Ted Cruz running for Prez

[TheLeviathan]

I'll be honest, I didn't read the whole paper, just the abstract, but one major concern I have with his proposal is that it assumes price indicators will drive student behavior.  I think part of the problem is that kids entering college largely don't care one bit about what they sign as long as they get into college.  I'm not sure how fluctuating interest rates based on risk factors is going to make a radical difference.

 

From my vantage point the problem is that loan money is a bottomless trough that colleges gorge themselves on precisely because college kids offer two of the most dangerous factors for abuse:  relentless demand and complete indifference to long-term consequences.

[Willihammer]

I'll be honest, I didn't read the whole paper, just the abstract, but one major concern I have with his proposal is that it assumes price indicators will drive student behavior.  I think part of the problem is that kids entering college largely don't care one bit about what they sign as long as they get into college.  I'm not sure how fluctuating interest rates based on risk factors is going to make a radical difference.

 

From my vantage point the problem is that loan money is a bottomless trough that colleges gorge themselves on precisely because college kids offer two of the most dangerous factors for abuse:  relentless demand and complete indifference to long-term consequences.

I'd like to point out that if the government were held to breaking even on its student loans, or even just to any standard at all, some point below break-even, the interest rate would have default risk priced in. Unfortunately this would also expose it to charges of racism, sexism, etc. from the left.

 

The authors of this paper seem to prefer that the government view itself not as a lender, but as a "diversified investor in the US labor force," that implements a more complex model than they're willing to describe.

 

Bottom line is that the supply side has gotten all out of whack from the demand side. It has to be put back in balance one way or another.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Alan Dershowitz called Ted Cruz the smartest law student he's ever taught.

So instead of incompetent, he's a demagogue.

 

That's even worse.

[TheLeviathan]

So instead of incompetent, he's a demagogue.

That's even worse.

Google why Ted Cruz likes country music. That's a doozy of a comment too.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Google why Ted Cruz likes country music. That's a doozy of a comment too.

I've already seen it.

 

A true thing of incoherent, rambling, pandering to a constituency glory.

[Pius Jefferson]

 

So instead of incompetent, he's a demagogue.

That's even worse

 

 

You've got the wrong political party. Democrats wrote the book on the politics of fear.

[Pius Jefferson]

 

Google why Ted Cruz likes country music. That's a doozy of a comment too.

 

 

 

A rushed decision given country acts like the Dixie Chicks but so freaking what? You'd say he was pandering if he came out and said he loves Neil young.

[TheLeviathan]

 

A rushed decision given country acts like the Dixie Chicks but so freaking what? You'd say he was pandering if he came out and said he loves Neil young.

 

Did you see what he said.  It wasn't even clever pandering.  It was baby kissing bad.  He literally found a way to say "I care so much about 9-11" from the question "What's your favorite kind of music?"  That's friggin ridiculous.

 

You've got the wrong political party. Democrats wrote the book on the politics of fear.

 

 

Both parties own that.  Let me show you:

 

"They're coming to take our guns/marriage definition/christmas tree/money/freedom/Christian Values"

 

So yeah, that's both parties.

[Brock Beauchamp]

You've got the wrong political party. Democrats wrote the book on the politics of fear.

That's cool. I'm not a Democrat.

 

And Ted Cruz is still a demagogue.

[Hrbowski]

 

That's cool. I'm not a Democrat.

And Ted Cruz is still a demagogue.

 

I guess we can agree to disagree.

[Hrbowski]

 

Both parties own that.  Let me show you:

 

"They're coming to take our guns/marriage definition/christmas tree/money/freedom/Christian Values"

 

So yeah, that's both parties

I think that both parties have a problem with stereotyping each other, but I know some people who want to take all of that away not counting christmas trees, but they might just be called communists.

[Hrbowski]

 

Google why Ted Cruz likes country music. That's a doozy of a comment too.

I don't see how, it really changed a lot of people in ways that may be surprising, but there is nothing wrong with liking country music; in fact, I love it!

[Craig Arko]

Ah, the 1930s Europe thread.

[biggentleben]

 

I don't see how, it really changed a lot of people in ways that may be surprising, but there is nothing wrong with liking country music; in fact, I love it!

