http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/verizon-and-google-draft-net-neutrality-peace-treaty.ars

Amidst all the rancor that we’ve seen during the last few weeks over the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed net neutrality rules comes a joint filing by Verizon and Google that asks a refreshing question. What do the antagonists have in common regarding this vexing problem?

“Because our businesses rely on each other, it is appropriate for us to jointly discuss a number of things,” wrote Alan Davidson of Google and Thomas Tauke of Verizon on Thursday, such as “how we ensure that consumers get the information, products and services they want online; encourage investment in advanced networks; and ensure the openness of the web around the world.” And so they’ve come up with a set of broad principles and the outline of a voluntary industry-wide system for handling network management disputes, with government intervention included only in the most dire cases—a set of “overarching values that create a framework to guide players throughout the Internet space.”

Google/Verizon say that the Internet should function as an “open platform.” That means, to them, that “when a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to—and that other person should be able to receive his or her message,” they write. The ‘Net should operate as a place where no “central authority” can make rules that prescribe the possible, and where entrepreneurs and network providers are able to “innovate without permission.”

Consumers, the statement continues, should enjoy control over all parts of their experience of the Internet. “No entity from either the government or the private sector should wrest control from consumers over how they choose to use the Internet, and the government should not implement policies that would limit consumers’ ability to choose for themselves,” Verizon and Google explain. And providers should offer maximum transparency to consumers, giving them “clear and meaningful information” regarding the services they buy and receive.

But here is where they screw up:

But Google and Verizon acknowledge that there needs to be a “backstop role” for the government to step in “if or when bad actors emerge anywhere in the Internet space, and we do agree that involvement should occur only where necessary on a case-by-case base basis.” In those instances, intervention should be “surgical, swift and based on a finding of specific facts that establish such harm.”

Anyone else notice the blatantly contradictory statements that there should be no central authority yet the government should be the central authority?

There is *NO* need for government, period. The market, even in its currently distorted mode, is more capable of dealing with issues that may arise than some government bureaucracy. Ideally these companies would be calling for complete government withdrawal from the field thereby empowering consumers and entrepreneurs. But this is better than full government intervention.

http://anarchyinyourhead.com/…

http://anarchyinyourhead.com/…

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has selected a moderate Republican, Lee Doren, as the new Crasher-in-Chief of Bureaucrash. The ongoing miniseries about the new direction of Bureaucrash in a not so bureaucracy-crashing direction continues. Sorry for the delay. My life is going in a good direction but is in a transition phase right now that makes things very hectic.

Stay tuned for the third, and probably final episode in this series! Bring personal lubricant for your own safety.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

When one walks into a business, most often you are greeted. As part of treating customers as their very livelihood, companies usually enact policies that make it a requirement for employees to acknowledge the arrival of a client or customer.

Imagine, however, if instead of getting a “hello” or “good morning,” the manager of the store asks you to greet him. Further, imagine if the manager holds you at gunpoint and threatens you with imprisonment. Assuming you could escape, chances are that you’d never go back to that store. Yet this is what happens in the courts.

Virtually everyone in the courtroom has to rise when the judge enters. Failure to do so might result in contempt of court – you can get a fine or be sentenced to jail time for your audacity. This is, of course, absurd. First of all, government courts are financed through taxation. People who do not use the system at all, for example, still have to pay. This is a form of redistribution, also known as socialism. Aside from the fact that the resources to run the system are extracted aggressively, often the accused are victims rather than victimizers.

Laws and ordinances regulating peaceful drug or firearm possession or usage, municipal codes regulating assembly, zoning, prostitution and gambling, for example, violate no rights and therefore have no victims. Thus, when an innocent person is brought (violently or through the threat thereof) to one of those government courts, the last thing one expects is to be further humiliated by having to stand for the judge. If anything, the judge should be kissing the defendant’s feet and begging for forgiveness.

We should not be surprised that the state does whatever possible to ascertain its aggressive political power in every instance; the courtroom is not an exception. Perhaps in the old days it was customary to rise for the judge. So what? Today, however, I see this not as a gesture of respect but as a demand for obedience. The judge, a state bureaucrat, has no authority over anyone. Prove that the judge and the court deserve any respect. After all, they were the ones (along with the legislative and executive branches) to kidnap people from their homes, families and places of employment, only to be dragged to face “justice.” Show that, especially in the case of victimless crimes, the defendant should stand for the judge. The concept of contempt of court, so long as the state holds a monopoly over this institution, is a farce. I believe is the court, along with all the thugs it employs, who is in contempt.

