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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
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:43PM (3 children)
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.
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)
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.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by schad on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:41AM (1 child)
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
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.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?