Ever since he killed Net Neutrality with dirty tricks and illegal tactics,
Donald Trump’s FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been claiming that his actions
had stimulated broadband growth in America, a claim his spokesvillain
repeated yesterday in response to Democrats introducing legislation to restore Net Neutrality.
But the data that Pai has touted was badly distorted due to a monumental
error (or, less charitably, a massive fraud) by a company called
Barrierfree, who seem to have incorrectly completed their their “Form
477” report of broadband availability in a way that vastly overstated
the availability of their service, creating an error of such magnitude
that it distorted the figures for the whole country.
Barrierfree – the trading name of the Barrier Communications
Corporation – claimed that it its first year of operation, it had made
fixed wireless and fiber service available to 62 million people – 20%
of the population of the USA. In reality, Barrierfree offers a small
number of people access to a poky wireless service that caps out at
25mbps.
Companies submitting Form 477 are instructed to enumerate each “census
block” where they offer service; Barrierfree appears to have simply
reported that service was available in every census block in every state
it operates in.
The extent to which this distorts Pai’s figures can hardly be
overstated: for example, Barrierfree’s claims account for 2m of the the
5.6m rural connections that Pai claimed had been made in 2017/8.
More importantly, Barrierfree’s entries allowed Pai to avoid a
legislative duty – under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act –
to intervene if the FCC determines that broadband deployment isn’t
happening quickly enough.
The incorrect claims by Barrierfree were detected by the nonprofit Free
Press, who found it obvious that there was no way that a company like
Barrierfree could go from zero availability to deployment serving 62
million people literally overnight.
Frank Wu writes, “Today Brianna Wu, progressive Democrat and cybersecurity expert, is launching her 2020 bid for US Congress in MA-8!
She has a brand new video, in which she introduces herself, and talks
about being disowned by her family when she came out as queer. He also
talks about the alt-right hate group Gamergate, founding her software
development firm, and progressive policies she supports. Simultaneously,
Brianna has re-designed her website, which outlines her platform,
accepts donations, and allows supporters to volunteer. ‘It’s time to be
bold,’ Brianna says.”
if u ever wonder how europeans can rely on trains so much to travel thru entire countries
this is why
(312km/h is about 194mph)
? Yea is this not the same everywhere??
doesnt seem to be
Also, most areas in America don’t even HAVE passenger rail anymore
The automotive industry purposely tried to kill off trains here in America
Public transit in general if we’re being honest.
As an europeean, what the fuck america?
if you ever see something weird about america chances are it’s because some powerful industry decided to kill something that would have worked towards the public good for profit
“if you ever see something weird about america chances are it’s because some powerful industry decided to kill something that would have worked towards the public good for profit”
Literally why would you ever go for Bernie when Elizabeth Warren is RIGHT there
A vote for Sanders is a vote for Trump. All he can hope to do is spoil the Dem’s chances.
VOTE BERNIE IF YOU WANT 4 MORE YEARS OF TRUMP
FUCK THAT NOISE HELL NO.
We are not doing this again.
Lobby hard for your choice in the primaries, but do not insult the other options.
I like Warren a lot more than Sanders. I like Klobuchar and Harris better than either of them. Right now, Gillibrand is my top choice.
BUT I WANT TO BE ABLE TO VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE IN NOVEMBER, whoever that turns out to be.
And since I want to be able to get behind them, I want to know what their good points are. I want to know what I can expect them to do, and – this important – what issues aren’t on their top priority list, so I can let them know what matters to me.
All of them are smart, decent people. All of them want a better country, a better world. All of them would, on their worst day, be better than Trump at his best, assuming he has something a sane person could call “best.”
No infighting this time. No circular firing squads. Do not insult, denigrate, discourage, or bully people who are supporting the candidates you dislike. WE NEED TO WORK TOGETHER FOR THIS.
Before the primaries, figure out who is the best representative for your interests, and promote the hell out of them. Encourage people to vote. Get people registered. Tell everyone why you like this one better than that one – based on policies and history, not “he’s a lying scumbag” or “she caters to corporate greed.”
None of them is perfect. ALL OF THEM ARE BETTER THAN WHAT WE HAVE – do not help the Republicans (and the Russians!) suppress progressive voters by badmouthing other people’s choices.
I don’t want Sanders. I think he’s too old (and so is Warren) and we need people whose understanding of business and social dynamics are based on recent trends. I think Sanders is too caught up in social class as the only real axis of oppression; I don’t think he understands intersectionality. I worry that he favors gun rights more than is safe.
I’m not voting for him in the primaries. But if he gets the nomination, HE HAS MY VOTE IN NOVEMBER. And not in a “ugh, holding my nose and voting against Trump” way – he wants medical care for everyone; he wants college to be available to all; he wants strong unions and worker support. I can get behind those policy plans.
No litmus tests this time. No single issue that convinces people to stay home in November 2020. Pick one you like, or pick a few that you’re deciding between – but don’t convince yourself that any of them are evil incarnate and must be stopped at all costs.
