[TriLUG] OT: Sen. Hoyle admits he let Time Warner Cable write NC's ant-muni BBND Bill

[Brian Henning]

This is why I usually try to avoid political commentary; I blame a moment of irritation for my outburst...  I should clarify:

By "centralized government," I meant "one person or a small group of people exercising governing power over a larger group of people."  All points made subsequent to my comment are correct and I agree with them all -- it's a necessity in some form or another, it's a property of nearly all forms of government, and corruption[1], either individually or corporately, is a problem.  It's germane (thanks, Cristóbal, for giving me another opportunity to open a dictionary[2]!) because this is an example of the actions of one man (or the group to which he belongs, the NC state senate) having ramifications on the population at large (the people of Gaston County and the State of North Carolina).

By "this great nation's leadership" (which was a poor choice of words), I meant the structure of government in our nation as a whole on all levels, and not the Federal government specifically.

Anyway, Cristóbal's comments are valid and the links quite useful.  Thanks!

I will now respectfully dog-paddle my way back to the shallow end of the pool.

~B

[1] Let's also define "corruption" as any failure of a governing body to represent its constituents' majority concerns, in favor of its own agenda, regardless of motivation [with a rider for "common good," whatever that means].

[2] By "open a dictionary," I of course mean "type the word into Google."

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On Behalf Of Cristóbal Palmer
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 10:35 AM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] OT: Sen. Hoyle admits he let Time Warner Cable write NC's ant-muni BBND Bill

On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 9:42 AM, Brian Henning <bhenning at pineinst.com> wrote:
> <rant>
>
> Hooray for centralized government!

He is a state senator representing Gaston county:

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/members/viewMember.pl?sChamber=S&nUserID=14

so I'm not sure what you mean by "centralized government" here or how
it's germane.

> I'm no anarchist by any means, but it's baloney like this that really
> undermines what little confidence I have in our great nation's leadership.

Again, he is a state level representative, not national.

If we're going to successfully defeat these ridiculous kinds of
lobbying efforts, it is very appropriate for us to get righteously
angry. We have to be careful, however, not to wander off into the
weeds and boil off our anger uselessly. Now I won't presume to tell
you where you should direct your righteous anger, but this list
strikes me as a more appropriate place to have a call to action.

For example, please go here:

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/GIS/RandR07/Home.html

And find out who represents you if you don't already know. From there,
send a piece of paper mail or make a phone call to get in touch with
that person. Do it at least three times. Every time, you should have a
brief, calm, clear statement about what motivated you to get in touch.

Peace and good luck to you,
-- 
Cristóbal M. Palmer
ibiblio.org systems
UNC Chapel Hill
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