As you may know by now, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler, the ex-big telecom lobbyist, is very likely giving his anti-net neutrality net neutrality plan another try. Mr. Wheeler's plan would still allow big telecom corporations to offer an internet "fast lane" where only the biggest (read: least innovative) players could pay to be on, while letting the rest of languish on an internet "slow lane" to which the big telecoms will never give another thought, and would still claim regulatory authority on net neutrality that's been struck down twice in the courts already. It's like he didn't hear all those millions of people who told him they didn't want any part of that. So Demand Progress helps you tell President Obama to step in and stop the FCC's efforts. Can he tell Tom Wheeler what to do? No. But he could say, again, that he finds the whole idea of internet "fast" and "slow" lanes completely unacceptable. It is, after all, meaningful when the President says something -- and I'm a lot more comfortable with that being the President's role than, say, launching air strikes without Congressional approval being the President's role.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvanians Against Fracking -- a coalition of over a half dozen good-government groups including Food and Water Watch -- will hold a rally in Harrisburg, on Tuesday, November 18, at noon, aiming to convince incoming Governor Tom Wolf to stop fracking in Pennsylvania; you can find more information about it here. Mr. Wolf -- one of the very few Democrats to buck the anti-Democrat wave on Election Day and defeat an incumbent Republican -- made more noise on the campaign trail about imposing an impact fee on gas drilling, which action, you may recall, Mr. Corbett called "un-American" although (or perhaps because?) over six in 10 Pennsylvanians supported it. And yes, if we're going to frack, we should be taxing it -- they are, after all, making money off the people's land. But if fracking makes our drinking water gelatinous and brackish and even flammable, we shouldn't be fracking, certainly not until we can make it so fracking doesn't pollute our water. Even when Democrats win, they don't push enough -- certainly not unless we do some pushing of our own, as is our duty.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FEC to mandate disclosure from all groups trying to influence our votes, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. I bet you just can't guess how the right wing has responded to any attempt to mandate disclosure of folks spending millions or billions to influence our vote -- that's right, they're calling it "regulating political speech." Silly right-wingers! They never learn that money isn't speech -- that disclosing the actual source of campaign funding (which, hello, every American who gives more than $200 to a political candidate -- two hundred dollars! -- already has to do) isn't the same as "silencing dissent." They claim it's the same, but it's not, and saying so is, frankly, an insult to our intelligence. I mean, when our government Hoovers up all our cell phone and email data without a warrant, then our government actually is infringing on our Constitutional rights -- but the noisiest right-wingers seem more concerned that some bajillionaire won't be able to spend a millions or billions of dollars spreading lies and hate.
UPDATE. Well, that was quick -- President Obama has essentially done as we asked in the first paragraph above, releasing a nearly two-minute video in which he asks the FCC to reclassify broadband as a common carrier under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, and restates his opposition to any form of tiered service which would "let any company pay for priority over its competitors." Listen to the whole thing; he really leaves himself no wiggle room, and even if he can't directly tell the FCC what to do, what the President says means something.
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