Re: Edited Edupage, 9 May 1996

At 10:08 PM 5/9/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
>From:  IN%"educom@elanor.oit.unc.edu"  9-MAY-1996 22:01:14.77
>
>>REGIONAL BELLS WANT RATE HIKES FOR WIRING SCHOOLS
>>The United States Telephone Association would like to raise the average U.S.
>>monthly phone bill by about $10 over the next five years to pay for wiring
>>schools and libraries with new lines for phones and computers, and to
>>subsidize poor and rural customers.  The proposal assumes an $11 billion
>>cost for wiring schools and libraries, with local phone companies paying
>>about a third to a half of that.  The rest would come from a surcharge on
>>other services, such as cellular.  "No single industry should be held
>>responsible for fulfilling this major goal," says USTA's president.  "Each
>>has a role and should make a significant contribution to the national
>>education technology mandate."  (Investor's Business Daily 8 May 96 A7)


OK, someone tell me why the END USERS don't pay for this!

If a school wants to be wired, the local school board can pay for it (and
the local taxpayers can vote for the millage increase).  If you don't think
every five year old needs a net connection (maybe because you are afraid of
them seeing nekkid ladies, or because you just think teachers should teach
and not rely on technology to do their jobs for them), you can vote against
spending the money.

As for subsidizing rural customers, those people made a choice to live in a
rural area, for whatever reason.  I see no reason to subsidize that choice.
Unless of course they want to pay higher taxes to subsidize the costs for
my living in the city.

        Clay

>
>OK, someone tell me why the END USERS don't pay for this!
>
>If a school wants to be wired, the local school board can pay for it (and
>the local taxpayers can vote for the millage increase).  If you don't think
>every five year old needs a net connection (maybe because you are afraid of
>them seeing nekkid ladies, or because you just think teachers should teach
>and not rely on technology to do their jobs for them), you can vote against
>spending the money.
>
>As for subsidizing rural customers, those people made a choice to live in a
>rural area, for whatever reason.  I see no reason to subsidize that choice.
>Unless of course they want to pay higher taxes to subsidize the costs for
>my living in the city.
>
>        Clay
>
>

I wouldn't normally respond to such an offtopic post, but this post is
so egregious I couldn't let it pass. Who says they make a choice to live
in rural areas? Do they also choose not to have enough money to pay
for shoes? So, because they live in a poor district they are not entitled
to the same level of education as a rich city suburb?  The illiteracy
rate in Alabama is 40%! This is just plain sick!  I don't think that
every school needs a net connection, I think they need better teachers. But
the statement that we shouldn't subsidize rural customers because they
CHOOSE to live there (even though some are poor and can't afford to live
anywhere else) is just plain fallacious. Just because you choose to live
in the city does not mean people always choose to live where they live.
Education is one thing (perhaps the only thing) that deserves to be
subsidized in this country. We're rapidly falling behind.
 I don't agree with the $10. I'd need convincing that every school
needs a net connection when the students can't read, but the tone of the
above message is callous, besides being wrong.



--
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes					Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin  				Auburn University
			doug@eng.auburn.edu
		Pro is to Con as progress is to congress

Ever since most of the hard crypto content moved to coderpunks, there have 
been a lot of totally non-crypto political postings that make my skin 
crawl. In general, the only thing that cypherpunks have in common is a 
belief that privacy is a good thing, strong cryptography is a good way 
to improve privacy, and that cryptography with _manadatory_ key escrow is 
not strong. Stuff on the CDA yes. Stuff on the CBA no. Use of crypto for
on-line tax filing yes. Generic Tax Evadance stuff not really.

I kinda miss the Perrygrams :)

-----
Cause maybe  (maybe)		      | In my mind I'm going to Carolina
you're gonna be the one that saves me | - back in Chapel Hill May 16th.
And after all			      | Email address remains unchanged
You're my firewall -    	      | ........First in Usenet.........

Simon Spero writes:
> Ever since most of the hard crypto content moved to coderpunks, there have 
> been a lot of totally non-crypto political postings that make my skin 
> crawl.
[...]
> I kinda miss the Perrygrams :)

Well, there aren't going to be any more of them. Lots of people
complained.  "You're a fascist" they said. "We can post whatever we
want, and you can't stop us. Nya Nya Nya." The intellectual level of
of the counterarguments was more or less that possessed by six year
olds, but it didn't matter -- they not only claimed their right to
piss in the communal coffee pot if they wanted to, but they went on to
exercise this right. Well, now they all get to drink it.

Some of the people who couldn't help but take a leak in the well
whenever they passed it by got upset that coderpunks drew off all the
crypto talk. Well, actually, there was no crypto talk left.  It would
have been nice to keep one list, but some people insisted on
exercising their right to be stupid in public over and over again and
it got to be too much.

It used to be that I turned to cypherpunks first to get news of
breaking cryptography policy interest and breaking cryptography
information. Now there doesn't seem to be anyone left here who gives a
damn about cryptography -- even big news like MD5 getting nuked
doesn't make it above the noise levels.

I'm expecting that I'll unsubscribe from this thalidimide parody of a
cryptography mailing list within a few weeks. Perhaps I'll start an
alternative place to discuss cryptography policy that explicitly has
the policy of tossing off people who want to post irrelevancies.

I suppose then the rest of the crowd can just turn the filters up or
whatever it is claimed one is supposed to do to find something worth
reading in the cesspit.

Perry