I love this comment from the OpenCongress link:

“The government failed at running a railroad.

The Government failed at running a Post Office

The Government failed at running two mortgage companies

The Government failed at running a rescue and recovery effort.

The Government failed at running an acquisition organization.

The Government faield at running an educational system (even though it is not their responsibility)

The Government is failing at running an automobile company.

The Government is failing at promoting an economy.”

1. The Government succeeded at building a railroad, the rapid settlement of the West in the late 1800s was proof of that. Cars, airplanes, etc., made the railroad obsolete and it now finds itself struggling. Welcome to progress and capitalism.
2. The Post Office was a VERY successful endeavor for decades. The rise of technology (email in particular), UPS, FedEx, and DHL, has all but abolished the need for a government-sponsored delivery industry.
3. The Government didn’t fail at running mortgage companies, they were victims of a broader economic crisis brought about by the loose and fast lending of other, private banks. They contributed to the problem sure, but they weren’t the sole cause.
4. Rescue and Recovery effort? Acquisition Organization? When you don’t specify WTF you’re talking about.
5. It Should be their responsibility, many founders thought so (including Thomas Paine), and the only thing they’ve failed at is underfunding it. Why are teachers among the lowest paid people in the country? Why are schools built 50 years ago now so hard to replace or refurnish? People are seriously trying to blame governments (local, state, and federal, all of whom, were elected by those same people) for failing to properly fund education? Then in the same breath some of those morons will bitch about higher taxes?
6. Can we give them time to find the bathroom of the ALREADY FAILING INDUSTRY before we claim they are failing to run it?
7. The stock portfolio that i follow bottomed out around February or March, and in the last 5 months my retirement account set up in January has doubled in value. I think the economy is beginning its recovery.

So I have to give kudos to the guy running packetlife.net. Its a great site for networking nerds like me, and he’s got some really awesome cheatsheets available. But he had a post this week that really struck a cord: Why network neutrality is a big deal. I dumped a less-edited version of this into the comments, but I wanted to flesh out the thought and post it here as well.

Internet connectivity isn’t like the highway system. The government doesn’t provide high speed links; private companies and giant corporations do. Ask Verizon how many million they invested in FIOS. It costs money to bury fiber or copper, buy or lease right-of-way, add capacity via routers, switches, DSLAMs, FTTx’s, Optical MUXs, servers etc., and once the line is in your neighborhood or house, the likelihood of a competing service coming in drops to almost zero.

As it stands, public opinion and the fear of government oversight has been the only thing stopping them from completely monopolizing their lines so far. But if they encroach slowly like they have been: capping transfers, “shaping” traffic, etc., ultimately convincing people that its really OK, and there’s nothing wrong with it, we’re screwed. Lets not forget all the lubing of the gears in Congress (telecom lobbying is a rather big business, on either side of this issue).

How about if you live someplace where there isn’t a BigName LEC? What if VZ or AT&T isn’t your ISP? How long before this type of tiered pricing is applied to the Qwests and the Level3 carriers? You get a discount or a kickback for every 10000 subscribers you have on a limited plan?

The biggest problem is much of our copper infrastructure is reaching its limits. Providers don’t want to bury new cable. They don’t want to install new DSLAMs, or cable nodes, etc. They want to keep riding the money train, soaking people for more money, for the same or less service. And they can, they own the line all the way to your house, and they no doubt own or lease the right-of-way for that service in your area. With your electric bill and water bill, there are government regulations and restrictions in place on those service provisions; there won’t be more than one electric service provider in your area, nor will there be multiple water providers, its just not feasible and makes no sense. Telecomm and data providers (ISPs) are in that same category, but are much more loosely controlled.

That’s not stopping the demand though. The Netflix On Demand, YouTube, Hulu, etc. In 5 years the amount of content distributed online will make today’s current usage look miniscule (just like the usage of 5 years ago looks so tiny compared to today’s). That’s banking on the hope that the entire system doesn’t collapse on itself in another year or two. The providers could have been spending some of those profits over the last 20 years to keep things up to date and rocking, and we could have a policy like Finland, where every citizen is guaranteed 1Mbps broadband.

