There is plenty of evidence that Kessler’s whole premise is wrong. For instance, Google Voice runs on Blackberries on the AT&T network. Apple allows other VoIP applications like Skype to run on the iPhone. There are reports that Apple is developing a product that would compete with Google Voice.

Even if you discount all of that, however, Kessler’s column is full of inaccuracies, faulty assumptions and outright misconceptions of the state of competition in the telecommunications space. These errors fall into four main areas:

• Misunderstanding and misapplication of technology concepts
• Business competition on features versus price
• Network investment and sunk costs
• Cable deregulation

We’ll break these down one by one.

Technology
Kessler’s suggestion for reform of wireless telecommunications is simple – “any device should work on any network.”

While that truly does sound like technology nirvana, unless we agree to one universal standard for every technology, it’s not likely to happen. Why? It’s due to the very thing Kessler claims to want – competition. As Victor Godinez points out in the Dallas Morning News:

Kessler’s insistence that “any device should work on any network” suggests that he doesn’t understand even the basics of cellphone technologies. T-Mobile’s and AT&T’s GSM networks are simply incompatible with Verizon’s and Sprint’s CDMA systems, no matter how much Kessler might think they are. That’s why, even when you unlock an iPhone, you can’t make it run on Verizon’s network.

Kessler makes a similar error when he suggests that ‚”voice is data.” As The Social Telco blog points out:

While there’s a sense in which that’s true – all communication is ultimately ‘data’ – it’s only true in the technical sense if it’s carried that way. Which it isn’t, on today’s cellular networks and most public telephone networks.

Other than where voice over IP is used, voice is circuit-switched, which means it ties up an entire (virtual) circuit from end to end for the duration of a call, making it unavailable for other purposes. Data, on the other hand, is typically packet-switched, meaning that a data ‘connection’ in fact only uses up network bandwidth when packets are actually being sent back and forth, otherwise freeing up that bandwidth for the use of others. As such, voice networks and voice calls use network capacity in a very different way from data, with different equipment required and different economics associated with them.

Wireless networks today are moving toward a new standard called LTE which will do two things. First, it will make Kessler’s assertion that ‘voice is data’ more or less accurate as it does rely on IP for voice traffic. Second, it breaks down the barrier between CDMA and GSM networks. Verizon has suggested they’ll be using LTE by next year. These advances are being brought about by the very competition Kessler claims is thwarting them.

Kessler also suggests that connection speeds to our homes and phones should double every year, and suggests they have not. Here again, Kessler gets it wrong.

We explored exactly this topic on Cable’s blog after Robb Topolski made a similar assertion about broadband speeds and Moore’s Law. The fact is, since the inception of the 300 baud modem in 1978, broadband speed to the home has more than doubled every two years. We have not done a similar comparison for cellular technology since people have used wireless for data for a very short period of time.

Competing on Price or Features
While Kessler spends most of his space clamoring for competition in price, he ignores robust competition on features. It is a glaring omission given the economics of telecommunications.

Telecommunications is an expensive game. Cable companies have spent billions, as have the telephone companies, building out their networks. We have seen estimates that the per-home connection and acquisition cost for one FiOS customer is between $3,000 and $5,000. The same holds true for wireless when you factor in spectrum costs, towers, etc. It will take those companies a very long time to recuperate the sunk costs.

So, how do you compete to get that back if you focus only on competition on price? The answer is that you don’t. You compete on price, if at all, only to gain market share. Once you have a healthy share of the market, you stop competing on price and compete on features.

That competition on features is exactly what the iPhone represents. Ringtones, app stores, and other features are the core of competition when costs are roughly equivalent. Working in cable, we often hear arguments about price. They typically go like this:

Complaint: My cable (and/or broadband) bill is too high.

Reply: Well, then switch to Satelite/DSL

Customer: But they don’t offer (VOD, speed like cable, etc)

Reply: So what you’re really saying is you want all the features that cable offers, but you don’t want to pay for them?

In other words, the choice of which offering to choose comes down to features. There are, people will acknowledge, cheaper options. However, people don’t make decisions solely on price. They make them on perceived value and that includes features. I can get a phone that makes calls, and plays MP3s, and does other things, for less than I’d pay for an iPhone. But I want the perceived value of the iPhone. That’s the value of exclusivity. Do I have to use your network to get the phone I want, yes you do.

If you argue competition solely on price, though, Kessler suggests that AT&T Wireless margins are an ‘embarrassingly high’ 25%. Does that point to a flaw in my argument? Not really. As Hance Haney at Tech Liberation Front points out:

Before we get to that, Kessler complains that margins in AT&T’s cellphone unit are an ‘embarrassingly’ high 25%. He doesn’t point out that AT&T’s combined profit margin – taking into account all products and services – is only 9.66%.

AT&T is actually earning less now than it was legally entitled to earn when fully regulated – 9.66% versus 11.75%.

