Obamacare for the Internet
Writes L. Gordon Crovitz on From Internet to Obamanet – WSJ:The permissionless Internet, which allows anyone to introduce a website, app or device without government review, ends this week. On Thursday the three Democrats among the five commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission will vote to regulate the Internet under rules written for monopoly utilities. […] The more than 300 pages of new regulations are secret, but Mr. Wheeler says they will subject the Internet to the key provisions of Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, under which the FCC oversaw Ma Bell.It easier for three dictators — I mean regulators — to pass regulations that no one has read apparently.
Title II authorizes the commission to decide what “charges” and “practices” are “just and reasonable”—an enormous amount of discretion. Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has found 290 federal appeals court opinions on this section and more than 1,700 FCC administrative interpretations.“Discretion” of a regulator as opposed to protection under a rule of law is the mark of fascism and dictatorship.
Defenders of the Obama plan claim that there will be regulatory “forbearance,” though not from the just-and-reasonable test. They also promise not to regulate prices, a pledge that Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has called “flat-out false.” He added: “The only limit on the FCC’s discretion to regulate rates is its own determination of whether rates are ‘just and reasonable,’ which isn’t much of a restriction at all.”How will such a ‘just an reasonable’ test apply in practice?
Bureaucrats can review the fairness of Google [1] ’s search results, Facebook [2] ’s news feeds and news sites’ links to one another and to advertisers. BlackBerry [3] is already lobbying the FCC to force Apple and Netflix [4] to offer apps for BlackBerry’s unpopular phones.The FCC takeover is a naked violation of property rights of those who own the hardware and software behind the internet.Returning to Mr. Crovitz:
Supporters of Obamanet describe it as a counter to the broadband duopoly of cable and telecom companies. In reality, it gives duopolists another tool to block competition. Utility regulations let dominant companies complain that innovations from upstarts fail the “just and reasonable” test—as truly disruptive innovations often do. AT&T [5] has decades of experience leveraging FCC regulations to stop competition. Last week AT&T announced a high-speed broadband plan that charges an extra $29 a month to people who don’t want to be tracked for online advertising. New competitor Google Fiber can offer low-cost broadband only because it also earns revenues from online advertising. In other words, AT&T has already built a case against Google Fiber that Google’s cross-subsidization from advertising is not “just and reasonable.”Utility regulation was designed to maintain the status quo, and it succeeds. This is why the railroads, Ma Bell and the local water monopoly were never known for innovation. The Internet was different because its technologies, business models and creativity were permissionless.Don’t let it go.Keep the Internet free.
Amy Peikoff Interview with John Allison
From Don’t Let It Go:At the top of the second hour of today’s show I’ll have the pleasure of interviewing John Allison, who is currently President and CEO of The Cato Institute, and formerly was the CEO of BB&T, the 10th largest financial institution in the United States. We’ll be discussing his book, The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, in which Allison presents the principles necessary to achieve success and happiness—principles applicable to individuals, organizations and society as a whole.During the first hour I’ll be discussing some news more generally, most likely focusing on the current hostage situations in France, one of which involves the jihadists who massacred 12 journalists and cartoonists working for Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine that dared to mock Islam and Mohammad.Join in live, either by phone or in the chatroom.The show can be accessed here.
Progressive War on Science
From The progressive war on science – The Globe and Mail:
Hardly anybody knows basic science and technology these days. Few of us are going to wade through the National Academy of Sciences report. We depend on intermediaries to tell us what to think, and a lot of them are also scientifically illiterate. Most journalists are generally more interested in controversy than in evidence. Environmental activists are in the business of opposing, and have no interest in solving real-world problems like providing heat and light at a reasonable cost. The people who actually know how things work – engineers and technology types – tend to be uninterested in politics and are poor communicators. Meantime, some of the most deeply anti-science activists (like the artfully named Union of Concerned Scientists) are quoted as if they were neutral actors for the public interest.Some of my dearest friends harbour irrational fears about nuclear power, agricultural chemicals and anything genetically modified. They consider themselves enlightened, and since enlightened people are against these things, they are too. These beliefs are an expression of identity, just as a belief in creationism is part of the identity of a Southern Baptist.Fifty years ago, enlightened people campaigned to ban the bomb. Today, they campaign to ban GMOs and modern agriculture. Vivienne Westwood, the famous British fashion designer, hand-delivered an anti-GMO petition to the British government earlier this month. Asked about people who can’t afford expensive organic food, she declared that they should “eat less.” She believes one of the problems with non-organic mass food is that it’s too cheap.But in most parts of the world, food is not too cheap. And the fear-mongering campaign against genetically modified food by the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth has been a serious setback for global food security, depriving millions of people of more nutritious, affordable and sustainable food sources. “The actions of Greenpeace in forestalling the use of golden rice to address micronutrient deficiencies in children makes them the moral and indeed practical equivalent of the Nigerian mullahs who preached against the polio vaccine,” says Mark Lynas, an environmental activist who reversed his position on GMOs and now campaigns for them. “They were stopping a lifesaving technology solely to flatter their own fanaticism.”The kind of doomsayers who warn that oil sands and pipelines will wreak environmental devastation are often the same people who warn that modern agriculture will prove catastrophic. These people are not harmless. As Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, observed, “If the naysayers do manage to stop agricultural biotechnology, they might actually precipitate the famines and the crisis of global biodiversity they have been predicting for nearly 40 years.”
