We've explored how the Goorizon alliance is the regulatory equivalent of a bobble-head doll: cute and stuffed largely with air, but primarily designed to pre-empt tougher consumer protections. Worse perhaps, Google and Verizon's defense of their proposal has been one distortion after another, the companies insisting the weak-kneed framework is solely about empowering the consumer, and has nothing to do with keeping wireless consumer protections away from their tablet/smartphone Android partnership.

With both Verizon and Google being immensely and documentably full of crap on this issue (and in Google's case they're now in full disagreement with Google circa 2007), it's fairly cute to see a Verizon lobbyist (whose job we can all agree is, in part, to lie whenever necessary) "setting the record straight." In a new Verizon blog post, Verizon's David Fish sets forth a new set of "facts" on the Goorizon proposal in response to "factually challenged" critics like consumer group Free Press. The only problem? Not a single one of them is true. One by one:

Here's a real fact: Verizon wants what any massive, government-pampered duopolist wants: more strings-free taxpayer money, a lazy regulatory body with no consumer protection authority whatsoever, government protection from competition, and the ability to engage in any business practices they like, no matter how unethical or anti-competitive.

No, it doesn't. The proposal is about as "tough" as year-old cardboard in a highway rainstorm, excluding wireless from consumer protections entirely, while the landline non-discrimination requirements are packed with absurd loopholes.No, it doesn't. It completely frees wireless from consumer protections, while leaving gaping loopholes for a myriad of managed wireline services. If you actually read the proposal (pdf), it claims prioritization might be considered unacceptable discrimination, then proceeds to vaguely insist this "presumption could be rebutted." The entire framework is intentionally ambiguous.These two can be tackled together, and neither is true. Partial Title II reclassification would give the FCC a degree of authority over broadband ISPs, while the Goorizon proposal is designed to ensure the FCC has "no rule making authority" and is required to "give appropriate deference" to telecom industry-backed self-regulatory organizations. And while the assumption is the FTC would step in to fill the void, the FTC is a slumbering agency that, like the FCC, can't even be bothered to address blatant, predatory false advertising in this sector.Again, by "specific authority," Fish actually means "little to no authority whatsoever," with offenses judged and punished by the industry itself. Apparently, Fish hopes that by falsely repeating the "fact" that the FCC is gaining authority here, nobody will notice that said authority is simply for show.Verizoogle's exemption for managed services is a neutrality loophole big enough to drive a truck through, given that in an app-mad, tablet and smartphone driven world, everything can become a managed service. About the only thing the proposal restricts are things Verizon had no intention of doing anyway, like the outright blockade of a competing voice service, or packet forgery. Even those might be allowed as long as a carrier lawyer vaguely shows the ISP was acting to protect the network from bogeymen (congestion, child pornographers, P2P, phantoms, goblins, etc.).As we've repeatedly noted, the "open access" conditions attached to the 700MHz auction were also packed with loopholes, allowing carriers to do essentially whatever they'd like as long as it's done to protect the integrity of the network. Like this new proposal, those restrictions were crafted to be intentionally flimsy so Verizon lawyers can tango over and around them at their leisure. They are for show.

And yes, "openness" is so "standard," that AT&T's still busily crippling Android phones and packing them with unremovable AT&T bloatware. It's so open, carriers are crippling phone functionality as to charge consumers more for tethering. It's so "open," companies like Skype are striking exclusive deals with carriers designed specifically to artificially save the concept of the voice minute from its inevitable evolutionary extinction. Crippled handsets, exclusive deals, high ETFs, gated app-store approval criteria and punitive mobile pricing do not equate to "open."

Some people need to cool the rhetoric and stick to the facts. -Verizon

It's fairly clear that Verizon lobbyists thought that by giving a few very minor and pathetic concessions on landline neutrality, they'd be rewarded with not only no neutrality rules applied to wireless, but they'd be able to pre-empt the FCC's interest in partial Title II reclassification of broadband ISPs. While Verizon protecting their revenues from government regulation is expected, the pretense that these actions are pro-consumer altruism is insulting.

And while consumer groups certainly aren't above layering annoying hyperbole (it's the end of the Internet!) on top of their arguments to grab the attention of a lazy public, their "facts" on the Goorizon proposal are much closer to the mark than Mr. Fish's. Here's a real fact for Mr. Fish: Verizon wants what any massive, government-pampered duopolist wants: more strings-free taxpayer money, a lazy regulatory body with no consumer protection authority whatsoever, government protection from competition, and the ability to engage in any business practices they like, no matter how unethical or anti-competitive.

Mr. Fish and Verizon apparently believe consumers and the press aren't smart enough to realize this, and judging from this morning's editorial in the Washington Post calling for "legislative enactment of something like the Google-Verizon plan," they very well may be right.