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| Saturday, November 11, 2006 |
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There goes the Sun 
What it still is
Just as it was in the first place
| | So I'm trying not to get too excited about all the Democrats running things on Capitol Hill right now. I know that things may not work out. On the net neutrality front, the punditry is that there won't be a big telecom bill for a long time because the Bells have gotten the video franchise rules they wanted from the states. Some people think net neutrality isn't really a standalone issue, so it can't fill up an entire bill on its own. |
| | But there is an angle that might work. Democrats should be, if they think about it, the party of long-range social planning. They should be the party that worries about investment in fundamentals that will support society into the future. Education! Stem cell research! National parks! Basic science of all kinds! And -- universal access to broadband. |
| | If Congress takes a hard look at the state of universal service today they'll be horrified. Graft, bloat, corruption -- paying for services that haven't been provided, paying more to more recipients by raising assessments, funding old stagnant service providers. . . lots of material here for dramatic camera-covered hearings. Lots of good Perry Mason moments. And, at the end, we'll have to decide that what the US should really be funding is broadband access, not access to traditional telephone services. |
| | First, we're going to see a lot more telco lobby money ladled on Democrats. Hardly need to point that one out. Here's hoping it doesn't fund an even-more screwed-up Regulatorium. |
| | Second, corruption is the Bigger Issue here. Susan is right about graft and bloat too. The answer isn't more legislation. It's better accountability, and not just on election day. Transparency won last Tuesday. But it needs to keep winning in the course of everyday governance. Citizen watchdogs need to guard the henhouse of democracy from the wolves we elect to serve there. |
| | Third (and here is where I part company with Susan and many other friends), we don't need Net Neutrality regulation. With new legislation build around vaguely-defined concepts, count on unintended consequences to dwarf the intended ones. We do need to talk about the concept, however. We do need to talk about what the Net is, where it came from, where it's going and and how to let it grow wild and free. We need to talk about how a wild and free Net is good for business (which Republicans like and understand) and good for culture (which the Democrats like and understand). We do need to open local Net-supported markets to competition around infrastructure deployment and services (and to understand how the infrastructure and the services that run on it are two different kinds of things). We need to help local duopolies quit offering crippled connectivity and lame services — and to get past the dumb retro notion that the only services that matter are telephone and TV. There are countless local and regional businesses — from one-person home offices to large employers — that can be sold all kinds of new services that don't depend on squeezing customer gonads at the network level. |
| | Most of all, we need to recognize that 11/7 was Independence Day for citizens, not just a victory for the Democrats in Conres. The Republicans took a "thumpin" indeed; but they took it from voters expressing their independence. As the new majority party, Democrats need to recognize that, or they'll get thumped too, next time around. |
| | Some of the best evidence of voter independence comes from the Lieberman election in Connecticut. Forget how you feel about the candidate. Look at what the voters did. They elected an independent candidate who had lost the primary of the party that "won" the national race for seats in Congress. Something independent was happening there. It was bigger, and deeper, than partisanship. As Dave puts it, we've never had so much power. |
| | Here's hoping (if not betting) that independence remains the Originating Force in our democracy. |
| | If Republicans want to win national elections they should drop the Southern Strategy that emphasizes guns, Bibles, and big spending, and adopt a Western Strategy that emphasizes small government, personal freedom, property rights, and the things that can only be done for us by government such as infrastructure, environmental protection, and (competent) national defense. This would be a return to Goldwater¹s ideals, and a rejection of the Religious Right¹s desire to use government to force a narrow set of social values on people. It¹s perfectly OK for the religious people to be grossed out by gays and abortion, but it¹s not OK to require everybody else to be grossed-out too. |
Not an Onion story
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