The Hill News

With so many Americans rightly focused on jobs and the economy, it is very possible that many people are unaware of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) scheme to impose a number of burdensome government regulations on the Internet. The move - while bad for consumers, innovation and investment - is not surprising because it is the fulfillment of a campaign promise made by President Barack Obama in 2008. Never mind that the Internet is a bright spot for our struggling economy and functioning just fine without what amounts to a federal pat-down of the inner workings of the Internet.

Federal regulation of the Internet, also known as network neutrality, has been seen as the holy grail for the media regulation obsessed left-wing special interest groups like Moveon.org, Free Press and George Soros's Open Society Institute for the latter half of the past decade. And with these and other special interests to satisfy going into a Presidential Election, it really does not matter that only 21 percent of Americans support federal regulation of the Internet over the free market or that these regulations will deter capital investment which create private sector jobs. Despite promises to change how Washington works, this is special interest policy-making 101 and to the Obama administration's FCC all other facts are seen as inconvenient truths.

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