 

His reasoning is BS. One of his benefactors is Ted Nugent, so you'd think he'd know that it wasn't just country music who used the tragedy to make money.  I personally lost a lot of respect for a number of artists in country music for some very obvious pandering to make money off of the tragedy.

[TheLeviathan]

 

I don't see how, it really changed a lot of people in ways that may be surprising, but there is nothing wrong with liking country music; in fact, I love it!

 

He can like whatever music he wants.  That's not the problem.  It's the uncanny stupidity of his pandering that's the issue.  At this point if you asked the man "Coke or Pepsi" he'd respond with some kind of stupidity like "Pepsi, it's wrapped in the beauty of the american flag just like the Baby Jesus.  Look at this historical proof I have as verifie by Republican Scientists"

 

http://drawception.com/pub/panels/2012/3-29/PWbxFFLwOC-6.png

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

I guess we can agree to disagree.

We can disagree but any man who is on the Committee for Science, Space, and Technology and calls net neutrality "ObamaCare for the internet" is either an idiot or a demagogue. Cruz should have been kicked off the committee for saying something so inane.

 

Whether you like ObamaCare or not, net neutrality is nothing like ObamaCare and presenting it as such is blatant demagoguery. He didn't present a factual counter-argument to the net neutrality announcement, he cast it in such a light to strike fear into his base while giving them no actual information on the topic. That's textbook demagoguery. I'd struggle to come up with a more clear-cut case of it, actually.

 

Unsurprisingly, Cruz received about $50k from big telecom in 2014. His motives were pretty clear as to why he was "against" net neutrality.

[Hrbowski]

But net neutrality is just going to make internet prices non-competitive like how Obamacare made insurance prices non-competitive, because if internet prices go up a good deal of people while either not be able to pay there bill or just won't use it and the biggest internet servers will be able to swallow up the smaller ones; therefore making them non-competitive. Plus I think it is good to have multiple views on a committee and I think your reason for wanting to kick him of is a poor one.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

But net neutrality is just going to make internet prices non-competitive like how Obamacare made insurance prices non-competitive, because if internet prices go up a good deal of people while either not be able to pay there bill or just won't use it and the biggest internet servers will be able to swallow up the smaller ones; therefore making them non-competitive.

That's not true at all.

 

Our internet prices already aren't competitive. The problem with ISPs is that they're not free market. They have handshake agreements not to enter each others' markets and then they provide lackluster service at high prices. Despite inventing the internet, the US lags behind most of the industrial world in internet speed. For example, I live within Minneapolis' city limits. The MSP market is the 15th largest in the United States. How many "choices" do I have for broadband? One. Yes, one. Where's your competition?

 

You think this will make pricing less competitive? Then why was Google - the biggest market disruption in ISPs right now - champing at the bit for reclassification because it allows them access to poles and infrastructure?

 

ISPs are terrified of Google getting access and for good reason: Google is swooping into cities and destroying the competition with low prices and speeds (on average) fifty times faster than what traditional ISPs are offering their customers. In markets that Google has entered (Kansas City, Austin, and a handful of others), established ISPs have been forced to reduce pricing and increase bandwidth to keep up with what Google is doing.

 

You want your free market, you got it.

 

And I haven't even brought up the content delivery side of the coin, which is actually the most important piece of the reclassification. Consumers won with this reclassification. It's that simple. The only losers were the established ISPs who want to protect their gravy train. Oh, and the politicians who take money to protect that gravy train... Like Ted Cruz.

[TheLeviathan]

How can anyone buy the idea that Comcast and other ISPs are acting within the free market?  They are the new monopolies and we are allowing them to exist.  

 

Everything that is good about capitalism and what the right espouses to be about hinges on making sure monopolies cannot exist.  And the right wing, pro-capitalism side is the one defending these practices!  It's amazingly stupid and yet another example of effective talking points convincing people they are doing the opposite.  

 

The internet should be treated as a utility and should be run by the government for precisely the same reason there is no Comcast controlling my hot water or electricity.  

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

The internet should be treated as a utility and should be run by the government for precisely the same reason there is no Comcast controlling my hot water or electricity.  

What I find most sad about this situation is the "don't change the internet!" argument against regulation.

 

Well, guess who actually "changed" the internet? Verizon. They're the ones who sued the FCC to break a long-standing policy of net neutrality (and they pissed off a grip of other ISPs by doing so, ISPs who were smart enough to realize that upsetting the apple cart was a bad idea).

