US Senate Manages Non-Debate Democracy Corporatacracy Fast-Track TPP Advancement Bill Fiasco Approach

""The decision on whether to surrender the authority of the US Congress to amend and potentially improve trade agreements goes to the very heart of whether the United Statesrespects democracy. If members of the House and Senate cannot check and balance executive branch choices that will define the economic future of the country, then the ability of the American people to petition for the redress of economic and social grievances and to have those grievances addressed by their elected representatives is severely undermined. That is what is at stake with debates about whether to eliminate basic congressional oversight of trade deals, via the “fast track” Trade Promotion Authority that President Obama seeks.

The vote Thursday by the Senate to shut down debate on a measure to provide Obama with this authority was the first step in the deconstruction of the democratic processes by which citizens can influence not just trade but economic policy. If the Senate now approves fast track, and if the House goes along with the plan, then the ability to alter or improve sweeping new trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be lost. All that will remain is a take-it-or-leave-it vote on final approval of a deal negotiated behind closed doors and without adequate scrutiny by the American people or their elected representatives.

It came when 13 Democrats joined 49 Republicans in supporting a cloture motion Thursday. Thirty-one Democrats, two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and five Republicans opposed the move to shut down debate about amendments and to effectively restrict meaningful discourse on what the measure’s sponsor, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, described as “quite possibly the most important debate that we’ll have all year in Congress.”

Among the senators who are current or potential presidential prospects, Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, voted “no,” as did Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts. So, too, did Senator Rand Paul, R-Kentucky. But Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida sided with the Obama White House and the corporate interests that have advocated aggressively for fast track and the TPP.

The Senate’s 62-38 decision to end debate on the president’s proposal to fast-track what could be the largest trade deals in American history was a travesty.""

http://www.thenation.com/blog/207921/no-debate-equals-no-democracy-folly-fast-track

The Dragnet Surveillance Program, NSA's Gem of Tracking World Phone Telecommunications, at an End?

""Congress is up against a tight deadline to extend or reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the provision that the government claims authorizes the National Security Agency’s phone-data program, before it sunsets on June 1. Naturally, the legislature is in a state of disarray.

The House has already passed the USA Freedom Act, which would put modest limits on the intelligence agency for the first time in decades. Now the Senate is under pressure to act before lawmakers leave for recess Thursday afternoon. If they do nothing, Section 215 will expire hours before they return to Washington, imperiling not only the phone records program but whatever other still-secret intelligence-gathering activities the government conducts under the statute.

The USA Freedom Act is hardly radical. One of its main components—mandating that phone companies store phone records instead of the government—was initially suggested by former NSA Director Keith Alexander, and it’s been endorsed by President Obama. But a major blockage to the reform bill has been Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who proposed instead to extend the current version of Section 215 for five years, and then last week offered a two-month extension. GOP leadership in the House indicated that an extension of any length was a non-starter and that they would not wait around while the Senate hemmed and hawed. In other words, McConnell could accept the USA Freedom Act, or nothing.

On Tuesday McConnell retreated slightly, and announced that he would allow a vote on the reform bill. It isn’t clear if it has the 60 votes needed to pass; McConnell seemed to be betting that it would fail and Congress might then accept a short-term extension rather than letting Section 215 expire completely.

Things got even more dramatic on Wednesday afternoon, when Rand Paul showed up to stage a “filibuster.”At the time of this writing Paul is speaking on the Senate floor, but it’s not totally clear what he’s doing there. It’s not technically a filibuster, and the first thing it disrupts will likely be work on the fast-track trade bill. There’s some speculation that Paul is trying to run out the clock in order to block both a clean extension of Section 215 and the USA Freedom Act, which he opposes on the grounds that it does not go far enough (as do some civil-liberties groups). Whatever his other goals are, it’s definitely at least partly a campaign stunt. “As you read this, I will be on the Senate floor to launch my filibuster to stop ANY extension or reauthorization of the ‘PATRIOT Act’s’ unconstitutional and illegal domestic spying programs,” he wrote to donors.