Haney also points out that those margins are required by government mandate, to subsidize landline service.

In a normal business, an unprofitable product or service would disappear. But telecom providers are still required by law to provide plain old telephone service to anyone who requests it. It’s called the ‘carrier of last resort’ obligation. Believe it or not, providers are still required to provide copper-based, circuit switched phone service in many places, even though they could cut costs by deploying fixed wireless and VoIP to deliver basic phone service.

This service obligation imposes a tax on those of us who have canceled our landline service in favor of our cellphones in the form of artificially high prices for wireless service.

Network Investment and Sunk Costs
Let us pretend for a moment that Kessler’s notions of reform made any kind of sense. He suggests the root evil lies in ‚’own[ing] a pipe between you and your customers,’ and thus we should take pipe ownership away. Except, those pipes are already built and paid for.

The mobile carriers already paid handsomely for the spectrum they use. If the government were to take ownership, then those companies would have to be compensated for the billions they spent. You may recall the ‘open access’ argument from a decade ago that proposed that it would be bad to let companies own their pipes because they could have exclusivity over the data that flows through them. Since the cable industry has invested more than $145 billion over the past 13 years, how should they be compensated? What of AT&T and Verizon’s investment in their networks because they want to compete with cable? Should that all be taken away with no compensation? And if it’s taken away, who can do a better job?

Companies are investing in networks to compete with each other. Is the competition and investment happening fast enough? Arguably not. But it is happening, and that competition is being spurred by exactly the concerns Kessler raises – demand for services, demand for speed, and demand for features.

Cable Deregulation
As we said, most of Kessler’s piece concerns itself with wireless. We have our issues with his facts and arguments there. However, given our employment with the cable industry, where we truly take umbrage at his comments is Kessler’s claim that one of the key elements of a new national data policy would be to “End municipal exclusivity deals for cable companies.”

Fortunately for Kessler, his work has already been done, since this was covered in the 1992 Communications Act. To quote from the section on “Franchising and Regulation”:

“a franchising authority may not grant an exclusive franchise and may not unreasonably refuse to grant an additional competitive franchise.”

Over the last few years, many states have taken that federal mandate a step further and passed laws that took franchise authority away from the cities and placed it at the state level. The FCC went a step further and made sweeping changes to section 621 of the Cable Act and granted a federal franchise authority to further streamline the process.

Conclusion
There’s plenty of irony in Kessler’s piece. He argues for competition, which already exists. He argues against exclusivity and pipe ownership and in favor of “new, feature-rich and productive applications.” But if you can’t own the pipe, who will pay for upgrades? If you can’t have an exclusive offering of a product or service, why invest the money to develop such offerings? How will we get the “faster and faster data connections” that Kessler wants? If you can take away the ownership of infrastructure that is already built, why should investors have any faith in supporting a business affected by such radically sweeping changes?

Focusing on a strong broadband infrastructure is a good thing. Focusing on a national data plan, especially as voice actually does become data, makes sense. However, Kessler’s arguments, based as they are on faulty technical, policy, and business assumptions simply don’t add up to much.

[I]f the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining — meaning taxpayers aren’t subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services and a good network of doctors, just like any other private insurer would do — then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about — if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems. (emphasis mine)

This argument really breaks down on a number of levels, and it’s worth a look at all of them.

First, let’s start with the fact that Obama’s comparing the most advanced medical care system in the world with the job of moving a package from Point A to Point B. Any schmuck can take a package – which has your name and address right on it – and get it from here to there. If I gave anyone reading this post an addressed package, you could jump in your car and drive it to the destination with minimal failure (allowing for flat tires, the recipient having moved and left no address, random explosion of the house, whatever).

The fact is, shipping isn’t a teribly complicated business. Yet even Obama admits that the Government option is the one that gets it wrong. He points out that FedEx and UPS are doing it right, but the USPS isn’t.

So that raises the next point of failure in his argument. It’s not like FedEx and UPS were doing it first, and the government created a new mail delivery vehicle to force FedEx and UPS to lower their costs. FedEx and UPS, to the contrary, sprung up in response to a near complete failure of the government option. They arose from the ashes of countless lost packages, and inefficient government bungling. They recognized a market for reliable package delivery.

Let us imagine, however, that we treat package delivery the way we treat medical care. In the package delivery business, you must a) declare the value of your package, and b) acknowledge that should it be lost or damaged, you will be entitled to only that amount.

In May of 1996, a man cut off his own hand believing it to be evil. He refused to let doctors reattach the hand, then sued them for not doing so. He claimed they should have known he was nuts and forced him to accept the reattachment of the hand. While this is an extreme example, this sort of frivolous suit is filed every day. Malpractice suits and insurance contribute a staggering amount to the costs of health care. The total amount can be debated, but a Congressional Budget Office Brief looking at malpractice insurance premiums paid by doctors rose twice as fast as medical spending between 2000 and 2002 – roughly 15%. For general surgeons the hike was even greater running at 33%.