Anyone willing to show the violence of the court by refusing to obey is a hero. Rising for the judge is bowing to the state.

November 17, 2008

Manuel Lora [send him mail] works at Cornell University as a TV and multimedia producer. Visit his blog.

And check out some of their militant reactions over at SacBee.com.

The people they steal from have less because of the intervention perpetrated by the organizations calling themselves government, an outcome that is predictable, but the fascists who do the stealing (or are direct beneficiaries of and advocate the theft) can’t be discomforted by that. The masses must sacrifice to keep the chosen ones in their elevated positions.

I love the comments on SacBee:

Posted by: bloody30319
Go get a job in the private sector if you don’t think $6.55 is enough. No one is forcing you to work for the State.
on Jul 28, 2008 at 06:32 am

Posted by: purrhos
These people need to be thankful that they even have a job.What an ungreatful bunch. Let’s launch an initiative to make the minimum wage permenant.
on Jul 28, 2008 at 02:28 pm

Posted by: LadyLibbey
What condescension. Excuse me, I like working for the state. I was told I was going to get paid quite a bit more. Then they want to cut my pay to minimum wage? I have a house to pay for, gas to pay for. I cant just find a job in private sector. Its not that easy. How naive.

How naive to think someone isn’t entitled to a job. Audacity of those who believe people should interact voluntarily. That people should have to earn their keep. Savages. Think of the children!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…

The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves.

One drug for kidney cancer, routinely available through public health systems in most European countries but not to British patients, can reduce the size of tumours in 31% of patients, compared with just 6% of those prescribed the standard NHS drug.

The growing row over “co-payments” has prompted the government to reconsider the ban. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has promised a “fundamental rethink” of the policy.

Research presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology found that kidney patients taking the new drug Sutent lived six months longer than those prescribed alpha interferon, the NHS treatment.

The failure of the NHS to make more effective drugs available to cancer patients has been condemned as “unethical” by leading doctors.

A woman with bowel cancer is fighting for the right to pay for a drug that could extend her life long enough for her to spend Christmas with her grandchildren.

Sheila Norrington, 59, a former NHS medical secretary from Maidstone, Kent, has been told by doctors that if she buys the drug Erbitux, which the health service will not pay for, she will lose her state-funded cancer care. Erbitux is the only drug capable of treating her advanced bowel cancer.

Norrington’s husband, Goff, 61, a former sales manager, said: “We have been told that if we pay for it ourselves we will be thrown off the NHS completely and we will need to pay for everything privately. We are devastated. This is not going to cure my wife, but if it keeps her alive a little bit longer, then we would pay for it.”

The couple say that although they could pay for a few cycles of the drug, which costs about £3,000 a month, they could not pay for all Norrington’s care, including scans, blood tests and consultations.

Goff Norrington added: “We have two young granddaughters and this could make the difference between sitting round the table with them at Christmas or not. We think it is deplorable that patients can get this drug almost anywhere in Europe but we cannot get it in the UK.”

A spokesman for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said: “We are governed by Department of Health policy on this issue.”

A poll for The Sunday Times shows strong support for allowing co-payment in the National Health Service, with 89% saying that people who buy additional cancer drugs should continue to get free NHS treatment.

Only 5% think allowing co-payment would create a two-tier NHS. Until now this has been the position taken by Alan Johnson, the health secretary.

Ministers had feared that allowing co-payment would upset less well-off patients, but the YouGov poll of nearly 1,800 people shows strong backing across the social spectrum and supporters of all three main parties.

Lee over at MooreWatch.com I think said it all: “This, of course, begs the question.  If compassionate free government healthcare can’t provide, y’know, actual healthcare to patients, and they are forced to paying massive amounts of money to buy their own treatments, maybe the solution to the problem is less free government healthcare and more private sector solutions.”

When will these people realize that the government can not negate scarcity? The only thing that can bring more and better healthcare to the masses is an increase in their wealth and the only way to do that is capital accumulation through free market capitalism.