House Democrats Plan April Vote On Net Neutrality Bill (theguardian.com) 140
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced that the House will hold a vote next month on the Democrats' bill to reinstate the Obama-era net neutrality rules. "Hoyer said in a letter to colleagues that the House will consider the Save the Internet Act during the week of April 8," reports The Hill. From the report: The Republican-led Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted along party lines in 2017 to repeal the popular regulations prohibiting internet service providers from blocking or throttling websites, or from creating internet fast lanes. Democrats and consumer groups are fighting the repeal with a legal challenge in federal court and have pushed net neutrality regulations at the state level.
While Republicans have floated their own bills to replace the rules, many oppose the Save the Internet Act because it reinstates the provision in the 2015 order that designates broadband providers as common carriers, opening them up to tougher regulation and oversight from the FCC. Though it enjoys widespread support among Democrats, the legislation may have a hard time getting through the GOP-held Senate. The "Save the Internet Act" was introduced earlier this month by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House and Senate Democrats.
While Republicans have floated their own bills to replace the rules, many oppose the Save the Internet Act because it reinstates the provision in the 2015 order that designates broadband providers as common carriers, opening them up to tougher regulation and oversight from the FCC. Though it enjoys widespread support among Democrats, the legislation may have a hard time getting through the GOP-held Senate. The "Save the Internet Act" was introduced earlier this month by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House and Senate Democrats.
F_ck Ajit Pai (Score:1, Insightful)
"Support" vs "Cares About" (Score:2)
The optics for the President, because 80-90% of the public supports Net Neutrality,
How many of those that "supports" net neutrality will care one whit about that issue when it comes time to vote. Maybe 0.001% of the populace would even think about it.
You are right about optics, but it seems like a really stupid use of resources given it cannot actually pass, nor do any candidate any good whatsoever.
Re: (Score:2)
>"How many of those that "supports" net neutrality will care one whit about that issue when it comes time to vote. Maybe 0.001% of the populace would even think about it."
And how many of the populous actually even understand Net Neutrality? I see wildly varying definitions from group after group. It is not a simple nor single concept, and it involves lots of creeping tendrils, such that what might be great in some ways are not great in others.
Like with many things, it is hard to support a generic conce
Re: (Score:2)
>"Why don't you say what YOU would like to see in such legislation, hmm? I don't think you've given us a single point or idea on those merits yet."
That wasn't the objective of the message. And I have no ulterior motives.
Re: (Score:2)
You are right about optics, but it seems like a really stupid use of resources given it cannot actually pass, nor do any candidate any good whatsoever.
Well, other than bogus investigations that the populace is starting to see for the fishing expeditions they are, what else do the Democrats have as legislative priorities? They can't exactly vote on reparations. All the candidates are jumping on that for their presidential platforms.
Re: (Score:2)
they may as well step back, clean house of the likes of clinton and pelosi, regroup and try again in a decade. Hopefully by then clinton and pelosi will have croaked.
And replace it with what? Acasio-Cortez? Ilhan Omar? Kamala Harris? Corey Booker?
It's amazing that I'm sitting here thinking the current crop of Dems are seasoned, respectable statesmen, due to the new loons their pushing forward.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm all in on net neutrality, but the Democrats are being really stupid about this. Why on earth would they bring this to bear when they already know the president will veto it? It's just going to make it less likely that the next congress will bring up such a bill.
Well for one thing it'll make it obvious who supports the American people and who doesn't. If he goes on record against Net Neutrality then it's another strike to be used against him.
Watch how the next crop of candidates running will be only too happy to show their taxes and school transcripts, while this self-described "stable genius" president is too scared do do either. How do you think that's gonna look?
I know it won't matter to his brainwashed supporters, but everyone else will pay attention and (hopef
Re: (Score:2)
It's got nothing to do with race and everything to do about politics.
I mean come on, the democrats objected to Obama showing a birth certificate which is a hell of a lot less private than taxes.
Re: (Score:2)
But even when he did produce the birth certificate the Republicans and Trump weren't satisfied that Obama was born in the US and eligible to be President.
Re: (Score:2)
And? The point was both sides ask for personal things and both sides refuse to comply. Obama never turned over his school transit and took 3 years to show his birth certificate (as was his right.)
Re: (Score:2)
He doesn't have his school transcript? It took him 3+ years to find his birth certificate.
Now you are getting it (Score:4, Interesting)
the Democrats are being really stupid about this. Why on earth would they bring this to bear when they already know the president will veto it? It's just going to make it less likely that the next congress will bring up such a bill.