Progressive War on Science
From The progressive war on science – The Globe and Mail:
Hardly anybody knows basic science and technology these days. Few of us are going to wade through the National Academy of Sciences report. We depend on intermediaries to tell us what to think, and a lot of them are also scientifically illiterate. Most journalists are generally more interested in controversy than in evidence. Environmental activists are in the business of opposing, and have no interest in solving real-world problems like providing heat and light at a reasonable cost. The people who actually know how things work – engineers and technology types – tend to be uninterested in politics and are poor communicators. Meantime, some of the most deeply anti-science activists (like the artfully named Union of Concerned Scientists) are quoted as if they were neutral actors for the public interest.Some of my dearest friends harbour irrational fears about nuclear power, agricultural chemicals and anything genetically modified. They consider themselves enlightened, and since enlightened people are against these things, they are too. These beliefs are an expression of identity, just as a belief in creationism is part of the identity of a Southern Baptist.Fifty years ago, enlightened people campaigned to ban the bomb. Today, they campaign to ban GMOs and modern agriculture. Vivienne Westwood, the famous British fashion designer, hand-delivered an anti-GMO petition to the British government earlier this month. Asked about people who can’t afford expensive organic food, she declared that they should “eat less.” She believes one of the problems with non-organic mass food is that it’s too cheap.But in most parts of the world, food is not too cheap. And the fear-mongering campaign against genetically modified food by the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth has been a serious setback for global food security, depriving millions of people of more nutritious, affordable and sustainable food sources. “The actions of Greenpeace in forestalling the use of golden rice to address micronutrient deficiencies in children makes them the moral and indeed practical equivalent of the Nigerian mullahs who preached against the polio vaccine,” says Mark Lynas, an environmental activist who reversed his position on GMOs and now campaigns for them. “They were stopping a lifesaving technology solely to flatter their own fanaticism.”The kind of doomsayers who warn that oil sands and pipelines will wreak environmental devastation are often the same people who warn that modern agriculture will prove catastrophic. These people are not harmless. As Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, observed, “If the naysayers do manage to stop agricultural biotechnology, they might actually precipitate the famines and the crisis of global biodiversity they have been predicting for nearly 40 years.”
