It begins:
President Obama is urging the FCC to reclassify consumer broadband service - to open it to broader government oversight and regulation - with the goal of protecting the net neutrality principles that his administration has long supported.
And which has neither a Congress which will legislate it nor the constitutional authority to decree it. Which will, of course, not stop them for one single solitary second.
In a lengthy statement that also included a video, Obama asserted "there is no higher calling than protecting an open, accessible and free Internet."
Which we already have, and to which the biggest threat is "his administration's net neutrality principles".
He urged the FCC to reclassify broadband service as a Title II telecommunications service but with caveats that would shield it from some aspects of regulation for such services.
i.e. "Fundamentally transform" the Internet into a government-sanctioned and -run monopoly while "protecting" it from the aspects that make it most nakedly obvious that it will be the twenty-first century Ma Bell.
"The time has come for the FCC to recognize that broadband service is of the same importance and must carry the same obligations as so many of the other vital services do. To do that, I believe the FCC should reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act - while at the same time forbearing from rate regulation and other provisions less relevant to broadband services. This is a basic acknowledgment of the services ISPs provide to American homes and businesses, and the straightforward obligations necessary to ensure the network works for everyone -- not just one or two companies," Obama said in a statement.
"Works for everyone". You know, like "spreading the wealth".
Ironic that this statement was issued over the White House YouTube channel, huh? Betcha that channel won't be impeded by net neutrality. Indeed, it will be mandatorily inserted at the top of everybody's "favorites" list, its videos forever on "autoplay".
ISPs oppose the reclassification of broadband under Title II, because it would give the FCC leeway to impose price regulations, conditions on wholesale access and other controls.
In response to Obama's statement Monday, Verizon said Title II would "apply 1930's-era utility regulation to the Internet," calling it "a radical reversal of course that would in and of itself threaten great harm to an open Internet, competition and innovation."
Aaaaand [BLEEP] you, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and other Internet service providers.
Such an approach also would run into a buzzsaw of Republican opposition on Capitol Hill, where the incoming GOP Senate majority can be expected to place pressure on the FCC even though it is an independent agency. The commission includes three Democrats and two Republicans.
ESPECIALLY [BLEEP] you, incoming GOP Senate majority. None of you, or the rest of us, have any say in the matter. The Emperor has spoken.
The National Cable and Telecommunications Assn., the lobbying group that represents the cable industry, said that it was "stunned that the president would abandon the longstanding and bipartisan policy of lightly regulating the Internet and calling for extreme Title II regulation.
Why were you "stunned"? You, above all organizations, had to know this was coming, especially after last Tuesday's election results.
The NCTA said that "this tectonic shift in national policy, should it be adopted, would create devastating results." It called on the FCC to leave the issue to Congress, which it said can "easily unravel the legal and jurisdictional knot that has tied up the FCC in crafting sustainable open Internet rules, without resorting to the rules of the rotary dial phone era."
Those rules held back cable TV, satellite TV, cell phones, IPads, smart phones, Obamaphones, tablets - and of course, the Internet. That's why it's so gosh darn important to reinstate them before any more dangerous consumer-friendly technology can escape his imperial majesty's tech dragnet, make it onto the (heh) "black" market, and enrich and benefit the lives of ordinary Americans.
The One is protecting us from the machines, in other words. That is his calling, after all.
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