Campaign Action
The opportunity to save net neutrality still exists, at least until December 10. That's the deadline for getting House signatures on a discharge petition to bring a Congressional Review Act resolution overturning the FCC's decision to scrap open internet rules last year to the floor. The Senate passed a joint resolution doing just that in May. But right now, it's at 177 of the 218 signatures needed, and a lot of Democrats are missing.
Motherboard reviewed the campaign donations of all the Democrats who haven't signed on and, guess what: "each of the representatives has taken thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from one or more major telecom companies, including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and the National Cable Television Association (NCTA), an ISP trade group." Here they are, with their top telecom donors:
- Brendan Boyle (PA-13) - Comcast, Verizon, NCTA
- Robert Brady (PA-1) - Comcast
- G.K. Butterfield (NC-1) - AT&T and NCTA
- Matt Cartwright (PA-17) - Comcast
- Jim Costa (CA-16) - AT&T & Comcast
- Henry Cuellar (TX-28) - Verizon
- Dwight Evans (PA-2) - Comcast
- Vicente Gonzalez(TX-15) - Charter
- Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) - NCTA, Charter
- Gene Green (TX-29) - Verizon
- Tom O'Halleran (AZ-1) - NCTA
- Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-7) - Comcast (Rep. Scanlon was only recently sworn in)
- David Scott (GA-13) - AT&T
- Brad Schneider (IL-10) - Verizon
- Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-9) - Comcast
- Filemon Vela (TX-34) - Verizon, NCTA
- Pete Visclosky (IN-1) - Verizon and NCTA
- Frederica Wilson (FL-24) - Comcast
A few of those names are going to be familiar for having been in the news lately as part of the No Labels/Problem Solvers blackmail attempt to keep power for Republicans under the new House Democratic majority. For example, the leader of the gang Gottheimer and pals Costa, O'Halleran, Schneider, and Sinema—the newly elected senator from Arizona who needs to get on board with her new colleagues.
Who could imagine that among the big telecom groupies refusing to fight for net neutrality are would be some of the same people who are so committed to helping out their corporate pals.