The House of Representatives on Tuesday followed the Senate’s lead and passed a major banking deregulation bill, sending it to President Trump to be signed into law.

The bill will reduce oversight of about 30 large and mid-size banks by raising a key threshold used by regulators to determine which banks pose systemic risks to the financial system. The deregulated banks will face fewer stress tests and have more lenient capital and liquidity requirements.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill that was passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis set the threshold for “systemically important” banks at $50 billion in assets. This bill raises the threshold to $250 billion in assets. Several of the banks in this size range that will be deregulated received billions in government bailout assistance after the 2008 crisis.

Like in the Senate, Democrats were split on the bill while Republicans voted nearly unanimously in favor (I see you, Walter Jones). And just like in the Senate, the Democrats that sided with the Republicans tended to be those who have taken a lot of money from the banking industry.

According to my analysis of campaign contributions in the current election cycle, Democrats in the House that voted for the bill received, on average, a little more than $20,200 from the commercial banking industry. The Democrats that voted against it received just about $7,200 from the industry, on average.

Two House Democrats stand out for having taken especially large sums from the banks this cycle — Krysten Sinema ($115,472) and David Scott ($70,750) — and both voted for the bill.

Sinema has received donations from PACs of banks that will be deregulated under the bill and trade groups that lobby for them, including the Mortgage Bankers Association ($15,000), Synchrony Financial ($10,000), American Bankers Association ($10,000), and Consumer Banker Association ($7,500). David Scott has also received contributions from banks that will benefit, including Credit Suisse ($10,000), Regions Financial ($10,000), SunTrust Banks ($10,000), UBS ($7,500), Barclays ($5,500), and more.

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The Senate Democratic caucus was divided 17–31 yesterday on a vote to undo parts of the Dodd-Frank Act and allow big banks to take on more risk and operate with less regulatory oversight.

Pundits have speculated about why the Democrats were split, arguing that it was rural states vs. ones with major urban centers, or “safe” seats vs. “toss-ups,” or more simply a matter of progressives vs. centrists. But a review of campaign finance records suggests the strongest correlation may be which senators have received big donations from the banks recently and which haven’t.

The Democrats who voted for the bill have received, on average, $55,667 from commercial banks during the current election cycle, while the Democrats who voted against it received, on average, $13,007. That’s nearly 4.3 times as much money.

Here’s the full list of Senate Democrats (including Independents who caucus with the Democrats), how they voted on the bill, and how much money they have received from the banking industry this cycle:

Voted YES:

• Heitkamp, Heidi (D-ND) — $157,354
• Donnelly, Joe (D-IN) — $140,360
• Tester, Jon (D-MT) — $131,662
• McCaskill, Claire (D-MO) — $85,911
• Stabenow, Debbie (D-MI) — $82,947
• Jones, Doug (D-AL) — $82,294
• Kaine, Tim (D-VA) — $70,931
• Warner, Mark (D-VA) — $48,773
• Nelson, Bill (D-FL) — $36,163
• Manchin, Joe (D-WV) — $35,161
• Carper, Tom (D-DE) — $33,155
• Peters, Gary (D-MI) — $16,535
• King, Angus (I-ME) — $9,500
• Coons, Chris (D-DE) — $7,500
• Bennet, Michael F (D-CO) — $5,703
• Hassan, Maggie (D-NH) — $2,021
• Shaheen, Jeanne (D-NH) — $376

Voted NO:

