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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On October 09 2014 01:47 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2014 01:34 WhiteDog wrote:On October 09 2014 01:15 aksfjh wrote:
While the working conditions are awful in the 3rd world countries compared to 1st world countries, the relative conditions to their surroundings and quality of life have improved significantly as well. Enacting tariffs and trade restrictions does nothing but hurt both sides, just like what happened with sugar tariffs in South America and the Caribbean. Those countries would continue to be rife with poverty, and maybe we would see a resurgence of American manufacturing and trade, or maybe we'd just import everything from Germany and Japan instead.
It's not like lowering US wages would help either, since all that would happen is a creation of another subclass of people. You can't live off of 40 hours a week on minimum wage already and that's what a lot of working adults are being paid, so lowering the wage floor just makes people poorer.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding though and the complaint is that we pay people in manufacturing jobs too much (because they're unionized? idk). The same thing occurs though, where you just create more working poor, which cannot buy the products they make (or others like them in different sectors).
Also, if you seriously believe they'll just automate the process, you need to rethink that. As of now, you usually only have 1-3 cashiers, 1-3 cooks, and a manager (and maybe an asst) at a fast food joint. You can't just turn every store into a vending machine, so you'll still have 1 cashier, 1 cook, and a manager at minimum to be there "just in case." Are they going to dump everybody for peak hours as well? Not likely. The most likely scenario, instead of automating, is that of "flex scheduling," where people are put in some sort of "on-call" list instead of set hours. Maximize the utility of the workers you have. Overall hours would be cut for most, but with a ~20% pay raise for many of those workers (proposed minimum wage hike), they could break (almost) even or even better than before. Most of our economies were built with tariff. What you're saying is not untrue but not true either. The situation in china is better for exemple, but not really in India, and not in all 3rd world countries, far from it. It depend on many things, and not everything is linked to free trade. I actually think the most important thing is the existence of a proactive state - and it is the point of view of many world organisations such as the United Nation Development Program since now some years. Now it's true that a sudden tarriff would result is an important movement of assets from 3rd world countries to OCDE countries which would result in a great crisis in most 3rd world countries - just like it happened when Volker increase the interest rate for exemple. But that doesn't take aside the fact that protectionnism, at least targetted, would be a great tool to resolve some of our greatest problem, which is competitive disinflation (coming also from Germany and Japan) and the environmental problem. But, for ideological reasons, that situation is never considered. Also, what doesn't seem to be considered is an interest rate that increases inflation based on rapid gains in technology and gains from shifting labor to overseas operations. We have had deflationary pressure for 2-3 decades, but price stickiness has prevented prices from falling to their "minimal" level on many goods. The only spoken "viable" course of action has been to deregulate more and things would fix themselves. On the tariffs side of things, I think they are MUCH more helpful for the developing countries to impose on their imports than for developed countries in any form. China does this well in a sense.
I seriously think the world should make another "bretton woods" or something, and try to seriously deal with global imbalance and environment, with an international "protectionnism" and fiscal transfer system, but such utopist idea cannot happen in our modern society.
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On October 09 2014 02:01 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2014 01:47 aksfjh wrote:On October 09 2014 01:34 WhiteDog wrote:On October 09 2014 01:15 aksfjh wrote:
While the working conditions are awful in the 3rd world countries compared to 1st world countries, the relative conditions to their surroundings and quality of life have improved significantly as well. Enacting tariffs and trade restrictions does nothing but hurt both sides, just like what happened with sugar tariffs in South America and the Caribbean. Those countries would continue to be rife with poverty, and maybe we would see a resurgence of American manufacturing and trade, or maybe we'd just import everything from Germany and Japan instead.
It's not like lowering US wages would help either, since all that would happen is a creation of another subclass of people. You can't live off of 40 hours a week on minimum wage already and that's what a lot of working adults are being paid, so lowering the wage floor just makes people poorer.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding though and the complaint is that we pay people in manufacturing jobs too much (because they're unionized? idk). The same thing occurs though, where you just create more working poor, which cannot buy the products they make (or others like them in different sectors).
