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Republicans Create Rider To Stop Net Neutrality
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes
"Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) submitted a rider yesterday to a bill on military and veterans' construction projects. The rider would, 'prohibit the FCC from using any appropriated funds to adopt, implement or otherwise litigate any network neutrality based rules, protocols or standards.' It is co-signed by six other Republican senators. We all knew this was coming after the last election removed most of the vocal supporters of net neutrality and supplanted them with pro-corporate Republicans."
Yes and no.
First off, AT&T and other telecoms are larger campaign contributors than Google, Apple et al, so this is pretty much a done deal, will of the people be damned.
Secondly, all corporate players generally recognize that a net neutral Internet could become potentially democratic (small d intentional here), which is not in their best interest. They'd much rather the Internet be a somewhat more interactive broadcast medium like television than they would have it be a truly horizontal distributed network, because the more broadcast-like it is the easier it is to control what is said or heard on it, and the harder it is to compete with established players.
Thirdly, most Republicans and Democrats could accurately be described as pro-corporate.
I am officially gone from
> Look at the post-war period. The period of greatest economic growth at all levels of society occurred during a time when the Democrats controlled the Presidency and at least one house of congress.
Look at the rest of history. The period of greatest economic growth at all levels of society occurred during a time when we were on a real hard currency, and neither republican nor democrat congresscritters could give away money that wasn't theirs by asking the Fed to print it. During those times, prices went down while wages went up.