... These new rules would not only affect your services, it would also give FCC regulators the power to decide what content on the Internet was “just and reasonable.” Commissioner Tom Wheeler makes the absurd comment that the FCC would never use those powers. But in a February 4 issue of Wired, he already hints at ways bureaucrats could start dictating what they view as “threats” on the Internet:“…my proposal includes a general conduct rule that can be used to stop new and novel threats to the Internet. This means the action we take will be strong enough and flexible enough not only to deal with the realities of today, but also to establish ground rules for the as yet unimagined.”
In other words, they want to establish new rules and regulations for stuff that hasn’t even been imagined yet!
Equally galling is the process by which this government takeover is happening. The 332 pages of new FCC rules have been held in secret, and even after Thursday’s vote, they are not being released. Like Nancy Pelosi said of ObamaCare, “We can read it after we vote on it.”
Back in 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama insisted that the FCC put out in public any changes that they are proposing before they vote on it. As Mr. Obama said at the time: “Congress and the public have the right to review any specific proposal and decide whether or not it constitutes sound policy.” Power does have a way of changing one’s preferences.
Also inappropriate has been the White House’s role in developing up the new Internet rules. The FCC is supposedly an “independent” agency…it’s supposed to draw up its own rules. But in this process, the White House injected itself right into the rule making process. Here again is Commissioner Pai, speaking to our own Sean Hannity:
“White House aides have been running a parallel FCC, and they’ve persuaded the president to pick this issue as one where he would make a pronouncement, now, just to let your listeners know, this never happens, hardly.”
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