In package delivery, the cost of package breakage doesn’t rise dramatically year over year. If it did, the companies would look at ways to reduce breakage and loss. Yet our government has ignored the skyrocketing costs of malpractice and malpractice insurance as a part of the reform debate.

Costs are a huge problem. We get that. But that raises another key difference between the healthcare debate and the President’s chosen analogy of package delivery. Research into package delivery technology isn’t a dramatic portion of the package delivery costs. Do they buy equipment? Yes. Do they invest in dfferent ways to scan barcodes and create shipping labels? Of course. Are they handwritten package slips a huge pain in the ass versus the barcoded, Internet-generated slips? I imagine they are. But unlike, for instance, pharmaceutical companies, the amount they spend on R&D is fairly constrained. They don’t spend a decade or longer trying to figure out a way to move ONE particular size and shape of package.

As a result, comparing the amount of money invested in drug research and clinical trials to the box moving industry is probably a silly thing to do. Yet their was POTUS, telling us that the two are somehow equivalent.

Looking at his argument, the one part of the example the President got right was when he said, “It’s the [Government] that’s always having problems.” If you think the same people that brought you Katrina, the US Postal Service, the missing $400 million dollar Mars Global Surveyor, the $600 hammer and the $900 toilet seat, and countless other blunders will do a better job with health of every American, look no further than the countless stories of Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse.

The fact is, Obama’s example probably gives us more to think about as an example of why we shouldn’t let government manhandle our health care system. As Obama points out, and as the famed economist Milton Friedman said, “The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.”

If you have ever read The Perfect Storm, there is a great explanation of the three weather phenomenon that came together to create the system that is the focus of the book. The movie glosses over the explanation, so read the book instead.

What we are witnessing this week is the same interaction of three deadly factors. Any one of the three would be destructive. In total, however, they have just cost you and I a trillion dollars. And don’t for a moment think the total will end there. Mark my words, this bailout has only begun to cost us.

The Three Factors

Under a Republican congress and Democratic President, Washington expanded a Carter era relic called the Community Reinvestment Act.

The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound banking operations.

In other words, banks will make loans for houses to people who are ill-equipped to pay them back. The “encouragement” came in the form of penalties for not doing so.

Add to that another bill passed by a GOP controlled Congress with a Democratic President. That bill, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act sought to:

Enhance competition in the financial services industry by providing a prudential framework for the affiliation of banks, securities firms, insurance companies, and other financial service providers, and for other purposes.

In other words, prior to the law, Insurance companies could sell insurance, banks could do loans, securities firms sold stock, and never the three should meet. After the law, it was a free for all. Banks created securities out of the shitty loans they issued under the CRA, Insurance companies under wrote those while creating their own shitty securities, etc, etc.

Now into the mix you have to throw the American people. They look at the news and see home values going through the roof. The react the same way they did during the Beanie Baby craze. They rush out to get a piece of that action. They can buy a $5 stuffed animal and sell it for $300 on eBay, so they buy the hell out of Beanie Babies.

Unfortunately, economic laws will only support that for so long. The company will make more (thereby reducing demand for the things), people will lose interest, or some other force will enter the market and suddenly your left with crates full of stuffed animals rotting in closets. Beanie Babies were an artificial market.

In the same way, people saw home ownership as a great way to make money. Home flipping became the rage, people took out second mortgages to buy second homes, and suddenly everyone had to buy a house.

The Perfect Storm

The trouble is when you have people who can’t afford to buy houses meeting up with people who have to sell houses to keep from running afoul of laws designed to promote home ownership among the poor, you wind up with a) a guy who will lie about his income or b) a guy who will lie about the value of the house or the terms of the loan.

So suddenly a lot of people are invested in houses they can barely afford anyway, and the real terms of those notes go into effect. People can’t pay, so the value of that note becomes worthless.

Since you have built shitty securities on the value of that house, the value of those securities go into the toilet. When that happens, the debt that the mortgage company is carrying becomes unsustainable and the house of cards comes tumbling down.

This is exactly what we’re witnessing. We’re seeing exactly what happens when an artificial market comes tumbling down. There never was a market for housing for people who can’t afford it. The government created one, took their eyes of the guys who were managing it, and is now asking us to throw another deck on the house of cards so people who can’t afford to borrow can keep doing so.

DC is Fundamentally Broken

I have said that Washington DC is so fundamentally broken it is going to drag the rest of the country down with it. I am more convinced of that than ever today.

With this bailout, we’re solving nothing. We’re simply allowing people who shouldn’t have credit to keep on borrowing. We’re enabling addictive behavior. The Congressmen who voted for the bailout should be tried as traitors.

