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Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

washingtonpost.com

151–160 of 248 posts

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too I'm from the midwest and I still don't understand this sentiment. Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night? That seems extremely anti-democratic to me. It's not that people who don't live on the coasts shouldn't have a say. It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes , then t…

> The house also favors less populous states, even if not by design. Out of curiosity, how does this happen in practice? My understanding was that seats were divided up by population (giving equal voice to those in more densely populated areas).

as someone else posted, about halfway down here is a good explanation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/1...

But I would even go further; as to the house specifically and not the election of the president, you have inner state politics affecting the house and the distracting process. ie. Gerrymandering.

In my opinion, we are not seeing red states and blue states (or purple state), we have urban/suburban/rural interests all competing for resources. Keep in mind, now a days, we typically relate urban with democrats and suburban/rural with republicans, but this is not always the case, and sometimes a bit too simplistic.

In a state like North Carolina for instance, the state legislature is run by the republican party, which has the power on how each US house seat is redistricted. I would argue that NC rural interests have much more power than NC urban interests at the state legislature level. This then also gets mirrored in the US Congressional redistricting, where the US Congressmen for cities like Charlotte are geographically divided to give Charlotte as little Congressional power as possible. (For instance, the Congressman for the NC 9th district was in fact essentially the Congressman for just South Charlotte and a few outlying suburbs, his seat has been spread out to a small part of South Charlotte and 3 or 4 very rural counties. This means that he can no longer solely lobby for South Charlotte's interests, but now has a "split" constituency (suburban vs. rural with different needs/wants. Think of it as a majority minority style district for rural areas). I would argue that this means that Charlotte's interests are in part superseded by small rural county interests, which once again, (unfairly?) gives more political power to lower density areas than larger density areas.

(Keep in mind, the above is all my own opinions and arguments, in currently lacking in hard evidence (such as the NC legislature intentionally split the 9th district to deny power to Charlotte) and relies on a few assumptions. So take it with a grain of salt, though I stand by my analysis.)

TL;DR; Even in states with a somewhat equal rural/urban divde, some states give more power to rural areas than urban areas by gerrymandering.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the amount of money spent relevant? At the end of the day, more individuals felt that Clinton should be their president.

uh, dunno ... maybe yield on dollars spent is indicative of, say, their ability to manage our tax dollars.

No? I don't see how spending money on a campaign is related to spending money on, say, social security. Otherwise, you're suggesting that advertising companies would be fantastic at government. Like, "They got me to buy Coke, they must be great at managing our public education!"

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#153
post #31

Well, sure. In theory, he could do anything by fiat within the bounds of established regulatory discretion. Of course, I wouldn't worry too much about all of the stuff that "Trump could do" until he gets around to doing it. He talks a lot. And, I suspect he won't have time to do all of the stuff that people worry about him potentially doing... As frustratingly slow as congressional action is -- it's more resistant to…

> Well, sure. In theory, he could do anything by fiat within the bounds of established regulatory discretion. Of course, I wouldn't worry too much about all of the stuff that "Trump could do" until he gets around to doing it. He talks a lot. And, I suspect he won't have time to do all of the stuff that people worry about him potentially doing...

It won't take him any significant personal time to get rid of net neutrality. Under Trump the FCC commissioners will change from a 3 to 2 Democrat majority to a 3 to 2 Republican majority in 2017. Net neutrality passed at the FCC on a 3 to 2 straight party line vote.

Republicans are massively, overwhelmingly against net neutrality and Republicans control both houses of Congress, so it is a pretty damn safe bet that the new Republican commissioner will be one who agrees with the overwhelming majority Republican opinion on this.

Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman, is a Democrat, but almost certainly will follow tradition and relinquish the chairmanship pretty much as soon as Trump takes office, and Trump will name one of the Republican commissioners as the new chairman.

So, in 2017 we will have an FCC commission chaired by a Republican, with a 3 to 2 Republican majority. Reversing net neutrality will almost certainly be one of the first things on the agenda for the 3 to 2 Republican majority, Republican chaired FCC, especially considering that reversing net neutrality has been a priority for Republicans ever since Wheeler went with Title II reclassification.

Wouldn't it be stupid for net neutrality advocates to wait until Trump actually does this to worry about it and start working to stop it? It's not like, say, building the wall and making Mexico pay for it, which has so many moving parts, cost, and problems to overcome that ignoring it until something concrete actually happens is fine--the wall plan is very likely to fall apart on its own long before it gets to that stage. Dismantling net neutrality will be close to trivial once Trump's appointments are on the commission.

