Another Bad Vote

John Sweeney (R NY) stood with house Republicans to vote against freedom and neutrality on the Internet. Sweeney stood up against Google and Ebay. Instead he stood for ATT, Time Warner Cable and Verizon who want to force people to pay for faster Internet downloads for their websites.

Small businesses would have sites that would load slower than those of big corporations who could pay the fees. People with personal blogs would have slower connections too. The small shops in our district would be hurt by putting an end to net neutrality. Imagine if a local radio station were slower to hear than a national one. Or if one TV station's shows had more static on them because they didn't give extra money to Time Warner Co., that would be stupid, right?

This is a vote that will hurt locally owned shops that are the heart of the Main Street towns in this district. Sweeney would force them to pay more money to have their websites load as fast as corporate websites would. Sweeney doesn't want a fair playing field for the marketplace, he wants a world where those who pay can play. That's how Sweeney works - ATT and Verizon are on his top ten donors list. He really does vote his values.

the House Republican leadership mustered enough votes to reject a Democrat-backed amendment that would have enshrined stiff Net neutrality regulations into federal law and prevented broadband providers from treating some Internet sites differently from others. ...(source)

Related Stories: Democrats Lose House Vote on Net Neutrality, Defeat for Net Neutrality Backers. Related Blog Post: Save the Internet