Net Neutrality Fight Is Not About Spin

Daniel Berninger has a neat little piece up on Om Malik's site, an argument why the Bells should be FOR network neutrality.

Put simply, once the Bells stop being common carriers they lose the benefits of that status, like preferred access to utility poles and streets. Cable operators pay for this access through franchise fees, usually 5% of their revenue.

The Bells will argue they are willing to pay the fee in order to get statewide or nationwide cable franchises. And they distinguish between voice service -- which they insist still has common carrier protection -- and cable or Internet service, which they claim does not.

Yes, that's a dodge.

But it doesn't matter.

Because this fight is not about arguments. It's not even about right or wrong. It is a raw political power  play by the Bell companies, aimed at squeezing out more revenue sources from an ever-diminishing customer base.

In order to squeeze those dollars out of us, the Bells need government help to get rid of competitors (check), enable their entry into new businesses (the ostensible purpose of the Barton bill), maintain their monopoly in the last mile (partly checked), and then to squeeze both sides of every information transaction as they do with cellular (which is what the net neutrality fight is really all about).

In order to do this, the Bells have run a K Street Project which makes Jack Abramoff's efforts look like child's play. They dominate every state capitol. They control a majority of most state legislatures. They practically own powerful Congresscritters (like Barton). And they have more Astroturf organizations than Richard Mellon Scaife, all aimed at convincing the waverers (by any argument necessary) to knuckle under.

Berninger's article reminds me of why I once admired my first Washington boss, James L. Buckley (left, from about the time I knew him). Buckley, who served one term (he beat Charles Goodall, appointed by Rockefeller when Bobby Kennedy died, then was beaten by Moynihan, and it's now the Hillary Clinton seat) and eventually got a federal judgeship (he was also the Buckley in the infamous case of Buckley vs. Vallejo) had what I considered (at the time to be)  a wonderful habit of finding novel means of reaching the same conclusions as his Republican peers. But, in the end, he always reached those same conclusions. He was playing a game with argument, getting from A to B via G and thinking he was being cute.

Cute was all he was being.

In the end, it doesn't matter how you get from A to B. What matters is whether you should be going there. Arguments, no matter how tidy they may be, matter much less in politics than the application of raw power. If the cable operators and Google and Microsoft can call a halt to the Bellco train long enough for a new Congress to be elected, one which demands net neutrality and encourages competition, that means a lot more than what I or Berninger or anyone else may have to say.

If being right were all that mattered in Washington, Jimmy Carter would have served two terms.