Tea Partiers Say Net Neutrality Hurts Freedom

Hmmm....so the TPers do organizing via the internet, yet they want the big telcos to set up 2 versions...one where you pay for better access, and the other which is, basically, crap?

Methinks they want it both ways. And, of course, being hypocritical at the same time.

There nuts... It seems to me that Google and Verizon's proposition constitutes restraint of trade.

"There are so many assaults on individual liberties -- the EPA, net neutrality, cap-and-trade, card-check; the list goes on -- that sometimes the Tea Party doesn't know where to start its battles."

Good lord. When will these people realize that corporations are not individuals? They conflate personal interests with business interests, and that is why we need strong consumer protection from the government.

Can't be nice about this one. Too much at stake. These people are incredibly gullible and stupid.

Wait till they find out that some ISPs may be owned by (*gasp*) liberals! Then the teabaggers will suddenly decide that they LURVE them some government regulation...

How did you find a picture of a conservative blogger without Cheeto stains on his fingers?

Since it is missing from this article, can someone take a whack at a rational argument for how net neutrality threatens to limit (rather than promote) "free speech"? I just want to figure out what its opponents are actually arguing. What, for instance, is this notion that the government will regulate access based on a subjective determination of "fairness"?

I thought the goal of net neutrality (about which I admittedly know little) was to ensure that the internet remains an "open common," equally accessible to all comers. I suspect everyone here does, too, but I'm curious to figure out what the other side is saying.

Tea baggers insistents on self-fucking knows no bounds

It is definitely better for corporations to rape us than for the government to enforce fair and equal access.

Tea baggers are clearly on the side of freedom.

How long before the teabaggers rename 'net neutrality'. Something along the lines of renaming the estate tax as the DEATH tax!

Sure net neutrality could be interpreted as gov't interference, but is ALL gov't interference bad? NO! Gov't interferred and said that slavery was wrong! Gov't inteferred and said that child labor was wrong! Gov't interferred and told food manufacturers that they couldn't place poisons into foods, is THAT wrong? Gov't interferred and made sure that the elderly had health care. Is THAT wrong? ("Don't touch my Medicare!")

Not all gov't interference is bad!! Repubs have been very successful in convincing some people that gov't is BAD! That perception needs to be changed and talking about how it can be needed and good is a start!

Sure net neutrality could be interpreted as gov't interference, but is ALL gov't interference bad? NO! Gov't interfered and said that slavery was wrong! Gov't interfered and said that child labor was wrong! Gov't interfered and told food manufacturers that they couldn't place poisons into foods, is THAT wrong? Gov't interfered and made sure that the elderly had health care. Is THAT wrong? ("Don't touch my Medicare!")

Not all gov't interference is bad!! Repubs have been very successful in convincing some people that gov't is BAD! That perception needs to be changed and talking about how it can be needed and good is a start!

The problem is that the Tea Party folks are morons and don't understand the issue at all. This should be a slam dunk for them but they are too stupid to get it.

These guys are a corporate PR firms wet dream. They are loud and believe absolutely anything someone tells them. So it's much safer to have corporations regulate themselves (aka no regulation) than to have the government regulate them? Didn't we already learn how wrong this argument was after the 2007 sub prime mess we are still recovering from?

This issue makes no sense for the TEA Party. So far away from making sense in fact that I suspect it to be the result of the public relations/marketing departments of the big telecom/cable companies.

Think about it. Plant the seed, couch it in terms of *Freedom* and the TEA Partyers will run with it, creating lots of opposition to a cause, net neutrality, which is clearly a public good, and a benefit to their own movement.

Proof certain these fools are shills for major corporations.

Worse is they will cut their own throat for these corporations and get nothing in return but a higher bill and poor internet service for all of us.

Extending the anti-net neutrality logic, they should be against government neutrality re any speech or assembly. Why not have corporations own street corners so that I can't stand up on my own soap box? I mean they already want to privatize most government services.

It used to be that Adam Smith capitalists saw the government as a referee ensuring free access to markets, but the Tea Party appears to be in favor of oligopoly.

Is anyone surprised? They don't have the vaguest notion of what "net neutrality" is, but if the Obama administration is for it, they're against it.

The Internet (btw...created by wasteful government spending) was setup to be an open and "neutral" infrastructure where anyone and everyone has equal access.

The past ten years has the private sector wanting to change that with multi-tiered MPLS style internet services. AT&T figures that their voice business is going to continuously shrink, they need to squeeze more money out of the internet... but that pesky FCC is preventing them from artificially limiting access and then charging more for priority.

It's simple to see what Net Neutrality is all about by seeing who is funding the campaign against it. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cisco, Juniper, HP. All companies who will take advantage of the average internet user.

And the Tea Party isn't a front to corporations... ha!

Net neutrality DOES hurt freedom, the freedom of the Tea Baggers and the Republican party to spout whatever bullshit they chose without repercussions!

Let's me see if I understand this: they view government regulations restricting discriminatory practices as slavery but arbitrary, unfettered corporate tiered price controls as freedom?

Oh, that makes sense.

That these teabaggers have not protested in vain:

Internet of the dollar, by the dollar, and for the dollar, shall not perish from this earth!

I love the smell of astroturf in the morning........

Every time one of these people opens his or her mouth, I immediately think of the Steely Dan album PRETZEL LOGIC.

If one need any further evidence of the fact that the Tea Party exists for the express purpose of contrarianism, this should provide it. These people stand for nothing except to oppose everything.

Corporate control of the Internet is free speech. WTF?