• Murphy, Christopher S (D-CT) — $77,987
• Brown, Sherrod (D-OH) — $68,817
• Gillibrand, Kirsten (D-NY) — $66,150
• Casey, Bob (D-PA) — $40,586
• Klobuchar, Amy (D-MN) — $26,276
• Feinstein, Dianne (D-CA) — $23,701
• Baldwin, Tammy (D-WI) — $17,585
• Menendez, Robert (D-NJ) — $12,920
• Reed, Jack (D-RI) — $12,125
• Whitehouse, Sheldon (D-RI) — $7,855
• Warren, Elizabeth (D-MA) — $6,586
• Cardin, Ben (D-MD) — $6,000
• Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) — $5,623
• Hirono, Mazie K (D-HI) — $5,306
• Cantwell, Maria (D-WA) — $5,081
• Booker, Cory (D-NJ) — $4,546
• Duckworth, Tammy (D-IL) — $3,035
• Harris, Kamala D (D-CA) — $2,995
• Markey, Ed (D-MA) — $2,954
• Sanders, Bernie (I-VT) — $2,796
• Masto, Catherine Cortez (D-NV) — $1,295
• Durbin, Dick (D-IL) — $1,196
• Murray, Patty (D-WA) — $636
• Merkley, Jeff (D-OR) — $581
• Wyden, Ron (D-OR) — $309
• Blumenthal, Richard (D-CT) — $143
• Udall, Tom (D-NM) — $130
• Leahy, Pat (D-VT) — $0
• Schatz, Brian (D-HI) — $0
• Smith, Tina (D-MN) — $0
• Van Hollen, Chris (D-MD) — $0

Did not vote:

• Heinrich, Martin (D-NM) — $22,888

These figure were calculated using campaign contributions data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

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Editor’s note: The following guest post is from Donny Shaw, a co-founder at Sludge — which will officially begin publishing when Civil launches in Spring 2018.

The US Senate is about to pass its first major piece of bipartisan legislation this session of Congress, a package of measure to deregulate the banking industry.

Nearly every bank in the US will benefit, from community banks that will no longer be required to verify a mortgage borrower’s ability to repay, to megabanks like Citigroup that will be able to take on more risk because of a reduction in leverage requirements.

At the heart of the bill is a provision that raises the threshold beyond which banks are considered “systemically important financial institutions” (SIFIs) under the Dodd-Frank Act and thus face heightened regulatory standards. The threshold would be raised from its current level of $50 billion in combined assets to $250 billion, reducing the number of banks currently treated as systemically important by regulators from 44 to 13.

Several of the banks that would see reduced regulatory oversight took billions of dollars in bailout assistance from the government during the 2008 financial crisis, including SunTrust, Fifth Third Bank, and Zions Bankcorp. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has determined that the bill will increase the risk that another financial crisis will occur. As a result, they estimate that it will increase the deficit by about $460 million over the next ten years.

Despite this, the bill has advanced in the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 67–32 and it is set to pass this week with bipartisan.

Clearly there is no mass movement pushing for Congress to let banks with hundreds of billions in assets take on more risk. In fact, Wall Street’s influence in D.C. has been one of the most potent narratives behind the anti-establishment sentiment that culminated in the election of President Trump. It’s one of the only issues that unites the populist wings of both parties.

So where did this idea to raise the SIFI threshold come from, and why is there so much momentum behind it in Congress?

The first organization to call for raising the threshold to $250 billion was the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), an influential DC “think tank” founded by several former high ranking members of Congress. In April, 2014, the BPC’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative’s Regulatory Architecture Task Force published a series of recommendations for revising Dodd-Frank that centered around this threshold increase. They argued that it would make the banking industry safer.

Having the BPC’s name on the plan gives it a patina of credibility and objectivity that it would not have if it came from a politician or an industry trade group. Its research and policy suggestions are treated by the media as coming from above and beyond the partisan fray, formulated by independent scholars, not lobbyists or political interests.

The BPC facilitates this image of itself, with everything from its name to its branding. Its website describes its policy solutions as “the product of informed deliberations by former elected and appointed officials, business and labor leaders, and academics and advocates who represent both ends of the political spectrum.”

But the BPC has strong financial ties to the banks that would benefit from its suggestion to raise the SIFI threshold to $250 billion. In fact, the organization grew closer to the banking industry at the same time that it was crafting its banking industry regulatory suggestions.

The BPC launched its Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative in 2012. That same year they recruited new major donors from the financial industry.

The American Bankers Association (ABA) — the banking industry’s chief trade group — and Citigroup became donors in 2012 according to the BPC’s 2012 year-end report. Neither the ABA nor Citigroup (or any other financial industry interest) are listed as donors on any prior BPC disclosures.

