Internet Wars, Chapter IV: FCC A New Hope For Consumers

[homice]

People are moron sheep. Some politician makes promises and they cheer for joy and trust the government. They don't know what the government actually does or history. The government will save us! Yeah right. Wise up.

Social security trust fund, gone, robbed by government.
Federal debt, massive, but don't worry what could happen there?
Postal service, running billions in debt per year.
Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, going great, not.
FCC invading the internet? I'm sure that will go well (baa baa more taxes and rules please).

Social Security Trust Gone: WRONG! http://www.aarp.org/work/social-security/info-11-2011/5-social-security-myths.html
Federal debt: WOULDN'T be massive if we weren't paying historically low tax rates in both upper income levels and the effective corporate tax rates http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates
Postal service broke: VERY WRONG, AGAIN! In 2006 Congress made USPS pre-fund 75 YEARS worth of employee pensions. Meaning they have to pre-pay for employees who AREN'T EVEN BORN YET. Removing this one artificial limit would put them about 1.5 billion/yr in the black. And removing congress' other artificial limits (that other companies don't have) would further improve thier situation.
Fannie and Freddie: You obviously don't know what these things are. Or how they're doing. Here's some reading. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42760.pdf

But nice touch, saying OTHER PEOPLE are morons and sheep. Or did Hannity tell you to say that?

 

[David Hedrick]

Fine is taxing the consumers? Maybe they should also stop having building codes and inspectors, since the additional costs of building are also passed on to the consumer.
Then we could shop at Fall mart even cheaper until it collapses and kills all the customers.

 

[computertech82]

fine them till it makes more sense to upgrade infrastructure, better yet, build a municipal internet.

america is capitalist, we do not subscribe to the communist nor fascist/socialist (same thing) economic policies of ponzi scam and pyramid scheme for the future generations to be forced into slavery or war for freedom because resources and time and the money they are traded with are finite, & most of which do not grow on trees in an endless supply to meet the full demands of all in a timely manner.
other wise we would all have apple pie and orange juice laying around in piles in every home in america as well as the world.
most people do not work for free or as slaves to reach these utopian/nihilistic goals.

sorry EPIC FAIL. socialist means majority rules, the opposite of fascist. Bother learning words before trying to use them.

 

[computertech82]

fine them till it makes more sense to upgrade infrastructure, better yet, build a municipal internet.

america is capitalist, we do not subscribe to the communist nor fascist/socialist (same thing) economic policies of ponzi scam and pyramid scheme for the future generations to be forced into slavery or war for freedom because resources and time and the money they are traded with are finite, & most of which do not grow on trees in an endless supply to meet the full demands of all in a timely manner.
other wise we would all have apple pie and orange juice laying around in piles in every home in america as well as the world.
most people do not work for free or as slaves to reach these utopian/nihilistic goals.

sorry EPIC FAIL. socialist means majority rules, the opposite of fascist. Bother learning words before trying to use them.

 

[Reepca]

"I distrust a large organization that handles large quantities of money and I depend on" - people in comments section, whether talking about government or corporations. It's amazing how similar both sides are, and yet how they refuse to see the common ground. In many cases it's the exact same argument aimed at a different body.

 

[truefoe]

The FCC should force the use minimum data rates for marketing across the board on all ISPs rather than allowing them to keep selling at what you "Might" get if all the conditions are perfect. The Data plans now are like car manufacturers telling everyone they can get 40mpg but then you buy the car and only get 20.

 

[alextheblue]

I don't see them sending checks out to the consumers! So where does the money go? Same place all your taxes go... into the bottomless pit of waste and fraud.

Because nobody uses public roads, public libraries, municipal water/garbage/electricity services, or public schools. And nobody uses the internet (formerly ARPAnet) or eats food e.g. milk, meat, grains, fruits, vegetables that has all been greatly subsidized with federal funding.

Wow! You're SO RIGHT. Wait, where does the other 90% go? /sigh

 

[Koushik Majumder]

I'm just shocked there was no news of Comcast being fined!

I am hoping they and Time Warner get fined. I also hope that some day Internet bandwidth will be labeled in bytes instead of bits Many people with 30Mbps think they are getting 30 megabytes per second rather than megabits per second. In megabytes it would only be 3.75. Because really, who talks about bits? People always talk about bytes, so ISPs use megabits to trick vulnerable customers. Not that it's an abuse but it should either be labeled as "Megabits per second" instead of "mbps" or just changed to megabytes.

This is the first thing they should be made to do. Liers in the first place, not a single piece of software uses bits as download speed, yet the use bits to cheat.

