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Bernie Finds New “Basic Human Right”: government-run high-speed internet access

Bernie Finds New “Basic Human Right”: government-run high-speed internet access

“High-speed internet service must be treated as the new electricity — a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right.”

https://youtu.be/1NJRZZcidyE

Thursday’s stunning landslide victory for Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party is seen by many to be, at least in part, a sharp rebuke of the radical socialism of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his circle.

Granted, Brexit and Corbyn’s well-known anti-Semitism also played a role.  But his open borders, free everything for everyone platform left many former Labour voters cold, particularly the forgotten ones who were expected to form Labour’s “red wall.”

Part of Corbyn’s hodge-podge of promised goodies was announced just last month:  free broadband for everyone. British voters were clearly not sold on the idea.

The party was also unable to win over new supporters. Its manifesto, which promises to provide free broadband service, to institute a four-day workweek, and abolish college tuition fees—reliably described as “radical” in the Tory-dominated press—failed to “cut through,” as the Brits like to say. The less well-off saw those policies as too good to be true, and more economically secure voters worried that they would end up paying for them.

In an interesting coincidence, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently added an “affordable” internet-for-all plank to his own radical socialist presidential agenda.  In fact, he’s found a new “basic human right”:  high-speed internet access.

Today, high-speed internet is central to the basic functions of families, students, and businesses. Small businesses often cannot exist without it. Access to health care often depends on it. Yet across the country, huge swaths of the population lack access to an internet connection or cannot afford the options available. Millions lack any internet provider in their area and tens of millions are trapped with only one option. High prices keep internet out of reach for working families in both rural and urban areas.

High-speed internet service must be treated as the new electricity — a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right.

Like Corbyn, Sanders promises to nationalize the internet and make it a government-run utility.

The Washington Examiner reports:

Bernie Sanders isn’t exactly shy about his socialist ambitions. But even by the Vermont senator’s far-left standards, his latest proposal is a doozy.

The 2020 presidential candidate now wants to nationalize the internet. At least, that seems the inevitable result of his newly released campaign plan idealistically dubbed “High-Speed Internet for All.” As is so often the case, Sanders identifies a real problem — in this case, it’s the fact that 1 in 4 people living in rural areas of the United States still lack access to broadband internet — and immediately jumps to full government control as the only solution. This is where he gets things completely wrong.

The senator’s proposal would essentially have the federal government take control of the internet in almost Orwellian fashion. It explicitly calls for $150 billion in spending on a “publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband network.”

So in short, Sanders wants to spend hundreds of billions creating government-run internet service providers, and put the same government bureaucrats and officials who waste our tax money on Serbian cheese and nicotine-addicted fish, lie to us about foreign wars, and are immune from consequences for violating our constitutional rights, in charge of providing our internet services.

He also wants to treat the internet as “a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right.” Under Sanders’s plan, the FCC would also break internet service providers he deems “monopolies,” regardless of whether consumers are being harmed or not, and set price controls on what currently existing private providers can charge consumers, likely pushing many of them out of the market in short order. This would leave his government-run providers as the only remaining option.

The UK election already has Democrats engaged in a circular firing squad as they bicker over their decision to lunge to the fringe left.  It will be interesting to see if they heed Obama’s advice and avoid nominating a far-left socialist bent on “revolution.”

It’s also possible they will finally see why American voters cheered President Trump’s SOTU statement that “America will never be a socialist country.”  I wouldn’t bet on it, though.

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Comments

There seems to be no limit to the “free shit for everybody” contest that the Dims are having.

And this stupid Marxist twat thinks that government regulation and mandate is the solution. He’s apparently not paying attention to what the free market is doing while he’s pontificating like the fucking moron that he is.

The 5G roll-out is under way and there are at least two commercial efforts to deploy constellations of satellites that will blanket the earth in high-speed internet coverage.

You want everyone to have high speed internet Bernie? Me too. Now you just shut your stupid fucking mouth and stay out of the way, idiot.

if he really cared about it he would advocate using all the stupid taxes we pay on phones (land and cell) as well as on isp access to go towards better access in rural areas like mine.
I have ONE internet provider here and NO cable.

    gospace in reply to dmacleo. | December 14, 2019 at 5:47 pm

    DSL from non-Bell local phone company – on which I pay a 911 tax when there’s no phone attached to dial 911. Along with every other “phone” tax.

    Or satellite with it’s absurd pricing policies and data limitations.

    There are companies that offer unlimited 4G internet service with dedicated towers. They construct them in areas that already have cable and fiber. If they dropped one in the middle of my town they would put the local phone company out of business, as almost no one actually has a landline. 4G is faster than the available DSL here.

Morning Sunshine | December 14, 2019 at 4:29 pm

I have two thoughts on this.

“High-speed internet service must be treated as the new electricity — a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right.”

and then, in a few years, if you choose to live without it, they can take away your children – it has happened to families who choose to live off-grid (not the Amish, they are exempt from that rule).

—–

will the high-speed internet then turn into the quality of service we can find in say, China or North Korea?

just another freebee some one else will pay for

    The best thing about these government “freebies”? The taxpayers who are footing the bill for all the slackers have worse tech. Obama phones were often, not always but often smartphones, and the middle classes paying for this government largesse are often still stuck with flip phones or Nokias with static antennas sticking out because that’s all they can afford . . . after being sucked dry to ensure welfare recipients have the best phone available.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | December 14, 2019 at 4:46 pm

Just think how much the Leftist Communists can spy on everyone with free internet for all.

