Simple political calculus. The sad fact is, come election time, collecting campaign cash (from companies like AT&T or Verizon) is more likely to get you re-elected than supporting positions, even popular ones, that simply don't motivate voters. Unfortunately, outside of the TechDirtVerse, net neutrality is one of those issues.
The narrow crafting of this bill is a clear attempt to score political points rather than actually solve a real problem. Unfortunately, grandstanding like this has become a full time job for the vast majority of legislators, and it's not likely to stop until voters in this country start to recognize, and reject, their representative's efforts at pandering.
What a convenient and utterly baseless assumption. Can you provide any evidence at all that armed pilots or air marshals are responsible for the lack of another 9/11-style attack? We also armored cockpit doors, increased airport security, and focused more resources on intelligence gathering. Can you conclusively prove that those measures had nothing to do with the relative calm? Can you even demonstrate that we haven't just been lucky for the past decade? No, you can't, so stop being ridiculous.
Realize there's a big difference between licensing and patent and selling it. If the government is licensing patents, they're not granting a monopoly to anyone - they're quite free to license the patent to as many different companies as they want.
Frankly, while using the crappy patent system may not be the best way to go about it, it's perfectly reasonable for the government to recoup licensing revenue to compensate taxpayers for government funded research. Otherwise, government funded research would turn into a pure corporate subsidy. We have too many of those already...
Not to question the independence of the Italian judicial system, but this decision has Berlusconi written all over it. He and his backers clearly feel threatened by any mass media that they don't own or control, and seem willing to use almost any means to discredit or clamp down on independent media...
This is just the latest example of private outsourcing by the State of Texas turning into a debacle, but will this change Gov. Perry's conviction that the private sector can always do a better job than the government? Heck no. What chance does actual evidence have in the face of conservative orthodoxy?
Don't forget that, even if nobody takes the government up on its offer, by making it the govt. has effectively created a market for these assets which doesn't currently exist. That along should have *some* salutory effect, although it may not be enough to contain this train wreck.
As for stock injection, short of a wholesale collapse of the banking system, with forced nationalizations a la AIG, that's not going to happen. The banking shareholders will join forces with the radical free market Republicans in the House to make sure of that.
I think we need to make a distinction here. For outbound text messaging, I think the telcos should go ahead and charge whatever the market will bear. However, it's charging for incoming messages that is problematic. Consumers should have a choice as to whether they want to pay for text messaging - charging for incoming messages eliminates that choice.
This is interesting data, but it would be infinitely more useful if the source of the e-voting errors was more thoroughly identified. The study implies that pollworkers aren't to blame, so what is? We all know that computers are deterministic in their behavior, so does the author of the study chalk the problems up to software bugs? Frankly, the line of reasoning by which the study author concludes that it's "unlikely that voters' unfamiliarity with the machines is to blame" seems more than a little thin to me, particularly because it assumes that misuse of the machines is somehow correlated with registered user complaints. Anyone who has worked in the software industry knows that said correlation is shaky at best - some users may not even have been aware that they had not completed voting properly. Admittedly this may indicate usability issues with the e-voting machine interface, but it's dangerous to draw broad conclusions from this.
And no, I don't work for or represent an e-voting company.
I vehemently oppose this bill, but the fact that Congress, and, specifically, the Democratic majority knuckled under to the administration is not so hard to understand.
If the Democrats has continued to fight the administration on this, the Republicans would have used it, as they always do, to beat the Dems about the head with the "weak on terrorism" club. The fact is, during this election cycle the whole Republican appeal can be boiled down to "Vote Democratic and Die". Ridiculous? Of course, but just the sort of hyperbolic rhetoric that unfortunately tends to appeal to a rather large swath of intellectually-challenged electorate. Fear is a powerful weapon.
By going along, the Dems hope to blunt any political advantage Bush and his fellows could have gotten out of this. It's sad that politicians these days are willing to sell our liberties down the river in order to gain a small political advantage, and it's equally sad that voters in this country seem content to let it happen, but that's the reality...
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Re:
Not to mention the fact that holding up legislators (i.e. Congress) as a model of transparency in this day and age is laughable.
Simple political calculus. The sad fact is, come election time, collecting campaign cash (from companies like AT&T or Verizon) is more likely to get you re-elected than supporting positions, even popular ones, that simply don't motivate voters. Unfortunately, outside of the TechDirtVerse, net neutrality is one of those issues.
