Welcome to net neutrality! We’re going to start taxing your broadband now.

Enjoy!

Every month, consumers pay a small fee on their phone bills for a federal program that uses the money — a total of $8.8 billion raised nationwide last year — to provide affordable access to telecommunications services in rural areas, underserved inner cities and schools.

Now the fee could start appearing on broadband bills too, in a major expansion of the nearly two-decade-old Universal Service Fund program.

[snip]

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, argued that even if broadband firms are required to contribute, there are no plans to increase the annual size of the fund.

Continue reading Welcome to net neutrality! We’re going to start taxing your broadband now.

Net Neutrality: Congressional Career-Killer.

If you want to know who is having a worse day than the DCCC*, the DSCC**, or the DNC***, try the Progressive Change Congressional Committee. You see, last week they issued a pledge in support of net neutrality that was signed by ninety-five candidates.

Every single one of them lost.

(pause)

Oops?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading Net Neutrality: Congressional Career-Killer.

Jay Inslee (D, WA) uses lobbyist letter for Net Neutrality push.

I believe that the technical term for this is “Oops.”

A letter that Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., is circulating on Capitol Hill expressing gushing support for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s controversial proposal to subject broadband to tougher regulation wasn’t written by the congressman.

How do we know? Digital fingerprints left by the author, Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a media watchdog.

(H/T: Ed Driscoll) Continue reading Jay Inslee (D, WA) uses lobbyist letter for Net Neutrality push.