more difficult than forcing companies to respond. With companies, customers quickly desert them for a better value, forcing companies to quickly change course (Windows Vista, Volvo, the old Apple Macintosh, etc.). With bureaucracies, you’ve got to wait for the next election cycle, contribute a lot of campaign funds, pester all your friends to join your cause, and then… hope.

And, who’s regulating the FCC? The fate of several hundred million American internet users should reside in the decisions of what a small panel of appointed bureaucrats decide is best for us all? The rules can be pretty vague. The FCC will decide these matters on a case by case basis.

Where’s the fire??

It’s petty to complain about things that have never been a serious problem. Usually you institute regulations AFTER an industry has been shown to violate us. In this case we are fighting over hypotheticals.

Well I’ve got a hypothetical for you. The FCC needs to survive. It starts regulating ISPs to impose Net Neutrality and ensure that they don’t prioritize content. The FCC makes exceptions for spam. Obviously it’s ok for the ISPs to restrict spam. Soon, under pressure from Homeland Security, the FCC begins monitoring and censoring illegitimate online content, such as Wikileaks. They assure us they aren’t here to censor the Internet, as long as the content is legitimate. Then the FCC, under pressure from major media conglomerates, forces ISPs to restrict access to pirated material. The ISPs complain that the burden is just too large for them to monitor and track pirated material. That’s quite alright, because the FCC will help with that too. They can hire a bunch of bureaucrats (at our expense) to simply monitor and censor only pirated material “with a light touch“. Then it comes to be one day soon that it only takes a 3-2 ruling for the FCC to start censoring pornographic and other objectionable content, without needing a public vote. Like with TV and Radio, children need to be protected, and a large portion of the public want this protection. The religious right and politically correct left have found common ground. Be careful not to say “fuck” on your blog or in the forums, it’s objectionable. Our whole internet experience is reduced to the intellectual level of a Barney episode. The former Net Neutrality advocates are OUTRAGED. They are screaming, “We didn’t intend this!!” “The FCC was going to regulate WITH A LIGHT TOUCH!”

Sound far-fetched? Read FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s own words on the government website www.openinternet.gov:

…And this principle will not constrain efforts to ensure a safe, secure, and spam-free Internet experience, or to enforce the law. It is vital that illegal conduct be curtailed on the Internet. As I said in my Senate confirmation hearing, open Internet principles apply only to lawful content, services and applications — not to activities like unlawful distribution of copyrighted works, which has serious economic consequences. The enforcement of copyright and other laws and the obligations of network openness can and must co-exist.
- FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski
If you enjoy access to controversial content such as sensitive government data from Wikileaks, or file sharing of copyrighted material, and you believe the government will be on your side to protect your access, you are simply mistaken.

Once our open and free internet is out of the market’s hands and protected in the hands of government officials, there’s all sorts of other things our government can protect us from. To quote from a new Washington Post article:

“Venezuela President Hugo Chavez’s congressional allies are considering extending the ‘Social Responsibility Law’ for broadcast media to the Internet, banning messages that ‘disrespect public authorities,’ ‘incite or promote hatred’ or crimes, or are aimed at creating ‘anxiety’ in the population.”

But… that’s Venezuela were talking about. That shit could never happen here.

Oh.

Really?

Then what the fuck is THIS??

S.3480 – Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010. Sponsored by Senator Joseph Lieberman. “Creates the Office of Cyberspace Policy and National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications to set standards and coordinate cybersecurity efforts within the government. Gives the NCCC broad powers…”
This new Senate bill proposes to give the president the authority “to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet“.

Now if we’re going to pre-emptively legislate based on hypotheticals, which hypothetical scenario is more likely? The FCC overstepping its current authority, or ISPs delivering services that its customers are not happy about?

Notice that the FCC took a vote on this just before Christmas when Congress is not in session and a lot less people are paying attention. Also note that they never had any authority to start making rules about the internet. They are already acting tyrannically. Already the new rules agreed to by the 3-2 ruling are confusing people and mystifying even Net Neutrality advocates. No one is happy about it. Even the paranoid zealots at SaveTheInternet.com are upset. It’s just beginning.

The scariest thing is actually what will happen to the ISPs as they become more answerable to government bureaucrats and less answerable to customers. Government power distorts businesses, turning them into the menacing form of corporations we all hate. The ISPs will have to step up their lobbying to survive, that is when they will blatantly attempt to get politicians in their pocket, and that is when they will begin caring more about political dominance and less about our user experience. All the money, time, and energy “invested” in lobbying and lawyers isn’t invested in building our high speed tech future. The ISPs have already spent over $40 Million of customer revenues to lobby in Washington on this matter. How much more customer revenue should they divert to fighting Net Neutrality advocates?
If we want business to stop interfering in politics, we need politics to stop interfering with business.

But hopefully this nightmare can be aborted before it is born.

From a recent article at Reason.com:

“Earlier this year, a federal court ruled that the FCC had no Congressionally granted authority to regulate network management. Congress hasn’t updated the agency’s authority over the Net since then, but the FCC is now saying that, well, it has the authority anyway. [Chairman] Genachowski’s team has come up with a different legal justification, and they’re betting that this time around they can convince a judge to buy it.”