Oregon Senator and NSA critic Ron Wyden joined Paul on the floor, where he promised “to use every procedural tool available to me” to prevent an extension of the bulk-phone-records program. Wyden also criticized supporters of surveillance programs for waiting until the last minute and then claiming, “‘Oh my goodness! It is a dangerous world! We’ve got to continue this program to protect us.’” As he and Paul chatted, Wyden suggested that they could continue indefinitely.""

http://www.thenation.com/blog/207857/patriot-act-fight-enters-twilight-zone

Obama's Lobbying on the Trans-Pacific Trade Deal (TPP) So Far Rejected on Senate Floor

""President Obama takes it personally when Americans disagree with his free-trade fundamentalism. He keeps griping about the Democrats who usually support his agenda but are ardently opposed to his request for “fast-track” authority to bypass congressional input and oversight on a sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

The president has from the start of the debate over fast track and the TPP had a practical problem: If most congressional Democrats align with labor, environmental and human rights activists rather than the White House --  as they appear intent upon doing — they can block Obama's trade agenda. In the Senate, just 40 votes are required to erect a procedural barrier to fast-track legislation. In the House, a reasonably united Democratic caucus could align with the significant number of Republicans who have traditionally opposed unrestricted free trade to thwart fast track and/or the TPP itself.

On Tuesday, the first major test came in the Senate, and the president lost. Sixty votes were required to open a debate on fast track, but only 52 senators voted to go forward. Forty-two Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats, Vermont's Bernie Sanders and Maine's Angus King, voted "no."

The trade fight is not finished; negotiations with Senate Republicans who favor Obama's agenda could make the fast-track proposal more attractive to at least a few wavering Democrats. And if that happens, expect Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to exercise the option he has retained to bring the issue up again.

Unless and until that happens, however,  the president has taken a hard hit. It happened because a number of traditionally pro-free trade Democrats, who had been expected to vote with Obama and the Republicans, joined with the Senate's growing caucus of fair-trade Democrats to block action.

This was what the president feared would happen.

In the run-up to Tuesday's vote, the president made no secret of his frustration with his fellow Democrats.

“There have been a bunch of critics about trade deals generally and the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” he told the crowd that was assembled last week for his appearance at the corporate headquarters of Nike, a US-based firm that (with its contractors) now employs roughly 40 overseas workers for every one American. “[What’s] interesting is typically they’re my friends coming from my party."

Instead of listening to their objections, however, Obama simply announced that he was right and the Democrats who have backed him on so many other issues were wrong.

The problem is that has "evidence" the president has mustered on behalf of fast track and the TPP is unconvincing. In part that's because, as Bernie Sanders warned with regard to proponents of free-trade deals during Tuesday's Senate debate, "These folks have been proven wrong time after time after time." But there is also the fact that the current promises are so hollow. Consider the case of Nike and that 40-1 ratio. Even if every promise about the benefits of free trade and the TPP were to come true—an exceptionally unlikely prospect if the history of trade pacts is any guide—the ratio of overseas workers to Americans employed by Nike and its contractors would shift to somewhere in the range of 30-1. That best-casescenario, everyone admits, would take more than a decade to be achieved. And, though fewer admit it, much of the new employment would likely involve technical workers developing automated production schemes that reduce rather than increase living-wage employment in the US and abroad.

These are points that foes of Trade Promotion Authority and the TPP have made in precise and thoughtful detail, and with substantial support from economists and policy analysts.

Yet, Obama has dismissed those who disagree with him as somehow wrongheaded and ignorant. “[What’s] interesting is typically they’re my friends coming from my party,” he said of the fast-track and TPP critics. “And they’re my fellow travelers on minimum wage and on job training and on clean energy and on every progressive issue, they’re right there with me. And then on this, they’re like whupping on me.”

Why does the president think this is so? “[On] this issue, on trade,” he says, “I actually think some of my dearest friends are wrong. They’re just wrong.”

Obama’s criticisms of fellow Democrats, which became more and more intense as Tuesday's Senate vote approached, disregarded not just the honest concerns of Democratic members of the House and Senate but the sincere objections of union members, environmentalists, civil-rights and human-rights activists.

