Since you are talking about me Mark I'll chime in here a bit too. As I've said before. You and I mostly agree. Government is, with precious few exceptions, the enemy of the people. Government and far to many that work in it are just plain evil. Or maybe arrogant but in the end that causes them to do evil things to the regular folk of the country.
WISPA is an association of or membership. The members are encouraged to run for leadership positions every year (half the board is up for election every year). There is no restriction on who can run for the board other than they have to be a member in good standing. There are a few other things that we ask of our candidates but they don't generally apply to the people here (no one I know of is sitting in jail right now :-). WISPA was formed to help protect our industry. Mostly from the government. That's why we are so focused and spend most of our money on FCC and legislative issues. We've actually been pretty successful here. We've had good success on favorable rules changes, gotten additional spectrum and we've stopped quite a few bad ideas from coming to fruition. I remember getting into it with you on the idea of reporting on the 477. You called me a traitor. Perhaps that fits but I think of myself as more of a realist. The 477 is there. We can't make it go away. In fact, much to my chagrin, it's work with the stupid broadband map. Tell you what though. They ARE there. They DO exist. And your competition is going to be government funded, or not, based at least in part on what the map shows. If you refuse to place yourself on the map, that's your choice. A foolish choice that's bad for you AND the rest of the industry, but your choice to make none the less. I live in farm country. Everyone out here gets government money for something. Crop failures, CRP programs, price supports etc. It sucks. Government money is poison. But so is NO money. It's like salt in many ways. Too much will kill you just as dead as too little. Here's a current example. We have bought out some of the CRP my family has. We run off road motorbike races on the ground. Now it's up for renewal. But the Fish and Wildlife department is refusing to allow the renewal because we need a buffer zone around the track. One that's probably bigger than the 49 acres of crp will support. Dad's still looking into it. Dad's PISSED off though. He didn't enter into any contracts with Fish and Game, why are they involved with this issue at all???? It's ALL private property. But, since it's rented to the government we have to live by it's rules. The bike races bring 10s of thousands or dollars into our local economy. Probably closer to 100k. But that doesn't matter to the dickheads at Fish and Game. They are more worried about the fish that don't exist in the middle of a field and the game birds that might be harmed in some way. I guess birds and deer can't hear a dirt bike coming soon enough to get out of the way. Wanna know the funniest part of all this? Dad plants habitat and birds because he loves that kind of stuff. That doesn't matter to Fish and Game though. They still want the races stopped. Or he has to give up over $2500 per year in revenue from the CRP payments on that ground. More than he'd make farming it (that's the reason for CRP in the first place). So a guy is stuck. The government controls (in one way or another) the prices farmers can charge for their crops, chemical use etc. and therefore the revenue that a farmer can generate. They then offer a program that will pay the farmer more money for the use of his poor ground and set the rules for it's use (basically nothing). Then they change the rules as time goes on, making them more and more restrictive. Eventually out here people tend to eventually give up and sell the ground to the government. MOST of the water ways are now owned by the state. I could go on, but everyone here has a similar story to tell. Look at the recent thread about the idiotic OSHA rules. Who's going to let anyone put a fall restraint system on their home? If you have a habit of falling off roofs, go get a desk job! In the end though. You and I, alone, can't fix any of this. We can't control anything. We have to band together into groups. And those groups have to compromise. Those groups also have to deal with reality as it exists while they try to enact their ultimate goals. WISPA did tell the FCC to eliminate USF, CAF or any other subsidies. We told them to just let the market deal with the issues. We knew ahead of time that they'd reject that stance though. So we also suggested alternative plans and mechanisms that would do the least harm to our industry, communities and country. Your problem Mark is that you don't understand the compromise part. It's funny though, we all do it every day. We walk on different sides of the hall. We use different urinals. We turn our music down in at night. Life is always a compromise. Many of them well and truly suck. But they are what they are. A person can sit there and refuse to move when he's in the crosswalk. It's his right to be there. But when that truck and trailer blows through the intersection at 60mph you'll still be dead as a doornail. Sometimes it's a good idea to have a plan B. Yeah, sometimes plan B is getting shot in the foot. But that's better than plan A (getting shot in the head). When the bag guy tells you he's going to shoot you no matter what telling him to pound sand isn't going to be very effective. At least if you get shot in the foot eventually you can try to go after the SOB!!!! I hope that someday you'll understand what reality is Mark. There's the perfect world then there's the one we're stuck with. I wish you'd climb off of your high horse and volunteer to go to DC and meet the people back there. They aren't all bad, but often their hands are tied too. Whining to us, or worse sticking your head firmly in the sand, is no substitute for working to make it better. Join the committees, run for the board etc. Talk is talk, but it takes action to fix things. Laters, marlon ----- Original Message ----- From: MDK To: WISPA General List Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2012 2:33 PM Subject: [WISPA] It's been a ride... Some up, some down. As the anniversary of my full 8th year actively in the wireless internet business is here, I decided to make some comments. My interest in wireless internet, and actual efforts to actually start doing it are now 14 years old. Yes, really, it was that long ago. And I'm feeling much older these days. My first internet venture failed quite spectacularly. I think I made every mistake one could make, and didn't learn every lesson there was to learn, either. But it did help, as I did not repeat a bunch of things that were fatal. The most important one was to not start with vastly larger bills than your revenue. Growth doesn't always come in rapid fashion. And there's a cost to all growth. Know before you make that leap, what the consequences will be. Over the last few years, I've been known to get what some people call "political". Perhaps it is, I say it isn't. It's just common sense business principles. It was one of my first lessons - learn how to preserve your future flexibility, because THINGS CHANGE. That, too, was one of my first mistakes. I had no alternatives, really, to travelling down the road I started on, which was a seriously bad mistake. That ability to be flexible, to violate the "rules" of internet by wire, is what created the WISP business in the first place, and yet, it's one of the things that's been done the most damage to, and faces the largest threats in the future. This post is probably my last, as it concerns things WISPA. I have given up on WISPA completely. Mostly for the reasons above. While WISPA was being formed, I had the self-generated illusion that fellow WISPS's would be all about getting, expanding, and maintaining the freedom to be in business. We're notorious for being rogues, cowboys, unconventional, and extremely individualistic. It would have never occurred to me that one or more founders of WISPA would go to the FCC and tell them that they should create reporting mandates and then encourage regulation of our industry. My shock when I learned that was a kind of "rock your world" kind of thing. And anger. Serious anger. How dare people undertake to put us under the thumb of the utterly incompetent idiots in Washington DC? If you want to live that way, go live some place like that, don't undertake to force it upon me. That's the essence of the American attitude, history, and the very thing that built this country. Over the years, I've come to realize that unlike me, few of our industry have any such lesson learned. The idea of getting free money or loans or other favors in the form of money from government or government actions has lured them into becoming just another faction of the crony capitalism that has all but destroyed our nation's economy, currency, and threatens to finish the job, rapid-fire. WISPA certainly doesn't seem to have any interest in telling Washington DC to go pound sand, and do what is the morally, economically, and Constitutionally right and proper thing. Leave us the HELL ALONE! Stop pretending that DC is the source of goodness, and stop pretending that they have even an IOTA of the answers for what ails the country and how to supply our needs. They do not. I won't waste your time with explanations of what I want, after all, either you're in agreement, or else your only interest is in creating false portrayals to attack me personally, calling me an "anti-government nut" or any of 100 other senseless phrases. Some of you I've gotten to know a bit over the years, and I have no idea if any of you are on this list anymore. Maybe someone will post this where everyone can read it if they want. Why we can't advocate for economic and business operation freedom anymore is completely beyond my comprehension. Especially since we're supposed be about business, a business which exists solely because of that amazing concept of economic and personal liberty otherwise known as capitalism - or free enterprise - take your pick. It offends too many, and those who it doesn't are too too timid to stand for what they think in the presence of the socialist bullies. It's my wish and my prayer as well, that all of you have a good life, a prosperous future, health, and happiness. But I hold out little hope, long term. Unless things change, we're all going away, our plans and enterprises massacred by the attitude that all our needs are merely a utilitarian function of government. Still, I hope the best for all - and always have and always will. Mark ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy 541-969-8200 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Wireless mailing list Wireless@wispa.org http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
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