I’ve been talking about the dangers of Net Neutrality and the neo-Marxist FCC for some time at RedState. However events are picking up speed, especially with Obamacare now out of the way. It’s time I laid everything back out from the beginning.
There are two major plans that the Obama FCC, headed by Chairman Julius Genachowski, has in store for us. Net Neutrality and a National Broadband Plan. Net Neutrality is the more misleading issue, though, and has the greater external push behind it, so the majority of the talk on the Internet is about that.
They’re both dangerous, though. Here’s why.
Net Neutrality is a term that has floated around in the technical community for years. It’s a harmless concept, but I won’t go into it because it has nothing to do with Net Neutrality as a regulatory practice. Seriously. The Neo-Marxists at Free Press and the self-seeking bosses at Google have perverted that tech-pleasing label into something vastly different.
Here’s what it is in practice: Chairman Genachowski made a landmark speech in which he declared that the FCC would enforce two new, never before used principles on the Internet: neutrality and transparency.
Neutrality: Here the FCC is claiming the authority to regulate how the Internet routes packets. “Packets” are the small pieces of data that everything is broken up into when it is sent over the Internet: email, web pages, images, videos, Skype phone calls, everything. Packets are like postcards: They contain data glued to the to and from addresses, in a manner of speaking. “Routing” is how the Internet passes those packets from computer to computer until they make it to their destination.
For years now, with tools like Quality of Service flagging, the Internet has been moving toward a smarter ability to route packets on the basis of what they contain, how time-sensitive they are and, yes, how much their senders and recipients were willing to pay for higher priority use of the resources. Smarter routing is more and more important as we use the Internet in more varied, more important, and more bandwidth-intensive ways.
Also, by making special arrangements and deals, ISPs and Internet companies can get together and offer services that otherwise might not be available to users. Even Net Neutrality proponent Google participates in non-neutral arrangements both abroad such as in the Indian soccer deal on Youtube, as well as at home when Google promises to abide by any T-Mobile restrictions on Android-based phones, even those restrictions which are non-neutral on the part of T-Mobile as an ISP. Freedom of enterprise helps Americans because the innovation enables us to have more services and options available to us. We need those options to remain, and that freedom to continue.
However Genachowski and the Obama FCC are placing these kinds of sensible cost-cutting and efficiency-gaining innovations in jeopardy with their talk of heavy-handed government regulation of the industry. The Internet has flourished since it came out from the thumb of government control when it was the ARPAnet, and became the free-wheeling marketplace it is today. Clearly, that scares people who want government to be in control of things.
And it’s total control they want, too. Because the second principle Genachowski asked for, “transparency,” doesn’t mean transparency of government. No, it means that the government is to claim the right to have access to every router in America, every switch, and every other piece of hardware that makes the Internet go. Public or Private, the FCC wants to be able to snoop on how it runs, to be able to control how it runs.
Does that scare you? It should. When you connect to the Internet, your home computer network (even if it’s just one computer) is now on the Internet. The Internet is not like a public road. It’s a vast series of private networks, all connected together. Government wants control over the whole ball of yarn, how everyone configures and runs their own private computers routing the packets of the Internet.
That control will have one immediate impact: The FCC will be picking winners and losers on the Internet, which is why Google is 100% behind this effort. Google will be a winner, thanks in no small part to its close ties with the Obama administration through Google CEO and Obama advisor Eric Schmidt, while those who invest in the capital of the Internet, the wires that criss-cross the country and the planet, will lose. If you look at any of the literature put out by the pro-Net Neutrality forces, you’ll see plenty of villification of ISPs, AT&T in particular.
The hope of the Net Neutrality left is that you’ll forget that today’s AT&T isn’t the huge monopolist of old, big and hated by many Americans. No, that AT&T is gone, and what is now called AT&T is actually the scrappy little Cingular, a company comparable in market capitalization to Internet firms like Google and Microsoft (and in fact Cingular/AT&T’s a bit smaller).
