“Senate Republicans moved Monday afternoon to prevent the FCC’s proposed rules on net neutrality with an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill that would tie up funding at the agency for new regulatory mandates. Observers said, however, that the move was unlikely to be approved in the Democrat-majority Congress,” Cecilia Kang reports for The Washington Post.
Kang reports, “Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), ranking member of Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, said in a release: ‘We must tread lightly when it comes to new regulations. Where there have been a handful of questionable actions in the past on the part of a few companies, the Commission and the marketplace have responded swiftly. The case has simply not been made for what amounts to a significant regulatory intervention into a vibrant marketplace. These new regulatory mandates and restrictions could stifle investment incentives,’ she said.”
“Senators John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), David Vitter (R-La.), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and John Thune (R-S.D. co-sponsored the amendment,” Kang reports. “The two Republican commissioners at the five-member FCC issued a joint statement in response to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s announcement, expressed concern that conclusions have been prematurely drawn about how consumers and businesses are being affected by Web policies. ‘We are concerned that both factual and legal conclusions may have been drawn before the process has begun,’ said Commissioners Robert McDowell and Merideth Baker. ‘We do not believe that the Commission should adopt regulations based merely on anecdotes, or in an effort to alleviate the political pressures of the day, if the facts do not clearly demonstrate that a problem needs to be remedied.'”
Kang reports, “Some wireless providers have balked at the proposal, with AT&T saying it does not agree that the rules should apply to its giant national wireless network because of capacity constraints. Genachowski said in his speech that the rules would apply to all platforms – which would include wireless – but that such questions would be part of a process that will begin late October to come up with new rules. If approved, final rules could be drawn next spring.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we said back in August 2006: “We don’t presume to know the best way to get there, but we support the concept of “Net Neutrality” especially as it pertains to preventing the idea of ISP’s blocking or otherwise impeding sites that don’t pay the ISP to ensure equal access. That said, we usually prefer the government to be hands-off wherever possible, Laissez-faire, except in cases where the free market obviously cannot adequately self-regulate (antitrust, for example). Regulations are static and the marketplace is fluid, so such regulation can often have unintended, unforeseen results down the road. We sincerely hope that there are enough forces in place and/or that the balances adjust in such a manner as to keep the ‘Net as neutral as it is today.”
That we have the same Take over three years later should be telling. Government regulations are not a panacea, neither are the lack thereof. It’s all about striking a proper balance where innovation can thrive while abuses are prevented.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “iWill” for the heads up.]
This is America and the Dems are in power because the people voted them in. All you America-hating, unpatriotic Republicans can either get in line or move to another country!
The Republican lickspittle are simply obeying their corporate masters. Not that the democrats are far behind. Our government operates via a system of open bribery commonly known as campaign contributions. The exremely foolish, ignorant, or scared,are led around by the nose by Beck et al. to protest against their own good.
Dear Superior Bean
Followed your link, no surprise George Mason U. They did have a final 4 Team a few years ago. Good for them. As to pinning the financial problem back to the Democrats pushing for expanded mortgage lending, you can certainly throw that in the mix. Please don’t forget to layer in all the unregulated mortgage brokers who pushed, sold and lied to people about the mortgages they were representing. These are the same unregulated people telling folks on the financial edge they can help them sort their debt problems when they cannot.
However, the better example of the lack of regulation is AIG FP which entered into billions of dollars of derivative contracts based in the value of the credit worthiness on the underlying company or index. They were an unregulated subsidiary of an insurance company that was putting enormous amounts of money at risk with NO oversight. Not sure the Superior Bean mind was aware of this but it the case.
Wow.
