Bravo: Boehner Speaks to Religious Broadcasters, Blasts FCC Threat That Is ‘Creeping Further into the Free Market by Trying to Regulate Internet’ (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 28, 2011
Speaker of the House John Boehner spoke out this weekend against the expanding, unauthorized power grab of the FCC in its efforts to regulate and control the Internet — via the Democrats’ deliberately-misnamed “Net Neutrality.” These crafty weasels pulled this off just before Christmas when most people were paying attention to holiday festivities and reuniting with family, not paying attention to anything the FCC was doing. As was the intention.
The Federal Communication Commission quietly granted itself regulatory power over telecommunications companies on December 21, a job it was never intended to do. Likely thereafter, if the FCC’s “uh, pay no attention to the scary man behind the curtain” power grab were to work, expect conservative talk radio to be next on the liberal FCC’s blood-drenched chopping block.
Boehner and other Republicans in the House are wise to what the FCC has been up to, however.
Or, so it seems. Fingers crossed.
From The Washington Times, Boehner rips bid to regulate Internet – Debt likened to Sputnik threat:
House Speaker John A. Boehner lashed out against efforts to regulate Internet traffic before an audience of evangelical Christian media leaders and pointedly responded to President Obama by comparing the challenge of the burgeoning national debt to the Sputnik-era space race.
In a speech to religious broadcasters that received a sustained ovation at his conclusion, he said free expression is under attack by a power structure in Washington populated with regulators who have never set foot inside a radio station or a television studio.
“We see this threat in how the FCC is creeping further into the free market by trying to regulate the Internet,” Mr. Boehner said.
“The last thing we need, in my view, is the FCC serving as Internet traffic controller, and potentially running roughshod over local broadcasters who have been serving their communities with free content for decades,” he said to loud applause from members of the National Religious Broadcasters, a trade group holding its annual convention here.
But, the Ohio Republican warned, one threat “dwarfs others in terms of the danger it poses to freedom and our children’s future.”
“You may recall President Obama, in his State of the Union address, talking about a ‘Sputnik moment,’ the moment that shocks our generation into getting serious. In my view, America’s ‘Sputnik moment’ is our shocking national debt,” he said.
Mr. Boehner also inveighed against any effort to reinstate the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” whose 1987 elimination led to the rise of a vibrant talk-radio industry.
“Our new majority is committed to seeing that the government does not reinstate the Fairness Doctrine,” he said.
Blast from the past… barely a blink after Barack H. Obama was elected president in November 2008, New York’s Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer in the interview below spoke out in favor of the deliberately misnamed “Fairness Doctrine” and took a quick swipe against talk radio (which is predominated by conservatives, since no one listens to liberal talk radio — hence, billionaire ultra-liberal George Soros, and not the free market, kept “Air America” on shattery life support for years until Soros finally grew tired of dumping millions of his dollars down the statist commode) and regulation of the Internet. He equated, in his own not-so-subtle way, that talk radio was something like pornography. So, this statist power grab of FCC/Team Obama is not anything new for ultra libs — it’s been only in the last month or so that the mainstream media began paying attention or started begrudgingly reporting on it.
Sen. Chuck Schumer Compares “Fairness Doctrine” to Regulating Porn | November 2008
From The Hill, Boehner slams FCC for possibly ‘running roughshod over local broadcasters’:
House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) provided some words of support for broadcasters who face tough regulatory fights at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and in Congress this year.
“The last thing we need, in my view, is the FCC…potentially running roughshod over local broadcasters who have been serving their communities with free content for decades,” he said in a speech Sunday to religious broadcasters, the Washington Times reports.
Boehner’s comments come as TV stations face proposals asking them to relinquish their spectrum holdings and an FCC vote that could weaken their hand in negotiations with pay-TV providers.
Boehner also slammed the FCC for getting too involved in the market by passing net-neutrality rules.
“We see this threat in how the FCC is creeping further into the free market by trying to regulate the Internet,” he said
He said the GOP will forestall the resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine, although Democrats have not proposed to reinstate the policy. The Fairness Doctrine required broadcast licensees to provide “balanced” coverage.
“Our new majority is committed to seeing that the government does not reinstate the Fairness Doctrine,” he said.
