<story><title>F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/technology/net-neutrality-repeal-vote.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mcantelon</author><text>&amp;gt;Targeted voter suppression campaigns have prevented people from voting who would have tipped the scales in favor of Democrats.&lt;p&gt;And the Democrats have spun reasonable measures, such as requiring some sort of identification to vote, as &amp;quot;suppression&amp;quot;, possibly so those who aren&amp;#x27;t citizens can vote. Who cheats more? Who knows.&lt;p&gt;The low-hanging fruit for the Democrats is, however:&lt;p&gt;1) Prioritize lower&amp;#x2F;middle class economic concerns over progressive identity politics&lt;p&gt;2) Push the DNC not to scuttle candidates, like Bernie, that people don&amp;#x27;t universally loathe&lt;p&gt;If those two things get done, the Democrats have a good chance going forward. Otherwise, who knows.</text></item><item><author>blunte</author><text>1. voters did not elect a Republican government.  &lt;i&gt;Gerrymandering has given Republicans wins in many places where Democrats would have won in any other universe.  &lt;/i&gt;Likely rigged electronic voting machines that have no audit trail have given Republicans votes they would not have had.  *Targeted voter suppression campaigns have prevented people from voting who would have tipped the scales in favor of Democrats.&lt;p&gt;2. Republicans (and many Democrats) do not &amp;quot;under-regulate&amp;quot;.  They regulate in favor of paying corporations.  Those regulations are not all typical visible regulations; many are special provisions or loopholes.  That is not laissez-faire.&lt;p&gt;3. Since you re-iterate, I re-iterate.  Republicans are not a party of deregulation.  They are a party that supports monopolistic, bully-capitalist behaviors.&lt;p&gt;The only real solution for the US is that it suffer a slow decline in global and economic relevance until it becomes desperate for a change in behavior.  Only then will the shit be flushed out of the government and campaign finance rules put in place to prevent another corrupt government that serves a very limited few people at the cost of 330million others.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>The voters elected a Republican government. That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine. Anybody who told you that lobbying the FCC was going to make a difference here was, whether they meant to or not, selling a bill of goods.&lt;p&gt;As someone who respects but mostly profoundly disagrees with principled Republican laissez-faire regulatory strategy (at least, once we got past 1991 or so), it is more than a little aggravating to see us as a community winding ourselves in knots over market-based regulation of telecom at the same time as the (largely unprincipled) Republican congress is putting the finishing strokes --- literally in ball-point pen --- on a catastrophically stupid tax bill that threatens universal access to health insurance, not just for those dependent on Medicare but on startup founders as well.&lt;p&gt;If you care deeply about this issue, stop pretending like filling out forms and putting banners ads is going to persuade Republican regulators to act like Democrats. &amp;quot;Net Neutrality&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t my personal issue --- I worked at ISPs, have backbone engineer friends, and candidly: I think this issue is silly. But if it&amp;#x27;s yours... sigh... fine.&lt;p&gt;But do it right: get out there, to your nearest seriously threatened D districts or to the nearest plausibly flippable R district (the suburbs are great for this), open up your damn wallets, and donate.&lt;p&gt;The FCC may very well be right that it&amp;#x27;s not their job to impose our dream portfolio of rules on Verizon (certainly, a lot of the rules people are claiming NN provided were fanciful). It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter how dreamlike the rules are: Congress can almost certainly enact a law, which the FCC can&amp;#x27;t revoke.&lt;p&gt;But otherwise, be clear-eyed: elections have consequences. We elected the party of deregulation. Take the bad with whatever the good is, and work to flip the House back.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kurthr</author><text>No, in person voter fraud is well studied and considered so uncommon that it is a red herring. If it were truly considered a problem then mail in ballots would require some proof that the correct person voted. That&amp;#x27;s the low hanging fruit for vulnerability of voting, why isn&amp;#x27;t it fixed? You can&amp;#x27;t even catch the perpetrator! Because rural voters who support them would scream, they don&amp;#x27;t care about fixing the gaping security hole.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;policy-and-politics&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;16767426&amp;#x2F;alabama-voter-suppression-senate-moore-jones&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;policy-and-politics&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;16767426&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;1) has identity politics has been shown to be such a loser for republicans?