The exact amount of money the ABA and Citigroup gave to the BPC was not disclosed, but both were listed as elite-level “leadership council” donors.

As this new banking industry money was rolling in, the BPC was staffing up its newly formed Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative with lobbyists and lawyers who have deep ties to the banks.

For example, they recruited Rodgin Cohen, one of the nation’s top banking mergers and acquisitions lawyers, to join the initiative. Cohen has lobbied the government on behalf of banks like Wachovia, Bank of New York Mellon Co, and Goldman Sachs. In 2009 Cohen said during a panel that he didn’t see much need for reform in the wake of the financial crisis. “The system will look more like what preceded the current environment than many people seem to believe, ” he said. “I am far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system.”

Another recruit, John Dugan, has lobbied for Bank One Corp, the Financial Services Coordinating Council, the American Bankers Association, and other financial industry interests. He’s well known as the originator of a series of financial industry policies that were adopted as part of the deregulatory boom in the industry during the 1990s. His claim to fame is calling for a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as a Treasury Department official in the George H. W. Bush administration. His so-called “Green Book” of banking industry policies was the first time that repealing Glass-Steagall was published as part of an official policy platform of an administration.

Randall Guynn, another of the experts recruited by the BPC, is a partner at DavisPolk, a powerful law firm that counts all of the biggest banks as clients. According to their website, Guynn “focuses on providing strategic bank regulatory advice and advising on M&A and capital markets transactions when the target or issuer is a banking organization or other financial institution.” Guynn has also registered to lobby Congress on behalf of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), an industry trade group that represents banking and financial interests from around the world.

As the BPC’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative worked on crafting banking policy proposals, the BPC’s financial ties to the banks grew even deeper. By 2014 the BPC counted not only the ABA and Citigroup as donors, but also Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Financial Services Roundtable, PNC Financial, State Street, and other financial industry interests.

The BPC has spent more than $1 million each year since 2012 on lobbying the federal government to promote their policies. Many of the lobbyists hired by the BPC have personal ties to powerful members of Congress, including Billy Piper, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Shelby Hagenauer, former Legislative Director to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

In 2017 the BPC reported lobbying on S. 2155, the banking deregulation bill currently before the Senate that includes their provision to raise the SIFI threshold to $250 billion.

As the senators backing this bill make their final push, they’re highlighting its bipartisan nature and its origins in an orderly and collaborative legislative process.

“The bill is the product of robust, bipartisan negotiations,” Sen. Crapo said on the Senate floor. “It is the outgrowth of the feedback and input garnered from a process we initiated in the Banking Committee, as well as from previous hearings, briefings and many conversations among members.”

In an op-ed, two BPC staffers called it a sign that “old fashioned legislating is not dead.”

Nowhere in the Congressional Record is it reflected that the plan to exempt banks with up to $250 billion in assets from stricter regulation actually originated from a think tank with deep ties to the banks.

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Senate Plan to Deregulate Big Banks Comes From a Think Tank With Deep Ties to the Banking Industry was originally published in Civil on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

But where did all those people come from? I took a look at the piwik logs from the SavetheInternet.eu site to help answer that question.

Top countries

Comments were submitted from around the world, including from all 28 European Union member countries. Most of the submissions came from large countries, but some smaller EU countries, like Ireland, Malta, and Slovenia, played major roles as well.

Not surprisingly, the largest country in the EU, Germany, sent the most comments. But when you look at the number of comments sent by each country as a percentage of their population, it’s clear that the residents of some smaller EU countries also strongly support net neutrality.

Top 10 submitting countries (ranked by comment submissions per capita)

1. Ireland (.039%)
2. Germany (.038%)
3. Slovenia (.021%)
4. Denmark (.02%)
5. Austria (.017%)
6. United Kingdom (.017%)
7. Sweden (.017%)
8. Netherlands (.015%)
9. Malta (.015%)
10. Spain (.015%)

Top referrers

People who used SavetheInternet.eu to take action in support of net neutrality were referred from hundreds of websites and social media platforms. Though some of the traffic came from sites like Mozilla providing links for their users, a significant amount also came from user-generated content posted to sites like Reddit and Facebook.

