Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson and Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai are touring rural areas and going on the radio to attack net neutrality while stooging for telecom companies. Here are some Sen. Johnson highlights:
"Chairman Pai just mentioned medical diagnostics," Johnson said. "You might need a fast lane within that pipeline so those diagnoses can be transmitted instantaneously and not be held up by, I don't know, maybe a movie streaming."
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"As chairman Pai said, net neutrality is a slogan," Johnson said. "What you really want is an expansion of high-speed broadband, and in order to do that you have to create the incentives for those smaller ISPs to invest. They don’t really control their own fiber if the government tells them exactly how they’re going to use their investment."
Ajit Pai says this:
I want everyone to have, what I call, digital opportunity…
Maybe you’ve heard this before? You know, “access” to the best healthcare in the world, if you can afford it. Sen. Johnson says that we need to get rid of “heavy-handed” regulation, while also saying we need “regulation” that “incentivizes” broadband companies to build the infrastructure in rural areas. This connection of phrases into a sentence sounds like smart government stuff. But it is the height of bullshit as what Sen. Johnson and Pai are literally saying is that “regulations” should mean taxpayer-funded infrastructure of broadband, while getting rid of any and all consumer protections.
We pay and build the internet machine for a company that then has one hundred percent control over whether or not we can use it. There’s more cow pies being tossed around in the interview below, including Pai’s willful ignorance of the actual differences between pre-net neutrality law internet and what the internet means and is, going forward.