Texas, Arkansas, & Nebraska AGs Are Now Aiding The Broadband Industry's Assault On Net Neutrality
from the investment-apocalypse dept
Back in January, 23 state attorneys general sued the FCC over its net neutrality repeal, claiming it ignored the public, ignored the experts, and was little more than a glorified handout to uncompetitive, predatory telecom monopolies. That trial will also determined whether the FCC ignored rules like the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires you, oh, actually have data to support a major, wholesale reversal of such a major policy (if you're just tuning in, they didn't). The suit, which is also backed by a few companies (including Mozilla), could result in the FCC's repeal being overturned and the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules being restored.
This week three additional state AGs (Texas, Arkansas, and Nebraska) decided to take the opposite tack, and filed a brief (pdf) last Friday in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, insisting that judges reject the lawsuit against the FCC. Not too surprisingly, the brief is filled with the kind of arguments net neutrality opponents have been trying to make for years, including the repeatedly, and clearly debunked claim that net neutrality simply had to be repealed because it was killing broadband industry network investment:
"The policy being repealed, in place since 2015, offered threats to investment and creative problem solving within the ISP community; those rules had also sought to regulate private business activity as a public utility."
Except again, neither of those claims are true. While industry lobbyists like to cherry pick data to suggest net neutrality caused an investment apocalypse, SEC filings, earnings reports, and even the public statements of countless broadband CEOs clearly show that's not the case. As for the effort to "regulate ISPs as utilities" we've also repeatedly noted how that's not true, as the former FCC went well out of its way to ensure some of the heavier, utility-style aspects of the Telecom Act (like rate regulation) wouldn't apply to broadband ISPs.
A cornerstone of the argument by the Texas, Arkansas, and Nebraska AGs is the FCC didn't violate the Administrative Procedure Act because precedent dictates that two agencies are allowed to look at the same exact data and have differing opinions, provided they justify their arguments:
"Accordingly, undoing or reversing agency action is permissible so long as the agency demonstrates awareness of the change and offers a satisfactory reason for it."
The problem for Ajit Pai and ISPs is they didn't offer anything close to a "satisfactory reason." ISPs make up justifications out of whole cloth, and the Ajit Pai just mindlessly repeats them. It got so bad, that at one point the FCC was literally just directing reporters who had questions to AT&T-funded lobbying organizations. Yes, lobbyists dictating government behavior using bogus data is nothing new, but usually there's at least a pretense that's not actually happening. The Pai attack on net neutrality is about as blatant an example of cronyism and corruption (given overwhelming public and expert opposition) as you're going to find.
In this age of hyper-partisanship and court stacking it's perfectly possible the industry gets a friendly judge willing to ignore reality and rule in their favor, but the facts continue to not be on their side. Especially in the full context of the FCC getting busted making up a DDOS attack, and ignoring identity theft and comment fraud in a bizarre effort to try and downplay massive public backlash to their decision to kill the rules.
When the court case kicks off next February, the outcome remains anything but clear. And even if the broadband industry wins, it still has to fend off state efforts to protect consumers (which the FCC repeal attempts to block, but the three AGs had no comment on). They also have to prevent any future FCC or Congress from passing tough net neutrality rules, which is why the broadband industry has attempted to convinced its most loyal supporters to pass flimsy net neutrality legislation in name only attempting to pre-empt any meaningful efforts to actually protect end users from largely-unaccountable telecom monopolies.
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Filed Under: arkansas, fcc, nebraska, net neutrality, state attorneys general, texas
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The gubernatorial route through the AG's office
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Re: tl;dr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law
First-past-the-post elections tend, mathematically, to devolve into races between two candidates. In the rare instance that an independent or third-party candidate wins, it's typically by displacing one of the two major parties. (When Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in 2006 and won the general as an independent, it was by getting support from Republicans, even though he went on to caucus with the Democrats; the actual Republican candidate in the race got less than 10% of the vote.) In the instances where a third party has become a major party, it's been by displacing another party (the Republicans displaced the Whigs, who had displaced the Federalists).
Making third-party candidates viable on a larger scale generally requires a switch away from first-past-the-post to some other system, such as ranked-preference voting. Maine has just introduced ranked-preference voting (only for federal offices at this time), so independents and third parties will have a stronger chance there than in most states. We'll see how that works out; I think Collins's bid for reelection in 2020 may be the race to watch.
Switching the presidency to a ranked-preference system is effectively impossible without a constitutional amendment.
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Re: Re: tl;dr
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Nah, Americans are way too enamored with team sports for anything like that to happen. "My team, right or wrong!"