The Truth About Michael Brown, Ferguson and Officer Wilson
Rich Lowry has an excellent editorial on The Inconvenient (and tragic) Truths | New York Post:The bitter irony of the Michael Brown case is that if he had actually put his hands up and said don’t shoot, he would almost certainly be alive today. […] the credible evidence suggests that Michael Brown — after a petty act of robbery at a local business — attacked Wilson when the officer stopped him on the street. Brown punched Wilson when the officer was still in his patrol car and attempted to take his gun from him. […] Again, according to the credible evidence, [Brown] turned back and rushed Wilson. The officer shot several times, but Brown kept on coming until Wilson finally killed him.[…] Aided and abetted by a compliant national media, the Ferguson protesters spun a dishonest or misinformed version of what happened — Michael Brown murdered in cold blood while trying to surrender — into a meme and a chant (“Hands up, don’t shoot”), and then a mini-movement. When the facts didn’t back their narrative, they dismissed the facts and retreated into paranoid suspicion of the legal system. The grand jury process was rigged, they complained, because St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch didn’t seek an indictment of Wilson and instead allowed the grand jury to hear all the evidence and make its own decision. Who could really object to a grand jury hearing everything in such a sensitive case?Then there is the argument that Wilson should have been indicted so there could be a trial “to determine the facts.” If a jury of Wilson’s peers didn’t believe there was enough evidence to establish probable cause to indict him, though, there was no way a jury of his peers was going to convict him of a crime, which requires the more stringent standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. Besides, we don’t try people for crimes they almost certainly didn’t commit just to satisfy a mob that will throw things at the police and burn down local businesses if it doesn’t get its way.Comments Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:
“[Prosecutor Bob] McCulloch short-circuited the process — reinforcing a sense among African Americans, and many others, that the justice system is rigged. He almost certainly could have secured an indictment on a lesser charge simply by requesting it, yet he acted as if he were a spectator, saying that jurors decided not to return a ‘true bill” on each possible charge — as if this were a typical outcome. As has been repeated often in recent weeks, a grand jury will indict a proverbial ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it to.” [“Bob McCulloch’s pathetic prosecution of Darren Wilson”]By “a grand jury will indict a proverbial ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it to”, Milbank admits to wanting to rig the system to indict Wilson despite their being no factual basis for doing so.Yet, thanks to McCullough releasing all of the evidence, we that know Brown was in the wrong because several Black eye-witnesses who were on the scene confirmed Officer Wilson’s account of the events — and their statements were backed up by the physical evidence. This evidence is publicly available for any protestor or looter to study if they can take the time away from blocking streets, chanting slogans, and putting buildings on fire. (If you read the documents pay special attention to witness number 10, page 4).For a Grand Jury to indict someone — whether a policeman or not — the facts need to cast at least some evidence of guilt. Whether one person or a mob of three million protestors are emotionally distraught has no say in the justice of the matter. The purpose of justice is not to appease an ignorant lynch mob that cries “no justice-no peace” and goes on a looting binge. Jonathan Turley at USA Today emphasizes this point:
“The law requires us to deal with facts, and when those facts do not support a criminal charge, prosecution is barred regardless of popular demand. In the end, it rings hollow to cry ‘no justice, no peace’ when you are rioting or looting. There can be no justice if it is merely the result of demonstrations rather than demonstrated facts. Otherwise, the scales of justice become just one more object to throw through the window of an appliance store.” [‘Jonathan Turley, “Ferguson needs facts, not passions”]In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, police officer Darren Wilson spoke about the shooting of Michael Brown.“I didn’t know if I’d be able to withstand another hit like that,” Wilson said of the altercation with Michael Brown. “I had reached out my window with my right hand to grab onto his forearm ’cause I was gonna try and move him back and get out of the car to where I’m no longer trapped…I just felt the immense power that he had. And then the way I’ve described it is it was like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan. That’s just how big this man was.”Comments Lowry on the issue:
There is good reason for a police officer to be in mortal fear in the situation Officer Wilson faced, though. In upstate New York last March, Police Officer David Smith responded to a disturbance call at an office, when suddenly, a disturbed man pummeled the officer as he was attempting to exit his vehicle and then grabbed his gun and shot him dead. [New York Post]Here is a video on that shooting in New York, which could have been Officer Wilson.From the NY Daily News:
Officer David Smith, 43, was shot and killed after a crazed man grabbed his gun from his holster during a disturbance call Monday morning, according to police. An upstate New York police officer was shot and killed by a crazed man who snatched his gun from his holster during a disturbance call Monday morning, according to police. Johnson City Officer David Smith, 43, was shot multiple times outside an MRI office near Binghamton after a disturbed employee managed to grab his gun just after 7 a.m., said Police Chief Joseph Zikuski. The married 18-year police veteran, who has an 11-year-old son, had just arrived at Southern Tier Imaging when MRI technician James Clark, 43, wildly ran up to him before punching him several times as he was trying to exit his vehicle, said Zikuski. During the attack witnesses said Clark managed to somehow grab Smith’s weapon and repeatedly open fire until the 40-caliber duty’s magazine was spent.Yes, racism does exist — on both sides of the “color-divide.”Yes, there are cops who unjustly target people because of their race. Officer Wilson was not one of them.Officer Wilson is the wrong person to target and blame for a situation he did not create — Michael Brown created that problem when Brown robbed a store, and then violently assaulted a police officer. Rather then saying “Yes, sir Mr. Officer. No sir.” He resorted to violence. Whether one takes up a fist or sword — to start up and initate violence — is evil. To use force, to defend oneself is the good.Brown was the assailant; Officer Wilson is the victim. Ask yourself if Officer Wilson was black would there be any of the rage over this incident? Would this even be an issue?