FFS ... how thrifty and disgustingly supremacist can these people be?
Is there any private industry that this rapidly aging, anti-Charity, rape-porn fantasy writing Communist doesn't think the government should own, run and operate?We've long noted how community broadband networks are often an organic response to the expensive, slow, or just-plain unavailable service that's the direct product of a broken telecom market and regulatory capture. While you'll occasionally see some deployment duds if the business models aren't well crafted, studies have shown such local networks (there are 750 and counting now in the States) offer cheaper, faster service than many incumbents. Chattanooga's EPB, for example, was rated the best ISP in America last year by Consumer Reports.
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Enter Bernie Sanders, whose new broadband plan was released last week and appears to have been cobbled together from the collected nightmares of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast executives. The plan would not only restore the FCC's net neutrality authority and the agency's authority over ISPs in general, but it would restore the FCC's broadband privacy rules scuttled in 2017 by telecom lobbyists. It would also ban arbitrary and unnecessary broadband usage caps and overage fees, and ban the sneaky fees ISPs use to covertly jack up the advertised price post sale.
But the plan takes some extra time to highlight how a Sanders administration would embrace community broadband, including the elimination of protectionist state laws, and the doling out of $150 billion to be used largely toward building alternatives to the private sector telecom status quo:
"Municipalities across the country running their own internet services have proved they can deliver high-quality service at a fraction of the price of established monopolies. Cities can run their own networks just like a water or electric utility or build out an open access network to allow multiple providers to compete on price and service, rather than one or two conglomerates gouging customers and setting their own prices. Bernie believes it’s time to stop relying on profit-focused corporations to get to universal broadband. Bernie will provide the necessary funding for states, cities, and co-ops to build out their own broadband networks, and ensure all households are connected by the end of his first term."
Needless to say, the telecom sector isn't going to much like any of this.
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The proposal isn't without its problems. Several economists versed in telecom and media tell me that the proposals to retroactively break up giants like Comcast NBC Universal and AT&T Time Warner are little more than pipe dreams that would be logistical nightmares in actual practice. And the Sanders camp also oddly opposes so-called "one touch make ready" rules (which allow any qualified third party to move pole equipment instead of just incumbent ISPs) despite widespread support of such proposals (unions tell me "one touch" poses a safety and security risk, but those claims are hotly contested).
[Sanders] was even kicked off a hippy commune for refusing to work.
...in 2016, his first million-dollar earning year, he donated less than 1% of his income to charity.
It’s only fair to point out also that Sanders increased his giving to above 3% in 2017 and 2018 — perhaps because by then he had some inkling of a presidential contender.
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Sanders really meant what he said in 1981 when he told attendees at a local United Way fundraiser in Vermont, “I don't believe in charities.”
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Sanders, like other socialists, isn’t opposed to helping people. Rather, he wants the state to do something he's unwilling to do himself on a personal basis: help the needy with his own wealth and the wealth of millionaires.
