House Democrats Tell Ajit Pai: Stop Screwing Over the Public (arstechnica.com)

slack_justyb shares a report from Ars Technica: The House Commerce Committee is "reassuming its traditional role of oversight to ensure the agency is acting in the best interest of the public and consistent with its legislative authority," Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) said in an announcement yesterday. Pallone, Jr. and Doyle wrote a letter to Pai, saying that he has made the FCC too secretive and has repeatedly advanced the interests of corporations over consumers. They wrote: "Not only have you have failed on numerous occasions to provide Democratic members of this committee with responses to their inquiries, you have also repeatedly denied or delayed responding to legitimate information requests from the public about agency operations. These actions have denied the public of a full and fair understanding of how the FCC under your leadership has arrived at public policy decisions that impact Americans every day in communities across the country. Under your leadership, the FCC has failed repeatedly to act in the public interest and placed the interest of corporations over consumers. The FCC should be working to advance the goals of public safety, consumer protection, affordable access, and connectivity across the United States. To that end, it is incumbent upon the Committee's leadership and its members to oversee the activities of the FCC."

On Thursday this week, the Communications Subcommittee will hold a hearing about the impact of Pai's net neutrality repeal on consumers, small businesses, and free speech. Witnesses who have been invited to testify at the hearing include former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, cable industry chief lobbyist Michael Powell (who is also a former FCC chairman), and representatives of Mozilla, Free Press, and Eastern Oregon Telecom.

Comments

Re:Reassuming?

[jeff4747]

Wait, if that is your "traditional role"

Oversight

where have you been? On vacation? Too busy?

In the minority. The Republicans ran the House for the last 8 years, and were not terribly interested in oversight of the FCC.

Re:See you at the gallows nazi Trump faggots!

[jeff4747]

Really? Snopes? That's your rebuttal?

Well, it's quicker than citing every single history book written on the subject.

Oh, and if you actually bother reading the Snopes article, they all but admit that yes, the Nazis were left-wing socialists

You really need to work on your literacy. The only parts that make this claim are the ones being debunked, as well as the things the NAZIs promised early in the party's history, but failed to deliver once they were actually in power. Who'd have thunk you couldn't trust NAZIs to deliver on campaign promises. (That last sentence is sarcasm BTW. Just making sure to label it since you're having trouble understanding simple English).

But since it's not written in your native language, I suppose we should give you some leeway in your inability to understand it.

It's one of the reasons why they're no longer considered a trusted fact checker by Facebook.

You got the direction backwards there. They left Facebook, not the other way around.

Re:Public to House Democrat party:

[jeff4747]

We OVERWHELMINGLY voted for the Republicans

2% is not OVERWHELMINGLY.

who gained a LOT of seats in the senate

Pre-election polls had you gaining 6 seats. You gained 4. And those 4 were quite close instead of the forecasted blow-out. The Democrats were defending twice as many seats, and many in "red" states, so we lost some. But good news! That flips in 2020, and Republicans will be defending far more seats, many in "blue" states.

Also, you seem to have forgotten that the House had the largest swing since Watergate. How'd that happen if the public OVERWHELMINGLY voted for Republicans?

Almost like it wasn't actually a Republican wave election.....

You know we can stop that anytime we want

[rsilvergun]

just refuse to vote for politicians who accept corporate PAC money. Look, right here's a wing of the Democratic party that does just that. They're looking to primary the corporate, Clintonion Democrats next election too.

I'm open to hearing a GOP equivalent but, well, I don't know any. Maybe folks like that jump ship to the libertarian party, IDK. Doesn't matter.

Refuse to vote for anyone who takes corporate PAC money. And vote in your primary. Your vote has orders of magnitude more power in a primary. Politicians don't fear being reelected. They _do_ fear being primaried. Show up and give'em something to be scared of again.