FCC Stalls on Details of its Net Neutrality Power Grab

We have discussed quite a bit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 21 unauthorized, unilateral Internet power grab – instigated and rammed through by its Chairman Julius Genachowski so as to impose the ridiculous notion that is Network Neutrality.

We have time and again demonstrated how untethered to Reality the attempted imposition of Net Neutrality on the working Web actually is.

Meanwhile, the Media Marxists have incessantly scolded us – for in fact more than six years now – that the end of the Internet as we know it was nigh unless we immediately imposed Net Neutrality.

During which time the Internet did not end. It instead rapidly continued developing – in government-free fashion – into the free speech, free market Xanadu we all know and love.

NONE of what Free Press, Public Knowledge, Media Access Project and the rest of the these Leftist media “reformers” said would happen without Net Neutrality happened. In fact, the exact opposite occurred – and continued occurring, and continues to occur.

An Internet that’s better, stronger, faster and freer – all without the government regulatory regime that is Net Neutrality in place.

The Media Marxists – confounded by Reality yet again.

By last year (and actually much earlier), no one save these Media Marxists wanted Net Neutrality. 302 members of an overwhelmingly Democrat Congress told the FCC to leave it alone. The D.C. Circuit Court in April unanimously told the FCC to leave it alone.

95 Congressional candidates signed a pro-Net Neutrality pledge – and all 95 lost in November.

That’s a whole lot of nothing going on for Net Neutrality. As we said, it was and remains the kid sitting by himself in the high school cafeteria.

So what did Chairman Genachowski do in the face of all of this omnidirectional opposition? He went ahead and power grabbed the Internet and imposed Net Neutrality anyway.

And he rushed to do so after an election in which the American people adamantly expressed their Less Government mindset – and before the Less Government-minded officials the American people elected could be sworn in.

Again, allegedly in the name of this six-plus-year slow-crawl towards Imminent Danger!

It’s 2006 – We must impose Net Neutrality now! It’s 2008 – We must impose Net Neutrality NOW! It’s 2010 and the Republicans have just taken over the House, so we must… !

So if the danger to the Internet remains so looming and dire, and required so dictatorial a move to address it as was December’s unauthorized Web commandeering – why more than two months later has the Chairman still not filed his Net Neutrality order with the federal registry – which is required to begin its implementation?

Because the Chairman is much more interested in protecting his newly usurped government turf than he is the Internet.

Two wireless providers – Verizon and Metro PCS – have already filed suit to undo the Chairman’s order. Verizon’s seeks relief in the same D.C. Circuit Court that unanimously ruled just last April that the FCC has no Net Neutrality authority.

But the D.C. Circuit’s docket is rolling, and their clock ticking. The longer the Chairman drags his feet on this Oh-So-Vitally-and-Imminently-Important Net Neutrality order, the less likely it becomes that the D.C. Circuit will be able to hear the case(s).

So by stalling, the Chairman is callously venue shopping – and ducking a court in which he knows he will most likely lose.

Venue shopping is in fact rapidly becoming a fixture of this FCC for all sorts of Bigger Government moves – by them and the Media Marxists who’s bidding their doing.

It is now the second week of March – and the Chairman still has not filed his order. We were told that Net Neutrality is so important to truth, justice and the American Way that the Chairman HAD to ram through the Christmas vote rather than waiting for Congress to write the legislation he himself acknowledges the FCC needs to act.

Yet here we are two months into the new Congress – plenty of time for them to have written legislation for the Net Neutrality we are told we so desperately need – and the Chairman still has not yet delivered us his order.

Sadly, this is par for the now all-too-familiar Genachowski course of action.