On January 20, 2021, Aji Pai’s tenure as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission finally ended. Pai was easily the worst FCC chairperson in history, so his departure is cause for celebration. Now, I don’t know how much President Joe Biden or his choice for FCC chair will do to mitigate all the damage that Pai did while holding that position, but I have a few ideas.
Continue reading “Pai Is Finally out at the FCC. What Does That Mean for Net Neutrality?”
To be honest, net neutrality won’t necessarily end until we stop fighting, but getting the Congressional Review Act Discharge Petition signed in the U.S. House of Representatives is our latest battle. And it is a battle worth fighting.
As I discussed in May, the Senate started its own discharge petition. That was process was started by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and it eventually passed the chamber one week after it was formally introduced. In the end, Senate Democrats received the help of three Republicans: Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), the now-disgraced Susan Collins, and John Kennedy (Louisiana) in a surprising move.
The passage of the petition was crucial because Congress had a 60-work-day window to act after Ajit Pai rolled out his plan to end net neutrality, which took effect on June 11. Since the process in the Senate was started in May, Democrats in the Senate got a head start. However, the House needed to pass its own petition by the end of the year and that process was always going to be harder.
In the Senate, Democrats needed only 30 signatures to force a vote on the CRA petition. They also needed to vote together and get 2 extra votes to pass the legislation. In the House, 218 signatures were required to even get a vote, so Democrats needed far more help from Republicans in that chamber.
Currently, there are only 197 seats held by Democrats in the House. In order to get a vote on CRA legislation, Democrats need to band together, but receive the help of 21 Republicans. If those weren’t difficult enough, there is now another complication: at least 17 Democrats have failed to sign the petition thus far.
As reported by Motherboard, there were 18 Democrats who failed to sign the petition at the beginning of this month. Two of those Democrats, Joseph Morelle (from New York’s 25th Congressional District) and Mary Kay Scanlon (from Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District) won special elections this year and Scanlon was recently sworn in. However, only Morelle indicated that he would sign the petition and the other Democrats, including Scanlon, had received generous donations from the telecom industry.
Below is a list of Democrats who have failed to sign the petition thus far (minus Morelle). The screenshot was taken from Motherboard’s article:
Since then, Morelle made good on his promise. Also, Rep. Wilson signed on. Thus, here is a revised list:
We need to contact the lawmakers who aren’t already on board, and that will include some Republicans. I really hate talking on the phone, but that’s one thing I can do.
We don’t have a lot of time, but we were recently given a reprieve by Trump himself because he started pushing hard for the stupid border wall — yet again. (Today, he held a meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in the oval office to discuss the wall and threatened to shut down the government if there wasn’t $5 billion for that wall in the next spending bill.) We had until December 10 for the House to sign the petition and get a vote, but because of the upcoming budget fight, the legislative session in Congress has been extended. We might have until the 21st to get that vote, but that is much better than we had.
Now, even if the CRA legislation is passed by the House, it still has to be signed by Trump. That seems like a longshot, to say the least, but if we play it right, we might be able to put enough pressure on Trump to sign it. (It would depend on the Republicans who vote in favor of the legislation, too, but public opinion is well in favor of net neutrality.)
Even if Trump vetoes the legislation, we will make a powerful statement by getting both house of Congress on board before the new Democratic majority in the House. And it will mean that we will need to remove Republicans from the Senate in order to restore net neutrality. We will see in the coming weeks and months if this is a hill Republicans want to die on. Ultimately, Democrats need to make net neutrality one of their signature platform items because the more people know what net neutrality is and how important it is, the more they like it.
Right now, there’s a net neutrality bill being considered in California. I talked about this in an earlier post, but SB 822 still faces hurdles in the California Assembly. One of the hurdles it has faced recently was in the Communications and Conveyance Committee last month. Now, it appears that the bill may be back on track, but I do not trust a few of the actors involved.
Continue reading “Net Neutrality in California: There’s Still a Fight Going on to Preserve SB 822”
In numerous posts on this blog, I have talked about the issue of net neutrality. I talked about the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission’s drive to overturn the 2015 Open Internet Order, which was passed by a Democratic-led FCC during the Obama Administration. I also talked about the agenda of current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. This time, I need to talk about the timetable for the rollback of that 2015 order, the response to the FCC’s December 2017 decision, and what can be done to fight back.
