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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @05:56PM
OP/GPP here.
Thanks for the kind words, dude. Or dudette. Whatever.
As of right now, that post was downmodded three times (twice as flamebait, once as troll) and upmodded three times (twice as insightful, once as interesting).
It's said you can tell a good idea by the enemies it makes. I think this makes a strong case that I was right on the money.
(Footnote: I'm an independent centrist policy wonk. I don't give a shit about left or right, I mostly think those labels are red herrings and the big parties are more like criminal gangs than anything else. I care about good policy - but I agree with you about shrill left wing nutters trying to stomp ground here by any means necessary. However, I think they're doing themselves more harm than good because they're so childishly transparent about it that they just come off as petty. So don't sweat it.)