Which would hopefully bite them in the ass if I had any faith in a Trump-appointed judicial branch. The FCC is required to take public comments into account when making regulations, this should be a fairly straightforward lawsuit.
The FCC is required to take the ideas and issues from public comments into account. When multiple comments raise the same issues or issues that were already considered in the initial policy recommendations, the FCC can ignore these comments without issue.
Separating the comment policy from the net neutrality issue - the comment policy actually makes sense. Ideally, government officials should be acting as technocrats - considering all the arguments and choosing the best policy. A vocal minority pushing an argument that is bad should not be able to prevent or indefinitely delay sensible regulation.
While this line of reasoning is frustrating for net neutrality advocates, it's easy to see why this is sensible w.r.t say vaccines. Regardless of how many anti-vaccination comments are sent, I want officials writing regulations that reflect the best solution w.r.t the scientific facts and the ethical concerns (both around government compulsion and the ability of a parent to hurt their child through neglect), not the solution that reflects the majority opinion of the small subset of people who submitted comments.
Taking comments into account is different than simply having an opt-in vote which translates to who's e-petition can go the most viral (and let's not even get into fraud). And this is very much a good thing. In this case, even if I might agree with having some issue with net neutrality being repealed - I think most people have no clue at all what's going on and are voting based on fear mongering and sensationalism.
For instance, what percent of people could explain why Pai thinks repealing net neutrality is a good idea? Most seem to think he's just some Trump appointee selling out the highest bidder. In fact he's been arguing for a path of deregulation for years, even before he was appointed to the FCC by Obama 5 years ago.
I tend to debate against the masses on this issue simply because I think we're acting like a mob instead of a rational collective. And even if we may be getting it right on this issue, mob mentality is something that should never be condoned - even if you side with them on an issue.
I agree with gbrown. Pai’s statements are so untruthful and nonsensical that I can’t figure out why he thinks it could help even after reading many comments by him. His most clear argument is that it will somehow increase investments into ISP infrastructure (citing, I think, what happened in Portugal) while he simultaneously says we have no way to know what effects repealing it will have until we try it. Meanwhile a million people have shared the images of the bucketed plans from Portugal charging $9.99 extra for social networking and things like that.
The man is totally full of BS.
As for your comment that he was an Obama appointee, he was actually selected by Mitch McConnell but I know it’s a common trope to blame everything on Obama.
“Though an Obama appointee, Pai does not share Obama’s progressive views and is by no means someone Obama would have chosen to lead the commission. Rather, there’s a tradition of letting the minority party pick two commissioners, since the majority can only legally hold three seats; in nominating Pai — at the recommendation of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican — Obama was sticking to that tradition.”
All your reasons for impugning his integrity boil down to you disagree with him. That is narrow minded.
Pai (and many economists) believe a double sided market could increase potential profits which would incentive investment so ISPs could provide a "fast lane." That isn't "somehow." They thought about and have a reason for believing what they believe.
You can disagree but that doesn't make them hitler.
No actually very few of my reasons for pointing out his lack of integrity have to do with simple disagreement on policy. I would try not to label people as narrow minded based on one short comment on the Internet. This community normally does a better job of not immediately devolving into personal attacks especially when you didn’t even ask what my reasons for disliking him are.
Read a much more in depth analysis in one of my other comments of his transformation of the FCC into a partisan agency, his attacks on poor people through the Lifeline program, as well as his close ties to Verizon which create a direct conflict of interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15781535
Not to even mention the post that started this thread about how Pai has accepted over a million fake comments on net neutrality from the telecom/ISP industries’ astroturfer lobbyists while refusing to provide enough information for NY to look into the matter (or investigating themselves)
There are people playing devil’s advocate for Pai’s views but how many people actually seem to strongly want these changes? Have you met any who don’t work for Comcast, Verizon, etc.? I honestly have not
There is no fast lane except by creating tons and tons of slow lanes. There are many ways to incentivize even our existing ISPs to invest more but he doesn’t pursue most of those.