Ultimately, the president's approach harmed his own credibility, as his comments created the impression that he was unaware of the long experience, and the deep insight, possessed by progressive critics of free-trade absolutism. The largest and steadiest public-education project on a major economic issue in modern history has played out over the past quarter-century in union halls and church basements and community centers across the country, as Americans have wrestled with the promises and realities of trade policy.

The people the president keeps saying are “wrong”—a group that includes Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Sanders and most House Democrats -- are not unthinking protectionists or crude isolationists. They are supporters of workers, the environment, and human rights in the United States and abroad. They have come to recognize that, while fair trade holds immense promise, free trade along the lines the United States has practiced it in recent decades has done immense damage.

The most ardent opponents of fast track and the TPP have first-hand experience with failed trade policies. They have seen what the North American Free Trade Agreement, the permanent normalization of trade with China and other trade arrangements have done to their communities.Their current position is rooted in an understanding that, as Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison (a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and an early supporter of Obama’s 2008 presidential run) says, “We cannot afford to rush through another NAFTA that values corporate profits above families.”

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama visited many of those communities and stood side-by-side with many of the leading opponents of ill-conceived and poorly administered trade agreements. He decried “a Washington where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who’ve seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear…”

Now, Obama suggests that those he sided with in 2008 are clueless in 2015.

That is not the case.

“American workers have seen the effects of unfair foreign trade on their jobs and manufacturing facilities—they don’t need their elected leaders making personal attacks on each other during an important policy debate,” says Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who remembers when Obama stood with the critics of failed free-trade policies.

“During the 2008 presidential primary, I watched President Obama argue in Cleveland that we should renegotiate NAFTA. Instead, we’ve seen more empty promises of jobs through exports while American workers are hit with a flood of imports and jobs shipped overseas,” says Brown. “It’s clear that the American public doesn’t support these trade deals and I am disappointed the president has resorted to name calling in an attempt to shift the debate.”

Brown’s opposition to fast track and the TPP is inspired by what he has seen happen to Ohio communities like his hometown of Mansfield, and in statistics that confirm the failure of trade deals to live up to promises made by Republican and Democratic presidents:

The Obama Administration predicted that the South Korea Free Trade Agreement would create 70,000 jobs and deliver up to $11 billion in exports. Instead, it only increased U.S. exports to Korea by $1 billion, while Korean imports have skyrocketed to more than $12 billion. The growing good trade deficit with Korea has eliminated over 75,000 jobs in the last three years.

The U.S. already has a trade deficit with Japan and 10 other countries included in the TPP. Since 1997, the deficit with these countries has increased by $151.4 billion.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, a Democrat who has worked on trade policy since the 1980s, explains that the president’s suggestion that his critics do not understand the issue is “absolutely inaccurate.”

“We know exactly what we’re talking about,” says Slaughter, the daughter of a coal miner who has charted trade-related factory closings and job losses in her upstate New York district for decades. “My concern is that he does not understand what’s in it.""

http://www.thenation.com/blog/206897/why-so-many-democrats-rejected-obamas-lobbying-trans-pacific-trade-deal

Gun Restrictions and Ammo Bans!: US Congress Facilitates Shady Moves Against the American People

ACTION: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Orrin Hatch may soon give the President authority to write gun control restrictions into a “trade agreement.” So click here to contact your Senators –- whether they are liberal or conservative. Urge them to vote against the anti-gun “fast track” bill (S. 995).

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Will UN-style gun control be rammed down our throats?

""Gun import bans ... Microstamping of firearms ... Ammunition bans ... The full implementation of the anti-gun UN Arms Trade Treaty ... Illegal amnesty which locks in millions of new, anti-gun voters.

This anti-gun wish list could be part of the secret trade agreement that President Obama is getting ready to spring on the Congress.

This trade pact is called “fast track,” and what it means is that Obama can write any form of gun control he chooses into a trade agreement -- import bans, amnesty, etc.

And this agreement DOESN’T need two-thirds vote in the Senate, as a treaty would. When completed, the agreement is merely subject to a majority vote in both Houses ... it can't be filibustered ... it can't be amended ... and the GOP can't refuse to consider it.

