Comcast

As DC-based nationally syndicated radio host Chris Plante rightly notes: “Were it not for double standards – the Left would have no standards at all.”

It’s a merry-go-round of Stupid.

Ironically, the world’s leading winner-take-all Internet platforms — Google, Amazon, and Facebook — are the leading voices of the July 12th “Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality.”

On the way out the door, Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) jammed through a massive new power grab – which changed the rules on data collection and sales. But only for Internet Service Providers.

Everything these companies own, owe themselves to Internet Service Providers (ISPs.)

The competitive facts of: this transaction, the marketplace around it, and the DOJ’s vertical precedents and non-precedents, are this transaction’s best friend.

The Oxford Dictionary defines capitalism as “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” A new poll on the topic from Harvard received some attention yesterday, garnering headlines about millennial’s view of capitalism. The poll is challenging to interpret given that most people likely have a connotative sense of capitalism, but helpfully Harvard dug a little deeper by interviewing a group of people regarding their view of capitalism. As it turns out those who were wary of capitalism were not so much rejecting it but rather were concerned that today it seems unfair and leaves some people out.

Net neutrality absolutists demanded Title II regulation of the Internet in hopes of getting the “strongest possible” net neutrality rules.

The central overriding question in the USTelecom v. FCC case challenging the FCC’s Open Internet Order may be: did the FCC read Judge Tatel right in that he de facto guided the FCC to pursue Title II to create the most solid legal foundation for net neutrality? That has been the public legal mantra of the FCC and the net neutrality movement for well over a year.

If President Barack Obama doesn’t like you – his government tends to make your life really, REALLY miserable. Ask Tea Party and conservative groups – when Obama’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) isn’t harassing them, it is allowing them to endlessly languish unapproved. Ask reporters who report things in ways the President doesn’t like – his government spies on and investigates them. Ask the coal industry – Obama’s administration is unilaterally regulating it out of existence. And on, and on, and…

The FCC’s just operative Open Internet Order, with its classification of broadband as Title II common carriage and vague Internet conduct standard, sets ISPs up for FCC “gotcha” or contrived regulation and enforcement.

The appellate process will only get tougher for the FCC’s Title II Open Internet Order from here, which means both legal and electoral uncertainty over the permanence of the FCC’s net neutrality authority will only grow as the appellate process plays out and the 2016 Presidential election approaches.

Based on the latest best arguments this week from both the FCC and broadband petitioners, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is very likely to partially stay the FCC Open Internet Order’s reclassification of broadband as a Title II service and imposition of a new Internet conduct standard — in the coming weeks.