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'There Will Be a [Senate] Vote' To Reinstate Net Neutrality, Schumer Says (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he will force a vote on a bill that would reinstate the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules. Legislation to reverse the repeal "doesn't need the support of the majority leader," Schumer said during a press conference Friday, according to The Hill. "We can bring it to the floor and force a vote. So, there will be a vote to repeal the rule that the FCC passed." The Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal its own net neutrality rules last week, and the repeal will take effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register. But Congress can overturn agency actions by invoking the Congressional Review Act (CRA), as it did earlier this year in order to eliminate consumer broadband privacy protections. A successful CRA vote in this case would invalidate the FCC's net neutrality repeal and prevent the FCC from issuing a similar repeal in the future. This would force the FCC to maintain the rules and the related classification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. A CRA vote lets Congress "undo regulations with a simple majority," without the possibility of a filibuster, as a Washington Post story said in February. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) announced a plan to file the CRA resolution last week. "It's in our power to do that and that's the beauty of the CRA rule," Schumer said. "Sometimes we don't like them, when they used it to repeal some of the pro-environmental regulations, but now we can use the CRA to our benefit, and we intend to."
The repeal will stand. #MAGA
You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country. If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board, across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differently. And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true ... It's just true. ... Race is at the center of this in many ways as well, unfortunately, we know that across the criminal justice system.
Now we find out exactly how unified the GOP is. Spoiler: They're not unified at all. If it's a simple majority I think Ajit Pai is going to have his ass handed to him by Congress, and rightly so.
It was always the House's job to handle this, putting it on the FCC's plate was a weak ass punt from the beginning.
So Trumps administration successfully forced them into a choice, and they choose to Shit, rather than Get Off The Pot.
It will be transparent how they intend to subsidize facebook, twitter, etc, in exchange for help during election time.
Unless they have a couple of Republicans who are willing to go against Trump and the FCC this ain't gonna happen.
Most people do not understand what the "Net Neutrality" debate is really about. Videos in this article show MSNBC anchor OWNED by someone who actually knows how this stuff works.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/14/msnbc-anchor-loses-net-neutrality-debate-with-former-fcc-chairman-video/
I support Net Neutrality but the FCC was the wrong place to enact those rules.
There needs to be a vote to reinstate Net Neutrality and to never allow another vote/bill to get rid of it ever again.
Just need a simple majority. Doug Jones will be in the Senate, they can't likely wheel McCain's corpse in for a vote, and Collins (R) supports Net Neutrality. Couple this with only 16% of Americans and ignorant enough to believe repealing NN is somehow a good thing for them, the Senators that have a fight on their hands for re-election are going to do whatever they can to get re-elected, even if it means voting to kill off the FCC vote. BTW, fuck Ajit Pai.
Fuck Ajit Pai
The proper way to implement significant policy changes is to change the law.
Because what's done via a pen and a phone are just are properly undone by a pen and a phone.
Nothing but political theater to dot the I's and cross the T's for democrats to say this tried to do something.
I hope this caused some synapses to fire.
I think the FCC and Ajit Pei are doing a good job. Why don't people understand they *removed* internet barriers erected by the Hussein Obama administration? They're setting the internet back to how it was - a time of MASSIVE GROWTH AND INNOVATION.
I noticed this morning that I can download documents much faster than all last year from my school library. It seems that curbing the Netflix bandwidth hogging of the white elites is really helping us. But you have to be one of us to know that. Mr. Pai, thank you.
Is a 1 page constitutional amendment, with no riders or dependencies.
Otherwise it's just pointless, and will be subject to continual lobbying and see-sawing debates forever.
There's no way this will pass the senate and house and survive a presidential veto, and he'll certainly veto it if it comes to his desk.
So the Congressional Review Act can be used to block the repeal of net neutrality's revocation?
So when did the original net neutrality rules get PASSED under the Congressional Review Act?
So, there will be a vote to repeal the rule that the FCC passed." The Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal its own net neutrality rules last week
So this is a vote to repeal the FCC repealing an original action - three levels removed!
