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[Bumber]

The New York Times published an article on an ongoing investigation involving Florida congressman Matt Gaetz.

Matt Gaetz appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight, stating that the allegations are false, and that people could look at his travel records. He said that he was cooperating with the FBI regarding an investigation involving an ongoing extortion plot related to the matter. He claimed that the New York Times has just ruined a sting operation that was planned to take place the next day, where Gaetz's father would wear a wire and hand over several million dollars at the FBI's direction. Gaetz named ex-DOJ employee David McGee as being involved in the extortion. Gaetz called for the FBI and DOJ to release the audio tapes made with his cooperation, which he said would prove his innocence.

[Moddan]

Florida _congressman asserts innocence.

[Dostoevsky]

Given Gaetz's career even pre-Trumpiness I'm not particularly inclined to believe anything he claims, but at the same time federal investigators aren't always the most squeaky clean folks.

The Joel Greenberg connection is interesting, per a couple of tweets from a local reporter.

Biden is giving a speech this afternoon (supposedly at 4:20...) on the recently-unveiled American Jobs Plan - AKA infrastructure week part LXVI. This will likely be the next reconciliation bill congress takes up - they've been looking to whatever Biden releases for guidance, though the specifics will likely differ at least somewhat in the end.

[Duuvian]

I haven't read in too much detail about it but I find the expansion of internet access appealing. However for my full support on that issue, one of the things I would most like to see is a reform of Federal cable laying laws. I'm aware of this issue thanks to a  US TV show called Adam Ruins Everything. In the episode on point he ruins the internet by explaining that current cable laying laws greatly benefit cable companies due to outdated laws which essentially create cable monopolies at the financial expense of the government.

From memory: When Cable TV was invented iirc the 60's and cable was being laid, the US government greatly hastened it's spread by subsidizing the wirelaying which still persists to this day. Along the way the cable companies lobbied for an even sweeter deal, where any company the cable was paid for by the government, the company owned and controlled the cable. This of course means that if the cable is laid to a town, that town has one choice for cable provider, whose services will be priced to be just barely tolerable to the consumer rather than priced to compete. That's not even touching the throttling issue that is also mentioned in that episode that explains why in the US oftentimes the internet speed is a "burst" or "turbo" speed that is described as what you are paying for... for about 5 or 10 seconds and then it throttles down to enough to render a youtube video at max or close to max video resolution, which is about the most demanding thing the average user will commonly do as far as requiring download speed. That's why big steam games take like 4 hours to download. According to that episode, if I was so fortunate as to live in Romania for example, it would maintain the high speed and finish in minutes for the simple reason that the laws in that country foster cable company competition by having cable be open for all providers. Frequent US internet throttling also has an effect on multiplayer games, especially first person shooters as latency is a factor in COMPETITIVE E-SPORTS such as those may be. It's pretty minor but it is a disadvantage.

I also note that some large cable companies are more closely allied to the Democratic party than Republican, though I imagine money goes both right and left to some extent in the large donor political campaign finance system. The words "legalized bribery" come to mind, but I'll argue that some other time if the politicians ever make an attempt to reform it.

I would strongly suggest to Democrats that in this bill is an opportunity to change the cablelaying laws so that cable laid with government funding must be open for use for all internet and cable TV providers to foster competition rather than monopoly. The government doesn't need to own the wires to do this, just force them open, or at least future government funded cable laying. It would go a long way towards not being labelled a big business bailout by opponents of a big bill, and opening the cable monopoly system up for competition would be something voters can understand, because remember if there is one thing both liberal and conservatives both certainly share it is disgust with what must appear to people (who do not happen to also be corporations under US court precedent) that big business is able to reliably shape legislation to benefit the corporate interest.

The internet access expansion should still be done because that does seem to be a very good thing, even if cablelaying monopolies can't be reformed, but I will be less pleased about how it was done than I could have been by it.

EDIT: Here is a basic breakdown of the spending:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/31/upshot/whats-in-bidens-infrastructure-plan.html

That looks pretty good to me so far, though there isn't much detail there.The bit about semiconductors I wonder about, but there is a shortage of components right now in some industries, such as the automotive sector. Apparently it's hard to buy top of the line graphics cards right now too, but that might be unrelated. Good thing I built mine at the start of the pandemic (before those came out). The shortage then on Newegg at least appeared to be cooling fans for some reason. I thought maybe the supply was being bought up to craft ventilators or something.

[Bumber]

I would strongly suggest to Democrats that in this bill is an opportunity to change the cablelaying laws so that cable laid with government funding must be open for use for all internet and cable TV providers to foster competition rather than monopoly.

Unfortunately, no matter the party, the lobbyists always win.

