You cannot be a fully functioning 21st-century citizen in America unless you have access to high-speed broadband. It's as simple as that.

There's just the unabashed and unprecedented and disgusting level of money in politics. I don't blame just the Republicans; the Democrats are just about as beholden to it, too.

People depend on the Open Internet to connect and communicate with each other freely. Voters need it to inform themselves before casting ballots. Without prompt corrective action by the Commission to reclassify broadband, this awful ruling will serve as a sorry memorial to the corporate abrogation of free speech.

If you have an internet service provider that's capable of slowing down other sites, or putting other sites out of business, or favoring their own friends and affiliates and customers who can pay for fast lanes, that's a horrible infringement on free speech. It's censorship by media monopolies. It's tragic: here we have a technology, the internet, that's capable really of being the town square of democracy, paved with broadband bricks, and we are letting it be taken over by a few gatekeepers. This is a first amendment issue; it's free speech versus corporate censorship.

We should be leading, and we’re not. We need to get serious about broadband, we need to get serious about competition, we need to get serious about our country.

Maybe a better way to put it on this Halloween Day is to say, 'It's not a trick or much of a treat, but it's all you get if you come knocking on the Commission's door today.

You cannot be a fully functioning 21st-century citizen in America unless you have access to high-speed broadband. It's as simple as that.