Welcome back to the "slimmed-down" Open Internet Coalition II

I'd like to welcome back to the playing field, the reconstituted "ItsOurNet Coalition" which inexplicably went away in January, but has now returned as "The Open Internet Coalition!"

Now we finally know what they were doing while they were gone from the scene for four months...

• They were losing weight.
• The coalition shed the excess pounds of Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon.
• Who needs them!
• It must have been too burdensome for Google to have to accomodate these more reasonable and less-regulatory members of the previous ItsOurNet coalition.
• Now the new "slimmed down" coalition can be faster, more nimble and united around being pro-regulatory for others.
• The remaining coalition members are a much tighter and cohesive bunch.
• There's now no one big or bold enough to challenge the Big Dog and ringleader Google. 
• There's also no one in the coalition who believes in a free market broadband policy.
• And it is basically companies and groups whose common thread is they have hired up all the under-employed pro-regulatory staffers who hate the telcos and cablecos.
• The remaining group is of one mind -- their nirvana "democracy".

I was frankly surprised that the new group chose not to be forthright and embrace its new "slimmed-down" public physique.

• They decided to inflate themselves to twice their real size by vastly overstating that they have 54 "member" companies.
• In truth, if you go to IAC's website, www.iac.com you will learn that 22 of the companies are listed prominently as IAC companies, and it appears if at least two more on the Coalition list are also part of the IAC family.
• Ebay represents that wholly-owned: PayPal, Skype, shopping.com, and stubhub as "independent" companies which they are not.   
• Even Google lists YouTube which it wholly-owns as an "independent" member.
• By my rough count, 29 of the 54 companies/groups they claim are just wholly-owned front groups for Google, eBay, and IAC/Ask.com.
• This the functional equivalent of putting on one of those huge rubber sumo wrestler outfits to look BIG and impressive in public.
• The problem is that it only has the desired effect if it isn't obvious that it is a costume.  
• I think they would be better off just owning who they are: a slimmed-down group of hard-core pro-regulatory folks.

My other suggestion is that this group would do better not claiming like it does in its introductory sentence that "The Open Internet Coalition represents consumers..." And "our coalition speaks for millions of americans..."

• Who are these people?
• Where are the consumer groups?
• Where's the Consumer's Union? the Consumer Federation?
• Don't get carried away that the so-called public interest groups that Google funds, are "consumer groups" in the true sense of the term.
• These are the left's version of Google-funded "Astroturf" groups which I think now are more accurately called "Google's Poodles."

I also recommend that everyone read everything on the Open Internet Coalition website.

• Any informed reader will see that it is replete with half-truths, unsubstantiated allegations, misrepresentations, and overstatements.
• But other than that it is actually a really good site.