Greetings.
I'll leave it to others to carry on the important
work former president Clinton started in health
care reform after discovering that 37 million
Americans have no health insurance.
Now that Clinton has magnanimously stepped
down, rather than embroil the US in lengthy
Whitewater hearings, and I'm president, I
plan to make it my top priority to deal with
a really serious problem. As horrifying and
unthinkable as it is in this day and age,
212 million Americans don't have network access.
The current network situation is an intolerable
and inefficient hodgepodge of private, university,
and government access providers. People in
different parts of the country pay different
amounts for network access. Different providers
give different levels of service. There's
no excuse for this. Access to the net -- equal
access to the net-is a fundamental human right.
Tipper and I have developed a program which
will guarantee equal access to the information
superhighway to all Americans, tall or poor,
rich or thin, white or non-smokers.
All access to the net will be through one's
employer. Employers will deal only with large
centralized network access providers. There
will be only one provider in each area of
the country, cutting down on wasteful duplication.
All providers will be heavily regulated, and
will be required to offer the exact same services
for the exact same prices. All employers will
be required to participate, and to pay the
full costs.
Unemployed people's access will be paid for
by the government. This
is not expected to require any tax increase.
At least, not a very large
tax increase. At least, not before the next
election.
Since individuals will not be charged for
the services, some may be
tempted to abuse the privilege. Especially
because many newsgroups are
known to be highly addictive. To prevent this,
newsgroup access will be
available only by prescription.
For instance, if someone wants access to alt.sex,
they would schedule an appointment with their
Primary Network Consultant. In a few weeks,
when the appointment comes up, they'd come
in at 8 am and get to speak briefly with their
Consultant at some time that day or evening.
The Consultant would refer them to a sex consulatant
or other specialist, as appropriate. After
a few weeks, they'd have a similar appointment
with the specialist, who would then prescribe
alt.sex or some other newsgroup as appropriate.
They would take the
prescription to their Network Access Provider
to get the prescribed newsgroup added to
their .newsrc. To prevent fraud and corruption,
all prescriptions will be carefully tracked
by the government in large databases, closely
secured against everyone who doesn't have
the carefully guarded top secret phone number
for modem access (202-456-1414). Also, all
prescriptions automatically expire after
30 days. They can be renewed only after
another appointment with one's Primary Network
Consultant and the specialist he refers
one to.
FTP, IRC, Gopher, WAIS, World Wide Web,
Archie, telnet, rlogin, finger, and e-mail,
may also be made available by prescription,
if they are approved by the Federal Data
Administration (FDA). For reasons of public
safety, network services and newsgroups
not approved by the FDA will be strictly
banned. Anyone caught owning, using, producing,
providing, or advocating unapproved services,
mailing lists, or newsgroups, will be subject
to zero tolerance-everything they own will
be forfeited to the government, without
a trial.
Also, anyone who rents an apartment or gives
a job to a suspected network abuser will
be subject to zero tolerance. Of course,
this being a free country, nobody will actually
be sent to prison without a fair trial.
Since nobody who's accused will be able
to afford an attorney, the government will
provide them with an attorney of our choice
without charge. And anyone guilty of three
offenses will serve a mandatory life sentence
without parole.
Similarly with anyone who writes, posesses,
distributes, manufactures,
sells, uses, posts, backs up, saves, promulgates,
perpetrates, forwards,
or laughs at, a spoof that makes official
government policies or proposals look ridiculous.
--
Al Gore president@whitehouse.gov
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