Net neutrality repeal after a year and somehow the walls haven't fallen in

Was there ever anything Democrats made a bigger stink about than the need for net neutrality and its subsequent repeal? Remember how CNN called it "the end of the Internet as we know it"? Remember all the sick death threats against FCC chairman Ajit Pai? Remember the hysterical screaming, the claims of Big Corporate slowing down the internet to punish us, or something of that sort? John Merline at Issues & Insights has a meaty, must-read piece about just how overblown and phony that crisis really was. He writes:

Well, here we are, one year later. The internet is still functioning. In fact, it's better than ever. Last year, average internet download speeds shot up almost 36%, and upload speeds climbed 22%, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report. There are more users than ever. More videos to watch. More content to consume. More commerce being conducted. No sites are being blocked. No one is complaining that their service is being throttled. And more people are gaining access to broadband. During President Trump's first year in office, in fact, the number of people without access to a broadband connection dropped by 18%. So what of all the chicken-clucking and feather-fluttering that came from the Democratic henhouse? Silence. They just moved on in embarrassment. What it shows is that Democrat hysteria campaigns are frequently the work of special interests and moneyed lobbyists. Democrats cluck to these orchestras with abandon and strive to get the whole public roused and enraged. In this case, a wiser head who looked at the facts objectively and got rid of some fettersome legislation prevailed, demonstrating in a test case how important it is to govern with a light hand. And even more important, how critical it is to be suspicious of hysterical press and political claims of doom and destruction. This case demonstrates that leftists are creatures of corporate special interests and corporate-state handmaidens. As much as the Left yells about giant corporations, its own people are such corporates' biggest sycophants.