Romney promises time travel

Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney promised yesterday that he would guarantee time travel to all Americans by the end of his first term.

"Any American who chooses to travel through time will be able to do so. This is a freedom and America was built on freedom. Only I can do this for America and I have a plan to do this for all Americans."

Asked what that plan might be, Romney said "There is no reason for me to go into the details. If I provide any detail, my opponents, who oppose me and therefore oppose time travel, will simply start picking apart my plans and prevent me from getting elected and being able to provide the time travel I have promised all Americans."

Romney went on to say that "President Obama has failed to deliver on time travel. He has held America back from exercising their freedom to travel where they want, when they want. It is time for a change."

Questioned whether time travel was even possible, Romney said "I don't believe just in the possible. I believe in the unlimited possibilities of the American people. My experience in the private sector provided me with the experience to create jobs. That is what this election is about, the jobs I have experienced and my experience creating jobs. Millions of jobs for hard-working Americans.

"My opponent, the president who some worry might not have been born in America, does not like jobs. He does not want people to have jobs. All he wants is big government, voters who want free stuff and will never vote for me so screw'em, and no time travel for them, either."

Romney's running mate Rep. Paul Ryan was speaking to Council for American Families when told of Romney's new promise. 

Ryan said that time travel should first be offered to Americans "who want to go back and undo bad choices, make better decisions. Even in cases of justifiable rape, rather, where the claims of a raped woman can be justified after they are proven by the evidence gathered at the scene, as it were, which would be much easier with time travel, that woman can now choose whether she gets pregnant or she might even choose to keep herself out of harms way before the alleged rape even occurs."

Ryan said time travel could even result in the prevention of pregnancy when the fetus grows up to be homosexual. "No abortion and and no deviant. That's a win-win," Ryan said.

Romney did say his concept for time travel is based on the idea of "getting government out of the way of companies that will provide jobs for everyone and the safest, most cost efficient travel through time the world has ever known. Free markets provide competition that works to free markets from excessive government regulations that prevent the freedom to compete that all Americans demand and deserve," Romney said.

"The president, who once said that he favored opportunity for all Americans in a socialistic effort to redistribute wealth through progressive taxes that I never paid anyway, opposes Americans having jobs or traveling through time."

The Obama campaign was cautious in their response. "That Governor  Romney promises time travel by the end of his first term makes sense of so many things," said David Axelrod, Obama campaign spokesman. He would not elaborate.

It's not a "free market"

It is stunning how many Republicans claim to defend "free markets," without seeming to know what they are talking about.

To begin with, there is no such thing as a "free market" in America, unless you are talking about selling used furniture on Craigs List. Maybe.

Effective markets require rules. Here's an obvious one: you have to own what you sell. Selling something you know to be stolen is a crime.

There are others. We don't want someone selling slug bait as cat food. We want to know what's in our hamburger (actually no, we don't). We don't want wheels to fall off our cars. We don't want a 50/50 chance that the light bulb we put in the socket is going to electrocute our children or burn the house down.

Each of these is a restriction on the "free market." So please, Republicans, stop asserting that any restriction at all on any business is unAmerican.

Secondly, money begets power begets money begets power. The very MARKETS that the Republicans claim to be defending REQUIRE PROTECTION from government.

Profits are good. And the left needs to lose the attitude that everybody else's money is tainted. The first responsibility of a business is to make money for owners. It has been shown that, in a "competitive environment," the best way of making money for owners is taking care of customers.

But without someone to enforce rules, the big dogs eat everyone else, grow into monopolists and soon customers are forced to transfer income in excess of "reasonable" profit, taking money from other sectors of the economy if the need is critical. We pay $200 for a loaf of bread, $50 for a gallon of milk, 5$ for a gallon of gas. Ooops.

What's reasonable? Dunno. Let's let a competitive market decide that. A market where there is real and vigorous competition, the lowest possible barriers to entry to encourage new players, and a fair and level playing field. I have no interest in assigning a percentage.

