FCC Forces California To Drop Plan For Government Fees On Text Messages (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California telecom regulators have abandoned a plan to impose government fees on text-messaging services, saying that a recent Federal Communications Commission vote has limited its authority over text messaging. The FCC last week voted to classify text-messaging as an information service, rather than a telecommunications service. "Information service" is the same classification the FCC gave to broadband when it repealed net neutrality rules and claimed that states aren't allowed to impose their own net neutrality laws. California's legislature passed a net neutrality law anyway and is defending it in court. But the state's utility regulator chose not to challenge the FCC on regulation of text messaging. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) was scheduled to consider the text-message fee proposal at a meeting next month but pulled the item off the agenda after the FCC action. "Under California law, telecommunications services are subject to the collection of surcharges to support a number of CPUC public programs that subsidize the cost of service for rural Californians and for low-income, disadvantaged communities, and provides special services for the deaf, the hard of hearing, and the disabled," the commission said in a statement Friday.

Comments

No need to feel torn

[rsilvergun]

this was a perfectly safe thing for the FCC to do. It was intensely unpopular, unlikely to pass. The whole thing only exists because California's right wing made it difficult to raise income taxes but the state needs money to fight the drought. So they come up with insane things to get around the rule that they can't just raise taxes when they need to.

Seriously, their taxes are like a one way ratchet. You can lower them with a simple majority but it takes a super majority to raise them. It's part of that whole "Starve the Beast" thing meant to crash the government so everything can be privatized.

Re:No need to feel torn

[ShanghaiBill]

You noticed that the party of states rights & small govt, made it so states can't pass their own Internet Regulations bill. That's rich.

The priority of rights should be:

Individual > Local > State > National

This isn't the national government overriding states' rights. It is the national government protecting individual rights.

Re:No need to feel torn

[Solandri]

The whole thing only exists because California's right wing made it difficult to raise income taxes but the state needs money to fight the drought. So they come up with insane things to get around the rule that they can't just raise taxes when they need to.

Seriously, their taxes are like a one way ratchet. You can lower them with a simple majority but it takes a super majority to raise them

Um, the Democrats have more than a supermajority in both of California's legislative branches. 72.5% in the state senate (29 D,11 R). 75% in the state assembly (60 D, 20 R). And they hold the governorship Yet somehow in your mind, this proposed legislation is the right wing's fault?

The Republicans in Sacramento have zero political power. The Democrats could pass anything they want any time they want, even if every single Republican votes against it. If something doesn't pass, it's because a substantial number of Democrats also opposed it.

BTW, the drought ended in 2017.

Sad

[Locke2005]

I wish the government had the power to significantly tax every unsolicited SMS message, phone call, and email I receive! Especially the ones where they are spoofing the caller id!

Re:They don't want California to die of thirst

[ShanghaiBill]

you'll have "water refugees" leaving the west and flooding your job market, lowering your wages...

California refugees don't lower wages, they raise them. They sell their $2M condo in west LA, and buy a 1035-Exchange mansion in Texas, thus generating dozens of construction jobs and yet more jobs for all the trucks of furniture to fill it up.

I live in San Jose, and if I sold my house and moved back to where i grew up, I could afford to buy the entire trailer park.

A little less brown than Rhode Island, Connecticut

[raymorris]

> Disclaimer: I live in San Jose, California, one of the brownest cities in America.

Did you mean whitest? According to the census, the entire state of Texas is 39% of *Mexican* descent, then add all of central America on top of that. Providence, Rhode Island has a higher percentage of Hispanics than San Jose does. Bridgeport, Connecticut is more Hispanic than San Jose. If San Jose were in Massachusetts, it would be the second-brownest city in Massachusetts.

> I believe immigration is a good thing

I've never heard anyone disagree with that. The question of the day is whether, when we make laws about immigration (or any other subject), we should follow those laws, or just pretend they don't exist. Republicans pretty consistently say don't make a law if you don't plan on following it. Follow the law, and if the law needs to be changed, change it. Democrats go back and forth on this about four years. In his first term, Obama was for strong enforcement of immigration law. In his second term, it was his official policy to unconstitutionally ignore the law. Hillary voted for a wall on the Mexican border, then later when she was invited on Univision she ridiculed the plan she had supported a couple years earlier. What's your stand on that, should we as a country DECIDE on immigration law, or should each politician do whatever they feel like today, ignoring the law?

Re:Spend less money ya dumb commies!

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yet we're #42 out of all 50 in terms of fiscal condition, mainly from debt. A lot of that "surplus" is because Sacramento loves to punt expenses further down the road, and bank a small "surplus" to fund special interest projects.