Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, has put out a two pronged announcement of what America needs conservatives to achieve when it comes to the the Internet, new technologies, and the regulation of them all. It’s fun to watch just how strong she’s come out on these critical issues.
First she had a very well-written piece in the Washington Times explaining how the Internet and related tech issues have gone from a “niche in public policy” to being essential “to keep America free and prosperous.” She gives a great overview of the problems with the FCC and Net Neutrality, then goes on to explain how she, Fred Upton, and other Republicans can do something about it. It’s worth a read, or a link, if you ever need a summary of where we stand today.
The big story though came the next day, when she gave the keynote address to the State of the Net conference held by the Congressional Internet Caucus advisory committee. That’s where she drew the line, bright and clear.
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Republicans are eager to get to work against the President’s regulatory bypasses of the last two years. Cliff Stearns promises “aggressive and rigorous” oversight of Internet, Energy, and Obamacare, says Hillicon Valley. As the Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, that’s no idle threat.
Meanwhile Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton is looking forward as well as backward, by looking to guide the FCC proactively on the issue of increasing the wireless spectrum available for Internet access. I think it’s usually better when legislators lead rather than letting those unelected, unaccountable regulatory bodies go off on their own, so I’m glad of this.
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Good evening. The Communication Workers of America are making a cowardly little statement in favor of Net Neutrality, as they simply must be team players even though they know the radical left’s agenda threatens to kill their own jobs, but for the most part the left still wants to move on from Net Neutrality. There are good reasons for that.
First, one of our predictions from before is already coming true. They’re coming after content, already. Louise Slaughter is pressing the FCC to institute a sweeping campaign of censorship online. Free Press is on the case, too. Speech that regulators disfavor must be “curbed,” she thinks. Remember when we were assured that the FCC should show “forbearance,” and that the FCC’s Net Neutrality power grab wasn’t a free speech issue at all, but just a network management issue? Of course. Of course.
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Net Neutrality (which Mike Wendy calls a “Private Property Slap-Down”) may not be any longer the top issue on the Obama administration’s side of things, but questions still remain. And the funny thing: all the Net Neutrality advocates in the world working in the White House were no big deal. But all of a sudden it’s a concern that a former AT&T President going to the White House is a problem.
But yes, the FCC wants to change the subject. Now suddenly the press is to open up more bandwidth for wireless Internet access. Funny, I was assured during the Net Neut debate that wireless access didn’t effectively exist. Now the FCC wants to expand it. More spectrum isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but we do have to watch how it is acquired.
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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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The new Congress is in session, and while some people are supremely interested in badmouthing the new Republican leadership, I’m more interested in trying to work with the Republicans to oppose the actual bad things being done by the Obama administration. I don’t have time to complain about past votes. Because guess what? Republicans who were previously bad under the Democrats can turn out good now that we’re in charge.
Because the fact is, the new, unprecedented, illegal Net Neutrality regulations are in fact a confused mess. In particular, the rules on paid prioritization on the Internet are so muddled that the whole thing is probably going to get tossed as soon as the FCC tries to stomp the boot of regulation onto anyone (which might be Comcast, because everyone knows the Democrats hate Comcast and the radicals are still going to be fuming about the NBC Universal/Comcast merger).
Also, Netflix itself my run afoul of the new regulations. That’s right, poor widdle Netflix, supposedly the victim of big, bad ISPs, is probably in violation of the new regulations. Heh.
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The New Year has started, and the Republicans are soon to start acting. Conservatives were mixed in reacting to Fred Upton’s words over the weekend. Some think he’s not tough enough when it comes to rolling back big government when it comes to the FCC, the EPA, and of course Obamacare. But I’m hopeful about him because he’s struck me as coming into his Chairmanship with aggression. He’s been vocal about coming into this year with an agenda to reverse what Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have been doing. I like that and it makes it easy for me to be patient and see what he does.
Some have also been questioning Darrell Issa’s commitment to making life miserable for people in the Obama administration, which I think is a bit silly. Issa’s been building up to this moment for months and I think he’ll do just fine with his subpoena pad.
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Some people stay up late on December 31. I don’t intend to, Friday and New Year’s Eve or not. Boring, yes, I know. But until I switch to decaf coffee my sleeping habits are going to be a wreck, so I’ll just have to ride it out. And that means I want to get going right away with tonight’s stories.
Republicans are getting very loud on regulatory issues, both with the FCC and with the EPA. Fred Upton is ginning up support in Michigan for his planned House efforts to challenge EPA regulatory power grabs with respect to Carbon Dioxide, efforts that will surely influence the FCC and Net Neutrality. In addition, on Sunday morning at 9am Eastern he’s scheduled to speak with Chris Wallace on Fox, with repeats on Fox News Channel at 2 and 6pm Eastern. I am so glad he’s going out there and preparing to lead on regulatory issues.
Kay Bailey Hutchison has also called the FCC “wrong” on Net Neutrality, and is hoping to be able to get some sort of action through a Democrat controlled Senate. It won’t be easy, as she points out, but it could happen if we can swing enough Democrats to see the truth about the FCC power grab.
She also doesn’t rule out defunding the FCC’s Net Neutrality plans, a way of stopping the regulations that the President cannot veto.
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Earlier this week I mentioned a story at Safe Libraries exposing American Library Association astroturf promoting the radical Free Press agenda on Net Neutrality. Now, the ALA does not come into this debate with clean hands. The ALA has taken stands before, notably to protect terrorists from being caught by the FBI. But now they’re getting aggressive.
On the heels of this story about ALA astroturfing on Wikipedia, the ALA is attempting retaliation. They are attempting to block the Safe Libraries author from having any further access to edit Wikipedia unless his article is censored. Quoth Safe Libraries:
As a result of the publication of this blog post, apparent ALA supporters, if not ALA members or the OIF itself, have initiated action at Wikipedia that resulting in efforts to stop my editing there or to have me remove this blog post. Self-censorship, as the ALA would call it. At this moment, I have been indefinitely blocked from editing, likely in part because I have not removed this blog post.
The ALA will defend the “civil rights” of terrorists, but will silence anyone questioning the activities of the ALA. How convenient.
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Tech at Night took Christmas off (in fact I even decided not to bother to put up a post saying I was taking Christmas off), so I have some catch up to do. Looks like nine links tonight, so let’s start.
Jack Shafer at Slate of all places has made fun of Net Neutrality by detailing what might have happened had the FCC regulated information services back in 1993 instead of starting it now in 2010. Poor Marc Andreessen really does take the brunt of it, but it’s funny and enlightening at the same time.
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