In the overly hyperbolic world of issue advocacy, Free Press is truly the organization that would be king of inflated rhetoric.  Tim Karr’s latest post sealed the title. In response to the FCC having the audacity to meet with companies it regulates, and lend an ear to concerns about applying to the Internet a regulatory model based on 18th century railroads, Free Press says:

This is what a failed democracy looks like…

Really? A regulatory agency trying to work with companies it regulates to understand the possible consequences and formulate policy that won’t be actively harmful is what ‘failed democracy’ looks like?

[T]he mere existence of these private meetings reveals to us a chairman who has fallen far short of expectations. Instead Genachowski is shying from the need to fortify the Internet’s open architecture in favor of deals made between DC power brokers.

They’re really unhappy with Julius, aren’t they?

During that period, more than 85 percent of comments received by the agency called for a strong Net Neutrality rule. Look at it this way: If a candidate received more than 85 percent of the vote, wouldn’t she have a mandate to decide on the public’s behalf?

Because Free Press and its sheep submitted BS filings in a nonsensical policy process, they should, absent any engineering expertise, get to decide telecom policy for the US?  That’s a fabulous idea.  We’ll just run the US Government like it’s a hackneyed spinoff of American Idol.  Whoever gets the most people to text their vote should be President, I suppose.

In Chairman Genachowski’s alternative view of reality, though, the public is immaterial, and industry consensus supreme.

This isn’t about industry consensus.  As CNBC noted this week, the last time bad telecom policy became the law of the land, AT&T alone cut capital spending by better than half.  Cable executives will tell you of the stagnation and decline of investment following the 1992 Act.  After four years of job loss, reduced investment, and a derailed industry, Congress realized the scale of their disaster and wrote the 1996 Act to clean up their mess.

If, by actually meeting with the companies that are putting tens of billions of dollars into these networks, the FCC can head off a repeat of that debacle, then by all means meet with them.  The minute Free Press starts raising capital to build its own networks, I’ll be more than willing to hear them out on what makes that easier or harder.