Meanwhile the actual architects of the Internet point out that he is trying to reclassify a telecommunications service as a data service (despite pretty clear definitions that make it a telecom service) in order to remove most of the FCC’s regulatory powers
Whether he actually believes less regulation will help the average person or not, he is taking slimy approaches to force his opinion through (over loud complaints from Tim Berners Lee and basically every major internet player that isn’t an ISP)
I am not stating he is somebody Obama would have chosen to lead the FCC, but Obama saw fit to appoint him. A democratic majority senate saw fit to approve him.
I do not necessarily agree with Pai, but actually take the time to read what he says instead of snippets taken out of context and it's hardly nonsensical or untruthful. In going through this process of trying to actually discover his views, I found several interviews [1][2][3] that I found informative. His major view is that you regulate as necessary. Let people compete openly and freely with as few rules as possible. When bad behavior emerges deal with it as necessary. He is focused primarily on competition and simplifying what is required for ISPs to get in and operate. Adding hundreds of pages of rules and regulations does not really fit into the picture here.
I don't necessarily agree with him, but he certainly has a perfectly cogent argument. And I think disagreeing on the right path forward is perfectly fine. A number of small ISPs have written to Pai expressing support of his plans to dismantle the rules. Others have written him expressing disagreement with those plans. This is all a far cry from calling somebody a nonsensical shill, a liar, and so on. And in the vitriol on both sides, I find most have very little understanding of what it is they're even getting so riled up about.
--
Out of curiosity, if you would humor me. Why do you think Google Fiber failed to achieve significant sign ups in the region it setup in? In the ~6 years of operation to 2016 it managed an estimated 0.07million television subscribers, 0.45 million broadband subscribers. They've since rolled back further plans for expansion and engaged in lay offs in downsizing. Imagine the doomsday scenarios come true and suddenly ISPs are demanding $10 for social media, $10 for gaming, ... . What effect, if any, do you think this would have on the outcome?
As far as the Obama appointment, let me be a bit more specific. It has been customary for a looong time for the majority party to allow the minority party to appoint two members of the FCC. In fact, legally the majority party can only have three of the five seats. So even if Obama/Congress had gone against tons of precedent and not accepted Pai as the nominee, McConnell would have just sent another similar nominee in his place. There was nothing to be gained by being obstructionist other than slowing down the appointment.
I’ll look into the sources you provided and reply to that portion after I’ve had a chance to watch them.
As far as Google Fiber, I think there are several reasons it hasn’t gone well. It was far more difficult and expensive than expected for them to roll it out. This had to do with many problems getting permits, digging and laying fiber, and getting sued by existing ISPs. Then the existing ISPs (who are far better at marketing their services and already have a huge user base that rarely switches providers) immediately increased bandwidth or decreased prices as soon as Google moved into new areas. Thus the consumers greatly benefited when Google Fiber arrived in their town but they had little incentive to actually switch to Google. For example, Time Warner announced in North Carolina that it was boosting its customers from 50 mbps to 300 mbps (for no additional charge) as soon as Google announced they would start rolling out fiber. See http://www.zdnet.com/article/i-wish-google-fiber-was-in-my-n...
Let’s also not forget most ISPs are also large TV and phone companies so they can offer bundles or loss leaders that a new entrant like Google cannot.
I really don’t think it was regulations that caused their biggest issues. In fact, if there had been additional regulations requiring shared access to utility poles and other infrastructure then they could have actually tried to compete on a level playing field. Instead you see things like in Louisville and Nashville where “Google faced lawsuits from incumbents over the use of existing infrastructure like utility poles to hang its fiber cables.” I’d love to hear from Pai how undoing net neutrality will suddenly get Google and much smaller players access to utility poles and other basic requirements for launching service.
Just blindly accepting whomever the minority party nominates is not a part of 'custom.' Letting the minority party select who is nominated is. But nominees are indeed rejected, though often it doesn't come to a vote. Voting is often a formality as decisions are agreed upon beforehand, so for rejections see the numerous appointments that are left to "withdraw."
