Well, sure. In theory, he could do anything by fiat within the bounds of established regulatory discretion. Of course, I wouldn't worry too much about all of the stuff that "Trump could do" until he gets around to doing it. He talks a lot. And, I suspect he won't have time to do all of the stuff that people worry about him potentially doing...
As frustratingly slow as congressional action is -- it's more resistant to being hand-waved away.
The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too. I would prefer that the lesson were: "Gosh! The President has too much power!"
> because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too
I'm from the midwest and I still don't understand this sentiment. Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night? That seems extremely anti-democratic to me.
It's not that people who don't live on the coasts shouldn't have a say. It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election.
We already have the senate. The house also favors less populous states, even if not by design.
And state governments.
People who don't live on the coasts have an enormous amount of say without getting an extremely disproportionate voice in the presidential election.
It is anti-democratic by design. Founding fathers didn't want a democratic election for presidents.
I think a good example of what the electoral college is: you have a sports tournament. The winner isn't the person who gets the most points in all the games. It's the person who wins the most games.
> We already have the senate. The house also favors less populous states, even if not by design.
The Electoral College also favors less populous states.
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature
thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the
whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the
State may be entitled in the Congress
So Wyoming gets 3 electors for a population of 584,153 or 194717 per elector. California gets 55 for a population of 38.8M or 705454 per elector.
> Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night?
Should that same philosophy apply globally? Should you be able to vote in a country where you don't live?
You may live in the United States, but if each state were a different country, wouldn't it make more sense that your vote carry more weight in your own country than others?
Obviously, we think of countries as being on a completely different level, but the Unites States was originally set up to be a group of states with a great deal of autonomy, united only by a relatively weak federal government. In that context, the president of the United States should be regarded as a president of the states, not a president of the people.
It certainly matters globally where you choose to lay your head down at night, just as it matters in which state you lay your head down at night, and that's by design. If you don't care for your state's laws, you should be able to find a state the matches your ideals without having to leave the country.
The president's power should therefore be removed by a layer of geographical abstraction from the people - it serves only to make limited decisions that affect all the states in a very limited way.
> Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night?
Because it turns out that has a very strong effect on the power of your vote :)
The electoral college exists to balance the voices of citizens in cities vs. "the country." It checks the power of highly dense populations who are more likely to vote for pro-city federal policies, so the needs of those in "the country" are not ignored.
I didn't support Trump and live in a super-blue city, but when the EC was explained to me this way, it made sense. I don't want to see the US further turn into a place where you can only succeed if you live in a city.
Exactly, and it is supposed to be. We are a republic and not a democracy. The founders strongly opposed democracy. One of the reasons being that minorities would have no representation if your government is by majority rule only.
> It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election.
Except that in a universe where the President was selected by popular vote, the candidates would have campaigned differently anyway, so your point is completely moot.
> The house also favors less populous states, even if not by design.
Out of curiosity, how does this happen in practice? My understanding was that seats were divided up by population (giving equal voice to those in more densely populated areas).
> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too.
The sarcasm in your post is, funnily enough, the opposite of the truth because they actually have MORE say than people living in coastal cities[0]
Not only that, but as populations in major cities increase, and number of electoral votes stay the same, this effect increases [1]
> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too. I would prefer that the lesson were: "Gosh! The President has too much power!
This is not a fair assessment. Plenty of people learned that lesson a long time ago, but always get laughed out of the room by the party in power.
I remember in the aftermath of 9/11 when GWB made one of the largest executive power grabs in history, and the right-wing whole-heartedly supported him in the name of keeping us safe. A common refrain from my left-leaning friends explaining why this was a bad idea was "Imagine someone like Hillary Clinton with these powers." Of course, that was all hand-waved away until Obama took office, then suddenly "executive overreach" became such a hot topic.
The only way to change the momentum of the executive gaining more power over more things is to convince both the in- and out-of-power parties that giving the President more authority is a bad thing. Good luck convincing the in-power party of that, no matter which side of the aisle they sit on.
> Good luck convincing the in-power party of that, no matter which side of the aisle they sit on.
Yup. That's true of all "true" reform. Most of the campaign finance reform laws that end up passing could more accurately be called "the incumbent protection act".
Why don't you take him at his word? It seems extremely unwise not to. Do you know who Jeffrey Eisenach and Mark Jamison are?
edit: perhaps more constructively - if he were to be serious about dismantling Net Neutrality, what would he have done differently than exactly what he's doing now? Beyond his most insane proposals (Muslim registration and internment/concentration camps, building a physical 2000 mile wall on the Mexican border) he seems to be making all the necessary, concrete appointments necessary to put the necessary people in place to follow through on his campaign pledges.
> Do you know who Jeffrey Eisenach and Mark Jamison are?
Uhhh. Yes.
> if he were to be serious about dismantling Net Neutrality, what would he have done differently than exactly what he's doing now? Beyond his most insane proposals (Muslim registration and internment/concentration camps, building a physical 2000 mile wall on the Mexican border) he seems to be making all the necessary, concrete appointments necessary to put the necessary people in place to follow through on his campaign pledges.
I have no idea. I see him walking back a lot of stuff, even before he's in office. I'm going to classify him as the used-car-salesman that says whatever he has to say to get a signature on the line below. I barely have enough energy to worry about all the things that do go wrong and have absolutely none left to spend on fantasies about more things that might go wrong. Getting old and tired, I guess...
> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too
No. Everyone should have an equal say. That's what national popular vote ensures. Clinton got over 2m more votes than her opponent, but will not be President. That's not democracy.
I completely agree with your point about limiting executive power.
Not to endorse either candidate, but you're making a common mistake.
If the election were a popular vote, the candidates would campaign for that. They'd focus more on big cities etc. There's no guarantee Clinton would have won the popular vote if that had been the case.
Exactly, this is not "democracy". However, the USA is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic. Electing the POTUS via a national popular vote would be rife with more problems than it solves. This article does a good job explaining this topic. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/11/the-elector...
> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too. I would prefer that the lesson were: "Gosh! The President has too much power!"
Maybe I'm not understanding this fully but I don't follow the people saying that Clinton should have won because she got the most votes. If the rules said the winning party is the one with the most votes, the campaign strategies of each candidate would have been completely different. It sounds like moving the goal posts to me. It's like you agreed the team with the most goals is the winner beforehand but then after you lost you want to argue you should be the real winner because you had more possession of the ball.
> Well, sure. In theory, he could do anything by fiat within the bounds of established regulatory discretion. Of course, I wouldn't worry too much about all of the stuff that "Trump could do" until he gets around to doing it. He talks a lot. And, I suspect he won't have time to do all of the stuff that people worry about him potentially doing...
It won't take him any significant personal time to get rid of net neutrality. Under Trump the FCC commissioners will change from a 3 to 2 Democrat majority to a 3 to 2 Republican majority in 2017. Net neutrality passed at the FCC on a 3 to 2 straight party line vote.
Republicans are massively, overwhelmingly against net neutrality and Republicans control both houses of Congress, so it is a pretty damn safe bet that the new Republican commissioner will be one who agrees with the overwhelming majority Republican opinion on this.
Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman, is a Democrat, but almost certainly will follow tradition and relinquish the chairmanship pretty much as soon as Trump takes office, and Trump will name one of the Republican commissioners as the new chairman.
So, in 2017 we will have an FCC commission chaired by a Republican, with a 3 to 2 Republican majority. Reversing net neutrality will almost certainly be one of the first things on the agenda for the 3 to 2 Republican majority, Republican chaired FCC, especially considering that reversing net neutrality has been a priority for Republicans ever since Wheeler went with Title II reclassification.
Wouldn't it be stupid for net neutrality advocates to wait until Trump actually does this to worry about it and start working to stop it? It's not like, say, building the wall and making Mexico pay for it, which has so many moving parts, cost, and problems to overcome that ignoring it until something concrete actually happens is fine--the wall plan is very likely to fall apart on its own long before it gets to that stage. Dismantling net neutrality will be close to trivial once Trump's appointments are on the commission.
It would actually be more work on Trump's part to stop net neutrality from being dismantled, as he'd have to do some work to find a Republican commission nominee who is not against net neutrality and will pass Congressional confirmation.
You're saying we shouldn't worry about Trump doing exactly what he said he would do and the Republican congress wants to do. That's just stupid. We need to start mobilizing against this now. We need to make sure Trump and the Republicans pay for every one of their unpopular, anti-consumer policies.
Now more than anytime before, I believe the people who say Trump 'reads' a room and says what the audience expects. This should worry you if you look at the team he is building to surround him during his term.
> And, I suspect he won't have time to do all of the stuff that people worry about him potentially doing...
Trump doesn't have to do that much to dismantle net neutrality. All he has to do is sign bills put in front of him and appoint people to the FCC that are against the latter. He's not president yet, so he hasn't done the former, but he is in the process of the latter.
The idea that the electoral college somehow protects smaller states is fallacious. If you take the six most populous states, you already have about 200 votes. Then you only need six more states from the next 18 most populous states. Bam, you have a majority by only winning 12 states, the other 38 states (and additional territories) have to put up and shut up. [1]
This doesn't usually happen because CA/NY usually vote D, Texas usually votes R, Illinois has been voting D for a while now, and Florida/Pennsylvania are swing states; (Florida usually votes R) although, the usual suspects have passed voter suppression laws.
This system doesn't protect smaller states by design, it is, as it always was, supposed to prevent the rule of mob and a demagogue from being elected. Unfortunately, due to an extremely misguided sense of party loyalty, here we are. At best it's an arbitrary ruling that can be exploited by someone who will lose the popular vote.
> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too.
Utter nonsense. Under a popular vote-based system, each person in a non-coastal state would have exactly as much say as each person in a coastal state. To the extent that coastal areas might have more sway as a whole because they have more people, isn't that the whole point of democracy?
If we want to give people in less populous areas more power because they're a minority, why stop there? Why don't we give Asians and blacks more voting power than whites? Why not give Muslims and Jews more voting power than Christians? We could give more voting power to gays and lesbians than straight people!
Why is rural area/state vs urban area/state the divide where we ought to privilege the minority? Why not some other dimension that historically has involved a lot more oppression? Wouldn't that make more sense?
No, the point of the United States is to unite the states into a manageable single government. It is not to provide a direct action democracy to the people.
We give states a base number of votes for being a state,2 , then add them based on population. This means that smaller states get a boost in power vis a vis larger ones but that larger states still matter more. This is not a bad thing.
States provide the basic block upon which Government in the US rests. It is in our interests to provide states with more equal power at a national level than population would dictate.
