President Obama was clearly and plainly talking about highways and schools when he said, "you didn't create that",
The problem lies with that statement itself. They (business owners) did create the highways and schools. Who paid the taxes to build those roads? Who paid the taxes to build those schools? Did business owners get exemptions to not pay for those things? Or did they get taxed at a higher rate because they made more money? As roads are so ubiquitous, and they apparently make business thrive, why do thousands of business fail every year? Are there no roads where they are located? On Jul 31, 2012, at 8:23 AM, Fred Goldstein wrote: > At 7/31/2012 09:28 AM, Brad Belton wrote: > >> I think the point of the article is once big government got out of >> the way, private interests (i.e. businesses) ran with the idea and >> it flourished. > > Yes, that was the proopaganda point he was trying to make. But it > was a flat-out lie when applied to the Internet. The government > funded the development of the Internet. The government built and > paid to run the Internet for years, for its own purposes. The > government then let more and more non-governmental users (NSFnet > educational) onto its Internet. All during this time, commercial > internets (small-i) could have been built, and some were, but the > critical mass of widespread connectivity happened when the > government's Internet (big-I) was opened up to the general public, > and government funding then ended. > > Everyone's entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own > facts. Crovitz made stuff up that was just totally wrong, two > quadrants opposed to the truth. He was no more accurate than > Stalin's propagandists. > > In plain fact, the key move that made any public internet possible > was a regulatory decision made by the FCC in the mid-1970s, the > Sharing and Resale decision. They ordered AT&T and other LECs to > permit private lines to be shared and resold. Before that, a private > line could only be run between a single customers' own sites. A line > to your own customer was only available to licensed common > carriers. A BBNer, Ralph Alter, went out and got FCC approval as the > first packet-switched common carrier, PCI, in 1973. Shortly > afterwards, BBN itself started up Telenet, while Tyment and Graphnet > also got licensed. After the Sharing and Resale decision, becoming > an ISP didn't require a common carrier license. Then 1980's Computer > II decision forced the Bells to sell "basic" services to competitors > if they wanted to offer "enhanced" services. The revocation of that > in 2005 led to the NN kerfuffle and the demise of more wireline ISPs. > > Jeff Broadwick adds, >> Either way, President Obama's statement that the internet was created so >> that "all companies could make money off the Internet" is patently false. > > Well, no. His statement, read in context of the full paragraph, > clearly meant something else entirely. His "so that" was not meant > as "created for the express purpose of", but as its perfectly good > alternative meaning "with the effect that". The ARPANET was created > *not* to survive nuclear war (it was not a Strategic network) but to > permit researchers (at industry and universities, as well as within > the government) to share resources. The more decentralized but still > subsidized Internet evolved in the 1980s. When it was privatized by > the Clinton administration, companies could make then money off of it. > > (I note that the Romney campaign has been playing the selective > editing trick. President Obama was clearly and plainly talking about > highways and schools when he said, "you didn't create that", but by > editing out that reference and stringing other sentences together, he > pretended that Obama told businessmen that they didn't create their > own businesses. You can pretty much make anyone seem to say anything > that way, as Colbert viewers know.) > > -- > Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com > ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ > +1 617 795 2701 > > _______________________________________________ > Wireless mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
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