It would actually be more work on Trump's part to stop net neutrality from being dismantled, as he'd have to do some work to find a Republican commission nominee who is not against net neutrality and will pass Congressional confirmation.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#154
post #31

Well, sure. In theory, he could do anything by fiat within the bounds of established regulatory discretion. Of course, I wouldn't worry too much about all of the stuff that "Trump could do" until he gets around to doing it. He talks a lot. And, I suspect he won't have time to do all of the stuff that people worry about him potentially doing... As frustratingly slow as congressional action is -- it's more resistant to…

The idea that the electoral college somehow protects smaller states is fallacious. If you take the six most populous states, you already have about 200 votes. Then you only need six more states from the next 18 most populous states. Bam, you have a majority by only winning 12 states, the other 38 states (and additional territories) have to put up and shut up. [1]

This doesn't usually happen because CA/NY usually vote D, Texas usually votes R, Illinois has been voting D for a while now, and Florida/Pennsylvania are swing states; (Florida usually votes R) although, the usual suspects have passed voter suppression laws.

This system doesn't protect smaller states by design, it is, as it always was, supposed to prevent the rule of mob and a demagogue from being elected. Unfortunately, due to an extremely misguided sense of party loyalty, here we are. At best it's an arbitrary ruling that can be exploited by someone who will lose the popular vote.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_Stat...

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#155
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly true of the libertarian right, but not of the social conservative right, who have been rather inconsistent in opposing "FCC legislating TV language and obscenity" and "DEA or Department of Health legislating controlled substances".

As a self-identified member of the libertarian right I absolutely agree. I get into this debate with so-called Conservatives frequently: smaller government and less regulation means marriage equality (at the state level,) the dismantling of the DEA (leaving it to states to make their own rules,) and the elimination of the Dept. of Education (leaving that to states as well,) among many other things. It also calls for…

Aristotle said that a city should only be as large as to encompass everyone that could hear the sound of a ram's horn or trumpet. Beyond that, you weren't part of the city or it's governance. Seems like a good rule which would prevent taking money from Florida and giving it to Alaska.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#156
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw your other comment alluding to this and was intruiged. If you have time, can you please elaborate?

Direct election was a proposal at the time, and many founding fathers supported it, but the slave states shot it down. The slave states are often mis-characterized as rural/not populous as compared to northern states. But that logic only holds if the color of your skin defines your humanity -- slave states weren't significantly less populous, it's just that a huge portion of their populations weren't enfranchised. In…

Thanks!

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#157
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to endorse either candidate, but you're making a common mistake. If the election were a popular vote, the candidates would campaign for that. They'd focus more on big cities etc. There's no guarantee Clinton would have won the popular vote if that had been the case. Edit: If you're downvoting could you explain why?

You're definitely not wrong that it's not guaranteed she would win. She'd probably have had a better chance though. It would've been harder for Trump to make his pitch in the areas Clinton did well in.

There is no way to predict what would have happened. National popular vote would completely change both campaign strategy and voter incentives, and the results were already so close that as much as casting ballots on a Sunday instead of a Tuesday might have been enough to change both the popular vote and the electoral college result.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#158
One thing for sure, a political leader in a democracy will only cater to the needs of his immediate key holders that run sectors of the country like the economy, military, etc., who in turn will only seek to fulfill the minimum amount of needs of the people that keeps them in power, nothing more nothing less.

The difference between a one party state is freedom of speech, human rights, a governing body that keeps the ruling party in check, and that using the military to squelch riots on national television would be political suicide.

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, the first article does not refute a single statement in the post you're replying to, which was about the historical reason for the electoral college. It merely justifies the electoral college from first principles in a modern context. It even says as much in its title. The second article also fails to refute anything I've said. A direct vote was ruled out because of slavery -- the article says nothing a…

>A lot of founding fathers would've preferred a direct vote. See for example Anti Federalist 72. Using google you can also find quotes from Madison, for example, arguing that a direct vote would obviously be best. Although true, this is true as a point in time statement. In the end, they were convinced of the alternative argument.

As I said in my original post, "Appealing to their ultimate compromise is a strange argument, especially since the original political motivations have largely become either irrelevant or reprehensible."

Re: Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality

#160
post #59
post #28

Net neutrality involves less regulation and thus less barrier to entry. That government requires IsPs to collect data on usage, and store it for several months is a huge burden and cost to any would be small competitors. The loss of net neutrality just increases walled gardens. And there will be a patch work of exceptions instead of broad neutrality.

I am all for net neutrality, but net neutrality is definitely regulation. It's the government saying that one entity cannot pay another for a service/good, classic regulation.

I'm not suggesting net neutrality is not regulation. I'm suggesting it's simpler regulation than letting companies sort it out, which always end up with many competing top end interests getting all sorts of exceptions applied by scalpel and duct tape.
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