Despite all of that, I was forced to watch to politicians on TV last night both of whom blamed “the greed and corruption of Wall Street” for the mess while giving a pass to the incompetence and stupidity of Washington. Make no mistake. This dismal situation was the result of horrible policy that started with, and was supposed to be overseen by, Congress. They passed the laws that allowed this to happen and ARE TAKING ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY for the mess they created.

What’s worse, is both candidates for President, and both candidates for Vice President, appear to have learned absolutely nothing from watching this happen and are pursuing the same ridculous policies that have crippled our nation.

I believe you can absolutely count on two things.

First, when the next Administration is about 6 months or a year into its term, they will have to deal with an economic disaster of Biblical proportions. This is a band-aid fix for a missing leg. It’s stupid and will do nothing but punt the problem into an off-year when the sheep aren’t watching.

Second, if you think we dodged a bullet with this bill today, you haven’t seen anything yet.

The fact is, we judge our elected officials by what they do for their state. The jobs they bring home, the scientific research centers located in our towns, the military bases, the bridges, etc. When someone is good at attracting that investment in their home state, we call them effective. If they fail at bringing federal dollars back home, we call them ineffective.

We hire politician’s to do a job where the goal is to get stuff for their state. We give them the power – through the nation’s checkbook – to get that stuff. Then, we demand that they not do their job. It’s ridiculous.

If earmarks are evil, and we want to get rid of them, then we need to fundamentally change the role of the elected official. We cannot support a system where their election depends on their ability to deliver for the people, and then blame them for delivering.

Banning earmarks outright would take more political will than Congress has ever had. It’s like challenging them to put down their machine gun and walk willingly into a knife fight. They know they have the advantage over their would-be rivals. As long as they bring back the pork, they don’t have to find a real job.

Why would they want to give up such a powerful tool?

`(B) TERMINATION OF AUTHORITY- The authority under paragraph (1) shall terminate on the earlier of–

`(i) the completion of the transition of the Graduate School to an entity that is non-governmental and not a nonappropriated fund instrumentality of the United States, as determined by the Secretary; or

`(A) IN GENERAL- The Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to use funds available to the Department of Agriculture and such resources of the Department as the Secretary considers appropriate (including the assignment of such employees of the Department as the Secretary considers appropriate) to assist the General Administrative Board of the Graduate School in the conversion of the Graduate School to an entity that is non-governmental and not a nonappropriated fund instrumentality of the United States, including such privatization activities not otherwise inconsistent with law or regulation.

`(1) CEASE OPERATIONS- Not later than October 1, 2009, the Secretary of Agriculture shall cease to maintain or operate a nonappropriated fund instrumentality of the United States to develop, administer, or provide educational training and professional development activities, including educational activities for Federal agencies, Federal employees, non-profit organizations, other entities, and members of the general public.

`(2) TRANSITION-

`(ii) September 30, 2009.’.

That’s right! The ridiculous waste of taxpayer time that is the USDA Graduate School must become a private entity or close its doors by October of next year.

Having flaunted its tax status to engage in direct competition with schools that don’t get such breaks, while still claiming to be “non-governmental” the USDA boxed itself into a corner. Apparently someone in government realized the ridiculous contradiction in calling it an NAFI while allowing it to use its government connection to skirt laws. So language was inserted to pull the plug on this $60 million boondoggle.

All I can say is it’s about time. Thank you to whatever House staffer followed my gripes about this and finally had the stones to kill it. Now the next question is, what bloated piece of bureaucratic crap do I set my sights on next?

P.S. I don’t actually believe I had anything to do with getting this killed, but I’ll be the first to pop the cork on a champagne bottle next October 1.

Update: My dear friend Anne was the first person to point out the absurd government abuse that is the USDA Graduate School. Any part I played in in getting it closed (which was none, but ignore that) starts with her.

The Politico today has a column penned by David All, a young GOP internet consultant, and Saul Anuzis, Chairman of the Michigan GOP. The column looks at the premise that the GOP is behind its Democratic counterparts online, and suggests one possible reason why – we don’t support the idea of big government intervention in regulating the Internet.

As Republicans, we must not only adopt the new techniques and structure of Internet democracy, but also understand the importance of preserving the open nature of the Net as a policy issue.The tools that are available at low cost to Republicans are only there because of an Internet ecosystem that has managed to remain open, despite the efforts of phone and cable companies.

Republicans need to adopt a lighter approach that will preserve the values of decentralization and freedom — essential conservative values — on the Internet. If we fail to engage in this effort, the Internet service providers, who control the last mile of the tubes into a customer’s house or small business, will choke off the affordable tools available to conservative activists.They have already started exercising their market power to block applications that enable Internet users to distribute information across the Net.

They will make the Internet look a lot more like cable TV, where citizens lack access to every legal channel available and where, consequently, conservative activists get shut out. Taking away these free tools will come at the major expense of the activists and small-businesspeople who are the core of our party’s strength.

