Fat Ginger Tosser

This BusinessWeek article on the big telcos is excellent (via MyDD). If I'd ever given any credence to their argument against Net Neutrality--that if it were imposed, they'd be prevented from "innovating"--it's gone now.

The thing that I always thought was most ridiculous about their argument was that even if you granted their claim that they needed to be compensated more for delivering higher-bandwith services, it would seem like there would be plenty of ways to do that that would keep Net Neutrality advocates happy. I mean, it would seem trivial to structure a deal that would let the telcos charge more for, say, cable TV over the internet while still giving a bedrock guarantee of high-quality access to lower-bandwidth applications. So why not try to craft a compromise? I can understand why the telco lobbyists took an absolute position, but I can't understand why none of their political allies tried to get them to bend rather than taking the amount of grief that they have. The telcos' first ask may have been hard-line, but I'll guarantee that they would have taken a reasonable deal if it had been offered--and if they'd felt that it was the best they would do.

Retardo Montalbon at Sadly, No! is talking about how to revitalize the democratic party:

Pandering to irrational biases makes it easier for Rethugs to consolidate their Party; of course it also makes their Party more radical. Their “contradictions” are and were easily sorted; there is and was no true dialectical process. In contrast, our contradictions are profound. We have one wing of the party that is basically laissez-faire, corporate, for free trade. We have another wing that is populist, sympathetic to unions, for fair trade. We have one wing that is or was pro-war. We have another wing that is anti-war and has been since Iraq was first spoken of. Usually the economic conservatives and the hawks are the same people. Likewise, the populists and the doves are often the same people.

I think that last claim--that being an economic centrist and being pro-war are connected--is wrong. It's probably true inside the beltway, but I don't think it's true at all among the Democratic electorate. There's always going to be a vigorous internal debate within the Democratic party about economic policy, between capitalism-friendly centrists like me (and the rest of my yuppie friends) and democratic socialists like Retardo. Both sides have good arguments, and I think it's important for the Democratic party to have that debate--when we're back in power. Right now, though, I think that Democrats on both sides of that debate are pretty much united in opposition to Bush's foreign policy--and, for that matter, we're also united with the rest of the country.

That's what makes it so important for Democratic politicians to focus on foreign policy--it's not just a strong issue for us, it's not just a place where we can make gains by attacking the Republicans in their traditional strong point, but it's an issue that can help unite the party. It may not seem that way from looking at the positions of politicians and bullshit "opinion leaders" like the DLC, but I'm pretty confident that that's how it is out in the real world, where voters live.

Let's see if the third time proves to be the charm...