Today's Corporate Media Hype is Only The BEGINNING Of What Big Corporate Intends For America [View all]

Last edited Wed Jul 10, 2024, 01:32 PM - Edit history (1)

Techdirt: The Corrupt Supreme Court Makes A Reckless Mess Of Broadband Consumer Protection (And Everything Else)
from the look-kids,-we're-dismantling-the-federal-government dept
Tue, Jul 9th 2024 05:25am - Karl Bode

The Supreme Court issued a recent ruling that ... dismantled decades of precedent and puts nearly all regulatory enforcement efforts at risk, yet it somehow barely warranted much coverage by a largely disinterested, billionaire-owned U.S. press...sold as some sort of noble, good faith rebalancing of power by industry, but the Loper Bright v. Raimondo ruling eliminates Chevron deference and upends the major questions doctrine...

You can already routinely see how hard it is for a U.S. regulator like the FCC, whose domain is telecom and (some) media, to pass even fairly-feckless policy choices without them being sued into oblivion. Even where they’re ... within their Congressional mandate...But even the existing corrupt, feckless mess that passes for coherent consumer protection in telecom is about to be upended by unelected [Republican] minority keen on dismantling the regulatory state on behalf of corporations looking to eliminate ... meaningful oversight...
Corporations didn’t lobby the unelected Supreme Court because they were just super concerned about the balance of policy power among “unelected bureaucrats.” They did it because they know they’ve already lobbied Congress into absolute, corrupt dysfunction on nearly all meaningful reform and corporate oversight. Now they’re taking aim at the already shaky authority of U.S. regulators.
All during the net neutrality debate you saw some variation of the claim that “if we want net neutrality protections, Congress should just pass a law.” This was usually made by companies like AT&T who know full well they’ve ensured that Congress is a corrupt, feckless mess. Now they’ve ensured regulators often can’t implement reforms without the explicit instruction of a Congress too corrupt to function. ...This is not a good faith effort at meaningful reform of policy power, and you don’t drop rulings like this the Friday before a major holiday because you’re proudly attempting to serve the public interest.

Once corporate America has the federal regulatory state handcuffed and neutered, they’ll shift their collective attention and resources toward undermining state rights. This is the culmination of a 50+ year Republican effort to dismantle coherent federal corporate oversight and accountability. All fights, on everything, are now local. And which state you currently live in matters more than ever. The goal isn’t some noble defense of freedom or constitutional balance. The goal is legal gridlock ... near-zero meaningful oversight of giant corporations. And there are decades upon decades of evidence as to precisely how that’s going to go for everybody without a seven figure lobbying budget.

And again, we’re not just talking about telecom or your expensive broadband bill. We’re talking about entirely new, bottomless legal fights over every last regulatory policy that impacts your everyday life. Every reform and every effort by every regulator governing every sector in the U.S. is going to be inundated with lawsuits by corporations claiming regulators lack the authority to do anything ... This intentional fracturing of coherent federal regulatory authority also comes as we collectively face unprecedented chaos caused by a destabilizing climate that’s only just getting started.

https://www.techdirt.com

EDIT: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/07/09/the-corrupt-supreme-court-makes-a-reckless-mess-of-broadband-consumer-protection-and-everything-else/