... is 11 to 11 a "stunning rebuke"?

We are pleased that Salon points out that the United States lags in broadband access and that telecom companies are working hard to bring high-speed Internet to all Americans. However, Daniel Reilly's article "The telecom slayers" perpetuates several misconceptions about the current debate.

Foremost among them is the assertion that online media companies "will be forced to pay the lion's share of fees" is inaccurate and misleading. No one is forced to pay for tiered Internet service, and as a substantively different offering from standard non-tiered access, it's only fair. Meanwhile, Google is asking the government to give them this service for free, and if they succeed, it's the average Internet user who will pay the price.

Moreover, the idea that creating such a fast lane for "will stifle innovation and choice" is ludicrous. In fact, the opposite is true -- packet prioritization means that high-quality, streaming online video service is a real possibility. It isn't now (http://www.slate.com/id/2140930/). And Sen. Snowe's comparison of a free market to a "Soviet Union supermarket" only underscores how little she knows about the broadband market.

Ultimately, organizations like Save The Internet have confused citizens by conflating the separate issues of content discrimination and traffic-shaping. The telecommunications industry has no interest in the former, while the latter is a necessary tool for keeping Internet traffic manageable.

We admire the initiative of the video-maker Ben Going, but that doesn't make his argument correct. Indeed, his video is actually free of any arguments. Style over substance may play well in Hollywood, but when far-reaching new government regulations are on the horizon, facts matter more than emotion.

And until the day some telco despot with a yen for antiquated copper circuitry pulls the plug on open access and the First Amendment this whole argument remains much ado about nothing.

Yeah, and on that day, it'll be too damn late to do anything about it.

It's attitudes like yours that allow large corporation to screw people. Why should I care? I've got my little piece of the pie, all this brouhaha is silly, who cares if the lobbyists are duking it out on Capitol Hill, what does it have to do with me?

It has everything to do with your usage of the internet, John. That's the POINT to grass-roots activism. If the average person using the internet doesn't make his voice heard, then one day your plug will be pulled, or priced out of your range.

And there you'll be, wondering what the hell happened.

In Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare writes: "Everyone can master a grief but he that has it. " No less passionate in their meaningless desire to "slay the telecoms" and establish Orwellian net neutrality mobilized, naive technocrats reared on suspicion, blogging away, and still playing their records backwards look to the time when they can have their Ben & Jerry's Cherry Che Guevara and eat it too. Rather comfortable in my own Matrix like existence all I want is 100 Mbps and I know that this hi-def IPTV advent will not occur if the government decides to once again shackle the telecoms with investment deterring regulations enacted solely upon the premise of hypthoteical arguments and anti-competitive practices. Instead of focusing the broadband debate (i.e H.R.5252) upon the initiatives that will bring about an adavanced product battle of Armaggedon that will end the unregulated cable company monopolies self annoited defenders of the public interest like Ben Scott have taken it upon themselves with the often paradoxical zeal of those who will defend our most cherished freedoms and indeed the purity of the "end-to-end" principle by aligning themselves with billionaires like Sergey Brin. Back here in the real world of bad coffee, mass transportation, and above ground swimming pools I care not a wit for smug underdog sentiment when I cannot excede more than 3Mbps under the best of circumstances on a cable modem. And until the day some telco despot with a yen for antiquated copper circuitry pulls the plug on open access and the First Amendment this whole argument remains much ado about nothing.

Sen. Ted Stevens is like George Bush, neither of them knows much of anything. Bush's ignorance shows every single time he makes a speech or fondles Angela Merkel in public. Bush is nothing but a clown, an emporer with no clothes and because of that he is destroying OUR America, it's not his America.

Rumsfeld, he of little if any military knowledge, says he has the confidence of the pres. and people just accept that. But there is a huge fallacy in logic here. SO WHAT IF HE HAS BUSH'sCONFIDENCE, that mere statement is supposed to imbue him with some kind of credibility, NFW. The Bush himself has no 'credibility or body of knowledge and expertise', so what does that confer on Rummy. IT CONFERS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. This is simply and nothing more than the blind leading the blind, or the dumb leading the dumb, it's simply a case of DUMB AND DUMBER.

'We the people' hesitate to run for political positions at any level of government. I't is no wonder that congress/government/the WH gets so little done. These assholes actually know very little. They are driven by nothing more than partisan political ambitions and self aggrandizement.

I personally think most of them are incompetents other than the fact that most of them are lawyers(may the saints presevere us from lawyers, insurance salesman and used car salesman and most of all POLITICIANS) most politicians seem to know little else than the law which they don't follow anyway or which they bend twist and distort to meet their own selfish ends.

And on top of all that, they are liars to 'we the people'.

Let's get right down to the bottom line, any politician who lies to the people ought to be removed from office, spend a year or more in jail depending on the severity of damage done and never be allowed to hold public office again.

That alone would REVOLUTIONIZE our political sytem. The other thing that needs to be done is our election system needs major reforms.

The power has to be returned to 'we the people' or I am convinced American democratic values are doomed.

Does anyone really want Halliburton or Bechtel or Kerr McGee or ADM or Cargill or the Carlyle group running our elections, our social security system, our government, or our military.

I read very recently that after WWII corporations paid for about 40-45% of the cost of running our government via their taxes. Hang on now you will be shoched. Corporations pay 7% of the cost of running our government that means 'we the people' pay 93% of the cost of running our government.

He who has the gold makes the rules. 'We the people' pay almost the entire cost of running our government that means it is our damn government, we frickin' own it. We pay the bills than we get to make the rules.

If corporatocracy wants to rule our gov't then they must pay 97% of the cost to run OUR government than it will be their government and they will have the right to make the rules.

AMERICA BELONGS TO 'WE THE PEOPLE'.

AMERICA IS THE PEOPLE.

It is that simple and at the very same time IT IS THAT PROFOUND.