The internet works just fine…I can get just about anywhere I want to and see whatever I want. So because the internet works and the government has realized that the internet works and is both open and free for exchange of ideas, they have been taking steps to fix that. The goal is to make the internet like everything else the government manages, piss poor and broken. Their tool to get there is the Net Neutrality idea. John Oliver has a good bit on it at the bottom of this page, you should watch it.
But now the government has spun this Net Neutrality idea off to the American people to be this wonderful thing that keeps the content open and free on the internet, but the content was already open and free. What the FCC and the big cable companies don’t tell you is that Net Neutrality is actually net favoritism. It lets some companies buy the fastest streaming speeds for content delivery and everyone else can just get along in the slow lane. No, Net Neutrality is a way for the government of the United States to strangle and choke off any dissenting speech through judicious use of who does and does not get the fastest streaming speeds.
This was all a moot point because Congress has been unwilling or unable, I’m never sure when they’re being recalcitrant and when they’re being incompetent anymore to play with Net Neutrality. The Net Neutrality idea by the FCC is now going to become law because the Executive branch has come up with the grand idea that we don’t have to pass legislation because the FCC has the authority to write the laws themselves. Isn’t it interesting with this administration how whenever there is a law Congress won’t pass or take up there is suddenly a law passed by an agency or an executive order passed that bypasses Congress.
Chief Justice John Roberts weigh in on the wielding of Congressional powers by government agencies when he wrote in his dissent of Arlington v. FCC, “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”
Since when did We the People, whom elect our representation, become We the Agency Bureaucrat, not elected, not appointed, but hired and told to go out there and get into everyone’s chili. We are talking about a fourth branch of government with no checks and balances beholden to no one except the Executive branch and even that connection is tenuous at best.
How surprising will it be to you that 40 federal agencies, including at least 12 that have no association with law enforcement, have their own armed divisions or swat teams. Agencies like the EPA, IRS, HHS, NOAA, Library of Congress, etc. So these agencies have their own private armies in some cases, write their own laws without the approval of Congress and thereby the PEOPLE, and go about enforcing them as they are wont to do. I don’t know that Roberts was being too soft when he called it “a bit much.” It is tyrannical behavior and we in the United States should really have more say into all of it.
Instead we are going to let the FCC goose step all the way to Net Neutrality because no one is willing to take them on, not the citizens, not the Executive branch (busy egging them on is more like it) and the Congress who should represent the people.
Exclusive: White House says net neutrality legislation not needed | Reuters.
John Oliver on Net Neutrality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU