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posted by mrpg on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the real-news dept.

The story of net neutrality as an Obama-led takeover of the Internet has been a key Republican talking point for months, a talking point which has been refuted by internal FCC documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information Act request. These findings were made by the independent, nonpartisan FCC Office of Inspector General an Inspector General. However, the findings were not made public prior to Thursday’s vote.

[...] First, some background: The FCC is an independent regulatory agency that is supposed to remain “free from undue influence” by the executive branch—it is not beholden to the White House, only the laws that Congress makes and tells it to regulate. This means the president cannot direct it to implement policies. In November 2014, President Obama released a statement saying that he believed the FCC should create rules protecting net neutrality, but noted that “ultimately this decision is theirs alone.”

[...] Since 2014, Republicans have pointed to net neutrality as an idea primarily promoted by President Obama, and have made it another in a long line of regulations and laws that they have sought to repeal now that Donald Trump is president. Prior to this false narrative, though, net neutrality was a bipartisan issue; the first net neutrality rules were put in place under President George W. Bush, and many Republicans worked on the 2015 rules that were just dismantled.

What happened, then, is that Republicans sold the public a narrative that wasn’t true, then used that narrative to repeal the regulations that protect the internet.

Internal FCC Report Shows Republican Anti-Net Neutrality Narrative Is False


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:30PM (4 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:30PM (#612020)

    - All areas of public policy are blatantly for sale to the highest bidder. Yes, including matters of war and peace. Nobody even pretends otherwise anymore. And no, that's not a partisan thing, because both major parties are doing exactly that, to the point where about 2/3 of a Congressman's job these days is making phone calls to beg major donors for money.

    If only it were that simple, we could round them all up, throw them in jail, and launch the key into the sun. But there's a distinction to be made if we are to understand the problem well enough to do anything about it.

    Yes, it's (more than) 2/3 of a Congressman's job these days to raise funds for their next campaign. And as long as their opponents in both primary and general elections can do it, the ones that don't spend their time fundraising will lose. Have already lost.

    But when they are out shopping, they're not selling votes. They're selling influence. Specifically, influence over themselves. It has to do with that "we don't read most of the bills" comment: they need experts to read the bills for them and tell them what the bills do and how they work.

    Where do you find policy experts? You find them in the private sector, because government expertise has been bled dry for decades. Trump's appointment strategy (such as his apparently intentional strategy of leaving a huge number of top executive positions completely unfilled) is helping this along.

    So you end up with people going to Washington to be policy experts and essentially writing the legislation that will affect their former (or still current) industries, because they're the only ones that know how to write the bill that Congress wants. But that creates a clear conflict of interest, not to mention putting unconstitutional levels of authority into the hands of unelected experts.

    The worst part is that the system has worked this way for so long that even the government experts that remain have been hopelessly corrupted by private sector influence. If somebody does try to do their job, industry be damned, that person's department has a habit of putting them out to pasture and Congress has a habit of making their job impossible. And for those that are perfectly happy within the one true web of corporate influence, they know what they must do to find themselves in a nice, lucrative, cushy job in the private sector when they leave the government.

    And yes, I'm coming dangerously close to the Republican anti-expert rhetoric. But the problem is endemic to both parties and all branches of government. Every bill is written by experts, implemented by experts, and tried in court by experts. Why? Because Congress (on both sides) writes more legislation than they can handle. And they're still not keeping up with the need to update outdated laws...in part because every bill passed now tends to generate more problems than it fixes.

    So when you say that Congresspeople spend their time whoring out their votes...practically speaking, it's a fair interpretation. But you can't solve it by telling them to stop. You have to a) change the campaign finance rules so that your opponent can't beat you by finding a few super-wealthy donors to back them, b) find more balanced sources of policy expertise that don't skew so hard in favor of corporations, and c) reverse course on collaborating with the private sector and eliminate the revolving door between regulators and regulated industry.

    It's what I do if I became despot. But I'm not sure how to make it work within the current system. You can't even elect a guy who promises to "drain the swamp" because he's more likely lying to you than making realistic promises.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:43PM (3 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:43PM (#612027)

    There's a better solution than any of that: Make it so the better-funded campaign doesn't necessarily have a better chance of winning.

    And there's reason to believe that's actually happening: Donald Trump had way less money than either Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, and managed to win. Bernie Sanders started with basically no money and came very close to winning.

    There's even a reason why that might be happening: Blanketing the airwaves with campaign ads only works if your targeted voters watch TV and don't skip the ads, which is a dwindling number of people.

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    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:01PM (2 children)

      by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:01PM (#612037)

      Your examples are exceptional politicians taking advantage of a temporary situation. Most politicians aren't exceptional, and most of those are not self-delusional enough to believe they are anyway. They know that their message is their party, and they're too dumb and/or lazy to forge a path for themselves.

      That's the majority of Congress. And they're not going to win a campaign against a much better-funded opponent.

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      • (Score: 2) by schad on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:41AM (1 child)

        by schad (2398) on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:41AM (#612098)

        they're too dumb and/or lazy to forge a path for themselves.

        You mean too smart. Forge a path for yourself and you get called a RINO or DINO and lose your next primary, because so many of the people who bother to vote in primaries are extremists who would never vote for a centrist no matter what.

        • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday December 20 2017, @06:45PM

          by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday December 20 2017, @06:45PM (#612443)

          Trump and Bernie are far, far from being centrists. Those were the examples I was referring to. It might be fair to say that most politicians are centrists who are just playing the partisan game. But even such politicians probably have a few unorthodox positions that better match their district than the party line.

          On the Dem side, they're called Blue Dog, not Dino. And they are elected in Republican-leaning areas where the primary voters are "smart" enough (or experienced enough) to know that somebody they would like more could not get elected.

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