Last year the US regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to rescind the net neutrality protections debated and constructed over the course of the administration of President Barack Obama and implemented in February, 2015. Some 29 individual American states, including California, Hawaii, Montana, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, vowed to fight back and promised to introduce their own net neutrality regulations to re-instate what they describe as "fair and open access to the Internet."

By far the toughest new net neutrality rules have been proposed by California. So radical are they that, when and if passed, they would be even stronger than erstwhile national regulations voted down by the currently Republican-packed Board of Commissioners of the FCC. California's determination seems to have pushed Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the FCC, over the edge.

So angry is he at the perceived lèse-majesté of the liberal upstarts of the California State Legislature that he has abandoned all notion of public civility and open-handedness that his role is supposed to embody and has resorted to a foot-stamping tantrum.

Addressing an audience at the Maine Heritage Policy Centre in Portand, New England, Mr. Pai said, "Last month, the California state legislature passed a radical, anti-consumer Internet regulation bill that would impose restrictions even more burdensome than those adopted by the FCC in 2015. California’s micromanagement poses a risk to the rest of the country".