Phil Kerpen (left) waits his turn while Glenn Beck explains the Marxism connection in Net Neutrality

Glenn Beck, who is America’s biggest argument for mental health parity in health care reform, has turned his paranoid ravings to the subject of Net Neutrality, suggesting the whole concept is one giant government conspiracy to take over the Internet.  To prove the point, he brings on Phil Kerpen, policy director and master astroturfer for “Americans for Prosperity,” which should really be called “Telecom Companies for Prosperity.”

Glenn Beck believes there is a conspiracy by Obama Administration officials, working with “Marxists and Maoists,” to secretly gain control of the Internet through the implementation of Net Neutrality, and to prove it, he brings on a guy whose paycheck depends on the corporate contributions from big telecommunications companies that want him to pretend he represents actual consumers.  The real conspiracy was sitting just six feet away from Glenn, but he missed it because he was too busy rearranging pictures of Mao Tse-Tung and others on his magnetized chalkboard.

Drawing chalk lines and stacking and re-stacking pictures like some sort of deranged episode of The Hollywood Squares doesn’t actually prove a conspiracy, but I’ll take Mao Tse-Tung in the center square to block!

In a remarkably fact free ten minutes, Glenn’s photo album of the guilty got star billing, as he labeled those who personally crossed swords with Beck or Fox News as “Marxists.”  Van Jones, who founded Color of Change, the organization that coordinated an effort to strip Beck of virtually all of his mainstream paid advertisers after Beck accused President Obama of being racist against white America is there.  Rahm Emanuel and Anita Dunn, both of whom referred to Fox News as an arm of the Republican Party are there (Emanuel “is just evil, not a Marxist” according to Beck, while Dunn is a “Maoist.”)  Robert McChesney, who co-founded Free Press, one of many public interest groups fighting for Net Neutrality is there as well.  He’s the ‘real string puller and master conspirator’ here, according to Beck and Kerpen.

At times, this theater of the absurd left Kerpen with an odd look on his face, reduced to simply looking up at Beck, who spent large amounts of two segments on the all-important issue of moving and labeling pictures of his personal enemies around like a 14 year old throwing a temper tantrum.  It’s hard to argue Americans for Prosperity represents the sane position on Net Neutrality after Kerpen’s ten minute Beck Affirmation Session.

[flv width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Glenn Beck Ravings of Net Neutrality Part One 10-20-09.flv[/flv]

Part one of Glenn Beck’s rant on Net Neutrality with Americans for Prosperity’s Phil Kerpen on October 20th (6 Minutes)

When dealing with people not entirely there, sometimes it is safer to just humor them while you seek a graceful exit.  But Kerpen played along with Beck’s label gun, and as we’ve seen all year, co-opted the paranoia among some conservatives that Net Neutrality, the Fairness Doctrine, and President Barack Obama are all conspiring to silence Glenn, right wing talk radio, and sooner or later all dissent.

Beck opens the discussion by fundamentally misunderstanding the very definition of Net Neutrality.

“Net neutrality. This is that everybody should have free Internet, right?,” Beck asks Kerpen.

“Well, essentially. You know, they dress it up the way they dress up a lot of their things. They turn it upside-down by saying that evil corporations, phone and cable corporations are going to block what we can do block or we can say,” Kerpen responds.

In fact, Net Neutrality has nothing to do with giving away free access to the Internet.  It is about preserving the free exchange of ideas that would allow Glenn, and anyone else, to talk about whatever they want online without fear a broadband provider would interfere with their content, slow access to it, block it, or charge extra to make sure it gets through to people at reasonable speeds.

Beck tried to conflate Net Neutrality with a government plan to give away access to everyone at taxpayer expense.

“I don’t remember anybody saying in the 1930s that everybody had a right to radio and we gave away free radios for the government. And I don’t remember anybody in the ’50s everybody deserved a free television, but that’s where we’re headed now. So that neutrality – I want to get to that later on in the week,” Beck said.

Perhaps Beck will educate himself on Net Neutrality by that time.

