Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Net Neutrality Is About Control : Progressive democrats Hate Free Speech

Again and again, what the progressive socialist democrats are doing is trying to energize their base of hateful thugs to try and get back the power they lost when Trump was elected by the people. 

And know this, I've said it dozens of times, it is only about the power for control of outcomes. Controlling the internet content is just the first step for total control. Controlling the free flow of information is total control.

The progressive socialist democrats want to control what the people get as information to make good decisions about current events. And when the socialist liberals believe the information you're getting isn't in their best interest, they will eliminate it. It's hurtful, harmful and hateful. Opinions that differs from the controllers is suspect.

Republican and Conservative content is deemed hateful. Facebooks Zuckerberg believes this.

Over the top? Think about it. What are the tech companies doing right now but controlling what you say and what you think. Twitter? Facebook? What are they doing but censoring  content ''they'' deem wrong and harmful, especially to their personal agenda and ideology.

And still more, when has any department of agency of the federal government ever, ever been nonpartisan?

Hey, and what is this about the socialist liberal democrats wanting to bring back the ''Fairness Doctrine''? Whoa, nothing to see here, just move along.

It really is about the free flow of information. democrats are 
against free speech. 


Democrats Work to Reinstate Obama-Era Net Neutrality Rules
Rachel del Guidice / /

Democrats are expected to vote this week to re-establish internet rules, commonly known as net neutrality, promulgated by President Barack Obama’s Federal Communications Commission.

“This move by the Democrats threatens American ingenuity and the countless good-paying jobs created by internet startups,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “Some of America’s most innovative companies have resulted from an open and free internet. That’s why I support the FCC’s actions to restore internet freedom.”

In 2015, the Obama-era FCC imposed net neutrality restrictions on broadband providers and essentially banned any unequal treatment of data being sent on the web. The rules banned blocking or slowing content which effectively prohibited discounts and premium pricing.

The rules were repealed Dec. 14. That change will go into effect June 11. Previously, all internet service providers were forced to treat all data on, and users of, the internet equally. The ambiguity of the rules also forced providers to go to the FCC for permission each time their service changed, according to James Gattuso, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

“Contrary to what the hysterical left-wing rhetoric would have the American people believe, repealing ‘net neutrality’ has not led to the death of the internet as we know it, nor has it led to higher prices or slower internet traffic,” Heritage Action for America, the lobbying affiliate of The Heritage Foundation, said in a statement about Democrats’ efforts to reinstitute the internet rules.

To reinstate the rules, Democrats want to use the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to review and rescind rules passed by federal agencies. However, in this instance, Democrats and a Republican, Rep. Susan Collins of Maine, want to use it to overturn the FCC’s repeal of the Obama-era net neutrality rules and reinstate them.

Using the Congressional Review Act to reinstate a regulation rather than repeal it is unheard of, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Wednesday in comments delivered on the Senate floor. “The [Congressional Review Act] has never been used to re-regulate,” Thune said, adding:

That is what this is doing. The FCC is unwinding the heavy-handed regulation that went into effect in 2015, and this is going to attempt now to re-regulate, not to deregulate or prevent regulations from going into effect. That has never happened before.

''Do my colleagues on the other side honestly think that Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to vote for that or that President [Donald] Trump will sign it into law? No. Everybody knows better than that.''

A simple majority of 51 votes is usually needed to pass the resolution disapproving of a rule under the Congressional Review Act. However, since Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is on leave for medical reasons, only 50 votes are needed, The Washington Post reported.

If the Senate passes the resolution, it would then go to the House and then to Trump for his signature, although it is unlikely that the president would sign the repeal of the net neutrality restrictions.

“I strongly support a free and open internet,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “And that’s exactly what we’ve had for decades, starting in the Clinton administration. The internet wasn’t broken in 2015, when the prior FCC buckled to political pressure and imposed heavy-handed Title II rules on the internet economy.”

Pai, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, said the undoing of the rules will foster greater competition on the internet. “On June 11, these unnecessary and harmful internet regulations will be repealed and the bipartisan, light-touch approach that served the online world well for nearly 20 years will be restored,” Pai said, adding:

''The Federal Trade Commission will once again be empowered to target any unfair or deceptive business practices of internet service providers and to protect [Americans’] broadband privacy. Armed with our strengthened transparency rule, we look forward to working closely with the FTC to safeguard a free and open internet.''

Roslyn Layton, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who focuses on evidence-based policy for information, communications, and digital technology industries, told The Daily Signal in an interview in March that Democrats’ efforts to reinstate net neutrality regulations are a fundraising scheme.

“The president has also said he would not sign it,” Layton said during a podcast for The Daily Signal. “But, for them, it is for fundraising. They can send out a message and say, ‘Help us get one more vote,’ or ‘Help us save the internet,’ people send them five dollars. So it is a great fundraiser for the Democrats. It is absolutely meaningless policy, they know that, they just do it to fundraise.”

Gattuso, Heritage’s senior research fellow who specializes in regulatory and telecommunications issues, told The Daily Signal in an email that the effort to reinstate the rules is a call for greater internet regulation. “Once more, misguided friends of red tape are working overtime to place the internet in a straightjacket of red tape,” he said, adding:

Consumers will be the losers if network neutrality rules are once more slapped on internet service providers.

The internet is the most successful and innovative marketplace on earth. But it could be condemned to a slow death if the special interests and the anti-market ideologues succeed in taking power away from consumers and to the bureaucrats.

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