And that's the rub. In the effort to make money, it is obvious that every business wants to reduce competition, so it has to spend fewer resources "taking care" of customers and can make more money for owners. That is why government is necessary to protect the markets. to ensure competition.

I don't care if Romney fired people while at Bain. I do care if ATT gobbles up T-Mobile.

And bankers who broke the law need to go to jail, along with any other CEO or VP who lies under oath or engages in activity which is a crime. Letting a company settle for a pittance and letting perps collect a bonus is to guarantee a repeat of behavior that has a high reward to risk ratio.

That is what Occupy Wall street was really about, and the fact that those same CEO's who broke the back of our economy for the last five years are putting people in Congress to reduce competition turn the rest of us into serfs living on the edge of their wealth.

End corporate welfare. End corporate control of our government, and the resulting abuse of our economy. Recognize that corporate tyranny enslaves as wrongly as any government tyrant.

Verizon, on the other hand...

... just bought about $4 billion worth of spectrum from Comcast.

Why do I like this deal, after showering AT&T's takeover over of T-Mobile with so much bile?

Because Verizon's deal brings new, unused spectrum to the market, actually doing what AT&T falsely claimed their deal with T-Mobile would accomplish. Because the Verizon deal still leaves the competitors on the field, especially the scrappy one (T-Mob) known for good prices and good deals. Because, in the final look, Verizon isn't AT&T.

Did you note last week that Verizon was the one major cell phone provider that did not use the sneaky software from Carrier IQ that knows more (a lot more) about you than your mother?

There is an obvious difference between Verizon and AT&T. One is good, the other is ... well, not so good. The corporate cultures seem vastly different. It's like going into a restaurant where staff is smiling and professional and eager, versus going into one where the first words you hear are "We close in fifteen minutes." Don't you just wonder what they're doing to your burger back there in the kitchen?

AT&T just seems to be in it for themselves, ya know?

We post this to let our conservative friends understand that we are not anti-business. We like business, and we like functioning markets, where they exist. Which does not include the U.S. pharmaceutical industry or anything that travels in the same wheel rut as AT&T.

That is not to say Verizon only wears a white hat. They were astoundingly silent about the AT&T and T-Mobile deal. Verizon's execs knew even if AT&T succeeded in swallowing T-Mobile and moving past Verizon to become the largest cell provider, even being second largest would increase Verizon's bottom line in a less competitive market. That's how oligopolies work.

But being silent is not the same as openly trying to undermine market competition. Verizon bought $4 billion of spectrum and will bring it online, while AT&T was taking a $4 billion charge for likely blowing a deal with T-Mobile that was a blatant attempt to subvert market dynamics so beloved of the right wing if in name only.

AT&T is anti-business, except their own. Rep. Greg Walden is anti-business,too, except for AT&T's business which Walden conducts quite well as a mole for AT&T at the government level. He is not working for small Oregon companies that need a functioning market in which to buy phone service. But then, we don't give Rep. Walden nearly as much money as he gets from AT&T.

Verizon is the nation's leader in customer service, the leader in basic service, the leader in high speed service, and it appears that lead will continue with this recent purchase of spectrum and marketing deals with cable companies.

AT&T's lies for all to see

How wonderful this last week to see the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission protecting markets, small businesses and consumers from a rapaciously hungry corporate monster.

Even "The Economist" magazine, hardly a liberal rag, opposed the AT&T takeover of T-Mobile.

AT&T's discomfort at the release of the FCC staff report on the merger is understandable, and wrong. That is OUR government staff, that is OUR report, transparency is GOOD, the people have A RIGHT TO KNOW. The company wasn't opposed to putting its falsehoods out there during the process. It's blatant hypocrisy to affect outrage when the government releases its findings.

In fact, ALL the documents of the proposed merger should be released. They were filed with a public body to get something from the public. We should be able to see them. Distortions and other bad things, like AT&T, grow in the mouldering dark.

