By Alan Caruba
UPDATE: This morning (2/26/15) the FCC voted to protect real Net Neutrality, doing what millions of people like you have called for: restoring the agency’s authority to protect Internet users under Title II of the Communications Act.
It’s an incredible victory that wouldn’t have happened without every single phone call, email, rally, Facebook post, tweet, meeting with Congress and everything else you’ve done to protect Internet freedom.
Today we get to celebrate something really rare: a concrete win that everyday people made possible. You stood up to corporate giants and created a public policy that will actually protect the public.
New Jersey –-(Ammoland.com)- The America that has existed from the days of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when its sovereignty was acknowledged by a treaty with England 1783, and its founding in 1788 with the ratification of the Constitution is no more. The America for which thousands fought and gave their lives is no more.
That America ends on February 26 2015 when the Federal Communications Commission, under intense pressure from the Obama White House and with the votes of its Democratic Party commissioners asserts government control over the Internet with a 332-page set of regulations, dubbed “Net Neutrality.”
Writing in the Feb 22nd 2015 Wall Street Journal, columnist L. Gordon Crovitz summed up what will occur saying “Obamanet promises to fix an Internet that isn’t broken…The permissionless Internet which allows anyone to introduce a website, app, or device without government review, ends this week.”
“The big politicization came when President Obama in November demanded that the supposedly independent FCC apply agency’s most extreme regulation to the Internet.” Of course Obama wants the Internet regulated and of course the Democratic Party will support this move to control who gets to put up a website or blog and, more importantly, who gets to say anything critical of the President.
The Democratic Party has been in everything but name the Communist Party in the United States for several decades. Obama was raised and mentored to be a Marxist. What we are witnessing is nothing less than tyranny replacing democracy.
Crovitz warned that “This week Mr. Obama’s bureaucrats will give him the regulated Internet he demands. Unless Congress or the courts block Obamanet, it will be the end of the Internet as we know it.”
Earlier this week, as reported by Giuseppe Macri in The Daily Caller the FCC’s two Republican commissioners, Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly, asked Chairman Tom Wheeler “to delay the vote and release his proposal to the public. ‘We respectfully request that FCC leadership immediately release the 332-page Internet regulation plan publicly and allow the American people a reasonable period of not less than 30 days to carefully study it.’”
There is some evil at work here because, as the Republican commissioners point out, “the plan in front of us right now is so drastically different than the proposal the FCC adopted and put out for public comment last May.”
Shades of ObamaCare! Even the Democrats who voted that monstrosity into law had not read it. Now neither Congress, nor the rest of America is being permitted to see regulations that will determine what can and cannot be posted to the Internet, the greatest instrument of free speech ever invented since the printing press.
Commissioner Pai says that the FCC is “adopting a solution that won’t work to a problem that doesn’t exist using legal authority we don’t have.” He estimates that the regulations will add up to $11 billion in new taxes on Internet access.
In a commentary, “Neutralize Obama’s Hijacking of the Internet”, Judi McLeod, the editor of CanadaFreePress.com, said “Forget NSA, the FBI, the CIA, and all warnings sent by Edward Snowden. They’ve got nothing on how Net Neutrality will silence you.”
“Someday in the near future when you type in the words “Islamic terrorists” in an Internet post, you will be knocked off the Net and find it all but impossible to climb back on again.”
Do I think the Congress will exercise its oversight responsibilities and stop this tyrannical power grab? No. Do I think our court system will do anything other than bow to precedent set by earlier FCC regulations? Yes.
As a nation founded on and devoted to freedom of speech, I think February 26, 2015 will go down in the history books as the day when that freedom came to an end in America.
Thanks to a National Security Agency we no longer have any privacy regarding anything we say using telephones, the Internet or any other form of communication.
If the Democrat-controlled FCC has its way, the Internet will slow your access and could eliminate access countless sites that provide news and express opinions the federal government finds offensive. That’s what tyrannies do.
c Alan Caruba
About:
Alan Caruba’s commentaries are posted daily at “Warning Signs” his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews.
Tyrannical government “Net Neutering” has begun! We will always have the net, BUT, now, without the balls. “Much about ‘Net-Neutrality’ policy is still unknown.” Therein lies the severity of the problem! What good, well meaning “dictator would withhold such “good” information from “his subjects”, unless, it is in reality a planned massive insidious “power grab” to control free speech and free marketing of the internet. For everyone in these comments that is complaining about a “tech subject” being in Ammoland. If our free speech on guns, Ammo, hunting, etc. is limited by the government, if our marketing choices of of… Read more »
This is not appropriate for this blog. Guns, Ammo, shooting, hunting, etc. only. Not internet info. of dubious value by an Obama hater.
