It's frustrating to see state Sen. David Osmek blatantly parroting Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's line on net neutrality with a fake-moral-outrage twist ("Net neutrality opinion attempts to rewrite history," editorial counterpoint, Dec. 22). Like the mere 1 in 4 Republicans who support Pai's decision, Osmek tries to paint a doctrine of fairness as some sort of anti-market liberal plot. His counterpoint is laden with fallacy. Obviously if throttling and blocking hasn't happened before, then it never will happen, right?
And Osmek's clincher? Trying to tie the thing to U.S. Sen. Al Franken. He pretty much ends the whole commentary on the note of "Sen. Franken's actions are so disgusting, you should find net neutrality disgusting, too!"
Well, I'm even more disgusted with Pai's disregard for the overwhelming public support for net neutrality. He's made it obvious by now that the only reason he had a comment period was to try to drum up support for the decision he was going to make anyway. Most of all, I'm disgusted with the actions of his boss, our bully-and-harasser-in-chief, who supports him on this issue and whose actions toward dozens of individuals make Franken's misdemeanors pale in comparison. Is this enough to disgust you over your anti-consumer position, Sen. Osmek?
Paul F. Villerius, Minneapolis
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Osmek states: "Despite virtually no evidence of an actual threat to our free and open internet, net neutrality proponents cleverly led a misleading public relations campaign." This is patently false. Here is only a handful of net neutrality violations that occurred pre-2015:
• In 2005, Comcast began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network.
• From 2007 to 2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing internet phone services on the iPhone.
• From 2011 to 2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service they were developing.