The Netherlands-based gay chat site BullChat was a top referrer, suggesting that the gay community is concerned about the discriminatory potential of practices like fast lanes, throttling, and zero rating on free expression and online communities. However, since bullchat was embedding content from savetheinternet.eu in their site, these numbers over report their number of referrals, and it’s unclear exactly how much traffic they contributed relative to other sites.

Traffic to SavetheInternet.eu came in a series of spikes, with little traffic on most days. Several traffic spikes came from Reddit, with r/PCMasterRace, the self-described “largest community of PC gaming enthusiasts on the Internet,” providing most of the Reddit traffic. (This particular subreddit has a long history of engaging politically on issues that affect Internet users.) Other spikes came from Youtube videos being posted, Change.org petitions being shared, and viral content spreading on Facebook.

These 500,000+ comments, from across the web and across the European Union, set a new record for public engagement at the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC), the regulators considering the net neutrality rules. Never before had BEREC received more than 100 comments for a regulatory proceeding.

The comments come on the heels of similar demands from a broad coalition of academics, public interest groups, web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, joined by Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig and Stanford’s Barbara van Schewick, and 135 startups and investors, including founders of the major European startups Skype and SoundCloud, and US companies like Medium, DuckDuckGo, and Cogent Communications.

The message is clear — people all across Europe want an Internet where all data is treated equally so that innovation, creativity, and free speech can thrive like never before.

House Democrats line up with campaign contributors as key vote approaches for TPP and other secret trade deals.

With the majority of House Republicans expected to vote in favor of trade promotion authority (a.k.a. fast track) for President Obama’s trade agreements, Democrats hold the swing votes that will determine if the authority is approved or rejected. Most of the discussion among Democrats has been focused on the agreements’ impacts on jobs, but information from whip sheets and campaign finance disclosures suggests that another factor may be influencing how Democrats are deciding how to vote — the positions taken by their top campaign contributors.

Trade promotion authority would allow the President to put his trade deals under special procedural rules that bar amendments, limit debate, and restrict dilatory tactics that typically create a 60-vote hurdle for legislation in the Senate. Without this authority it is widely believed that Obama’s trade agreements would not be able to pass through Congress.

According to whip count information from The Hill, and myoriginal analysis of campaign contributions from the most recent election cycle, the 19 Democrats who have already expressed support or are leaning in favor of fast track have taken exceptionally large sums from industries that support it — including financial companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and defense contractors — and lower than average sums from the interests that oppose it — including unions, environmental organizations, and human rights groups.

On average, in the last election cycle the pro-fast track Democrats took 39% more money from supporting interests and 21% less money from opposing interests than the average Democrat.

Last week, Politico named 8 undecided Democrats, including leadership members Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, who they believe will ultimately “decide” the vote. If the correlation between campaign contributions and fast track position ends up being similar to the rest of the House Democratic Caucus for these members, this group (now down to 7 after it was reported that Rep. Kilmer will vote in favor of fast track) looks likely to break in favor of fast track if their votes are needed. These key undecided Democratss have taken, on average, 2.5 times as much money from supporting industries than the average for Democrats overall. They’ve even taken more, on average, than the Democrats who outright support fast track, 79% more, to be precise.

Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, one of the key undecided Democrats, received $1.3 million from pro-fast track industries during the last election cycle, more than any other Democrat in the House.

The bulk of House Democrats oppose fast track authority. The Democrats who oppose fast track (128 per The Hill whip count) have taken, on average, 32% less money from supporting interests than the Democrats who are in favor. They have also taken 20% more money from interests that oppose fast track.

Forty-one Democrats are still undecided on fast track, and the correlation between campaign contributions and vote positions holds true for this group as well. On average, they’ve taken less money from pro-fast track industries than than the Democrats who support it (9% less), but more money from pro-fast track industries than the Democrats who oppose it (44% more).