Also, if you seriously believe they'll just automate the process, you need to rethink that. As of now, you usually only have 1-3 cashiers, 1-3 cooks, and a manager (and maybe an asst) at a fast food joint. You can't just turn every store into a vending machine, so you'll still have 1 cashier, 1 cook, and a manager at minimum to be there "just in case." Are they going to dump everybody for peak hours as well? Not likely. The most likely scenario, instead of automating, is that of "flex scheduling," where people are put in some sort of "on-call" list instead of set hours. Maximize the utility of the workers you have. Overall hours would be cut for most, but with a ~20% pay raise for many of those workers (proposed minimum wage hike), they could break (almost) even or even better than before. Most of our economies were built with tariff. What you're saying is not untrue but not true either. The situation in china is better for exemple, but not really in India, and not in all 3rd world countries, far from it. It depend on many things, and not everything is linked to free trade. I actually think the most important thing is the existence of a proactive state - and it is the point of view of many world organisations such as the United Nation Development Program since now some years. Now it's true that a sudden tarriff would result is an important movement of assets from 3rd world countries to OCDE countries which would result in a great crisis in most 3rd world countries - just like it happened when Volker increase the interest rate for exemple. But that doesn't take aside the fact that protectionnism, at least targetted, would be a great tool to resolve some of our greatest problem, which is competitive disinflation (coming also from Germany and Japan) and the environmental problem. But, for ideological reasons, that situation is never considered. Also, what doesn't seem to be considered is an interest rate that increases inflation based on rapid gains in technology and gains from shifting labor to overseas operations. We have had deflationary pressure for 2-3 decades, but price stickiness has prevented prices from falling to their "minimal" level on many goods. The only spoken "viable" course of action has been to deregulate more and things would fix themselves. On the tariffs side of things, I think they are MUCH more helpful for the developing countries to impose on their imports than for developed countries in any form. China does this well in a sense. I seriously think the world should make another "bretton woods" or something, and try to seriously deal with global imbalance and environment, with an international "protectionnism" and fiscal transfer system, but such utopist idea cannot happen in our modern society.
Don't you usually call for higher inflation? The Bretton Woods system essentially bound all countries to the gold standard which means every country needs incredible fiscal discipline, even more than what most pro austerity guys are demanding now. After all Bretton Woods collapsed when the US went into Vietnam and started social welfare programs and decided to fund it via the money press instead of taxation. It's basically the opposite of what you usually argue for.
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What he wants is not a return to the Bretton Woods system, but a conference to coordinate on those subjects that wouldn't just be hand-waiving.
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On October 09 2014 02:13 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2014 02:01 WhiteDog wrote:On October 09 2014 01:47 aksfjh wrote:On October 09 2014 01:34 WhiteDog wrote:On October 09 2014 01:15 aksfjh wrote:
While the working conditions are awful in the 3rd world countries compared to 1st world countries, the relative conditions to their surroundings and quality of life have improved significantly as well. Enacting tariffs and trade restrictions does nothing but hurt both sides, just like what happened with sugar tariffs in South America and the Caribbean. Those countries would continue to be rife with poverty, and maybe we would see a resurgence of American manufacturing and trade, or maybe we'd just import everything from Germany and Japan instead.
It's not like lowering US wages would help either, since all that would happen is a creation of another subclass of people. You can't live off of 40 hours a week on minimum wage already and that's what a lot of working adults are being paid, so lowering the wage floor just makes people poorer.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding though and the complaint is that we pay people in manufacturing jobs too much (because they're unionized? idk). The same thing occurs though, where you just create more working poor, which cannot buy the products they make (or others like them in different sectors).