Of course, such class warfare is old hat to a little left-wing organization called Free Press. Co-founded by a man named Robert McChesney, the organization I believe is best expressed as neo-Marxist. While the original Marxists wanted control of the means of production of goods, today the groups like Free Press want the state to control the means of production of information, as ours is increasing an information-driven economy. Free Press traditionally has sought tight state controls over television and radio, but now they have turned their attention to the Internet. They even have a front group for that purpose, called Save the Internet.
Save the Internet is innocuous looking at first. They take full advantage both major deceptions of the Net Neutrality movement. First, they make you think this is all a harmless little bit of technocracy, and not a power grab. In fact they’ve used that to trick some rightys into thinking that without Net Neutrality, ISPs might censor content. In fact it’s just the opposite: It’s only if Net Neutrality comes into effect that the censors of the left will even have the power to control the Internet.
Phase one, Net Neutrality, includes no plans to regulate content, just routing. But just as the FCC regulates content on television and radio, most famously in the case of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl show, so too will it be able to regulate content on the Internet should Net Neutrality be the law of the land.
The fight has already begun to prevent it, though. Comcast has taken the FCC to court, arguing that the FCC’s current reaches into Internet regulation go beyond the statutory powers the FCC has been granted. In fact, those who watch this industry closely tell me that the federal courts at this point are almost sure to rule in Comcast’s favor.
Genachowski has a plan though. It’s one you may have heard of before: Deem and pass. The backup plan the FCC has, in the event that the courts rule that the FCC no longer has the authority to regulate information services on the Internet, is to deem that ISPs are no longer information providers, and then re-pass the same regulations that the courts just threw out, then pass Net Neutrality on top of that. Once that happens, the government will be taking over another sixth of the economy.
Verizon is taking a leading role against the new deem and pass (demonpass?), and AT&T agrees, calling upon the Congress to take up these issues rather than leaving the FCC to expand beyond its legal bounds to do these things on its own. Of course, Democrats lack the votes for Net Neutrality, so it’s easy to see why nothing’s happened on that front.
We have to stop it, though. If ISPs are hindered, then the very foundation of the Internet will be hindered. The Internet’s backbone must continue to grow and to innovate as needed to withstand the ever-growing traffic burden we put on it, and no regulatory framework can keep up with how fast the Internet is changing. The market and competition will stamp out any hostile behavior faster than the government ever could, and without even any distortions or government-chosen winners and losers.
In particular, the coming wave of wireless, high-speed Internet access is going to rock the foundations of the broadband market. Sprint is already deploying its 4G WiMax network. When AT&T and Verizon counter with their 4G LTE networks, cable and DSL Internet will feel unprecedented pressure to deliver the best service to their customers for the lowest price. Unfettered technological advancement will save the day, not government. As Reagan put it, “government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”
Ultimately, the goal of neo-Marxists like McChesney and Free Press is to have Single Payer Internet, with all the central government control and lack of freedom that the comparison with Single Payer Socialized Medicine would imply. Just as the “Public Option” for medicine was described as a “right” by the Democrats, so too do the Free Press people want Internet access to be a “right,” owned, operated, and controlled by the government. The UK has its doctors and hospitals controlled by the National Health Service, and McChesney would have our Internet under the control of a National Internet Service.
Phase 1 of Single Payer Internet is Net Neutrality, which establishes the baseline of FCC authority over the Internet. Phase 2 is the National Broadband Plan. To continue the Obamacare comparison, the goal of the Plan is to get “universal coverage.” Even if you live in the middle of nowhere, in a place that’s far too expensive to wire up, even though the technology is right around the corner for wireless Internet to come at high speed, the FCC neo-Marxists want to say everyone has a right to wired Internet access. And guess what will pay for it?
That’s right, you and I will pay for it with new taxes. For phones we already pay a “universal service” tax. The FCC wants to expand that to high speed Internet connections, thus, an Internet Tax. This is a tax that would never see a single Congressional vote, because the FCC would apply it all on its own with the authority vested in it by deem-and-pass Net Neutrality.
On top of that, prices will go up if the National Broadband Plan becomes reality. Your Internet bill at home could go up 25%.
