The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Flow of Funds

Re: Flow of Funds

David Nieporent — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:10:56 -0000

List what sectors employ the individuals who contributed.

You've apparently confused this with campaign finance. Cato et al. are simply not-for-profit organizations, like the Red Cross or your local church. When you write a check to them, you're not required to disclose your employer. Cato does not know the "Sectors" that employ the individuals who contributed.

If these groups want to be taken seriously, they have to do much better on the transparency front than this.

These groups already are taken seriously. The people who don't take them seriously are the ones who won't take seriously anybody who produces results they disagree with, in which case phony concerns about "transparency" are just pretexts.

Re: Flow of Funds

TheRadicalModerate — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:22:52 -0000

I'm still trying to wrap my head around a VoIP rag that thinks that net neutrality is good for their industry. VoIP runs over the RTP protocol, which essentially has no congestion control and will (when we get close to congestion limits on consumer networks) fail spectacularly without differentiated services.

Re: Flow of Funds

Alsadius — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:33:04 -0000

So you believe that major corporations are funneling their money through other individuals in order to avoid appearing on public disclosure lists? And this money is tax deductible too? I'm sure the IRS would love to see the evidence you've collected on this issue.

Re: Flow of Funds

Ian Argent — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:38:30 -0000

It's the color of a TV tuned to an empty channel of course. (Which, depending on your age and the age of the TV, could cover either of those answers)

Re: Flow of Funds

Dameon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:49:16 -0000

Excuse me? This is a progressive phenomenon? Those same three billionaires exist in the right-wing mind, too. I'm not yet thirty, and I don't really have much of an idea who George Soros is, but apparently I work for him.

Re: Flow of Funds

Peter Twieg — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:41:48 -0000

But hey, it's their inherited money, they can do what they want with it.

Thanks for illustrating a detail of the stereotype that Megan left out: Not only are libertarian think-tanks funded by shadowy billionaires, but they're shiftless shadowy billionaires who haven't even earned their wealth in any meaningful sense.

Re: Flow of Funds

bombloader — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:53:10 -0000

Attempting to attack funding sources is usually the province of those who can't shoot down the conclusions on evidential grounds, so they try to poison the well and hope nobody looks at the evidence for their own position. BTW, any advocacy group for anything is likely to get a substantial amount of funding from people who are significantly above the median income-they're the ones who have extra money available to fund causes.

Re: Flow of Funds

Joe_Magarac — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:18:02 -0000

The Cato annual report that Mr. Sanchez linked to is unaudited.

That may mean nothing. But pointing skeptics to an unaudited financial report seems silly.

Re: Flow of Funds

TallDave — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:34:58 -0000

Heh, this title reminds of an Aeon Flux episode:

"You fool! You've cut off the flow of funds!"

Re: Flow of Funds

R.J. Lehmann — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:21:40 -0000

I have no opinion on net neutrality, and I think good research is good research, regardless of who funds it. But libertarian think tanks really, really have to stop with this line of bullshit about their sources of funding. *Of course* the direct contributions from corporations are small, because it's obviously unseemly for a corporation to make direct contributions to research that is primarily about THEM. Instead, as others here have pointed out, the money is funneled through a foundation or it's contributed by the CEOs and other top officers of the corporation, neither of which get counted as "corporate" money.

So, Michael Cannon's health research isn't funded by the health insurers, no. It's funded by the "Wellpoint Foundation" and the "Assurant Health Foundation." Which is akin to those companies saying: "No, we didn't contribute to Max Baucus' campaign -- our PACs did that!"

If these groups want to be taken seriously, they have to do much better on the transparency front than this. Don't just say how much was contributed by "individuals" -- list who the top ten contributors are. Or if that's too invasive, list what proportion of funding came from individual contributions of less than $500. List what sectors employ the individuals who contributed. Or just own up to the fact that you *aren't* going to be fully transparent, and deal with the fact that this question will hang over you. But the "1% corporate funding" line is just pure unadulterated bullshit.

Re: Flow of Funds

Calvin Jones and the 13th Apos — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:09:21 -0000

People pushing "net neutrality" as if it's "preventing censorship or keeping Comcast from charging you an extra ten bucks to see the websites you want" (neither of which actually happen or are going to happen, of course) are either deeply mistaken or simply lying. I tend to assume the former from most of them, because all they know about the issue is press releases, rather than technical analysis.

While it hasn't happened yet, that doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. Try living in the Philadelphia area and watching any of the Phillies, Sixers and Flyers games using Dish or DirectTV(meaning the local broadcast).

Re: Flow of Funds

Joshua Lyle — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:56:22 -0000

To clarify, I'm not saying that carriers would necessarily be compelled to ban such traffic, only that this may enthrone banning it as a "reasonable network management practice", deeply violating the "all bits are created equal" norm.

Re: Flow of Funds

Joshua Lyle — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:53:23 -0000

I suggest owning infrastructure. It would be nice if that were subject to less legal interference (something mentioned in the article).