If you pass a constitutional amendment to adjust voting laws you can enable exactly whatever you like though, for any of your more hyperbolic suggestions you would need to override many of the existing protections as well but if you wanted to be an asshole along with the rest of america there is no reason we could not do so using our existing legal framework.
The argument is not about rural versus urban but about the relative power of small versus large states. This isn't a historical issue but a simple legal one. States actually matter in the United States.
> To the extent that coastal areas might have more sway as a whole because they have more people, isn't that the whole point of democracy?
But the United States was never intended to be a popular democracy. In their wisdom the Founding Fathers acknowledged the problems inherent in democracy (it devolves too easily into two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner). Instead, they created a federal republic, in which the primary powers of governance would be invested in the states. This is evident in the text of the 10th amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The essential characteristic of this federal republic was that issues would be decided locally, and only a few necessary powers would be delegated to the central government. Small, local governments have many advantages: it's easier for ordinary people to participate in and influence them, and they're harder for big money to control. Local governments listen more closely to their constituencies and their decisions more accurately reflect what their communities want. While some of the Founders were fonder of a strong central government than others, none of them would have supported the degree of centralization we have today.
I can't help but wonder what our society would look like if we had adhered to the original vision of the Founders. Indeed, our entire moral framework would be based on the reality that people only a few hours' drive away might have very different values, and rather than coercing them through the threat of government force, we had to either persuade them to change their minds, or learn to work with people who were very different from us. In the modern United States people pay a lot of lip service to these ideals but at the end of the day they just want to get their candidate elected so that he/she can force everyone else to conform to their beliefs. Authoritarians on both sides of the political spectrum grow bolder every day and I can't help but feel that the American experiment in self-rule may be approaching its twilight.
The antidote is a return to the true meaning of the 10th amendment. A more local government which is influenced and participated in directly by the people it governs. A world where your vote is one of hundreds or thousands, not hundreds of millions, and genuinely does count. An end to the US central government as a tool of coercion and a dismantling of the most powerful bureaucracy in human history. Unfortunately the national conversation is very, very far away from this idea. Everyone's so caught up hoping that the next autocrat at the top will come from Team Blue/Team Red depending on their favorite color...
> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too.
So, how about this - instead of weighing electoral college votes by location, we could weigh electoral college votes by education level. That way, people with higher education gets more of say than people with lower education.
Pro-Trumpers need to explain why giving giving geographic weighting should be more valuable than giving educational weighting. There are a million factors that elections could be adjusted for.. why should we pick geography as a factor over anything else? Why should farmers be weighed more than University professors?
Is there something more special about farmers than university professors? Which one is more important for a modern economy?
How about this, we can weigh votes by race - black votes more than white votes. Isn't that just as valid as weighing farmer votes over urban votes?
I have talked directly to people in higher positions in telecom industries. They are expecting a reversal on net neutrality towards more "market-friendly" positions.
Yes, this is a personal anecdote. No, I don't have a citation.
Hope for the best, but expect and prepare for the worst.
The executive staff at telecoms I have talked to have mixed expectations. I don't know anyone at/with cable -- which I think this was aimed at in the first place.
The reclassification of services necessary to make the ruling in the first place was (I believe) over-reach.
But, people appear to like the outcome, so they don't quibble with the methods.
I don't dislike that particular outcome, but worry about the executive branch unilaterally extending their own purview. That territorial expansion would allow for a lot of decisions that I might like a lot less. That probably just means that I worry too much about what will happen when a guy I don't like is in charge...
I think at this point it is clear that it takes tremendous energy to have a very little say on topics like net neutrality, surveillance, and more. That's the case is most western countries: Our leaders have a great latitude, in parallel with their main program, to apply things which weren't discussed during the campaign.Until we find a better way, we'll have to accept that, yes, the president has legitimate power to do it.
"The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too"
The arrogance and entitlement of middle america is really getting to be too much. Now your votes should count more just "so you can have a say too".
Maybe you shouldn't have abandoned unions, maybe you shouldn't have abandoned the left, maybe you shouldn't have expected the GOP to place your interests first. It's been almost 50 years since "The Silent Majority" and apparently nothing's changed.
Maybe the problem isn't everyone else. Maybe the problem is you.
Exactly. Why don't we just all calm the hell down and wait until something actually happens before we start panicing. To be honest, I think the propaganda machine is just pissed that the establishment candidate lost and are doing their best to trach the public why this is bad.
Congressional action can be slow but I think it's clear that Republicans are not going slow in this coming Congress. Your statement about the electoral college is uncalled for. Your comment would have been great without that sentence.
GOP has both chambers, they are against net neutrality, Trump is against it, there is nothing to protect it at this point. NN won't last the first years of Trump's administration.
The part of the Net Neutrality debate that is so often disregarded (and probably the reason conservatives oppose it vehemently) is that it gives FCC (an unelected body of government, part of the executive branch) power to legislate.
Not passing judgement or touching the merit of the whole subject but it is a very consistent position of the right in the United States to oppose regulation passed down by unelected officials of the executive branch instead of legislation created and approved by the legislative body through their elected representatives.
It is a similar phenomenon to the one occurring in Europe with its maximum exponent being the Brexit process, also motivated in a lot of ways by the perceived interference in the day to day life of the British by regulations passed down by unelected officials of the European Union instead of legislation created and approved by the local legislative bodies through their elected representatives.
