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Comment by martindbp | Hacker News Reader

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It was not targeted. They are not able to meet the constraints written out in the law. Are you saying we should ignore the law as it was written and give them the hand out anyway?

> They are not able to meet the constraints written out in the law.

Which constraints were they not able to meet? Brendan Carr, an FCC Commissioner, has publicly claimed that Starlink clearly met the traditional constraints, but that the FCC invented a new standard and claimed that Starlink failed to meet that. [0]

> Are you saying we should ignore the law as it was written and give them the hand out anyway?

It depends. Did the FCC apply their standard in a consistent way? And is it normal practice for them to revoke the contract of every partner for the mere possibility of their missing a deadline? If the answer to both questions is 'Yes', then this action is proper. If not, then it is not only improper, but would appear to be an act of blatant political corruption, aimed at someone who is clearly considered to be an enemy of the administration.

The selective enforcement of the law is the very definition of corruption.

[0] https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/173469670679577812...

Starlink was not the only provider that was excluded from the subsidy. Giving public money away to a service provider that cannot provide the service as described in the law is the definition of corruption. You can see the details that led to the commission making its decision here: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-105A1.pdf

Enough laws have been written that you are in violation of many of them by nature of existing.

There are also plenty of contradictory laws still on the books which are not enforced because it's considered ridiculous to the judicial system. Judges don't like it, and prosecutors have better things to do like going after criminals.

Perusing idiotic nonsense before putting all the murders and rapists in prison really does more to undermine the legitimacy of the legal system than any political adversary to the US could ever dream of.

The rule of law is important and trying to use nihilistic arguments to ignore the laws as they are written to give one of the world's richest people a free billion dollars even though his company is not able to provide the specified service defies all logic.

Are you really comparing "inability to receive government subsidies due to not meeting requirements" to violent physical crimes?

This isn't some arcane "no horse parking on Sundays" law. The whole purpose of the law is to deliver the specified speeds and the requirements are not being met.

Like an investigation maybe?

Are they wrong about these details then? Or is that the defense: “doesn’t matter if I’m actually doing that or not. The government is out to get me.”

To someone who's used to getting away with murder, enforcement of the rules as written seems like persecution. Consider the "Funding secured" mess Elon got himself into with the SEC[1].

[1] https://www.theverge.com/23558736/elon-musk-securities-fraud...

The document in the tweet has a list of rebuttals.

Unfortunately Twitter doesn't function for me after loading it a few times earlier today. I max out my daily quota through precaching or something. It used to work a few years back!

Can you post link that is not login-walled?

https://nitter.net/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1734696706795778126

the decision was made before he bought twitter

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