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Internal FCC Report Shows Republican Net Neutrality Narrative Is False (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A core Republican talking point during the net neutrality battle was that, in 2015, President Obama led a government takeover of the internet, and Obama illegally bullied the independent Federal Communications Commission into adopting the rules. In this version of the story, Ajit Pai's rollback of those rules Thursday is a return to the good old days, before the FCC was forced to adopt rules it never wanted in the first place. But internal FCC documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information Act request show that the independent, nonpartisan FCC Office of Inspector General -- acting on orders from Congressional Republicans -- investigated the claim that Obama interfered with the FCC's net neutrality process and found it was nonsense. This Republican narrative of net neutrality as an Obama-led takeover of the internet, then, was wholly refuted by an independent investigation and its findings were not made public prior to Thursday's vote.
Using a Freedom of Information Act request, Motherboard obtained a summary of the Inspector General's report, which has not been released publicly and is marked "Official Use Only, Law Enforcement Sensitive Information." After reviewing more than 600,000 emails, the independent office found that there was no collusion between the White House and the FCC: "We found no evidence of secret deals, promises, or threats from anyone outside the Commission, nor any evidence of any other improper use of power to influence the FCC decision-making process." [...] 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.
Using a Freedom of Information Act request, Motherboard obtained a summary of the Inspector General's report, which has not been released publicly and is marked "Official Use Only, Law Enforcement Sensitive Information." After reviewing more than 600,000 emails, the independent office found that there was no collusion between the White House and the FCC: "We found no evidence of secret deals, promises, or threats from anyone outside the Commission, nor any evidence of any other improper use of power to influence the FCC decision-making process." [...] 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.
Repubs playbook in the tl;dr edition.
Facing a corrupt political system with cynical acceptance will change nothing.
When politicians lie, we have to call them out, shout about it and try not to elect them. Resigned acceptance of lying politicians as a fact of life will only make things worse.
No, you're not going to find evidence of "collusion" between the White House and the FCC, and no, that does not contradict the claim that the Obama administration got the FCC to pass net neutrality. Net neutrality was a huge goal of the Obama administration and a very big political win for them. It IS possible, you know, for like-minded people to work independently towards a common goal. I've heard that happens from time to time.
And, by the way, can we save everyone a huge amount of time and wasted expense and just assume that we won't find any evidence of "collusion" between this White House and the hacking of the DNC email servers or the purchase of Facebook advertisements? And, can we also just admit that like-minded people can be working independently towards a common goal in THIS instance, too?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Both major US parties use the same siren song. On the right: "That's what Obama wanted!" On the left: That's what Trump is doing!"
The power brokers now have the ability to galvanize a large portion of the population with a few key buzzwords. It's a lot more work to remain undecided.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
We need to grow some balls. When politicians lie, they need to be tried, convicted, and locked up for a very, very long time. I know, I know, that means all our current people are probably going to jail. That's fine. We need a new bunch anyway. The problem is that there is absolutely no accountability or repercussions for lying. The lies either get them whatever they were looking for, or they get caught and simply deny or worst-case walk away. There needs to be criminal and financial penalties for lying to your constituents. Starting with Trump and working down from there.
The problem is what is a lie, far righters will claim that Obama lied when he said you can keep your doctor, the rest of us point out that he was telling the truth in the context he was speaking. The problem is that you need to get into the mind of the accused to prove he had intent to lie, and that is damn near impossible.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The problem is what is a lie, far righters will claim that Obama lied when he said you can keep your doctor, the rest of us point out that he was telling the truth in the context he was speaking. The problem is that you need to get into the mind of the accused to prove he had intent to lie, and that is damn near impossible.
The problem is you can't keep up with all the lies. The ones that sound plausible enough are likely to sneak though. Heck even if Obama did push hard for NN, then that would be within the bounds of his job and not really a bad thing, but republicans make it out to be a bad thing.
Obama's one major lie was that you can keep your doctor stuff. Most likely he knew when he was saying it, that if he said, "If you like your insurance then you can keep your insurance as is, if your insurance meets the new minimums." then he would lose many votes.
He shouldn't really have lost votes for telling the truth, but people always want their cake without the hard work.
The republican tax plan that is about to pass is partially balanced on the plan of a lot of people no longer having health care. If people don't buy it, they government saves money they can give to the rich and big business.
Guess what happens to a large percentage of people without health care?
Bad things, up to an including death. In short, part of their plan for prosperity rests on the death of innocents. Of course much of the rest rests on our kids and grandkids paying it all back...
If the republicans wanted to be honest with this they would also stop requiring hospitals to treat people in emergency rooms without insurance, but they don't. They say you don't have to buy health care but ignore that someone still pays. If they did that the costs wouldn't largely just be shoved back on those paying. Of course even then it is paying for health care when it is almost too late. Care at the start of illness is much cheaper than at the end.