Also, if you seriously believe they'll just automate the process, you need to rethink that. As of now, you usually only have 1-3 cashiers, 1-3 cooks, and a manager (and maybe an asst) at a fast food joint. You can't just turn every store into a vending machine, so you'll still have 1 cashier, 1 cook, and a manager at minimum to be there "just in case." Are they going to dump everybody for peak hours as well? Not likely. The most likely scenario, instead of automating, is that of "flex scheduling," where people are put in some sort of "on-call" list instead of set hours. Maximize the utility of the workers you have. Overall hours would be cut for most, but with a ~20% pay raise for many of those workers (proposed minimum wage hike), they could break (almost) even or even better than before. Most of our economies were built with tariff. What you're saying is not untrue but not true either. The situation in china is better for exemple, but not really in India, and not in all 3rd world countries, far from it. It depend on many things, and not everything is linked to free trade. I actually think the most important thing is the existence of a proactive state - and it is the point of view of many world organisations such as the United Nation Development Program since now some years. Now it's true that a sudden tarriff would result is an important movement of assets from 3rd world countries to OCDE countries which would result in a great crisis in most 3rd world countries - just like it happened when Volker increase the interest rate for exemple. But that doesn't take aside the fact that protectionnism, at least targetted, would be a great tool to resolve some of our greatest problem, which is competitive disinflation (coming also from Germany and Japan) and the environmental problem. But, for ideological reasons, that situation is never considered. Also, what doesn't seem to be considered is an interest rate that increases inflation based on rapid gains in technology and gains from shifting labor to overseas operations. We have had deflationary pressure for 2-3 decades, but price stickiness has prevented prices from falling to their "minimal" level on many goods. The only spoken "viable" course of action has been to deregulate more and things would fix themselves. On the tariffs side of things, I think they are MUCH more helpful for the developing countries to impose on their imports than for developed countries in any form. China does this well in a sense. I seriously think the world should make another "bretton woods" or something, and try to seriously deal with global imbalance and environment, with an international "protectionnism" and fiscal transfer system, but such utopist idea cannot happen in our modern society. Don't you usually call for higher inflation? The Bretton Woods system essentially bound all countries to the gold standard which means every country needs incredible fiscal discipline, even more than what most pro austerity guys are demanding now. After all Bretton Woods collapsed when the US went into Vietnam and started social welfare programs and decided to fund it via the money press instead of taxation. It's basically the opposite of what you usually argue for.
Ho yeah the bretton wood results were poor, but at bretton woods there were delegation many countries, with Keynes proposing some measure and even foreseeing the current situation (trade imbalance) to a certain extent. What I want is people getting together and agreeing on something, and not letting the system run its course to the end of time until Marx is shown right in practice and not only in theory.
By the way, what you're saying about fiscal discipline is untrue. Every currency were bound to the US Dollars, but the US was a responsible hegemon (and it still is to a certain extent) in the sense that it helped most countries with their needs (marshall plan ?), increasing its demand to sustain the global economy. Nothing compared to Germany today please don't make it seems like you're doing the right thing in killing southern europe's demand. You also forget about the IMF (which does not exist in europe). But you're right in suggesting that the euro is doomed like the bretton wood monetary system was.
Did you know most communists were pro free trade ? They thought it would just accelerate the downfall of capitalism. Marx was, for exemple.
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Every time I try and change the topic from economics..,
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Economics is more interesting than whatever dumb shit the republicans/democrats did last week.
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The United States has struck a deal to reduce Indonesia’s debts in exchange for Jakarta pledging about $12 million for programs to protect endangered species and their habitats on Sumatra island, conservationists said Friday.
The move adds to a similar agreement in 2009, under which the Indonesian government pledged $30 million for increased protection of Sumatra’s forests, said NGO Conservation International, which helped broker the deal.
The agreement, which was inked this week, will provide additional funds for environmental groups to improve programmes aimed at protecting the Sumatran low-land rainforests as well as efforts to increase populations of threatened animals.
The forests of Sumatra, a huge island in western Indonesia, are one of the most biodiverse places on the planet and are home to critically endangered Sumatran rhinos and tigers.
“The debt-for-nature swap will benefit critical ecosystems in Sumatra through increasing conservation efforts,” Conservation International said in a statement.
“The United States is proud to partner with the government of Indonesia and the NGO sector to help protect and preserve the diverse wildlife that exists on Sumatra,” said Kristen Bauer, charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Jakarta.
