Google and Verizon are working behind closed doors to divide internet service into tiers. That’s right. You’re going to have to pay more money for good service while having your basic stuff will gradually become more and more unpalatable. This will enable some companies (not me!) to pay for premium access (fast connection) while the independents are left in the dust. And the independents is where intelligent commentary and political action have been coming from. Prepare to return to the days when you’re only news is cable news unless you are willing to wait and wait to see a web blog like mine.

This is a disaster for free speech. What’s more, it is going to cost everyone big, big bucks, that is, unless you’re a cable provider in which case you’ll be able to swim in the money.

Only in the United States can a public good like internet access be bought and sold like an old cow. There is no concern for the public, its rights and the future of democracy. These are all small quibbles in corporate largese.

Incredible amounts of money can be made from dividing a public good. The internet is a government creation and the private cable companies have been salivating like so many rabid dogs at the prospect of taking your money and destroying your freedom.

Don’t think for a moment, this is all about the money. The millions of small voices on the web are very annoying to the powerful and they must be silenced.

They will silence us in the name of the free market, in a made up, fradulent, crap argument that there isn’t enough band width while there is plenty, and this will be all the more reason for companies not to invest or develop new internet capabilities because after all, if the good isn’t limited in its service, who’ll pay for premium?

This is disgusting, a rip off, real evidence of how corrupt, incompetent and vicious this society is to those without billions of dollars to play with.

These people did not develop the internet, they preyed on it. These people provide, currently, a rotten service that in most locales is little more than a one cable company monopoly. But this isn’t enough. This isn’t profitable enough. They can’t hold you by the cojones and extract the last dollar, the last dime, the tiniest, thinnest penny.

The internet is yours. It doesn’t belong to these people. But our pseudo representatives and useless media clowns will do nothing. They will have premium service. Their friends in the board rooms will keep the money flowing to our elected comedy acts that pass for legislatures.

We have no defenders. This is absolute positive evidence of the complete helplessness of the general public. This is a complete repudiation of the concept that our government should try in some tiny, almost imperceptible way, to serve our interest and they can’t do it.

Two companies, Google and Verizon, meet behind closed doors to decide the fate of the internet, this is how the business of government is done in this country. You have no one at the table because this isn’t a symbolic issue, this is about dividing you up for the kill. This is about dividing you up into essentially taxable constituents. That’s right. What would you call it when a public good, something paid for and developed with your taxes, something you owned, is distributed among a number of companies?

I would like to say bought and sold. But I can’t. They are not paying for it. They don’t owe us a dime. They get what they get because of who they are and they have no responsibility whatever except to make money and guess who is going to pay that money.

This is so disgusting. You wake up in the morning, go to your computer and find your rights and privileges hocked like old jewelry at a pawn shop. This is not our America. This is the land of “you can buy or steal anything, anytime as long as you have enough influence and the right friends.” This is corporatism writ large.

There is nothing you own, nothing you prize, nothing sacred, that they cannot come and get. And then make you pay and pay and pay.

James Alan Pilant