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Dangerous, disingenuous, and false

Larry Downes displays a shocking ignorance of history and a repellent prejudice towards big business against the citizenry. This screed is not a technical but a political document, and should be marked as such.

The Interstate Commerce Commission did not 'struggle for decades' to determine that the Union Pacific Railroad was in fact gouging its customers and engaging in what today we call predatory pricing. The challenge was how to bring the malfeasors of great wealth to bay, with their considerable resources to muddle the issue of fair rates, bringing up tangential questions such as defining a 'reasonable rate of return' based on the company's value. This is specious special pleading and it must be attacked as such and discarded.

The issue with Net Neutrality is the same issue the Founding Fathers struggled with more than two centuries ago: How to preserve access to information vital to the functioning of the Republic. That's not which information is in the hands of the biggest buyers -- it's the information available to citizens to know how their government is functioning, what they're doing with taxes, and what combinations of wealth and privilege are working to truncate the rights and liberties of the people.

It's about people finding out about the criminal activities of corporations like Worldcom and Enron. That's what needs to be preserved -- not some telecom executive's idea of a 'fair marketplace' where he gets to decide what gets published to the people and what doesn't.

The fatuous argument that "regulation won't work here 'cause, hey, I can make up some instances when it didn't, or oughtn't to have" needs to be discarded wholesale. Larry, throw out this column. It's not worth the electrons it's printed on.

Lets get to the real nitty-gritty, which is who is paying you to say something like this. I find it far more likely that a major telecom company has you in its back pocket than that you seriously believe that the ICC caused the railroads to fail. Why don't you tell me why Norfolk Southern is thriving as a private rail freight company today, if as you claim regulations made railroads fail in the 1920s? Come to think of it, why don't you show us why the FCC is going to make TV go away because they're going to start regulating cable?

Let's hear your explanation. After you make full disclosure.

Until then, you are a tool and a shill, and you deserve censure. As a free American, I repudiate you.


--Pete Rogan

Posted by: progan01@...   Posted on: 12/12/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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