Kerpen knows better, but he’s paid to distort the issue.  Stop the Cap! consumers encountered Americans for Prosperity in North Carolina this past summer who were duped to show up to support state measures restricting municipal broadband projects in the state.  They thought they were there to support a-la-carte cable programming options and to oppose Obama Administration “emergency powers” to control the Internet.  Upon learning the true nature of the legislation at hand, a number of them ended up on our side.  They hate big telephone and cable monopolies too.

Americans for Prosperity is largely funded by corporate interests, which makes it unsurprising they would echo their talking points.

Kerpen’s fear factory that Net Neutrality represents a way for government to demand balance on websites is laughable, but then we know better.  For a crowd that already believes in the basic construct of Glenn Beck’s world view, it’s entirely believable.  That’s a shame, because it is Net Neutrality that ultimately will protect their access to Glenn’s online content without blockades or extortionist pricing from broadband providers.

[flv width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Glenn Beck Ravings of Net Neutrality Part Two 10-20-09.flv[/flv]

Part two of Glenn Beck’s rant on Net Neutrality with Americans for Prosperity’s Phil Kerpen on October 20th (5 Minutes)

I like to think our issues are neither right nor left.  Net Neutrality preserves freedom of speech from provider interference whether you are Glenn Beck or Michael Moore.  Internet Overcharging costs conservatives as much money as it does liberals.

As various special interest groups and public relations firms continue their efforts to co-opt Net Neutrality into a partisan political issue, in hopes of muddying the waters and helping to engage consumers to help in its defeat, I occasionally take time out to talk to some of the opponents of Net Neutrality to understand their points of view, to engage them in a discussion deeper than the usual memes about “government control” or “takeovers,” and ask them to present their arguments opposing a measure that has support from groups across the political spectrum (Democrat Underground, MoveOn.org, AfterDowningStreet.org, and Common Cause on the left,  Glenn Reynolds, the Christian Coalition, and the Gun Owners of America on the right.)

Sometimes the discussions are illuminating, and I can respect their points of view even if I personally disagree.  Other times, rebutting an article published on another blog that elicits a two sentence reply from the author illustrates the fact many of these articles are more heat than light.  Often, an author fundamentally seems to misunderstand the basic tenets of Net Neutrality, replacing them with an odd assortment of conspiracy theories.  Other times, they are assured of their fact presentation right up until their points are debunked, at which point the only response they are capable of is a feigned complaint that you are “attacking them”… and then they attack you back.

Such is the case this evening in a debate with RedState blogger Neil Stevens, who has been on a rage (Google Undermines the Internet, On Julius Genachowski and Net Neutrality, and Google’s Non-Evil Pose: Hand Out Palm Facing Up) over Net Neutrality for several months, alternating between the belief the entire campaign is being orchestrated by Google and the one about it being a giant socialist conspiracy.

Tonight, the latest tirade, The Real Net Neutrality Astroturfers, attempts to neutralize efforts to call out Broadband for America, and other like-minded industry front groups, by suggesting Net Neutrality proponents have their own groups in the fight.  There is no doubt there are consumer groups out there that do not take a penny of industry money and support Net Neutrality.  There is also no doubt there are some companies involved in this fight on the pro-Net Neutrality side as well.  That’s hardly “breaking news.”

Stevens wants readers to accept a moral equivalency between industry-sponsored astroturf groups, supported by the very industry that seeks to throttle and overcharge for your broadband service, and consumer groups like ours (and several others) that do not take a penny of industry money, just because some big companies on the Internet share our position.

Stevens takes a wrong turn down Astroturf Alley, offering up a handful of BfA members that sound like they aren’t the astroturfing type as proof that BfA is not nearly as guilty as those big bad Net Neutrality supporter groups:

But despite such blatant falsehood, Save the Internet presses on to accuse its opposition of being ‘astroturf,’ that is, fake grassroots involvement. Now I would love for someone to accuse me of that, because I and anyone familiar with my financial situation would never stop laughing. Of course, they don’t mention the Open Internet Coalition backed by the above Internet titans, oh no. Only opponents like Broadband for America, a group promoting greater Internet access across America, gets that tag. I mean sure, when I think ‘corporate astroturf’, I think of BfA members like the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Child Safety Task Force, Hispanic Leadership Fund, the Livestock Marketing association, and the Jewish Energy Project. That’s just the corporate Axis of Evil right there, Save the Internet wants you to think.

Oh my.

