The Left created out of whole cloth the utterly terrible policy that is Network Neutrality. They did so to undermine the private Internet – so as to ultimately strand you with the government as your sole Internet Service Provider (ISP). Which would be a huge free market and free speech problem.
How do we know this is their Net Neutrality intention? Because they say so:
“At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
How very Hugo Chavez of them. Translation: “Thanks for the trillion-plus dollar Internet investment – we’ll take it over from here.”
The Barack Obama Administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unilaterally imposed Net Neutrality on December 21, 2010. Congress never authorized them to do so. I’m fairly sure they’ve never passed any law that even contains the phrase “Net Neutrality” – let alone one specifically authorizing the Commission to pull the trigger.
Verizon Communications sued to undo the power grab. Oral arguments for the case were heard by the D.C. Circuit Court last week. In response to the judicial to-do, we here in (touch with) Reality were subjected to yet another round of Leftist Net Neutrality euphoric inanity.
There was a laugh-free mockumentary – a “leaked” look at the alleged failings and evils of a free market Internet. A free market Internet which has already delivered us 98% access to high-speed broadband, $186,152,000,000 in online commerce just last year and a virtually limitless stream of news and information. Those failings and evils.
Then there was the Reddit live-blog round robin put on by Media Marxists Susan Crawford, Larry Lessig and “Net Neutrality”-coiner Tim Wu. Crawford “starred” in the aforementioned terrible flick. She and Wu were once Obama Administration officials. All three are (shocker) college professors.
The Fact-Free Three took questions from the Reddit audience – themselves mostly Fellow Travelers. Thus most of the queries were Leftist-slanted softballs. And the answers were just the sort of drivel one would expect.
Let us sample just a smidgen from the boob-erific buffet.
Q: What can we as consumers do to encourage lower TV/ Broadband Internet prices?…(I)t seems difficult for small innovators to start up and compete….
It’s difficult for the little guys to get bigger largely because of huge regulations and taxes. The Universal Service Fund (USF) tax alone is 15.6% – on everyone’s bill. The bigger guys are better equipped to absorb and handle the gi-normous cost of government. But the toll damages and destroys the little guys – including We the End Users. The bigger the government, the wider the gap between the big guys and everyone else.
(Crawford) A: Where the market fails, some towns can build or oversee municipal networks. There are currently about 400 towns in the US that have built municipal networks.
Again, broadband would be a whole lot cheaper were there a whole lot fewer taxes and regs on it. And the private Internet is perhaps the greatest, most rapidly delivered achievement in human history. But these people call it a “failure.” Meanwhile they label as “successes” federal programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – which are currently facing unfunded liabilities of $84 trillion.
And the municipal networks Crawford cites are just more such government “successes.”
Municipal Broadband’s Record of Failure
The Costly Truth of Municipal Broadband Networks
Municipal Broadband “Wired to Waste”
In answer to the next question, Crawford responds (in part):
Given how expensive and second-rate Internet access in America is – and how many people we’re leaving behind – we really need oversight in this market.
Because nothing makes something better and cheaper than greater government oversight – like ObamaCare, right Ms. Crawford? And again, 98% of Americans have broadband access – exactly who outside of mountaintop dwellers and survivalists are we “leaving behind,” Ms. Crawford?
The Cavalcade of Inanity went on for what appears to be hours, but you by now have the gist. These people are willfully ignorant on stilts. Tightly closed-minded ideologues who refuse to allow facts to get in the way of a good beating.
And it is these people to whom the Obama Administration has turned to drastically over-regulate and further tax the free speech-free market Xanadu that is the Internet.
Their prodigious absurdity is tempered only by the incredible danger they pose.
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