Given the attacks on cable and telephone companies in this diatribe, it would be easy enough to discount any response from me as shilling on behalf of cable. Look at my bio, however, and you’ll see that I may be the one person uniquely qualified to address every inaccuracy and outrageous claim in his post. Prior to coming to work in the cable industry, I was the eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney ’04, and the Republican National Committee. I’ve been involved in Republican politics – and online politics – since I launched one of the first state party websites (EVER) at the New Mexico GOP in 1995. At that time, there were only about 5 state parties online.

Since I have been active in GOP politics, and specifically online politics, since Andreesson released the browser in 1994, I have a bit to say about the reasons the GOP is behind (which virtually nobody argues). As an employee of the cable industry, I have a bit to say about what , if anything, that has to do with net neutrality.

The Cyclical Nature of Politics

To begin with, I, and many others, believe the GOP is behind online for the simple reason that it has never had to be ahead. When the GOP was previously in the minority it turned to talk radio to communicate and organize. In the early 1990s, talk radio was the most interactive medium and the party out of power generally gravitates to the best available method of message disbursement and organization.

In 2000, when the Democrats were out of power, they did the same and gravitated toward the Internet. The Republican Party still dominates talk radio, though the Democrats have been making inroads. Unfortunately, you can‚Äôt give money through your radio, so the media focused on the Internet and long ago stopped writing the “Why aren’t Democrats on talk radio?” stories.

Just as there is nothing preventing Democrats from building an audience on talk radio, there is nothing preventing Republicans from achieving online. Now that we are in the minority in Congress and, if Obama wins, may be completely out of power, Republicans will look to rebuild using the tools that offer the most capability to interact and spread a message. They will eventually catch up to and surpass what the Democrats are doing. That’s the cyclical nature of politics.

But What Does Net Neutrality Have to Do With This?

The short answer is absolutely nothing. But David is part of a group called Internet For Everyone whose founders have suggested nationalization of the Internet. The list of his coalition partners reads like a who’s who of the left. ACLU, ACORN, Care2, NOW and SEIU are just a few of the far left groups signed on to the project. David and his two web properties – SlateCard and Techrepublican – appear to be the only GOP organizations onboard with the project.

To his specific claim, it is simply absurd to make the suggestion that Republicans are behind because there is no national broadband solution. David might as well argue that the GOP is behind because the government hasn’t bought everyone a car. The two are just as closely related.

David, like most people arguing for Net Neutrality likes to throw out numbers that seem to support his point.

America’s rural voters are largely Republican. Yet they face major challenges in gaining access to a broadband Internet connection. The latest U.S. Census data show that only 39 percent of rural households subscribe to broadband — and nearly 10 million rural households are in areas not served by any broadband provider.

These figures come from an Internet for Everyone document, which cites a 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) of the U.S. Census Bureau. There is a document available on the NTIA website that provides statistics from the CPS. According to the CPS, 39% of rural households did respond that they have broadband service, but 19% also said they have dial-up, and another 10% responded that they access the Internet outside of their home. Thus 68% of rural households access the Internet according to the CPS survey. The figures for urban households, the only other category, were 54% broadband, 9% dial-up, and 9% outside of the home, for a total of 72%. The spread between rural and urban households is only 4%, hardly qualifying as a great divide, or leaving the poor rural folks behind.

Neither the NTIA site nor the CPS study address the 10 million households claim. The 10 million figure may be arrived at by referring to the number of housing units not passed by cable broadband service, according to estimates provided by SNL Kagan – a media research firm. Kagan found that 10 million households, not rural households, don’t have access to cable broadband – not broadband at all, which is what David claims . Simply put, not all of these people live in rural areas. For instance, some areas in Montgomery County, Maryland – a suburb of Washington DC, are unserved by cable, but that is hardly a “rural” area. Moreover, some of those are served by telephone company broadband service – as in Montgomery County. There are suburban or exurban communities that cable doesn’t serve, for one reason or another.

David also fails to note that the cable broadband he denigrates was a) built with $130 billion in private capital, not government subsidies, and b) was built without the burden of government regulation that hampered development of DSL. It was the lack of regulation and the investment of private funds that created the platform we rely on for high bandwidth applications. The cable system that serves 92% of Americans with broadband was built under a system identical to the current regulatory regime, not under the ‘good old days’ of common carrier and forced access.

It’s worth noting, by comparison, that the telephone companies sat on DSL technology for more than a decade while under the exact regulatory regime the IFE folks are now promoting. There was simply no incentive to invest in a network technology they could not monetize and see returns on the initial outlay. Now that they have been freed of such regulations, the telephone companies are aggressively building a $100+ billion Fiber to the Home networkto compete with cable.