Top Secret TPP means you won’t know what’s in the bill

Reports have already surfaced that the TOP SECRET draft contains a whole chapter with a European Union-style provision allowing unlimited migration from Mexico into the United States. This would fulfill Obama’s dream -- which he begun with Executive Amnesty -- to import millions of new anti-gun (liberal) voters into the country.

Of course, we can't quote for you any of the language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement because the document is TOP SECRET. Obama won't reveal it, even to most congressmen, until Congress has given it its imprimatur by allowing it to pass under fast track procedures.

On Monday, Politico reported:

If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.

If you’re a [congressional] member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.

And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.

Truly, even more than with ObamaCare, this is a case of "You have to pass it to find out what's in it."

Some Republicans are being duped

But that's not all: The fast track authority being granted to Obama and his successor for the next six years applies to whatever type of trade negotiation Obama chooses to enter into.

So, if he can write the UN Arms Trade Treaty into a trade agreement, then it can't be filibustered or amended or prevented from consideration.""

http://www.gunowners.org/alert5072015.htm

US Army Recruiting Illegal Immigrants by the Border Truckload

""The Pentagon is speeding up its recruitment of illegal immigrants in a program that fast-tracks them to U.S. citizenship, as Congress debates allowing the military to do so.

Since January, the Pentagon has enlisted 81 illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and qualify for President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, according to figures provided by the Army on Thursday. 

Between January and April 8, only 43 had been enlisted, an Army spokesman said.

Since then, at least 38 more recruits have signed up. 

But in Congress, members are debating whether illegal immigrants should lawfully be allowed to join the armed forces. 

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a Marine veteran and son of Hispanic immigrants, inserted a provision in the 2016 defense policy bill that would encourage the Defense secretary to consider qualified illegal immigrants as "vital" to national security. 

The House is scheduled to debate the bill next week, but some House Republicans, led by Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), are trying to strip the provision, arguing it endangers the measure's passage.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said he will propose an amendment during consideration of the bill to remove the provision if it has not already happened by then. 

Gallego's plan could help pave the way for more DACA participants to be recruited through a Pentagon program known as the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, or MAVNI. 

That program was created for legal immigrants with medical training or critical language skills deemed vital to the national security, according to its creator, retired Lt. Col. Margaret Stock. 

The MAVNI program stalled last year after the Pentagon last September extended eligibility to qualified illegal immigrants, since the program was not designed to accept people without legal documents. 

This year, the Pentagon expanded the number of slots available from 1,500 to 3,000, and is slated to expand that number to 5,000 in October. 

Army spokesman Wayne Hall said the 81 MAVNI enlistees have signed enlistment contracts but are not yet officially in the Army. ""

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/241338-army-speeding-up-recruitment-of-dreamers

Congress to Overturn? Thousands Call to Reverse FCC Net Neutrality Rules

""The landslide 2014 elections made crystal clear that the American people reject larger, more intrusive government,” the Web form leading to the letters says in part. “But President [Barack] Obama reacted by moving even further left, ignoring the fact the Federal Communications Commission is supposed to be an independent agency, and openly demanding the FCC take the most radical action imaginable: reducing the Internet to a ‘public utility,’ imposing sweeping new taxes and destroying private investment, competition, and innovation while putting bureaucrats firmly in control.”

The American Commitment Web page appears to overstate some information related to the net neutrality debate of the past year. The actual letters sent, in some cases, use more moderate language, but one letter calls the FCC action “reckless,” and another letter calls net neutrality supporters “extremists.”

In November, Obama called on the FCC to pass net neutrality rules that reclassified broadband as a regulated common carrier. He also noted then that the FCC is an independent agency. “Ultimately, this decision is theirs alone,” Obama said then.

And while some opponents of the FCC’s rules fear the regulations will allow new taxes on broadband and limit some private investment in broadband networks, it’s uncertain whether those predictions will come true. Some studies predicting billions of dollars in new broadband taxes tie the FCC’s net neutrality action to a separate proceeding at the agency examining whether broadband providers should pay into its Universal Service Fund. The USF is pool of money that helps subsidize telephone service and now broadband in rural areas.

Net neutrality advocates argue that the rules, prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or throttling Web traffic, will actual spur investment in Web-based services.

