You completely ignored the most relevant parts of my argument which were:
1. Pai seeks to increase competition in a monopolistic market by decreasing regulation of the monopolizing companies while failing to address the fundamental reasons that they have a natural monopoly in the first place. Thus they now have even more power and they still have no competition. Even people on Breitbart and many other conservative sites are making this argument en masse: https://theintercept.com/2017/11/27/net-neutrality-trump-bre...
2. He has a major conflict of interest having spent most of his career with Verizon who will be one of the largest benefactors and who has pushed hard for this. Is it illegal? Probably not. But it couldn't be more sketchy.
You spent most of your post harping on lifeline which I briefly mentioned so I will respond to that as well. You attack resellers as if they are necessarily evil. Obviously it makes sense to add verification procedures if fraud is an issue, but as a program designed for the poorest Americans who would otherwise have no phone or Internet in many cases (hence its literally a lifeline) you still want to make it reasonable for them to use it. Since the FCC has allowed the big four telecoms to control all the lines, excluding resellers means that 70% of lifelines' users would be excluded.
Why are 70% of lifeline users subscribed through third party MVNOs? Well because Verizon happily charges many of their users $100/month for a loaded up plan and maybe $50/month for a more basic plan after taxes and fees. Meanwhile many RedPocket users pay $10-20/month or even less. Similarly for StraightTalk, Boost, etc. So he basically told them go pay $30-80 more per month to buy service from his old company (Verizon) to get a $9.25-34.25 subsidy or leave lifeline.
So yes he will eliminate fraud but he will basically gut the program entirely in the process.
Furthermore, you say he has made some improvements to the program. Some of them do sound like improvements but when you read the details they often don't sound as good. For example, now people aren't locked into their lifeline provider for a year but now they have to choose from 4 provided telecom companies (instead of 900) and they have to pay part of the fee every month. I'm sure if we took a poll, people would rather have a year contract to get free phone service from RedPocket rather than a month to month plan where they have to pay $X to AT&T if the RedPocket service was adequate for them in the first place.
You went on some rant about Starbucks getting subsidies. I'm really unclear where that line of reasoning comes from. First of all, Starbucks has free wifi. There are 900 companies approved under lifeline so its not like you can just set up a wifi network and start charging the government.
Wheeler made Lifeline apply to broadband service so I see no reason why an eligible person shouldn't be able to use their credit for Starbucks wifi (assuming it did actually cost something) as opposed to AT&T if they choose to do so, especially since Starbucks is just giving them AT&T wifi anyway. If they are poor and potentially homeless, being able to surf the Internet on their device at Starbucks sounds quite useful. Its a safe place, there are chairs, its warm, etc. When Starbucks did charge for Internet a long time ago, you likely could have gotten a much cheaper monthly plan for wifi there than AT&T would charge for LTE. Both because wifi is almost always cheaper to serve per megabyte than LTE and because Starbucks can offer wifi as a loss leader to try to sell coffee.
Explain how if there are 900 approved providers, people can set up wifi hotspots and bill the government? Maybe you should try doing that and see if it works. I suspect it won't be so easy.
You didn't mention the most obviously anti-poor parts of the Lifeline changes which included (1) reducing the budget for the program and (2) forcing the recipient to pay for at least part of the bill so they can't get it for free
A majority of lifeline users don't pay anything currently so obviously it would force many of them to consider whether they could pay a monthly cost for it and given they are on the program the answer will often be no. This deprives them of Internet and/or phone service (ie. their lifeline). So yes I stand by my statement that Pai "[will] dramatically cut access to the internet for poor people through the lifeline program"
Since you continue to attack me personally, in this case for mentioning a few things from an article that you claim has some clickbait as well (like most media these days), here is an article that discusses much of what I said: https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/17/fcc-lifeline-internet-su...
You feel the need to say things like "but instead of actually talking about things like this" which do not further the conversation. You haven't responded still to arguments I've made and questions I've asked you in this and other threads on this post and instead you act like I'm not trying to provide more details, sources, etc.
I think I pretty thoroughly rebutted most of your major points so I strongly disagree.
And now in your second paragraph, which I suppose is supposed to be a keypoint of your argument you lead with "Pai has spent most of his career with Verizon." Pai has been working since 1997 - 20 years. He spent exactly 2 years of those 20 years with Verizon -- shortly after university, 16 years ago. Nearly his entire life has been sent in the public sector. And you now lead a new post stating "he spent most of his career with Verizon."
Please try to step outside your bias and look at what you're writing. What you read on the internet is, quite often, not true. Think about whatever source you read that claimed Pai spent "most of his career" with Verizon. You can find his biographical information on the FCC page or his LinkedIn profile [1][2]. You're reading and citing extensively from fake news. Imagine you were me, reading your comments. What would you think - of you? How much weight would you give to anything you say? Would you have any interest in continuing the discussion?
You made a good point. I’ll happily concede he worked at Verizon for two years, although he did focus on regulatory issues so it’s still a major conflict of interest as likely a large shareholder. The tone of your responses is still quite negative and you glossed over many paragraphs of facts to pick apart one detail that is important but hardly a reason to suddenly support Pai’s position.
Meanwhile still no examples of a minority party nominee not getting confirmed or rebuttals of a large number of other points especially around Lifeline which you talked about for quite a while.
