Posted on 04/09/2014 5:49:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
Heavyweight conservatives and banterweight conservatives are lining up on both sides the Comcast/Time Warner merger.
The heavyweights, which include Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform, Wayne Crews at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Duane Parde at the National Taxpayers Union, have penned a letter to influential Senators including Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley and Ted Cruz, urging them to look past the politics and approve the merger between the two cable giants on traditional grounds—you know, the grounds under which the anti-trust laws were written and passed in the first place?
“As advocates for a free market,” the heavyweights write, “we believe that the Sherman and Clayton antitrust laws require the government to abstain from intervening in such transactions on antitrust grounds absent any clear showing of actual or potential market failure of which there is none here.”
And they are right.
Let me make it clear: I don’t like Comcast’s politics. I once ran a company that was a competitor to Comcast and know full well what they can do to the competition. And I think they are at the sleazy end of the K Street shuffle.
But none of those reasons are reason enough for anti-trust policies to apply.
Anti-trust laws were created to prevent any company from so dominating the marketplace that they could damage competitive pricing for consumers. They were created to make sure that business combinations didn’t unfairly cooperate on prices too.
On both counts the Comcast/Time Warner merger clears the hurdle.
We have become so accustomed in this country, on both sides of the aisle, that all is fair in love and war and politics, that we have forgotten that laws are not meant to be used as hammers against people we disagree with, but rather are made to be enforced, under the Constitution for the expressed purpose for which they are enacted.
And those protections should apply to everyone.
The bantamweighters, which include Judson Phillips with Tea Party Nation, Colin Hanna with Let Freedom Ring and Stephen Demaura with Americans for Job Security, are arguing that Comcast and Time Warner merger would provide less diversity of thought, amongst other things, which is not what the law was meant to ensure.
They cite the First Amendment to the Constitution as a “guarantee of a diversity of viewpoints.”
The First Amendment does no such thing as guarantee diversity of thought. Only a liberal would argue such. Their argument is not just wrong historically, but a very different plain meaning than our Founders intended for the First Amendment.
In essence, the arguments the "liberty" people make are political arguments that conservative interests might be harmed by the merger.
It always pains me when I have to point out to good, faithful conservatives that they didn’t invent the Constitution even if some of them just discovered it six years ago.
In their discovery, they should be careful not to twist it as our liberal friends would do.
The Comcast/Time Warner deal might have some hidden problems that the Senate Judiciary Committee will have to sort out.
But from here, it looks like neither the Sherman and Clayton anti-trust provisions nor the First Amendment to the Constitution would be violated.
I’m not a big fan of cable either.
But if you have problem with it you can change the channels just as well at DirecTV.
I miss the HBO content as well and I’d pay for it if it were offered separately. However, there’s enough content between Netflix and Hulu Plus to make up for it. The thing I missed the most this past year was NFL football but after a while, I got used to doing other things on the weekend. I did go to Buffalo Wild Wings to catch a game here and there.
I dumped TV in 1997.
And having been away from it for that long, the world I live in, which is obviously affected by TV, has clearly gone mad.
No. I am not joking.
I called Comcast as my bundled bill had now gone over $200.
They said I could have HBO.and cut my bill down to $139.
I told them I didn’t like HBO and I’d like to watch less TV not more,They gave me Starz instead.
My 1st bill came to $150.The second bill is up to $172.
I’m quitting this cable one of these days and keeping the internet only.The phone service is lousy and the only shows I seem to watch are ELRaymond and Andy Griffith show.
I think Al Franken’s running the hearing. What a tool he is.
My brother has a condo there as well. Charter simply stopped service to all units. Condo owners have to open a new account and arrange to have Charter send a tech to install set top boxes. Charter admitted that they are overwhelmed by condo requests and can’t commit to a service appointment. Problem is my brother rents his place out. Renters want their TV.