Source
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There's a fascinating bit of history behind how Harry Dexter White, the effectual leader of the American delegation at the Bretton Woods Conference, basically held the floor of the discussion hostage while he imposed his views a la stressing the importance of the IMF and the World Bank. To make things even better, White was a spy for the Soviets, meaning that a great deal of his work behind creating the IMF and the World Bank was likely invested in estimation that they would eventually be taken by the USSR lol.
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OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A judge in northeast Kansas has ordered a county to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following actions earlier this week by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Johnson County Chief District Judge Kevin Moriarty issued the order Wednesday. He says it was meant to avoid confusion about the legal climate surrounding gay marriages.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear appeals from five states seeking to preserve their bans on gay marriage. One of them was Utah, which is in the same federal appeals court circuit as Kansas.
The Kansas Constitution has banned gay marriage since 2005.
Source
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AT&T has agreed to pay $105 million for “cramming” unauthorized charges on the monthly bills of its wireless customers, federal and state regulators announced Wednesday.
The charges — typically $9.99 per month — came from third-party services for things like trivia, horoscopes and love tips. AT&T is accused of keeping at least 35% of the fees, as well as obscuring the charges on bills and preventing customers from securing full refunds.
“For too long, consumers have been charged on their phone bills for things they did not buy,” Wheeler said. “It’s estimated that 20 million consumers this year are caught in this kind of trap, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.”
AT&T said in a statement that it and a number of wireless carriers had offered third-party “Premium Short Messaging Services” in the past few years.
Source
For anyone who doubted what I was saying about companies building this deceptive theft into their business plans here's the most recent case. (Or me being a witness to them telling their customer service reps to help steal it).
As predicted, they are going to pay a fraction of what they stole and claim that they didn't do anything wrong. As a result only some of the people will get some of their money back and no one who participated in stealing the money will be punished (outside of having to give back a portion of the loot[on a corporate level, those potential bonuses aren't going back]).
So why wouldn't they just find a new way to steal the money until they get caught again...? I mean they were doing this scam for almost a decade and only had to pay a fraction of one years take to settle up and have the record show they didn't admit to any wrong doing.
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House Republicans have surprising new company in attacking Nancy Pelosi: her fellow House Democrats.
Three Democrats running in GOP-leaning House districts have used late-stage television ads in a bid to distance themselves from the liberal leader of Democrats' House caucus—the same caucus they're fighting to join in 2015.
"Here's what I believe: Congress is broken," says Gwen Graham, one of the Democratic Party's top recruits, in a recent TV ad as a photo of Pelosi and House Speaker John Boehner flashes on the screen. "Both parties—Republican and Democrat—are to blame. And both need new leaders in Washington."
In Georgia, Rep. John Barrow, one of five Democrats to vote against Pelosi as party leader at the start of the 113th Congress in 2013, uses that fact as one of the key reasons to reelect him. "I voted against Nancy Pelosi as speaker," Barrow brags to Georgians in a recent television ad.
And in Colorado, Democratic candidate Irv Halter is trying to gain some traction in a very Republican district by lumping in his opponent, Rep. Doug Lamborn, with the Democratic leader. "Career politicians like Doug Lamborn and Nancy Pelosi have failed," Halter says, as he gestures toward photos of Lamborn and Pelosi. "…There's only one way to change Washington: Vote them out." National Journal
It's not the worst strategy, it's not a new strategy, and I hope it's not a successful strategy. You see, they're not the Democrats you think you know--they're new, shiny, and hip! They can be trusted to oust the party regulars and bring in all that hope and change you thought you voted for last time around!
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WaPo's front page spread suggests yet another cover-up from the White House
As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved.
But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member — yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.
The Secret Service shared its findings twice in the weeks after the scandal with top White House officials, including then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. Each time, she and other presidential aides conducted an interview with the advance-team member and concluded that he had done nothing wrong.
Meanwhile, the new details also show that a separate set of investigators in the inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland Security — tasked by a Senate committee with digging more deeply into misconduct on the trip — found additional evidence from records and eyewitnesses who had accompanied the team member in Colombia.
