The Senate has the 30 sponsors it needs to move a bill to the floor to reverse the FCC's decision to repeal net neutrality.

 Courtesy of The Hill:  

A Senate bill that would reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to repeal net neutrality received its 30th co-sponsor on Monday, ensuring it will receive a vote on the Senate floor. 

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) announced her support for the bill on Twitter, putting it over the top of a procedural requirement to bypass committee approval. 

The bill, which is being pushed by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), would use Congress’s authority under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse the FCC’s rollback of its popular net neutrality rules. 

“We’ve reached the magic number of 30 to secure a vote on the Senate floor, and that number will only continue to climb,” Markey said in a statement Monday. “Republicans are faced with a choice — be on the right side of history and stand with the American people who support a free and open internet, or hold hands with the special interests who want to control the internet for their own profit.”

It should be remembered that net neutrality has overwhelming support from the American people, so these Senators have to keep in mind how this vote will be used against them in their next reelection bid.

That bodes well for the passage of this bill.

Though of course you can bet that communications giants like AT&T and Comcast are going to lobby hard against it.

Might be time to start making some phone calls to our Senators.

Marco Rubio just lost the youth vote.

Hey, hey, hey who really cares about faster internet anyway?

Courtesy of The Intercept:

In a rare senatorial act, full-time Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio joined with a handful of fellow legislators on Friday in an attempt to block local municipalities from undercutting big telecom companies by providing cheap, fast internet service. 

Rubio, who is raising campaign cash from the telecom industry for his presidential campaign, fired off a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to allow states to block municipal broadband services. 

The letter was the latest salvo in a long-running effort by the major telecom companies to outlaw municipal broadband programs that have taken off in cities such as Lafayette, Louisiana, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, because they pose a threat to a business model that calls for slow, expensive internet access without competition. 

In Chattanooga, for instance, city officials set up a service known as “The Gig,” a municipal broadband network that provides data transfers at one gigabit per second for less than $70 a month — a rate that is 50 times faster than the average speed American customers have available through private broadband networks.

I would say that is a fairly ridiculous position to take for a Republican who espouses the virtue of capitalism and the free market.

And it is really going to cost him the support of every young gamer, constant internet user, and, let's face it, porn watcher in the country.

By the by my daughter has visited Chattanooga and goes on and on about their high speed internet. And because of that businesses are scrambling over themselves to build there.

Clearly Rubio is big telecom's bitch, and just because he looks young does not mean that he understands what it takes to attract the youth vote. Because this ain't it.

P.S. And if this were not enough Rubio also has a plan to make gay marriage illegal again. 

FCC to save the internet from greedy service providers.

Courtesy of BGR:  

Verizon’s lawsuit against earlier net neutrality rules is about to backfire in a spectacular fashion. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Communications Commission will propose new net neutrality rules that will reclassify ISPs under Title II of the Telecommunications Act and thus open them up to being regulated more like utilities. 

“According to multiple people familiar with the agency’s plan, Mr. Wheeler intends to change the way both mobile and fixed broadband firms are regulated,” the Journal writes. “Rather than being lightly regulated information services, they would become like telecommunications companies, which would subject them to greater regulation on everything from pricing to how they deploy their networks.” 

This would give the FCC the power to stop ISPs from blocking traffic from services that rival their own and from setting up paid prioritization schemes where they would charge money to Internet companies to ensure that their traffic got delivered faster than other companies who don’t pay up.

This of course has angered many service providers like Verizon and AT&T, who had hoped to make huge profits by charging large companies like Netflix more money to allow them faster connection speeds while limiting regular users.

I have to tell you as somebody who relies on the internet for my livelihood I welcome this news with open arms.

I currently pay through the teeth for my internet here in Alaska from GCI, and I really hope that these new regulations will help improve our overall access to bandwidth and also reduce costs.

By the watch to see which politicians start calling this government overreach, big brother tactics, and an attack on capitalism. Because those are the politicians who are in the pocket of big business.

Alex Jones comes out against Net Neutrality and in support of Ted Cruz. Which essentially tells you everything you need to know about both.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

“This has been the plan for a decade – free-quote-Wi-Fi that’s paid for by taxpayers, but you have no rights on that Wi-Fi, and you can’t get to InfoWars.com or DrudgeReport.com, that the White House officials have said they want to shut down, basically,” Jones warned this week on his radio program. “So this is it, they’re coming.” 

Jones, who claims to be nonpartisan, promoted a widely mocked statement by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who misrepresented the president’s statements on regulating Internet service providers like utilities to claim “net neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet,” reported Right Wing Watch. 

“Bottom line, ladies and gentlemen: Obamacare is now moving to the Internet,” Jones said. “Federal regulation and control written for select corporations, right out of the FCC to shut down all of their competition, and Republican leaders – to their credit, have now come out with statements … saying that it is Obamacare for the Internet.” 

“That’s what Ted Cruz has come out and said,” the broadcaster said. “I like Ted Cruz, he knows what he’s talking about.”

Okay so Jones, who has also been quite chummy with another potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul,  has COMPLETELY misrepresented net neutrality here. What it does is the exact opposite of what he says it does, which of course is how the Right Wing addresses things they don't like of don't understand.

I think Alex Jones promoting Ted Cruz is a good thing, in that it allows rational people to realize just who is drawn in by the message Cruz is putting out.

I mean hell if crazy people like your crazy message, than it would be crazy NOT to run for President of the United States. Right?