When will this insanity end? Why not put together a REAL bill that would lay out what Net Neutrality really meant? They are using this weasel technique to try and avoid actually having to state what Network Neutrality is, because the original FCC order was to the benefit of companies, not consumers.
I have all along said that I don't dislike the concept of Net Neutrality, but what the FCC actually had was the opposite of that because it bound ISP's in many ways that had nothing to do with equal network access, and also provided a foothold for government dictating how the internet worked.
I would love to support a simple bill that clearly laid out REAL network neutrality - but you can bet you'll never see such a thing from ANY party in DC.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Did anyone really believe our government didn't contain checks and balances? That's why there are three branches.
Once the dust settles, network neutrality is re-established, and the US 'net is back on track, are there to be any consequences for the people who created this mess?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Well, Net Neutrality is about preventing ISPs (dumb pipe providers) from charging content providers extra to have their content delivered.
You don't know how peering works, at all.
It's about keeping all traffic prioritized equally
Also wrong since ISP's were allowed to prioritize packets. Or didn't you want VOIP to work at all because an ad tracker was busy feeding back your personal info to its server?
It is also about not charging consumers extra for services like social networking or streaming.
Also wrong, ISP's were allowed to charge more for faster access to content.
The idea is that the internet should be completely neutral and open.
The is correct, but you don't seem to understand what it implies.
It means, you can reach ANY host of your choosing and the ISP will not act against that traffic, but may enhance access in certain ways (either extra bandwidth or prioritization of existing traffic) depending on what you want to do. THAT is Network Neutrality and the platonic ideal. You'll note it dd not take 80+ pages to say that so you REALLY REALLY need to go read all of the crap the FCC put into the original order to see how wrong you are about what the FCC claimed was "Network Neutrality".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Step back and think about this on a purely tactical level.
If the measure passes, the Democrats will be given credit even if every single Republican voted for it.
If the measure loses, the situation for the Republicans is not any different than it was today since it's something almost no-one will every know about, and certainly very few voters will care about way off in November.
Republicans voting for this can only lose, there is literally nothing to gain.
Some may still do so though, so it may pass. Not sure what the repercussions are of passing something that denies the FCC has the ability to choose what to do, but if you actually think about things long term it seems like a super-bad precedent to set in terms of choices other agencies make being overridden in similar ways.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does anyone have any insights into ISPs and their access to utility poles after this FCC rule making? From what I can find online, only utilities and communications providers under FCC control can gain access to private land for the purpose of running wires, etc. If ISPs are not utilities and not under the control of the FCC, then can they still demand access to my land? Granted, most of them are also telecommunications or cable TV providers, but can I force them to declare if they are fixing someone telephone service or their internet service.
Well we'll still have no privacy protections so we'll have a European style dumb pipe.*
*sort of like CCTV, but for the internet.
It could become true - will it?
- the US political system seems to be financed by contributions to the candidates or incumbents to get elected or reelected or - the candidates or incumbents (let's call them "seats" from now on) are independently rich - multi-billionaires - to pull it through on their own.
I financier of a "seat" has a certain interest in a "seat" to get his/her ideas promoted and implemented. A "seat" then is in a bind to go by that line of the financier, or s/he will need to look for other financiers next time and considered "unreliable". Can't imagine the Koch's sponsoring someone promoting workers right, unions etc. It's called bribery in other places outside the US.
Self-financed "seats" are independent in their actions and can actually do what they want if they get elected, but what frame of mind do they have as multi-billionaires? One needs to justify inwardly to be "rich" and many others visible everywhere are not - can happen in multiple ways - nevertheless creates a certain mind set, often detrimental to the "underlings"... One example of idiocy mind-set: Everyone can make it, if someone doesn't s/he is doing something wrong and needs to learn to do better, just look at the examples A, B, C where it worked .... bullshit!
The political system needs to become independent from outside influences, like a government financed budget to "seats" with a certain vote count.