You're definitely right about the reasons Google failed to compete, but we can look at it even more fundamentally. The major problem is that people, for whatever reason, were insufficiently incentivized to sign up. When regulations are overly precise in what and how a product must be offered, it ends up turning competition into an RPG style stat check on scale. Could you make a McDonalds style hamburger cheaper than McDonalds? Not a chance. Fortunately, you're not required by the government to create hamburgers in the same style as McDonalds and so there is room for competition in ways outside of price alone. This not only enables competitors, but also requires that McDonalds not take their own success for granted. If their style of burger is no longer what their demographic desires, they can easily lose - fast.
So essentially deregulation opens up two mirrored possibilities. The first is if the monopolist begin to really carry out the doomsday scenarios some people are fearing, that's damn sure going to incentivize people to swap when possible. And similarly, the lack of regulation enables far more creative offerings. The cliche example is a nearly free email-only type package, but really there is no limit to what could be achieved particularly with partner companies and motivated investors. And these offerings would not be so readily matched by the monopolists since their value is far more difficult to gauge, and the value to ISP themselves would also be a dynamic value. E.g. an ISP partnered with Netflix would receive a different level of value from from a certain package than Comcast would from the same package.
Again, I'm not really convinced this is a reasonable enough argument to give up net neutrality -- but it's an argument that I think is fully cogent and viable. The thing that concerns me is that people aren't really even discussing his views -- instead just demonizing him, and justifying their own behavior by claiming he doesn't even have consistent views which is plainly absurd. We should be able to civilly disagree. And indeed as it looks like net neutrality is almost certainly going away, civilly accept loss. In any case it will be a great test to see who was right -- and if Pai's statement that bad behavior itself will be regulated against is something that he will stay true to, if necessary. If it does indeed become a serious issue it could even be a topic in the 2020 presidential race -- Pai's term expires in 2022.
Can you provide a list of a few FCC candidates who were withdrawn or otherwise not accepted? The only one I can find is from this year and Trump withdrew her nomination only to later confirm her (presumably once he’d filled the third Republican seat since it was 2-1 before that)
And here is a pretty darn clear quote indicating it is in fact unheard of to not accept FCC nominees:
On Thursday, a Schumer spokesperson said that despite Trump's decision to withdraw Rosenworcel, they would push for the Democratic commissioners of their choice.
“We intend to assert our prerogative on nominees as has always been done,” the spokesperson said. “The administration has always deferred to congressional leaders and we fully expect that to continue.”
Wait what? I specifically said I could find only one example which was under Trump and the nominee was ultimately accepted. I also quoted Schumer and the Democrats saying this was without precedent. I’m really not sure what you’re getting at here.
Please don’t ignore my response as well as my request for any examples and then tell me an article I cited says something it doesn’t.
Nomination is not the same as confirmation. The US congressional system is built on a system of checks and balances. Even a single senator, lacking an opposed super majority, can indefinitely delay and ultimately kill any nomination. This, coincidentally, happened with Rosenworcel's initial nomination (in 2012) when the senate, thanks to a single minority party senator, refused to even consider her nomination for months until other conditions were met.
There's no gentleman's agreement like you seem to think, or at least are certainly implying. The reason that the minority party gets to select their nominees is because of the implicit threat of rejecting anybody except their picks.
Just because one senator (without an opposed supermajority) could theoretically indefinitely delay a nomination to the FCC, it has never happened. Has it?
In the example you gave, Grassley put Rosenworcel and Pai's nominations on hold for a time. Notice he did this to one person from each party simultaneously and still allowed both to be confirmed after a little while. Mitch was a big fan of Pai so there is no doubt they could have scraped 60 votes together to get the two through if he hadn't relented.
I asked for examples where the nominee was "withdrawn or otherwise not accepted" and you gave me one where they blocked all nominations, regardless of party or point of view, for only a few months due to a personal dispute.
Everything points to what I said originally which is that the majority party gets 3 FCC nominees, the minority party gets 2 FCC nominees, and they traditionally all get approved due to the "gentleman's agreement" as you call it. While no one has 60 votes in the Senate right now, many FCC nominees have sailed through for the minority party even though the majority party had 60 votes to stop any nomination holds from the minority.
There are reasons why he is demonized. He has dramatically cut access to the Internet for poor people through the lifeline program despite numerous speeches where he has purported to champion access for those users. He uses his chairmanship to accuse people of being socialists who support Venezuela and want to undermine capitalism. He refused dozens of interview requests before finally giving a partisan and vitriolic interview to Breitbart.