[MrRoboto75]

we'll throw money at private companies and expect them to build infrastructure with zero oversight, and they totally won't just pocket the money

just like last time

[TamerVirus]

Over budget and behind schedule!

[Iduno]

we'll throw money at private companies and expect them to build infrastructure with zero oversight, and they totally won't just pocket the money

just like last time

Top of the page, so it's guessing game time. Is it the government giving massive amounts of money to AT&T to give us all high-speed internet again? Or are we giving the money and wireless spectrum to small companies again, and also all of those small companies are owned by AT&T et al yet again?

[MrRoboto75]

we'll throw money at private companies and expect them to build infrastructure with zero oversight, and they totally won't just pocket the money

just like last time

Top of the page, so it's guessing game time. Is it the government giving massive amounts of money to AT&T to give us all high-speed internet again? Or are we giving the money and wireless spectrum to small companies again, and also all of those small companies are owned by AT&T et al yet again?

basically

but this time it'll be different somehow

[Lord Shonus]

That looks pretty good to me so far, though there isn't much detail there.The bit about semiconductors I wonder about, but there is a shortage of components right now in some industries, such as the automotive sector. Apparently it's hard to buy top of the line graphics cards right now too, but that might be unrelated. Good thing I built mine at the start of the pandemic (before those came out). The shortage then on Newegg at least appeared to be cooling fans for some reason. I thought maybe the supply was being bought up to craft ventilators or something.

The current semiconductor shortage is crippling almost every industry, because the things are used in almost everything now. That which does not contain semiconductors is made with stuff that does, crippling any expansion or even maintenance of production lines. This is strangling the civilian economy, and will become worse as mass vaccination allows the country to reopen.

Among the products that rely heavily on semiconductors are guided missiles, fighter jets, tanks, and almost ever other form of armament. This makes it a national defense issue as well.

Most importantly, the vast majority of semiconductor production is currently located in China and Southeast Asia (most charts will claim the US as a leader, because they are going by where Intel and AMD are headquartered, not where the factories are). This is not only an issue because China-Not China relations tend to be volatile, the entire region has a lot of potential crisis points. There is, for example, a low-key almost-war going on between China and India right now. Bringing more semiconductor industry home is something that will greatly benefit the US.

[bloop_bleep]

What I've heard is semiconductor manufacturers predicted much less demand during pandemic. Which was a major derp, as demand in fact rose immensely, with people staying home and connecting to their jobs over Internet more. Now almost every part of the supply chain is running at 100% capacity and it's still struggling to meet demand. Expansions in manufacturing capacity are ongoing but could take quite some time. I think I've heard TSMC, a major semiconductor foundry from Taiwan, is opening a new plant here in the US but that could take a while to get running. And that's only part of the supply chain with the printed silicon wafer production; there is raw materials obtainment, PCB manufacturing, capacitor and other electronic components manufacturing, shipping. Silicon is common but needs to be refined to an incredible degree to be useful in semiconductor production. Mining boom happening which is taking up quite a bit of consumer hardware; not just GPUs but also power supplies. CPUs are also being hit. Intel has reportedly been looking to go to outside sources to make their chips instead of their own internal fabs, apparently because their fabs are quite a bit behind the competition in terms of process resolution. I myself think that might not be great for the current semiconductor situation if their fabs are going to start gathering dust...

[KittyTac]

I don't really mind voter ID. Most other democracies have it.

It can go wrong but then agaim so can everything else. Everyone calling it the next Jim Crow is just paranoid. By that logic everyone else is Jim Crow too.

[Doomblade187]

I don't really mind voter ID. Most other democracies have it.

It can go wrong but then agaim so can everything else. Everyone calling it the next Jim Crow is just paranoid. By that logic everyone else is Jim Crow too.

Well you see most other democracies don't have a history of disenfranchising their voters based on race. It's a pattern, and a problem here.

[delphonso]

I bet most other democracies do have that history.

The real issue is getting the ID. When Wisconsin started requiring them, it also required you have had the same address for a year or something. Which hit anyone in university hard and most people who had changed jobs in the last year - not even mentioning homeless or recently homeless.

All that is also ignoring when you're supposed to go and get your ID. During work? Your lunch break? Most modern countries don't have so much of their population on the brink og poverty working two jobs.

[KittyTac]

I don't really mind voter ID. Most other democracies have it.

It can go wrong but then agaim so can everything else. Everyone calling it the next Jim Crow is just paranoid. By that logic everyone else is Jim Crow too.

Well you see most other democracies don't have a history of disenfranchising their voters based on race. It's a pattern, and a problem here.

I don't really believe it will happen again. And universal voting franchise wasn't a thing until the early-to-mid 20th century in most places.

It all depends on the exact implementation. I think it's too early to panic right now.