Because we have that. And Republicans know damn well that they only win elections by splitting and suppressing votes for Democrats – so they’ll be hyping “this candidate is too terrible to vote for!!! Just stay home!” for the next year and a half.
FUCKING THIS.
We do not shoot down any decent, viable candidate this time.
You may have seen the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman in a viral video
last month, in which he appeared on a panel at the World Economic Forum
in Davos and berated the attendees for their tax-evasion
and insisted that no amount of philanthropy can make up for starving
the state of the money it needs to provide for everyone under democratic
guidance.
But Bregman was capable of understanding that just because Carlson
thought he was on Bregman’s side, it didn’t follow that Bregman should
be on Carlson’s side, especially not after Carlson’s years of carrying
water for sinister, manipulative, pro-monopoly billionaires like Rupert
Murdoch and David Koch.
So Bregman lit into Carlson, calling him a “millionaire funded by billionaires” who was “part of the problem.”
Carlson lost his shit, flipped out, called Bregman a “moron”
and a “tiny brain” and told him to “go fuck yourself,” adding that he
“tried to give you a hearing but you were too fucking annoying.”
Predictably, Carlson never aired the segment, but thankfully Bregman made his own recording and leaked it to Now This news, and it’s online for all to see.
The Truth-In-Billing, Remedies, and User Empowerment over Fees Act
[TRUE Fees] has been introduced by Rep Anna Eshoo [D-CA] and Sen Ed
Markey [D-MA]; if passed, it will force ISPs and cable operators to
advertise the true costs of their packages, including all surcharges.
As Karl Bode writes on Motherboard, the bill seeks to remedy an epidemic
of the kind of false advertising that is banned in Europe, but which
American firms regard as “the height of capitalistic creativity,” from
hotels who use hidden “resort fees” to jack up prices over advertised
rates to the misleading “regulatory recovery” fees on phone or utility
bills that falsely suggest that they are the result of some statute, not
the company’s greed.
And of course, no one practices this deceptive art with the virtuosity
of the cable/ISP industry, whose monopolism, contempt for customers, and
price gouging are legendary.
It’s not just Amazon and Apple
that expect massive taxpayer subsidies in exchange for locating
physical plant in your town: when Google builds a new data-center, it
does so on condition of multimillion-dollar “incentives” from local
governments – but Google also demands extraordinary secrecy
from local officials regarding these deals, secrecy so complete that
city attorneys have instructed town councillors to refuse to answer
questions about it during public meetings.
Data-centers consume massive amounts of electricity and water, and so
companies are always on the hunt for low costs for these necessities.
Sometimes, those savings come from geography – siting a data-center by a
river or lake, or in a cooler climate – but they can also come from
sweetheart deals from local power and water companies.
The Partnership for Working Families has been fighting for transparency
on these deals since Google’s first wave of data-center buildouts in San
Jose in 2006. They recently filed public records requests in eight
cities where Google has built or is building data-center and seven
cities with Google offices.
The records reveal a pattern of extreme secrecy: Google uses
special-purpose, anonymous LLCs to do its deals, sometimes using
multiple LLCs for different parts of the deal (for example, one LLC
might acquire the land, and another might develop it).
Google binds the cities it deals with to vows of silence, through
extensive nondisclosure agreements. The agreements prohibit cities from
revealing Google’s power and water usage, payroll data, and investment
level. Google argues that these are trade secrets that might reveal
sensitive competitive data, but this is also the information that voters
need in order to assess whether they are getting value for money when
they hand over millions to one of the world’s largest, most profitable
companies.
What’s more, the NDAs also prohibit disclosure of the existence of the
NDAs themselves – a kafkaesque American version of the UK’s notorious “super-injunctions” – further shielding these deals from democratic scrutiny and debate.
For example, if it wasn’t for the Partnership for Working Families’
records requests, the people of Council Bluffs, Iowa would not know that
the city government sold Google 850 acres of land for one dollar; the
people of Midlothian, Texas would not know that Google got a ten-year
tax-holiday from the city in exchange for creating a mere 40 jobs; and
so on.
The secrecy doesn’t end after Google opens its data-centers, either. In
Berkeley County, South Carolina, Google formed a new LLC to apply for
additional water usage permits, years after it had opened its
data-center. The people of Berkeley County are not allowed to know how
much water Google is already drawing from their local aquifers, but the
new LLC was applying for permission to be the county’s third-largest
water user, and its link with Google was only discovered because the
company made the mistake of listing it as sharing an address with the
other anonymous LLC it had formed to build and operate its data-center.
Long-serving local officials defended the secrecy and the subsidies,
saying that corporate America expects democratically elected governments
to negotiate in secret to pay companies to operate in their
jurisdictions.
“So I’m being held, and every person in this body is being held to a higher ethical standard than the President of the United States?”
“That’s right, ‘cause there are some ethics committee rules that apply to you.”
“And it’s already super legal, as we’ve seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy, so it’s even easier for the President of the United States to be one, I would assume.”
“That’s right.”
“Thank you very much.”
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Exposes the Problem of Dark Money in Politics
