Fabricating a broadband problem to justify more regulation/taxation/spending

Net neutrality proponents continue to fabricate problems to manipulate public policy to promote government intervention and regulation over free markets.

• They fabricated a non-existent problem that broadband companies wanted to block, degrade and impair users access to the content of their choice.
• Totally bogus. They have produced no evidence to back up their fabricated problem.
• They are up to their old tricks again, trying to fabricate a problem that the US is falling behind on broadband. See Steve Levy's "hook-line-and-sinker" take on US broadband standing in the world in Newsweek.
• This is a fabricated bogus "problem" as well.
• They only cite a biased OECD study that claims the US is 24th in the OECD, but don't mention any of the many counter-arguments why that "study" is way off the mark.
• FCC Commissioner McDowell recently did a great job discrediting the very flawed methodology that the OECD used.  
• The OECD report is a classic example of "How to lie with statistics."
• There is also never a mention by net neutrality proponents of the competing broadband ranking study by The Economist's Intelligence Unit which ranks the US #2 in Internet/broadband in the world.

Fortunately net neutrality proponents have failed miserably in their efforts to date. 

• They know they have lost the debate on the merits of the argument of competition vs regulation.
• None of their Hill supporters are willing to push net neutrality legislation because they know they will get beat on the policy merits and in votes.  
• More evidence of their weakness is that they have changed their issue branding from "net neutrality" to "open access" and "open Internet." 
• Even more evidence of their weakness is that the corporate coalition backing net neutrality fell apart when Microsoft and Yahoo left in the fall.
• Further evidence of their weakness is that the remaining companies feel the need to inflate and misrepresent the size of their remaining group, the Open Internet Coalition.
• It shouldn't surprise anyone that the folks who fabricate issues and problems have no problem claiming to be a 54 company coalition when 29 of the supposed member "companies" are just wholly-owned subsidiaries of Google, eBay and IAC.
• Bogus accounting for the lead organization promoting a bogus policy issue and a bogus broadband problem should surprise no one.  

As I discussed above, their current game is to fabricate a new problem, that they can't prove, that the US is falling behind other nations in broadband penetration and speed.

• They want to rig the debate by passing legislation that redefines broadband to fiber-like speeds so they can then claim that the US has a broadband monopoly with no competition and terrible "broadband fiber" penetration.
• This is all so they can justify a new "national broadband strategy" that has the government playing the central role in broadband/Internet not the free market.
• What is amazing is how little these broadband critics say about what they would do differently policy-wise to encourage more and faster broadband.
• The reason they are silent on this point is that they want to:
• Regulate the Internet for the first time;
• and raise taxes to fund more government spending on broadband subsidies.

It will be interesting to see how long net neutrality proponents can continue to bob and weave and avoid disclosing their true policy intentions.

• They don't want to talk about what they would do differently policy-wise, (more regulation, taxation and spending) because they know how few Americans would support them if they were forthright.