Sen. Sanders releases his broadband plan, a plan big telecom executives won't like, according to Karl Bode at Vice. Sen. Sanders would restore net neutrality and break up big telecom monopolies, of course, but he'd also prevent big telecoms from imposing hidden and onerous fees -- which anyone who has ever paid a cable bill will like! -- plus he'd invest $150 billion (over how many years, his proposal doesn't say) in community broadband, which anyone who has ever paid a cable bill will also like. I'm not sure Mr. Sanders's plan is "Comcast's Worst Nightmare," though -- maybe Ben Tarnoff's "Socialist Plan to Fix the Internet" is. (No, I won't recoil from the word "socialist" just because idiots use the word to describe anything they don't like.) Mr. Tarnoff's plan is more a "sketch," containing a range of proposals including turning our internet into a free, publicly-owned utility and regulating corporations differently based on their size and function; you would think Comcast would rather deal with Mr. Sanders than Mr. Tarnoff.
Chris Calton at the Foundation for Economic Education writes about how asset forfeiture laws have mushroomed over the last half century -- with a vital assist from then-Senator/now Democratic Presidential contender Joe Biden. And also, sigh, with a vital assist from then-Assistant Attorney General/now Republican Presidential contender William Weld, which should (again) instruct us about the general uselessness of moderate Republicans. At first, RICO only went after the assets of convicted criminals, but within a decade Congress changed the law so they could go after indicted criminals -- and then Messrs. Biden and Weld stepped in, allowing law enforcement to take "substitute" property (like houses) without even demonstrating probable cause, let alone getting an indictment. Thus we now have a state of affairs that outrages liberals and conservatives alike -- not to mention good Americans who've lost their homes not because they broke the law, but because their local police department got hungry.
Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer reminds us that the Iran-Contra affair might predict what'll happen with the current impeachment effort better than the one against Richard Nixon. Mr. Reagan got away with that one, after all, and most Americans today look at the makeup of the Senate and conclude that our current President will, too. I recall that the Iran-Contra investigation essentially ended when NSA head John Poindexter told Congress that "the buck stops here with me," i.e., that he had decided to go ahead with the whole arms-for-hostages-plus-money-for-Contras deal and had actively kept President Reagan out of the loop. But that doesn't excuse our media's collective amnesia over that time a President committed an impeachable offense and Congress didn't impeach him. And while our current President ought to remember that he's a lot less popular than Mr. Reagan was back then, no matter what he says to screaming crowds at rallies, the rest of us should remember that he's not that unpopular -- at least not yet.
Comments