Today the chairman of the FCC is announcing the agency will move to regulate the Internet, despite the fact that it doesn't really have the authority.
As Americans for Prosperity's Phil Kerpen has explained, the FCC intention - to classify the Internet like an old-fashioned telephone system so it can regulate - requires twisting history. It marks a major policy shift that could affect all Americans.
Strangely, just three days ago, The Washington Post reported (using mostly unnamed sources) that the FCC was going in the opposite direction. Tech reporter Cecilia Kang wrote:
"The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has indicated he wants
to keep broadband services deregulated, according to sources, even as a federal court
decision has exposed weaknesses in the agency's ability to be a strong watchdog over
the companies that provide access to the Web."
This sentence alone betrays Kang's bias about the FCC. She calls the fact that the FCC is not allowed to regulate a "weakness" and implies the agency needs the "ability to be a strong watchdog" over Internet service providers.
The only named source in that May 3 story was from Public Knowledge, one of the left-wing "public interest" groups pushing for Internet regulation that she frequently quotes.
Either her sources were or the Post story was way off base, considering today's bombshell news (which leaked yesterday).
So far, Americans haven't exactly been up in arms demanding regulation of the Internet. In fact, it has been a tremendous free-market success story. Now it looks like it will be the next big government takeover. More than 41,000 AFP activists filed comments with the FCC recently opposing regulation. For more information, check out Phil Kerpen's filing with the FCC.
