“We will come to regret this, bitterly.”

“We will come to regret this, bitterly.”  That's a quote from the Patterico blog, talking about the (now presumed) FCC proposal to regulate the Internet in the U.S.  Here's a slightly less succinct, but more pungent, assessment from Warren Meyer of CoyoteBlog:

Here is my official notice -- you have been warned, time and again.  There will be no allowing future statements of "I didn't mean that" or "I didn't expect that" or "that's not what I intended."   There is no saying that you only wanted this one little change, that you didn't buy into all the other mess that is coming.   You let the regulatory camel's nose in the tent and the entire camel is coming inside.  I guarantee it.

 Mr. Meyer's post is titled “Sorry, But All You Internet Users Appear to Be Idiots” – rude, but definitely to the point.

Some members of the FCC have been rather publicly itching to get their bureaucratic mitts on the Internet for quite some time, and the money-motivated political types (that would be all but about three of them) have long been eying it as a source of untapped bribes campaign funding.  What has stopped these leeches from following through with their desires is the utter lack of any excuse reason for doing so.  What's different now?  The notion of “net neutrality” has somehow caught on, giving them the perfect political cover for a power grab.  Why the notion of net neutrality has caught on is a complete mystery to me – it's an entirely hypothetical problem, with zero current or historical examples.  Competitive pressures seem very likely to keep it from ever being a problem.  Nevertheless, the non-technical masses have somehow become terrified of net inequality, and the bleating can be heard far and wide.  Me, I see the disgusting leers of toad-like bureaucrats as they reach for ever more power...