To Wi-Fi?
Warning: Rant ahead. Possibly containing profanity and baseless accusations added for shock value.
Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco and first runner up in the 2001 Upperclass Twit of the Year Contest has declared access to the internet a “Fundamental Right�, equal to none other than your rights to speak freely without fear of reprisal from your government, your right to practice of any religion (or not) you choose (or not) and your right to keep an bear arms.
He is in the process of attempting to set up free Wi-Fi service throughout the Shity by the Bay, and I have no doubt that as the subject starts getting bogged down in debate that he will begin blasting any and all who oppose it as friends ‘Big Phone’ and Big Cable’ who currently GASP charge people for their services after said companies have invested in the infrastructure to yield these services.
Newsom is also under some illusion that he can do this for little to no cost to the taxpayers of his goofy-assed city.
First off, I would like to point out to Mayor Dipshit that the government offers no truly ‘Free’ services. Even the federal government, who actually prints the little green pieces of paper we all use as currency can’t do anything for ‘Free’ and if they can’t do it, I cannot see Mayor Knewlittle as anything but delusional, possibly an aftereffect of withdrawals from his MethAmphetamine suppository bender last week.
I was listening to a nationally broadcast radio show yesterday when a caller phoned in and reminded me of something Ayn Rand wrote about rights. Specifically, in her book ‘Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal’ she mentions that a right can only be something that costs nothing to anyone. (I am, of course, paraphrasing, as all my Rand books were lost in a horribly moist situation involving a storage unit and automatic sprinklers. I did go on an Amazon shopping spree yesterday to correct that problem, however.)
But if you look at the Bill of Rights and the subsequent addition of later amendments to the Constitution, you will be hard pressed to find a single ‘Right’ contained within that costs anyone anything. They are free to all. The wealthy have no more availability to them than do the poorest of the poor.
When people like Mayor Monkeypoke start planting flags like Marvin the Martian into “Planet New Fundamental Rights� such as Wi-Fi or the boondoggle that would be American Socialized Medicine, they are talking about ‘Rights’ that would not only need support from the tax base (read: the working class and the eevviill rich folks), but that would be more available to the poor than to the people who would be paying to support the so called ‘free’ program.
But of course, RNS regulars already know all this, which is why I like y’all.
I would just like to ask Mayor Fuckstick about his plan to give portable computers to the homeless.
Oh, he doesn’t have a plan for that yet? Then I would like to ask him why he is planning on denying them access to this fundamental right by not supplying the computers. After all, Wi-Fi to a person without a computer is as useful as oxygen to a rouge corpse.
And a rouge corpse is exactly what his city has become.
While it’s true that the gov. should not be allowed to deny anyone internet access, just as it should not be allowed to deny anyone access to firearms, it certainly is not gov.’s job to supply that access to either one.
Great post!
….Mr. C.
You skipped a rant, my friend.
The first rant is of global scale, and includes that whacky idea that a laptop can be made profitably for $100, with a hancranked generator in it for the po’ folk who don’t have electricity, and millions of them given to the world’s chilluns, who must be educated up to a digital standard that just can’t be done except with a computer.
Of course, we’ve skipped over little things like international language barriers, the fact that uneducated chilluns in the bush don’t type and can’t operate a QWERTY keyboard, etc etc. Apple will simply become the socialist tool of the socialist UN, and fill that wish list, and bring it all in under $100 a unit.
They haven’t learned all their lessons from socialism. The first socialist lesson is that a properly diverse committee, not an engineer, must design the computer. Designed by a committee with political and cultural axes to grind, they will be hard-pressed to keep the price under $10,000 per unit, let along get it down to the target $100.
After THAT little boondoggle is done, with the UN fatcats getting their slice of the pie, along with Apple, THEN there will be a demand for WORLD-WIDE free Internet access so the kiddies can connect.
How will all this be paid for?
My guess is that the UN will ask all it’s member nations (read: the US of A), to tax their current access to the ‘Net and form a pool of money (yes, just like the oil-for-food pool of $$$) to put up the next generation of Wi-Fi all over the globe.
Sorry AK, for stealing your rant, but it seems to me that this is a more important bubble to burst.
Ya know, just when you think you’ve seen the “stupidest thing ever” some bright bulb goes and trumps it.
What’s next?
I’ve got no reason to worry about the UN or some dipshit charity wanting to waste their money on the development and give-a-way of cheap laptop computers.
Let ‘em do it. See if I give a rat’s ass.
The tribes on the Serengeti Plains will use the thing to push grain, the natives in the deep Amazon will use it to club small animals and the primitive South Pacific Islanders will use it as a foot rest.
What the hell do they need with a laptop?
The only way that the UN will be getting a dime from the US is if they lay off their machinations on taking over the internet, and that is a big IF.
Maybe in my spewing of my ranty goodness I messed my mark: I am not pissed that this guy wants to spend SF citizens money to give away for free to the ‘po when the market already provides the service and that the people who want it need to earn the money to get it.
My rant was that this commie pinko ass crack linking SOB is comparing my (and your) right to speak freely to the ability of a semi-literate to get access to internet porn.
I was also hoping to point out that his city is on the fast track to ban all firearms within the city limits (unless you’re a cop), an actual civil right that the Founding Fathers put into the BoR, and wants to substitute it with the ability of destitute individuals to read the NY Slimes and/or the SF Crapsicle online.
Oh, and Mr.C, the government DOES restrict access to the internet to citizens of this country.
Federally prosecuted computer hackers (aka: Crackers) are usually forbidden to own a computer lager than a calculator and access the to the internet in any way, even celphone email, is expressly verboten.
Pedophiles are sometimes restricted from all but the mildest of web sites and an even larger number of them have their site history files monitored by their probation officers.
So if this internet thingy that Mayor McCheesdick believes is such a fundamental right, how does he reconcile these two legal precedents in his jurisdiction?
Or does his city become a haven for crakers and kiddie diddlers?
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