- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
The Federal Communications Commission is about to start winding down a program that gives $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes, and says it will have to complete the shutdown by May if Congress doesn’t provide more funding.
Another great fuck you to the less financially able citizens of this country by the GOP. When the hell will we learn?
Never. Have you seen how small our public education budget is!?
The GOP plan at work!
That’s a feature, not a bug
When Fox News stops doing things like telling those citizens that shutting down this program is Biden’s fault.
Impoverished people are easier to lead and the GOP can’t lead themselves out of a brown paper bag, so…poverty it is.
“Fuck you lower middle class. Don’t forget to vote for GOP!” - GOP
Lower middle class: “See? Both sides are the same!”
It doesn’t work unless you wave the flag.
Except you know they’ll just turn around and go “ThIs HaPPeNeD uNdEr BiDeN!”
Every single sticksville Cletus and his sisterwife will vote to chop off their own left hands if it meant that minorities were harmed by it.
I’m completely for shutting down the affordable connectivity program
The ISPs should have to provide the service at a minimal rate to same said families and also offer 100/100 minimum service to anyone in the regions they operate. It shouldn’t be subsidized by the government, it should literally be the cost of doing business for the business. Write up a bill, make it law, giant fines for not keeping a certain level of 9s in terms of availability and capacity.
Fuck government subsidies to big companies with huge profit margins. I work in IT, I know how the technology works. I know what it costs. I know that they do not need to charge anywhere near as much as they charge and they’d still make a killing, even with all the boots on the ground collecting paychecks.
I’m completely for shutting down the affordable connectivity program
The ISPs should have to provide the service at a minimal rate to same said families and also offer 100/100 minimum service to anyone
Maybe reverse the order of those ideas, so as not to make the lives of people who are already struggling even harder.
in the regions they operate.
ISPs would then have an incentive to avoid operating in poor neighborhoods. Mitigating that could be tough, given that internet service deployments are already patchy in many places.
Another approach might be municipal broadband, which big ISPs have been lobbying against for ages, often successfully.
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it will be almost impossible to convince ISPs to provide low and no cost options on their own.
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The amount they lobby has been proven with the Net Neutrality fiasco
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Private companies are not efficient and shouldn’t be responsible for publicly required utilities.
Point 3: That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
Also, conservatives say the exact same thing about public utilities to privatize them, the exact opposite of your claim
I’ve seen huge government systems at work, currently seeing one, and man it’s a lot of things but the word “efficient”? Nope.
Private companies are supposed to do this, yes, but under very strict government rules. Internet access should be treated as a public utility, executed by private companies
Point 3: That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
What?! Ok… Wait… Are you saying that a company with a fiduciary responsibility to provide profit for shareholders is more efficient than a company with the same equipment, same personnel, and same properties but does NOT have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders?
Explain. In detail.
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What a bunch of assholes…
GQP: Ruin Everything
It’s been their philosophy for a while now, Grover Norquist and his lame ass “don’t raise taxes” pledge was one of the first of their idiots saying the quiet part out loud, they just want to starve the beast to destroy our government and trust in it so that they can push forward with their neo-Confederaracy/neo-Feudalism.
Grover Norquist was also the piece of shit who said he wanted the government so small that it could be drowned in a bathtub.
And he did stand-up comedy in the D.C. area. Really. He must have been just hilarious, so I’m not sure why he hasn’t been given a Netflix special.
I hear Netflix will give any bigot a comedy special
Right? But not Grover. It’s almost as if he’s as shitty a comedian as he is a political thinker.
So Jesse Watters basically?
Probably. I’ve never seen Grover’s attempt at comedy, but I’ve seen Watters (and Gutfeld too) try to be funny and fail miserably.
Ugh forgot that Gutfield exists, dude is like the Bill Maher of the Right, except that Bill Maher is becoming the Bill Maher of the Right.
Dems when in power: There’s is nothing we can do.
Dems when out of power: we aren’t in power There’s nothing we can do.
Republicans are like hitting the gas to the right and fascism, and dems are like switching to neutral and coasting.
D’s when controlling govt: Create stuff like this (plus terribly advertise it). R’s when controlling govt: Kill stuff like this (plus tax cuts for wealthy, destroy govt). Very predictable. Easy choice.
I get that people want to see D’s fight harder and not be a bunch of weak cowards, though.
It’s not fight harder… it’s fight AT ALL. Not like Obama when he gave away his court pick and pretended he was powerless, causing Roe V Wade to be overturned. Nobody is more responsible than Obaam who did jack shit to fight.
He had the largest bully pulpit and didn’t use it. Maybe an off comment here and there. He should have been on wvery night and used every available or questionable presidential power.
The dems are the party of Joe Manchin and Sinema. So desperate for power that they stand for NOTHING, and never wield it even when given to them.
And let’s he honest, economically they’re identical to the GOP. Biden was a linchpin of not being able to discharge student debt. LOL, you know the wrong he’s fighting but won’t own up to his role in creating?
Day 1 Biden could have canceled the student debt. Even if it was challenged, in court… worst case is after dragging it through the courts for years, you lose, and then you the same thing slightly differently and re-litigate it.
This is the norm from Bush and Trump years. And if dems pretend like there still are rules, even though their opponents don’t follow them, then you get this–the collapse of the union and political violence virtually identical to the fall of the Weimar Republic.
Pretending there are norms are why Obama was a failure, things like no police reform, no immigration reform, no path to citizenship, gitmo never closed, and on and on. The only thing Obama got done was bring set up to cash in for millions and millions after his term. He’s not gonna waste his time building homes for the poor, he’s got $$$$ to make.
The point is that it’s all theater to give you the feeling that there’s a choice. But really there’s no left party. There’s no socialists and communists to vote for or even in the national discourse. Dems get my vote just bc they’re not pro fascism. But honestly a vote for dems just leads to fascism slower. For all the surveillance acts approved under them and under Obama.
I want to be wrong and will raise a glass with you if I am. But I’m pretty sure the union is just going to collapse. Best to gear up for it and gope that from the ashes something without capitalists emerges.