The Wall Street Journal reported that the FCC will tweak the language of “net neutrality” rules to skirt a Supreme Court ruling and Congress. Talk about bold!
In a move that will stoke a battle over the future of the Internet, the federal government plans to propose regulating broadband lines under decades-old rules designed for traditional phone networks.
The decision, by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, is likely to trigger a vigorous lobbying battle, arraying big phone and cable companies and their allies on Capitol Hill against Silicon Valley giants and consumer advocates.
Breaking a deadlock within his agency, Mr. Genachowski is expected Thursday to outline his plan for regulating broadband lines. He wants to adopt “net neutrality” rules that require Internet providers like Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. to treat all traffic equally, and not to slow or block access to websites.
The decision has been eagerly awaited since a federal appeals court ruling last month cast doubt on the FCC’s authority over broadband lines, throwing into question Mr. Genachowski’s proposal to set new rules for how Internet traffic is managed. The court ruled the FCC had overstepped when it cited Comcast in 2008 for slowing some customers’ Internet traffic.
Writing in Red State, Neil Stevens described the net neutrality movement as a small band of neo-Marxist radicals. No wonder the Obama administration wants to appease them. It’s their base.
The fact is, the idea that this “Net Neutrality” plan is anything but a power grab was always a lie being pushed by a couple of sources. The first is Google, which has had ties with the administration from Eric Schmidt himself advising Barack Obama, to Andrew McLaughlin who’s been lobbying for Google from his job as Deputy White House CTO. Google stands to benefit when the FCC passes regulations which favor Internet firms like Google over ISPs.
Part of Google’s drive has been in funding Free Press, a radical fringe group dedicated to the nationalization of all mass media in America. Their neo-Marxist vision is to have people’s state commissars dictating all the news you read in the newspaper, watch on television, and see on the Internet. Obviously, they’ve been pushing hard for deem-and-pass “reclassification” of the Internet under FCC total control
However they’re gradually letting slip how much of a fringe group they really are, despite their “Save the Internet” front group having a long list of names. They can’t even decide how many supporters they want to lie and say they have! Is it 1.7 million, or is it 1.6 million? Oops, maybe it’s just 1.0 million. But now the radically pro-Net Neutrality Cecilia Kang, who runs with stories clearly pushed by Google and Free Press without fact checking them first as seen in the updates, claims Free Press is nowhere near a million, and sits at only half that.
House Minority Leader John Boehner slammed the FCC for taking over the internet.
“Under this job-killing big government scheme, the Obama administration is seeking to expand the power of the federal government,” Boehner said in a statement.
“The success of the Internet is a perfect example of what happens when entrepreneurship and innovation are allowed to flourish, but today’s decision will undermine its success and hurt our economy,” the GOP leader continued. “The American people are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’ They aren’t asking for yet another government takeover that imposes new job-killing federal regulations and puts bureaucrats in charge of the Internet.
Even if you’re for net neutrality, do you really want government agencies skirting the law to enact rules without the approval of congress? This is government run amok.