The level of intellectual treatise here is astonishingly low. You can get better debate on a school playground. Liberals hate conservatives, conservatives despise liberals. Why? You both claim to ‘love America,’ but apparently nobody in it who opposes your views. And the ridiculous names you assign to people who are targeted by your opinion-leaders… if this is the path the country has decided to take, then the country is completely doomed to decay and self-ruination. Remember a few years back when President Bush took the country into a very divisive war, and the Republicans were so fond of saying ‘you’re either with us or against us?’ Now President Obama is making divisive decisions, and I’m still hearing the same rhetoric from the right. He’s a socialist? Sure he is, and President Bush was an autocrat. It’s all a point of view, and too often it is the point of view of someone on television. Yes, I think Fox is very guilty of pushing their television hosts’ ideologies on the public. I know they’re not the only channel doing it, though they are probably more successful in charging their political base to bouts of anger and righteous fury that would be indefensible and embarrassing during, say, the Reagan years.
I’d stopped scrolling down to see the Mac Daily News comments some time ago, mainly because it seemed like a bunch of Windows-bashing noise that—although I agreed with much of it—was useless. When I checked the Net Neutrality comments on a whim yesterday, I was dismayed to see such a schismatic set of tracts. For some reason, I expected better of Mac users, if only because data indicates Mac users tend to be well-educated. If you really think any of your anger is doing America any good at this juncture, you’re missing an awful lot. I implore each of you to reach for something more useful than pre-programmed responses of insults and ‘facts’ laid down in Sermons on the Mount from people who are paid to stir up dissent and indignation. But do it without me; I’m finished with the comments on Mac Daily News.
The dems will be voted out sass a ass. Most people that voted for Maobama now know they have been lied to and taken for fools. We are mad as hell and will vote the dems out.
Liberals in the US government forced the banks to make these suicidal loans that brought down the economy. Maobama is doing everything he can to keep it down and make it worse. You libs are greatly mistaken if you believe that you have the power and support that you think you have. The majority of the US is center right. You freaks are out of here in the next 2 elections.
I really don’t understand why Kay Bailey Hutchinson is fighting against “net neutrality” when she’s running for governor of Texas. Oh, wait, AT&T;is based in San Antonio, TX. I wonder how much money she’s gotten from AT&T;and other Telco’s/ISP (TimeWarner).
It’s really sad that Telco’s and major ISPs would rather spend money on lobbying and padding the election coffers of elected officials than in investing in infrastructure that benefit the consumer.
As might be expected, the most politically responsive mortgage lenders were the two government enterprises, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae…
I wasn’t going to post anything on the Net Neutrality topic because of how fast it devolved into ugly namecalling yesterday, but I wanted to clarify this statement in an earlier post. People could get the mistaken idea that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac always were government run entities, which they were not.
They were established as government sponsored enterprises but were operating as private companies until the feds placed them into a government conservatorship during the financial collapse of September 2008.
@No Alabama, Either
You’re right. It’s as if everyone gets their “talking points” emailed to them each morning, along with the requisite names to call people they disagree with. Funny, but you don’t see this level of anger on other Mac-oriented Web sites. I wonder why it’s concentrated here?
Waggoner
Buddy, I was not lied to. He said he would represent a change from Bush and he has though not so much in the beginning as he carried on the same financial program to stabilize our country’s economy. You may not like it but you and yours lost the election. Do you have respect for that? Please don’t think you are converting anyone with your language, you are reaffirming people’s decisions. Calling Obama Mao or putting a Hitler mustache on him doesn’t take the discussion anywhere.
@ No Alabama, Either,
I sure can’t fault you for your reaction. It can be very disheartening reading the comments here. I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut, but it seems like something always gets me going again. Good luck to you.
@ Islandgirl,
I would say that the level of vitriol here is so high because it can be. Other web sites simply wont tolerate it, which isn’t such a bad thing. But it does make MDN rather unique, and I’m sure they realize the fact. We keep coming back, at least until we get burned or burned out.
Right on Waggoner. Everyone I know feels the exact same way. Maobama is a fraud and liar. Every time he opens his mouth he lies. His Maobamacare is just a farce to grab control of the 100s of billions of dollars that the insurance company must keep in reserves. He and his party could care less about the actual population. All of these drones that post here are completely clueless and not representative of what is happening in reaction to all of this “hope and change” going on in our country. Can’t wait to watch the door slam on their asses on the way voted out!
@Sir Gill Bates
We keep coming back, at least until we get burned or burned out.