Will that ever happen - NO because all those string-pullers, who are doing so well how it works right now, just look at the latest tax system getting implemented, will no longer be able to play their games.
Now, looking at the 2-Party system - all hope is that the Democrats, once again in power will make it all right - wanna bet on it?
Why are there no more political parties in the government? String pullers again at work....
Good luck hoping, there is no hope.....
If it's a simple majority I think Ajit Pai is going to have his ass handed to him by Congress, and rightly so.
Even if the Senate Dems were to vote in lockstep, which is less than clear, this would have to pass in the House as well, then survive a presidential veto. That's not going to happen, and TFA says as much. This is nothing but political posturing on Schumer's part.
It might very well pass, both House and president.
The main problem with the existing legislation was legal, not technical. It was passed in opposition to Congress' explicit instructions.
NN is a good idea, when viewed on its technical merits, and if a law gets passed that's a good thing.
Ajit Pai won't be getting "his ass handed to him", he'll be getting explicit direction from congress which is the correct way to do this.
Business is constrained by uncertaintly. So consider this: Even if this doesn't passm the ISPs will hesitate to violate neutrality. It is hard to push forward with a business model that is constantly threatening to be overturned. Imagine offering paid fast lanes today, only to have them made illegal in 3 months by congress, or in 2 years after midterm elections, or in 3 years with a new presidency. It's just a big risk for them to do. They would be better to play it safe and look like good guys.
Healthcare companies face this too: companies hesitate to open up to the ACA (Obamacare) markets given that the Republican majority keeps threatening to repeal it.
I'd prefer actual legislation to set the law of the land and tell the FCC and the FTC what to do.
Trump's approval rating is in the gutter and he's taking the GOP with it.
Was just looking at some comments the other day saying, in effect, the following:
Economy is going great, ISIS is defeated, stock market is soaring, China is finally dealing with North Korea, and jobs are coming back. Not bad for "worst president in history"
Don't discount the fuckton of people who are enjoying the positive changes that have happened since he was elected. Those polls are just the bitter people who still dislike Trump for no reason.
... and customers pay for their connection. Why should customers have to pay for every frigging website like it is a television channel? Just so that the ISPs (who are also TV providers) can take us back to the frigging 80s?
I find it weird Americans are more divided over whether or not to support having health care than they are over whether they're okay with slow Internet connections. They'd rather be dead than have porn that buffers.
The legislature would not pass this before. Wikipedia sums this up nicely: "Between 2005 and 2012, five attempts to pass bills in Congress containing net neutrality provisions failed. Each sought to prohibit Internet service providers from using various variable pricing models..."
This includes when both houses were controlled by democrats.
This bill will be referred to committee and never emerge to see the light of day. I'm guessing it will never come up for discussion by committee either. Shame on you Senator, you know this already, but you don't care.
Ah yes, grandstanding for political appearances.. Go Chucky!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
IMightB inquired:
Do people not remember the origin of "The Internet"? It started as a Defense Project to ensure communications in the event of a nuclear war... They opened it up to universities, and then to the public. Back then they did a fairly decent job of being hand-off. It wasn't until they turned over to private corps, that it started to go downhill.
As it turns out, that's a common belief - and it's wrong.
While it's true that a 1962 RAND Corporation white paper authored by Paul Baran theorized that a packet-switched data network could allow military communications to survive a general nuclear war, that was entirely a thought experiment. The Department of Defense filed it away and largely forgot about it.
It wasn't until 1965, after accepting a position at DARPA, that an electrical engineer named Robert W. Taylor first got the idea for what would eventually become first the DARPAnet, then the ARPAnet, and finally the Internet.
