Sleepycatz

I am way behind on a number of posts; but this little gem on the Senate committee for Commerce, Science, & Transportation website caught my eye today: Bipartisan Poll Shows the Majority of Americans Favor Video Choice Over Onerous Net Neutrality Regulations

The word ‘onerous’ really struck me — as I’ve never seen it applied to neutrality — I mean how many onerously neutral countries are there? Anyway after reviewing the press release, it turns out that — surprise — the “bipartisan poll’ was funded by Verizon. The use of a constructed poll to get the results you want is called Push Polling. Here’s how it worked in this instance.

First question:

As best as you can say, have you read, seen or
heard anything recently about a debate occurring in Congress over
the concept of net neutrality or not?
Total
          Yes 7
          No 91
          (Don't know/refused) 2

Second Question:

Which is Most Important to You?

Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:

1) Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will
see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV

OR

2) Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers
from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security
for a fee

Total
        Delivering TV and video choice 66
        Enhancing Internet neutrality 19
        (Both) 3
        (Neither) 8
        (Don't know/refused) 4

So – people who don’t understand what net neutrality is about would like more competition and would like to pay less. Gee, people who understand and are pushing for net neutrality want that too — it just so happens that net neutrality guarantees that will happen, while the lack of it pretty much guarantees that it won’t.

Telecom companies, as I have noted many times in the past, have not and will not increased services unless they are forced to by regulation or market forces. By allowing providers to pick and choose traffic to degrade or block allows them to establish a monopoly on services such as streaming multimedia, and online gaming. By forcing the Internet to remain neutral allows for new competition and services to flourish in an open market.

How such an erroneous and clearly fallacious poll wound up on a US Senate website is one of the questions that clearly needs to be asked. At some point, we simply need to demand that our elected representatives sport sponsorship logos, like Nascar, drivers, so we can know what corporation we are voting for. Even after this doctored poll was released, Sen. (tubes) Stevens doesn’t have the necessary votes to get H.R. 5252 past a filibuster.