Why Did Strong Democrats Vote Against Net Neutrality

Rarely, if ever, will you find me or other lefty bloggers in Texas saying anything bad about Congressmen Gene Green (D-Houston) and Charlie Gonzales (D-San Antonio).

By and larger, they are among our party’s standard bearers in the Texas Delegation. And, following the Tom DeLay-engineered redistricting of 2003, these folks are among the few true voices Texans have left in Congress.

That’s why I am so, so, so puzzled by the fact that they both voted against the Markey Amendment today (both sit on the House’s Energy & Commerce Committee).

Sean-Paul Kelley over at The Agonist made an interesting point, though, one worth mentioning here.

We Democrats are always up in arms because Republicans, instead of voting their constituants, are voting for dollars—their dollars, i.e. campaign contributors.

I’ve always felt Democrats were above that and, by and large, we are.

That’s why I was shocked to learn that Charlie Gonzales had accepted nearly $60,000 in campaign money from telecom giant and Network Neutrality opponent AT&T:

The Markey Amendment would have prevented AT&T (who has given Charlie almost $60,000 in campaign donations) from creating a “Tony Soprano model of networking, where some companies get better service than others, as Professor Tim Wu, a staunch proponent of internet freedom. Charlie voted against the amendment because he is opposed “regulating the internet.”

What’s worse is that it appears as though one of our very respected Congressman has actually become a tool of the telecom cartel, to borrow from Sean-Paul’s words:

Guess what he did later in the afternoon? He offered a telecom cartel sponsored amendment to regulate search engines! But hey, that’s not regulating the internet, right?

Except for telecom interests (AT&T is a Big Dog in Gonzales’ district), most of Congressman Gonzales’ constituants (indeed, the majority of the average folks out on the Internet) don’t support COPE—the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Efficiency Act of 2006—in its present form because it will destroy the internet as we know it.

Luckily the Gonzales amendment was defeated 11-43.  If it had been passed, as they note over at TPM Cafe, it would have required the FCC to make a study of “competition in the Internet world,” including an especially “special arrangements” between Websites and other companies:

It would be similar, he said, to the type of tie-in arrangements that proponents of Net Neutrality said will exist with telephone companies favoring content. Such arrangements between Web sites and others, Gonzales says, would make it hard for a “garage-bases startup” to make a go of it. Citing an article from Southwest Airlines’ magazine, he noted that Google gets revenue from ads tied to searches and that Yahoo is “fighting for deals.”

First of all, far be it for me to criticize, but making policy based on articles from Southwest Airlines’ in-flight magazine can hardly be a good thing. Second, we all know search engines are a business. Sure, they’ve got ads on there. On this very site, I’ve got Google ads which, I’ll admit, have not exactly provided me with a windfall of funds to support the site, but, nonetheless, I wonder if the Gonzales Amendment would have regulated things like individual bloggers making money from services like Google Ads, AdBrite, or CrispAds. It’s scary.

So, Rep. Gonzales, you’ve done a lot of good for Texas, but your vote today was against everything we’ve always thought you stood for. So, why? Why?

Tweet This Post   Ping This Post

Bookmark It