When AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and other telcom giants purchased a net neutrality repeal from FCC shill Ajit Pai, it must have occurred to them that California would be a major problem in their plans to become the ultimate gatekeepers for internet traffic.
The US is a nation that practices federalism. Some people call this states’ rights, but those people are wrong. States don’t have rights. As the US Constitution clearly points out, only people have rights and those rights are inalienable.
As part of their plan to ensure this remained the case, the founders of the US ensured that individual state territories would always have their own governments operating alongside the federal government.
And it’s a good thing they did. Because when Ajit Pai successfully managed to repeal net neutrality, he did so without a mandate from the US people, with more than 80 percent in favor of keeping it. He used fraudulently obtained comments to make a biased decision in tandem with telcom lobbyists against the interests of the US people. He, and other GOP politicians, lied over and over to push a laughably false rhetoric surrounding the net neutrality debate, until eventually federal net neutrality was gone.
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When a judge recently ruled that the FCC’s thoughts on net neutrality didn’t apply to or supersede state laws, such as California’s strongest-in-the-nation net neutrality rules, we were once again protected from tyranny and corruption by the Constitution.
According to a CNBC report, Pai made the case against federalism at a WSJ Tech Live event yesterday. Reporter Marguerite Reardon writes:
He argued that “while that federalist system has served us very well” up to this point in our nation’s history, it’s time for Congress to consider “whether or not we can still maintain a multilayer regulatory system.” He said allowing states and local governments to pass their own laws regulating internet services, which inherently cross state lines, creates market uncertainty.
“When you’re talking about the choice for a venture capitalist or an entrepreneur to set up shop in the United States where they have to get permission from the federal government or from the state of California, San Francisco, or some other jurisdiction, or whether they should set up shop in country B where there’s a uniform, well-established set of regulations that are consistent, I worry that the proposition value for country B will become stronger over time.
Pai may be a big deal in the telcom industry, where he was once a lawyer for Verizon, but it’s unclear how he plans to spin his limited clout as the head of the FCC into a bonafide campaign to abolish federalism and change the very nature of our democracy.
If history’s any indicator, he’ll use lies, duplicity, corruption and a complete disdain for the people’s mandate to accomplish his goals while simultaneously mocking the citizens whose taxes pay for his betrayals.
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