Ex-Verizon Lawyer Ajit Pai Confirmed To Second Term As FCC Chair (fastcompany.com) 101
Congress late Monday approved Ajit Pai for a second term as chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Fast Company reports. "The Senate voted 52-41 (with almost all 'yea' votes coming from Republicans) to give Pai a new five-year term retroactive to July 1, 2017. Without the confirmation, Pai would have had to give up the chair at the end of 2017."
"I am deeply grateful to the U.S. Senate for confirming my nomination to serve a second term at the FCC and to President Trump for submitting that nomination to the Senate," Pai said in a statement. Pai served as Associate General Counsel at Verizon Communications Inc. in February 2001, where he handled competition matters, regulatory issues, and counseling of business units on broadband initiatives.
"I am deeply grateful to the U.S. Senate for confirming my nomination to serve a second term at the FCC and to President Trump for submitting that nomination to the Senate," Pai said in a statement. Pai served as Associate General Counsel at Verizon Communications Inc. in February 2001, where he handled competition matters, regulatory issues, and counseling of business units on broadband initiatives.
LOOOOOOOOOOL (Score:4, Insightful)
This country is well and truly fucked.
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Because South Korea doesn't have an incompetent, sociopathic, narcissistic buffoon in charge who will need a nice juicy war to break out in a few years time to secure his second four years in the trough?
Re: LOOOOOOOOOOL (Score:1)
Re: LOOOOOOOOOOL (Score:2)
Re: LOOOOOOOOOOL (Score:1)
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So you are saying you think republicans and democrats live in different countries now?
The division isn't between really Democrats and Republicans as such, but yes -- our nation is clearly split into two in every sense except the legal.
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Dude, like it or not, Trump is gonna do two terms, unless he doesn't want to. No serious Democrat will go sit in the crosshair while they can be assured of an easy ride four years later. Anyways the Democrats are scattered to the four winds as it is.
You can kid yourself with that puppet show all day long if you want, but that's how it is. And I'm not saying that because I like him; if anything, I'd personally make a contribution to Sanders if I believed he had any chance against the mob that controls the De
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Obama created more jobs per month
Obama left a LOWER annual deficit, Trumps is right up there with G.W..
No, you definitely laid the shit end of the stick out for America!
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We survived 8 years of Obama... you'll survive 8 years of Trump.
Obama was trained in politics, he was a great public speaker and he had actual policies.
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He was trained in community agitating, could read from a teleprompter, and had policies that sucked.
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the republicans are burning the place to the ground; keeping the goods and leaving us with burned out countryside.
thanks, guys. really appreciate the 'I got mine, fuck you' attitude.
shows great pride in your country.
shows that you really care about us. for the long run.
(gulp. threw up a little bit.)
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It isn't just Republicans though, Verizon has many, many Dems in it's corporate pocket, for instance, as do Comcast. Take a gander at any state where Verizon and Comcast operate and you will find greased palms on both sides of the political aisle. The only two things that have kept them in check are the various courts and federal bureaucrats. It certainly hasn't been the FCC or any of the State or Federal Congresscritters.
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One of my early acts as a Representative in the Congress of the United States will be to meet with FCC representatives to discuss the structuring of a Net Neutrality bill, charging the Commission with protecting Net Neutrality and leaving the details of how to do so up to the Commission. The language must be clear enough that operating in bad faith against the principles of Net Neutrality will make the Commissioners and Chair liable for impeachment.
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And how did that go? What response did you get? What were the arguments the FCC used? Etc.
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In the English language, "Will" is the future-tense of "am". The past tense is "has" or "have".
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Yeah, I misread your comment. Sorry about that. I was really hoping you'd spoken with them and was interested in what they said -- but I guess I'll have to wait. :)
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Nah I'm campaigning basically all the time. Net Neutrality is actually a difficult issue because it's like... should we have a law against murder? ... yes, what the hell do you even say to that? The policy position on Net Neutrality is pretty much "Yes, this is important." It's really hard to articulate why it's important (all of the points for it are sort of weak and fuzzy, yet the only points against it are that some businesses can strangle the market and impede progress so as to avoid having to funct
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follow the money, bribery is legal in DC (although not always transparent)
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where did you look? It was almost all Republicans. It even says it right there in the summary.
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"almost all" the 52 votes in the affirmative came from republicans means that at least one vote came from non-republican members.. so who the fuck were they?
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You forgot Tom Carper and Chris Coons, both from Delaware.
According to that list, they both voted Nay. Do you have evidence to support otherwise?
Re:almost all the yea votes? (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.senate.gov/legisla... [senate.gov]
McCaskill (D-MO), Yea [wikipedia.org]
Manchin (D-WV), Yea [wikipedia.org]
Peters (D-MI), Yea [wikipedia.org]
Tester (D-MT), Yea [wikipedia.org]
So called "moderate Democrats".
Two of whom are a part of something called "The ModSquad", [moderatedemocrats.org] one is "ranked exactly 50th on its scale of the 100 senators, from most-liberal to most-conservative" and one is just a tad more to the left of her. [govtrack.us]
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Dem's from flyover states are no better than R's.
they're just as dumb and out of touch. no surprise here.
Hail the Corporate Overlords (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Hail the Corporate Overlords (Score:5, Funny)
Is there a list of his "past initiatives & intentions"?
#27: Proposed Verizon slogan: "Can you fear me now?"
