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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 meustrus on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:09PM (3 children)
One can see the reasoning behind it, though. It's the same reason Hillary conceded before all the results were in; not doing so leads to a messy, controversial situation that is likely to accomplish little more than widening the partisan divide.
But it's ultimately the same argument as what was behind bailing out the banks that caused the 2008 recession. "Too big to fail" means that their failure causes bigger problems than we care to deal with. And there's the problem: anybody so embedded into our well-being is not just unaccountable on a case-by-case basis. They are fundamentally unaccountable to anything.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:11AM (2 children)
That was Gore. (Dumb bastard deserved to lose.)
Hillary actually won the popular vote.
...and there were some votes in the Electoral College in 2016 that challenged the winner-take-all thing.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by meustrus on Wednesday December 20 2017, @06:39PM (1 child)
My point was not about who would win. My point was that there was controversy that threatened to destabilize the country. But yeah, SCOTUS picking a 2000 presidential victor out of their ass was done for the same reason.
And now to take the bait.
Not sure why Gore deserved to lose. He would have been a more competent president than Bush, and a competent president could have:
And I'll be the first to admit that Obama did nothing to fix half of those problems, even making some of them worse. But Gore, having had more experience and not being from notoriously corrupt Chicago, would have been better than Obama, I think. Not to mention that certain something about Obama that emboldened the other side to refuse to cooperate.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @09:26PM
Gore (a senator's son) volunteered for military service during the USAian assault on/occupation of Vietnam.
(He was in the propaganda corps.)
I don't think he would have been better WRT military aggression in the Mideast.
USA hasn't elected a non-Neocon (non-warmonger) since 1960[1] nor a non-Neoliberal (not worker-hostile) since the Donkeys got creamed in 1972.
Even if elected, Gore would have abandoned any Progressive tendencies.
...and BTW, by 2000, Glass-Steagall was already dead. Thanks, Slick Willie.
...and Killery would have been another data point along that pattern's quasi-straight line.
[1] Carter's actions weren't overt, but he was also into covert pro-Oligarchy regime change, supporting coups in Latin America.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]