Comcast announced today that it's purchasing Time Warner Cable for $158.82 per share.

If this sounds like the No. 1 cable company in the country purchasing the No. 2 cable company in the country, it is. If it sounds like the creation of a monopoly, it is. If it sounds like something that should be stopped, it is.

It likely won't be.

Comcast will sufficiently cook its books to get around this. Michael Maiello reported today Comcast will find a way to lose enough customers to nominally claim that Comcast/Time Warner Cable will represent less than 30 percent of market share, and this will likely be enough to appease the Feds.

It shouldn't. It's another loss for free speech and another gutpunch for the little guy in an increasingly top-heavy United States, where the powerful have won the right to purchase more speech through lobbying, then drown out dissent by buying out media companies.

Let's note this right away: This is not really about your exorbitant cable bill. Your exorbitant cable bill is a bad business practice, yes, but cable is a side issue.

This is about one company owning a plurality of the fiber that runs underneath our homes and using it to dictate the flow of commerce and speech through those pipes.

Our economy now runs on the premise of a reliable, high-speed Internet. It thrives on the idea that every website is accessible once created, that traffic to your website won't be throttled due to petty grudges or competing business interests from the people who own the wiring underneath your house.

Comcast has already taken a federal appeals court ruling last month as a free pass to immediately start slowing access to a competitor, Netflix.

A D.C. court ruled that Internet service providers can apply a governor to whichever websites they'd like. Internet is no longer to be viewed as a public utility by the FCC — a status that allowed a technological revolution in the last two decades never before seen. ISPs can block or slow traffic to websites of any dissenters or competitors. It is now to be governed entirely by private interests.

Now, in more than a third of the U.S., the Internet will be governed by a single private interest — Comcast/Time Warner Cable.

Netflix had become a recent thorn in the side of its cable business. Some people were sick of that exorbitant cable bill, so they were speaking with their dollars by canceling cable.

Comcast had more of those dollars, so they bought Time Warner Cable in an effort to make it harder for you to speak.

This is what happens when you allow for money to constitute speech in America.

We must make it clear that this is not about getting cheaper, unfettered access to SportsCenter or Real Housewives or Honey Boo-Boo. ­­This is not about your ability to watch Scrubs on Netflix without it buffering, either.

This is a speech issue, again. And the speech of the little guy is about to be trounced upon, again.

There's a precedent to stop something so blatantly anti-competitive and bad for the average American consumer or small business owner.

Remember, the DOJ stepped in to avert a T-Mobile/AT&T merger in 2011, calling the 43 percent market share the combined company would create too weighty. T-Mobile walked away with $4 billion for the hassle.

This one's even more important.

Make an uproar about this. It's worth it. Claim you'll drop your cable. Maybe even do it. Switch to Charter if they're in your area. Develop a new technology to get around this. Root for workarounds. Let it be known that pitchforks are at the ready if the Department of Justice were to rule against the consumer.

Stopping this sale would finally constitute a major 21st century decision that looks out for the speech of the common man in America — the very first principal upon which this country was founded, but has been consistently forgotten when staring down a fight or a wad of cash.

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