Bill important because it reasserts power of Congress over unelected bureaucracy
House Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has introduced a bill to block the FCC from imposing its 332-page “Net Neutrality” Internet takeover plan, which has still not been released to the public over a week after its adoption.
The bill, entitled the Internet Freedom Act (H.R.1212), would not only stop the FCC from “reclassifying broadband Internet access service as a telecommunications service and from imposing certain regulations on providers of such service,” but would also prevent the agency from imposing similar rules unless authorized by Congress.
“Last week’s vote by the FCC to regulate the Internet like a 1930s era public utility is further proof that the Obama administration will stop at nothing in their efforts to control the Internet,” Blackburn said in a press release. “There is nothing ‘free and open’ about this heavy-handed approach.”
“These overreaching rules will stifle innovation, restrict freedoms, and lead to billions of dollars in new fees and taxes for American consumers.”
“Once the federal government establishes a foothold into managing how Internet service providers run their networks they will essentially be deciding which content goes first, second, third, or not at all,” she added. “My legislation will put the brakes on this FCC overreach and protect our innovators from these job-killing regulations.”
The bill’s opponents are complaining it would “strip away the FCC’s statutory authority,” but that’s a good thing: Congress needs to reassert its power over unelected, out-of-control bureaucracies.
The United States was founded as a constitutional republic of limited powers, not as a bureaucratic oligarchy of unlimited powers vested to over 250 unelected heads of various federal agencies, which we have today.
Simply put, Congress should be enacting laws, not bureaucracies.
The Consumerist, a blog owned by Consumer Reports, suggested that Blackburn introduced the bill because she’s backed by AT&T and Comcast, but the blog neglected to point out that billionaire activist George Soros and the Ford Foundation spent nearly $200 million to support the FCC’s Internet takeover.
“The Ford Foundation, which claims to be the second-largest private foundation in the U.S., and Open Society Foundations, founded by far-left billionaire George Soros, have given more than $196 million to pro-Net Neutrality groups between 2000 and 2013,” MRC Business reported.
But why would they do that? Because the FCC’s “Net Neutrality” regulations empower the federal government and the establishment to restrict political speech on-line.
“We need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it,” wrote Dr. Robert McChesney of the University of Illinois, a socialist activist who not only received funding from Soros but whose work also influenced the FCC. “The fight against hyper-commercialism becomes especially pronounced in the era of digital communications.”
THE DEATH TO INTERNET IS COMING ? FCC Refuses to Testify: Agency also refuses to publicly release proposed regulations
Two prominent House committee chairs are “deeply disappointed” in Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to testify before Congress as “the future of the Internet is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on new Internet regulations pertaining to