You know, we forget sometimes…in all the talk about democracy, we forget that it’s not a democracy, it’s a republic. The people dont make the decisions, they chose the people who make the decisions. Could they do a better job chosing? Yeah. But when you consider the alternatives… — Josiah Bartlett (Aaron Sorkin), The West Wing

I was just watching some old episodes of The West Wing, which I’m known to do occasionally (especially on boring Sunday afternoons), and I have always loved this line. To anybody more curious, it comes from the sixth episode of the second season, titled “The Lame Duck Congress.” It was far too long to fit in a Tweet, and wouldn’t have the same impact if i had to disjoint it and spread it across tweets…

And I’ll say it again:

The US has run the table on the world’s economy for 60 years and that train has run off the rails. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we had the lowest working industrial population in the world, and we made up for it with huge advances and sheer wastefulness in power generation (both steam, electricity, and oil) and mechanization.

We were able to become the worlds leading industrial and economic power because we were the only ones really left capable after WWII. Most of Europe would feel the fallout from WWII until the mid-eighties when they started to recover. Africa remains dark for the most part. Japan took the worst beating but has come back as an economic super power and now owns a significant portion of our national debt. The rest of Asia was busy dragging itself out of the rice patties and into its own Industrial Age, allowing THEM to take on all the benefits we Americans had, without any of the overhead of actually having to create any of the Industry. It was already done, the trial-and-error was mostly over. They just had to build factories and staff them and we had a cheap source for manufactured goods. Now THOSE countries are starting to evolve beyond their industrial ages whereas we hit the technology age and turned into Jeff Spicoli. We have progressively gotten more ignorant and apathetic about our place in the world’s economy. Our manufacturing base has moved overseas to escape the overhead of labor unions. Why pay healthcare benefits and have employees who pay income tax? Get mexicans or asians to do the work, and charge the same money, that way you can pocket the difference and buy a 3rd private jet or a 4th yacht. *See below

After the depression and WWII, we decided we had to bury the communists, so we spent BILLIONS on national defense, creating the largest debt of any country in the world. All the while we spent paltry amounts of money on stupid things like infrastructure, education, social security, healthcare, non-defense-related-science research, genomics, etc.

Until we re-sort ourselves life is going to suck here for a while. We’re going to be pinched economically, everybody’s at fault and no one is to blame. Well, not quite. One percent of the country owns 38% of the wealth. Ten percent owns 71% (inclusive). Those are Wikipedia’s numbers from 2001, so the numbers are most likely different, but i can’t see them being any better (from my point of view as a resident of the middle class). I blame them.

Addendum:

And oh yes, I’m envious of the rich. I covet things that I cannot afford, fancy cars, computers, houses, etc. But when I look at some of these guys, who own multiple houses, private aircraft (and can afford to pay a pilot a decent wage to fly them around at a whim, and pay rent on a hanger or tarmac space at an airport), multiple exotic cars and boats, $400 pants, $500 shirts, the ears of congressmen, senators, presidents, etc., it really pisses me off.

I’m all for a capitalist society, where good ideas and hard work are rewarded. But when i hear talk about the “fairness” of Unions, or the “fairness” of an economic stimulus package, I can’t help but be appalled at the things that we choose to care about, while we sit by and let rampant greed and corruption corrode this country from the top down. The odds are no longer in the favor of hard work and good ideas being enough for somebody to make something out of themselves. The fact that you can still cheat, lie, and steal your way to the top should say something to everyone about the state of the country.

Article

Sadly, when the Supreme Court makes such a decision it becomes gospel for lower courts and few will stand to challenge it, even if the bench looks notably different from when the decision was made. That’s the bad thing about legal precedents, and they just set a big one.

My take is that if one was to rape a child, they know that they are raping a child, particularly a child under 12. If one is to undertake such an act, there is a small chance they don’t know the consequences, but regardless, it is effing WRONG on so many levels as to make distinctions not matter. The death penalty is a serious punishment, and should only be reserved for serious crimes, and I think that in this country we both overuse it and don’t use it enough. Rape can be proven via many means, and since this girl reportedly needed to have surgery afterwards to repair damage, not to mention the ridiculous amount of mental instability she might experience later in life, I can see it being justified here, given sufficient evidence, which the local and supreme courts of Louisiana apparently found.

This is the type of “legislating from the bench” that the courts should not be doing. What they just did may not have created a law for such cases, but it did create a precedent, which sadly in our time, is almost the same thing. They just overturned the laws governing this practice in 5 states. So because he just scarred her for life, and didn’t kill her, he gets to live. That’s fair?

Bravo to both presidential candidates for coming out against the ruling. It doesn’t make much difference at this point, but perhaps something can be done about it once Barack is in office

footnote: I’m not saying all legal precedents are bad, there area few that I am particularly fond of (Roe v Wade, Epperson v Arkansas, Miranda v Arizona, just to name a few), but as in all imperfect systems, mistakes are made (Dred Scott, and the case in question here, for instance).