The lead investigator later told Senate staffers that he felt pressure from his superiors in the office of Charles K. Edwards, who was then the acting inspector general, to withhold evidence — and that, in the heat of an election year, decisions were being made with political considerations in mind.
There are two problems here. First is the less questionable one, that a volunteer aide who is unmarried apparently hired a prostitute, something that was not pursued in the investigation although it makes the statement "no aides were involved" untrue. The other is the more serious one, that the Obama administration quashed the investigation and subsequently the story because it was an election year. It did distract from the fact that Obama failed to extract any concessions and basically said he had no interest in legalizing drugs.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey says his office will no longer fight a court challenge to West Virginia's ban on same-sex marriages.
Morrisey issued a statement Thursday that his office "will respect" the recent U.S. Supreme Court declining to review a lower-court ruling in July striking down Virginia's ban on same-sex marriages. But Morrisey says he still doesn't agree with the high court's stance.
U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers in Huntington had previously put West Virginia's case on hold. On Tuesday, Chamber ordered the state and clerks in Kanawha and Cabell counties to respond to a motion by plaintiffs by Oct. 21.
Source
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WASHINGTON -- Three Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have joined Republicans in calling on President Barack Obama to restrict travel by people from Ebola-stricken West Africa.
"The United States needs to institute travel restrictions, enhanced airport screening and possible quarantine of individuals who have traveled to, or from, the West African countries that have been most impacted by this tragic Ebola epidemic," says the Wednesday letter.
Reps. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa) joined two dozen Republicans in signing the letter. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is one of the only other Democrats who has called for a travel ban, most loudly advocated so far by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). (Grayson first called for a ban in July.) As The Hill reported, a new poll shows that a majority of Americans support the idea.
The Obama administration has resisted calls for travel restrictions, saying airport screening is effective and that aid workers need to be able to travel to and from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in order to mitigate the crisis at its root. More than 3,000 people have died in West Africa, and more than 3,000 remain infected.
Instead, the Department of Homeland Security and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have announced new screening procedures, including taking the temperature of people from West Africa at five U.S. airports.
Source
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Want to attend college for free? It can happen if you learn German.
All German universities are now free to Americans and all other international students. The last German state to charge tuition at its universities struck down the fees this week.
Even before Germany abolished college tuition for all students, the price was a steal. Typically semester fees were around $630. What's more, German students receive many perks including discounts for food, clothing and events, as well as inexpensive or even free transportation.
In explaining why Germany made this move, Dorothee Stapelfeldt, a Hamburg senator, called tuition fees "unjust" and added that "they discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up study. It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany."
Source
Or we could do the whole $1.2 trillion in student debt thing instead...
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President Barack Obama says his administration "expects" that the Federal Communications Commission will not allow Internet service providers to offer multiple tiers of service.
Speaking at a town hall in Santa Monica, California on Thursday, Obama reiterated his support for net neutrality, or the principle that all Internet data and traffic should be treated equally. Asked by a questioner at start-up incubator Cross Campus for his thoughts on the issue, Obama said he opposes paid prioritization of Internet service.
"I made a commitment very early on that I am unequivocally committed to net neutrality," Obama said. "I think it is what has unleashed the power of the Internet and we don't want to lose that or clog up the pipes."
He continued: "My appointee, [FCC Chairman] Tom Wheeler, knows my position. I can't now, that he's there, I can't just call him up and tell him exactly what to do. But what I've been clear about, what the White House has been clear about is that we expect whatever final rules to emerge to make sure that we're not creating two or three or four tiers of Internet. That ends up being a big priority of mine."
Source
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On October 09 2014 16:23 coverpunch wrote:WaPo's front page spread suggests yet another cover-up from the White HouseShow nested quote +As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved.
But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member — yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged. Show nested quote +The Secret Service shared its findings twice in the weeks after the scandal with top White House officials, including then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. Each time, she and other presidential aides conducted an interview with the advance-team member and concluded that he had done nothing wrong.
