The network neutrality debate has seen no limit of dumb arguments from both sides of the aisle. Since the argument really heated up in 2005 with AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre first clumsily explaining his dream of double dipping, it has been so warped by fuzzy logic, bad science, and spin that the "debate" today is little more than an ugly mess, dominated by professional distortionists and people in strange outfits. The tone and pace of the conversation is now largely dictated by lobbyists and think tankers for hire, who use a wide variety of incredibly sleazy tactics to try and win what now passes for honest debate on the subject of open networks and consumer rights.

One of the biggest contributors to the ever-devolving quality of the discussion has been Bret Swanson, recently employed by a PR firm named the Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute is responsible for such ideas as "intelligent design" (created by evangelical partisans to help sell creationism in the classroom) and the Exaflood (created by ISPs to try and convince the world the Internet will collapse if ISPs aren't allowed to cap, throttle, and overcharge consumers).

Swanson is essentially a fake objective analyst for hire, who now does heavy lifting for major telecom carriers under the actually rather ironic name of Entropy Economics. Through bunk science and massaged statistics, Swanson gets quoted as an objective analyst in media outlets, informing the world that there really aren't any broadband problems. Swanson's latest masterpiece appeared this week over at the Huffington Post, where Swanson informs his readers that the FCC's effort to craft more tangible network neutrality guidelines for carriers will result in huge job losses:So, Swanson's "science" here consisted of taking a count of those who submitted network neutrality comments to the FCC, then adding up how many people they employ to nebulously make a scary connection to job losses. Except one, there's no indication that the kind of wimpy and vaguely worded network neutrality guidelines the FCC is proposing will do much of anything, much less hurt employment. As it stands, the most the new rules will do with require that ISPs are simply clear about what kind of network management they're using. While there are layoffs in the telecom sector, they have nothing to do with network neutrality.

Two, and more importantly, a huge number of companies and other firms that submitted comments to the FCC (including Swanson himself) were doing so under the guidance of companies like AT&T. Carriers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast of course bombarded the FCC's inbox with anti-net-neutrality tirades themselves. So did all of these companies' hardware and networking vendor partners, who mirrored carrier positions against network neutrality because they'd like to keep getting paid.

But carrier lobbyists also filed protests with the FCC under the guise of literally thousands of think tanks, fake consumer groups and even seemingly unrelated front organizations, including professional disc golf course designers (funded by AT&T) or even the "Arkansas Retired Seniors Coalition" (run by a former 30 year BellSouth PR rep). Adding up the total number of people employed by this orchestra of co-opted and AT&T-funded organizations shows nothing about employment or network neutrality, but it does say planety about how far companies like AT&T are willing to go to manipulate public opinion.

Swanson knows his argument is empty, but assumes his readership is well-stocked with idiots. He even goes on to note that "one can't gauge Net Neutrality's overall desirability merely by who files FCC comments," yet proceeds to do just that. The rest of Swanson's argument is the same canned telecom industry arguments we've been debunking for half a decade, including the idea that neutrality protections would harm investment in networks, or that the neutrality debate is simply between huge telecom companies and huge, mean content companies like Google (which helps foster apathy among consumers unfamiliar with the debate).

Swanson, like most hired telecom wonks, omits the fact that the idea of open networks -- or being able to use the applications and devices of your choice without ISP interference -- is something supported by a vast majority of consumers. Not everybody agrees that we need network neutrality regulations, of course. Many supporters of the concept argue that all you'd really need to protect open networks is persistent competition, but guess what: carriers object to any changes on that front as well.

You'll notice that at no point does the Huffington Post highlight Swanson's connections to the telecom industry's biggest players (Swanson's tied to AT&T through the telco's funding of such "think tanks" as Digital Society, where Swanson is a "visiting fellow," and Arts and Labs). In fact, Huffington Post (or Swanson himself) doesn't even allow users to comment on the article, which conveniently prevents Swanson from actually having to defend his painfully-unscientific job loss "evidence."