Charles Brabham wrote:
Something occurred to me recently that I thought I'd share... It has to do
with the Feds, the ARRL, BPL and ARESCOM / WL2K.

Note how the ARRL was getting some traction early on with the BPL deal by
taking a rational, scientific approach to the problem. Remember the video of
Ed Hare driving around listening to BPL hash? Being above commercial
concerns, amateur radio operators were in a good position to comment on
technical matters with no taint of commercial motivation or greed. We spoke
from an old, well-respected reputation.

Then things seemed to go wrong in a murky sort of way. - In the end, Ham
Radio was dissed by the FCC as not being relevant enough to protect from BPL
interference.

To me, this says that somebody within the federal government who wanted to
boost BPL decided to pull a few strings and ham radio obligingly tripped
over those strings.

I was thinking about how the federal government sometimes handles problems
and wondered if the Department of Homeland Security grants may have been a
successful "trojan horse" weapon that we are currently suffering the effects
of.

It strikes me funny that all within a year or so, the feds (DHS) would throw
millions of dollars at amateur radio through the DHS grants, and then the
same feds (FCC) turn around and say our work is so irrelevant that it does
not merit protection from inteference. To me, they are all "the feds"
because of the heirarchy of command there.

The government ain't that well organized. Remember that one of the
complaints about 9-11 was that the various intelligence and
investigative agencies did not talk with each other. More often
you get fiefdoms and turf wars.

With its deep pockets, it seems to me that the DHS grants handed out were a
very cheap and effective way for the federal government to:

A: Eliminate the Amateur community's "detatched, objective" status by
throwing money at the problem, depending on us to discredit ourselves by the
way we react to the existence of that sudden influx of money.

But DHS has nothing to do with BPL, so this doesn't follow.

B: Throw the ARRL and the amateur community into disarray, making the
organized, concerted effort against BPL that was building much less likely
to jell into something effective.

That wasn't it. What did it was that the commissioners are
lawyers and not technically inclined, and were bullshjtted by
BPL lobbyists.