Boehner noted that Communications subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (Ore.) “has teamed up with another former broadcaster, Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana, to introduce legislation to help keep the airwaves free. I expect the House to act on this measure as well.”
From Seton Motley, Big Government, The Internet, the Egyptian Uprisings and the “Kill Switch”:
Governments throughout the world – Egypt, Iran, Syria, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and on and on – block or dramatically control their peoples’ access to the Internet.
We in America have enjoyed a government-free Web. Which has led to it becoming a free speech, free market Xanadu.
That all changed December 21st, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) executed a completely unauthorized power grab – and voted themselves Internet Overlords.
These three unelected Democrat bureaucrats did this, they say, to “protect” us from the non-existent threat of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) affecting our access to the Internet.
And the enforcer of this “protection” of our unfettered Internet access? The government – the entity responsible for myriad instances of Web censorship all over the world.
And these three Donkeys did this in truly authoritarian fashion – in a manner unnervingly reminiscent of what we’ve seen from the aforementioned dictatorial regimes.
Now we are told we need an Internet “kill switch” – granting the President the power to shut down or commandeer control of the nation’s ISPs.
Much like the recent moves of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Does not this cognitive dissonance cause you policy whiplash?
Excellent exposé on the hypocrisy of left-wingers at RedState by Melissa Clouthier — here’s the opening… The Left’s Assault On Free Speech:
Imagine, if you will, a Denial Of Service attack on George Soros’ Open Society Institute (Orwell would love this name). Would the lefties be sitting, mute, taciturn at their voices being squelched? Would they be pleased?
The Americans for Prosperity, an activist organization on the Right, has been fighting against a non-stop Denial Of Service attack by leftist goons intent on silencing the organization and their supporters.
From Capitol Confidential, Big Government, Republican Plan for Obama Regulations Revealed!:
A few weeks ago, President Obama purported to promise an overhaul of the Federal regulatory regime, pledging to look at bloated and outdated piles of red tape in order to make the tough cuts necessary, in his mind, to stimulate economic growth.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Obama stated, “Regulations do have costs; often, as a country, we have to make tough decisions about whether those costs are necessary…But what is clear is that we can strike the right balance. We can make our economy stronger and more competitive, while meeting our fundamental responsibilities to one another.”
But as Big Government demonstrated just a few short weeks ago, the progressive left did not respond favorably to the President’s call for balance between public welfare and private-sector growth. Progressive special interest groups have outlined, instead, a plan of attack on Obama’s regulatory agencies, demanding an iron-fisted regulatory regime designed to punish some of the nation’s most prolific industries.
[...]
The Republicans have just introduced draft legislation that could force the Obama Administration to live up to its promises to investigate regulatory overreach and institute real, job-saving reforms.
Just last week, House Republicans released a three-page draft bill calling on “certain standing committees to inventory and review existing, pending, and proposed regulations and orders from agencies of the Federal Government, particularly with respect to their effect on jobs and economic growth.” You can download a copy of the draft legislation here, from Politico…
[N]ext week, the House majority will instruct 10 committee chairs to begin an oversight process on federal regulations that could impede job growth: 1099, EPA, tax policy, etc. Each chair will go to the floor and outline oversight plans. “They will have a series of hearings, they will conduct oversight,” the aide said. “This is an effort that we expect to go for the next several months. It will result in a report coming from each committee chairman, saying, ‘Here’s our findings. Here’s jobs, jobs, jobs recommendations.’
The bill specifically targets for investigation regulations, executive and agency orders that impede job creation, discourage innovation, hurt economic growth, harm investment, limit access to capital or cut into the US’s international competitiveness.
The bill also seems to call into question a number of the regulations listed above, as it targets actions and orders that create economic uncertainty and impede economic progress like those being issued daily from the EPA, bills and agency actions like IPAB that fail to meet standards of transparency and oversight, actions like Card Check that impede labor-management relations and actions, like Net Neutrality, that lack specific authorization for execution.
This legislation, if passed, will be key in forcing the Obama Administration’s hand, and it will show American voters just how dedicated the Obama Administration is to real reform, and real job growth and creation.
'Freedom of Speech' sign, Tea Party event in Atlanta, 2009
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