Today I'm Thinking About Ted Cruz's Ability to Split Hairs

Today I'm thinking about this:

Ted Cruz Hits Back At Al Franken On Net Neutrality

It seems to me that Ted Cruz is just deciding not to understand what Al Franken said.  Taking issue with the use of the term, "the same," rather than understanding the concept.  It seems like what children do when they can no longer support their arguments.  Just yell, "Nu-uh," enough times and you win, right?  Or, at least, you feel like you've won.  After all, winning a debate is less about actually and clearly having a concept of the issues and making valid points and more about who gets the other's goat.

Would you really decide to willfully misunderstand just so you don't agree with a guy from the other side of the isle?  That seems... dumb.  Also, petty.  Petty and dumb.

To me, it appears that if Net Neutrality is changed, then every product and service you get from the internet would have to pass on those costs to consumers.  From my understanding it would also give many ISPs a direct ability to sabotage their competitors.  What about competition giving us better prices?  You'd also have less internet overall and all those little things that make you want to scream at your ISP would probably get even worse.

I was once told that the reason the internet speed was slow - when we upgraded - was that the speed we'd paid for wasn't "sustainable" in our area and, thus, the default speed for us had been set with a top speed significantly lower.  The price had not been set lower, however, and when I asked if he could change it, despite a rambling set of pre-written excuses, the technician told me that he could, indeed, set that top speed where the price said it was.  Then he did.  He hadn't seemed particularly convinced of the rationale provided for the lowered top speed for the area and I assured him that, though the excuses sounded pretty much like outright lies, I didn't fault him for his employers trickery.

He's the little guy, of course, and the policy did not come from his mind.  It came from the a-hole upstairs who realized that there would be families that didn't call in the first place and would be fine with about half the service they were paying for or who, if they did call, would accept the scripted explanation about sustainability and tolerate never achieving the speed in the price.  Mr. Upstairs A-hole could continue to charge that extra little bit for a service he knew full well they would never actually have to provide.

When I see the clip of Sen. Ted Cruz willfully not understanding what Net Neutrality is, I am reminded that a lot of corporate policies seem to have more to do with what is best for the bottom line and less about what is best for the consumer and for those employed there.  (Another example: I once had a credit card customer service person explain to me that the term, "due date," is not actually the date a payment is due, but rather the last day of the grace period.  Instead, your payment is due the date of the billing and the time between the billing date and the due date is a grace period.)

Undoing Net Neutrality isn't akin to developing a new model telephone.  It's more like typing up a pre-written list of excuses to explain why the new telephone looks remarkably similar to the old model and, despite bells and whistles touted in the advertising, none of the bells and whistles work right.