Not only the policy but the haste with which Pai is pushing it through has come under attack. “Where’s the fire?” asked Tom Wheeler, Pai’s predecessor and the architect of the 2015 policy, this week. Wheeler observed that the FCC’s authority to cede regulation of network neutrality rules to the Federal Trade Commission, as Pai plans, is uncertain.
The FCC's abandonment of network neutrality will end the internet as we know it
“I remember the days when Chairman Pai was a commissioner who claimed to be a champion of prudence and process,” Wheeler wrote. “Back then, of course, he was in the minority.” With Republicans in control of the FCC and Congress, “process and prudence...have given away to ideology.”
It’s especially worthwhile to ponder that videotaped sketch at the dinner, which featured Pai and an executive Gizmodo identifies as Verizon lawyer Kathleen Grillo in a (supposedly) fictional meeting at Verizon in 2003, when Pai was still on the Verizon staff.
“As you know,” Grillo says, “the FCC is captured by industry, but we think it is not captured enough…. We want to brainwash and groom a Verizon puppet to install as FCC chairman. Think ‘Manchurian Candidate.’”
“Awesome,” says Pai.
“So you’ll do it?”
“Absolutely.”
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