Rep. Ron Kind (D, WI) has been leading the pro-fast track whip operation among House Democrats. He has taken $879,814 from interests that support fast track, the sixth highest total in the Democratic caucus. His top donors include several companies that have been lobbying around trade issues and publicly support fast track, including General Electric, UPS, and Honeywell.

This fast track vote will largely determine the fate of several trade agreements that are currently being negotiated in secret by the Obama administration, special industry advisers, and foreign governments and interests. The most well known of these trade agreements is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but there are several other currently being negotiated, including the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Data scientist Solomon Kahn has built a simple, lightweight web app for displaying campaign finance data that makes it easier than ever before to get detailed information on who funds federal politicians. The app is about one month from launch and it’s currently on Kickstarter for funding server space and outreach work.

There are other services that makes this information available (OpenSecrets, Influence Explorer, MapLight), but Solomon’s new app, which he’s calling “Explore Campaign Finance,” is unique in that it allows people to view every single company and individual — and even every single contribution record—just by clicking around in the app. You can drill down to the most granular details without ever having to open a spreadsheet.

On top of the completeness of the displayed data, the app is built around visualizations that help you contextualize it all. For example, you won’t just see that defense interests gave $45,000 to a given senator during an election cycle, you’ll also be able to easily understand how that compares to other industries and how it compares to totals in other election cycles.

Here’s what you see when you search for a politician:

If you click on the “Finance/Insur/Real Estate” segment in the chart (dark blue), you’ll get a subsector breakdown that looks like this:

Next click on a subsector and see a complete list of company/individual totals (example: “Securities & Investment”):

Then click on a company and see records of all contributions from that company:

There are a lot of unique customization features built into all of this — view data by totals or by percent, view contributions from individuals, political action committees (PACs), or combined, view with negative (i.e. returned) contributions included or excluded. The app also includes information on independent expenditures. Money spent by outside groups in support of a politician or in opposition to their opponents is displayed along side regular campaign contributions.

The app is built with OpenSecrets data on the past 25 years of federal candidates and its code will be open sourced. Of course, it’s going to free for anyone to use.

Existing tools for viewing these details in the data require you to download a file and sort the data in a spreadsheet. The Explore Campaign Finance app’s intuitive, clicky interface lowers the barrier for doing deep analysis of campaign financing. It will likely help time-crunched journalists and newsrooms without a dedicated data person on staff, but it will also allow non-professional investigators, from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, to explore this information in depth for the first time ever. That could be huge. Too often this information gets stuck inside a bubble of journos, political professionals, and dedicated campaign finance reformers.

If you like the sound of this project, please consider supporting the Kickstarter campaign with a donation, an endorsement on social media, or both.

Follow the Money: ‘USA Freedom Act’ Backers in Congress Have Taken More Than Twice as Much Money From Intel Contractors

Members of Congress who support mass government surveillance are, for once, facing a little resistance. Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the phone dragnet that was ruled illegal by a federal court, is scheduled to expire on June 1. At the moment it does not appear that there are enough votes to pass an extension.

But a group of lawmakers who are disproportionately supported by big Intelligence contractors have a plan to make sure the government’s mass surveillance power does not eclipse. They have a bill that would extend Section 215 while also amending it so that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance programs can pass judicial muster. It would technically end the government’s bulk collection of phone data, but it would also give the NSA new powers to continue and expand its mass surveillance of Americans’ communications.

It’s been given an appropriately Orwellian title (the “USA Freedom Act”), and it has already been approved by the House of Representatives.

Fight for the Future has outlined many of the ways in which the USA Freedom Act perpetuates and expands mass surveillance. But you don’t have to simply take their word for it (or mine). Just follow the money and you’ll find patterns showing that the members of Congress supporting the USA Freedom Act are siding with their donors in the defense industry that benefit from surveillance by way of Intelligence contracts.

Members of the House who voted for the USA Freedom Act received, on average, more than 2.2 as much money from the defense industry during the last election cycle than did the members of the House who voted against it.

