Remember “Net Neutrality” and how the Obama Administration was finally able to have the Internet declared a “public utility” so the FCC could take it over in 2015?

Among other things, it allowed the Most Transparent Administration EVAH to reward their cronies in Silicon Valley with a rule that affected everyone but them.

The House voted this week to rescind an Obama Administration regulation requiring that cable customers “opt in” to allow data mining of their preferences, which allows companies to feature targeted ads or improve service. The rule passed in a partisan FCC vote last year but never took effect. This belies the idea that Comcast and other invented villains will have some “new freedom” to auction off your data. President Trump is expected to sign the bill, which already passed the Senate. The result will be . . . the status quo.

The FCC didn’t roll out these rules in response to gross privacy invasions. The agency lacked jurisdiction until 2015 when it snatched authority from the Federal Trade Commission by reclassifying the internet as a public utility. The FTC had punished bad actors in privacy and data security for years, with more than 150 enforcement actions.

One best privacy practice is offering customers the choice to “opt out” [snip]

The FCC ditched this approach and promulgated a rule that, curiously, did not apply to companies like Google or Amazon, whose business model includes monetizing massive data collection—what panda videos you watch or which gardening tools you buy. The rule was designed to give an edge to Twitter and friends in online advertising, a field already dominated by Silicon Valley.

The current FCC Chairman Pai and Chairwoman Ohlhausen’s have issued a public statement about working towards a comprehensive and consistent framework of privacy protection. Yet Democrats, including Obama apparatchik on the FCC, Tom Wheeler, have engaged in blatant misinformation on this issue. Trying to panic citizens with fake headlines like “How the Republicans Sold Your Privacy to Internet Providers” in service to their corporate friends is a continuation of the classic class warfare Obama and Democrats engaged in for the last eight years. It was never about privacy or ostensible Net Neutrality for the little guy. It was, and is, about power.

It’s who they are. It’s what they do.