In America, opposing FCC mandating net neutrality through regulation is akin to other similar rejections of "legislation by the executive":
- DEA or Department of Health legislating controlled substances
- FAA legislating personal drones
- FCC legislating TV language and obscenity
- ATF legislating gun ownership, possession and storage
- Treasury Secretary legislating penalties for failure to enroll in government approved healthcare (Obamacare "Tax Penalty")
It is all part of the same phenomenon, people pushing back against what they perceive as a federal overreach in areas that deny people proper representation in contesting the regulations imposed.
Trump got elected on that exact platform by the detractors of such overreach and it is only natural that he is going to follow the desire of his electoral constituency.
It is completely normal and accepted for various agencies to make rules within the confines of the laws that have empowered them. It is in fact necessary considering how complex our society is. Congress cannot possibly control everything.
If congress has power to pass certain laws, they have power to relegate some of such authority to a governing body. If the FCC's rules are in accordance with the laws that empowered it, then there is nothing wrong.
And no Trump never said he is against net neutrality. If he did that, he might have lost the election -- net neutrality is very popular.
> If congress has power to pass certain laws, they have power to relegate some of such authority to a governing body. If the FCC's rules are in accordance with the laws that empowered it, then there is nothing wrong.
Yes, and people who don't like these regulations have the power to vote politicians who would revoke this authority. Your argument is unlikely to convince anyone. Especially people who are concerned that governments regulate too much, as parent states.
> It is completely normal and accepted for various agencies to make rules within the confines of the laws that have empowered them. It is in fact necessary considering how complex our society is. Congress cannot possibly control everything.
You are ignoring the obvious possibilities of letting local or state government legislate those things, or simply not legislating them.
There is essentially zero complaining about the FAA's quasi-legislative power. All of the regulatory agencies have quasi-legislative, executive, judicial activity. This is not new. If conservatives don't like what the FCC or FAA are doing, its about businesses complaining to them directly. It has nothing to do with conservative ideology being reluctant with the nature of regulatory agencies.
The FAA regulates kites. So of course they can regulate drones, personal or commercial.
Depends on the philosophical basis of their conservative or libertarian beliefs. Many conservatives have had fundamental issues with the administrative state, since they first opposed it in Prussia. Many of the problems which they have with the administrative state have to do with the incentives of the administrators, and the broad, arbitrary power delegated to the regulators.
Certainly true of the libertarian right, but not of the social conservative right, who have been rather inconsistent in opposing "FCC legislating TV language and obscenity" and "DEA or Department of Health legislating controlled substances".
As a self-identified member of the libertarian right I absolutely agree. I get into this debate with so-called Conservatives frequently: smaller government and less regulation means marriage equality (at the state level,) the dismantling of the DEA (leaving it to states to make their own rules,) and the elimination of the Dept. of Education (leaving that to states as well,) among many other things. It also calls for overturning Roe v. Wade (but not for the reasons the social-right wants but because it's really a 10th Amendment issue.)
By the way before I get downvoted for my views, I am merely pointing out that actual conservatism is a position of Federalism rather than a position on a particular agendas of certain groups.
That means a government should be closer to the people it obsensibly represents and decision should be made at the lowest level until such time as it affects a higher level. For example, if California wants to legalize heroin, that's for California to decide -- it has no practical effect on people in Louisiana.
The problem with many social conservatives is that they are intellectually inconsistent -- you can't call for government to enforce what 'you' want but then call for smaller government when it comes to what 'they' want.
It's a question of the scope of government and at what level government ought to be acting -- it really isn't about specific issues but the bigger question of "Is this the role of the Federal government."
How about the USDA inspecting meat to prevent shady companies from passing off improperly stored meat as safe? Or the Department of Housing making sure that people don't add lead to paint without it being labeled as such?
Do you trust five unelected FCC commissioners, who are quite technically incompetent, to regulate the internet for 330 million Americans? Frankly, I'm quite weary.
> The part of the Net Neutrality debate that is so often disregarded (and probably the reason conservatives oppose it vehemently) is that it gives FCC (an unelected body of government, part of the executive branch) power to legislate.
Completely wrong. It gives to the FCC the authority to write rules. In fact, Congress cannot delegate its legislative authority to the Executive branch short of a Constitutional amendment. They tried that with the line item veto and Clinton but it was struck down in the Courts.
Rules and laws are very different. Here is a primer:
And BTW, the United States population is about 320M and the GDP is about $18T. Shit's complicated. The idea that Congress should write every rule is blithering populist nonsense.
Going by the argument of opposing regulation/"interference" by unelected officials, conservatives could claim that the FDA (also an unelected body of government, part of the executive branch) frequently oversteps its bounds when it bans substances and products found to be harmful. How is a harmful product supposed to be taken off the market - wait for legislation from Congress while the product remains freely available?
I think delegation of authority is inevitable in a complicated administrative system.
You're right, that's the argument. It ignores the fact that the position makes no sense. In the UK, most laws are made by civil servants, under the direction of ministers, within the mandate of parliament. Under Brexit, this function will grow, not shrink.
Stephen Phillips, a prominent and heavily Brexit-supporting Conservative, appears to have figured out that Brexit means a huge increase in executive power, not a reduction. He's resigned from the party. Sadly, he appears to be alone.