Still, American Commitment said it was encouraged by the response of its members. The 3-year-old organization has “never seen such an intense citizen response in opposition to a federal regulatory action,” Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment, said in a statement. 

Earlier this year, Republican leaders in Congress proposed legislation that would overturn the FCC’s reclassification of broadband as a regulated common carrier while retaining some basic net neutrality protections. With widespread opposition from Democrats, that legislation hasn’t advanced, but American Commitment said it was encouraged this week when Representative G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat, called on Congress to craft net neutrality rules.

The petitions are just one effort to overturn the rules. This month, trade group USTelecom and ISP Alamo Broadband filed lawsuits challenging the FCC’s new rules.

While American Commitment rallied opponents of the new regulations, net neutrality supporters haven’t been silent.""

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2904632/thousands-call-on-congress-to-overturn-net-neutrality-rules.html

White House 4 Sale: America is an Oligarchy, Big Banks the Criminal Syndicates

""Senior SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day surfing porn sites instead of cracking down on financial crimes
Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers watch porn instead of cracking down on unsafe conditions at nuclear plants
NSA spies pass around homemade sexual videos and pictures they’ve collected from spying on the American people

NSA employees have also been caught using their mass surveillance powers to spy on love interests, such as girlfriends, obsessions or former wives … and to eavesdrop on American soldiers’ intimate conversations with their wives back home. And see this  (“routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted” …  “‘Hey, check this out … there’s good phone sex’”)
An employee of the Transportation Security Administration admitted that TSA agents share – and laugh at – nude scans of passengers.

Investigators from the Treasury’s Office of the Inspector General found that some of the regulator’s employees surfed erotic websites, hired prostitutes and accepted gifts from bank executives … instead of actually working to help the economy

The Minerals Management Service – the regulator charged with overseeing BP and other oil companies to ensure that oil spills don’t occur – was riddled with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity”, which included “sex with industry contacts”
Agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency had sex parties with prostitutes hired by the drug cartels they were supposed to stop
Federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Secret Service investigating Bitcoin money laundering extorted and stole over $1 million in Bitcoin

Police have been busted framing innocent people
Warmongerers in the U.S. government knowingly and intentionally lied us into a war of aggression in Iraq.  The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest ranking military officer in the United States – said that the Iraq war was “based on a series of lies”. The same is true in Libya and other wars
The government lied when it said it doesn’t conduct mass surveillance on Americans, lied about the extent of the torture program, and lied when it said torture was aimed at protecting America against terrorists

The government made sure that false claims were made about the amount of oil spilled by BP in the Gulf
The government has framed whistleblowers with false evidence
The Pentagon falsely smeared USA Today reporters because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has conspired with big banks to manipulate commodities prices for decades
The government-sponsored rating agencies committed massive fraud (and see this)

The Treasury department allowed banks to “cook their books”
Regulators knew of and allowed the use of debt-hiding accounting tricks by the big banks

The Secretary of Treasury (Tim Geithner) was complicit in Lehman’s accounting fraud, (and see this)

The former chief accountant for the SEC says that Bernanke and Paulson broke the law and should be prosecuted

The government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing. See this and this. For example, the Federal Reserve turned its cheek and allowed massive fraud, and the SEC has repeatedly ignored accounting fraud. Indeed, Alan Greenspan took the position that fraud could never happen

Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy, when they were not. The Treasury Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely

A high-level Federal Reserve official says quantitative easing is “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time”
The non-partisan Government Accountability Office calls the Fed corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest. Nobel prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz says the World Bank would view any country which had a banking structure like the Fed as being corrupt and untrustworthy. The former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said said he worried that the failure of the government to provide more information about its rescue spending could signal corruption. “Nontransparency in government programs is always associated with corruption in other countries, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be here,” he said

Arguably, both the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by refusing to close insolvent banks

Congress may have covered up illegal tax breaks for the big banks
The biggest companies own the D.C. politicians.  Indeed, the head of the economics department at George Mason University has pointed out that it is unfair to call politicians “prostitutes”.  They are in fact pimps … selling out the American people for a price.""

http://www.globalresearch.ca/government-corruption-has-become-rampant-america-is-an-oligarchy/5439709

Washington D.C. Legalizes Marijuana: Thwart Attempted as Congress Crying Fowl

""Marijuana is now effectively legal in the nation’s capital even though Congress tried to stop it.