I won’t bore our readers with my response to the rest of his theories about the true nature of Net Neutrality — you can follow the link and read them for yourself in the comments.  But this did represent an excellent opportunity to use the last week’s worth of research on individual BfA members to suggest Stevens might want to take a second look at his list, because most of them carry a fist full of broadband-provider-dollars or have telecom executives serving on their respective boards.  Another doesn’t even appear to exist.

But here is the illuminating part of my effort to engage with the Net Neutrality opposition:

I learned about BfA last week and saw the list of their 100 members. Most of them were obviously equipment manufacturers or telecommunications companies. But I wondered what in the world some of those public interest groups you mentioned, among others, were doing as members of this group. I spent last week researching ALL 100+ and the results are posted (on Stop the Cap!).

I could not find a single group that I could verify as representing actual consumers. Not one. The overwhelming majority of those public interest groups either received substantial funding from AT&T and/or Verizon, or had a company executive on their Board of Directors. I also found disturbing connections between several of the groups and Washington, DC lobbying and PR firms who have a habit of paying to use an organization’s name for a client’s agenda.

[…]

Odd how groups with Mission Statements that in no way relate to any of the broadband issues BfA will concern itself with: no regulation, no Net Neutrality, but yes to government handouts to providers to expand broadband, all seem to be members of this group, and often also magically chimed in on some other telecom issues, such as urging approval of Verizon’s merger with NorthPoint Communications or their buyout of Alltel.

[…]

Biggest advice I can give you is never simply take what you’re handed. Check it out yourself and be careful of hidden agendas and industry money, because it’s all over the place.

Stevens quickly responded, and I hoped it would provide for a spirited debate.  Not so much:

You can’t win the argument so you attack the speakers.

Get lost.

Although not so much a rebuttal as an indirect concession (when you can’t argue the facts, just feign you were ‘attacked’ and then attack back), in the spirit of harmony with conservative friends, Stevens and I continue to agree on one very important point: “We all need to look hard at just who is pushing this agenda….”

[Update: 2:20am — Moments before publishing this, I learned Stevens added a follow-up reply, before my account was banned:

Yeah, I’m not really going to let some fascist Obamanaut come here and start using this site to try to silence dissenters with the administration’s new FCC chairman.

Especially snotty bad faith posters like you.

Apparently on RedState, confronting inaccurate information and engaging in meaningful debate is a one-way ticket to banning.  That’s another indication of a weak argument at work — one that cannot withstand even the most basic scrutiny, without quickly getting rid of the person asking the questions.  On RedState, a ban is expressed by this error message when attempting to visit the site:

601 Database redigestation error.

I am not sure what ‘redigestation’ is, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  Stevens is, of course, free to visit Stop the Cap! and share his views without fear of immediate banning just for disagreeing with me.  I’m not afraid of his arguments.]

[Update: 1:30pm — Amusingly, as of this afternoon, my original rebuttal to Stevens was modified – it’s now white text on a white background, creating a giant white empty-appearing block.  If you attempt select the text, however, it’s all still there and becomes visible.  Evidently Stevens (or someone running the site) felt his original rebuttal wasn’t terribly effective, so “additional measures” were warranted.  An additional reply this morning dismisses the whole rebuttal as inspired by George Soros, the right’s favorite bogeyman.]

[Update: 5:13pm Friday: I hoped to have this up Thursday night, but wanted to add additional links to the article to be certain people can verify the information contained within it.  It’s on a final proofread right now and will be posted within the next two hours.]

Over the past week, I have been involved in some in-depth research on a matter that concerns me greatly — the special interest astroturfing problem.  An article that normally would have taken less than a day to write has now run close to a week, just because under every rock there is yet another special interest group, telecommunications company, or hired gun lobbyist working for what should be legitimate public interest groups.  What is even more disturbing is the apparent influence some of these groups, with yet undisclosed telecommunications company connections, have on public broadband policy, because government agencies and our elected officials do not realize they are taking input from industry-connected front groups.

