'Net neutrality' sounds nice, but the Web is working fine now. The new rules will inhibit investment, deter innovation and create a billable-hours bonanza for lawyers.
By ROBERT M. MCDOWELL, A REPUBLICAN COMMISSIONER OF THE FCC
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will mark the winter solstice by taking an unprecedented step to expand government's reach into the Internet by attempting to regulate its inner workings. In doing so, the agency will circumvent Congress and disregard a recent court ruling.
How did the FCC get here?
For years, proponents of so-called "net neutrality" have been calling for strong regulation of broadband "on-ramps" to the Internet, like those provided by your local cable or phone companies. Rules are needed, the argument goes, to ensure that the Internet remains open and free, and to discourage broadband providers from thwarting consumer demand. That sounds good if you say it fast.
Nothing is broken and needs fixing, however. The Internet has been open and freedom-enhancing since it was spun off from a government research project in the early 1990s. Its nature as a diffuse and dynamic global network of networks defies top-down authority. Ample laws to protect consumers already exist. Furthermore, the Obama Justice Department and the European Commission both decided this year that net-neutrality regulation was unnecessary and might deter investment in next-generation Internet technology and infrastructure.
Analysts and broadband companies of all sizes have told the FCC that new rules are likely to have the perverse effect of inhibiting capital investment, deterring innovation, raising operating costs, and ultimately increasing consumer prices. Others maintain that the new rules will kill jobs. By moving forward with Internet rules anyway, the FCC is not living up to its promise of being "data driven" in its pursuit of mandates—i.e., listening to the needs of the market.
It wasn't long ago that bipartisan and international consensus centered on insulating the Internet from regulation. This policy was a bright hallmark of the Clinton administration, which oversaw the Internet's privatization. Over time, however, the call for more Internet regulation became imbedded into a 2008 presidential campaign promise by then-Sen. Barack Obama. So here we are.
David Klein
Last year, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski started to fulfill this promise by proposing rules using a legal theory from an earlier commission decision (from which I had dissented in 2008) that was under court review. So confident were they in their case, FCC lawyers told the federal court of appeals in Washington, D.C., that their theory gave the agency the authority to regulate broadband rates, even though Congress has never given the FCC the power to regulate the Internet. FCC leaders seemed caught off guard by the extent of the court's April 6 rebuke of the commission's regulatory overreach.
When I read that Julius Genachowski is working around Congress ... especially when it is clear that the FCC has no business regulating the internet AND with Obama and the progressives that ultimately wanting to control sources of information to the general public, I am concerned. The internet works ... if it isn't broke, so why try to fix it? It doesn't take a rocket scientis to question the motives of Genachowski. Oh, of course if there are political reasons ... we peons need the progressives to let us know how to live and think !!
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This problem will be very easily remedied, should the Republican House have the ambition to do it. The incoming Commerce and Appropriations Committee chairpersons simply can defund Chairman Genachowski, and send him and his staffs packing. The FCC has outlived its usefulness anyway, and the Internet has done just fine despite interference from ridiculous interventionists like the FCC. We need to clean hous across the entire scope of the "imperial federal government", and reduce the headcount and budget by no less than 25% across the board. The FCC is a dinosaur, and is a solution in constant search of a problem. In most companies, "solution departments in search of problems" typically get disbanded, and the employees shown the door. Exactly what needs to happen here.Today Presents Early Test Of Tea Party Strength In House GOP: Committee Chair Elections
Today, the Republican Steering Committee will meet to select the GOP’s committee chairs for the 112th Congress. Most of the chairmen have been preordained, including a number of extreme conservatives we profiled in September who will head up some of the committees and subcommittees. These include incoming Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who hinted atimpeaching President Obama over immigration, incoming Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration chairman Steve King (R-IA), who called immigration a “slow-motion Holocaust,” and incoming Financial Service Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy Ron Paul (R-TX), who said that “printing paper money is nothing short of counterfeiting.”Two committees, on the other hand, have hotly contested battles that will come to a head today: the Appropriations Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee. In each case, the results will give us an early barometer of how much power the Tea Party will wield in Speaker Boehner’s House. The vote will be held by among the members of the Republican Steering Committee, which is composed of House conservatives handpicked by Boehner. However, despite the rightward tilt of the voting committee, early predictions don’t look good for the Tea Party.
APPROPRIATIONS: Three congressmen are vying to be the next head of the Appropriations Committee: Hal Rogers (R-KY), Jerry Lewis (R-CA), and Jack Kingston (R-GA). The two leading candidates, Rogers and Lewis, come with significant baggage. Rogers has shown such a love for earmarks throughout his tenure in Congress that he is affectionatelyknown as the “Pork King.” Lewis, a rampant earmarker himself, is also one of the most corrupt members of Congress, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Because Lewis has served as the ranking member of the committee for three terms, per GOP Caucus rules he would need a special waiver from the Republican leadership in order to stay at the helm – a move that would further salt the Tea Party’s wounds. Tea Partiers are lining up behind the more conservative Jack Kingston – a recent vote conducted on a Tea Party Patriots conference call found 80 percent backed the Georgia congressman – but for now he trails in the race.
ENERGY AND COMMERCE: Joe Barton’s stranglehold on this committee was put in doubt the moment an apology to BP for an alleged “$20 billion shakedown” escaped his lips. However, by consistently kowtowing the Tea Party line – even joining the House Tea Party Caucus and winning theendorsement of the Tea Party godmother Michele Bachmann (R-MN) – Barton has clawed his way back into the chairman’s race. Like Lewis, Barton would need a special waiver in order to continue on, but in this case, Barton is the preferred choice of a majority of Tea Partiers. Early predictions, however, give the edge to Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI). In response, Tea Partiers have gone all-in against Upton. As ThinkProgress reported last month, Glenn Beck and FreedomWorks have orchestrated amajor campaign against Upton, citing the fact that Upton introduced a bill to make light bulbs more energy-efficient. Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) and John Shimkus (R-IL) are also running as compromise alternatives.
Today’s vote will be a telling tale of what happens when the Tea Party goes to Washington. Will Tea Partiers be “co-opted” and their power dissipated in Congress, as former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott called for? Or will the “Tea Party takeover” of the GOP continue? If Rogers or Lewis win the Appropriations vote and Upton prevails on Energy and Commerce, business as usual will have prevailed in the GOP caucus. If Kingston and Barton get the nods, the Tea Party takeover lives on.