Meanwhile, the new details also show that a separate set of investigators in the inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland Security — tasked by a Senate committee with digging more deeply into misconduct on the trip — found additional evidence from records and eyewitnesses who had accompanied the team member in Colombia.
The lead investigator later told Senate staffers that he felt pressure from his superiors in the office of Charles K. Edwards, who was then the acting inspector general, to withhold evidence — and that, in the heat of an election year, decisions were being made with political considerations in mind. There are two problems here. First is the less questionable one, that a volunteer aide who is unmarried apparently hired a prostitute, something that was not pursued in the investigation although it makes the statement "no aides were involved" untrue. The other is the more serious one, that the Obama administration quashed the investigation and subsequently the story because it was an election year. It did distract from the fact that Obama failed to extract any concessions and basically said he had no interest in legalizing drugs.
I dunno, man. Maybe I'm just jaded, but this sounds like business as usual to me. Would it have made any sense to pursue an investigation of what was basically a non-incident, especially when it could have been politically damaging? Now, I'm not sure why it would have been politically damaging, but if I can tell you if a were a lawyer working for the administration and was made aware of the incident, my advice wouldn't have been any different. Would you really have had this guy subject to a thorough Secret Service investigation for hiring a prostitute? Would you really have advised the Secret Service to publicly acknowledge the incident? Squashing a non-story hardly seems scandalous to me. The White House is after all a political institution and we should expect them to make decisions with respect to potential political fallout. What administration would have handled this differently?
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Even if there is some kind of problem, which it's not clear that there is, the whole incident is so far down the list on things that people should be outraged about that it's basically a non-issue.
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On October 10 2014 09:42 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +President Barack Obama says his administration "expects" that the Federal Communications Commission will not allow Internet service providers to offer multiple tiers of service.
Speaking at a town hall in Santa Monica, California on Thursday, Obama reiterated his support for net neutrality, or the principle that all Internet data and traffic should be treated equally. Asked by a questioner at start-up incubator Cross Campus for his thoughts on the issue, Obama said he opposes paid prioritization of Internet service.
"I made a commitment very early on that I am unequivocally committed to net neutrality," Obama said. "I think it is what has unleashed the power of the Internet and we don't want to lose that or clog up the pipes."
He continued: "My appointee, [FCC Chairman] Tom Wheeler, knows my position. I can't now, that he's there, I can't just call him up and tell him exactly what to do. But what I've been clear about, what the White House has been clear about is that we expect whatever final rules to emerge to make sure that we're not creating two or three or four tiers of Internet. That ends up being a big priority of mine." Source
It took 6 years for Obama to do something I like, but it may have been worth the wait. Net Neutrality is perhaps the biggest issue we deal with today in my opinion. Only one that comes close in my mind is the corruption of the prison-industrial complex.
But with a free internet, all other issues will be easier to solve.
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On October 10 2014 12:31 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2014 09:42 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:President Barack Obama says his administration "expects" that the Federal Communications Commission will not allow Internet service providers to offer multiple tiers of service.
Speaking at a town hall in Santa Monica, California on Thursday, Obama reiterated his support for net neutrality, or the principle that all Internet data and traffic should be treated equally. Asked by a questioner at start-up incubator Cross Campus for his thoughts on the issue, Obama said he opposes paid prioritization of Internet service.
"I made a commitment very early on that I am unequivocally committed to net neutrality," Obama said. "I think it is what has unleashed the power of the Internet and we don't want to lose that or clog up the pipes."
He continued: "My appointee, [FCC Chairman] Tom Wheeler, knows my position. I can't now, that he's there, I can't just call him up and tell him exactly what to do. But what I've been clear about, what the White House has been clear about is that we expect whatever final rules to emerge to make sure that we're not creating two or three or four tiers of Internet. That ends up being a big priority of mine." Source It took 6 years for Obama to do something I like, but it may have been worth the wait. Net Neutrality is perhaps the biggest issue we deal with today in my opinion. Only one that comes close in my mind is the corruption of the prison-industrial complex. But with a free internet, all other issues will be easier to solve.
Are there any conservative (Republican) Presidential candidates that support Net Neutrality?
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EPT
