Oppression in the Air

Radio Free NJ ^ | 7/23/2012 | frithguild

[frithguild]

I have tried to make the point that the architects of our Constitution understood that the regulatory state favors big interests over people and small business. To prevent the rise of a royal central power, they divided federal power into discreet compartments. I have examined precisely how our Supreme Court permitted the rise of a federal regulatory state beyond these compartments on January 6, 1936 by acquiescing to then favorably viewed fascist and socialist policies. I have also looked at how resulting agricultural regulatory policy oppressed especially southern tenant farmers, whose organized pleas for better laws and regulation went ignored. There are some striking parallels between STFU and the Occupy movement. Organization and communication did not achieve better regulatory fairness in the 1930's, and it does not seem to be working now. A Constitutional Reboot, however, will work best to again establish fairness between individuals or small business and large established interests by throwing off their advantages entrenched in the regulatory state.

The national will for sweeping changes in how Americans interface with their government does not exist in the present divided political climate. Our political divisive discourse seeks a marginal edge on small issues. I have found myself guilty in this very failing, even in the midst of a series of pieces attempting to bring the Constitutional Reboot idea to RFNJ readers. Yet, as I have considered this topic, I have seen couples walking together doing it, people walking out of church doing it and people at OWS events doing it. So I ask now, do you want to spend less to do it? Spending less for something we do all the time is something we can agree upon. So we need to sell the air.

The regulation of radio spectrum in the United States is a natural monopoly rooted in the notion that spectrum is a limited resource. The FCC grants exclusive licenses to extraordinarily limited spectrum they make available, creating scarcity in a renewable resource. As a result, the FCC receives extraordinary payments from large cellular providers for a manufactured scarcity. Regulation inflates price. Everybody pays inflated bills every month for a regulatory manufactured scarcity. My solution is to open more spectrum and sell it – permanently.

Americans accepted radio spectrum regulation, which aims to promote security of network operations, maintenance of network integrity, interoperability of services, protection of data and any number of additional concerns. Yet, when you look at it carefully, the most ardent proponents of radio spectrum regulation are highly profitable cellular companies, which are more than capable of providing for such “regulatory” concerns without regulation. Making radio spectrum property, which may be defended against encroachment in special courts with interstate jurisdiction to immediately halt interference, will spectacularly reduce monthly cellphone bills for everybody.

Yet, many who ask us to “open our eyes” to see the wreckage of corporate greed ask for more government crafted solutions. My eyes have been open for a long time. If you really wanted to inflict pain on large corporate interests, you would set them against each other, rather than coddle them with the regulations they want. That kind of pain means growth that will give you something real.

As I see it, "the care of providing for his enjoyments ought to be left almost entirely to each individual: the principal function of government being to protect him from suffering." Regulation of the radio spectrum does little to nothing to promote safety. Should we throw off the cellular regulatory state, perhaps then we collectively may see the value in a Constitutional Reboot.

[Mack the knife]

The original mistake was to set up this “Administrative State” in the first place. The excuse was that the regulations require too much technical knowledge to develop, expertise that mere congressmen do not have; and that applying them requires technical knowledge that mere judges, trained in law but not science, do not have.

Poppycock.

The result is the publication in the Federal Register of about 80,000 pages of new regulations per year -— and that is just at the Federal level.

At a minimum, we should require that:
1) all regulations have a sunset date of no longer than 10 years; and
2) all new regulations must be passed by Congress in order to be effective.

Consider Obamacare — the law itself was 2000 pages, short on specifics, but it set up over 100 panels to “flesh out the law”. The panels have just gotten started, and have produced over 10,000 pages of regulations.

The one that best exhibits the hubrus of the bureaucrats is the one that adds $1.00 to the cost of every health insurance policy to support abortion on demand, and forbids the insurance company from informing the buyer of that cost. Would this have passed Congress? I doubt it. And yet, it is now the “law”.