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By any objective measure, the rollout of broadband services to the country is going phenomenally well, and is largely being done with private capital and without involving taxpayer dollars. As you might expect, broadband providers have focused on areas where demand and market forces sufficiently incentivize private network companies. But there obviously remains the problem of areas where, for reasons of geography, population density, or other issues, making a business case for deploying broadband is a challenge.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is about to reveal it’s recommendations to Congress regarding a National Broadband Plan. As part of the FCC’s efforts, they have solicited ideas from the public on what should be the elements of the plan.
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Members of Congress say they are concerned about the exploding budget deficit, though not so concerned, it seems, to stop all the spending that’s actually causing the deficit explosion—up to about 24.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
President Obama’s solution has been to appoint, by executive order—because the Senate wouldn’t pass it—a bipartisan group to explore what the government can do to reign in the spending.
It’s like an alcoholic convening a meeting of other heavy drinkers to discuss how the alcoholic can cut back on his drinking—and having the meeting at a bar at happy hour.
Of course, everyone knows the committee will recommend some minor spending cuts and some major tax increases. The tax increases would pass and the spending cuts would be postponed until later—because spendaholics don’t really want to cut spending, they just want to say that they do.
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Is there a more dynamic industry than wireless communications?
In a relatively short time a cell phone has become a necessity to virtually everyone, and one of the areas of most rapid technological innovation is in wireless handsets. Every few months one company or another introduces a new, feature-rich handset, which consumers eagerly gobble up.
At the same time, service providers compete fiercely for customers, continually upgrading their networks to provide better and faster service and even financing consumers’ purchase of sophisticated handsets.
This is at least one industry that has succeeded in creating high-paying jobs, pleasing consumers, delivering innovation, and funneling tax revenue to virtually every level of government. You’d think government would be pleased, but from San Francisco to Maine, and at many stops in between, mobile phones are under attack by radical opportunists.
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| Senator Jim Bunning could probably use a hug. The retiring Kentucky Republican has been trying to get Congress to live up to its fiscal promises. And for that good deed he’s getting pummeled by Democrats, barraged by reporters and largely ignored by Republicans. This is not a good sign for all that promised future austerity by either party. Congress passed a new version of “pay as you go,” or “paygo,” legislation in February when it increased the government’s borrowing limit to $1.9 trillion. The goal of paygo is to force the government to find ways to offset any new spending. Democrats included the provision to help deflect criticism for their explosion in deficit spending. President Obama showered it with praise: "PAYGO would hold us to a simple but bedrock principle: Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere. Read More...
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One of the challenges of putting out nearly daily content is to find a title for all of the various pieces. Ideally titles should be clever and also provide the reader with some idea of what’s to come.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seems to have a similar challenge—how to “Title” various things, which is why you should be concerned about the recent talk of moving Internet oversight from Title I to Title II.
One might be forgiven for thinking this is just inside-the-Beltway meddling and jamming the iPod earplugs back in. But in fact it is just that freedom to stream music, play a massive multiplayer game, watch video, send messages, and enjoy the future bounty of innovation that could very well be at stake. One could say that the “open Internet” as we know it is at risk.
Communications systems of various sorts get placed under either Title I or Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Read More...
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World markets have been worried about the financial disaster threatening Greece. And well they should.
The European Union member country recently revealed that it had been hiding its debt. Greece’s total debt is 113 percent of GDP for 2009, and expected to rise to 125 percent by 2010. E.U. rules require that total debt not be higher than 60 percent of GDP, according E.U. Business.
And so the markets stumbled for several days over the prospect of a Greek failure, until other E.U. countries hinted they might help out.
But looking at the mounting debt facing the U.S., we have to wonder if we’ll be the new Greece.
Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center has just put together a chart highlighting our own challenges. It shows gross U.S. federal debt for 2010 at $11.9 trillion. That’s 94.3 percent of GDP. Not quite Greece yet, but heading that way quickly.
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When will the Census Bureau enter the 21st Century—or even the 20th?
It’s time to take the constitutionally mandated census once again. But while the rest of the country gathers and processes information with the speed of light, the Census Bureau still operates at the speed of shoes, where few, if any, technological tools exist to streamline the process. And they seem uninterested in improving their processes.