District of Columbia residents who are at least 21 years old are free to grow as many as six plants and possess as much as 2 ounces, as a measure approved by voters in November took effect Thursday. It’s still illegal to sell the drug or smoke it in public.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, allowed legalization to begin over the opposition of federal lawmakers, who have constitutional sway over the city. In December, Congress attached a provision to the U.S. budget that blocked the city from spending money to implement the measure. District officials said it doesn’t apply because the initiative was enacted before the budget. The police chief and head prosecutor agree.

“The residents of the District of Columbia spoke loud and clear,” Bowser told reporters Wednesday. “We believe that we’re acting lawfully.”

The decision thrust the city into the expanding nationwide push against marijuana prohibition. Alaska on Tuesday became the third state to legalize marijuana after Colorado and Washington. Oregon is to follow in July, when a ballot measure takes effect.

Voters in at least five states, including California, Nevada and Arizona, may consider similar measures in 2016, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based group that favors legalization.

District of Columbia officials have already decriminalized possession of as much as one ounce by reducing the penalty to a $25 fine. The step, approved last year, was aimed at concerns that drug-enforcement laws were disproportionately affecting black residents, who make up about half the city’s population of 646,000."" 

The Magic Plant

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-26/marijuana-legalized-in-u-s-capital-as-officials-thwart-congress

War Games On for a Net Neutrality Internet: Congress Always Looking Out for the Corporate Interests

""The “net neutrality” rules which seek to guarantee equal access to all online services are likely to spark fresh challenges in court and efforts in Congress to nullify or revamp the plan.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler earlier this month unveiled the plan to regulate broadband Internet service providers as “public utility” carriers, revamping the agency’s rules struck down by a federal court last year.

The rulemaking effort elicited an unprecedented four million comments, with passionate arguments on both sides about the importance of “freedom” and the need to encourage “innovation” and investment.

“This is a big step forward for consumers,” said Chris Lewis at the consumer activist lobby Public Knowledge, which has been pressing for strong net neutrality rules.

Lewis said the rules would ensure “an Internet where consumers can go anywhere they want,” without seeing services or applications blocked for competitive or financial reasons.

Senator Patrick Leahy also welcomed the effort, saying it will “ban pay-to-play deals that could strangle innovation from startups and small businesses, creating an Internet divided between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’”

The “open Internet” rules, which would become final if adopted by the five-member FCC, would bar “paid prioritization,” blocking of legal content or “throttling” — slowing a rival service which competes with one backed by the Internet provider.

- Heavy-handed regulation -

But critics say the Wheeler plan is heavy-handed, based on a 1934 law aimed at regulating phone companies, and claim it will stifle investment and cost consumers more, because broadband firms would not be able to generate revenue through special deals.

Michael Powell, head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which represents broadband cable operators, said the FCC was moving toward “onerous regulation and could well depress investment and innovation.”

Powell said the move opens the door to rate regulation despite Wheeler’s claim to steer clear of this.

Former FCC commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth said the agency faces a difficult legal path trying to classify broadband as a public utility without imposing other regulations imposed on telecom firms.

“I don’t think the commission has thought this through,” said Furchtgott-Roth, who heads the Hudson Institute’s Center for Economics of the Internet.

By selectively imposing regulations, he said, the FCC opens itself up to legal challenges.

And while FCC officials have not released details of the plan, Furchtgott-Roth said the reclassification will likely mean “billions of dollars in new fees and taxes” which would be imposed either at the federal or state level.

The FCC move also sparked criticism in the Republican-led Congress, which has the authority to nullify the rules or pass legislation to reverse some of the mandates.

Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte, head of the House Judiciary Committee, said Wheeler “overestimates the FCC’s authority to rewrite our nation’s communications laws… and ignores the fact that his net neutrality rules almost certainly will be stuck in courts for years over questions of their legality.""

A Net Behind Bars:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/fierce-battle-looms-in-congress-over-net-neutrality-rules-for-the-internet/