The Senate Commerce Committee released yesterday, and posted on its web site today, a Verizon-funded push-poll that not surprisingly finds 1. Most Americans want competition in cable and 2. Most Americans are opposed to “onerous” (that’s the word used by the supposedly independent “bi-partisan” write-up of the poll results) net neutrality regulations.
Now, it’s probably true that most people, in any kind of poll, would say they favor competition in the cable market. It might be true that most people wouldn’t want net neutrality if they understood the debate, but this poll sure doesn’t give even a remotely fair temperature reading on this matter.
Check out the poll’s loaded question on net neutrality:
Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:
Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV
OR
Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security for a fee
Faced with this choice, is it any surprise that 66% of the 800 registered voters surveyed (91% of whom were clueless about net neutrality) opted for the delightful delivery of benefits of new video choices over the insidious barring of cool new services such as faster broadband and better security?
The survey, conducted by not one but two bought-and-paid-for political polling firms, Public Opinion Strategies and The Glover Park Group, is just routine message manipulation by the pollsters — that’s what they get paid for, and hey, everybody has to make a living. But the fact that once again, the United States Senate is disseminating corporate propaganda on one of its most powerful committee’s web sites, funded by stiffs like you and me, should get everybody hopping mad.
There was a time when the Congress pretended, at least, to not be in the pockets of powerful interest groups. The Senate Commerce Committee has given up even a thin veneer of working for the public. It’s working for Verizon now.
I’d feel this way if the Committee had posted a Google-sponsored poll on its web site, pitching the opposite position. If the political process has become so bad that even pretense of independent-minded lawmaking is too much work, we’re all in trouble.
All of this shameless propagation of corporate-sponsored lobbying dreck reflects nothing other than last-ditch desperation by Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK), who is almost out of time to pass his telecom reform bill before this Congress is history. After intensive lobbying, Senator Stevens still doesn’t have the 60 votes he needs to shut down a filibuster on the bill.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:00 PM|Comments(0)
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