So, what can I boycott because of Lindsey Graham?
Political Grandstanding
The narrow crafting of this bill is a clear attempt to score political points rather than actually solve a real problem. Unfortunately, grandstanding like this has become a full time job for the vast majority of legislators, and it's not likely to stop until voters in this country start to recognize, and reject, their representative's efforts at pandering.
Re: NRA proposal
What a convenient and utterly baseless assumption. Can you provide any evidence at all that armed pilots or air marshals are responsible for the lack of another 9/11-style attack? We also armored cockpit doors, increased airport security, and focused more resources on intelligence gathering. Can you conclusively prove that those measures had nothing to do with the relative calm? Can you even demonstrate that we haven't just been lucky for the past decade? No, you can't, so stop being ridiculous.
Re: Re:
Realize there's a big difference between licensing and patent and selling it. If the government is licensing patents, they're not granting a monopoly to anyone - they're quite free to license the patent to as many different companies as they want.
Frankly, while using the crappy patent system may not be the best way to go about it, it's perfectly reasonable for the government to recoup licensing revenue to compensate taxpayers for government funded research. Otherwise, government funded research would turn into a pure corporate subsidy. We have too many of those already...
Re:
What agenda is that? The truth? Certainly you're not implying that TechDirt has a financial interest in making distorted claims (like the MPAA)?
Politics...
Not to question the independence of the Italian judicial system, but this decision has Berlusconi written all over it. He and his backers clearly feel threatened by any mass media that they don't own or control, and seem willing to use almost any means to discredit or clamp down on independent media...
Can we start a campaign to ensure the top suggestion for "cheese" is "eating surrender monkey" ?
Figures...
This is just the latest example of private outsourcing by the State of Texas turning into a debacle, but will this change Gov. Perry's conviction that the private sector can always do a better job than the government? Heck no. What chance does actual evidence have in the face of conservative orthodoxy?
Re:
Agreed. I think Pandora is simply trying to draw the broadcasting lobby into this fight.
Nothing's that simple...
Don't forget that, even if nobody takes the government up on its offer, by making it the govt. has effectively created a market for these assets which doesn't currently exist. That along should have *some* salutory effect, although it may not be enough to contain this train wreck.
As for stock injection, short of a wholesale collapse of the banking system, with forced nationalizations a la AIG, that's not going to happen. The banking shareholders will join forces with the radical free market Republicans in the House to make sure of that.
Direction counts!
I think we need to make a distinction here. For outbound text messaging, I think the telcos should go ahead and charge whatever the market will bear. However, it's charging for incoming messages that is problematic. Consumers should have a choice as to whether they want to pay for text messaging - charging for incoming messages eliminates that choice.
So what is the source of the discrepancies?
This is interesting data, but it would be infinitely more useful if the source of the e-voting errors was more thoroughly identified. The study implies that pollworkers aren't to blame, so what is? We all know that computers are deterministic in their behavior, so does the author of the study chalk the problems up to software bugs? Frankly, the line of reasoning by which the study author concludes that it's "unlikely that voters' unfamiliarity with the machines is to blame" seems more than a little thin to me, particularly because it assumes that misuse of the machines is somehow correlated with registered user complaints. Anyone who has worked in the software industry knows that said correlation is shaky at best - some users may not even have been aware that they had not completed voting properly. Admittedly this may indicate usability issues with the e-voting machine interface, but it's dangerous to draw broad conclusions from this.
And no, I don't work for or represent an e-voting company.
Not so hard to understand...
I vehemently oppose this bill, but the fact that Congress, and, specifically, the Democratic majority knuckled under to the administration is not so hard to understand.
If the Democrats has continued to fight the administration on this, the Republicans would have used it, as they always do, to beat the Dems about the head with the "weak on terrorism" club. The fact is, during this election cycle the whole Republican appeal can be boiled down to "Vote Democratic and Die". Ridiculous? Of course, but just the sort of hyperbolic rhetoric that unfortunately tends to appeal to a rather large swath of intellectually-challenged electorate. Fear is a powerful weapon.
By going along, the Dems hope to blunt any political advantage Bush and his fellows could have gotten out of this. It's sad that politicians these days are willing to sell our liberties down the river in order to gain a small political advantage, and it's equally sad that voters in this country seem content to let it happen, but that's the reality...