Since David’s whole argument hinges on getting rural, Republican voters connected, it’s important to note that he got his central supporting facts wrong with regard to the current status of rural broadband. David made the same arguments in a Washington Times video interview posted yesterday (in which he conveniently rounds the number of Americans without a broadband connection down to 50%, despite many current estimates which place the figure at between 42% and 45% and likely to drop to 40% when numbers are compiled for the second quarter of 2008).

Since he has a habit of misstating facts and figures, one must ask if he is uninformed or intentionally misquoting numbers to justify his thesis. My belief is the former, but I still have some suspicion it may be the latter.

Further Pandering

Part of the reason I believe David may simply be desperate to make his case and willing to clutch at straws is the way he characterized the AP “research” into the Comcast/BitTorrent issue.

For example, Comcast was caught red-handed by The Associated Press blocking the distribution of the King James Bible. Martin launched an investigation and convened public hearings that put Comcast in the hot seat.

That is an absolutely false characterization of what happened. The Comcast/BitTorrent flap was a matter of Comcast trying to guarantee the best possible experience for the vast majority of its users, and trying to restrict the impact that heavy users of P2P applications have on broadband networks.

David implies that a) Comcast was aware the content the AP used in its test was the King James Bible and b) specifically targeted that traffic. Why would he make such outrageous claims to make his case? Because David is trying to convince Republicans to support his cause, and Republicans identify strongly with issues of faith. By claiming “the big bad cable company tried to stop you from seeing the bible” he’s pandering in the worst possible way.

As a Republican

As a Republican, I would be skeptical of Internet regulation on the best day, and downright hostile on any other. I do not believe the imposition of a new regulatroy regime is the cure to the perceived ills of either the state of broadband or the state of my party. As someone who has been thinking of ways for Republicans to use the Internet for almost fifteen years, I disagree completely with David’s ridiculous claim that the only way to save the party is to create a new bureaucracy to regulate the Internet.

While I respect David’s opinion and right to speak out on whatever topic he chooses, I firmly believe he could not be further off track on this issue. I also hope he will take the time to address my deconstruction of his argument and answer my challenge to the factual basis of his column. He may perhaps become informed about the subject matter rather than irresponsibly disseminating mistruths.

Authorities in Spotsylvania County, Va., said a woman who struck people with her car in a parking lot made a Nazi symbol and yelled “white power.” …

The victims, who are white, told police that a woman struck several pedestrians and a vehicle. One victim told police that the woman made a Nazi symbol, yelled “white power.”

The assumption in hate crimes is the crazy racist/homophobe/religious zealot has a beef against a specific group and targets members of that group. I’ve always wondered how that would play out if the victims were the same gender, religion, race and sexual preference. Perhaps it’s a older white Jewish kid beating up a younger one. Is it a hate crime if he shouts “you young punk” while administering the beat down? Is ageism respected as a hate crime component? What about two people with all the same characteristics but one is buff and the other is scrawny. Is geekism or skinnyism a component?

So now we may get our answer. It seems a crazy white supremacist has gone on a rampage targeting other white people. Since she attacked them randomly with a car, you can’t really claim she knew their religion or sexual identity. So a crazy white person attacks other white people to express her belief in “white power”.

I really want to follow this one and see if they charge her under hate crime laws or just as a nut. By all accounts, this crime is exactly the sort of thing that compelled the passage of hate crimes bills. Had the victims been black, or had the attack taken place at a synagogue or gay nightclub, you can bet they would be talking hate crimes – despite the fact that we’re obviously dealing with a woman who simply has a head full of bad wiring.

Given that she attacked her own race, will they have a hard time proving racial motivations? All other details of the crime fit the hate crimes mold, but the perp/victim mix is out of whack. Will this be the incident that makes people question hate crimes bills?

CableTechTalk will give the industry a voice in the ongoing discussion and debate over telecom policy discussions. Debate over the direction of our nation’s telecom laws increasingly takes place online. This blog seeks to be an active player in that conversation, but it won’t be one-sided. Far from a typical press release and talking points blog, CableTechTalk will invite people with whom we disagree to engage in cross posted debates on the issues – sharing both sides of the argument and letting readers draw their own conclusion.

The blog also gives us the opportunity to share developments in the gadgets that attach to and leverage our voice, video and data platform. This week we’re in Las Vegas looking at the new tech toys on display at CES. We’re looking at the new TVs and set-top boxes, personal entertainment devices, gaming and broadband applications, and all the other things that make life fun.

If you get a chance, I hope you’ll take a look.

Also, you have no doubt heard in the news about special micro chips that can be embedded directly in an animal’s skin that can help track a missing pet. While some serve as mere computer-based identifiers so that someone who finds your missing pet can be sure it is yours, others get fairly sophisticated.