You have inadvertently revealed the game. Make sure to vote for things that are popular when they can have no effect, so that you'll not be voting on things later that might make the giant corporations that support you mad.
It's the same reason why neither the Democrats nor Republicans ever seem to get much passed when they control both house and senate.
Re: Now you are getting it (Score:1, Insightful)
My taxes went up 6% and Healthcare went up 280% when Democrats gained control, but poverty increased and average lifespan decreased.
My taxes went down 12% and Healthcare went up 1.1% this year. I'm being paid more, my friends and family are all happily employed in good jobs, North Korea hasn't tested a missile or nuke in 16 months, we're exiting never ending wars, Islamic extremists haven't been nearly as effective as they were under Obama, and someone is at least trying to enforce our laws and promote Amer
Re: Now you are getting it (Score:1)
A fantastic example of why Trump will win in 2020.
When faced with truth, all you had was a sniveling whine to retort.
Re: (Score:3)
This post gets modded insightful? That is insane.
Honestly, I was embarrassed by Trump at first and wished he would stop tweeting. But watching all the attacks and vicious ugly things said about his supporters, I am now glad he tweets and fights back.
Being "civil" and "presidential" didn't stop Bush, McCain, and Rommey as well as their supporters from being labeled racists. The overuse if that label has diluted it of all meaning.
Re: (Score:2)
you're a treasonous lying faggot.
Why the homophobia?
Nah, you're both missing it (Score:2)
Getting politicians on the record opposing popular legislation is just as important as getting them to support it. So you can vote them out of office in the next election, after which your bill is brought up again. If it's still blocked, repeat the process until it is passed.
why bring up any bills at all? (Score:2)
It's not even the Pres.
It's the Senate; McConnell will never bring up bills that have the slightest odor of not helping big donors.
Re: (Score:2)
About bloody time, for this. Save the internet!!!
It is just a political stunt. It will pass the house. Then it will die in the senate without even being considered.
This isn't about passing NN. It is about framing the issue for the 2020 election, and cornering the Republicans into voting "No", so the Democrats can hammer them for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Your faith in government meddling is strong.
Re: (Score:2)
If the government were doing there job, the communications lines would be a public asset just like the roads. Anything that requires the power of imminent domain is a public asset. If it is important enough to take it by force for the public good, it is important enough to remain in the public's control. All of these issues about NN would go away if the communications infrastructure was not abusable by private entities.
Welcome sham voting season (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing worse than an endless parade of bills that are voted on just to virtue signal, with no chance of accomplishing anything.
Would be nice if everyone would try to work together to solve real problems.
million of dollars? (Score:2)
FUD FUD FUD!
It's not a sham (Score:5, Insightful)
This is put up or shut up time for those schmucks, and with how much cable money and AT&T cash they're sitting on it'll be shutup. In turn that'll be an issue in 2020 that might cost them their seat and give it to a Democrat. If that happens enough times then the Dems will pass the bill.
This is how the sausage is made. Don't like it? Go vote for a Democrat in 2020. And if you don't like the candidates vote in your primary dammit.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, to be clear "Corporate" Democrats (Score:2)
Basically, there's a class of right wing Democrats who vote like Republicans on just about everything (except maybe Abortion & the ACA). These are typically called Corporate Democrats, "Clinton" Democrats of (if you're one of them) "New" Democrats. They're functionally identical to a Republican but run as Democrats.
This is why it's important to show up to yo
Re: (Score:2)
People forget that Tom Wheeler was a literal cable company lobbyist when he became head of the FCC. The Democrats fully expected him to serve the cable company's interests and block net neutrality.
Wheeler only pulled Title II rabbit out of his hat in reaction to losing Verizon lawsuit.
At that point after pushing open Internet nobody expected him to serve the cable company's interests. He already unambiguously demonstrated otherwise years before deciding to do Title II as a last resort.
Re: (Score:2)
Because Obomneycare was always their damned plan. Has been since the Heritage Foundation wrote it in opposition to the Clinton plan in the early 90's. Dole ran on it in '96, and Romney pushed it into law on the state level in Massachusetts. That they flip-flopped in a partisan play does nothing to change that fact.
Which is why Obomneycare is a great partisan hack test. If you
Failure to comprehend the purpose. (Score:3)
Nothing worse than an endless parade of bills that are voted on just to virtue signal, with no chance of accomplishing anything.