And again, innovation will suffer further. Once the FCC starts dictating control over even the set top boxes your cable providers hand out to you, and after they’ve already taken control over routing on the Internet, truly there will be few or no ways for Internet service to get better in America without a game of Mother May I. Just think: In 10 years maybe even Iraq would have better Internet access than we’d have, should all this come about.
Of course, just as with Net Neutrality’s two big lies, the National Broadband Plan has a big lie behind it. Namely, the claim is that America “lags behind” the rest of the world in high-speed Internet access, and the problem is that there isn’t enough government involved yet. Once you stop laughing when given this argument, ask the neo-Marxist questioning you to adjust the broadband statistics for demographics and geography. Countries like Japan and the Netherlands have better Internet access per person not because their governments are working better, but because they are smaller, more densely populated countries. America will always have a different profile of Internet access as long as Americans are free to live anywhere we want on the fruited plain, whether in an apartment in a big city, on a farm on the plain, or in a cabin in the mountains.
It’s the same reason that American Internet access varies from Europe and Asia, that our need for the automobile varies from the rest of the world. We’re spread out, and we value our freedom to be spread out. And just as you can’t run public transit to every little suburb and rural area, so too can’t you immediately and cheaply get the best Internet access out to everyone at the same time. Higher costs, delayed implementations. These are facts of geography, and no amount of FCC regulation can fix that.
I hope this has been a useful summary of what the FCC has planned for us and our Internet in the coming months. It’s harder to fight an unelected, unaccountable regulatory agency than it is a Congressional action, but we can try. We’re the people and we will be heard.
I won’t hide it. The primary election polls have been as lousy for Chuck DeVore as they have been for Barbara Boxer. Some are giving up, but I think it’s far too soon even to consider that. So I stand with Jeff Flake, who just endorsed DeVore, as well as Jim DeMint, Tom McClintock, Dana Rohrabacher, and the California Republican Assembly. I back Chuck DeVore to win the Primary in June, and to beat Babs Boxer in November.
My primary reason is that Chuck DeVore has the strongest record of all three Repbublican candidates for Senate. Chuck DeVore is pro-life, anti-tax, pro-marriage, and anti-spending and is the only candidate with a voting record to prove it. Chuck DeVore was the first to pledge repeal of Obamacare of the Republican candidates for Senate.
Carly Fiorina has come around second, but in an unfortunate way. First, she adopts Democrat language by saying she wants to “repeal health care,” tying right into Democrat claims that only through government can people see doctors and visit hospitals. Second, she’s repeating history with her push.
This goes to my secondary reason for supporting Chuck DeVore: He’s the electable conservative in the race. Once upon a time in this campaign, Fiorina used Scott Brown’s name and image to promote herself, giving the appearance of an endorsement, without getting Brown’s permission first. This time, she’s using the name and logo of the Club for Growth to collect names for fundraising. Repeat: There’s no indication your name goes on a Club for Growth petition of any kind, nor that the Club for Growth is involved in this petition.*
Fake, misleading use of the names, likenesses, and logos of others will get Fiorina crushed by Babs Boxer and her allies in the press come the general election, should she get the nomination. Lefty reporters will pounce, attacking her non-stop for it, demanding apologies, and calling into question the integrity of the entire Republican party for her doing it. An experienced campaigner, someone who’s worked her way up rather than starting at a statewide race, would know better than to play fast and loose with the appearance of an endorsement.
We can’t afford to nominate someone who will self-destruct in a rare opportunity to win a California Senate seat. This is our year, this is a weak incumbent Democrat, so this is the time to pick the best candidate we can get. In a rough year there is a case for bending on principle, but not in a good year. In a good year we can be choosy, so I choose Chuck DeVore.
You can give to Chuck DeVore here. Let’s take a stand against a Senator who wants taxpayer-funded Viagra to go to sex offenders.
*If Fiorina spokespeople would like to clarify this, I’d be happy to update with a response.
I enjoyed the original Ocean’s 11. Fun little movie, honest and enjoyable.
The remake obviously gave up some of that charm in exchange for some flashy, artsy style. Enjoyable in its own way, especially with the few tributes it paid to the original.