That’s according to an analysis I conducted of campaign contributions data that is made available by OpenSecrets. The members of the House who voted for it got, on average, about $38,000 from the defense companies over the two-year period while the members who voted against it got about $17,000.

Intelligence contractors, which largely consist of big defense industry organizations like Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Northrop Grumman, account for 70 percent of the government’s Intelligence budget. The Intelligence budget is classified, but it’s estimated to be about $100 billion annually, so these contractors probably earn about $70 billion per year from these programs. They have a clear financial stake in perpetuating and expanding the government’s surveillance activities, which is exactly what I and others believe the USA Freedom Act would do.

The USA Freedom Act is being rushed to the floor of the Senate this week (a vote is possible as soon as Tuesday, May 19, 2015). There may also be votes in the Senate on a straight renewal of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. It’s unclear how the votes will play out, but I’m hoping that the “do-nothing Congress” will live up to its name and simply let Section 215 of the Patriot Act (and the illegal mass surveillance it authorizes) expire at the end of the month.

(If you appreciated the information in this post, please “recommend” and share with anyone you know who cares about surveillance. Thanks.)

Or Facebook’s, or Microsoft’s, or Twitter’s…

Two years ago Internet freedom organizers won a major victory against the copyright industry in killing SOPA. The collapse of the bill, which was on track to pass through Congress with overwhelming support, was unlike anything we’ve seen in recent political history. But the organizers did have some powerful companies on their side, and once the dust settled there was still an open question about who was more important in the win — the companies or the public.

In the looming net neutrality victory, the Internet has shown that it can win even when the biggest stakeholders stay on the sidelines. What’s more, they didn’t win net neutrality simply by killing an impending threat; they actually convinced the government to pro-actively design a major new policy in their favor. The government has a well-known status quo bias with strong systemic features that make change much more difficult to achieve than simply keeping things the way they are, so this is a key part of what makes this win so significant. There is very little precedent for public interest groups winning policy changes in their favor, against significant corporate opposition, when they have close to no corporate support on their own side.

This net neutrality victory is more evidence of what many suspected after SOPA — what makes the Internet a powerful space for collaboration and innovation also gives it a powerful self-defense mechanism, and attempts to break it will be met with decentralized, grassroots political action that organized money can’t simply plow down.

__________

A year ago, when the Federal Communications Commission announced it would create new rules for net neutrality, the option for reclassification under Title II of the Communication Act was just a footnote in the discussion. As laid out by the FCC, the plan was to create new rules that, although not sufficient to actually prevent fast lanes, could survive an inevitable court challenge from Verizon or some other telco. Congressional Democrats urged FCC Chair Tom Wheeler to at least hold Title II reclassification open as a stick approach, which he did, but virtually no one at the time expected the FCC to go with anything except another carrot.

I don’t think there is a single person that believed last February that Title II was politically possible. Plenty of people believed it was the only way to actually ensure net neutrality. The courts had made that clear. But deregulation has been the golden goose of the telecom industry for decades and no one expects a scrappy win over one of the most powerful lobbies in the world.

The opposition

Companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, and trade groups representing the industry, have for years used every avenue available to them to kill net neutrality and have fought not to be called Title II common carriers. Big telecom is widely regarded as one of the most politically powerful industries. They have been joined in this fight by shadowy nonprofits like TechFreedom, a group that does not disclose its donor but acknowledges having taken money from broadband companies, and American Commitment, a group with ties to the Koch network (they won’t say whether or not they take money from the Kochs).

The support

The public fight for reclassification has been waged by grassroots activist groups like Popular Resistance, Free Press, Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Center for Media Justice, Color of Change, and many others (full list of organization, companies, and individuals here). In addition, the start-up community was largely on their side, with trade groups like Engine calling for Title II and helping to organize. Companies including Netflix, Etsy, Tumblr, and Kickstarter, among other, were supportive of reclassification and took some action to engage their users. Later in the debate, wireless underdog Sprint joined the call for reclassification, although they didn’t participate in any efforts to organize the public to take action. This was a fight led start-to-finish by grassroots groups outside of D.C. with support from smaller players in the tech industry and allies inside the Beltway.