In practical terms, the amount of legislation a modern country needs is far in excess of what its elected bodies can deliver. The question isn't if someone other than the body should be legislating, it's who, and with what oversight.
Trump has announced two appointments to the FCC, Jeffrey Eisenach and Mark Jamison.[1] Eisenach has a paper arguing that ISP's should not be subject to any antitrust regulation.[2] Mark Jameson wants to abolish the FCC.[3] "Telecommunications network providers and ISPs are rarely, if ever, monopolies", he's written.
I don't think Trump cares much about net neutrality in particular, but it wouldn't surprise me if he abolished or severely cut back the FCC.
The big deal to me is mostly the last-mile infrastructure, which is more of a local/state issue anyways. If the telecom companies mostly handled the backbone, losing the government enforcement doesn't even seem that bad.
Regardless of what happens at the federal level, California and New York are completely controlled by Democrats, so HN commenters should find it relatively easy to push through state net neutrality laws. And bigger companies like Netflix can probably bribe the smaller states by promising to set up a call center in Montana or something in exchange for net neutrality laws in that state.
Frankly, this current system where an unelected official gets to pick and choose the scope of his agency is a bit silly. I wouldn't mind if the whole agency is cut out, if its scope changes so wildly depending on who's President.
The irony is, places mostly controlled by Republicans will be bitten the most by weaker FCC. They are already plagued by lazy and sleepy monopolists and corrupted local laws written by them that prevent municipal networks and result in overpriced and underpowered Internet. Without FCC it will only get worse. So those who chose that will taste their own medicine.
I thought rich people were given exceptional QoS so they don't complain about it to the media. Not to mention: they're rich; They don't really care how much their internet costs so long as it works.
My opinion is that for the Trump supporter this is not a bad thing, per-se. It is going to be masked under some coat of security mixed with a bit of corporate capitalist liberty. And also, a lot of people is going to make a lot of money filtering and analyzing data.
The irony here is that eliminating net neutrality regulations are the opposite of security in most ways because without it, ISP's and whatnot are free to shape traffic however they see fit and in doing so introduce risk. Additionally, from a governance perspective the growing consensus, whether we feel good about it or not, is that we are going to need more regulations surrounding the Internet and devices which connect to it. Moving away from net neutrality rules "because regulation" doesn't bode well for getting control of what is by all measures an out of control market. Bruce Schneier covers this pretty well in his testimony to Congress:
I think they mean, this will not damage Trump, as it will be spun as a success, even as it causes damage to the average person. Probably applies to many, if not all, of his policies.
How is it bad for those things, especially freedom? Regulation takes away freedom, by definition. An ISP start-up offering services which discriminate traffic now can't exist, and therefore can't give consumers more options. This is why I'm against net neutrality. I also believe that even with NN, companies will do what they want if it's worth the risk of being caught.
It's pretty safe to think that the Republicans will do exactly what corporate lobbyists will them to do. I am not sure what the telcos' agenda is but this what most likely will happen.
> Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the
Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media.
Is this really the best quote out there on Trump's intentions regarding NN?
To be honest, it looks like he took it for some other kind of regulation altogether and just used it as a pretext to bitch about Obama and censorship. If anything, NN forces all ISPs to "carry" conservative media.
The reason the drone and surveillance programs didn't take a large part in election propaganda this past year is that violating individuals' rights has bipartisan support.
Up voted because I cannot see how anyone could disagree with this. Obama didn't do _anything_ to stem the flow of citizens' data being funneled into the government machinery.
Can anyone who downvoted this point to any time in the past few years that a major party in a western nation promised to reduce surveillance, increase government transparency, or add new protections for individuals?
Well, no. It's one of those issues where the elected officials of both parties largely agree, and the voters of both parties largely agree, but the voters disagree with the officials.
Readit News
As frustratingly slow as congressional action is -- it's more resistant to being hand-waved away.
The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too. I would prefer that the lesson were: "Gosh! The President has too much power!"
I'm from the midwest and I still don't understand this sentiment. Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night? That seems extremely anti-democratic to me.
It's not that people who don't live on the coasts shouldn't have a say. It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election.
We already have the senate. The house also favors less populous states, even if not by design.
And state governments.
People who don't live on the coasts have an enormous amount of say without getting an extremely disproportionate voice in the presidential election.
I think a good example of what the electoral college is: you have a sports tournament. The winner isn't the person who gets the most points in all the games. It's the person who wins the most games.
The Electoral College also favors less populous states.
So Wyoming gets 3 electors for a population of 584,153 or 194717 per elector. California gets 55 for a population of 38.8M or 705454 per elector.Should that same philosophy apply globally? Should you be able to vote in a country where you don't live?
You may live in the United States, but if each state were a different country, wouldn't it make more sense that your vote carry more weight in your own country than others?
Obviously, we think of countries as being on a completely different level, but the Unites States was originally set up to be a group of states with a great deal of autonomy, united only by a relatively weak federal government. In that context, the president of the United States should be regarded as a president of the states, not a president of the people.
It certainly matters globally where you choose to lay your head down at night, just as it matters in which state you lay your head down at night, and that's by design. If you don't care for your state's laws, you should be able to find a state the matches your ideals without having to leave the country.
The president's power should therefore be removed by a layer of geographical abstraction from the people - it serves only to make limited decisions that affect all the states in a very limited way.
If that was the goal, that's what the candidates would have campaigned for.