He has also coordinated with the GOP to a degree that is not at all normal for the FCC chair:
“The collusion became so obvious that Senate Democrats officially asked Pai and his Republican colleague to hand over emails covering their interactions over concerns that what they were doing was seriously improper. Pai and O'Rielly simply refused to hand anything over.”
Under Wheeler, we saw the FCC become strongly partisan for the first time. “Under Democrats, about eight percent of votes on major orders split along party lines. Under Republicans, only four percent split on party lines. Under Chairman Wheeler, 26 percent of votes on orders have passed with yes votes from the Democratic Chairman, Commissioner Rosenworcel, and Commissioner Clyburn, with Republican Commissioners O’Rielly and Pai dissenting. The difference from the past is stark.” (note the 26% number includes all votes whereas the 4% and 8% numbers include only major policy decisions. If we considered only major policy decisions the percentage of partisan votes under Wheeler would be even higher: https://techpolicyinstitute.org/2016/02/16/the-partisan-fcc/ )
Many arguments for Pai’s views assume he will inject much more competition into the ISP space despite not making efforts to address the systemic issues that Google Fiber hit around digging up roads to lay redundant cables (since no shared access is granted) or fighting through lawsuit after lawsuit to be able to use utility poles. Meanwhile he is open to further monopolization in the cell phone industry where he has already admitted he would strongly consider allowing us to go from four to three major wireless carriers: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-open...
Meanwhile he was a high level lawyer for Verizon and stands to greatly benefit (along with his friends) when T-Mobile and Sprint merge as well as when Verizon Fios gets much more freedom to overcharge and segment Internet service instead of becoming a dumb pipe selling data throughput as a commodity. It is honestly perplexing he wouldn’t need to recuse himself.
In short, a partisan stooge with vested interest in the telecom and ISP industry is not a reasonable leader for our supposedly nonpartisan FCC. You can demand that everyone “civilly accept loss” but I really see no reason why that is helpful, a good idea, or even reasonable given the situation.
I wish it would be a serious issue in the 2020 campaign but, let’s be honest, America has plenty of other problems and it won’t even be a minor factor.
tldr: You should expect to be demonized when you transform an independent agency into a partisan hit job on poor people and the average consumer while enriching yourself, your former coworkers, and an army of lobbyists for the monopolistic telecom and ISP industries.
Your post is perhaps the essence of the issue. We are talking about people raging over Pai's position on net neutrality. Instead of discussing this, you respond with a slew of things that mostly absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality. Let's say I ask the average person who is raging about net neutrality, what are your views on the proposed modifications of the lifeline program and the vote split ratio under recent FCC chairpeople? Nobody is going to have any clue whatsoever about any of this.
And if they did they what it's about, I imagine they'd be even more confused by your argument which seems to be mostly just citing clickbait [1] with even more sensationalized language added on top. So for instance let's take that lifeline program. Did he "dramatically cut access to the internet for poor people through the lifeline program"? No. In part a response to massive abuse, they chose to be more judicious about how money is handed out - primarily as it relates to Tribal lands where, I presume, the government has more difficulty with know-your-customer requirements.
What happens is people who don't even setup infrastructure instead of resell access they purchase from a third party, and then artificially and fraudulently inflate subscription numbers raking in up to $34.25/"user"/month -- $9.25 in the normal lifeline subsidy, and a $25 'enhanced' subsidy on top of it. You'd apparently have guys setting up Wi-Fi hotspots and then claiming people using them were "customers", thus qualifying the "service provider" for the subsidy. They "charge" the user $34.25/month, the government pays for it. Imagine a Starbucks getting up to $34.25/month from the government for each person who used their Wifi.
Their proposed changes aim to get more control on how money is going out so they would only allow the max subsidy ($34.25) for companies who are actually deploying permanent infrastructure in rural areas. Urban areas and resellers in rural areas would still qualify for the standard $9.25/month subsidy. The prohibited Wi-Fi hotspotting as qualifying as an ISP, and set minimum standards of quality. They also removed a rule that locked consumers into a Lifeline provider for a minimum of a year - enabling them to swap providers as they see fit. And they've also proposed fines in the tens of millions against the "ISPs" who were fraudulently abusing the program.
