In The Never-Never Land of Net Neutrality Opposition, Favored Companies Win

[Commentary] In the never-never land of the House of Representatives, where reality seldom intrudes, legislators will get around to passing legislation to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from constructing a Network Neutrality rule.

Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), one of the leading lights opposing a free, open and job-creating Internet, doesn't like the government interfering because there has been no “market failure,” as if a situation would ever be recognized as such. So Congress must act. But it’s not enough to roll back an FCC regulation that exists. The House also has to act to foreclose a FCC regulation that doesn't exist, much less any “market failure.” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has said there would be no compromise on killing Net Neutrality, has another legislative item in his FCC file: prohibiting the Commission from bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. If anything, that goal is, to use the familiar phrase, “a solution in search of a problem.” No one has even hinted at bringing back the old Fairness Doctrine, which was honored mostly in the breach even before it was killed off in 1987.