A bunch of Republicans in congress are vowing to defeat this new ruling. I will admit that unless the Republicans have truly altered course (maybe they have), I am personally afraid of them being our line of defense for the future of free speech and an actual open internet.


Should these guys decide the future of our internet?
The FCC chairman Julius Genachowski is promising to regulate with a “Light Touch“. The same agency that censors radio and TV broadcasting with a “Light Touch” by throwing a big fit and leveling massive fines disproportionate to the “crime“.
(CBS is still fighting the FCC over the fine for Janet Jackson’s split second nipple slip)

Let’s let our ISPs (wireless and wired) be free and motivated to continue their heavy investment towards the future evolution of the Internet. The public good is not served by doing things to discourage massive future internet investment.

Even if; even if we get the terrible nightmare hypothesis feared in all the Net Neutrality propaganda of ISPs offering higher level of services to people willing to pay more for it, well that’s not really so horrible, and certainly not justification to start regulating. All great technologies enjoyed by the common man today started out as luxuries for the few; heated running water, the automobile, the telephone, the cell phone. Sometimes that is the necessary approach to fund technological development. Imagine if early in this century our government passed “Transportation Neutrality” laws ensuring that no one travel faster and more comfortably than another simply because they pay more for it. The automobile industry would never have gotten off the ground, and automobiles would not be accessible to the masses today. WHO KNOWS how the Internet will develop and progress? It would be so foolish to get in the way of the companies investing in our future and bringing value far above the price they are charging.

Don’t let people scare you about the ISPS. The sky is not falling. Our internet is not going to be ruined. Unless… Government gets its boot in the door.

Net Neutrality is the doorway to regulate the Internet. The intent of the legislation is to keep the Internet free and open. But the result of imposing legislation makes the Internet less free and open.

We MUST stop judging government policies by their intentions and start judging them by their results.

Intentions may change.
Regulatory structures rarely do.

Regulation = Freedom only in George Orwell’s 1984. Central authority monitoring does not lead to “openness”. Burdening the Internet service providers with extra hoops for oversight and regulation will not ensure a brighter future for our internet and its ongoing evolution.

Regulations are a tax. We all pay for a company’s massive loss of efficiency needed to deal with regulations. It might be worth it when we are protecting our air and drinking water, but it is SILLY when we’re paying it to protect us from a problem that never happened.

Do companies who invest their time, energy and money providing us access have a right to a voice here? What do the ISPs have to say?

ATT says:
“[We disagree with the need for Net Neutrality regulation] especially given the utter absence of any evidence that abuses are occurring in the Internet market, let alone any of the gravity to justify government intervention. … Too often, well-funded ideologues have used intimidation, vilification, and fear-mongering to advance their goal that government control the Internet and other forms of communication without regard for their impact on the jobs and livelihoods of millions already challenged by a difficult economy.”

Verizon says:
“The FCC appears to assert broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband wireline and wireless networks and the Internet itself. This assertion of authority without solid statutory underpinnings will yield continued uncertainty for industry, innovators, and investors. In the long run, that is harmful to consumers and the nation.”
(Verizon has always held this position)

Is that greedy profit seeking nonsense, or is that actually correct?
These statements from the ISPs are especially bold considering they are concerning their potential future masters who can jeopardize the Billions of dollars they’ve already spent on their infrastructure.

Indeed a new Slate Magazine article states that “the new rules could in particular upend the best engine of innovation the struggling economy currently has.”

When you run at the speed of Congress it is hard to keep up with Moore’s Law.
- Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems
The solution to a problem that doesn’t exist IS the problem.


Senator Al Franken might be right. Net Neutrality might become the most important free speech issue of our time, IF we follow his advice.

When you hear Net Neutrality arguments, pay attention to the unintended consequences of their good intentions.

Remember: This isn’t an argument about having a free open internet. This is an argument about whether our central government planners should be given the power to start regulating it.

Ultimately this is an old ideological battle playing out again, between those afraid of the free market and those afraid of government intervention.

If you look around at all the problems with our country, they are caused less by outside aggressors and mostly by ourselves. If we want to improve things we need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. An unregulated free Internet is just too important to harm.

The Internet has none of the problems that Net Neutrality advocates are wailing about. And yet for the last 5 years the Net Neutrality movement has been furiously demanding immediate government action, constantly scaring people with impending doom if we don’t act RIGHT NOW PEOPLE, RIGHT NOW!! And yet they are clutching at trivial examples to justify the need to SAVE THE INTERNET! The 2 million strong coalition to save the Internet is nothing more than an embarrassment, demonstrating that it is still possible in this day and age to whip people up into a passionate frenzy over vague confusion.

It’s one or the other, Regulation or Freedom. Ask yourself which you support.

When they tell you we need to impose regulation to keep the Internet free, tell them we need to prevent regulation to keep the Internet free.

The Internet doesn’t need to be saved by bureaucrats. We don’t want their protection.

10 men drinking in a abr

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so - the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings). Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free.

But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill! And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier."