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Alan Greenspan once championed the gold standard, that obviously didn't last forever.

>It's ignorant to seize on one line of a political appointee's 40-year resume

People are often defined by their most recent accomplishment(s) (unless a worse one can be dredged up from the past).

I try to keep myself informed of current events, but I'm not always as successful as I would like, and I've not got unlimited time to go digging through the Internet Archive to find and read Wheeler's old blog posts (of which I was unaware). If they were so central to Wheeler's philosophy why did they not receive more recent attention?

>it's clear the blind Wheeler hate was completely unfounded.

If to you, "blind Wheeler hate" == skepticism, then it's not clear at all, but I am starting to warm up to the guy. Thanks for the blog links.

PS, I also doubt that we'd be better off today without the enormous furore over FCC internet regulation.




> If they were so central to Wheeler's philosophy why did they not receive more recent attention?

I don't mean to imply that you're a lazy cynic, just that the easily digestible stories on HN (especially political ones) are often lazy and cynical.

"OMG, I just saw John Oliver, did you know Wheeler was a lobbyist for the cable companies!?"

vs.

Acknowledging that he was a lobbyist for the NCTA during the Jimmy Carter administration and realizing that his more recent lobbying work was for the CTIA - (Still over 10 years ago) - where they were trying to free up more spectrum to enable wireless broadband.

For the past 10 years, he worked with a VC firm that invested hundreds of millions into tech companies. Wheeler personally sat on the board of Earthlink, InPhonic, and Telephia...

I'm not sure why the narrative was so far off the mark but I gave up trying to correct it a long time ago. Rest assured though, there at least a few people that weren't surprised whatsoever about Wheeler's pro-consumer actions.




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