States rights? (Score:4, Interesting)
How much can states override the FCC's proclamations? While the Constitution gives the Federal Gov't control over most "interstate commerce", within a state, in theory the state should have a lot of control in terms of privacy, throttling, anti-trust, etc.
Let the red states have choice-free oligopolies that overlord their content and privacy; the fools deserve it.
Re: States rights? (Score:1)
You are a slave, and it isn't to the grind. That's for sure.
Nice strawman argument tho.
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How much can states override the FCC's proclamations?
It's funny how lefties have suddenly rediscovered the allure of federalism [wikipedia.org] now that they're temporarily out of power. I'm sure it will go back in the dustbin after the next election cycle or two.
Don't be so sure. Marijuana legalization is a long-running left-wing states-rights effort.
(Not that it matters for the FCC. Internet access is firmly interstate and thus federal.)
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If it's not MY state, I frankly wouldn't care that much. If TX want's to marry Camcast, lettem.
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They're not oligopolies - that would imply they somehow came to dominate the market on their own. They're government-granted monopolies. Net neutrality is a government solution to a government-created problem. Basically the government whose initial regulation of cable and phone companies created this screwed up monopoly ISP system in the first place, now claim the solution to their first screwup
Re: States rights? (Score:2)
Even if it were true that the current situation is due to government mandated monopolies, which it isnâ(TM)t, it isnâ(TM)t true that âoeeven more regulationâ cannot be the best solution. Whether monopolies exist due to laws, competition/lack thereof or consolidation, itâ(TM)s appropriate for the government to ensure customers are protected from companiesâ(TM) insatiable greed. This is especially true for companies holding the keys to a resource as important as the internet.
Too bad it's the FCC chair, (Score:1)
and not the electric chair instead.
We have our work cut out for us (Score:2)
Get mad. Don't get mad. Get motivated, be depressed. It doesn't matter. We must do the work. We just have to go out and select some sane and civil folks for office and stay involved so that things don't drift off course again. NO magic - just dedicated work. A careful dedication to have sa
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the people had their democracy taken from them. now that corps are 'people', our amount of money donations don't even come close to the 'corp citizens' (united) amount of BRIBERY they are capable of.
unless something fundamental changes, we truly are fucked for the long-run, in this country. regular people have no say anymore, both R and D are in the pocket of big business (R a little more; plus they think they're the jesus party and lots of their base are too dumb to realize its all a con). the R's don't
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I'm running for election in my own district. Going to meet with the Young Democrats Club tomorrow evening, although they have a speaker already; trying to get more Facebook likes and more than two Crowdpac donations (or they can write checks). After a month I have over a hundred followers, two donations, and I'm starting to run into strangers on the street who recognize my name.
2018 is going to be an interesting year.
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this country no longer belongs to us
It never did. That's nothing new. The only new thing is the 24x7 panic mode in the media.
In a nutshell:
- Obama sold you out to insurance companies and spent 1 trillion more dollars on military than Bush while earning a Nobel Prize for peace
- Bush sold you out to defense contractors and transformed the intelligence services in big brother
- Clinton sold you out to big pharma and wall street and rented out his last day in office to 140 criminals who wanted a presidential pardon
and that's just the last 30 years
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Well, we could have a share of ownership [johnmoserforcongress.com].
I structured the Universal Benefit in my Universal Social Security framework as a dividend from the economy: every adult holds one equal share in the United States economy, and receives an equal proportion of the Universal Benefit’s tax rate—which I’ve proposed at 15%.
Although the taxes are higher than I'd hoped. I've got plans for that, too:
Minimum Rate — The rate resulting in a benefit half-way between the CPI-adjusted cost-of-living increase, and no lower than 10%; [...]
[...]If the Minimum Rate is above the current Universal Benefit tax rate, then the Social Security Administration must not adjust the Universal Benefit tax rate.[...]
[...]The Social Security Administration may, at its discretion, reduce the Universal Benefit tax rate by any rate between the Mandatory Minimum Adjustment and that which achieves the Minimum Rate. For example: if the Minimum Rate 14.9% coming from 15%, then the Social Security Administration may set any rate between 14.975% and 14.9%.
That will eventually lower the tax rate (at every tax bracket and on businesses) by 5%, and it will guarantee at least half of the productivity growth distributed without adjustment in any given year is distributed after adjustment. I need to stipulate that the COLA figure is continuous across years without adjustment: if the economy is down and COLA is higher than the benefit, then th
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The only ones who do are the robber-barons.
They are small in number, but rich in money, power, and resources.
What are you confused about? You clearly and correctly stated the reason things are getting more insane every day.
Ex-Apple Store Employee Beauhd clickbaits again (Score:1)
Was it really useful to shoehorn "Ex-Verizon lawyer" in the title of this story? Everyone already knows that you're an Apple shill and that you're getting your marching orders from them. Maybe you could serve your masters with a little more subtlety and once in a while pretend that you're just reporting news instead of shoving your propaganda down the readers throats?
There's people here that have been reading Slashdot since before you learned to speak, show some respect and don't make it another Huffington
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I think it's absolutely relevant to show that Ajit has long been in the pocket of big telecom. Since when has Net Neutrality become Apple astroturfing? What are you smoking, and can I have some?
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All the previous FCC chairman have worked for ISP and telcos. There is nothing special or new about this guy.
Also I think it's relevant to show that Beauhd is in the pocket of Apple and only started posting about Net Neutrality since Apple came out against it, so what's the problem?
Ajit Pai my son! (Score:1)
Your time at Verizon is over. Now you must choose between nice clean job at non profit or designated shitting lobby.