Actually, you can subscribe to on-line access to all NFL games. I got frustrated near the end of last season with the selection of regional games on the traditional networks, and purchased a partial year subscription for $39.99, as I recall. It was great. For the remainder of the season, through the playoffs, I could stream any game. I rarely watch live, network TV any more. We have only bare bones TV via Charter, because it is bundled with Internet. There aren’t a lot of alternatives for the latter in my area, otherwise I would ditch Charter entirely!
Gee! I thought my husband did well negotiating with TW. LOL. My cable was out and rebooting did not solve the problem. So, he went down to the sevice center and they gave him 2 new boxes — one of them was a DVR. They cut my price from $216 to around $180. The DVR is free. They gave my husband the NFL channel and gave us HBO and either Starz or Showtime. I haven’t found anything on HBO that I want to watch — a lot of it is soft porn. I’ll have to use a channel blocker before the grandchildren show up here!
But in all this fussing around, I found a new channel — Ovations. I just love the programming. It’s not PBS — but I call it PBS for grown ups and there are some really good shows there. I record them on the DVR and watch them when I’m sick of Fox News!
My new favorite is “The Artful Detective”. It is set in 1890 Toronto and is about a straight laced, Jesuit educated, detective who uses science to solve crimes. We have really come to love that show and we watch it instead of O’Reilly who has become insufferable. The ads for the Artful Detective describe Murdocch (the main character) as “19th century threads with 21st century creds”.
My daughter has watched the Artful Detective series on Netflix because Comcast doesn’t carry it. Her family loves it too.
You mean like when there is only one cable company to "choose" from?
Streaming on-demand is almost ready for prime time (pun slightly intended) - I think in another 2 years, the old cable model will be “dead man walking” in that they’ll still have the lion’s share of customers, but their days will be officially numbered, and they will suffer ever-decreasing customer bases as people cut the cord.
Grover Norquist Turns to Progressive Media in Crusade Against Ted Cruz... Grover is the Muslim Brotherhood’s best friend. Note his Muslim wife and ..
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3084869/posts
Abdurahman Alamoudi, the Boston bombers, and Grover Norquist .
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3012061/posts
I thought that was illegal? They can restrict the size and location, but must allow even exceptions to the location rules if an acceptable signal can't be gotten otherwise.
me too - I have amazon as well - good movies and tv shows ala carte / no commercials
Same situation she is in.
There were a lot of people who rented out houses and condo’s for March maddness, with no TV.
Charter sounds like a great company
The condo association can do just about anything. The justification is that they don’t want the dishes flying during hurricanes, and that the condo’s don’t all face the right way.
There can be one dish to service all the condo’s. Just have to get the right installer. Call DirecTV and get a commercial installer.
Our time warner/brighthouse cable kept spiking and this week they sent a letter saying another increase is coming. So I cut back to an $89 bundle with tv, internet and phone and only added HBO (would miss such shows as Temple Grandin and Game of Thrones), and so far we don’t miss the multitude of channels we never watched OR digital and HD.
Daughter’s family went to roku and are very happy with it.
On both counts the Comcast/Time Warner merger clears the hurdle.
No it doesn't. In our neighborhood, Comcast is the only game in town for internet services. They also scramble the signals so over-the-air antenna don't work and you are forced to buy their basic cable box or subscribe to their internet service if you want to use Roku, Chromecast or other internet based service.
The reason they get away from this crap is, shall we say, good interface with the local politicians who permit it.
Wrong, wrong and wrong yet again.
Who writes for this Townhall site? Whose pocket are they in?
Comcast and TWC are already without competition and the horrible service and product by both is legendary. And this would remove even ore competition. That is anathema to Capitalism. Capitalism does NOT mean permitting business to do whatever it wants as it will turn into the seven headed hydra. No. Competition must be fostered (tax breaks an obvious example).
This merger will D E S T R O Y competition and innovation. It is the flip side of Socialism. It is a merger that must be stopped. Many more of these “too big to fail” companies and kiss Capitalism goodbye.
Same here (been a little longer) And we can watch ALL the shows we watched before when we had cable and save over 1200 bucks a year doing it.
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