Politicians Defer To Time Warner Lobbyists Who Wrote The Bill They're Pushing
from the funny-how-that-works... dept
Following up on the earlier story of Time Warner Cable going the political route to try to block municipal competition in Wilson, North Carolina, Broadband Reports has a story pointing out two interesting side stories:- During hearings about the law to ban such municipal competition, the politicians pushing the bill that would ban municipal competition were asked to clarify, and rather than answer themselves, the politicians "turned to a Time Warner staff member and an attorney who represents the industry to speak on their behalf." In other words, they outright admitted they didn't understand their own legislation and that the corporate lawyers from the company that would benefit from the legislation understood it better than they did. It's certainly no surprise that lobbyists write the legislation that politicians pass, but usually they at least try to hide it a little bit. Here they're basically flaunting the fact that Time Warner Cable wrote the bill, and the politicians just shuffled it through the process without understanding it. Isn't it great to be a servant of the people?
- Time Warner Cable is complaining about what a huge cost municipal broadband is to the people of Wilson, but leaves out the fact that Time Warner Cable's CEO's compensation from the past two years is greater than it cost the city of Wilson (via a bond measure, so not taxpayer dollars) to fund the deployment of the fiber network. And you have to wonder if Time Warner Cable will end up spending more trying to block this competition than it would have cost to have built out a competitive quality service as well.
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Filed Under: broadband caps, lobbyists, municipal broadband, politicians
Companies: time warner cable
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Not surprising
Deferring the TW lawyer during a hearing? Fail!
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is that even legal?
Might this be a chance to get the noerr-pennington doctrine repealed? We need it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noerr-Pennington_doctrine
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Irrelevant
So what? Or to be more specific, what does one have to do with the other? TWC's CEO may or may not be overcompensated, but how is that relevant to practically anything at all?
Besides, you had to stretch even for that one. Compensation for the past TWO years? How using the last THREE years next time? Or saying his compensation over the last DECADE is greater...
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Bonds are taxes
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Re: Bonds are taxes
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Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
Bond payments are not made at maturity 99.9% of the time. They are paid either quarterly or annually.
Muni wifi is not a profitable endeavor, most jurisdictions use it as a backbone for their traffic and sell extra capacity to the public.
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Re: Bonds are taxes
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Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
This type of project is typically set up a special "tax district" allowing the Muni to collect taxes for the service directly. Similar to a water district or a park & rec district.
But you may be right I may not know what I am talking about.
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Re: Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
How can you possibly claim to know what you're talking about when it's painfully obvious you can't read or at least have the attention span of a squirrel? This ENTIRE EFFORT is about municipal fiber optic to the home, NOT municipal wireless internet(muni wifi).
From http://www.greenlightnc.com/about/ (The municipal ISP at the heart of this article, in case you weren't aware.) (Emphasis mine.)
A fiber optic network will definitely make a profit. Considering reports of people who are willing to move/have moved to get within the areas serviced by fiber optic ISPs I can't see how it couldn't make a profit.
Please, please: read, think about, then read again before splattering such ignorance on the web.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
By your logic, the rates I pay for my water should cover the bond issued by the water district, yet I still pay $1300 a year in property taxes to the Water District on top of my $100 a month water bill to the Water District. Shouldn't my water rates make the district profitable? Now piss of.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
$209 per month for water? do you live on the moon?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
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Re: Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
That's true of muni-WiFi. But this is muni-fiber, which has been quite profitable for many cities.
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Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
A general obligation bond is a common type of municipal bond in the United States that is secured by a state or local government's pledge to use legally available resources, including tax revenues, to repay bond holders. Most general obligation pledges at the local government level include a pledge to levy a property tax to meet debt service requirements, in which case holders of general obligation bonds have a right to compel the borrowing government to levy that tax to satisfy the local government's obligation.
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Re: Re: Re: Bonds are taxes
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Nice
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In this instance, that practice was used dishonestly and the legislators sponsoring the bill were lazy. More upright lobbying firms do, actually, draft plain-language legislation with clear and honest intent.
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Re:
How far back do you want me to dig for the opposite? DMCA? Franchise suits? Lending acts? Copyright? Patent law? Trademark? National speed limits? NHTSA guidelines? ISO/IEC JTC 1?
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Re: Re: legislation
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Re:
Should we expect our legislators to read and understand legislation drafted by lobbyists? Of course!
Which seems to be the objection here. Regardless of whether you're for or against the measure, you'd expect the people introducing the legislation to have a grasp on it.
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Got $100
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As told by bias party
The source of this quote is the City of Wilson's CIO. This is a little like hearing a soccer player saying "the line judge didn't like us". They may be a little bias.
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Why we need term limits
This does not surprise me and should not surprise anyone that pays attention to what goes on inside the beltway.
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Said it before
Said it before and I will say it again, we really do have the best government that money can buy.
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Re: Said it before
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understanding legislation
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Transcripts?
Secondly, can someone point to a transcript of these proceedings because one legislator is disputing the 'spin' by the blogger reporting the story. Would be nice to see the actual discussion that happened.
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