Some companies are experimenting with global positioning satellite or GPS tracking that can be affixed to a collar or implanted subcutaneously. Unfortunately, the more sophisticated the process, the more you will pay, often both in one-time setup and then in monthly fees. Yet, if you have the money, it may be worth the price for your overall peace of mind as well as the safety of your beloved pet.

At the same time, we write off the possibilities this would afford us in tracking lost children.

A child of a certain age, for example, should know how to get home or at least be able to offer information to others to help them get back. Yet few pets speak; they need us to employ the very best ways to find a lost pet if they have any hope to make it home again.

All this despite the fact that almost one million people go rogue each year, and of those 85% to 90% are juveniles.

That means that 2,100 times per day parents or primary care givers felt the disappearance was serious enough to call law enforcement. 152,265 of the persons reported missing in 2000 were categorized as either endangered or involuntary. The number of missing persons reported to law enforcement has increased from 154, 341 in 1982 to 876,213 in 2000. That is an increase of 468%.

Despite all of this, California is busy making it illegal to protect your kids using the same technology you use to protect your dog.

This bill would prohibit a person from requiring, coercing, or compelling any other individual to undergo the subcutaneous implanting of an identification device, as defined.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love my dog, and if he disappeared, I’d be pretty broken up. However, if some friggin’ whack job pedophile snatched my kid when I had my back turned, and I had no way of locating him simply because some ACLU lawyer thought it was a violation of his rights, I’d hunt down the guy that took him and the ACLU lawyer and dispatch them both.

We fear technology because we’re incredibly short sighted in our thinking. Just think of all the Amber Alerts that could be resolved within minutes or hours if we could pull up a grid and see the location of the missing child. Imagine the hundreds of thousands of parents crippled by the grief of a lost child who could have had their children returned safely if we hadn’t acted in fear.

Legislation like this ignores the possibilities of science, and places more value on the family pet than the family member. That’s just sick and sad.

In one corner we have the libertarian wing – the get government off my back and out of my life crowd. They want nothing more than an exceedingly limited federal government with the bulk of important decisions made by the branch of government closest to them.

In the other corner, we have the religious wing of the party. They claim the title “conservative” but there is nothing restrained in their pursuit of public policy based on their theology. They say they want government out of their lives, but then they use the power of the fed in an attempt to legislate everything from government mandated a la carte television to right to die issues dragged up from lower courts simply because the original verdict offended some religious sensibility.

These two factions have been clashing of late because the former holds the latter somewhat to blame for the party’s losses in 2006. The rabid pursuit of a gay marriage amendment and the circus that was the Terri Schiavo case, the argument goes, drew negative attention to the party in a way unseen since Pat Buchanan’s bigoted speech at the 1992 convention. Not in 14 years had the religious right done so much to harm the GOP.

The religious wing fires back that it was the heathens among the GOP (Mark Foley being one) that cost us the election. They believe (despite polling to the contrary) that the country yearns for the same sort of theologically pure government not seen since the Taliban was routed in 2001.

Now the debate is playing out in the politics of the Presidential contest. This morning, Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost took aim at Fred Thompson for his support of Federalism.

Now I’m not so certain. His views of the federal marriage amendment, the Schiavo case, and his general position on federalism are troubling. For me, conservatism trumps federalism, while the position Thompson endorses seem to reverse that order…

Federalism also can disappoint those who believe that justice trumps ideological concerns. One of the most disheartening and shameful scenes of the last decade was to see so-called conservatives claim that the Terri Schiavo case should have been left solely to the state of Florida. The charitable view is to assume that had they known that a woman was being killed by the state without due process of law, they would have sided with justice over judicially mandated involuntary euthanasia. The less generous opinion is that they simply haven’t considered how federalism relates to conservative principles.

For if conservatives are willing to give the state the power to kill an innocent woman, willing to let adherence to procedure trump our dedication to justice, willing to put the rights of the government ahead of the rights of the individual, then we have lost all sense of what it means to be conservatives.

Federalism can be useful in drawing legitimate lines of Constitutional authority. But when it is allowed to transfer power to the states from other societal spheres, the philosophy merely creates 50 separate laboratories of liberalism.

A Fundamental Question

Carter makes an argument that Federalism is not a conservative position. It raises an interesting topic of debate. He gets into theoretical discussions about various interpretations of the ideologies that shape society, but suffice it to say he does not adopt a Federalist viewpoint. The basics of his argument are the government of Massachusetts could, if it wanted, assume a totalitarian position and define all aspects of society. They could enforce not only their own views of religion, definitions of marriage, etc, but they could prohibit all others.

Well, yes. Exactly. That’s essentially the theory of Federalism. If the majority of the people of Massachusetts, who elect the governing bodies of the state, felt that was acceptable, they could do just that. His argument is rather simplistic as he describes a more dictatorial regime, and seems to ignore that Federalism still begins and ends with the role of the people being governed in setting the course of their life. If you include that, he’s pretty much right on. People can, if they choose, set their own rules and live by them.