IG Report On FBI Spying Exposes “Scandal Of Historic Magnitude” For US Media

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ig-report-fbi-spying-exposes-scandal-historic-magnitude-us-media

A new human right? Gosh, they are always found in the last place you look!

Thursday’s stunning landslide […] a sharp rebuke of the radical socialism of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his circle.

It’s also a sharp rebuke of the unceasing, poisonous, agitprop vectoring from the BBC.

This morning a steady stream of BBC guest experts talked about the loss. It was a British rehash of CNN and NPR after Trump won. We need to refashion the messaging claimed one expert. Another pointed to dissatisfied blue collar workers in Wales. The usual threadbare horseflop.

Of course the BBC is already agitating for a Scotexit. How dare Booris not allow a referendum!

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | December 14, 2019 at 5:13 pm

Wonder if Bernie is in this?

Rudy Giuliani Can Barely Contain Himself Over His Ukraine Findings

Rudy comes home

Upon his return to New York on Saturday, Giuliani says he took a call from President Trump while his plane was still taxiing down the runway, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“What did you get?” Trump asked. “More than you can imagine,” answered the former New York mayor who gained notoriety in the 1980s for taking down the mob as a then-federal prosecutor.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/rudy-giuliani-can-barely-contain-himself-over-his-ukraine-findings

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | December 14, 2019 at 5:14 pm

Oh my!

Bernie Rescinds Endorsement Of Dem Candidate After “Legalize Bestiality” Video Resurfaces

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/bernie-rescinds-endorsement-dem-candidate-after-legalize-bestiality-segment-resurfaces

Access to health care often depends on it.

Huh?

Personal experience tells me that the only really vital component of health care is the ability to stagger into the emergency room. High-speed Internet won’t help me do that.

1 in 4 people living in rural areas of the United States still lack access to broadband internet

Sounds like an ideal opportunity for government to jump in and extend the broadband network to those areas, and leave the rest of it alone. Using this as a justification for totalitarian government control makes about as much sense as using the excuse of “pre-existing conditions” to stick us with 2600 pages of Obamacare pork, corruption and socialism. How often are we expected to fall for the same old crap?

I suppose that’s why the leftists do so well among the young & dumb—they haven’t been around long enough to have seen this same playbook over, and over, and over . . .

Electricity is a human right?
Sooooo, if I stop paying the bill, can I still expect to use the service?
Anyone tried to pull it off?

We need a high speed rail, to use to run the likes of this corrupt bastard out of our government.

I’m still waiting on my free pony, Bernie.

    I think it’s a Skittles-pooping unicorn you are waiting for. If you’re a white male, you are personally responsible for all Americans not getting their Skittles-pooping unicorn. If you’re a straight white male, you are everything wrong with everything and should be impaled on the horn of a Skittles-pooping unicorn. And stuff!

    /sarc

Just because a clown says so doesn’t make it fact.

    The foreign city where I reside is being ruined by the prevalence of expatriate and homegrown moonbats who do indeed believe that by declaring something to be a human right (e.g. food, potable water, a clean environment, and public safety), that thing becomes a human right.

FREE everything! When I became disabled, I received Social Security Disability (SSDI), a computer, Internet, my apartment completely remodeled, Section 8, Food Stamps, $35 a month to fee my service dog, free public transport and para-transport, free home health aids, and sooo much more. There is/was (not sure if it still exists) a program the Social Security Administration provides called Plan to Achieve Self-Sufficiency (PASS.) Under that plan I qualified for SSI which made me eligible for Medicaid – free medical care. A permanent vacation I thought! Fantastic.

After 6 weeks, I was bored and depressed. I was in my late twenties. I saw other people in my situation and all the did was drink and/or drug all day every day. I didn’t want to end up like that!

I found a job at a magazine. That was a spring board that eventually resulted in me starting my own business with 4 employees. With my earnings I was eventually freed from government control and started to live again and prosper.

My personal experience shows that FREE isn’t so good!

    “I saw other people in my situation and all the did was drink and/or drug all day every day.”

    Multiply that by the number of welfare recipients and you get an idea of the scale of the problem.

Sad that an idiot like bernie is even in the race let alone being highly competitive.
Says a lot about our Dept of Education’s teaching values. Time to wipe that pile of goose dung off the books. Fire all the people in that department and let them find other work – if they can figure out what the word work means.

The U.S. Constitution requires negative rights: essentially the right to be left alone (e.g., freedom of speech and of religion, right to bear arms, right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, right not to have your property taken without compensation (etc., etc.).

Bernie et al believe in positive rights: that is, rights to be provided with the fruits of others’ labor. Is it necessary to point out that once one starts down this path of positive rights there is no logical stopping point?

In any case, I’d expect government-provided internet to work about as well as the USSR’s phone system did. Which is to say, very poorly in all respects other than in maintaining government’s ability to monitor anything and everything you say when using the services government has so thoughtfully provided for you.

Besides, Isn’t there already an emanation from some Constitutional penumbra guaranteeing citizens unlimited access to whatever pornography they might find pleasing?

Government owned, run, and regulated internet.
What could possibly go wrong?

Free markets only work if monopolies are regulated and antitrust laws are enforced. You pay $50 for 10MBPS internet? The rest of the world pays $10 for 50MBPS.

Sen. Sanders has the better of this argument.