It's not virtue signalling if they really do want to pass it into legislation. It indicates to voters who is preventing legislation from being enacted that is widely supported by the public.
Would be nice if everyone would try to work together to solve real problems.
Alternatively, the public can be shown who should be voted out because they are not acting in the interests of the public.
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry, you're taking the theatrics too seriously. This is a very obvious PR sham. It's been done many times before. "Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't"
People vote on promises and bullshit. If they judged politicians on their actual voting record, reelection rates would be closer to 20% instead of 95%.
Trust me, it's better this way (Score:2)
See, Americans are on average centrist. Unfortunately, our plurality wins election system
Re: (Score:3)
>"The only real fix is some sort of instant runoff voting system"
+1000
https://fairvote.org/ [fairvote.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Then I got to experience the Democrats controlling both branches of Congress under Bush1, Clinton, and Obama; and the Republicans controlling both branches under Clinton, Bush2, and Trump. Trust me, it's better when control is split.
Democrats never had both branches at any time under Clinton. For a brief period the Democrats had the Senate under Clinton but never had the House.
Re: (Score:3)
"Virtue signal" is ungrammatical and silly. You're allowed to say "signal their virtuousness" if you like.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, it's just used like the Bat-Signal, 'cept it only summons white knights.
Those most likely to engage in virtue signalling want nothing to do with anything white.
Re: (Score:2)
The real fix, that is opening the local markets to allow actual competition (that naturally generates net neutrality in the process), this no one wanna touch.
Re: (Score:2)
The real fix, that is opening the local markets to allow actual competition (that naturally generates net neutrality in the process), this no one wanna touch.
Do you mean: eliminating state granted monopolies to the landline phone companies, eliminating gross revenue taxes levied on cable companies by local governments (aka "the franchise fee"), or both?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The real fix is giving putting the government in charge of the infrastructure. The cable lines should never have been privately owned in the first place. I lean Libertarian, but the libertarian ideal of all roads being privately owned is insane. The ridiculous debate we're having over NN exemplifies how.
Re: (Score:2)
Worse, this isn't about what you think of "network neutrality." This is 100% about pushing CALEA requirements onto the internet. You do want all of your data snarfable without a warrant, right?
CALEA requires a warrant but you're right when you say this isn't really about network neutrality. The democrats could have done a clean NN bill but they instead elected to keep all the Title II bullshit intact.
Re:Welcome sham voting season (Score:4, Interesting)
You want government to Do Something(tm), you'll get stuff like the Patriot Act.
In general, when government is tied up and unable to accomplish anything useful, things outside of government get done.
Also means stuff that requires fine details to be sorted out, like gun control, to either not go forward, or for it to take its own time to be hashed out, rather than rushed out and full of holes.
Beware when some bill passes quickly - it usually means something in there is set to screw you over. When government is log jammed it means they're not making up laws to screw you over.
Re: (Score:2)
You want government to Do Something(tm), you'll get stuff like the Patriot Act.
Also remember: the Patriot Act was written in 1999 and was sitting in committee until 2001.
Re: (Score:2)
Would be nice if everyone would try to work together to solve real problems.
What is there to work out? Pai refuses to do what his position mandates is his job. By now he's been caught lying about the NN "DDOS" attacks. Congress has oversight over the FCC, but up until the Democrats took control of the House have been unwilling to do anything about Pai and the FCC.
nothing worse? (Score:2)
They force lawmakers to take a stand and vote.
Is that what you mean by virtue signalling?
I can think of plenty of worse things.
We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it (Score:2)
'nuff said.
Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing (Score:2)
This is only "Team Red" and "Team Blue" arguing in public, desperately trying to maintain the illusion of two separate political parties.
When all is said and done, nothing will change.
I used to be onboard with Net Neutrality (Score:1, Offtopic)
But in the end, we can see the real damage to the Internet is from Silicon Valley monopolies enforcing restrictions on speech and suppressing their competition to prevent any actual free speech supporting platforms from starting up. Then they say their don't "editiorialize" and thus get to benefit from protections from law enforcement when they let actual unlawful behavior roam free while at the same time, enforcing their own politics in their moderation.
What we need now is not to suppress ISP. We need an
Re: (Score:2)
We also need to make sure to remove protections from prosecution from Social media platform when they fail to remove unlawful content.
Nope... Censorship is wrong.
Re: (Score:1)
Censorship is wrong. Removing child pornography, Terrorist recruitment material, live stream killings, threats of physical violence is not censorship.
