Except that he can get broadband; he just can't get it quite a cheap as he wanted. Either this story or yesterday's mentions that he was paying $5 a GB for cellular data (3G?), and running up about 30 GB a month in usage. So, $150 per month. The hookup he wanted would have probably cost, what, $40 or $50 a month? If he's living so close to the edge that an extra hundred a month puts him on the street, then he couldn't really afford to live in that house anyway. (Some of us are out of pocket more than a hundred a month for a bus pass to get to work. We suck it up; it's a cost of doing business and living where we choose.)

Of course, this guy also claims to have offered to pay "a good chunk of the cost" of installing the cable to his house, which would have run into the tens of thousands of dollars. If he was willing to splash out for that, then he could have afforded to pay even utterly ungodly cellular data rates for years. Bluntly, the only plausible explanation is that there's more going on here than meets the eye--the financial and technical case don't credibly add up to being "forced" to sell his house. Either he's got additional reasons that he wants/needs to move that he isn't sharing, or he just really craved some attention.

If you're innocent, why would you resist talking to investigators all by yourself?

Really?

Yes, I realize that this isn't a criminal investigation, but honestly. If I knew there were a chance that any offhand remark or misstatement I made could end up being quoted on C-SPAN by a Senator with an axe to grind...yeah, I'd be pretty damned reluctant to talk. Even if I weren't bright enough to figure that out for myself, I'm pretty sure I can see why my employer would have similar concerns.

The law is that any shop open to the public must accommodate the entire public, and cannot refuse service for any discriminatory reason.
The law is that the right to do business with someone is established from the customers point of view.
The law is that shops don't get to choose their customers.

And you should read up on how Christianity was indeed used as an excuse to discriminate against blacks.
Bills EXACTLY like this one were used to try and get around the Civil Rights Act's prohibition on discrimination in the marketplace.

Bingo.

I can't believe people need this stuff spelled out for them.
It's like they weren't taught it in history class.

But then...a lot of people weren't, because the right has been successful at raising a hue and cry when people try to teach it or talk about it.
They say "people would stop being sexist/racist/anyotherist if you just stopped talking about it".

But what really happens when you stop talking about it?
They forget the lessons of the past.
Or never learn them in the place.

And that's how we get stupid laws like these and end up having the same arguments all over again!

1 - Private entities have the right of freedom of association.
2 - Businesses are not private entities.
3 - Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
4 - Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States
5 - Katzenbach v. McClung

It's the same arguments all over again, ignoring past and already settled legal precedent/authority.

Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

and

Katzenbach v. McClung
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...

No it is not.

If a person or business wishes to participate in the market it must participate in the entire market, meaning anyone willing to do business with them, customers included. the only permissible reasons for not doing so must be business related decisions, like being unable to take on any further work, unable to agree on a transaction, or so forth.

But denial of service rooted in discrimination ("I don't like your skin color" or "I don't like your sexual orientation") is not allowed, and not a right.

Our country has been through all this before.
It's not new and neither are the concepts.

Title II of the CRA of 1964 spells it out quite clearly when it "outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... )

Things like redlining, segregated lunch counters (or just straight up whites only establishments) all serve to produce only one thing: the inability of an entire class of people to participate fairly and equally in the same markets.

What you propose is not a tenet of freedom, but a restriction and deprivation of freedom.

Except for the fact that a robust national highway system is a key factor in fostering and supporting economic growth.
People also used to question why we needed links between LA and NY.

It's not about people wanting to drive their families.
It's about the economic support and stimulus that such infrastructure provides.

China has already learned this lesson, having observed how it benefited our country and helped fuel our greatest period of prosperity and growth. China began its massive interstate (interprovince i guess is more accurate) highway project a little more than a decade or two ago, and in the space of 7 years had more highway miles than the US. and the results have been dramatic, spurring economic activity far inland where prior to the highways there used to be little or none. the majority of economic activity was clustered around the seaports and only as far inland as the roads reached. with a modern highway system constructed the potential reach of freight, and the volume of freight the roads had the capacity to handle, was increased by several orders of magnitude, and it's been pivotal in the expansion of their economy.

As for Russia, there is economic activity on the east (largely based around exporting oil and other resources), and economic activity on the west, but there is little in between and the two areas of activity are currently tenuously linked at best, mostly by rail. More capacity and capability to move people and goods between them would be very beneficial to the country.

and if not broken up, at the very least ISP's like Comcast should be forced to divest themselves from their content creators (NBC and such) and delivery services (Hulu).

I watched it, and they may have spent 100k on legos, but they didn't film 100k worth of legos.

So...meh. At the $5 per gigabyte we keep seeing tossed around, that's $150 a month to work from home, with occasional trips into town for supplies and groceries he probably needed to get anyway. Some of us are out of pocket that much for a transit pass to get to work.

Given that it probably costs north of ten thousand dollars in legal fees, commissions, and taxes to buy or sell even an inexpensive home (and the sky's the limit if the property is more valuable), moving out solely to save even a couple of grand a year in bandwidth fees is a pretty dubious move, financially speaking. Bluntly, there's more to this story than is being reported.

government's stance is that material can be innocuous separately, but become sensitive (and require classification) if collected together.
it's the idea that individual puzzle pieces are worthless, but if you collect all the pieces you now have a complete picture.