So which is the conservative position? Should Conservatives resist the encroachment of the Federal Government into the most private decisions of our lives?

To explore that, let’s return to the Schiavo case. What we see in her situation is exactly that. A state, based on the laws enacted by the duly elected representatives and the adjudication performed by its judiciary, made a decision to let a woman die. States do this routinely. States choose not to admit evidence in cases that could exonerate innocent people wrongly convicted and slowly dying in an 8×8 metal cage. We acknowledge the injustice, but there it is. The fact is the rule of law, for all its power to manage society, is an imperfect machine that is occasionally greased with the blood of the innocent.

Does that justify the federal government forcing its nose into the tent and demanding a different set of laws (laws of its choosing) be applied because the citizens of California, Washington, DC, or Illinois were bothered by the rules set forth in Florida? Does it justify the expansion of the federal government’s role to interfere with the laws of a state?

Occasionally, we see a murder case where the outcome of the trial is so horrific it appalls us as a people. Take a look at O.J. The overwhelming majority of this nation was horrified that these two lives were taken. The country watched in shock as the joke that is the California judicial system let the killer walk free.

Yet nobody demanded that the federal government intercede on behalf of “the innocent”. Nobody staged protests to demand that the rights of Nicole and Ron be heard and the murderer be dragged to Washington for justice. We understood that there was an imperfect trial, in a flawed court system, and a travesty occurred.

If you really want to see this argument on display, suggest to someone who is pro-life that a Constitutional amendment banning abortion is completely contrary to Conservative beliefs. Abortion is murder! They will claim. We need to protect life at the federal level!

But this ignores the fact that murder is tried as a local crime. It is left to the local courts to determine whether a murder was premeditated or a crime of passion. It is left to the states to decide which homicides can be justified and which cannot. It is left to the states to decide what level of punishment is applied to a crime. Why then, is abortion, or right to die not afforded the same level of local discretion?

Federalism and Marriage

Now I can jump on my other favorite “federalist” soapbox, again. If you consider yourself Conservative, the idea of a federal amendment “protecting” marriage should make your skin crawl.

The debate over marriage, as I have often been known to rant about, is not about the “definition” of marriage. It is not a question of whether marriage is one man and one woman, two men, two women, or a human being and a goat. The real debate over this issue must, and I believe eventually will, come down to what is the basis for marriage.

Is marriage a contract between two people and God? Or is a marriage a contract between two people and the state? In computer security terms, who, in this arrangement, is the certificate authority? Who ultimately sanctions the marriage?

If marriage is a contract between the united and their God, then the government has absolutely nothing to say about it. The Constitution is quite specific on that point. Churches, then, should be the ultimate arbiters of what “defines” marriage for their parishioners.

If marriage is a document legally binding two parties for the purpose of legal assets and legal protections, then the contract should be gender neutral as is every other contract drawn between consenting parties. I can sell my car to a man or a woman. Homosexuals can trade real estate under the same rules that govern such transactions for heterosexuals. Marriage, if it is a contract with the state, should be no different.

It is that debate, and that question, that must ultimately be decided before any law to define marriage can be written.

So Who Is Conservative?

Now I have been called a “squishy” Republican because I pursue the principles of my party before the principles of my faith. I have had my conservatism challenged by those, like Carter, who ignore the very meaning of Conservatism. Conservatives adhere to tradition and the continuance of trusted methods. The very word conservative implies that change to the existing structure of society should be measured and tempered.

By comparison, liberal ideology stresses the rapid adoption of new laws and the imposition of the federal government’s authority to address any perceived situation. Think there might someday be a problem with discrimination on the Internet? Legislate the solution before you have ever seen a problem. That’s the liberal way.

I am terrified because it seems, increasingly, to be the way adopted by the religious wing of the GOP. It is a disturbing trend, and one that threatens to rip the very fabric of the GOP coalition. If religious conservatives abandon the detente that exists with fiscal conservatives in pursuit of their ideology, they are threatening the ability of either of us to be successful.

However, a rift between the two factions of the GOP could be a good thing. It may bring about a fundamental realignment of electoral politics. The religious right and the tax-and-spend liberal left would unite in pursuit of a federal government that not only mandated the “right” way to live (be it through edicts on smoking or worship), but they could enforce it through taxation.

On the other side, the fiscally conservative Democrats, the libertarians in the GOP, and the moderate centrists, fearful of an all-powerful government and distrustful that it’s one-size-fits-all solutions would be either cost-effective or successful, would stand in opposition.

If anyone thinks that a Federal government empowered to weigh in on religious decisions will always weigh in on the side of the religious, they are sorely mistaken. If anyone believes that a government big enough to tell you what to do with your womb, your choice of mate, or your right to die will practice restraint in telling you what to do with your wallet, you’re high as a kite.