This feels like the lead up to the financial collapse too...
dickish behavior by banks->economic collapse because of it-> regulation of banks to prevent dickish behavior-> de-regulation of banks -> dickish behavior by banks -> economic collapse.... wash rinse repeat...
Though our next economic collapse is because of dickship behavior on the part of congress.... (I'd blame the president for signing the bill into law, but we all know he can't be expected to read or understand a bill put on his desk to sign, congress should know that doubly well.)
Good points. It was really the whole shakedown of content providers like Netflix and others for daring to make money selling content to Verizon and Comcast customers that was the impetus... as-if those customers that were paying Verizon, Comcast and Netflix somehow needed to be protected by the ISPs from accessing the content they paid for without paying for bandwidth twice.
I would like to agree, but watching the senate race in Alabama. The question to me becomes how bad does a person have to be to cause people to vote against their aligned party? While Doug Jones won, he won by less then 1% against a convicted pedophile? With church ministers standing up for this lowlife. How many traditional values is the population willing to give up, just for their party to win?
Now this will happen in Democratic states too, if a popular politician gets in trouble doing something, there is a huge support network trying to protect him, vilify the accusers and the messengers.
We as a nation can deal with people in power with positions that we don't agree with, however we have lost the feeling that these people are working for their constituents and their prosperity. They are in it for their own personal Ego trip Like President Trump, or for the Party Line like many of the Democratic and GOP Congressmen. This is the real tragedy of our nation. We have moved from debating policy to likability of the person, to general party alliance. So now the people in charge are just playing games with our nation to keep their power, by gerrymandering to keep their power, entertaining media show them that they are indeed pure conservative or pure liberal enough for their base, taking advantage of strongly held minority views to win elections...
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If you are called an ISP then you should only be responsible for the level 1-3. The hire levels 4-7 are outside of the domain, and in general do not require the same level of infrastructure support. Slashdot can moderate down or even delete my comment so it isn't read, even if my comment was legal. Because I am able to post my view in an other forum, or in general being able make my own site relatively inexpensively.
Today for the ISP we are limited in choices, hence why Net Neutrality is important. In my area I have 3 options, Cable (Spectrum) and Cell Wireless (AT&T and Verizon). In my home Cell coverage is spotty so I only have one real option. All three of these ISP sources have interests in additional services that compete against other services which do not own the infrastructure to be an ISP, and many of the ones who can may not be able to get past the local monopolies to implement.
If I don't like Facebook, Google or Slashdot. I can use an other service. If I don't like my ISP well I am kinda stuck, if my ISP says I shouldn't use a service then I may not be able to do so.
That is the real danger. At the moment the ISP are saying they are not planning on blocking anything, or throttling down anything. But they put in a lot of political capital to get this removed... Which make me wonder why the effort if they are not planning to do something.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yes it was. There was a whole class of catastrophic insurance plans which are very popular among those of us who are generally healthy. Those didn't meet his minimum insurance standards, thus they were effectively made illegal. I figured out during that whole time that a lot of people cannot understand the appeal of a catastrophic insurance plan because of the number of people that said losing those was of no issue because they didn't cover anything. I'm sorry, but I'm one of those people who uses those insurance plans everywhere. High deductible, minimum coverage. The reason is simple, the money I save on insurance I invest, and I have my own fund that I use to pay for most things. It saves A LOT of money, simply by wiping out the middle man. But you have to be intelligent and have money put away for stuff that your insurance won't cover, things like regular checkup. But a lot of supporters of obamacare felt I should be protected from myself and be disallowed to use the strategy I've used my entire damn life to great success.
Indeed. And this leads to an important point: How much do we believe women?
Eight women accused him of misconduct. He said he did not do it. The only people who would know for sure would be Moore and the 8 accusers.
So we find that for many folks in Alabama, one man is more believable than eight women. So women are, at most, about 12% as believable as men!
This sadly explains a lot about us as a culture.
Moore was not convicted of anything
That is true but then neither was Hillary Clinton but that has not stopped conservative pundits from dragging her into every conversation about the incompetence, hypocrisy and corruption of their leaders and confidently asserting that she is guilty of a long list of crimes as established fact. So you can think of Roy Moore as the liberal's Hillary Clinton, except while Hillary is merely corrupt Roy Moore is also way, way, way more creepy than she could ever hope to be.
Okay, it was technically a lie. What he should've said is "If you like your health care plan, and it passes muster under the new rules, you can keep it". He should've explained why there were going to be new rules - presumably to ensure that all insurance that calls itself a 'health care plan' had to actually provide health care when it was needed.
Now I don't say this as a major fan of Obamacare. I was on it for a while, and it was better than nothing. But it works out as essentially a free annual checkup plus a plan to negotiate discounts with doctors for fees that, unless you get seriously sick, you have to pay out of pocket. And in an emergency, it's real health insurance. That was the best that our political system was able to provide. And truth be told, it was exactly what Republicans claimed to have wanted - before Obama proposed it...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
And Obama didn't influence the FCC at all, eh?
That's not what they said. What they said was that there was no improper influence.