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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

> It is now abundantly clear which party values what, and for whom. If we would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our souls from partying with Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility', then we're going to continue to complain about this for another 50 years and beyond.

If that were true, it'd be great. But which is the party that supports municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility? California has a Democratic governor, Democratic legislature, and in the most populous areas Democratic local government, and yet no municipal broadband.

There's a map here of which state legislatures have passed restrictions on municipal broadband, and it seems pretty idiosyncratic relative to blue/red politics: https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... E.g. WV, OH, IN, IL, KY, GA, NM, VT are friendly to it, while WA, OR, TX, CO, AL, PA, FL, MA are unfriendly.

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Single-issue voters don't vote straight party tickets. You have to learn about the individual candidates and only vote for the ones that support your pet issue.

The mayor in this story probably didn't care much either way about municipal broadband. They just don't see it as an issue worth the effort.

If there were a real chance that not supporting municipal broadband would hurt their re-election chances, they'd be more likely to support it. If not, perhaps their successor would see things differently.

NC is missing from the unfriendly list. I believe it was time warner cable who bribed the state legislature a bit over a decade ago, and again recently. By the legislature i mean almost everyone in one party, and a few in the other. They are of course the only viable ISP in much of the state, though now they go by spectrum because of the constant unchecked mergers. They are worse than ever.

It's true municipal broadband is spreading in all kinds of districts, but in places where it's being debated one particular party always sides with the telecoms. Lets not forget their appointee ajit pai.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161031/07232735920/after...

> If that were true, it'd be great. But which is the party that supports municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility? California has a Democratic governor, Democratic legislature, and in the most populous areas Democratic local government, and yet no municipal broadband.

California politics is a clusterfuck of epic proportions because of systemic deficiencies so I'd caution against taking any conclusions from it, even though on paper one party has had near total control for decades. The major bills like budgets and taxes require a 2/3 supermajority and until independent redistricting was implemented, any sort of progress on those issues required capitulating to a small number of gerrymandered districts that tended to produce extremist politicians (relative to their demographics). I'm not talking about districts in Fresno or something, but several right in the middle of Orange County. Passing a budget in California used to be a year round job of porkbarelling and horse trading for a significant fraction of the legislature.

Once the FCC introduced net neutrality rules, no one felt it was worth the effort to revisit the rules that limited municipalities from establishing ISPs. Trump really galvanized the party in CA but now, the state is a battleground between the "neoliberal" and "progressive" factions which are both ostensibly Democrats but have fundamentally different views on the free market's place in society. Even though a lot of the "read my lips, no new taxes" types are out, there is still a fundamental philosophical difference within the party that requires compromise and politics moves slowly.

That said, (late?) last year CA won a major ruling against the FCC (remains to be seen what the Supreme Court will say) that allows it to diverge from FCC regulations so expect a lot more progress once the list of high priority items shrinks.

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