On Thursday, May 10, 2018, the FCC announced that the 2015 Open Internet Order would expire on June 11, 2015. Pai said that internet service providers had 30 days to comply with the new rules.
As those following this story know, net neutrality is highly popular and most who understand what it is are in favor of it. In fact, a poll conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation showed that 83% of respondents (regardless of their pollical leanings) favored net neutrality. Pai’s decision is unpopular and should be fought every step of the way.
Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the Internet, made a plea to U.S. lawmakers:
Democrats at the FCC, in Congress, and in numerous states have already responded in numerous ways. Since early December, over half of the states have done a combination of the following:
In addition, numerous tech companies have displayed banners or badges that carry a “RED ALERT” message on their websites. Reddit started an “Orange(Red) Alert” in its r/announcements section. These companies have implored users and visitors to contact their members of Congress, so they will support the measure to overturn Pai’s decision.
Continue reading “Net Neutrality Officially Ends on June 11 but We Can Restore It.”
Today, the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order that classified broadband service as a utility under the FCC’s Title II rules and thus sign the Internet over to greedy telecoms. The 3-2 vote was along partisan lines, of course, with the Republicans on the board in favor of the repeal.
The vote was immediately decried by the Democrats at the commission, at least 18 state attorneys general, other pro-net neutrality lawyers, and most Americans.
But these unelected bureaucrats at the FCC still did as they pleased, at the behest of their corporate puppet masters.
Continue reading “The FCC Just Voted to Sign the Internet Over to Greedy Telecoms”
Hello, readers! This news roundup is jammed packed because it deals with several aspects of the media: The Internet, broadcast TV, the size of multimedia corporations, and deregulation. All of the following stories have been developing for weeks but not all have been discussed on this blog — until now.
Continue reading “News Roundup Special: The U.S. Is Messing with the Media”
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest …
It’s the day after Thanksgiving, so I hope those who celebrated it enjoyed their day.
The month of November is also coming to a close, so we’re drawing ever closer to more holidays, include the New Year. There are certainly hopes that 2018 will be nicer to us than 2017 was.
So yes, hope springs eternal.
Continue reading “Famous Sayings: #89 — ‘Hope Springs Eternal’”
So, today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his plan to gut net neutrality. He’s a day early and now we wait until December 14 for the full FCC to vote on the matter.
Continue reading “Net Neutrality Update (November 21, 2017)”
This is very late, but I just need to make a quick post about net neutrality and more. Early last month, the U.S. Senate had to vote to reconfirm Ajit Pai’s horrible self for a new five-year term at the Federal Communications Commission, which would retroactively begin in July 2016. This leaves the door open for more horsesh— for Pai to continue with his agenda, as horrible and pro-corporate as it is.
Continue reading “Is There Still a Way for Us to Stop Pai and His Agenda?”
I wanted to talk about this sooner, but July 12, 2017 is the Internet Day of action. That day, various websites and Internet companies, like Amazon, Google and Netflix, will be joining in to get more people involved in the fight for net neutrality.
We have until August 18, 2017 to submit comments to the FCC before it votes on the issue of net neutrality. We know where FCC Republican commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly stand. Democrat Mignon Clyburn is outnumbered, although she might be joined by Jessica Rosenworcel and a Republican of Trump’s choice.
From May 24-45, 2017, Ipsos conducted a poll of over 1,000 Americans adults (354 Democrats, 344 Republicans, and 224 Independents) in all 50 states for Mozilla. The poll concerned net neutrality and the results showed that most adults (76%) are in favor of net neutrality.
Either-one percent of Democrats and73% of Republicans indicated there were in favor of it. Most adults (78%) saw a free and open Internet as a right, which Democrats leading the way with 88% in agreement.
Furthermore, most respondents indicated a mistrust of the Trump administration (70%), Congress (78%), and the FCC (58%) to protect net neutrality.
“Get ready to hear a lot about net neutrality if you use Amazon, Google, Netflix or hundreds of other websites.” 11 July 2017. Web.
This is a quick post, so I will just leave these links here. Please take part because net neutrality is not only important for free speech, but businesses, the sharing of knowledge, and our democracy could be threatened without it.
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