FCC Set to Take Away Another Ham Radio Band in 2021
k0lwc.com
k0lwc.com
But a senator - supposedly the highest rank of the legislative branch - can receive 100s of thousands of $ from a handful of companies and then turn around and propose something that directly hands precious federal resources to those exact companies who stand to earn billions from them.
How is this even legal, let alone seen as normal?!?
When you make a political donation you're required to name your employer. That's intended to prevent companies from directing people how to donate: if the SEC sees a suspicious amount of money going to one candidate, they can investigate. "Suspicious" would be millions, an amount large enough to actually sway a candidate, not a few thousand.
That's the thing here: the table is from 2015 to now, and that's just not a lot of money to a politician running for national office. They need to raise millions to get re-elected.
You can't buy a senator to do the opposite of what you want, not for that kind of money. All you can do is get the senator elected who is already predisposed to think like you.
I do wish OpenSecrets wouldn't summarize by employer this way, since it's misleading. AT&T and Verizon employees gave to Thune because they like Thune. The fact is Thune was always going to win in a walk, and he crushed his opponent by a 2:1 margin. They just like him there. He raised $10 million in that election, of which the tens of thousands donated by employees of one industry just didn't make a differnce.
Thune voted for this because he's pro-business and anti... well, you don't need to hear what I think of Thune. But it's not as if he's doing the opposite of what his constituents want. They're perfectly thrilled that he's doing this, and in two years he's going to crush his opponent again.
I say this not to defend Thune or the system we're in. I'm deeply aggrieved at it. But it's not the outright bribery that OpenSecrets implies that it is. It's ideologues donating to, and voting for, the ideologues who agree with them.
In 2011, Pai was then nominated for a Republican Party position on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Minority leader Mitch McConnell.[18]
What a different time. Why in the world would Obama have listened to McConnel on this.
Table of frequencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_alloca...
Not that there (usually) is now. 9cm is a big loss to the amateur community, but honestly, it's not because it's currently heavily used, or for lack of alternative bands to communicate on. The band in question is not "mainstream" in ham radio in the way that lower (HF, VHF, UHF) frequencies are; it's used by microwave experimenters, and almost exclusively with home-built equipment. (You can't just buy an off-the-shelf, ready-to-use 9cm transceiver; at best you could probably buy a transverter, but many hams who are interested in this band will construct their equipment from scratch.)
The reason it's a big loss -- bigger than it would seem based purely on utilization -- is that, like every amateur band, it has its own peculiar characteristics, and experimenters are therefore losing an important and unique domain to experiment in. 9cm in particular is the lowest-frequency amateur band that is unarguably located in the "microwave" range, so it's of particular interest for that reason alone. And it's a wide allocation, which is especially relevant in an era of high-bandwidth digital communication: lower frequency amateur allocations have correspondingly less bandwidth to work with, as well as, in general, stronger restrictions on how that bandwidth can be used.
Of course the loss also sets a depressing precedent. The majority of hams have never used the 3.4 GHz band (and now they'll never get to!) But what band are we going to lose next?