This is a recurring theme in government: the misapplication of government interest in technology.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) pushed for years to create a means for taxpayers to file their taxes online, even though the private market had created Turbotax, a popular and successful tool for individuals to file their taxes. Government plowed ahead and created an ability to file, but only because of an agreement with Intuit. Reneging on the agreement might have run the company out of business.
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Our thanks to FedEx Chairman Fred Smith for dredging up a 2001 IPI study and resurrecting its recommendations in a Wall Street Journal op/ed this past Saturday.
In his op-ed, Mr. Smith rightly touts accelerated depreciation as a powerful tool through which the federal government could stimulate real job creation in the private sector through tax policy.
He’s right—in 2001 IPI found that for every $1 in tax reductions through accelerated depreciation, the economy would reap $9 in increased GDP.
But depreciation fixes are not the only tax tools available to the feds to stimulate economic growth. Read More...
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In the federal government, regulators are not directly accountable to the electorate. While an elected official must account at every election for their actions, typically regulators, such as FCC commissioners, are appointed by elected officials and hence do not answer directly to the people.
This simple fact may explain the FCC’s seeming determination to assert increased government control of the Internet, or at least the belief by pro-government control activists that the FCC deliver their agenda on a silver platter.
Years ago, the FCC determined broadband would be regulated as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” So, the FCC decided, and later the Supreme Court agreed, that broadband is not to be burdened with antiquated “common carrier” regulations, rules created in 1934 to impose heavy government control of the then monopoly telephone system. Read More...
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President Obama introduced his budget this week amid lots of calls for Republicans to support the president’s laundry list of new and expanded spending programs, along with a minimal spending freeze and some tax cuts.
For example, Politico cites White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer saying that Republicans “have a responsibility now to partner with the President, to try to get things done for the American people.”
In short, Pfeiffer wants Republicans to quit being the party of “no.”
But bipartisanship is only good when the proposed legislation is good. And frankly, most of the president’s proposals have been stinkers.
Take the administration’s proposal to try accused 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in downtown New York City. Republicans opposed the plan, as did most of the public. Read More...
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While in Washington ideologues argue over whether there is adequate competition in the communications industry and dream up fanciful schemes to redesign the communications industry and dangerous plans to regulate the Internet, the states are moving ahead with modernizing their communications regulations to reflect the competitive reality that we see around us every day.
This week the story is Georgia, where the legislature is beginning the process of eliminating hidden and distortive subsidies in the rates paid by Peach State consumers.
Wisely, Georgia is planning to "bring access charges to parity," which means to eliminate the subsidies buried in inter-carrier compensation, or fees paid between different carriers to carry local and long-distance traffic. The entire system is outdated and creates competitive distortions between companies.
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Would the REAL Obama agenda please stand up!
On Monday morning the White House released a plan for:
- Doubling the Child and Dependant Care Tax Credit for families making under $85,000;
- Limiting student federal loan payments;
- Expanding tax credits to match retirement savings; and
- Expanding assistance to families caring for elderly relatives.
All of which cost money.
But by Monday evening, the New York Times reported that President Obama wants to freeze spending on many domestic programs for three years, then tie future program growth to the inflation rate.
Talk about trying to have it both ways. So which is it?
Is the economy so bad that we need new or expanded spending programs? Or was last year’s spending spree so massive and irresponsible that we have to freeze the budget?
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With insurmountable majorities in both Houses of Congress, Congressional Democrats had the votes to jam through any piece of legislation they liked. They didn’t need the support of Republicans, and they acted as if they didn’t even need the popular support of the American people. They had the votes.
Or so they thought. Massachusetts’ new Senator-elect Scott Brown says the biggest driver behind his remarkable election was the people’s disgust with “the way things are being done.” Voters are unhappy with a ruling majority that seems intent to pass an agenda without regard to the will and concerns of the people.
It’s not too big a stretch to see a parallel situation at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where Democrat-appointed commissioners “have the votes” to jam through new federal regulatory control over the Internet through so-called “network neutrality” regulations.
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What Will the President Say in His State of the Union? The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says he has some explaining to do.
