Regulation, Regulation, Regulation. We’re faced with it, and now the regulators are going Presidential on us and claiming executive privilege at the FCC. You want to know how they’re coming up with their marching orders for America? Too bad. Just ask watchdog StimulatingBroadband.com.
You want a laugh? George Soros-funded front group Free Press is suing the FCC… because Net Neutrality isn’t enough of a power grab. Incredible.
Jay Rockefeller is defending Net Neutrality, meanwhile, against Kay Bailey Hutchison’s withering attacks, and push for a Congressional Review Act repeal of the regulations.
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So while there have been a number of genuine online attacks lately against the Senate, the CIA, PBS, Bioware, and more, the headlines have been full of reports of aftershocks. What seems to be going on is that existing account credentials leaked from previous attacks are being plugged into other sites, including Paypal.
Anyone who reuses passwords is vulnerable to these secondary attacks. Be careful out there.
These punks are overreaching though. Now the NSA is getting involved. These guys had a mission in life to track down and make life tough for Soviet spies. These no-life kiddies don’t have a chance.
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Today, the House of Representatives voted to repeal Net Neutrality. H.J. Res 37, a resolution invoking the Congressional Review Act to reverse the FCC’s Net Neutrality order, passed the House under H.Res 200 by a 241-178 vote. Republicans voted 236-0 for repeal, while Democrats voted 178-5 against repeal. The five Democrats? Boren of OK, Conyers of MI, Costa of CA, Peterson of MN, and Shuler of NC. So of the Democrats you called, two went our way. We’ll have to remember the ones who chose to side with the San Francisco Democrat agenda instead of the (slightly) bipartisan position.
I feel good about this big win in the House today. I’ll let Fred Upton tell you why this vote was important:
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The final House vote is coming to repeal Net Neutrality via the Congressional Review Act. I’m pretty interested to see how many Democrats we can get in the House, because it may give a clue of how many Democrats we can get in the Senate. Remember: under the CRA we only need 51, not 60.
I hope we don’t have to fire up the CRA next over socialist wireless data roaming regulation. As I pointed out earlier this week, Sprint stopped investing in its network, while AT&T and Verizon spent even more. So now Sprint customers end up having to roam more when off of Sprint’s network. Should Sprint be allowed to make up for that by getting the government to force a special deal? I don’t think so. Regulation should reward investors and punish free riders. Only then do we truly look out for the public, the people who need more investment made.
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The House of Representatives is likely to vote tomorrow, Thursday, on the repeal of the FCC’s Net Neutrality power grab. Using the Congressional Review Act, the repeal of the Net Neutrality order can be accomplished in an expedited way. In particular this means the bill cannot be filibustered in the Senate, so passing it means something.
This is our first opportunity to rein in the Barack Obama Administration’s ongoing, all-encompassing effort to bypass Congress and enact their Leftist policies via executive branch regulatory fiat.
There are thirteen swing-district Democrats on whom pressure has been put by their leadership to stand for the ridiculous and oppressive notion that is Net Neutrality – by voting Nay on the CRA Resolution.
Let’s persuade them otherwise, shall we?
| Democrats in Question | Phone | Fax | |
| Jason Altmire (PA-4) | (202) 225-2565 | Jason.Altmire@mail.house.gov | (202) 226-2274 |
| Sanford Bishop (GA-2) | (202) 225-3631 | Sanford.Bishop@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-2203 |
| Leonard Boswell (IA-3) | (202) 225-3806 | lbos.ia3@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-5608 |
| Jim Costa (CA-20) | (202) 225-3341 | jimcostamc@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-9308 |
| Henry Cuellar (TX-28) | (202) 225-1640 | from website | (202) 225-1641 |
| Reuben Hinojosa (TX-15) | (202) 225-2531 | Rep.Hinojosa@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-5688 |
| Tim Holden (PA-17) | (202) 225-5546 | from website | (202) 226-0996 |
| Rick Larsen (WA-2) | (202) 225-2605 | Rick.Larsen@mail.house.gov | (202) 225-4420 |
| Mike McIntyre (NC-7) | (202) 225-2731 | from website | (202) 225-5773 |
| Jerry McNerney (CA-11) | (202) 225-1947 | from website | (202) 225-4060 |
| Gregory Meeks (NY-6) | (202) 225-3461 | from website | (202) 226-4169 |
| David Scott (GA-13) | (202) 225-2939 | from website | (202) 225-4628 |
| Heath Shuler (NC-11) | (202) 225-6401 | Heath.Shuler@mail.house.gov | (202) 226-6422 |
I’m late. No excuses. Let’s go.
So the courts threw out Verizon’s challenge of Net Neutrality, rejecting the very clever argument made by Verizon that it wasn’t premature. So now we wait for the actual publication of Net Neutrality to take place.
Well, to a point. The Republicans aren’t waiting and will vote this week in the full House to repeal Net Neutrality under the Congressional Review Act. Remember: this cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and so when it passes the House we only need 51 votes in the Senate, not 60. Seton Motley has some phone numbers to call if you’re represented by a key Democrat.
Tell ’em that even FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, as part of the 2/5 of the FCC that voted against Net Neutrality, still thinks it was a bad idea. Ask them his question: “Nothing is broken on the Internet, so what are we trying to fix?”
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Remember when I seemed to write about Net Neutrality four times a week, which was really something when I was only posting three times? Well, the AT&T/T-Mobile deal is probably going to get that much discussion for now.
Of course there’s nothing new yet. Discussion is all there is until government actually starts acting. My job is to find the interesting discussion, I suppose. So let’s start with Douglas Holtz-Eakin at NRO, who makes very well the key thing we all must remember when it comes to the wireless market: size isn’t what matters. Competition matters. And as I’ve been saying from the start, taking the sick man in T-Mobile and combining him with the #2 firm only helps competition by putting pressure on the high-flying, LTE-deploying #1 Verizon.
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Good evening. I’m going to start tonight with a clarification from Friday. While I identified last week’s Net Neutrality push poll with Consumer Reports, the poll was actually signed on by CR’s publisher, Consumers Union, and conducted by the Consumer Federation of America. As that one television network says, I have now made a report, and you can decide for yourself what to make of it.
Meanwhile we still have a bunch of Net Neutrality fighting going on. Republicans are on to something with the Congressional Review Act plan of repeal, and the forces of Net Neutrality are worried. Al Franken wants to start putting people in jail over it, this despite the FCC’s failure even to publish the rules of the Net Neutrality game.
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Much to cover, and less time to cover it in! So many important things I don’t even know what to hit first. So, I’ll be biased and hit what I found out about from RedState. Google and the NLRB teamed up to promote unionization, with Google providing free ad space.
That’s a problem for three reasons. First, the NLRB is supposed to be the impartial arbiter of disputes between unions and employers. For the NLRB to promote unionization is to tip its hand as being a tool of one side: the unions. Second, Google isn’t even unionized. Third, and the undoing of the scheme: The NLRB, like the rest of the government, is prohibited by law from accepting free goods or services. If it weren’t for that, they’d all have continued to get away with it as they have since 2008. What a technicality.
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Ah, 1am. I spent a few hours this evening working on some math, and now suddenly it’s the middle of the night. So as I say all too often in this space, I’m going to make it quick.
While Fred Upton and his committee arrangements are so important to our coming fights against the EPA, the FCC, and of course the coming Obamacare apparatus, it’s also true that other Republicans can and will play roles in this fight.
Marsha Blackburn is one of them. She’s introduced the Internet Freedom Act, written to take back from the FCC the powers it’s unilaterally decreed itself to have over the Internet.
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