"Wheeler’s tenure as the nation’s top communications regulator, a period marked by a variety of pro-consumer reforms, is coming to an end. "
Didn't Wheeler and co. try to overturn net neutrality???? The only reason they failed is because of the outrage of millions of concerned Americans. Best thing "Last Week Tonight" ever did was to report on that.
Wheeler passed net neutrality, Trump's replacement will most likely do everything they can to get rid of it. I hope you plan on expressing your outrage. But they probably won't care.
> Didn't Wheeler and co. try to overturn net neutrality?
No, Wheeler and the Democratic majority passed net neutrality, defended it in court, and when they lost passed a new (and in several respects stronger) version, based in a different legal authority than relied on for the first version.
The Last Week Tonight coverage was, as I recall, about a perceived loophole in the initial draft of the second net neutrality proposal, after the first was struck down.
"Didn't Wheeler and co. try to overturn net neutrality????"
You clearly do not know what you're talking about. Wheeler and his colleagues passed the strongest net neutrality protections in US history. I'd do a little more research.
"In late April 2014, the contours of a document leaked that indicated that the FCC under Wheeler would consider promulgating rules that would violate net neutrality principles by making it easier for companies to pay ISPs (including cable companies and wireless ISPs) to provide faster "lanes" for delivering their content to Internet users. These plans received substantial backlash from activists, the mainstream press, and some other FCC commissioners. In May 2014, over 100 Internet companies — including Google, Microsoft, eBay, and Facebook — signed a letter to Wheeler voicing their disagreement with his plans, saying they represented a "grave threat to the Internet". As of May 15, 2014, the "Internet fast lane" rules passed with a 3–2 vote. They were then open to public discussion that ended July 2014."
The Wikipedia article is missing important context, resulting in it being substantially misleading.
We had a net neutrality law in place before Wheeler joined the FCC. This was the FCC Open Internet Order of 2010 (the 2010 order). The 2010 order was based on regulatory authority that came from Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Verizon sued to have the 2010 order overturned. In 2014, Verizon won, and the 2010 order was dead.
Wheeler then set out to restore as much as possible of the 2010 order. His first approach was to mostly reinstate the 2010 order, but modified by the minimum amount necessary to remove those parts that the courts had found exceeded the FCC's authority under Section 706.
It is quite misleading to say that his proposal would have made paid fast lanes easier, because with the 2010 order struck down creating paid fast lanes was as easy as it could possibly be. The correct statement would be that Wheeler's first proposal did not ban fast lanes (I believe it did add some restrictions on them), because he was operating under the constraint of keeping the regulation within the power of Section 706 as interpreted by the court.
He stated that he was open to considering reclassifying ISPs so that they could be regulated under Title II of the Telecommunications Act instead of under Section 706, if the limitations on regulation under Section 706 proved to be too limiting.
Title II gives much more power, and so would be a much harder sell politically. Title II was called by some "the nuclear option", and using it would guarantee that Congress would try to reverse it, and would also guarantee another long court fight. If adequate regulations could be done staying under Section 706 and avoiding the issues the court had with the 2010 order, they would have a very very good chance of surviving any court challenge.
During the comment period, enough commentator said they wanted to see Title II based regulation because they didn't want to give up the things that had to be given up to make Section 706 acceptable to the court. Wheeler then revised his proposed rules to be based on a subset of Title II, and put in the stronger limits on fast lanes, and brought them up for a vote, where they passed 3-2.
Though republicans' stonewalling court appointments, and especially the supreme court appointment, for an entire year is unprecedented. Sadly it seems to have paid off. I guess presidents serve 3 year terms now.
They can have a filibuster blocking that vote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointment_and_confirmation.... " A simple majority vote is required to confirm or to reject a nominee, but a successful filibuster threat could add the requirement of a supermajority of 60 needed in favor of cloture, which would allow debate to end and force a final vote on confirmation."
I'm not going to lie and say that no Democrat has ever talked about it before. It doesn't stop the fact that this is the longest a Supreme Court candidate has ever went without even a hearing so I don't think that "unprecedented" is inaccurate.
This is the kind of thing that Democrats should have been talking about during the election. Republicans are for the most part anti-consumer but they do a good job of framing it as good for business. But everyone has a story of Comcast ripping them off, Democrats should talk more about how good for business really means bad for you.
Thing is, I don't think people (of any partisan stripe) like to think of their main role in the economy as being consumers, even if it's an accurate description of >=90% of us. After all, most Americans are just temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs.
This headline is terrible. It's phrasing it as if the FCC has a choice. It doesn't. It works at the behest of the government which has changed due to the election.
It sucks but if you don't like it and you didn't vote Clinton it's your fault.
The only re-assuring thing to me about this is: Pretty much anything ridiculous the Republicans accomplish in the next 2-4 years can almost certainly be reversed once they (purposefully or not) knock some sense back into the American public.
Supreme Court appointments can actually be effectively undone, if the party that wants to undo them can get control of both houses of Congress and the White House.
They key is that there is nothing in the Constitution that sets the size of the court. All that the Constitution requires is that there be a chief justice. The actual number is set by statute. We have nine now because that's what the statute says we should have. It has not always been nine, and there is nothing that requires it to stay nine.
If a party doesn't want to wait for current justices to retire or die in order to shift the direction of the court, it could expand the court instead and fill the new seats with its preferred justices.
Yes. Although it's not "that" bad if they replace Scalia with another Scalia. We can only hope that (a) No justices die for the next 2 years, and simultaneously (b) Republicans screw up so bad over the next 2 years the Democrats win Congress back so they can at least "moderate" the situation over the final 2.
Well, we just set the precedent this year that allows us to not confirm judicial appointments if there is an upcoming election. So once we consider "within two years" as upcoming, we never have to replace any judges.
s\House\Senate. The Democrats have basically no chance at retaking the House in the foreseeable future... all the red states are gerrymandered to hell, plus you can expect voter suppression laws to keep popping up like weeds in all them as well, with decreasing chances of them being blocked... because the SCOTUS is tilting back to the right.
Actually, in democracies, people do get out and vote and change rulers when they can be made to care sufficiently.
In India where I live, I've seen time and again how state politicians who seemingly have the administration locked up, voters intimidated through outright thuggery, bribed with cash & liqor etc nevertheless go out and vote them out if only the opposition puts up a credible and trustworthy alternative who holds out a vision of improvement. Given the amount of voting booth capturing and thuggery going on, I used to be skeptical about the democratic process but have seen time amd again that in such situations when the opposition is able to put up a credible leader, nothing the incumbents can do can save them.
It's basically "don't do non-urgent stuff that we'd probably revoke anyway, those two months aren't worth the hassle".