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Re: Re: Re: tl;dr
You really haven't engaged the point of my post at all.
The point of my post is that, by its nature, a first-past-the-post electoral system leads to races between two candidates. I'm not talking about psychology, I'm talking about math.
I agree that the two-party system is a problem, and that the trend of people rooting for a "team" rather than an ideology (and even changing their ideology to match their team) is disturbing.
But "just vote third-party" isn't a solution. Not as long as we elect politicians based on FPTP.
Even in the rare race where a third-party or independent candidate has a viable shot at winning under a FPTP system, it's almost certainly going to be at the expense of a major-party candidate. It's still a two-person race. It's still choosing the lesser of two evils, or casting a protest vote on a third candidate who doesn't have a legitimate shot at winning. That's what happens under FPTP, whether the candidates call themselves Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, Labour, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, or anything else.
"Just vote third party" isn't a solution. If a third party did become powerful enough to challenge the two major parties, history shows us that it would just replace one of them, and we'd be back to a two-party system. Again, this has already happened twice in American history. Electing third-party presidents (first Taylor, then Lincoln) didn't fix the two-party system, it just replaced the old two-party system with a new one.
We need more than to merely vote for third-party and independent candidates. We need to fix the electoral underpinnings that favor a two-party system, so that a multi-party system can actually thrive.
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Everyone votes on the issues.
That's called a participatory democracy and works in very small groups like committees.
In a nation the size of (say) Colorado, there are more issues manage than there are days in a year, and most people are not up on the nuances of even the ones that personally affect them.
The notion of a representative Democracy is to vote for people who are savvy enough regarding the issues (or wise enough to discern honest expertise from corporate salesmanship). But we're not very good at determining those from Ted Cruz.
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Re: Everyone votes on the issues.
There actually is an argument to be made that people vote for one party over the other because they associate their party with their identity, not because they favor a particular candidate's stance on particular issues.
Indeed, there's evidence that people are changing their stances on issues to match their party's stance rather than picking their party affiliation based on their stance on the issues. (Just look at how quickly the Republican and Democratic party lines on Russia have flipped in the past two years.)
I agree that this is a serious problem. But simply voting third-party doesn't solve it. As long as our elections are first past the post -- that is, one round of voting, with the candidate with the most votes winning even if they don't have a majority -- we're going to have a two-party system.
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They would probably be your best bet for getting the ball rolling, whether you agree on other issues or not.
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Re: Re: The gubernatorial route through the AG's office
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Re: The gubernatorial route through the AG's office
Attorneys General. Your brothers-in-law and random passersby will thank you.
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Texas, Arkansas, & Nebraska AGs Are Now Aiding The Broadband Industry's Assault On American citizens.
Like a glove.
"and the Ajit Pai"
Every time I see his name I think "Arm Pit."
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Texas
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Its day in court.
Courts brought to you by the (Anti-NN) Federalist Society.
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You say that like Texas is a monolith and everybody wants the same thing.
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Oh, absolutely.
I just tend to bristle at "the people of [place] voted for [person or thing], so they deserve what they got" reductivism. Not everybody votes the same way.
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Especially not in heavily gerrymandered places. (Can't remember offhand if TX was one of those, though)
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Yup.
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Yeah, if he was going to generalize, he should have said "If Texans generally want...".
Shame on him.
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I thought that was Faux News.
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Uh oh?
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Sounds like those AG's just perjured themselves...
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Public Utility? Please!
Oh no! The rules might regulate these private companies like a public utility!
If only!
I would celebrate if that were the case.
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Welcome again after 3 years "thebosz"! Don't wait so long again!
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Re: Welcome again after 3 years "thebosz"! Don't wait so long again!
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Re: Welcome again after 3 years "thebosz"! Don't wait so long again!
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Depends on how you look at it
On the contrary, I at least find it downright hilarious that they obsess over the site so much that they regularly check posting history of other people(clearly indicating a stable and rational mind), and see any indications that people aren't as obsessed as they are with TD as signs of some conspiracy.
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HOW MUCH?
HOW MUCH is this going to cost the consumer?
Every Cent paid to those responsible for changing opinions, along with the Sponsors and Lobbyists..
Along with a RAISE in the cost of the internet , cable, Sat, Phone and cell service...ALL going up.. So that WE PAY FOR IT.
In all of this, its easy to say, PAI did not follow procedure..so nothing should happen. Erase IT ALL and we go back to Square 1.
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Another easy fix.... Ex-Lax in the Judge's coffee
After the first 30 or 40 times, you'd think the Judge would figure out that they'd better start sticking to the law and not their whims.
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