I’m almost there. I learned a lot about Apple and Mac history from this site after I switched to Mac in early 2007. Now, much of what’s offered just seems…mean spirited. I wonder if that’s partly why ChrissyOne became less active at posting. There sure aren’t many female opinions on this site.
Typical lib-commie-drone looking to silence the opposition. The party of openness can’t tolerate different and opposing views.
hmm, chrissyone, typical liberal-commie-US hating-drone. I sure don’t miss her.
@ Islandgirl,
Yeah, ChrissyOne was always a lot of fun, but she took some major crap from some of the Neanderthals here. I don’t know about there not being many female opinions here since a lot of women seem to follow along the same political lines, although perhaps they don’t state their opinions quite so crudely.
Glad to hear about your switch to Mac and hope you are enjoying it. Maybe you should visit sites like MacWorld and avoid most of this foolishness. I probably should also.
You know, it’s not hard to understand how the Sturmabteilung and their leader came into power back in the day. There seem to be quite a few posters here who would fit right into a brown shirt.
I’m trying to stay neutral here, but I gotta be honest, I think some people may have taken Supreme Being’s quoted explanation of the financial collapse the wrong way. From reading these comments, it seems that many of you took that to mean that government involvement caused the financial collapse. That is true, but the quote says that the government deregulated and loosened many restrictions, which is the real cause of the collapse. Deregulation leads to Laissez-faire, which is only good in markets where there is a fiscal motivation for companies to self-regulate. That is not the case with the banking industry, and it is currently not the case with the telcos. I’m not for a complete government takeover of anything, but a little regulation will help in this case.
As I said yesterday:
“Who is going to monitor and enforce this policy? And how? What is the penalty for non-compliance? What good is a policy that you can’t enforce effectively?”
Do we really need another wasteful, useless government bureaucracy? This draconian regulation will have lots of “unintended consequences” and will do absolutely nothing to solve the supposed problem.
Who’s watching the watchers?
I’m a proud “lib,” in fact- I’d vote for Karl Marx (not Josef Stalin) over Sarah Palin!
I need this site for my sanity- don’t make me boycott it because of the ignorant rightwing bias more and more presented.
“LIbs” – Obama, Clinton et. al are very progressive regarding technology- it’s the hicks and Bushes who fear “the internets” and the “YouTubes.”
“I need this site for my sanity …”
Now that’s a scary comment!
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We’ve only spent 4% of the must pass right now! porkulus package. The economy is in the toilet. Unemployment (real) is around 20% or higher. The porkulus money is going to be used during the 2010 and 2012 election years to try to get these criminals back in office. We are noticing these actions Maobama.
wrong. Barney’s Frank, Chris Dodd, Maobama, caused this happen by forcing banks to loan to people who should never have been loaned money. They forced this on the free market with constant threats of congressional subpoenas. Don’t try to rewrite history commie boy.
This site should change it’s name to ConservativeDailyNews, what’s wrong with u people, it’s cool big Corps to manipulate legislation for their gain, but when gov wants to help the little guy u are against it because the NEW admin is actually trying to help the majority, which is what gov is meant to do, simply ridiculous, go back to watching Fox News now
You really believe that the gov wants to help the little guy???? You are out of your mind. They are in it to steal private property and gain as much power and money for themselves as possible. Why do you idiots think corporations are so evil. They are made up of all of the employees and shareholders to provide goods and services to make people’s lives better. The exact opposite of the government. Limit government to only the bare bones basics. Keep you busy bodies the hell out of my life and bank account. Maobamacare is just a way to rob the hundreds of millions of $ that the insurance companies must keep in reserve. The lib-coms know that Maobamacare would be a massive failure but could care less. They want the money and power.
Money Stealing Traitors
Enough said.
MDN: “That said, we usually prefer the government to be hands-off wherever possible, Laissez-faire, except in cases where the free market obviously cannot adequately self-regulate (antitrust, for example).”
Or the savings and loan scandal of the 80’s, the Enron scandal of 2000, the current mortgage debacle. Unfettered capitalism is NOT good for America, or its tax payers.