The second was a huge, huge dropoff from the first. It took too long to tell the story and was far too self-conscious of how fancy and self-referential it was.
The third gave up so much of that, gave up the weak romance storylines (which the rat pack didn’t even bother with because they were unneeded), and just gave us a fun story of revenge.
It’s too bad you have to watch 12 to understand 13 because 13 is probably the best of the remake series. It’s lessy artsy but more gripping and more entertaining.
Think Progress is alarmed that the coming Constitutional crisis over the President’s newly-signed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). I conclude this because it is unusual to see progressives use an originalist argument for Constitutional interpretation. However Ian Millhiser and Think Progress need more practice at it, because the argument they make is not the one they intend.
I’ll start with Millhiser’s last point, that the framers “they probably knew a little bit more about the Constitution than Ken Cuccinelli.” This is not entirely true for several reasons. First, we’ve ratified seventeen amendments to the Constitution since the passage of the second Militia Act, and ten more were only ratified six months earlier. These changes to the Constitution require careful consideration, especially those of the ninth and tenth amendments.
Regardless, Millhiser makes one core point: If it is Constitutional to require individuals to purchase firearms in the course of regulating the Militia, then it is Constitutional to require the purchase of medical insurance. However there is a key difference between the two here: the Militia Acts of 1792 are grounded in two specific clauses in the Constitution, while the PPACA has no such support. First see Article 1, Section 8:
The congress shall have the Power […] To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
We see here that the Constitution expressly allows for the Congress to provide for arming the militia. The second Militia Act does that, among other things. Further, the Second Amendment was passed to ensure all free men could arm themselves with weapons purchased and owned by themselves as individuals, as provided for in the second Militia Act:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
So if Millhiser can find support for medical insurance regulation with as much plain language as has arming and regulating the Militias of the states, then his point will be better taken. Until then, all he’s done is support the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment, and possibly given a future administration cover for a military draft. But if he wants to defend the PPACA with this act, he needs more practice reading his Constitution and arguing from it.
I’m ready for the promotion to end. Sixteen 12 packs plus an 18 pack in front.
The Eeyores of the conservative movement are all over this Obamacare vote, declaring that we’re doomed to perpetual socialism because Republicans never repeal anything. To them I say: bah. We’ve never been in this situation before, where we’ll actually win an election on the heels of passage.
Social Security: Passed in 1935. Republicans take House and Senate in 1947, 12 years later.
Medicare and Medicaid: Passed in 1965. Republicans take Senate in 1981, 16 years later.
Obamacare: Passed in 2010. Republicans take House in 2011, one year (9 months, actually) later?
There’s just no comparison. We can fight back before much of it even takes effect, not over a decade later when the benefits are entrenched. No excuses. No pessimism. Fight and win, politically.
There are those on the right who now believe that the passage of Obamacare is inevitable. I don’t know; I don’t think public whip counts are worth the pixels they’re printed on. But I also know that elections have consequences, and up to now it’s been remarkable just how much a complete failure President Obama has been in achieving his platform. It won’t surprise me if Obamacare passes and takes him from being a complete failure to an ordinary failure.
But let’s assume for argument’s sake that Obamacare is a done deal. What then? Some are talking revolution. But notwithstanding the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, revolution is something that has tradeoffs, and the case for it must be very strong even to consider it seriously. I don’t think we’re even close to that point, for no small reason that our position is far stronger than the major past attempts in our history. Now is the time to fight politically. Fight and win, politically. Not fight but keep a revolution in our back pocket, but commit ourselves to sweeping political victory with the same totality that the signers of the Declaration committed themselves to their own fight.
A revolution boils down to a simple choice: If you have enough strength to win, then you get your first shots to be Lexington. If you don’t, then you get your first shots to be Fort Sumter.
In the first example, the revolutionaries had no peaceful means to bring about change. They had no way of influencing the Parliament or the King through the British system of government at the time. In fact, the situation was so bad and London was so out of touch with America that the Parliament was raising taxes at an alarming rate and the King was sending foreign troops to shoot at us.
