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Candidates for Sale


Chilly

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For all the excitement that Barack Obama has garnered, and all the talk about a new day in Washington, it would be tragic if the real legacy of his election victory was to finally expose the essentially unchanging, oligarchic nature of our political system. It's the same old story: Money talks, and bull sh-- walks. And don't be surprised if we're the ones still walking after November.

 

The King is dead. Long live the King

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It really is telling that this thread has only a couple posts, while the others have lots more, no?

 

Enjoy your government, morons.

 

What's more telling is that Matt Taibbi is considered a good journalist.

 

Can't wait for more nuggets like, money talks, bulls%^t walks. Insightful.

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What's more telling is that Matt Taibbi is considered a good journalist.

 

Can't wait for more nuggets like, money talks, bulls%^t walks. Insightful.

 

Too bad he's the only one reporting on the flow of money in the campaigns.

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Too bad he's the only one reporting on the flow of money in the campaigns.

 

But he's not just reporting, he's offering his view on it. Just like we're supposed to be shocked that McCain received money from telecom lobbyists and that was the reason that he supported an internet tax moratorium that purportedly benefits them. Yet, data shows that cable companies have a far greater share of internet customers. So, what does that say.

 

My biggest issue is that Taibbi gives short shift to the short-staffed FEC, when that is a larger issue along with the basic idiocy of McCain Feingold. The main reason that Dems blocked full staffing of FEC for over 12 months is that it gave an advantage to a candidate with more small dollar contribution base. Since we all know who that candidate is and which party has stalled the nomination process, you would figure that if he's unearthing great scandals in fundraising, he would devote more time to the politicization of a system that was meant to be apolitical.

 

But instead, we learned that we're not getting screwed, but are getting f-d.

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It really is telling that this thread has only a couple posts, while the others have lots more, no?

 

Enjoy your government, morons.

 

I think most people have tuned out your constant link spamming to the point that when you've actually posted something good people don't even want to check it out. I recommend everyone read this however, it reminds me of Jesse Ventura saying something to the effect that American Democracy offers the voter only one more choice than Communist China.

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But he's not just reporting, he's offering his view on it. Just like we're supposed to be shocked that McCain received money from telecom lobbyists and that was the reason that he supported an internet tax moratorium that purportedly benefits them. Yet, data shows that cable companies have a far greater share of internet customers. So, what does that say.

 

The cable companies aren't tier-1 providers, so they have to buy tier-1 access. The telecoms are major players in the tier-1 game, with AT&T the largest tier-1 provider by far. Qwest, Sprint, and Verizon are all in the tier-1 market.

 

More customers for cable companies leads to more bandwidth purchased by the ISPs from the tier-1 providers.

 

My biggest issue is that Taibbi gives short shift to the short-staffed FEC, when that is a larger issue along with the basic idiocy of McCain Feingold. The main reason that Dems blocked full staffing of FEC for over 12 months is that it gave an advantage to a candidate with more small dollar contribution base. Since we all know who that candidate is and which party has stalled the nomination process, you would figure that if he's unearthing great scandals in fundraising, he would devote more time to the politicization of a system that was meant to be apolitical.

 

I don't disagree that he needed to spend more time on the issues with the FEC.

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The cable companies aren't tier-1 providers, so they have to buy tier-1 access. The telecoms are major players in the tier-1 game, with AT&T the largest tier-1 provider by far. Qwest, Sprint, and Verizon are all in the tier-1 market.

 

More customers for cable companies leads to more bandwidth purchased by the ISPs from the tier-1 providers.

 

Wrong tie-in. The internet tax moratorium is largely irrelevant to Tier-1 & peering statuses, because it's applied on the end user levels - ie cable modem or DSL subscribers. While Tier-1 providers certainly win if total traffic goes up, the bigger revenue is in the last mile. If anything, AT&T, Qwest & Verizon would benefit more from an Internet tax, because that tax would make cable phone service more expensive and the telcos would lose less customers to the cable guys.

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Really, though, I was trying to entice our good friend pBills to post int his thread, but alas I have failed in that quest.

 

That article is dead on about McCain and proves that he is Lucifer. All the stuff about Obama can be dismissed as there are totally acceptable explanations for each example in the article.

 

[/pBills]

 

 

 

 

Good enough?

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Wrong tie-in. The internet tax moratorium is largely irrelevant to Tier-1 & peering statuses, because it's applied on the end user levels - ie cable modem or DSL subscribers. While Tier-1 providers certainly win if total traffic goes up, the bigger revenue is in the last mile. If anything, AT&T, Qwest & Verizon would benefit more from an Internet tax, because that tax would make cable phone service more expensive and the telcos would lose less customers to the cable guys.

 

Hrm, interesting. I would have guessed that the bigger revenue was in the backbone market, not the last mile.

 

Thanks for correcting my pompous idiocy.

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Hrm, interesting. I would have guessed that the bigger revenue was in the backbone market, not the last mile.

 

Thanks for correcting my pompous idiocy.

 

AT&T's pure wholesale business revenue (the closest to what would be characterized as the backbone business) is about $14 billion, out of total revenue of $120 billion.

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AT&T's pure wholesale business revenue (the closest to what would be characterized as the backbone business) is about $14 billion, out of total revenue of $120 billion.

 

Damn, yeah, that is small. I just looked up the numbers for Global Crossing too - that company is much smaller than I thought it was.

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Damn, yeah, that is small. I just looked up the numbers for Global Crossing too - that company is much smaller than I thought it was.

 

Keep in mind that Global Crossing also generates most of its revenues outside the US. It's a gnat compared to AT&T.

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