 

This situation wasn't caused by government overreach. It was created by corporate greed overreach. The rules and system we had in place were good enough but Verizon, in a blatant attempt at cash-grabbing, decided that they wanted more money and sued so they could start making money not only from consumers but also from content providers. It's a classic case of double-dipping.

 

But the right doesn't want to talk about that.

 

This is an incredibly complex situation and I've been reading tech sites covering this subject for the past five years (when news of the Verizon lawsuit first broke). What I find terribly disappointing is that so few Americans truly understand how the Internet works and fall back to shoddy news coverage that doesn't actually examine the situation, they just spew partisan talking points. Net neutrality is too damned important to be influenced by partisan talking points.

[Hrbowski]

 

The internet should be treated as a utility and should be run by the government for precisely the same reason there is no Comcast controlling my hot water or electricity.  

 

The thing is if the government controls the internet they while just take everything down that doesn't go along with whoever is the president's agenda.

[Brock Beauchamp]

The thing is if the government controls the internet they while just take everything down that doesn't go along with whoever is the president's agenda.

The government doesn't control the Internet any more or less today than they did five years ago (unless you count relinquishing ICANN control, which has nothing to do with this situation). This reclassification merely says "Nobody can control the delivery of data, specifically the last few hundred feet to the consumer."

 

There's a Grand Canyon of difference between those two things. You're falling prey to hyperbolic nonsense that is being spewed by politicians.

[TheLeviathan]

 

The thing is if the government controls the internet they while just take everything down that doesn't go along with whoever is the president's agenda.

 

I understand that fear, but that is a separate problem.  The government could shut that down regardless of who is providing the service.

 

The problem is companies like Comcast that are leveraging the genuine need for internet for their own profit.  You know, the exact reason why we don't allow companies to run our electricity without regulation.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I understand that fear, but that is a separate problem.  The government could shut that down regardless of who is providing the service.

More importantly, Title II reclassification did nothing to increase or decrease the government's ability to "shut down the internet".

 

Nothing has changed in this regard. It's a moot point.

[Squirrel]

I fear corporate money and greed will win this. 

[TheLeviathan]

 

I fear corporate money and greed will win this. 

 

A valid fear given they are currently winning it.

[Hrbowski]

 

You're falling prey to hyperbolic nonsense that is being spewed by politicians.

How do you know it isn't you? The government said they were going to stop the banks from being crooks with the Dodd-Frank Act but they lied and still bailed them out when they should have gone to jail, they lied about the PATRIOT Act and said it was only for terrorists, but it wasn't, and they lied about the Affordable Care Act and said it would not cover abortion but it did; although I am not going to say these acts never did anything good, I still think they are lying about Net Neutrality.

 

P.S. I am not saying the other side isn't lying.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

How do you know it isn't you?

Because I've been reading about this independently for years, the kind of in-depth reading that doesn't come from mainstream media. I didn't form an opinion based on a three minute newsclip or a politician's tweet; my opinion was formed after years of interest and reading hundreds of articles from a wide variety of sources.

 

After all, this is my livelihood at stake here. It's in my interest to know what is happening and the potential impact of any new legislation.

 

At the end of the day, Title II reclassification does not give the government more or less power to control the content of the Internet.

 

You know how I know that? Because the government has technically held that power since day one. Should the government try to exercise that power in the manner you proposed, it'd be a rather clear violation of the First Amendment.

[biggentleben]

As someone who's been participating on forums with Brock for quite some time, this is absolutely an issue that he would be more than well-versed in.  Now, I wouldn't only go by any person's opinion, regardless of how educated it is, but Brock's opinion on this topic is very, very well-informed and trustworthy, certainly moreso than about 99.98% of the people from either side that have been on television talking about it.  Take the time to do your research and weigh Brock's opinion on the matter in that light, but calling his opinion as anything but based on intense research and knowledge of the subject area bugs me, and I'm not even the guy who's spent the time doing the research.

[Hrbowski]

 

I didn't form an opinion based on a three minute newsclip or a politician's tweet; my opinion was formed after years of interest and reading hundreds of articles from a wide variety of sources.

 

 

I didn't either; and I consider it a good thing that you didn't.