Politics?

So I was reading over at digg.com and I found an article from Wired News. Its about Pete Ashdown, who's running for senate against Orrin Hatch in Utah. Normally I avoid politics and political discussions like the plague(or worse). I figure one politician is as retarded as the next, and since I couldnt possibly care less about all the normal political subjects like foreign policy, government spending, hippies, etc, I've never identified with any of thier views, but this article seemed interesting enough so I read it.

Pete Ashdown, an executive of Xmission(a local ISP) is running against Orrin Hatch, who I'm sure is a great guy, but has been known to be snugly tucked away in the back pocket of the RIAA and MPAA. He once suggested that "copyright owners should be able to destroy the computer equipment and information of those suspected of copyright infringement, including file sharing." Then a year later he "proposed the controversial INDUCE Act that attempted to make illegal all tools that could be used for copyright infringement." On the other hand, Pete Ashdown is very tech savy and seems to understand technology, the internet, etc. He supports fair use and is anti-DRM. In short, he seems to have his head screwed on right. As mentioned in the article "Ashdown... hopes to fight anti-tech policies and help Congress understand the internet from the point of view of someone who has been there."

It reminds me of the one and only time I went to a Town Hall meeting. The issue on the docket that day was wether or not the city should purchase the Switchpoint Broadband Network. My mom was going to voice her support for the city making the purchase and I decided to go since I figured it meant the diffrence between crappy DSL or Cable compared to the 100Mb/sec upload and download that I had become accustombed to. As it turned out, the members of the city council didnt know the diffrence between a keyboard and box of tacks, so it was a good thing that a lot of techies showed up. There were some people who came to oppose the idea, but none of them really had anything inteligent to say. I do remember an old guy(the cow guy) who stood up and said that we should invest in agriculture and cows and that it wasnt the city's place to become an ISP or some such nonsense, needless to say he was shut down pretty quickly and the city did end up buying the network. Everybody lived happily ever after with bleeding fast internet access.

Going back to the topic at hand. I see Orrin Hatch as the cow guy. He just doesnt understand technology. With technology moving at the rate that it is, the lawmakers have a lot to catch up on, and you cant have people making decisions that dont understand the issues. We might as well just put the lobbyists in office.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I think we need more geeks in politics. I agree with what Ashdown is saying, and Im definately voting for him.

I'm also going to vote for Lewis Billings, who's been the mayor responsible for building Provo's fiber-optic network, iProvo. Dave Bailey, on the other hand, would love to shut iProvo down.

Anyway, talking about politics makes me sick, I'll never do it again.