#team cable

So I heard today through the grapevine about Verizon being involved in some shady stuff in or around Fairview, Michigan. There’s a lot going on, but here’s the short list:

Doing construction in and disrupting the habitats of two species that are on the protection list for wildlife.

Deliberately counting on nearby Amish and Mennonites to just put up with getting pushed around.

Refusing to consider alternatives with the locals.

There’s also the standard two faced corporate stuff which is so common it’s not worth a bullet point on the list.

FOR FUCKING OUT LOUD.

These companies are complaining about having to deal with all these different regulations now that they had their puppet remove the one single federal regulation in their way in a literal “be careful what you wish for” scenario, and they have the audacity to blame anybody but themselves.

This is literally the rationalization of a criminal that stabs somebody to death, saying that if the victim had only handed over their money, they wouldn’t have gotten hurt.

But that’s not what is driving me up the wall here. They are trying to push for legislation that favors them under the guise of standing up to the same consumers who they have screwed in the past without Net Neutrality protections, and have spent inordinate sums of money in the form of campaign contributions to screw again. And they’re invoking the Constitution and Bill of Rights for their rationale to do so. Let’s ignore for a second that they’re trying to justify their own business practices and set technology policy by invoking a document written when the steam engine was still the Hot New Shit, and just focus on the mind-boggling brazen attempt to invoke some sort of political resonance or Revolutionary narrative structure in their struggle.

Or, you can just read my translation / summary of their argument:

“The Declaration of Independence endows all men with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As making money makes me happy, I hold that all of these complaints against my industry for trying to stop us from charging more money for less service is an unconstitutional violation of my right to pursue what makes me happy.”

Somebody’s full of himself. Of course, he’s also full of shit. Those two facts are related.

Pai’s not saying it, but he’s praising everything he’s done to promote consolidation of media sources and censorship of information, including but not limited to repealing net neutrality. Remember that Sinclair Broadcasting propaganda push? He thinks that was a good thing.

This is Team Cable

This is Team Internet. 

I know that this isn’t a joke but I just wanted to make this. 

AT&T is really going Double Or Nothing here. Like the article says, it’s unlikely that the Supreme Court would side with them on this and they’re probably using this entire thing as a delaying tactic to buy time and goad the FTC into a settlement that would let them escape worse penalties and fines. But if the Supreme Court did hear the case, and did side with them, they can’t just say “nobody tells ISPs what to do now” because in a legal sense that authority has to exist somewhere. So the Supreme Court, in siding with AT&T on this and reversing the assigning of responsibility to the FTC, might end up overturning the entire 2017 repeal.