How A Better Democrat Rolls

Time Warner Cable took a tentative step in New York toward billing Internet customers based on consumption rates, a Trojan horse to two-tiered pricing on the Internet. And the usage limits were designed to gouge consumers and, since they have a monopoly, offer them essentially no other viable options.

Eric Massa took on the issue and won.

I live just about on the border of New York’s 28th and 29th Congressional districts. The 28th is represented by Louise Slaughter, the powerful chair of the Rules Committee, the 29th by freshman Congressman Eric Massa. I emailed both Massa and Slaughter about the cap. I heard nothing back from Slaughter. Massa’s office told me that they thought it was a serious issue, that they were getting complaints from a lot of constituents…and then sprung into action. The opening line of the video below (via) is “I plan on putting the entire full force of my incumbency and all the risk associated with that behind stopping this very, very ill-thought out decision by Time-Warner.”



Shortly after this, Time-Warner shelved their cap plan. Apparently, it was all a “big misunderstanding.”

More on this here. Eric Massa won election as a better Democrat with significant help from the netroots. And then he turns around and stands up on the significant issue of net neutrality. This is how progressive movement power turns into policy muscle.