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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