Notice how the things you cite never really dig into the details? Instead they just use labels, aspersions, and completely misleading statements. I mean again you can definitely disagree with the FCC's actions on the above. Perhaps instead of cracking down on abuse in this way they could have instead tried to strengthen know-your-customer laws, presumably with support from Tribal governments. Why didn't they decide to go this route? What would have been more desirable? What nuance is there in Tribal - US legal relations? But instead of actually talking about things like this they lead with hyperbolic sensationalism that you then repeat, and spread -- and next thing you know everybody's acting a fool thinking the sky is falling and Pai is Lucifer incarnate.
You completely ignored the most relevant parts of my argument which were:
1. Pai seeks to increase competition in a monopolistic market by decreasing regulation of the monopolizing companies while failing to address the fundamental reasons that they have a natural monopoly in the first place. Thus they now have even more power and they still have no competition. Even people on Breitbart and many other conservative sites are making this argument en masse: https://theintercept.com/2017/11/27/net-neutrality-trump-bre...
2. He has a major conflict of interest having spent most of his career with Verizon who will be one of the largest benefactors and who has pushed hard for this. Is it illegal? Probably not. But it couldn't be more sketchy.
You spent most of your post harping on lifeline which I briefly mentioned so I will respond to that as well. You attack resellers as if they are necessarily evil. Obviously it makes sense to add verification procedures if fraud is an issue, but as a program designed for the poorest Americans who would otherwise have no phone or Internet in many cases (hence its literally a lifeline) you still want to make it reasonable for them to use it. Since the FCC has allowed the big four telecoms to control all the lines, excluding resellers means that 70% of lifelines' users would be excluded.
Why are 70% of lifeline users subscribed through third party MVNOs? Well because Verizon happily charges many of their users $100/month for a loaded up plan and maybe $50/month for a more basic plan after taxes and fees. Meanwhile many RedPocket users pay $10-20/month or even less. Similarly for StraightTalk, Boost, etc. So he basically told them go pay $30-80 more per month to buy service from his old company (Verizon) to get a $9.25-34.25 subsidy or leave lifeline.
So yes he will eliminate fraud but he will basically gut the program entirely in the process.
Furthermore, you say he has made some improvements to the program. Some of them do sound like improvements but when you read the details they often don't sound as good. For example, now people aren't locked into their lifeline provider for a year but now they have to choose from 4 provided telecom companies (instead of 900) and they have to pay part of the fee every month. I'm sure if we took a poll, people would rather have a year contract to get free phone service from RedPocket rather than a month to month plan where they have to pay $X to AT&T if the RedPocket service was adequate for them in the first place.
You went on some rant about Starbucks getting subsidies. I'm really unclear where that line of reasoning comes from. First of all, Starbucks has free wifi. There are 900 companies approved under lifeline so its not like you can just set up a wifi network and start charging the government.
Wheeler made Lifeline apply to broadband service so I see no reason why an eligible person shouldn't be able to use their credit for Starbucks wifi (assuming it did actually cost something) as opposed to AT&T if they choose to do so, especially since Starbucks is just giving them AT&T wifi anyway. If they are poor and potentially homeless, being able to surf the Internet on their device at Starbucks sounds quite useful. Its a safe place, there are chairs, its warm, etc. When Starbucks did charge for Internet a long time ago, you likely could have gotten a much cheaper monthly plan for wifi there than AT&T would charge for LTE. Both because wifi is almost always cheaper to serve per megabyte than LTE and because Starbucks can offer wifi as a loss leader to try to sell coffee.
Explain how if there are 900 approved providers, people can set up wifi hotspots and bill the government? Maybe you should try doing that and see if it works. I suspect it won't be so easy.
