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Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

> He thinks (mainly because of ignorance, I guess) that ISPs are competing in a decent approximation of a free market, and that consumers have a choice of providers offering various services at various competitive price points.

No, he doesn't. John Boehner is an intelligent individual. His number one campaign contributor is AT&T.

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N0000...

He damn well understands the issues. He understands that AT&T wants something, and AT&T pays him a lot of money and AT&T wants a return on that payment. This is not rocket science.

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That link tells you absolutely nothing, since there is no way to distinguish between 'John Boehner has this stance because AT&T is his biggest contributor' and 'AT&T is John Boehner's biggest contributor because he has this stance.'

I certainly contribute to causes I support, and if I were an American, I'd contribute to politicians whose causes I support. I would happily contribute money on behalf of my business to a politican who supported causes friendly to my business. There's no impropriety in that, on my part or the politician's.

This is exactly why we need campaign reform.

If you're business X, who's product is something that is provably not in the people's best interest you can ram through its legality with enough money thrown at the policy makers who are supposed to be serving the people who elected them.

AT&T did not elect John Boehner. John Boehner should not share _any_ ties with AT&T.

AT&T did not elect John Boehner. John Boehner should not share _any_ ties with AT&T.

This argument would apply as much to individual campaign contributions. Individuals have agendas just as corporations (and non-profits, and PAC's) do. If that were the rule then wouldn't electability just be based on the politician's personal wealth rather than the wealth of their supporters?

Nothing is provable in politics. You're not going to get consensus on 'the people's best interest'. You're not even going to get consensus on 'the people'. (Apparently the stockholders of AT&T aren't invited.)

Given that, 'campaign reform' just sounds like another way to keep participants out that you don't agree with. Businesses shouldn't participate. Unions shouldn't participate. Churches shouldn't participate. Non-profits shouldn't participate. Rich people can participate - as long as they aren't allowed to participate too much, and can't have any privacy when they do it.

If people who don't pay taxes are allowed to vote themselves benefits, I don't see how anyone can argue that a business owner can't donate whatever they want to whatever cause or candidate they like. Everyone participates and things shake out how they shake out.

You're absolutely right. It is exclusionary. Participation should be exclusive to those who can vote. This means, no corporations, no organizations, no churches, etc. Individuals _only_.

Not letting Canadians vote in our elections is exclusionary too, that makes sense to me. Just because it's exclusionary doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

Of course we can't get consensus on 'best interest' but at least we can limit participation to those who's interests are on the table.

If you're CEO of X-Corp participate all you want, but do it with _your_ money and _your_ vote and that's _it_. At least there's a chance I'll be able to reason with and engage in political debate with you.

I really wish more people would know about/use/and reference sites like http://opensecrets.org and http://opencongress.org when discussing politics and influence. Great and severly underused resources run by open initiatives and groups like the Sunlight Foundation and The Center for Responsive Politics. If you care, get educated and contribute to, help support, donate, code, whatever for OpenCongress. Great tool I check daily.

Full disclosure, I'm an active participant and donater to OpenCongress. Also, I am not the shii of shii.org fame, to preemptively stop questions about that...

His main source of info is probably also AT&T. He doesn't have to be evil, just misinformed. If you thought spear-phishing attacks were effective, just imagine having a multi-million dollar budget for the lobbyists to construct an alternate reality for this one guy.

It's evil when you know that AT&T's "information" is really an instruction, and disregarding it is likely to produce a sudden downturn in the donations they just "happen" to make, while producing an upturn in donations to anyone who "happens" to "agree with their perspective".

In truth, none of these guys are living in bubbles. They all know that what they're being told to do is anti-citizen. And they also know that if they don't pass it into law, they'll be replaced with someone even less ethical and more mercenary.

I mean, how do you think this guy got his job in the first place?

Or maybe ATT supports him because they like his position on the topic?

Perhaps a good model here is that Boehner's position and ATT's support are dynamically coupled ... each causes and maintains the other.

Kinda makes it tricky to assign blame (which is fortunate, for Boehner).

The thing is Boehner's position is so contrary to reality it's hard not to conclude that AT&T is influencing his position. Otherwise we'd have to believe that AT&T was lucky enough to stumble upon a Senator who misunderstands an issue in the exact way that benefits them.

Excuse me, but calling his position so contrary to "reality" is asinine. The internet has thrived and flourished for the past 20 years specifically because of a lack of government regulation - I don't know why it is so hard to believe that some people want to keep it that way.

Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee claim the internet flourished because of the maintenance of a common carriage agreement, which net neutrality advocates want to cement.

I can understand how common carriage rules lead to great things on the internet. I have a lot more trouble understanding how cementing these rules would stunt the internet's development, and by contrast, I can easily see how the dismantlement of these rules could lead to Bad Things.

Indeed, the clear truth (as numerous luminaries have also said) is that internet would never have existed without massive government intervention to require local telephone companies to allow data to be transmitted over "their" phone lines, which otherwise they would have prevented.

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