Imagine…. you need some bread… So, you hop in your car, turn on the ignition, back out into your street, and almost hit someone. You get out and see a long line of cars in your normally empty street…. After about an hour, you come to the end of the road in your development, where it empties onto the highway….

Flashing lights. Oh, no, you think… a terrible accident. There at the head of your development stands a policeman holding up traffic. You crane your head out the side window, looking for the accident… You want to know if you can avoid it by going the opposite direction… It must be out of your view, you decide… You can see no activity. And ….. to your surprise, trucks are speeding up and down the highway… They usually don’t go that fast, the occasional ones who venture there, but today there are a lot of them, and they are flying…

The policeman seems to have gotten word on his headsets, and he motions five more cars forward, including yours.. You are on a wide open road and you go straight to the store, now 2 hours behind…. As you pull into the store, you notice a policeman there too, standing on the corner, letting traffic out to go back to where they came….

You notice that if there are trucks on the road, you get held back… Only when there are none, do cars get allowed upon the highway… That’s not fair you think..

So you ask the store clerk, who seems tired of answering the same question…. He tells you…

“Congressional Republicans passed a law that disbands highway neutrality.

“Highway Neutrality? you say…”WTF is that”……

He says, “Well, the roads used to be neutral… that means anyone could use them to go anywhere they wanted. They were just there; you could just drive on them… But the Republicans said that since trucks pay more in taxes, a lot more, the roads were for them… They have first priority.. If they aren’t using the road, then they’ll let cars on them. It’s kinda nice; for the first time here in the city, I actually got my delivery on time. But my sales are about 20% of what they usually are on a Sunday…. Guess people are stayin’ put and don’t want to deal with it…

You say, “:Let me get this right… Because trucks are bigger, they get priority over cars?”

“Yeh, but for a lot of money you can upgrade to truck status, and ride with them…” the clerk volunteers. I think it’s $50 a month…. If you want to go for free, you have to wait for the gate keepers to let you on….

You say. ” but that’s extortion! Since man has been around,… the highways were always free, unless they were a toll road… How can they suddenly take what’s always been free, and start charging an arm and a leg for it?

He says… “People voted Republican… That’s all I can say… I guess the truck lobby sort of owns Republicans… at least they contribute money to their campaign, and to pay them back, we now have lost our highway neutrality… and if you want to go somewhere quickly, you have to pay, and pay, and pay, and pay, and………..

By now you’re boiling mad… You get a lot of groceries because you know, you are not going on the highway for a long while…. It takes you two hours to go one mile…..

While all eyes were on the budget bill and threats of government shutdown, the Republicans two days ago ( 4/8/11) found time to remove neutrality from the internet. Yep, the House voted on a terse statement that says the FCC must rescind their net neutrality policy immediately.. … Once this is done, preference will be given to the large providers, and small ones like all of us, will have to await our turn.

Unless we pay for the upgrade….

This was just an political exercise. It won’t pass the Senate and Obama will veto if it were to ever make it that far… But the vote was unsurprisingly, along party lines. The usual 6 Democrats crossed over to the Republican side, and two Republicans joined the Democrats on this issue…

So though this won’t pass, it is reminder that if Republicans win in 2012, this will be the future of the internet…

And I don’t know about you, but the internet has become more of a basic right to me than my free speech…. We have a right to free, unrestricted internet. This is a people’s right, not a decision to be left to business…

We need people in Congress who support people instead of big business….