 

[larkspur]

Because nobody uses public roads, public libraries, municipal water/garbage/electricity services, or public schools. And nobody uses the internet (formerly ARPAnet) or eats food e.g. milk, meat, grains, fruits, vegetables that has all been greatly subsidized with federal funding.

I find it difficult to believe anyone can trust the government given that it's an ambiguous existence made up of collective robots manufactured who the hell knows where with 0 transparency to the public. It'd make so much more sense if our government was made up of human beings either voted into office or selected by individuals voted into office.

Not sure what country you are from, but in the USA, public roads are paid for and maintained by the states. Only interstate highways (a very small percentage of total public roads) receive Federal funding and the Federal government uses that funding to coerce the states (see "Drinking Age to 21" and 55mph national speed limit [Carter administration] among many other examples). Public libraries are funded by the states, municipalities, or private endowments. Municipal water/garbage/electricity services are paid for by the actual people who use them. Public schools are funded by the states with supplemental grants from the Federal government (who again uses them to coerce states - see "Common Core" and Michelle Obama's school lunches). The federal government did not build the infrastructure on which the world wide web exists. People will always eat food - there will always be a strong market for it - so why does the Federal government need to subsidize crops at all? Moreover - why does the Federal government subsidize only specific crops (like corn-for-fuel-ethanol)? Answer = lobbying by special interests.

Also - as mentioned by another poster - many public schools in the USA are terrible. Private schools are much, much better - it's so obvious I'm not going to quote a source. Can you imagine how bad the world wide web would be if it was administered by a government?

Consider that the current USA FEDERAL debt is above $18,275,000,000,000 (usdebtclock.org). That amount guarantees that unborn taxpayers will be saddled with paying dead people's debts. Can you imagine if that were true for private business (like if your Uncle died leaving a lot of debt and the banks sued you for his debts)?. At this point I would trust a robot long before I will trust any of the establishment politicians. Humans are so easily corrupted. It's obvious you believe in statism, but it'd be great for future generations if you could realize that the federal government in the USA stopped working for the people a long, long time ago. How can you deny that the fines being levied on these companies are not being paid for by their customers? Where do you think they get their money from?

I'm with what a previous poster mentioned - make the top executives of these companies personally responsible and prosecute them individually for continued breaches of FCC policy. Fining the companies hurts their customers, nothing more. I've said it many times before - the FCC is all about the money and unless there is drastic change in the way the US federal government works, they always will be.

 

[larkspur]

Social Security Trust Gone: WRONG! http://www.aarp.org/work/social-security/info-11-2011/5-social-security-myths.html
Federal debt: WOULDN'T be massive if we weren't paying historically low tax rates in both upper income levels and the effective corporate tax rates http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates
Postal service broke: VERY WRONG, AGAIN! In 2006 Congress made USPS pre-fund 75 YEARS worth of employee pensions. Meaning they have to pre-pay for employees who AREN'T EVEN BORN YET. Removing this one artificial limit would put them about 1.5 billion/yr in the black. And removing congress' other artificial limits (that other companies don't have) would further improve thier situation.

-Current unfunded Social Security Liability = more than $14,000,000,000,000 (increasing) (usdebtclock.org)
-Current Total unfunded US Federal Liabilities = almost $100,000,000,000,000 (increasing) (usdebtclock.org)
-Federal taxes are definitely not at historic lows as demonstrated by your reference chart. Nor are Federal tax rates. If you actually pay attention to the chart in your reference you'll see the income tax rates spike during/after each of the most expensive wars (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam) to pay for them and for veterans' benefits. Federal debt wouldn't be so massive if the federal government acted responsibly instead of some college kid who pays off his credit card with a new credit card ad infinitum. When the present population has no possible chance to pay back their massive debt, it's time to cut back on spending! In the college kid analogy this means drinking Old Milwaukee instead of Sam Adams 😉
-Oddly enough, UPS and Fedex turn a profit and [in my experience] do a much better job. The US Postal Service requires Federal funding to remain afloat. And BTW most companies have dropped pensions - USPS's continued insistence on having a pension program is forcing taxpayers to subsidize them. And yeah you can blame the Federal government (Congress) for that if you like.
-Fannie and Freddie have always been Federal government sponsored entities. And they did a bang-up job contributing to the bubble-burst! Should we discuss the "bailouts" (paid for on the backs of your unborn children) next?

 

[Danra]

The only reason the FCC is doing this now is the government is trillions of dollars in debt [because of wasted spending $, or throwing money away on purpose]. How much of that fine money do you think will get back to customers? In can tell you - NONE!! The government [Obama administration] will keep it all, and every other dollar they can figure out a way to grab - and stay in office.