Bill To Save Net Neutrality Is 46 Votes Short In US House (arstechnica.com)

Congressional Democrats seeking to reinstate net neutrality rules are still 46 votes short of getting the measure through the House of Representatives. Ars Technica reports: The U.S. Senate voted last month to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules, with all members of the Democratic caucus and three Republicans voting in favor of net neutrality. A discharge petition needs 218 signatures to force a House vote on the same net neutrality bill, and 218 votes would also be enough to pass the measure. So far, the petition has signatures from 172 representatives, all Democrats. That number hasn't changed in two weeks. The outlook looks grim as Republicans have a 235-193 majority in the House. If you're curious to see which representatives haven't signed the petition, you can view this page maintained by net neutrality group Fight for the Future.

Comments

Wait for the midterm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the people decide. I doubt they'll believe Trump promises again.

Re: Wait for the midterm.

[Anonymous Coward]

You grossly underestimate the American publicâ(TM)s stupidity

Re: Wait for the midterm.

[Anonymous Coward]

That. The whole FCC fraudulently killed it because the republicans wanted it -- because they're being paid a lot by big ISP who will get to charge you more.

Republicans do everything against the public's best interest and the same victims are happy to vote for 'em repeatedly. Trump having approval ratings that aren't negative is proof that they're amazingly fucking stupid.

Re: Wait for the midterm.

[ClickOnThis]

That. The whole FCC fraudulently killed it because the republicans wanted it -- because they're being paid a lot by big ISP who will get to charge you more.

No, not the whole FCC. Just the Republicans on it.

Republicans do everything against the public's best interest and the same victims are happy to vote for 'em repeatedly. Trump having approval ratings that aren't negative is proof that they're amazingly fucking stupid.

Trump's overall approval rating has been consistently low compared to other recent presidents. But among Republicans, his approval rating is at 90%.

The Republican party is Trump's bitch.

Re: Wait for the midterm.

[kenh]

You've never had net neutrality. Do you have equal up and down bandwidth? Can you host a public-facing server at home under your ISP's TOS?

That's not what net neutrality is, not even a little bit.

What's the point?

[damn_registrars]

Gerrymandering has just been legalized. The SCOTUS is about to shift even further to the right and for a longer time frame. The only way net neutrality will happen for anyone who currently lives in the US is if they either move to another country or if their state leaves the country. The bill might as well be shredded tonight.

Re:What's the point?

[quantaman]

Abuse of power is all fun & games when you're in power, the problem is when you're on the receiving end.

Your memory is incredibly short - remember it is the Democrats that abused power, not Republicans.

The ACA passage? Some political manoeuvring, but not abuse of power. In fact, if it weren't for the fairly extraordinary policy of "no GOP Senator is allowed to vote yes" it would have garnered quite a few GOP votes, it was afterall a GOP concept.

Why is it so darn hard for the FBI to describe when and why they started their Trump Investigation?

It's not hard, Carter Page blabbed his mouth to a diplomat about the leaked emails months before anyone knew of leaked emails. That's a good and very valid pretext.

Why did the FBI pay individuals to try and infiltrate/influence the Trump campaign?

When even a top GOP member disagrees with you it means your conspiracy theory

Why were there so many "unmasking" requests from the US Ambassador to the UN in the final year of the Obama administration? (Her defense is that it wasn't her, it was her "staff"!)

I can't recall this one off-hand but I'll look into it, I'm not hopeful that it has any more validity than your other points.

Alternative Units

[dohzer]

Can someone tell me how many dollars 46 votes converts to? I can't work with these the American Imperial units.

Re:Thanks for the info

[ClickOnThis]

You were saying?

Re:Conversion rate

[Solandri]

Campaign contributions typically favor the party in power (scroll down to the historical party split and historical average contributions), which is currently Republicans. A fact conveniently omitted by journalists who cherry-pick data to try to make the party they oppose look like bad guys.

Historically, telecom contributions have slightly favored the Democrats. The only reason Democrats are making a fuss about net neutrality is because they consider it to be an issue they can leverage for votes. If they truly believed in net neutrality on principle, they could've easily passed it during Obama's first term when they held the Presidency and both branches of Congress with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

The problem has always been local governments granting monopolies for cable and phone service. Both parties are complicit in this and neither seems willing to change it. Passing net neutrality is putting on a band-aid to hide festering gangrene caused by these government-granted monopolies these telecom companies enjoy. A way to placate the voters by pretending to be on their side, while making sure the monopolies awarded to their campaign contributors (the telecom companies) continue undisturbed.