Katrina Christiansen

Jamestown

Rep. Cramer and Senator Hoeven showed the state of North Dakota just how morally bankrupt they are by voting in favor of reversing Obama era rules regarding internet privacy that allows Internet Services Providers to sell the browsing data of customers without permission.

Cramer claimed in his March 28th press release titled, REPEAL OF OBAMA-ERA FCC RULE RESTORES INTERNET PRIVACY FRAMEWORK, that the rule called by the previous administration as an internet privacy rule, does nothing to protect consumers and stands to hurt small and rural internet providers.

Well, it turns out most constituents can detect when they have been sold out. Cramer in an attempt to do damage control on his house.gov website linked to an Op-Ed on CNSnews.com that purports to expose the truth behind the Internet Privacy vote. CNSnews is news and commentary website founded by L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative activist.

Rep. Cramer more often than not, uses ideological, rhetoric or delusory arguments in place of facts to support his paid-positions. The truth regarding the vote is that now ISPs can collect data on the websites people visit including highly personal data like medical and financial and sell without consumers’ permission.

Rep. Cramer attempting to beguile us has claimed that “poor” ISPs like Verizon and Comcast are now on equal footing with the likes of Google and Facebook. Rep. Cramer, we have to pay our ISPs for their services. We do not have to pay Google or Facebook for services. We do not have luxury of swapping ISPs when we do not like their data policies. We can avoid Facebook and Google.

Cramer is not bankrupt in his campaign coffers; he received $71,750 in the last election cycle from Telecommunication industry and employees. Hoeven only received $25,800. So it seems that all the bombastic talk about “Draining the Swamp” Cramer mirrored from Trump was pseudo-policy.

Cramer is too busy tweeting selfies or making undignified comments about people to develop rich, market based policy and solutions to real problems. Like the unhealthy and costly ramifications of the Republican Administration’s cowardly rescinding of the Clean Power Plan. The rule that would have led to huge reductions in asthma attacks, heart attacks and premature deaths and thus health care costs across the nation. In North Dakota it would have led to reductions in the 2,200 tons of benzene, formaldhyde and acetaldehyde emitted by oil and gas operations and helping the 80,000 people who live in 12 western North Dakota counties where the average cancer risk exceeds EPA’s level of concern.

Alas, interest groups have a disproportionate say in our lives. They won Cramer’s support behind the rescinding and gutting the EPA per his inexorable press releases as he received $265k from Energy and Natural Resource companies and employees in 2016.