me (warforged swashbuckler): -to DM- how much would it take to send a bunch of flyers to all the major cities?
DM: a few hundred gold. ya’ll have more than enough.
me: I want the flyers to say: to all warforged- feeling despondent? restless? want to see new lands? miss a proper battle? come to *port city*. you want a war? we’ll give you one.
DM: -stares at me- -sets down his vape- -covers his face and starts laughing-
other players: -gone quiet-
DM: I’ve been running this campaign for years. seen people pull every trick in the book. this is the first time ANYONE has thought to do that at my table.
me: ….am I the only one that reads the racial histories?
If Trump FCC chairman Ajit Pai had confined his attack on Net Neutrality to merely rolling back the 2015 Title II rules, he might have gotten away with it; but like the Republic plan to kill Obamacare, the Republican plan to rob the middle class to enrich billionaires, and, well, every other Republican plan in this administration, Pai’s plan is so grotesque, so overreaching, so nakedly corrupt that it is likely to collapse under its own weight.
That’s because the Supreme Court has held that a federal agency contemplating a significant change in policy must “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.” But there are no new facts in evidence since the first Net Neutrality rules were enacted in 2004 to justify a change. We don’t know what evidence Pai will bring to court when it comes time to fight his plans, but the cards he’s played so far are hilariously weak: for example, he claims that the 2015 Title II rule led to a decrease in infrastructure investment by telcos. In fact, the telcos’ own filings and investor calls reveal that the reverse is true (Pai is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own fact).
US democracy has many structural deficits, but it also has strengths, and Pai has blundered into them. The first is that the administrative branch is composed of “expert agencies” like the FCC and they are legally required to provide strong evidentiary backing for their actions. As Tim Wu – the competition and internet legal scholar who coined the term “Network Neutrality” – writes in the New York Times, “A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn’t enough.”
The other structural strength of the US system is the independent courts who act on a well-litigated Constitution whose jurisprudence is voluminous, and who have the power to overturn both the administrative branch and Congress. Again, these are far from perfect, but they are an important check on the abuse of political power, and they are much more readily available to the public than the other two branches. To saw Congress, you have to buy a majority of Congressjerks with campaign contributions; to capture a regulator, you must represent an industry that can offer them lucrative employment after they leave government life; to use the court to neutralize these other branches, you need only convince three appeals court judges or five Supremes that the Constitution supports your position.
While the courts are packed with Republican appointees (thanks to GOP Senate dirty tricks in refusing to approve judicial appointments under Obama, all the way up to a vacant Supreme Court seat that Trump stole), there is a well-established moderating effect of judicial service on long-serving judges, because working your way up through the federal courts requires a showing of adherence to the Constitution, which, overall, favors policies at odds with the right-wing agenda.
This means that when Pai’s plan gets to the courts, it stands a good chance of being struck down – and in any event, the court battle may last until 2020 and serve as a good argument to spur voters to vote against Trump and thus change the FCC leadership, mooting the whole point.