You didn't mention the most obviously anti-poor parts of the Lifeline changes which included (1) reducing the budget for the program and (2) forcing the recipient to pay for at least part of the bill so they can't get it for free
A majority of lifeline users don't pay anything currently so obviously it would force many of them to consider whether they could pay a monthly cost for it and given they are on the program the answer will often be no. This deprives them of Internet and/or phone service (ie. their lifeline). So yes I stand by my statement that Pai "[will] dramatically cut access to the internet for poor people through the lifeline program"
Since you continue to attack me personally, in this case for mentioning a few things from an article that you claim has some clickbait as well (like most media these days), here is an article that discusses much of what I said: https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/17/fcc-lifeline-internet-su...
You feel the need to say things like "but instead of actually talking about things like this" which do not further the conversation. You haven't responded still to arguments I've made and questions I've asked you in this and other threads on this post and instead you act like I'm not trying to provide more details, sources, etc.
I think I pretty thoroughly rebutted most of your major points so I strongly disagree.
And now in your second paragraph, which I suppose is supposed to be a keypoint of your argument you lead with "Pai has spent most of his career with Verizon." Pai has been working since 1997 - 20 years. He spent exactly 2 years of those 20 years with Verizon -- shortly after university, 16 years ago. Nearly his entire life has been sent in the public sector. And you now lead a new post stating "he spent most of his career with Verizon."
Please try to step outside your bias and look at what you're writing. What you read on the internet is, quite often, not true. Think about whatever source you read that claimed Pai spent "most of his career" with Verizon. You can find his biographical information on the FCC page or his LinkedIn profile [1][2]. You're reading and citing extensively from fake news. Imagine you were me, reading your comments. What would you think - of you? How much weight would you give to anything you say? Would you have any interest in continuing the discussion?
You made a good point. I’ll happily concede he worked at Verizon for two years, although he did focus on regulatory issues so it’s still a major conflict of interest as likely a large shareholder. The tone of your responses is still quite negative and you glossed over many paragraphs of facts to pick apart one detail that is important but hardly a reason to suddenly support Pai’s position.
Meanwhile still no examples of a minority party nominee not getting confirmed or rebuttals of a large number of other points especially around Lifeline which you talked about for quite a while.
You’re welcome not to continue having the discussion and you can think poorly of me for not knowing the exact time that Pai has been working in a position of conflicted interest. I’ll admit when I’m wrong but so far the bulk of my argument stands and I refuted many of your points which you didn’t acknowledge while you reprimanded me for #fakenews. Please spare us the ad hominem attacks. They don’t belong in this community and I can (and have) pointed out flaws in your arguments as well. Of course when you’re wrong it wasn’t fake news or misleading.
How many of your points about Lifeline don’t hold up under scrutiny? Sounds like you fell for some fake news yourself.
Sorry if I exaggerated / misunderstood his career length at Verizon. To be honest his arguments against net neutrality (in conjunction with no effort to guarantee shared access to utility poles or other cables, among other issues) show he is being disingenious even if he didn’t have Verizon stock and had never worked for them. Leaving monopolistic policies and getting rid of consumer protections is a recipe for large companies with unfriendly policies.
A few other facts about unpopular and messed up positions he’s taken, straight off his Wikipedia page:
1. As chairman, Pai scrapped a proposal to open the cable box market to tech companies such as Google and Amazon (Hmm another pro-monopoly pro-Verizon action)
2. Pai wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post criticizing a government-funded research project named "Truthy" at Indiana University which was studying the spread of "false and misleading ideas, hate speech and subversive propaganda" (Speaking of fake news, apparently Pai didn’t think it was worth looking into. What a waste of taxpayer money! mock horror)
3. The whole Sinclair scandal which I won’t try to summarize here as you can just read Wikipedia. This one involves Trump and Kushner currying influence with Sinclair. Fun
> what percent of people could explain why Pai thinks repealing net neutrality is a good idea?
Well, he says things like "increasing competition", and talks about "burdensome regulations", but I honestly don't believe he thinks repealing net neutrality will benefit consumers. I don't care who appointed him, to me he's an obvious, lying shill.
Agreed. See my comment next to yours also. The minority party appoints 2/5 of the FCC so Obama was just appointing Mitch McConnell’s pick (but being Obama he gets all the blame for it!)
And what are we going to do, if they don't? Seems like the main theme of this decade is "Yeah, so what?", on issues ranging from Panama Papers to net neutrality.