Our situation is nothing like that. In fact we had the Congress and the Executive as recently as 2005, and there’s nothing that prevents us from winning it all back should we inspire enough votes our way.
In the second example, that of the Civil War, we had just had an election, and the candidate of the would-be revolutionaries lost. They had a say, but they failed to win support. Lincoln’s “free soil” anti-slavery candidacy beat not only the compromise “popular sovereignty” of Douglas, but also the pro-slavery Breckenridge, and the ambiguously pro-compromise Bell.
The slavery movement also got beat in the Congressional elections, with Republicans going +31 in the House to end Democrat control of that body. Republicans also came into the Senate after 1860 with 6 more members than in 1856. (All figures here according to Wikipedia. Corrections welcome.)
That movement was doomed to failure through peaceful means because it did not have public support and could not win elections. In fact, the secessionists knew most of the country was against them. Do we actually think the country is against us? I don’t. I think if you ask the average TEA party goer they’ll tell you it’s not true at all, that the Democrats are going against their own constitutents in this fight.
Our position is so strong, and so well supported by the public, that aside from our chances of success, it’s just plain foolish for us to fold a strong political hand and threaten the stability of our nation. Democrats aren’t going to go +6 in the Senate. We might. The Democrats certainly aren’t going to go +31 in the House. Some analysts would say that’s a low end projection for what we’ll do year.
Our position is the exact opposite of that of the seceders in 1860, and even stronger yet than the revolutionaries of 1776. Let’s use our position of strength, take the Congress, and undo this monstrous bill without the need to fire a shot.
One point I initially missed in my previous article on the California Senate race (Cross-posted to RedState), and only later pointed out on Twitter, was that the Democrats should be scared to death about the current polling of Babs Boxer versus the Republicans. Our worst result against her right now gives us a one in four chance to win.
One in four sounds poor, but this is California. Since Pete Wilson retired from the Senate to become Governor, we’ve failed to win a Senate race. We lost two in 92 (Boxer over Herschensohn, Feinstein over Seymour), 94 (Feinstein over Huffington), 98 (Boxer over [Fong, that’ll teach me for using Wikipedia one lazy evening]), 2000 (Feinstein over Campbell), 04 (Boxer over Jones), and 06 (Feinstein over Mountjoy) for a record of 0 wins and 8 losses since then. The fact that all three of our candidates are polling at least that well against Boxer, with her polling under 50 against anyone (she’d probably graze 50 against me on a good day), should have Democrats panicked that this will be Coakley v. Brown revisited.
It turns out I was right and they are scared. The national left is rushing out here to raise her some money, including the DNC and President Obama himself in April, this after Al Gore helped this month.
Barbara Boxer’s political future is in jeopardy. It’s time Republicans across the country tune in, because the Democrats already started.
Rush Limbaugh weighed in on Net Neutrality. As to be expected, he’s against it. A kindly listener has uploaded it to Blip for us.
Writing quickly here, I’ve only read a transcript given to me. Sadly I think he gets some points wrong. First, Net Neutrality isn’t yet a content-level fairness doctrine, but it’s true that if the FCC does as expected and deems ISPs no longer to be information services, then nothing will stop them from regulating content on the Internet the same way they regulate content on television. But they’re not trying that yet, because they’re still just getting the camel’s nose under the tent right now.
Basically, Rush is reading what is applied to ISPs as applying to websites. Websites don’t yet have to treat everyone equally under the plan of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, but your ISP does. And Google doesn’t want anyone to be able to charge you more depending on what strain you put on the network, as some perverted left wing notion of fairness, to echo what Rush said yesterday.
But still, I’m heartened that Rush is getting people thinking about Net Neutrality. Too many on the right have bought into the bland-sounding technobabble that Free Press and Google have been putting out, without seeing the neo-Marxism behind it. Traditional Marxists wanted control of the means of production of goods. Neo-Marxists want control over the production of information, because ours is an information-based economy today.
My new site is up. Unlikely Voter will be where I do poll analysis and election projection.
Launching this site may have taken a year off of my life. It feels good to be live with it.