‘Saddles small, independent
businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations’
(Breitbart) – Ajit Pai, the sole Republican Commissioner on
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), inferred in a Tweet that President
Barack Obama’s secret, 332-page “Net Neutrality” document is a scheme for
federal micro-managing of the Internet to extract billions in new taxes from
consumers and again enforce progressives’ idea of honest, equitable, and
balanced content fairness.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently acknowledged that the two
Democrats on the commission had decided to avoid Congressional input regarding
the Internet by adopting President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1934 Communications Act
to regulate the Internet with the same federal control as the old AT&T
customer monopoly. To make sure that libertarian advocates would remain in the
dark, Wheeler “embargoed” release of any of the specifics in the new
administrative “policy” that will act as law.
The FCC legislation that was passed eighty-one years ago by
the most leftist Congress in American history to ban companies from
participating in “unjust or unreasonable discrimination” when providing phone
services to customers.
But in 1949, the Democrat-dominated Commission implemented
the “Fairness Doctrine” that required holders of media broadcast licenses to
present “issues of public importance” in a manner that is “honest, equitable,
and balanced” in the “Commission’s view. It would take 39 years before a
conservative Congress could overturn a policy that hijacked the mainstream
media to kowtow to liberals or face loss of their licenses.
If the Internet economy was a country, it would rank fifth,
behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and India. Economic activity on the
Internet totals $4.2 trillion, and almost half of the earth’s 7
billion people are already connected to the Web.
Ajit Pai’s description of “President Obama’s 332-page plan
to regulate the Internet” sounds Orwellian. He tweeted a picture of
himself holding the 332-page plan just below a picture of a smiling Barack
Obama with a comment, “I wish the public could see what’s inside.” The
implication depicted Obama as George Orwell’s “Big Brother.”
Pai also released a statement: “President Obama’s plan marks
a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC
the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works,”
he said. “The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new
taxes on broadband… These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and
more hidden fees that they have to pay.”
Pai had previously observed that he was concerned about the
plan would hinder broadband investment, slow network speed and expansion, limit
outgrowth to rural areas of the country, and reduce Internet service provider
(ISP) competition.
“The plan saddles small, independent businesses and
entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the
market,” Pai said. “As a result, Americans will have fewer broadband choices.
This is no accident. Title II was designed to regulate a monopoly. If we impose
that model on a vibrant broadband marketplace, a highly regulated monopoly is
what we’ll get.”
Pai’s confrontational comments came after FCC Chairman
Tom Wheeler penned an op-ed in Wired Magazine detailing his spin on the
core aspects of the Democrat’s desire to lump ISPs under the amended Title II
of the 1996 Telecommunications Act — which was used to break-up the AT&T telephone
monopoly into four regional Bell companies at the dawn of the digital age.
“Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the
strongest open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” Wheeler
wrote on Wednesday. “These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid
prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and
services.”
Pai responded that the “Courts have twice thrown out the
FCC’s attempts at Internet regulation” during the Obama Administration. On
January 14, 2014, the D.C. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals struck down most of
the FCC’s November 2011 net neutrality rules. The Appellate Court vacated
the FCC’s “anti-discrimination” and “anti-blocking” as essentially
discriminatory and blocking in an attempt to again give the FCC political
appointees the power to dictate what they believe is honest, equitable, and
balanced.
Pai said that after a year of debates responding to the
courts twice striking down FCC efforts to regulate the Internet, “There’s no
reason to think that the third time will be the charm. Even a cursory look at
the plan reveals glaring legal flaws that are sure to mire the agency in the
muck of litigation for a long, long time.”
Pai promised he would make further comments as he reviews
the plan himself in the next two weeks in the run-up to the FCC’s public vote
on February 26. He has blamed the two Democrat Commissioners’ for their
dismissal of any negotiations with Congressional Republicans in setting the
“basic rules” governing Internet access.
As Breitbart has highlighted before, turning the Internet
into a “telephone service” would “empower an intrusive public sector that
thrives on high taxes, heavy-handed controls and the status quo.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/02/09/republican-fcc-member-warns-net-neutrality-is-not-neutral/
Source:http://www.teaparty.org/obamas-332-page-plan-control-internet-82310/
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