Free Market? What Free Market?

[DaveofCali]

The FCC is now going to allow broadband companies like Comcast that are basically the gatekeepers of the internet in this country to basically setup internet toll booths to favor their and their partners own content, which will allow them to stifle their competition and choke Netflix and other companies that dare compete with them, and make the internet (in the U.S. at least) a pay to play system. This is the government allowing the stifling of competition on the internet, not to mention the huge threat towards freedom of speech on the internet.

This is just one of many examples of how there is only a MYTH of a free market in this country.

[Hardrada]

1. I don't think a Democratic administration would allow THAT!

[ixion]

2. There is no free market, and the so-called 'Captains of Industry' are not capitalist, they are

cronyists. They don't believe in competition, innovation, or the free market. What they believe in is gaming the field to give them a quasi-legal monopoly.

This has nothing at all to do with the free market.

[ThomCat]

4. Yes, and our administration is enabling this.

:(

The republican politicians worship the crony capitalism and uber-wealthy, but mostly fail to implement the proposals to give them what they want because we all know not to trust them.

Democratic politicians, on the other hand, area also in favor of crony capitalism and the uber wealthy, but quietly, while publicly claiming to be against that shit. Democratic politicians publicly claim to be on the side of protecting the rights of consumers. So politicians like Obama have been able to sneak past the give-a-ways to the uber-rich that the republicans fail to achieve. It is because people don't know it's coming, so they aren't as wary, and aren't constantly unified, shouting "NO" the way they would be with a Republican administration.

I wish we had a real democrat in office, and a real democratic administration that really cares about people's rights, and didn't regularly side with corporations. :(

Or if Obama, as he claims, really is a liberal (just a fucking useless, stupid, cowardly one) I wish he wasn't a fucking damned horrible negotiator who insist on appointing others are conservative corporatists, and many others who are out-right neocons in the name of bipartisanship. You don't achieve liberal success by constantly moving to the right, or by surrounding yourself with right-wing staff, advisers, and appointees.

But I really don't believe this B.S. about him being a failed liberal. He's a successful Conservative tool giving the corporations whatever they want by deliberately failing in every confrontation with them. And by failing, he is succeeding in becoming one of the worst presidents ever.

He is already certifiably worse that Bush in FOIA completions and transparency.

He is already certifiably worse than bush in civil rights. Bush never claimed the right to assassinate citizens. Bush never tortured a US Citizen as far as we know, like the Obama administration is doing now. Bush never rounded up antiwar activists and held them in jail without charges indefinitely. He has expanded the ability to spy on citizens beyond what Bush had in place. He has turned the TSA into something more invasive than it ever was under Bush.

I wonder in how many more areas he will end up being provably worse than Bush. And how fucked up is that, that we can even consider that for a so-called democratic president? :(

[eomer]

6. Except that they call it the "free market".

That's how they market it to those who are susceptible to their disinformation programs.

Same as the way they use "democracy".

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Why do you want the Palin in 2012?

Barack Obama is the strongest, most progressive president ever.

[DaveofCali]

5. Just because the bad cop scares me doesn't mean that I have to like the good cop

I'm tired of having to choose from only "approved" candidates from the rich and the big corporations in this country.

[DailyGrind51]

7. The "Internet" was paid for by tax payers and is part of "the commons".