Maybe if they concentrated on that stuff rather than Steven Crowderâ(TM)s latest rant or Charlie Kirkâ(TM)s opinion.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Removing child pornography, Terrorist recruitment material, live stream killings, threats of physical violence is not censorship.
Yes it is. You have no right to interfere with private communications. It is none of your business.
And please sanitize your input, we don't do unicode here
Re: (Score:3)
But what are you really advocating? You're advocating that you get decide what a private company allows or does not allow under the guise of free speech.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure you know what NN is?
Big government is back to slow your net (Score:2, Informative)
No innovation, what of new innovative community broadband?
Back to more federal rules and laws to keep existing network speeds.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
80-90% may be for NN, but only 20% think it is an important issue, and about 0.1% will change their vote because of it.
Re: (Score:2)
That's really a big problem, isn't it? To support Net Neutrality, I have to support a politician who aligns with values that are completely unrelated.
I can't blame someone who thinks other issues are more important. But we shouldn't have to make that choice in the first place.
(Just to be clear... I do personally support many of those values.)
Re: (Score:2)
>"I can't blame someone who thinks other issues are more important. But we shouldn't have to make that choice in the first place."
Yet we always do, because we don't have much choice [in the USA]. There are actually only two parties (because of our horrible voting system). So the two take set stances on a whole sets of things, many of which most don't necessarily agree, so most voters are just SOL. We are forced to pick which issues are the most important- sometimes it might be only ONE issue, and all
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, or Approval or Score voting methods.
We are forced to pick which issues are the most important- sometimes it might be only ONE issue, and all the other stuff we might not like comes along with the vote.
And I've noticed that over time, it is easy to become agreeable with those other stances, to the point we fight for them as hard as our primary issue. I did that for a while until I decided not to immediately dismiss the "other side".
Now I tend to dig deep and look for compatibilities between each side, and from my perspective they are fairly agreeable for the 90%+ of circumstances which people don't talk about in political discussions.
I think the point is to keep piling up issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Most Americans support a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, ending the 8 wars we're in, tuition free college and even a federal jobs program of one kind or another. This is one nail in the coffin of the guys who've been screwing us over since the 80s (and that goes for any Dems who don't vote for it, especially in the Senate).
Re:I think the point is to keep piling up issues (Score:4, Insightful)
>"Most Americans support a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All,[...], tuition free college and even a federal jobs program of one kind or another."
âoeWhen the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.â
Most Americans will vote for anything that takes money from others (even future generations) to give it to themselves, regardless of the consequences to the economy or their freedom. Most Americans will also vote based on identity and feelings instead of facts and analysis. That is why the USA was set up as a Republic and with [what was supposed to be] some majorly constraining rules in the Constitution about what the Fed is allowed (very little) and not allowed (a lot) to do.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Mark Davis just explained Republicanism, not what "most Americans" actually want - the only thing he understands is greed and how to apologize for it."
Um, no, what I explained was the difference between conservative and non-conservative. Its not about greed, but explaining that to you would be a waste of time....
>"Fuck you bitch liar. FUCK YOU and your dishonest tapdance faggot shit. You and Kendall should burn in hell for all eternity."
Wow, really intelligent conversation and thought process. I am
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, really intelligent conversation and thought process. I am sure you sway lots of people with such foul commentary.
Why don't you simply ignore the bullshit and allow it to be modded to -1 in silence?
most people understand (Score:2)
That their own taxes pay for these things, and don't consider them "free".
It is a straw man to say those who want government programs want "free" things.
Re: (Score:2)
>"That their own taxes pay for these things, and don't consider them "free"."
The people most using such government programs are not the ones paying for them, or they are paying for a small fraction of a percent over their whole life. When one gets something you one doesn't pay for, it is free to them; a "gift" forced from others or from our children and our children's children in the form of trillions of dollars of unpaid, increasingly unservicable debt.
That is not to say I am against all government pro
Re: (Score:2)
Most Americans support a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, ending the 8 wars we're in, tuition free college and even a federal jobs program of one kind or another. This is one nail in the coffin of the guys who've been screwing us over since the 80s (and that goes for any Dems who don't vote for it, especially in the Senate).
And the polls show that the support fades faster than a Walmart t-shirt when people are told how much those programs will cost them.
Yep, and it goes right back up (Score:2)
Yeah, you can game polls, but you can't game reality. The folks down in North Carolina just got a lesson in that.