Rep. Mark Takano Red Pen Markup Part Deux: The Marco Rubio Net Neutrality Op-Ed Edition
Washington DC - Earlier today, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) took a red pen to Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s recent op-ed on Net Neutrality. In the markup, Rep. Takano calls the op-ed “intentionally misleading,” “poorly researched and sourced,” and urges Senator Rubio not to draft essays on his return flights from Iowa.
In the op-ed, which is littered with errors, Senator Rubio claims that, “By labeling ISPs as public utilities, an extraordinary amount of power over the Internet, including case-by-case discretion, would be given to an unelected, unaccountable board that every lobbyist, lawyer and crony capitalist with a vested interest in the Internet will seek to manipulate.”
Senator Rubio fails to mention that he voted to confirm all five Federal Communications Commission Commissioners (what he calls “an unelected, unaccountable board”) and that he received more than $47,000 in campaign contributions from Internet Service Providers and Telecom companies.
The op-ed also repeatedly praises the Internet for revolutionizing industries and creating billions of dollars in economic activity across the globe, yet fails to mention that the Federal Government, not the free market, created the Internet. The op-ed also uses the terms “Internet” and “Web” interchangeably, despite being two different things.
A former high school English teacher, Takano gave the op-ed an “F” and urged Senator Rubio to do more research on the topic.
Background Information:
In 2013, Rep. Mark Takano took a red pen to then Rep. Bill Cassidy’s letter on immigration reform. The mark up became a viral sensation, has been viewed more than 1 million times on Facebook, and was featured in many media outlets, including Huffington Post, MSNBC, UpWorthy, CNN, and more.