Posted on 01/28/2015 8:11:43 AM PST by cornelis
Dear Friends,Obamacare, the VA scandal, the IRS scandal--these are just a few examples of what happens when we give government huge power without oversight.
It's about to happen again--the Obama Administration is fighting for a government takeover of the Internet and the Federal Communications Commission is going to vote on it February 26th. That's why I am writing you today--I need your help to stop this.
President Obama came out a few weeks ago urging the FCC to vote to regulate the Internet the same way that it regulates public utilities under Title II. What this means is that, for the first time, billions of dollars in fees will be attached to Internet service just like they are to telephone service.
You see, under Title II if someone wants to own a telephone company, there are fees baked into the law--fees companies pass on to customers.
Now, under this new regulatory regime, Internet service providers will be subject to these fees as well, and then pass them on to you, the consumer.
This is essentially a massive tax increase on the middle class, being passed in the dead of night without the American public really being made aware of what is going on.
The Internet is built on speed and dynamism, it’s always changing, there are always new and better ideas that are exploding onto the scene, and part of the reason for that is that innovators are not having to go ask Washington, DC for permission every time they want to do something new.
What this really comes down to is a fundamental question:
Who do you want in charge of the direction of the Internet: people at dot-com startups that brought us game changing companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and Uber; or nameless, faceless, unelected bureaucrats in our nation’s capital?
There is another aspect of this that gets overlooked: the Internet is an incredibly important force for freedom, for liberty, and the rights of free speech that we hold dear. It is an existential threat to tyrants in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia who seek to keep information from their people.
We must preserve the high ground for the United States to stand up to these countries and tell them to keep the Internet free and preserve free speech on the Internet throughout the world. We cannot do that if we are regulating the Internet in a similar manner ourselves.
I am not accusing anyone of sinister motives here, but I am deeply concerned about the idea of any government bureaucrat having the power to tell companies what they can and cannot do. In the long term, this could have a chilling effect on political speech, in ways that today we could not even begin to imagine.
We do not have much time left to stop this gigantic government takeover of the Internet. The FCC is voting on February 26th and the Left is mobilizing to support their effort to do so. We cannot let the conversation be totally one-sided. The FCC needs to hear from us today--not tomorrow or next week or next month. Today.
Please join me and go sign the petition to keep the Internet free. We must stand for liberty and preserve the Internet free of government interference.
Thank you for standing for Internet freedom.
Sincerely,
Senator Mike Lee Republican-Utah
This government ignores elections, but a petition is supposed to matter?
Anything and everything. Don’t slack.
The fact that a sitting member of Congress is petitioning voters to ask the executive branch to disallow one of its spawn agencies to implement “rules” tells me that this nation is lost. Congress should be voting right now to defund the FCC over this BS, but instead they’re wasting cycles sending emails to constituents.
We’re so lost.
This is the most important fight of this century. If we win on thing it must be the liberty of the Internet. Keep it government free.
When was the last time a public utility fought for liberty?
If we lose, goodbye FR, et. al.
They continue to let this president seize power, our system of government is a complete failure.
We gave the GOP as much power as we could in the last election, and they refuse to use any of it, except of course where it concerns advancing the government agenda.
We need to work our way back. Why not help?
Shouldn't the American people be the ones voting as to whether or not the FCC/Gov't takes control of the Internet? Why is the FCC voting to decide whether or not they takeover of the Internet? WTF?
Time to go VIRAL on Facebook, Twitter, etc.. Or will government employees Zuckerberg, etc. BURY IT?
Instead of a petition how about passing some legislation to stop this insanity? Isn’t that the point of controlling both houses of congress?
Well, I am sure that they would say Obama will just veto it, or we don’t have 60 votes in the senate, or some other excuse.
They can’t do anything at all outside of holding meaningless votes, unless of course we give them all three branches of government, at which point they outspend democrats and increase the size and scope of government as fast as they can.
And for all of their reaching across the isle to work with democrats, when it comes to getting even a single democrat to support something they “allegedly” want to do, they can’t get a single one, ever, for anything.
Quite frankly, I have had well more than enough of this BS party.
The GOPe votes for the highest bidder, 100% of the time.
Our taxes funded the US government invention of the internet. Therefore the internet superhighway belongs to the American People — exactly like the Interstate Highway System.
The People are entitled to have a say in how their internet is run — just like they have a say in how electric companies, gas, and water companies are run. Why is it okay to regulate other things the People own but not the internet? Because Comcast says so?
Comcast says they own the internet because they’ve built some infrastructure. Stop and ask yourself if this is true. Aren’t they just leveraging an asset the US taxpayers own, exactly like the company that sells hot dogs at Yellowstone Park? They own the hot dog cart, not the park — you do. If you don’t like what they’re charging for hot dogs at Yellowstone, you can kick them out and hire another contractor.
I don’t like Comcast, I don’t like what they’re charging, I don’t like that they’re giving fast lane access to people who use their lousy streaming service, Xfinity, and slowing down service to people who use Netflix. There is no law against this, because there is no regulatory agency overseeing them. And I really don’t like the fact that they decided to help themselves to a giant cut of Netflix profits because no one representing the consumer was empowered to stop them.
What are you going to do when Comcast decides to raise basic access to three hundred dollars a week? You will have no recourse. None. You can’t take your business elsewhere, because in large swaths of the country, Comcast is the only internet game in town.
Because Comcast lobbyists keep speciously repeating ‘free speech,’ you just don’t think — you all react like Pavlovian dogs. WHAT?! FREE SPEECH? THEY’RE GONNA TAKE AWAY FREE SPEECH?! And so you’re hell-bent on GIVING UP YOUR RIGHT TO OVERSEE AN ASSET YOU OWN.
Meanwhile, Comcast is hell-bent on taking away your ownership rights to the internet. That’s the only reason they keep screaming “free speech.”
The crazy part of this is that BOTH the leftists AND those of us on the right want the same result. We want a free and open market as it pertains to the internet as a whole. We don’t want one company or agency or cartel being able to dictate who gets to say what, what speeds certain companies serve certain types of data at, how many options for service everyone gets, etc... Pretty much everyone wants it to be open, free-wheeling and lucrative like in the wild west days of the 90’s.
The question is: Do either of the proposals on the table get us from here to there? Does government oversight and regulation get us there? Does ceding control to the telecoms get us there?
Something tells me that whoever “wins” this battle will be sorely disappointed.
Answer me this...Name one federal agency that is not staffed, controlled and funded by the very same industries that it regulates. Sure, stricter government regulation of the telecoms will initially be painful for them but make no mistake, the long term downside of this for them is that they will have to increase their bribery fund to continue getting what they want.
“We don’t want one company or agency or cartel being able to dictate... how many options for service everyone gets”
But we can’t have that, because of the way the modern internet scales. Free market forces have consolidated the internet into one giant company. (I’m talking about the Comcast/Time Warner merger.)
Ceding control of a public asset worth billions to a private company cannot be the answer. Since it is a public asset, the public must exercise regulation. In its absence, you get the kind of shenanigans Comcast has been pulling with impunity regarding throttling.
And to answer your question, the FCC has done a decent job regulating the broadcast networks. (We the people own the band the networks sit on.) Except for eff bombs and nudity, the government does not have a track record of trying to regulate network free speech. And the FCC continues to enforce the rule that over-the-air broadcast must remain free to anyone with an antenna, though the networks would love to get rid of that rule.
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