2) since more people voted for Hillary than Trump, is &amp;quot;universal&amp;quot; loathing actually a problem for presidential candidates?&lt;p&gt;Roy Jones won 6&amp;#x2F;7 districts and lost the popular vote. Pretty much the definition of gerrymandering, 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;wonk&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;how-doug-jones-lost-in-nearly-every-congressional-district-but-still-won-the-state&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;wonk&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;how-d...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/technology/net-neutrality-repeal-vote.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mcantelon</author><text>&amp;gt;Targeted voter suppression campaigns have prevented people from voting who would have tipped the scales in favor of Democrats.&lt;p&gt;And the Democrats have spun reasonable measures, such as requiring some sort of identification to vote, as &amp;quot;suppression&amp;quot;, possibly so those who aren&amp;#x27;t citizens can vote. Who cheats more? Who knows.&lt;p&gt;The low-hanging fruit for the Democrats is, however:&lt;p&gt;1) Prioritize lower&amp;#x2F;middle class economic concerns over progressive identity politics&lt;p&gt;2) Push the DNC not to scuttle candidates, like Bernie, that people don&amp;#x27;t universally loathe&lt;p&gt;If those two things get done, the Democrats have a good chance going forward. Otherwise, who knows.</text></item><item><author>blunte</author><text>1. voters did not elect a Republican government.  &lt;i&gt;Gerrymandering has given Republicans wins in many places where Democrats would have won in any other universe.  &lt;/i&gt;Likely rigged electronic voting machines that have no audit trail have given Republicans votes they would not have had.  *Targeted voter suppression campaigns have prevented people from voting who would have tipped the scales in favor of Democrats.&lt;p&gt;2. Republicans (and many Democrats) do not &amp;quot;under-regulate&amp;quot;.  They regulate in favor of paying corporations.  Those regulations are not all typical visible regulations; many are special provisions or loopholes.  That is not laissez-faire.&lt;p&gt;3. Since you re-iterate, I re-iterate.  Republicans are not a party of deregulation.  They are a party that supports monopolistic, bully-capitalist behaviors.&lt;p&gt;The only real solution for the US is that it suffer a slow decline in global and economic relevance until it becomes desperate for a change in behavior.  Only then will the shit be flushed out of the government and campaign finance rules put in place to prevent another corrupt government that serves a very limited few people at the cost of 330million others.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>The voters elected a Republican government. That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine. Anybody who told you that lobbying the FCC was going to make a difference here was, whether they meant to or not, selling a bill of goods.&lt;p&gt;As someone who respects but mostly profoundly disagrees with principled Republican laissez-faire regulatory strategy (at least, once we got past 1991 or so), it is more than a little aggravating to see us as a community winding ourselves in knots over market-based regulation of telecom at the same time as the (largely unprincipled) Republican congress is putting the finishing strokes --- literally in ball-point pen --- on a catastrophically stupid tax bill that threatens universal access to health insurance, not just for those dependent on Medicare but on startup founders as well.&lt;p&gt;If you care deeply about this issue, stop pretending like filling out forms and putting banners ads is going to persuade Republican regulators to act like Democrats. &amp;quot;Net Neutrality&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t my personal issue --- I worked at ISPs, have backbone engineer friends, and candidly: I think this issue is silly. But if it&amp;#x27;s yours... sigh... fine.&lt;p&gt;But do it right: get out there, to your nearest seriously threatened D districts or to the nearest plausibly flippable R district (the suburbs are great for this), open up your damn wallets, and donate.&lt;p&gt;The FCC may very well be right that it&amp;#x27;s not their job to impose our dream portfolio of rules on Verizon (certainly, a lot of the rules people are claiming NN provided were fanciful). It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter how dreamlike the rules are: Congress can almost certainly enact a law, which the FCC can&amp;#x27;t revoke.&lt;p&gt;But otherwise, be clear-eyed: elections have consequences. We elected the party of deregulation. Take the bad with whatever the good is, and work to flip the House back.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Latty</author><text>Requiring ID often is voter suppression. Democrats repeatedly offer to support these requirements if ID is free and easy to obtain. Of course, republicans often actively work against that. In 2015 in Alabama, DMVs in predominantly black (and therefore democrat) areas were going to be closed closed by republicans in power, making it harder to obtain ID for democrats. Republicans have repeatedly been caught talking about how voter ID law is pushed only for partisan advantage. Is it really surprising the democrats are wary?&lt;p&gt;Yes, voter ID requirements, while not necessary by any metric I can see, sound reasonable, but they are being abused as a tool for suppression. If republicans truly care, they just need to include law that enforces free and easy access to ID for everyone.</text></comment>