Anyone who watched the AT&T CEO in action before Congress, read the canned pro-merger crap AT&T regional presidents planted in newspapers around the nation (it all reads the same!), watched the callously manipulated spectacle of gay and lesbian organizations, Latino advocacy groups, Black community leaders giving pay back by advocating outside their interest, watched AT&T lawyers preen with false outrage, read anything about this corporation or even just dealt with an indifferent AT&T representative after the company attempted to rip them off, knows that AT&T is a company without a soul.

Yeah, yeah, we get there are people working for AT&T who have souls. So far. Leave it alone.

AT&T will eat whatever it can until gorged and then eat some more, the only thing stopping it something larger.

Which is why we have laws against monopolies, why AT&T had to be broken up once before, and why this last couple weeks of courage on the part of the justice department and FCC is only the beginning. AT&T has already said, somewhat ominously, they will pursue "alternate means" to get what they want.

One day, see the ancient James Coburn movie, "The President's Analyst."

At&T's representative from Oregon, Greg Walden, a man corrupted by campaign contributions and who knows what other spores AT&T may have planted in his brain, must be sweating bullets. He will now have to work harder for his host, and risks even greater exposure.

I want a dumb pipe

I don't want to be a captive of AT&T or Verizon. I want them to serve me.

In Europe, the owner of T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, prohibits its subscribers from using Skype in its terms and conditions. AT&T and Verizon would love to be able to impose the same terms and conditions here.

What's it going to be, Congress? Oregon representatives DeFazio, Wu, Walden, Blumenauer and Schrader need to stand up and protect the market from the power of the duopoly. You too, Wyden and Merkley. Be heard on this.

I love the iPhone, and I love my Evo 4G and my Nexus S. I think it is wonderful to be able to buy these phones with all the features preloaded and have a two-year contract and a high value added by Sprint or AT&T or Verizon. They should be able to sell that.

But I want more choice. I want to be able to use the phone I want in the way I want and pay a fair price for access that I control.

I don 't want AT&T or Verizon to dumb down my phone so I can't use it on my home's wifi network the way they do now. I want to use my home's broadband conveniently to make a call and not be forced to kludge a solution.

I don't want AT&T or Verizon to cut sweetheart deals with Samsung or HTC or Motorola so that I can't get the phone I want to work on the technology I want, the way they do now.

I want to pay for megabytes I choose to download and upload, and not be forced to pay for data sent by automatic programs that AT&T or Apple or Google have loaded on my phone that suck up my personal data and sneak it to their servers without my knowledge.

I don't want NFL or NASCAR or anybody else's bloatware on my phone, or at least be able to get rid of it, which I can't do now. At what point does "protect network security" become an excuse for "keep competition out?"

And by the way, I want to pay for my call minutes in tenths: a call that lasts two minutes and six seconds should be billed at 2.1 minutes, not three, which is nothing but a 30% theft by the phone company.

If the telecom's don't want to become "dumb pipes," then I want our government to ensure, through the mechanism of the free market, that I have the right to choose a "dumb pipe" for my mobile phone and data services.

In fact, I need to be able to choose between two dumb pipes, either GSM or CDMA technology. I want to be able to use any phone I want on whichever pipe that I choose. I want to own the phone, and be able to customize it in any way that I want, use it in any legal way that I want.

The current system is being abused, protections for the consumer are few, because the market has failed to be transparent enough to drive the abuses out through the mechanism of consumer choice.

That will get worse if the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile is approved.

We need competition in the market place and a government that has reduced barriers to entry into the market of access to airwaves, "spectrum," that is owned and licensed by "We the People."

Our founding fathers would have been as outraged by the threat of corporate power as they were of royal power had such a thing existed in their day. It is up to us to stand up and demand our rights in a this new world. We do this by protecting the free market, doing what we need to foster competition and freedom of choice.

It is time our representatives in government took the threat to the future of communications seriously. We cannot let the consolidation continue by those who seek a monopoly. It is bad for markets, bad for America.

Hooray for Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) who earlier this week held a news conference urging regulators to block the deal, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). Thank you for your free market stance that helps small business and consumers.

Power corrupts, even the economic power of private enterprise. The best antidote for that corruption is competition, functioning markets, and effective oversight.

Wake up.