Roger Stone writes clearly and emphatically about why it will be beneficial to reverse "Net Neutrality"

Roger Stone writes in an op-ed in The Daily Caller,

The singular reason why this so called “Net Neutrality” came to the forefront is because then President Barack Obama ordered it. And who was prodding Obama to do so? Google. Microsoft. Facebook. Twitter. Amazon.

The Tech Left, funded largely by George Soros, had decided to champion under the banner of a benign-sounding “Net Neutrality” campaign and seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grab the moral high ground in their determination to allow the giant edge providers to censor the Internet to suit their ideological preferences — ridding the Internet of conservative and libertarian content.

Google was especially vested, as the tech giant helped write the 2015 net neutrality rules and Google employees had more access to the White House during Barack Obama’s term than did Lois Lerner.

In the words of the other dissenting FCC commissioner, Michael O’Reilly, Net Neutrality is not “forbearance” but rather “faux-bearance.” This coined word invokes the bogus nature of the claim that Net Neutrality promotes a fair and free market Internet, with a neutral level playing field.

The term “forbearance,” in FCC parlance, means that the FCC can elect not to apply rules in specific instances and to specific entities. The FCC can pick and choose whom to regulate vigorously and whom to give a free pass. This is de-facto creation of winners and losers by governmental fiat.

The truth is the Tech Left crafted “Net Neutrality” rules to regulate the Internet under Title II specifications that defined Internet Service Providers — the companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T that plug you to into the internet — to be bound by “Net Neutrality” rules, demanding that the internet service providers treat all edge providers equally.

But since the giant edge providers — companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter — are content providers, they are exempt from “Net Neutrality” rules, free to restrain content by censoring out all conservative and libertarian views at will, without so much as an explanation to anyone why the objectionable views were banned.

…Neuro-linguistic programmatic word-play is a hallmark of the Left.

Consider the “Affordable Care Act” which makes healthcare less affordable, “Common Core” which lowers education to the lowest common denominator, “Global Food Security” which ironically increases world hunger and the “USA Freedom Act” which decreases freedom and liberty for all Americans.

“Net Neutrality” gives the US Federal Government the power to choose winners and losers, in an egregiously partisan manner. “Net Neutrality” says nothing about neutrality and everything about governmental control and nepotistic picking of favorites — the very opposite of neutrality.

Picking the winners wasn’t enough for Team Obama and his rabid leftists. They also wanted to create losers by punishing opponents with the cudgel of insurmountable and cryptic government regulations.

The American people were sold a bill-of-goods with FCC 15-24.

We were told that forcing cable providers to allow anyone to use their infrastructure would increase competition and industry investment. Exactly the opposite has occurred. Broadband choice has not expanded and broadband investment actually declined in the years since the passage of the so-called net neutrality rules, undoing a decade-long trend of ever greater investment.

“Net Neutrality” has also failed to keep the internet free and open. By providing forbearance cover to their Silicon Valley political patrons, the FCC functionaries empowered during the Obama administration look the other way as the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans with conservative- or libertarian-minded viewpoints have been trampled.

…If Donald J. Trump had not won the election in 2016, there is little question that the vibrant alternative media that exists today would be but a dim shadow of its current self. Even today, calls for outright censorship of Breitbart, Drudge Report, and Infowars are screeched out of the same mouths that call for “fairness” of content.

In closing, this glaring example of a ham-handed attempt to abuse governmental power for partisan gain demonstrates clearly that Congress needs to act quickly to establish protections for American consumers so that all companies play by the same rules. Nobody should be allowed to block content. Social media has become the new “public square”, and First Amendment protections equally apply.

Read more here.