As a condition of the DARPA grants that helped fund their experiments, research teams at three different major research centers were required to install remote terminals at DARPA for their - entirely separate and self-contained - multi-user mainframe systems. These were the first computers to operate interactively, rather than in what mainframers call "batch mode", and support multiple, concurrent user sessions via dumb terminals with line printers as their "displays". One of Taylor's assignments was to monitor and liase with the scientists who built and ran this trio of individual experimental systems, and he quickly noticed that something very like what we would think of as newsgroups spontaneously appeared on all three systems. (That is to say that computer scientists who had accounts on all three, separate, not interconnected in any way systems had each decided that something very much like a computer BBS or Usenet-style messaging system would be a useful addition, and had - again, independently - hacked such a tool together for the users of each of these systems to communicate with each other in a way that had some degree of persistence and which was accessible to the entire user community of that particular machine.)
The fact that users on each system had more-or-less-simultaneously decided such a tool was desireable, and had developed code to create it - and we're talking three different sets of code here - without ever communicating with the other two teams greatly interested and excited Taylor. He immediately wondered what would happen if all three systems were physically connected together in a way that would allow their users to communicate not only with each other, but with users on the other two systems, as well. He took that idea to his supervisor, one Charles Herzfeld, who thought it might have merit. Herszfeld asked Taylor to draw up a formal proposal, and committed, sight unseen, to fund it to the tune of a million dollars (which was real money in 1965).
So Taylor wrote a proposal, and with a million bucks to spend on it approached the managers of the three, separate multiuser systems with his idea to interconnect their systems. All three turned him down flat.
Robert W. Taylor was from Texas, where they grow 'em stubborn, so he persisted in pitching his idea to the three managers of different, multiuser mainframe systems, despite their continued objections that each saw no merit in his proposal, and each considered it a potentially major distraction from the purposes for which each of their disparate systems had been created. Eventually, over the course of time, he wore them down to the point where he got two of them to agree to at least test the idea. It took nearly two years from then before all the ducks were duly aligned, the necessary equipment designed and built, and the long-distance, dedicated telephone lines contracted for.
At 22:30 hours on October 29, 1969, the first two nodes of what was dub
Check out my novel.
I am the senate!
Trump's approval rating is in the gutter and he's taking the GOP with it.
So you would say something like the GOP has a 90% chance of losing the next election, hmm, where have I heard things like that before, it seems like last November there was something....
Those pollsters, sure are accurate! And it means so much measuring numbers a year ahead of time!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm sure the Reps controlled congress would happily reinstate it.. for a price.
Look back in the last 10 years : republican kept blocking anything over and over , be it nominations of peoples under the flimsiest pretense, to laws , to budgets. At some points you STILL have to govern and react to events in spite of the republican pure spiteful (pun intended) government blocking. That is where the writing of the pen come in. If you want to point finger, point finger at the republican for refusing to even govern properly.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Do you have some sort of evidence that Schumer and company "really don't support" NN "at all"?
Or are you just an edgy redditor?
[fedora tipping intensifies]
Or I was led to believe.
That was a profoundly interesting read. Thank you for the background information.
They lose more if they vote against it. Every time some schmuck's connection makes him wait, ..... they will say "Oh this seems exactly like it has the last eight years, I guess nothing has changed after all".
What you underestimate is how crappy current connections are already, so people are simply used to random slowdowns. Campaigning on Net Neutrality is a stupid thing to do because almost no-one will even understand any impact even IF a company decides to do anything. Witless low turnout in DC for the FCC protests, no-on outside of a bunch of nerds really cares about this, and Democrats only actually care because they think it makes Republicans look bad. As far as helping you, they really don't give a fig.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is it possible to have Ajit Pai removed as chairman of the FCC - perhaps by Congress?
There are absolutely no redeeming qualities with him; in his professionalism and job tasks, nor his personality.
He has got to go. He is totally unqualified for any leadership roll at all.
Any person serving in a public office MUST absolutely take the constituent opinion as a heavily weighted driver for what to do.
The more than 83% of the peoples' voice FOR net neutrality should push the chairman that way - in spite of his personal opinion.
STOP THE DICTATORSHIP ACTIONS OF THIS ADMINISTRATION!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
ImprovOmega opined:,/p>
That was a profoundly interesting read. Thank you for the background information.
You are entirely welcome. Thank you for the compliment!
Check out my novel.