The stage is being set once again this year for a public debate on issues like the National Broadband Plan, Net Neutrality, and our own battle against Internet Overcharging schemes.  Before this battle goes too far, some of the opponents working against consumer interests need to be revealed.  Therefore, a very lengthy special report is forthcoming shortly that will be required reading for any visitor to this site, so you fully comprehend what is taking place, and are well prepared to engage these groups.  We’ve already tangled with some of the astroturf groups who’ve debated us, and we’ve done so successfully.  Soon, there will be many more.  When fighting for an honest National Broadband Plan, Net Neutrality, and no Internet Overcharging schemes, this is your chance to call out the cozy little astroturfing game that has been used successfully in the past to fool legislators into believing they are doing the right thing by us, actual consumers.

I hope to wrap up work on the piece by later tonight, assuming I don’t encounter even more entanglements along the way.  This is why coverage this week has been more sparse than usual.  Hopefully after publication, you will understand why.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas)

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who often adopts anti-consumer positions on telecommunications policy, has written a so-called “killer amendment” that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing proposed Net Neutrality rules.

Her amendment, informally proposed Monday as part of a House Interior Appropriations spending measure (H.R. 2996) states:

Purpose: To prohibit the FCC from expending any funds in fiscal year 2010 to implement any Internet neutrality or network management principles, or to promulgate any rules relating to such principles.

Hutchison’s amendment has several Republican co-sponsors: John Ensign (R-Nevada), Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), David Vitter (R-Louisiana), Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina),  and John Thune, (R-South Dakota).

Hutchison released a statement explaining the amendment: “I am deeply concerned by the direction the FCC appears to be heading. We must tread lightly when it comes to new regulations. The case has simply not been made for what amounts to a significant regulatory intervention into a vibrant marketplace. These new regulatory mandates and restrictions could stifle investment incentives.”

Ensign said Net Neutrality would punish a telecommunications industry at a time when it’s managing through an economic downturn.

“Any industry that is able to thrive should be allowed to do so without meddlesome government interference that could stifle innovation,” he said.

Brownback also has a history opposing the consumer interests of his constituents.  Back in May, he penned a letter to a Stop the Cap! reader in Kansas openly favoring Internet Overcharging schemes.

Public interest groups are calling on the public to express their displeasure with the Republican senators for their opposition to Net Neutrality.

One possible explanation for the sudden, strong interest by Hutchison and other Republicans to oppose Net Neutrality can be found in their respective bank accounts.  Hutchison accepted $67,300 in campaign contributions just from AT&T, her ninth largest contributor.

Combined, AT&T donated more than $400,000 among the six Republicans opposing Net Neutrality, and one of those senators, John Thune, used to work for a DC lobbying firm that was hired by Comcast.

The details were compiled by Sam Gustin, a reporter for DailyFinance:

Over the course of his career, Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, has received $220,914 from “telephone utilities,” including some $83,130 from AT&T, his second-largest donor, in the form of employee and lobbyist donations to his campaign and political-action committees. Sprint Nextel has given Brownback $35,550 over the course of his career.

Two of the co-sponsors of the bill, Sen. David Vitter of Lousiana and Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who have both seen their reputations tarnished after sex scandals, have been on the receiving end of AT&T’s largesse. AT&T and predecessor BellSouth have donated $82,050 to Vitter’s campaigns and political-action committees. And over the last four years, AT&T has donated some $61,250 to Ensign’s campaign and political-action committees. Verizon-related entities donated $46,600 to Ensign during that period.

During that time, AT&T has donated $63,750 to the campaign and political-action committees of Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican. AT&T is DeMint’s second-largest donor.

Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican, has not received significant donations from the telecom industry since his 2006 defeat of Sen. Tom Daschle, then Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. But from 2003 to 2005, Thune served as a senior policy adviser to the D.C. lobbying firm of Arent, Fox, when its client Comcast, the largest cable company in the U.S., paid some $40,000 in fees.

[Update: Yesterday evening, Washington Post reporter Cecilia Kang reported that the Republicans were, at least for now, backing off on pushing for their amendment:

“While we are still generally opposed to net neutrality regulations, we have decided to hold off on the amendment because [FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski] approached us and we are beginning a dialogue,” said a staff member on the committee.

Hill watchers said the amendment itself represented standard operating procedure when attempting to block regulatory agency policy decisions, but characterized the Hutchison amendment’s chances of passage as remote.  Hutchison and the Republicans are in the minority in the Senate.]