Re: Flow of Funds

Joshua Lyle — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:40:02 -0000

Speaking of Ars Technica articles, I picked up a nice list from this one. The exceptions to the FCC proposed rules for net nutrality include:

* To manage congestion on networks

* To address harmful traffic (viruses, spam)

* To block unlawful content (child porn)

* To block unlawful transfers of content (copyright infringement)

* For "other reasonable network management practices"

My concern is that you can drive a great big truck through the loophole here that may leave us worse off if this includes things like encrypted onion-routed traffic, which it may well, since how can you perform deep-packet inspection on such traffic to ensure that you're blocking unlawful content?

Re: Flow of Funds

Sigivald — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:37:54 -0000

"Net neutrality" is bullshit.

By which I mean, primarily, the term is bullshit.

The hyperventilators would have you believe that the evil telco will censor your access to websites (as if AT+T or Qwest care about the websites you look at).

This is primarily (or if one wishes to be charitable, entirely) ignorance based on confusion about what the "pro-neutrality" complainers (ie, Google) are complaining about.

"Net neutrality", from the Google side, is about Google not having any disadvantages compared to colocated caches, and not having to worry about the provider's own phone/VOIP system not being on "general internet" bandwidth (ie, guaranteeing service quality even when someone on the network segment is using bittorrent to steal DVDs). (There are also complaints about open-internet traffic charges vs. locally mirrored CDN network traffic, but that's even more arcane.)

Google's "neutrality" - as currently pushed - would prevent traffic shaping and QoS necessary to let low-latency traffic that cares about delivery order (VOIP, gaming) coexist on a network with traffic that uses huge amounts of bandwidth but doesn't care about some latency (bulk data transfer; normal file downloads and torrents, legal and illegal).

Some, however, have to know better...

(Further sources: Richard Bennett (cache because of "Bandwidth exceeded" at the moment), (and more here), network engineer and low-level protocol guy.)

Re: Flow of Funds

Henry — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:36:10 -0000

Julian Sanchez really disappointed me. He really protests too much. That not of the corporate sponsors are telecomms does not mean that telecomm money does not flow into Cato. The Foundations? What do they have their fund invested on? The Individuals? Where do they work? What are they business interests?

Really Sanchez's argument about the corporate sponsors is the kind of BS that I would expect from NRO, not from him. Its kinda like the arguing that Geroge Bush wasn't a moron because he went to Yale.

Re: Flow of Funds

Calvin Jones and the 13th Apos — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:34:39 -0000

So what would you suggest? Since leaving the Telecoms to their own devices would be just as bad.

Re: Flow of Funds

Calvin Jones and the 13th Apos — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:33:09 -0000

It's too bad that Sanchez didn't get his facts straight. Of course CATO bends its facts to fit what its donors want. Just look at the lineup. Who knew that VW was Libertarian? Tobacco companies? Shocker!! Wellpoint? And if you look at the names, most of them are CEO's(or former CEO's) of big corporations. It makes me wonder how many of those CEO's(and ex-CEO's) would have ever passed the drug test most probably make their employees take on condition of getting hired.

Re: Flow of Funds

TallDave — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:30:41 -0000

Shrug. Big surprise. These are the same people who get all worked up when private companies spend a few tens of thousands funding anti-AGW studies while tens of millions are poured into pro-AGW studies/agitprop by people like Gore who have huge investments that depend on rent-seeking via AGW regulations.

Re: Flow of Funds

Joshua Lyle — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:25:54 -0000

I did. It just convinced me that letting government regulate the telecom industry is even more insidious than I thought.

Re: Flow of Funds

blissfulight — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:08:56 -0000

I looked over their roster of contributors, and didn't see anything from the Herb and Matilda General Store Foundation (Bigger, Arkansas, pop. 355), which surprised me, as I thought the Cato Institute got the bulk of their funding from Mom and Pop types, and not from multimillionaires, like John Malone, of Liberty Media, who I'm sure has only a passing interest in the outcome of Net Neutrality (big words deserve big letters, you know).

The indignation from the Cato Institute rep(?) was quite shocking, to say the least. It's seriously damning stuff. Really. I'm sure that the Cato Institute would never, ever, ever bend the facts to fit the conclusion. Never. Ever. Ever. Not net neutrality. Not healthcare. And most certainly not smoking. Anyway, one would hope that the Cato Institute would someday aspire to hire actual people that can pass a grade-school level of reading and writing comprehension, unlike those stupid reporters, but the public school system does have its cracks, and sometimes people do squeeze through.

Re: Flow of Funds

Brian 2 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:07:36 -0000

I like Eric Raymond's take:

Mistake #1 for libertarians to avoid is falling for the telcos’ “we’re pro-free market” bullshit. They’re anything but; what they really want is a politically sheltered monopoly in which they have captured the regulators and created business conditions that fetter everyone but them.

OK, so if the telcos are such villainous scum, the pro-network-neutrality activists must be the heroes of this story, right?

Unfortunately, no.

Re: Flow of Funds

Omnissiah — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:56:20 -0000

Geez, I need to have my reading glasses checked, I guess. Shoulda know better, I've never seen Sanchez make an obvious mistake before.

Re: Flow of Funds

wiredog — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:55:11 -0000

First we have to define "net neutrality". The FCC definition seems reasonable to me, as it recognizes the limited bandwidth available, especially in the wireless arena, and doesn't say anything about limiting the cost of a limited good.

Re: Flow of Funds

Rob Lyman — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:41:08 -0000

It's grey where I am. No link, though, too lazy.