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House Democrats Refuse To Weaken Net Neutrality Bill, Defeat GOP Amendments (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday rejected Republican attempts to weaken a bill that would restore net neutrality rules.
The House Commerce Committee yesterday approved the "Save the Internet Act" in a 30-22 party-line vote, potentially setting up a vote of the full House next week. The bill is short and simple -- it would fully reinstate the rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015, reversing the repeal led by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in 2017.
Commerce Committee Republicans repeatedly introduced amendments that would weaken the bill but were consistently rebuffed by the committee's Democratic majority. "The Democrats beat back more than a dozen attempts from Republicans to gut the bill with amendments throughout the bill's markup that lasted 9.5 hours," The Hill reported yesterday. Republican amendments would have weakened the bill by doing the following: Exempt all 5G wireless services from net neutrality rules; Exempt all multi-gigabit broadband services from net neutrality rules; Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that builds broadband service in any part of the U.S. that doesn't yet have download speeds of at least 25Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3Mbps; Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that gets universal service funding from the FCC's Rural Health Care Program; Exempt ISPs that serve 250,000 or fewer subscribers from certain transparency rules that require public disclosure of network management practices; and Prevent the FCC from limiting the types of zero-rating (i.e., data cap exemptions) that ISPs can deploy. An additional Republican amendment "would have imposed net neutrality rules but declared that broadband is an information service, [preventing] the FCC from imposing any other type of common-carrier regulations on ISPs," reports Ars Technica. "The committee did approve a Democratic amendment to exempt ISPs with 100,000 or fewer subscribers from the transparency rules, but only for one year."
Commerce Committee Republicans repeatedly introduced amendments that would weaken the bill but were consistently rebuffed by the committee's Democratic majority. "The Democrats beat back more than a dozen attempts from Republicans to gut the bill with amendments throughout the bill's markup that lasted 9.5 hours," The Hill reported yesterday. Republican amendments would have weakened the bill by doing the following: Exempt all 5G wireless services from net neutrality rules; Exempt all multi-gigabit broadband services from net neutrality rules; Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that builds broadband service in any part of the U.S. that doesn't yet have download speeds of at least 25Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3Mbps; Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that gets universal service funding from the FCC's Rural Health Care Program; Exempt ISPs that serve 250,000 or fewer subscribers from certain transparency rules that require public disclosure of network management practices; and Prevent the FCC from limiting the types of zero-rating (i.e., data cap exemptions) that ISPs can deploy. An additional Republican amendment "would have imposed net neutrality rules but declared that broadband is an information service, [preventing] the FCC from imposing any other type of common-carrier regulations on ISPs," reports Ars Technica. "The committee did approve a Democratic amendment to exempt ISPs with 100,000 or fewer subscribers from the transparency rules, but only for one year."
That's OK. You get people on the record for supporting it (or not), and then, after the 2020 elections, you have a bill ready to go.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The point is to get the GOP on record supporting something that will likely raise your cable bill (or phone bill if you're on DSL). That's an issue that can resonate with voters. From there it becomes election fodder to win seats and push the presidency over the edge.
The democratic bill allows FCC to impose regressive USF taxes on Internet access. They didn't have to do that. The democrats could have done a clean NN bill. They elected not to.
Umm, yes he did "exonerate Trump" on the collusion conspiracy (which is what the parent was talking about). The "not enough evidence" was for the obstruction of justice charge.
The letter from Barr dealt with two different issues: 1. Russian collusion 2. Obstruction of Justice.
For 1, Mueller could not establish that any collusion took place. It wasn't "not enough evidence". It was "the report did not establish that members of the Trump compaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference".
For 2, Mueller deferred to make a conclusion based on the evidence.
So, if we are talking about collusion (which again is what the parent was talking about), it did exonerate Trump. If we are talking about obstruction of justice, it did NOT exonerate Trump. You should not confuse the two topics.
The crying came originally from the left and the right and the center. It was not a partisan issue until the anti-regulation nuts got involved and the big telecoms started donating money to get it defeated.