The main issue was supposed to be forcing competitor products into an Internet slow lane. Why not use existing antitrust laws to encourage ISPs to divest their content businesses. This would eliminate the incentive for ISPs to preferentially treat their own content providers at the expense of a truly competitive market. It is about competition providing customers with the best value at the best price isn’t it? Or are we supporting the fleecing of the people to support an ever decreasing number of increasingly sized pseudo monopoly corporations. Question, who pays the bill when too big to fail corporations FAIL.… Read more »
Know how I know Caruba knows nothing of what he’s writing about and just using his soapbox to boohoo about Obama? I’ve been working on Internet issues for close to 20 years, and Caruba completely misses the mark as so many other writers.
Why would “Ammoland” jump into this quarrel?!
Anyone interested in a more balanced explanation should look here: https://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/26/389259382/net-neutrality-up-for-vote-today-by-fcc-board
Unintended Consequence #1:
People will move their websites out of the US, to places that are friendly to the content they want to distribute.
I expect to get gun and ammo related news here. If you want Internet and tech news I would head to sites like theses: – www_eff_org why-the-fcc-cant-save-net-neutrality – mashable_com fcc-net-neutrality-vote – gizmodo_com net-neutrality-wins-what-now – tech_slashdot_org fcc-approves-net-neutrality-rules Alan Caruba I get it, President Obama: – part of the Communist Party – raised and mentored to be a Marxist – Shades of ObamaCare (Should that read “50 Shades of Obama”?) You don’t like his policies or the man much. Loud and clear. Now I do agree with your National Security Agency statement, what do you recommend? The NSA seems to be above… Read more »
With this regime ‘regulating’ the Internet the day may soon come that you can’t get your “gun and ammo related news here” or anywhere else for that matter! The ATF’s plan to ban common AR ammunition might be a hint of things to come.
The leap your making is huge. Do you think putting your Internet provider in charge of what you can reach a better idea? Ask yourself this. If the only choice for Internet is Comcast cable or some fourth tier modem speed connection which would your family pick. Comcast most likely. Now you also want to visit this website. Comcast could say this website is lower priority than say Comcast News portal. Heck they could make viewing YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, or any of the other streaming media choices out there slow or vanish. Unless your pay more and more money. That… Read more »
I expect to get gun and ammo related news here. If you want Internet and tech news I would head to sites like theses: – http://www.eff.org why-the-fcc-cant-save-net-neutrality – mashable.com fcc-net-neutrality-vote – gizmodo.com net-neutrality-wins-what-now-1688183094 – tech.slashdot.org fcc-approves-net-neutrality-rules Alan Caruba I get it, President Obama: – part of the Communist Party – raised and mentored to be a Marxist – Shades of ObamaCare (Should that read “50 Shades of Obama”?) You don’t like his policies or the man much. Loud and clear. Now I do agree with your National Security Agency statement, what do you recommend? The NSA seems to be above… Read more »
Much about ‘Net-Neutrality’ policy is still unknown. I suspect the ‘Internet leaders’ who invested big money on server farms and the highest speed network infrastructure are going to be ‘pissed’ when they find out they can’t charge extra for all that ‘bandwidth’. If that’s what happens just add it to the list of attacks on ‘free market capitalism’?
You don’t know what is in the 322 page internet regulation plan. Does the plan attempt to limit free speech? You haven’t read it so quit saying it does, like it is a fact. Does it state who can or cannot put up a website or blog? Again, you haven’t read the plan so you have no way of knowing one way or another. Personally I am against any regulation of the internet based on the above. I’d also be against any internet regulation of an INDIVIDUALS liberties, freedoms, and rights. However I’m fine, for example, with regulating the internet… Read more »
And so you know what is in it? Which department in the FCC do you work for? I’m sorry, but 300+ pages. NO Visibility. Concealment, not transparency. THAT in and of itself is suspicious. And then there is the efforts in the past by Democrats to control free speech, especially political speech. The various scandals of this administration give us no reason to trust it and more reasons to distrust it. If you don’t see that trend/tendency, then well, you must think Obamacare has worked really, really well. Certainly we need to see what is in it, as you state.… Read more »
Dave, You are a moron. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.