You’re welcome not to continue having the discussion and you can think poorly of me for not knowing the exact time that Pai has been working in a position of conflicted interest. I’ll admit when I’m wrong but so far the bulk of my argument stands and I refuted many of your points which you didn’t acknowledge while you reprimanded me for #fakenews. Please spare us the ad hominem attacks. They don’t belong in this community and I can (and have) pointed out flaws in your arguments as well. Of course when you’re wrong it wasn’t fake news or misleading.
How many of your points about Lifeline don’t hold up under scrutiny? Sounds like you fell for some fake news yourself.
Sorry if I exaggerated / misunderstood his career length at Verizon. To be honest his arguments against net neutrality (in conjunction with no effort to guarantee shared access to utility poles or other cables, among other issues) show he is being disingenious even if he didn’t have Verizon stock and had never worked for them. Leaving monopolistic policies and getting rid of consumer protections is a recipe for large companies with unfriendly policies.
A few other facts about unpopular and messed up positions he’s taken, straight off his Wikipedia page:
1. As chairman, Pai scrapped a proposal to open the cable box market to tech companies such as Google and Amazon (Hmm another pro-monopoly pro-Verizon action)
2. Pai wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post criticizing a government-funded research project named "Truthy" at Indiana University which was studying the spread of "false and misleading ideas, hate speech and subversive propaganda" (Speaking of fake news, apparently Pai didn’t think it was worth looking into. What a waste of taxpayer money! mock horror)
3. The whole Sinclair scandal which I won’t try to summarize here as you can just read Wikipedia. This one involves Trump and Kushner currying influence with Sinclair. Fun
1. Pai seeks to increase competition in a monopolistic market by decreasing regulation of the monopolizing companies while failing to address the fundamental reasons that they have a natural monopoly in the first place. Thus they now have even more power and they still have no competition. Even people on Breitbart and many other conservative sites are making this argument en masse: https://theintercept.com/2017/11/27/net-neutrality-trump-bre...
2. He has a major conflict of interest having spent most of his career with Verizon who will be one of the largest benefactors and who has pushed hard for this. Is it illegal? Probably not. But it couldn't be more sketchy.
You spent most of your post harping on lifeline which I briefly mentioned so I will respond to that as well. You attack resellers as if they are necessarily evil. Obviously it makes sense to add verification procedures if fraud is an issue, but as a program designed for the poorest Americans who would otherwise have no phone or Internet in many cases (hence its literally a lifeline) you still want to make it reasonable for them to use it. Since the FCC has allowed the big four telecoms to control all the lines, excluding resellers means that 70% of lifelines' users would be excluded.
Why are 70% of lifeline users subscribed through third party MVNOs? Well because Verizon happily charges many of their users $100/month for a loaded up plan and maybe $50/month for a more basic plan after taxes and fees. Meanwhile many RedPocket users pay $10-20/month or even less. Similarly for StraightTalk, Boost, etc. So he basically told them go pay $30-80 more per month to buy service from his old company (Verizon) to get a $9.25-34.25 subsidy or leave lifeline.
So yes he will eliminate fraud but he will basically gut the program entirely in the process.
Furthermore, you say he has made some improvements to the program. Some of them do sound like improvements but when you read the details they often don't sound as good. For example, now people aren't locked into their lifeline provider for a year but now they have to choose from 4 provided telecom companies (instead of 900) and they have to pay part of the fee every month. I'm sure if we took a poll, people would rather have a year contract to get free phone service from RedPocket rather than a month to month plan where they have to pay $X to AT&T if the RedPocket service was adequate for them in the first place.
You went on some rant about Starbucks getting subsidies. I'm really unclear where that line of reasoning comes from. First of all, Starbucks has free wifi. There are 900 companies approved under lifeline so its not like you can just set up a wifi network and start charging the government.
Wheeler made Lifeline apply to broadband service so I see no reason why an eligible person shouldn't be able to use their credit for Starbucks wifi (assuming it did actually cost something) as opposed to AT&T if they choose to do so, especially since Starbucks is just giving them AT&T wifi anyway. If they are poor and potentially homeless, being able to surf the Internet on their device at Starbucks sounds quite useful. Its a safe place, there are chairs, its warm, etc. When Starbucks did charge for Internet a long time ago, you likely could have gotten a much cheaper monthly plan for wifi there than AT&T would charge for LTE. Both because wifi is almost always cheaper to serve per megabyte than LTE and because Starbucks can offer wifi as a loss leader to try to sell coffee.
Explain how if there are 900 approved providers, people can set up wifi hotspots and bill the government? Maybe you should try doing that and see if it works. I suspect it won't be so easy.
You didn't mention the most obviously anti-poor parts of the Lifeline changes which included (1) reducing the budget for the program and (2) forcing the recipient to pay for at least part of the bill so they can't get it for free
A majority of lifeline users don't pay anything currently so obviously it would force many of them to consider whether they could pay a monthly cost for it and given they are on the program the answer will often be no. This deprives them of Internet and/or phone service (ie. their lifeline). So yes I stand by my statement that Pai "[will] dramatically cut access to the internet for poor people through the lifeline program"
Since you continue to attack me personally, in this case for mentioning a few things from an article that you claim has some clickbait as well (like most media these days), here is an article that discusses much of what I said: https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/17/fcc-lifeline-internet-su...
You feel the need to say things like "but instead of actually talking about things like this" which do not further the conversation. You haven't responded still to arguments I've made and questions I've asked you in this and other threads on this post and instead you act like I'm not trying to provide more details, sources, etc.
I think I pretty thoroughly rebutted most of your major points so I strongly disagree.