Right now the top issues are both getting lots of attention in the Senate. One is the cybersecurity bill. It’s been difficult for me to find out much about what’s going on with it, and it turns out there’s a reason. Sources familiar with the situation indicate to me that Harry Reid has been negotiating with Republicans in bad faith. Even Republicans who love to negotiate with Democrats, and are well known for producing major pieces of legislation with Democrats, are being stonewalled.
Lieberman-Collins is even worse than I thought, too.
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So, the Marketplace Fairness Act. Ben Domenech and Francis Cianfrocca recently went off on it on Coffee and Markets, which is a great series to listen to. Having an opportunity to block out time to listen to it is probably the best part of having a 2.5 hour commute from Arlington to Purcellville (and then 2.5 hours back).
I support the bill, and the interstate compact it approves, and I’d like to explain why.
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With that business out of the way, back to Tech at Night. I for one am glad that Jon Kyl and Sheldon Whitehouse are having trouble coming up with a compromise. The Lieberman-Collins bill favored by Harry Reid and Barack Obama is terrible and just an awful, huge power grab. We’re better off waiting to see if we get a Republican Senate next time to pass something along the lines of CISPA or SECURE IT, than passing bad bill in compromise.
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I hope nobody’s surprised that the Obama administration is stonewalling Darrell Issa from Trans-Pacific Partnership oversight. Because the President would love to get a power grab out of this, I’m thinking.
In other House news, the Republican Study Committee is going Tech. Which is good; the less we have to rely on Democrats for good policy outcomes, the better. So I wish luck to Marsha Blackburn, Steve Scalise, and their staffs, in getting this Tech and Telecom Working Group together.
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When Jim DeMint and Steve Scalise first started talking about reforming the regulated relationship between broadcasters and cable companies, oh the fits that were thrown. Even a certain conservative group jumped out in front complaining. But look: these regulations are worth big bucks to the side they favor, and the negotiation deadlocks they produce don’t help the public, they only force everyone to deal with blackouts.
The comprehensive reform package commonly referred to as Retransmission Consent reform should pass. I wonder if FCC thinks it will, as it has begun by tweaking Must Carry rules itself, possibly as pre-emption?
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Gotta love it when Tech at Night is declared because Comcast, despite telling me they’d auto-bill my card, choose not to do the auto-bill and instead just shuts off my Internet out of the blue. Lovely. So anyway, I’m unfortunately now low on time to create lengthy narratives, so we’ll do what we can.
So, Steve Scalise, a rising tech star in the House, is at it again. HR 3310 passed I believe through suspension, and now it’s up to the Senate to move on the bill. It’s a simple, but effective concept: Take 8 separate reports the FCC is currently making, and turn it into one report. Efficiency and transparency rolled into one.
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Imagine if we’d banned automobiles because all the old business models that were destroyed by them got government protection. Imagine a government that unfairly killed innovation in order to give well-connected businessmen a leg up on upstart competition. That’s what big media outlets are asking for when they come after Dish Network’s innovative DVR service. And of course, given the Obama administration’s track record of unfairly picking winners and losers, they might get what they want.
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I know many RedState readers are big fans of Jim DeMint, so in my coverage of the Retransmission Consent debate, I’ve focused on him. However he’s not the whole story. This Congress, due to the TEA party-driven Republican majority, it’s been the House where our major regulatory reform successes have happened. And it’s Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and Bobby Jindal’s successor in the House, who is the champion of the Next Generation TV Marketplace Act there.
However I know that there have been skeptics on this reform, so I was fortunately able to snag some of the Congressman’s time, and ask him a few questions about the proposed reforms. Catch his answers below the fold.
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Up late tonight. Spent the better part of the last 8 hours setting up my new computer*. Lots of data to transfer around and all that. But fortunately there aren’t many new developments lately to talk about, so let’s go.
I’m going to start with LightSquared. Out of the blue, it’s been repeatedly claimed that LightSquared is “the next Solyndra,” and that some nebulous form of corruption is somehow benefiting the company. Is it possible? Certainly. But I’d like to see some proof that LightSquared received actual benefits from the Obama administration, as Solyndra got free money from the government in the form of loan guarantees.
No, I won’t accept proof that Barack Obama is a bad guy as proof that LightSquared had something going on. I’m playing the role of skeptic on this particular issue, because I don’t want it to be true. I want America to get more spectrum used for 4G wireless Internet, and I want us to have more national networks supplying 4G wireless Interent. LightSquared coming online would give us both, as LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja has said.
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