Washington is all atwitter over President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union address. And understandably so, because the president has some serious explaining to do, like:
- How he plans to get control of the $1.4 trillion federal deficit, more than three times the deficit Obama was so critical of under George Bush.
- And how he intends to pay for all the Democrats’ new federal spending. Yes, he could raise taxes, but he already has several new taxes in his health care bill.
- And maybe the president can explain why his much-boasted stimulus bill has had little impact on creating new jobs.
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 Fate of the Union |
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Something remarkable is going on in America.
I can’t quite explain it; I’m not sure anyone can. But we can use Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska to exemplify the change.
In order to “persuade”—some might say “payoff”—Nelson to vote for Senator Harry Reid’s health care reform bill, Reid agreed that the federal government would pay Nebraska’s portion of the increased Medicaid cost—forever.
Nelson can be forgiven for thinking his so-called “cornhusker kickback” would be hailed back home as a great achievement because, in the past, it would have been. Trying to maximize federal revenue is like a state hobby.
And Reid certainly thought Nebraska would approve. Why, he essentially called the other states a bunch of chumps for not getting their own kickback.
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Immigration—next to imitation—being the sincerest form of flattery, it’s no wonder new Census Bureau figures show Americans moving to Texas as fast as they can. They like what they see here.
The federal nose-counters say new Texans in 2008-09 numbered nearly half a million—18 percent of all the population growth in the country. Only Wyoming and Utah, with smaller populations, drew larger percentages of newcomers.
We’re not talking just about the foreign-born. Domestic migrants to Texas—from New York, California, wherever—outnumbered international border-crossers two to one.
How come? A good climate would be part of it, and we’re talking both weather and the business climate. Whereas the policies of many other states don’t exactly encourage hard work, savings and investment, Texas pours rewards on workers and entrepreneurs.
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[The following is an excerpt from IPI’s comments filed today with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to regulate the practices of Internet service providers (ISPs)]
The intent of Congress to increase competition and innovation in communications through the Telecom Act of 1996 is finally being realized. Congress intended to deregulate and thus invigorate the communications industry through competition and market forces—and it did just that.
The wisdom of this approach is obvious: The United States today has a vigorously competitive communications marketplace, and consumers have access to a tremendous array of products and services, and all of the research and rollout have been paid for through private risk capital at no cost to the taxpayers.
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Can Congress Force You to Buy Health Insurance? Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says only by ignoring the Constitution.
The health care reform legislation in Congress requires every American to have health insurance or pay a significant fine. But where does the U.S. Constitution give Congress that power?
Cyber News Service posed the question, and Democrats seemed to fumble for an answer.
Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is quoted as saying, “probably the same place that states have the authority to require, mandate if you will, compulsory auto liability insurance.” Claire McCaskill and some other Democrats agree.
Of course, state constitutions are completely independent documents and have no bearing on powers granted by the U.S. Constitution.
That document sets strict limits on federal power. Read More...
Limited Powers |
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Presidential elections are expensive—something liberals never tire of reminding us every four years when they push for some way to nationalize the cost of presidential elections.
Except, of course, in 2008. Liberals were remarkably quiet when then-candidate Barack Obama spent money like there was no tomorrow—$741 million, more than the Bush and Kerry campaigns combined in 2004—a mindset the president seems to have carried over into the presidency.
But as expensive as presidential campaigns can be, that’s only a fraction of the true cost taxpayers must pay after the candidate is elected.
And we are only now beginning to discover just how much the election of Barack H. Obama will cost. For example:
- There’s the president’s $3.5 trillion budget for 2010 that passed last April, by far the largest in history.
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When you watch a dog chasing its tail around and around in circles, the obvious question posed to the dog is “what are you going to do with it if you ever catch it?”
Well, politically liberal activist groups have been chasing their own tails for years, criticizing content and media companies for, well, just about everything they do, and of course all in the name of “protecting consumers.”
But in their latest attack, these activists have caught their own tails, and in the course of doing so have demonstrated that their real agenda is anything but innovation and consumer benefit.
The activists’ latest complaint is a new video service called TV Everywhere. Read More...
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Author: Bartlett D. Cleland || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA