Petition Response: Reaffirming the White House’s Commitment to Net Neutrality



By Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and Todd Park, the United States Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President.

Thank you to everyone who has signed on to this petition in support of a free and open Internet. Since his days as a United States Senator, President Obama has embraced the principle of net neutrality. As the President recently noted, his campaign for the White House was empowered by an open Internet; it allowed millions of supporters to interact with the President and each other in unprecedented fashion. That experience helped give rise to the creation of this very platform -- the We The People website -- where Americans can express their opinions on any topic and receive a response from the White House. Rights of free speech, and the free flow of information, are central to our society and economy -- and the principle of net neutrality gives every American an equal and meaningful opportunity to participate in both. Indeed, an open Internet is an engine for freedom around the world.

Preserving an open Internet is vital not to just to the free flow of information, but also to promoting innovation and economic productivity. Because of its openness, the Internet has allowed entrepreneurs -- with just a small amount of seed money or a modest grant -- to take their innovative ideas from the garage or the dorm room to every corner of the Earth, building companies, creating jobs, improving vital services, and fostering even more innovation along the way.

Absent net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a high-priced private toll road that would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries. The resulting decline in the development of advanced online apps and services would dampen demand for broadband and ultimately discourage investment in broadband infrastructure. An open Internet removes barriers to investment worldwide.

A wide spectrum of stakeholders and policymakers recognize the importance of these principles. In the wake of last month's court decision, it was encouraging to hear major broadband providers assert their commitment to an open Internet.

It was also encouraging to see Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, whom the President appointed to that post last year, reaffirm his commitment to a free and open Internet and pledge to use the authority granted by Congress to maintain a free and open Internet. The White House strongly supports the FCC and Chairman Wheeler in this effort.

The petition asked that the President direct the FCC to reclassify Internet service providers as "common carriers" which, if upheld, would give the FCC a distinct set of regulatory tools to promote net neutrality. The FCC is an independent agency. Chairman Wheeler has publicly pledged to use the full authority granted by Congress to maintain a robust, free and open Internet -- a principle that this White House vigorously supports.

Todd Park is the United States Chief Technology Officer. Gene Sperling is Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.

Imagine walking into the police station to report that your spouse has been the victim of a crime, and being turned away because you're gay and the police officer says that helping you would violate his "religious freedom."

That may sound insane, but the Kansas State House of Representatives just overwhelmingly passed a bill that would allow any employee of any public or private organization to refuse service to gays and lesbians -- all under the guise of protecting the "religious freedom" of Christians.

The good news is that many pastors in Kansas are speaking up, condemning the bill as a fraud that doesn't protect genuine religious liberty but does enshrine hateful discrimination counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Even better, state senate leaders are now beginning to backpedal on their support for the bill -- so the time is ripe for a national outcry among Christians who are appalled that our faith would ever be used to justify putting up "no gays allowed" signs.

"Today, U.S. consumers can’t make a near-real-time payment in a convenient and cost effective way from any bank account to any other bank account," the Fed’s 13-page paper noted. "In a world where several other countries are moving to ubiquitous near-real-time retail payment systems, the U.S. payment system does not have this capability."

But the Fed, which historically has been wary of imposing mandates on banks, is trying not to come off as heavy-handed. And that cautious approach may make it harder to bring about change in the banking industry.

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The holy grail of person-to-person payments is the ability to send money instantaneously to anyone else’s mobile phone number. In Sweden, that’s been reality for over a year now, since the rollout of a system known as "Swish." The upgrades have brought Swedish consumers a lot of benefits, according to Lars Gunnstam, who heads the consortium of banks that runs Swish.

You can split a dinner bill while you’re still sitting in the restaurant. Or make a last-minute payment to your utility company. A food truck owner, who would otherwise waste a lot of time handling cash, can instead get paid via mobile phone. "He can immediately see that he has received the money," explains Gunnstam, an executive at the Swedish bank Nordea. "And you can immediately shake hands and say, ‘Fine, done.’ That is very important if you do business out in the street."

There exists these days, among Washington policy intellectuals and advocates who tilt toward the left end of the accepted political spectrum, a certain measured optimism. It’s not about Obama, or any feeling that he might somehow, with his sagging poll numbers, be able to persuade congressional Republicans to fund, say, an infrastructure investment bank. Confidence is appropriately near zero on matters like that. Rather, it’s about the widely held perception that the Democratic Party, after years of, in the argot, “moving to the right,” is finally soft-shoeing its way leftward, away from economic centrism and toward a populism that the party as a whole has not embraced for years or even decades.

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But Obama is only part of this story. The large and passionate following gained by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is a major development here. Warren is a native of Oklahoma who grew up poor and became a professor at Harvard Law School and then (as leader of congressional oversight on the Troubled Asset Relief Program) a thorn in former Treasury secretary Tim Geithner’s side before she handily defeated incumbent Republican Scott Brown to reach the Senate. She has millions of admirers who would dearly love to see her run for president in 2016, whatever Hillary Clinton’s plans.

Warren possesses a knack for earthy articulation of the liberal-populist worldview matched by no one else in American public life today. Videos of her speaking to supporters and donors, or decimating slow-witted cable hosts, go “viral” and get millions of views from liberals who’ve been desperate for years to hear a prominent Democrat talk the way she does. This is part of what she said in what is perhaps her most famous clip, from September 2011:


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The most astonishing piece of social science research I’ve seen in some time was published in late 2011 by two academics, Michael Norton of Harvard and Dan Ariely of Duke. They asked a sampling of Americans two basic questions: What do you think wealth distribution in the United States is today, and what wealth distribution do you think would be ideal? They then matched those two sets of numbers to the existing facts.

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ--A gas pipeline owned by PSE&G ruptured today under the Raritan River, causing two geysers of natural gas to erupt near the Northeast Corridor rail bridge.

The ruptured line has sent strong odors of natural gas wafting through the area, with complaints of the smell coming from as far away as Highland Park High School.

The New Brunswick Fire Department and PSE&G are currently working on the broken line. Parts of Johnson Drive are closed so crews could access the leak site.

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A gas line was seen leaking natural gas near the site of today's rupture on November 16, 2013. Muckgers reported on that line failure, saying a kayaker talked about it to the New Brunswick Fire Department, which relayed the information to PSE&G.