Posted on 12/21/2010 8:15:26 PM PST by seamus
The Federal Communications Commission today moved in to regulate the Internet, which is the wonder of the modern age exactly because the FCC hasn’t been able to get its hands around its throat. Don’t just take it from me and others at The Heartland Institute. Some guy named Steve Wozniak wrote in The Atlantic that the little tech company he helped found would have never fundamentally transformed our economy and our lives if the rules the FCC just imposed were in place years ago.
I believe this is the end of the Internet as we know it. If the barrage of lawsuits soon to come don’t dislodge the FCC from a place it has no jurisdiction to regulate, it will burrow itself in for good. And we’ll all be the poorer for it — never knowing what cool stuff we’ll miss because of a world where companies play “Mother May I?” with bureaucrats before moving forward with their next innovation.
At a time when we need much less regulation across the board to encourage economic growth, the FCC has just inserted its muck-making machine smack dab in the middle of the only industry keeping America’s economy afloat.
Here are a couple of Heartland videos that help explain the net neutrality debate: (“Net Neutrality: Part 1” and “Why Obama is Wrong about Net Neutrality.”) Here is a Heartland policy study that exposes the Marxist history of the net neutrality movement. And here is my contribution to the statement Heartland released to the press today in reaction to this inevitable, but still depressing, news:
READ MORE HERE (and it gets worse).
(Excerpt) Read more at somewhatreasonable.com ...
We'd have had a generation above what is "wired" broadband over the air five years ago (for practically nothing) if the government would get out of the way.
Full disclosure: I'm the author.
I’m only commenting now on my post, Outlaw Woman, because I could not get back to it immediately after putting it on FR. Strange ... but I’m glad FreeRepublic is back to its usual smooth-operating self.
No problem. Heck since that post we’ve experienced DADT, Regulation of carbon emissions by the marxist, START, etc.
It’s been a mind blowing spectacle watching the traitors in action.
Anyway, yes FR was acting hinky that nite for sure. Someone told me it was probably the weather in CA.
I hear ya, fellow "old-timer" at FR (circa 1990s). That is the long-term plan, let there be no doubt.
Actually, Logic n' Reason, all we need is a new Republican House to pass a bill telling the FCC to stand down. And we need the Senate to pass it — which would probably happen.
Unfortunately, our president wouldn't sign that bill ... unless he had so much pressure on him that he'd have to. Regardless, lawsuits that will fly will probably circumvent all this flotsam and jetsam. And, if that doesn't work, (hopefully) a new president in 2012 will make this but a blip on the advancement on the digital economy and our freedom.
As I explain (I think) in my post at Somewhat Reasonable, a federal court told the FCC they can't do this. But they did it anyway. Some 300 members of Congress, including 82 Democrats, told them not to do this (in a non-binding letter). But the Democratic appointees on the FCC pushed it through 3-2 anyway.
That's the nature of federal bureaucracies: "We'll do what we want in an instant, and it will take years of procedures on your end to stop us." This is why the FCC cannot be allowed to get its way here and now. It must be countered by the other branches of government. Immediately. And we must be the coal in the engine of correction.
A Marxist flash mob has broken out in the Obama administration.
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