But the goal was 270 electoral votes, so that's what the candidates campaigned for.
This is like a losing soccer team saying that they won more free kicks, so they should get to win, not the team that scored more goals
Because it turns out that has a very strong effect on the power of your vote :)
The electoral college exists to balance the voices of citizens in cities vs. "the country." It checks the power of highly dense populations who are more likely to vote for pro-city federal policies, so the needs of those in "the country" are not ignored.
I didn't support Trump and live in a super-blue city, but when the EC was explained to me this way, it made sense. I don't want to see the US further turn into a place where you can only succeed if you live in a city.
Exactly, and it is supposed to be. We are a republic and not a democracy. The founders strongly opposed democracy. One of the reasons being that minorities would have no representation if your government is by majority rule only.
But everybody knows how the system works. It is late to discuss about its fairness.
Except that in a universe where the President was selected by popular vote, the candidates would have campaigned differently anyway, so your point is completely moot.
Out of curiosity, how does this happen in practice? My understanding was that seats were divided up by population (giving equal voice to those in more densely populated areas).
what if she spent TWICE the money getting them?
The sarcasm in your post is, funnily enough, the opposite of the truth because they actually have MORE say than people living in coastal cities[0]
Not only that, but as populations in major cities increase, and number of electoral votes stay the same, this effect increases [1]
[0] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_w...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/1...
(Ed: fixed AMP link)
Isn't that one of the primary mechanisms of sarcasm?
This is not a fair assessment. Plenty of people learned that lesson a long time ago, but always get laughed out of the room by the party in power.
I remember in the aftermath of 9/11 when GWB made one of the largest executive power grabs in history, and the right-wing whole-heartedly supported him in the name of keeping us safe. A common refrain from my left-leaning friends explaining why this was a bad idea was "Imagine someone like Hillary Clinton with these powers." Of course, that was all hand-waved away until Obama took office, then suddenly "executive overreach" became such a hot topic.
The only way to change the momentum of the executive gaining more power over more things is to convince both the in- and out-of-power parties that giving the President more authority is a bad thing. Good luck convincing the in-power party of that, no matter which side of the aisle they sit on.
Yup. That's true of all "true" reform. Most of the campaign finance reform laws that end up passing could more accurately be called "the incumbent protection act".
edit: perhaps more constructively - if he were to be serious about dismantling Net Neutrality, what would he have done differently than exactly what he's doing now? Beyond his most insane proposals (Muslim registration and internment/concentration camps, building a physical 2000 mile wall on the Mexican border) he seems to be making all the necessary, concrete appointments necessary to put the necessary people in place to follow through on his campaign pledges.
Uhhh. Yes.
> if he were to be serious about dismantling Net Neutrality, what would he have done differently than exactly what he's doing now? Beyond his most insane proposals (Muslim registration and internment/concentration camps, building a physical 2000 mile wall on the Mexican border) he seems to be making all the necessary, concrete appointments necessary to put the necessary people in place to follow through on his campaign pledges.
I have no idea. I see him walking back a lot of stuff, even before he's in office. I'm going to classify him as the used-car-salesman that says whatever he has to say to get a signature on the line below. I barely have enough energy to worry about all the things that do go wrong and have absolutely none left to spend on fantasies about more things that might go wrong. Getting old and tired, I guess...
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No. Everyone should have an equal say. That's what national popular vote ensures. Clinton got over 2m more votes than her opponent, but will not be President. That's not democracy.
I completely agree with your point about limiting executive power.
If the election were a popular vote, the candidates would campaign for that. They'd focus more on big cities etc. There's no guarantee Clinton would have won the popular vote if that had been the case.
Edit: If you're downvoting could you explain why?
I suppose it was kind of a rotten trick to not tell the Democrats about the Electoral College beforehand, yeah.
Maybe I'm not understanding this fully but I don't follow the people saying that Clinton should have won because she got the most votes. If the rules said the winning party is the one with the most votes, the campaign strategies of each candidate would have been completely different. It sounds like moving the goal posts to me. It's like you agreed the team with the most goals is the winner beforehand but then after you lost you want to argue you should be the real winner because you had more possession of the ball.
It won't take him any significant personal time to get rid of net neutrality. Under Trump the FCC commissioners will change from a 3 to 2 Democrat majority to a 3 to 2 Republican majority in 2017. Net neutrality passed at the FCC on a 3 to 2 straight party line vote.
Republicans are massively, overwhelmingly against net neutrality and Republicans control both houses of Congress, so it is a pretty damn safe bet that the new Republican commissioner will be one who agrees with the overwhelming majority Republican opinion on this.
Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman, is a Democrat, but almost certainly will follow tradition and relinquish the chairmanship pretty much as soon as Trump takes office, and Trump will name one of the Republican commissioners as the new chairman.
So, in 2017 we will have an FCC commission chaired by a Republican, with a 3 to 2 Republican majority. Reversing net neutrality will almost certainly be one of the first things on the agenda for the 3 to 2 Republican majority, Republican chaired FCC, especially considering that reversing net neutrality has been a priority for Republicans ever since Wheeler went with Title II reclassification.
Wouldn't it be stupid for net neutrality advocates to wait until Trump actually does this to worry about it and start working to stop it? It's not like, say, building the wall and making Mexico pay for it, which has so many moving parts, cost, and problems to overcome that ignoring it until something concrete actually happens is fine--the wall plan is very likely to fall apart on its own long before it gets to that stage. Dismantling net neutrality will be close to trivial once Trump's appointments are on the commission.
It would actually be more work on Trump's part to stop net neutrality from being dismantled, as he'd have to do some work to find a Republican commission nominee who is not against net neutrality and will pass Congressional confirmation.
Also, I don't need any of your lessons.
Prosecute Hillary? "We have to move forward"
Torture works? "Well, General Madd Dogg Mattis thinks its not very important"
Climate change? "I have an open mind about it"
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but what Trump could do is pretty much up in the air at the moment
Trump doesn't have to do that much to dismantle net neutrality. All he has to do is sign bills put in front of him and appoint people to the FCC that are against the latter. He's not president yet, so he hasn't done the former, but he is in the process of the latter.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-fcc-idUSKBN13H02...
This doesn't usually happen because CA/NY usually vote D, Texas usually votes R, Illinois has been voting D for a while now, and Florida/Pennsylvania are swing states; (Florida usually votes R) although, the usual suspects have passed voter suppression laws.
This system doesn't protect smaller states by design, it is, as it always was, supposed to prevent the rule of mob and a demagogue from being elected. Unfortunately, due to an extremely misguided sense of party loyalty, here we are. At best it's an arbitrary ruling that can be exploited by someone who will lose the popular vote.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_Stat...
Utter nonsense. Under a popular vote-based system, each person in a non-coastal state would have exactly as much say as each person in a coastal state. To the extent that coastal areas might have more sway as a whole because they have more people, isn't that the whole point of democracy?
If we want to give people in less populous areas more power because they're a minority, why stop there? Why don't we give Asians and blacks more voting power than whites? Why not give Muslims and Jews more voting power than Christians? We could give more voting power to gays and lesbians than straight people!
Why is rural area/state vs urban area/state the divide where we ought to privilege the minority? Why not some other dimension that historically has involved a lot more oppression? Wouldn't that make more sense?
We give states a base number of votes for being a state,2 , then add them based on population. This means that smaller states get a boost in power vis a vis larger ones but that larger states still matter more. This is not a bad thing.
States provide the basic block upon which Government in the US rests. It is in our interests to provide states with more equal power at a national level than population would dictate.
If you pass a constitutional amendment to adjust voting laws you can enable exactly whatever you like though, for any of your more hyperbolic suggestions you would need to override many of the existing protections as well but if you wanted to be an asshole along with the rest of america there is no reason we could not do so using our existing legal framework.
The argument is not about rural versus urban but about the relative power of small versus large states. This isn't a historical issue but a simple legal one. States actually matter in the United States.
But the United States was never intended to be a popular democracy. In their wisdom the Founding Fathers acknowledged the problems inherent in democracy (it devolves too easily into two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner). Instead, they created a federal republic, in which the primary powers of governance would be invested in the states. This is evident in the text of the 10th amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The essential characteristic of this federal republic was that issues would be decided locally, and only a few necessary powers would be delegated to the central government. Small, local governments have many advantages: it's easier for ordinary people to participate in and influence them, and they're harder for big money to control. Local governments listen more closely to their constituencies and their decisions more accurately reflect what their communities want. While some of the Founders were fonder of a strong central government than others, none of them would have supported the degree of centralization we have today.
I can't help but wonder what our society would look like if we had adhered to the original vision of the Founders. Indeed, our entire moral framework would be based on the reality that people only a few hours' drive away might have very different values, and rather than coercing them through the threat of government force, we had to either persuade them to change their minds, or learn to work with people who were very different from us. In the modern United States people pay a lot of lip service to these ideals but at the end of the day they just want to get their candidate elected so that he/she can force everyone else to conform to their beliefs. Authoritarians on both sides of the political spectrum grow bolder every day and I can't help but feel that the American experiment in self-rule may be approaching its twilight.
The antidote is a return to the true meaning of the 10th amendment. A more local government which is influenced and participated in directly by the people it governs. A world where your vote is one of hundreds or thousands, not hundreds of millions, and genuinely does count. An end to the US central government as a tool of coercion and a dismantling of the most powerful bureaucracy in human history. Unfortunately the national conversation is very, very far away from this idea. Everyone's so caught up hoping that the next autocrat at the top will come from Team Blue/Team Red depending on their favorite color...
So, how about this - instead of weighing electoral college votes by location, we could weigh electoral college votes by education level. That way, people with higher education gets more of say than people with lower education.
Pro-Trumpers need to explain why giving giving geographic weighting should be more valuable than giving educational weighting. There are a million factors that elections could be adjusted for.. why should we pick geography as a factor over anything else? Why should farmers be weighed more than University professors?
Is there something more special about farmers than university professors? Which one is more important for a modern economy?
How about this, we can weigh votes by race - black votes more than white votes. Isn't that just as valid as weighing farmer votes over urban votes?
Yes, this is a personal anecdote. No, I don't have a citation.
Hope for the best, but expect and prepare for the worst.
The reclassification of services necessary to make the ruling in the first place was (I believe) over-reach.
But, people appear to like the outcome, so they don't quibble with the methods.
I don't dislike that particular outcome, but worry about the executive branch unilaterally extending their own purview. That territorial expansion would allow for a lot of decisions that I might like a lot less. That probably just means that I worry too much about what will happen when a guy I don't like is in charge...
The arrogance and entitlement of middle america is really getting to be too much. Now your votes should count more just "so you can have a say too".
Maybe you shouldn't have abandoned unions, maybe you shouldn't have abandoned the left, maybe you shouldn't have expected the GOP to place your interests first. It's been almost 50 years since "The Silent Majority" and apparently nothing's changed.
Maybe the problem isn't everyone else. Maybe the problem is you.
Not passing judgement or touching the merit of the whole subject but it is a very consistent position of the right in the United States to oppose regulation passed down by unelected officials of the executive branch instead of legislation created and approved by the legislative body through their elected representatives.
It is a similar phenomenon to the one occurring in Europe with its maximum exponent being the Brexit process, also motivated in a lot of ways by the perceived interference in the day to day life of the British by regulations passed down by unelected officials of the European Union instead of legislation created and approved by the local legislative bodies through their elected representatives.
In America, opposing FCC mandating net neutrality through regulation is akin to other similar rejections of "legislation by the executive":
- DEA or Department of Health legislating controlled substances
- FAA legislating personal drones
- FCC legislating TV language and obscenity
- ATF legislating gun ownership, possession and storage
- Treasury Secretary legislating penalties for failure to enroll in government approved healthcare (Obamacare "Tax Penalty")
It is all part of the same phenomenon, people pushing back against what they perceive as a federal overreach in areas that deny people proper representation in contesting the regulations imposed.
Trump got elected on that exact platform by the detractors of such overreach and it is only natural that he is going to follow the desire of his electoral constituency.
If congress has power to pass certain laws, they have power to relegate some of such authority to a governing body. If the FCC's rules are in accordance with the laws that empowered it, then there is nothing wrong.
And no Trump never said he is against net neutrality. If he did that, he might have lost the election -- net neutrality is very popular.
"Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media."
Yes, and people who don't like these regulations have the power to vote politicians who would revoke this authority. Your argument is unlikely to convince anyone. Especially people who are concerned that governments regulate too much, as parent states.
You are ignoring the obvious possibilities of letting local or state government legislate those things, or simply not legislating them.
The FAA regulates kites. So of course they can regulate drones, personal or commercial.
By the way before I get downvoted for my views, I am merely pointing out that actual conservatism is a position of Federalism rather than a position on a particular agendas of certain groups.
That means a government should be closer to the people it obsensibly represents and decision should be made at the lowest level until such time as it affects a higher level. For example, if California wants to legalize heroin, that's for California to decide -- it has no practical effect on people in Louisiana.
The problem with many social conservatives is that they are intellectually inconsistent -- you can't call for government to enforce what 'you' want but then call for smaller government when it comes to what 'they' want.
It's a question of the scope of government and at what level government ought to be acting -- it really isn't about specific issues but the bigger question of "Is this the role of the Federal government."
How about the USDA inspecting meat to prevent shady companies from passing off improperly stored meat as safe? Or the Department of Housing making sure that people don't add lead to paint without it being labeled as such?
Completely wrong. It gives to the FCC the authority to write rules. In fact, Congress cannot delegate its legislative authority to the Executive branch short of a Constitutional amendment. They tried that with the line item veto and Clinton but it was struck down in the Courts.
Rules and laws are very different. Here is a primer:
https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/basics-regulatory-proce...
And BTW, the United States population is about 320M and the GDP is about $18T. Shit's complicated. The idea that Congress should write every rule is blithering populist nonsense.
I think delegation of authority is inevitable in a complicated administrative system.
Stephen Phillips, a prominent and heavily Brexit-supporting Conservative, appears to have figured out that Brexit means a huge increase in executive power, not a reduction. He's resigned from the party. Sadly, he appears to be alone.
In practical terms, the amount of legislation a modern country needs is far in excess of what its elected bodies can deliver. The question isn't if someone other than the body should be legislating, it's who, and with what oversight.
Personally, I think hardline ideologically driven policies leads to disaster. But it looks like that's what we're going to get.
Trump has announced two appointments to the FCC, Jeffrey Eisenach and Mark Jamison.[1] Eisenach has a paper arguing that ISP's should not be subject to any antitrust regulation.[2] Mark Jameson wants to abolish the FCC.[3] "Telecommunications network providers and ISPs are rarely, if ever, monopolies", he's written.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/22/obama-net...
[2] https://www.aei.org/publication/broadband-competition-in-the...
[3] http://www.techpolicydaily.com/communications/do-we-need-the...
The big deal to me is mostly the last-mile infrastructure, which is more of a local/state issue anyways. If the telecom companies mostly handled the backbone, losing the government enforcement doesn't even seem that bad.
Regardless of what happens at the federal level, California and New York are completely controlled by Democrats, so HN commenters should find it relatively easy to push through state net neutrality laws. And bigger companies like Netflix can probably bribe the smaller states by promising to set up a call center in Montana or something in exchange for net neutrality laws in that state.
Frankly, this current system where an unelected official gets to pick and choose the scope of his agency is a bit silly. I wouldn't mind if the whole agency is cut out, if its scope changes so wildly depending on who's President.
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http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/bruce-schneier-internet-of-th...
This is a bad thing for all consumers, period.
Is this really the best quote out there on Trump's intentions regarding NN?
To be honest, it looks like he took it for some other kind of regulation altogether and just used it as a pretext to bitch about Obama and censorship. If anything, NN forces all ISPs to "carry" conservative media.