Another Week of Growing Opposition to FCC’s Internet Grab

by Seton Motley

It must be getting a bit cramped in the office of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman’s Julius Genachowski, at least figuratively speaking.  Every day delivers more and more people opposed to his “Title 1.5,” promises-of-forbearance laden Internet reclassification push.

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The Chairman spent the first half of the year meeting incessantly with the Media Marxist likes of Free Press, Public Knowledge and the Media Access Project – those opposed to free speech, free markets and private property rights, otherwise known as Network Neutrality (NN) proponents.

Genachowski went out of his way – and outside the proscribed bounds of his and his Commission’s authority – to bend over backwards to do these Leftist groups’ bidding on over-regulating the Internet.  Up to and including reclassifying broadband to the oppressive Title II.

Bipartisan opposition to Genachowski’s unlawful unilateralism continues to grow.  There was the Clinton-appointed led D.C. Circuit Court decision against the Commission’s actions in the Comcast-BitTorrent case.  There were the three separate letters sent to Genachowski by blocks of Congressmen and Senators – 282 in all, both Republicans and Democrats.  And yet another letter was sent by seventeen minority groups who almost NEVER oppose anything proposed by any Democrat.

Perhaps the Commissioner has begun to hear the rising din.  In the last month his staffers began to host what has become a series of meetings with Net Neutrality opponents like AT&T, Verizon and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association – along with the same old NN proponents.

At least both sides are now getting in the room.  Another one of these meetings was held on Saturday, and two more are scheduled this week.

As it becomes clearer that a rational, reasonable Internet regulatory solution might be achieved, we will see more people rush to join the opposition to the FCC’s proposed “Third Way.”

A very warm welcome to the party to Democrat Congressmen Ben Chandler of Kentucky and Alan Grayson of Florida.  Though both are supporters of Net Neutrality, they announced on Friday their opposition to the Commission’s move to reclassify.

Grayson is worthy of special note here.  He is about as rabid a Leftist partisan as there is in Congress – who during the health care debate railed on the House floor and stood next to a sign that read “The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly.”  So if he finds the FCC’s push for Internet reclassification to be over the top, how far from the pack has Commissioner Genachowski strayed?

(Grayson’s Senior Policy Advisor is Matt Stoller, a vehement Net Neutrality proponent who used to be a consultant for Free Press and was once “physically removed from a meeting at the AFL-CIO for making a scene over the refusal of the Communication Workers of America to support net neutrality.”  No word on whether he had to be physically removed from the Congressman’s office upon hearing word of his boss’s anti-“Third Way” announcement.)

Last week also saw bipartisan legislation filed in the House by Michigan Republican Fred Upton and Texas Democrat Gene Green that calls on the Commission to end its attempt at “Third Way” reclassification.  It has 48 sponsors – 24 Republicans and 24 Democrats.  This joins legislation that does the very same thing already filed in the Senate.

Here’s to checks and balances.  Here’s to the Executive branch – of which the FCC is a part – properly yielding to the bounds and parameters of the Legislative and Judicial branches when overreach occurs.

Here’s to hoping it finally happens with the FCC’s unilateral Internet reclassification land grab.


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Posted Aug 3rd 2010 at 7:13 am in Congress, News, Regulation, Uncategorized | 36 Comments