Oh. My. Gawd.

These people are truly idiots. I mean there is one thing to be ignorant due to a lack of education on the subject matter, but these people seem to be willfully ignorant.

*If the government is involved, it MUST be bad!*

I know that part of the government's job seems to be to save people from themselves (seatbelt laws), but what do you do with adults who not only don't want to be saved from themselves, but want the rest of the nation to suffer the same fate?

How does a campaign based on FEAR and HATRED do so well in this nation?!?

Right-wing morons advocating against their own interests because a corporation tells them to.

No news here.

The Tea Party would cut off their own legs if the gubmint started a "free shoes" program. Which is basically what they're doing now on this net neutrality issue.

Tea Party, oh Tea Party, what next?
It can be safely stated that the Tea Party is just another branch of the Republican Party. They are the New John Birch Society. Scared of their own shadow.

Maybe they'll start their own internet and hope that the "free market" will prevent Comcast from throttling their bandwidth.

Wait a minute! You know, these guys are right. Net neutrality does hurt freedom. It hurts the freedom of the telcoms to maximize their profits! Why have I been so blind. I may be a telcom some day (regulated industries BTW), so I certainly don't want to be restricted. Well, maybe they could enforce net neutrality just until I get my telcom started (wouldn't want the others to be able to box me out), and then take it away. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I often check out the Freepers to get an idea of what the teapartiers are thinking; I think there's a lot of crossover in the user base. Here's a thread on the subject, which makes their perspective clear: a) if Obama and liberals like it, they don't; and b) any government control of anything is bad. I know it sounds patronizing to say that the other side just doesn't understand the specifics of an argument, but I find that unavoidable -- Net Neutrality benefits all consumers, and would seem to be immune to this kind of political divide. Then again, the anti-healthcare-bill rallies were full of tea partiers holding up signs with slogans completely aligned with health insurance companies' values, so who knows.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2536501/posts

I'm not getting it... this makes no sense whatsoever. Whatever is motivating these Tea Bagger people you cannot believe Version, AT&T or apparently Google has the public's best interest at heart.

The answer to crowding on wireless cell phone bands is to build infrastructure, new towers and wifi-hotspots, not to set up toll roads. The telcos can step up and build that infrastructure or other companies will.

In case you believe that the "libruls like it so I hate it" characterization is a caricature, this is from the FREEPER page:

"To: butterdezillion

I’m a little tech savvy, but I haven’t been following this - however:

1. All of my liberal friends are for this
2. The Obama Administration is for it

Personally, that’s all the information I need to be against it.

17 posted on Thursday, June 17, 2010 9:05:28 AM by Noamie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]"

In all seriousness, their logic is identical to classic Libertarian Catch 22 failure.

They oppose the government involving themselves in regulating business and thus restricting free speech, (Google and Verizon in this case) even if it means the lack of government oversight allows Google and Verizon to limit and restrict the business capacity and speech of other businesses and individuals.

It's like supporting the Civil Rights Act while accepting blatant discrimination to ensure pure freedom in the course of doing business.

The teadopes can be & are easily coaxed into anything. Underneath the cloud that they reside in, is the one true ambition of, Get the Black, not right-wing crazy, smarter than us, President, out of office. Many of them know this going in, but the majority of the dopes are just mesmerized into following a path that, although self-destructive, they gradually follow, out of sheer ignorance & an inability to think for themselves. Hello Dick Army & Faux news.
You know, it's fun to be in a group & invited to a party.

They have it backwards (as always). Supporters of net neutrality often suggest that it's smaller sites like these that would suffer the most under the tiered Internet plan ISPs are expected to establish if no government rules require them to treat all Internet traffic equally.

That is right. Google and Verizon will squash them.

Teapartiers are idiots!

http://suspiciouspackaging.blogspot.com/2010/08/tea-party-hypocrites.html

Seems like we ought to teach the righties a lesson, and remove neutrality from our highways.

That is, dictate the right of way upon our streets and highways based upon how much money the individual or corporation has.

lolll...that'd be funny; it would be like Asia thirty years ago, when you'd see people splattered all over the sides of trucks and buses.

TPM please stop devoting so much time in covering these clearly misguided fools. The tea party is band of rag tag idiots with no real political platform. Hell might as well cover the anarchist movement this much if you are going to follow groups that have no real political power.

Teabaggers are basically racists, xenophobes, religious bigots, ultra-right wing extremists, fascists, uneducated yokels, and reactionaries.

My fave is that the proposed regs skip mobile sources entirely, which will end up being:
a) 25%
b) 50%
c) 99%
of personal traffic in five years.

Hint: I'm betting it's c), which explains why these regs are not being fought by the big boys.

This is an absolute joke. Net neutrality PROTECTS your freedoms to browse the web freely without any restrictions from the provider.

Just more proof that the teabaggers are nothing more than useless idiots and they would be the thing that they rail against; fascists who would have made up the people that helped Hitler attain and maintain power. It really doesn't matter however, I doubt that most of the trailer-parks that they live in get broad-band anyways.

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Another issue on which tea baggers demonstrate their ignorance. Corporate mafia in action.

This is why I say the reason so-called "conservatives" (Republicans, Libertarians, the Tea Party, etc.) express a distaste for licking the government boot is that they want to lick expensive Italian leather shoes instead. ALL must be sacrificed to the corporate idol, even a globe-girdling free market like the net (And no, corporations and "free markets" are NOT synonymous).
I've suspected this for a long time, but "conservative" ideas regarding internet "management" have made this clearer than ever.