Missing in Action

All of the largest stakeholders that were key active participants in fighting SOPA were largely silent on the Title II reclassification fight. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt actually lobbied against reclassification in meetings with the White House. The Internet Association, a trade group with membership including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and hundreds of other companies, did send a lukewarm letter approving of reclassification. However Microsoft, Facebook, and Google are all also part of other trade groups that are opposed to Title II reclassification, like ITIC. What’s absolutely clear is they have done nothing to engage the public at large, a stark contrast to their involvement in SOPA. The reason, presumably, is that net neutrality helps their smaller competitors more than it helps them. The giants of the Internet would have no problem complying with whatever tolls are charged by ISPs for faster speeds, but the search engines and social networks of tomorrow likely would. Other groups that typically fight with Internet freedom activists and were with them on the SOPA fight stayed mostly silent on the issue, possibly because they receive funding from the telecoms. This includes at least the Center for Technology and Democracy.

The money

Without any of the top web companies with them, net neutrality advocates were utterly dwarfed by their opposition in financial resources. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the key groups fighting Title II rules — Comcast, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, AT&T, and Verizon — spent $61 million on lobbying the government in 2014 and an additional $14.5 million on campaign contributions during the 2014 cycle. The lobbying and political contributions of the key groups organizing the fight for Title II reclassification totals under $100,000.

__________

This latest round for net neutrality began officially on February 19, 2014 when the FCC announced their intention to create new rules. But the groundwork for the activism that would be the game changer had been laid many years earlier.

In 2006, Free Press and dozens of other groups formed the Save the Internet Coalition to fight early attempts by telecom companies to exploit deregulation and extract tolls on the Internet. That work put net neutrality on the map as an important issue for the progressive political activism community and, perhaps more importantly, for the public-interest funding community. It also meant that a lot of the policy work that would be needed was already in-hand and relationships with brilliant lawyers had been established (folks like like Barbara van Schewick and Marvin Ammori), and they were there to walk the FCC through the importance of a Title II approach. Organizations like the Ford Foundation, the Media Democracy Fund, Open Society Foundation, and Voqal were prepared to provide financial support for the fight.

But what vaulted activists over the top was not lobbying in D.C., but the record levels of public engagement they inspired across the country. Since the FCC opened their public comment period, nearly 4 million people have submitted comments regarding the net neutrality docket, more than the commission has ever received for an issue. Tom Wheeler acknowledged the power and importance of these comments by mentioning them in the opening sentence of his public announcement of Title II rules published at Wired.

The vast majority of the comments to the FCC favored strong Title II rules. Besides these comments, millions of individuals made calls to the commission or contacted their members of Congress. What makes this even more impressive is that net neutrality is a technical and complex issue with a bland name that is barely discussed in the mainstream press (in part because of the affiliations between media companies and telecoms). And it’s being fought around a rulemaking process at a regulatory agency. Again, there’s not a lot of precedent for this.

The organizers obviously used successful tactics to promote this engagement (some of which is discussed below), but this was about more than good tools and smart messaging. None of this would have been possible if there were not already millions of people inclined to invest some of their time in this effort.

Here are a few of the factors that I think made this possible.

