You poor miserable *******! It's a shame you can't see past the end of your
nose! God help us all.
"Nomen Nescio" wrote in message
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The debate on BPL has raised a lot of important issues, and has
also generated a lot of comments by Internauts both with and without
ham licenses. Here's my opinion, FWIW.
It's not so simple as writing a check, but the FCC *is* being
manipulated by very powerful interests, and they're in a hurry. Not
only are they powerful because they have immense wealth, but they're
all the more powerful because they know that "Shrub" has presented
them an opportunity which won't come again in their life, and they are
determined to take every advantage of it in the short time left before
their pet goes back to his animal farm.
Bear with me for a moment: I'm moved to step back and take a look from
a wider view -
The most important thing that the Bush administration brought to
Washington is the belief, now widely held in the corporate boardrooms,
that rich people are entitled to enjoy robbing those less ruthless or
lucky. Lobbyists for both liberal and conservative causes have
complained bitterly about the arrogance and greed that the Republican
administration has allowed to fester inside the beltway: there is no
longer even the appearance of democracy, and it's starting to strain
the credulity of even so staunch a GOP stronghold as the religious
right.
- From Reagan's somnambulance, through the elder Bush's first term, and
continuing with the "Right Wing Revival" during the Clinton
administration, up to our current economic mess, the Republican Party
has been courting those with money by placing a rose between its teeth
and a pistol in its pocket. The elder Bush and Newt Gingrich were, and
their heirs are now, brazen and unashamed pimps for the idea that
those that have shall get, and those that don't shall get screwed.
No sooner had they gained power in the House, then the GOP started to
undo (and in a way that was very hard to reverse) every law, program,
entitlement, and court decision which gave ordinary people a chance of
living with a (little) dignity.
By the way, Newt wasn't just talking about the New Deal when he said
"The great social experiment has failed" - he was talking about
undoing centuries of progress, not just decades. The fact that his
personal life was too personal for the spinmeisters to hide hasn't
dimmed his enthusiasm for the good 'ol days: the theme of his book
"Gettysburg", an fictional alternative-history of the battle, reveals
an attitude that even Publishers Weekly commented on -
"The authors show thorough knowledge of the people, weapons,
tactics and ambience of the Civil War, though their portrayals of
historical figures like Lee, Meade, James Longstreet and Richard
Ewell betray a certain bias (the Confederate men are noble and
wise, the Union leaders hot-tempered and vindictive)."
In the "new" Republican view, it's not enough to move your business'
assets overseas, or to "outsource" your back office tasks to
third-world countries. It's not enough to (once again) utilize the
dark-skinned to provide a lifestyle Nero would envy: the Old Elite
feels it must squeeze the middle class until everyone with less than
$1,000,000 of ready cash is living on rented land in a rented tent,
owning nothing but a TV set so that The Massa can tell them how to
vote.
But I digress: lets stop looking at the forest and go back to pecking
at the BPL tree -
Frankly, if I was one of the old white men who run America, I'd be
hard-pressed to find a downside in BPL. Consider:
1. The Air Traffic Control radio system has needed a major overhaul
for decades, and BPL will provide the FAA with a perfect reason to
spend Billions to trade-in every navigational aid and radio in the
country, because BPL operates on some of the same frequencies and
will rendor most of the others unusable. Of course, the planes will
have to upgrade as well, but airplane owners, as a class, have
plenty of spare cash, and the fact that every other country and
every other airline in the world will be forced to go along is just
one of those "intangible benefits" that those with a certain
lifestyle expect.
By the way, there will be a few dead, burnt bodies lying around
while the FAA sells its new system to the Congress, but even that
smell can't overpower the ordure of the Potomac at low tide, so
you'd better get used to riding in the back of the airbus, paying
more for tickets and maybe even thinking of flight insurance as a
sensible precaution.
2. The power companies, made stodgy and unprofitable by such quant
words as "service" and "obligation" and "customer", will enjoy a
dramatic influx of badly-needed cash, which will arrive just in
time to save them from having to admit their mistakes, reengineer
their transmission systems, or (most importantly) actually work at
alternative and/or renewable energy sources.
3. If they design the system well, BPL will enjoy a wealth of new
options that even cable moguls don't have: a priceless data
coral, with well-penned users whose choices will be limited to
those favored by like-thinking men of means: every click will be
tracked, every purchase planned, and every complaint laughed
off. There won't be any "spam", since there won't be any
advertising allowed into the system that the upper crust didn't
choose to allow, and those whom exhibit anti-American sentiments or
question the wisdom of Those In Charge [tm] will soon find that
everything they ever put into an email is available to their boss
in an electronic blacklist.
Of course, any slander or complaints about these common-sense
capitalist perquisites would be nipped in the bud, and the system
will Protect Our Children [tm] by guiding their tiny minds into
well-mapped impressions of the hard, hard life that the rich must
suffer in order to provide the servants with the benefits we should
be grateful we're able to beg for.
BPL is, as its advocates have explained, needed to counterbalance the
critical shortage of war movies and of Father Knows Best reruns: it
will put those airwaves that have been wasted on other nations'
viewpoints and a few hobbyists' toys to more productive use. Your
Betters have said so, and now if you're a Right-Thinking American, you
will stop whining.
James Penn
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