One of the defining tenets of Republican policies is that the government should not be in the business of picking winners.  No regulation should be implemented or bill passed that inherently picks one company or another as the winner.  Exceptions are made in cases of natural monopolies, or in the national interest.

As documented by Susan Crawford in Backchannel.com in an article entitled: Handcuffing Cities to Help Telecom Giants the federal government, controlled by Republicans, and through the FCC, is attempting to curtail public rights. From the article

In other words, if a city wants to set up a fair and competitive system that favors competitors, citizens, and long-range goals instead of the interests of a single big company—well, that would be illegal. This nationwide effort is aimed at, effectively, privatizing public rights of way.

By doing this the federal government is picking the incumbents as the winners.   It is also eliminating the possibility of using the various state and local governments from exercising the concept of ‘laboratories of government and innovation’.

They are talking about small government, and freeing the nation of burdensome regulation, and then turning around and doing the opposite.  Tell your elected representative: we know what you are doing, and it is unacceptable.

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