1. Anti-monopoly sentiment — From big banks to big telecom companies like Comcast, Americans from across the political spectrum are growing skeptical of monopolistic businesses. The younger demographics are the most skeptical, suggesting that anti-monopoly attitudes are on the rise. Net neutrality is an anti-monopoly fight because toll roads on the Internet only works as a profit model if consumers and content providers literally have no other choice but to pay up.
2. Frustration with ISPs — The problem with monopoly power is more apparent in the telecom industry than just about anywhere else. Because of the telecoms’ dominant market positions and power to design policies in their favor, America has fallen behind the rest of the developed world in broadband access. People are frustrated with their ISPs, and they’re mad that they have no real choices in the matter. Thanks in part to their horrid customer service, Comcast is consistently ranked as the most hated company in America.
3. No one wants crappy Internet — Fast lanes and slow lanes on the Internet could lead to censorship and make it harder to share content on your favorite websites. Slower speeds for companies that can’t afford to pay up would mean that startup social networks that could improve on the dominant players of today may never come into existence. Sites like Reddit and Tumblr may have never been built without net neutrality protections. In the wake of the NSA revelations, people want alternatives to the big online companies like Facebook and Google. No one wants crappy Internet, and polling shows that support for net neutrality is thoroughly bipartisan. Net neutrality organizers gave millions of American something they could actually do with their anger over monopolies, censorship, and surveillance.

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The net neutrality fight never went viral to the extent that the SOPA fight did. This at least in part because the biggest players, like Google, were silent, but it’s also because pushing for new policy is a lot harder to rally around than pushing to kill something (vaguer enemies). Clearly, the record levels of public engagement at the FCC show that people were inclined to take action if shown the way. But this effort was spurred by organizers and organizations every step of the way.

Below are just a few of the strategies and tactics that were used. I can’t post a comprehensive list, but please add more in comments.

1. Battle for the Net — Fight for the Future built this site with help from Demand Progress and Free Press that became the homepage for the campaign. It includes a rotating action center for directing calls/emails to the target du jour, a political scoreboard for tracking where politicians stand, and social media tools. The site was so successful that its code was copied by anti-net neutrality groups.
2. Ground game —This was really led by Popular Resistance, but other folks joined in. Activists occupied the FCC’s tiny strip of lawn for weeks and physically blocked Tom Wheeler’s driveway one morning because, they said, he wasn’t going to work for the public. Emergency protests were held in cities across the country and www.protestsign.org was built to instantly turn any screen into a protest sign.
3. Daily FCC calls—Fight for the Future built a call tool that let people sign up to make daily calls to random people at the FCC. The strategy was that if low-level FCC employees were being bombarded with net neutrality calls they would have a responsibility to bring it up in meetings. At its peak there were more than 2,000 were making daily calls to random FCC answering machines.
4. Hitting all levers of power—The FCC Commissioners, and Chairman Wheeler in particular, are the ones who would make the decision, but activists also targeted anybody who could influence them, including the White House, Congress, and companies. President Obama’s support for Title II shows how important this was.
5. No pre-compromise—Organizations like Mozilla and some inside-the-Beltway interest groups were reluctant to push a Title II approach to net neutrality. Grassroots activists proceeded with fighting for what they believed would actually be effective and eventually convinced other groups to join them.
6. Internet slowdown— This was perhaps the most SOPA-like moment. On September 10, 2014, grassroots groups got over 40,000 websites to post slow-loading icons on their homepages that showed what the Internet could look like without net neutrality protections. Top participating sites included Tumblr, Netflix, and Vimeo.
7. Organizing communities of color— The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has been lobbying against net neutrality after receiving major funding from Comcast. In response, Color of Change and other organizations got their members to lobby the Congressional Black Caucus in support of net neutrality. They managed to flip several caucus members to lobby the FCC in support of Title II.

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The net neutrality debate is far from settled. The FCC still needs to vote on Wheeler’s proposal on Feb. 26, and that leaves plenty of time for telecom lobbyists to work their magic. Indeed, Republicans in Congress who are backed by contributions from the big ISPs are already working on a plan to block the FCC with legislation. Even if the FCC approves Wheeler’s reclassification proposal, the telecom companies already have plans to challenge it in court.

So, it’s not over yet, but I think the important take away already is that winning policy isn’t just about money, it’s about power more broadly, and the Internet seems to be giving the public a key source of political power when combined with smart organizing. Hardly anything is more worth protecting than that power. So hats off to everyone who’s done anything to support net neutrality. Remain vigilant.

Full disclosure: I am a card-carrying, t-shirt-wearing member of Team Internet and I formerly served on the Board of Directors for Fight for the Future.