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The Obama Administration is Killing the Internet
by Seton Motley
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“What Seems to be the Problem?”
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Bad policy after bad policy. Often illegally imposed. As a result, the Tech Sector – 1/6 of our nation’s economy, as big as health care – is hemorrhaging jobs.
Tech Layoffs Hit 3-year High in First Half of 2012
And our Internet service would be better, faster and cheaper were it not for this Administration.
The damage done by taxes and regulations is often unseen. The money wasted - either sent to government or spent complying with ridiculous over-regulation - could have instead been invested in improving and expanding existing service, and hiring people to make it all happen.
The worst gig-and-progress-killing Administration Internet power grab of all was the December 2010 illegal imposition of Network Neutrality. Net Neutrality eviscerates private sector investment in the infrastructure necessary to maintain and continue building the World Wide Web – exactly as ObamaCare does to private sector health care.
Which ultimately leaves us with the government as our sole Internet Service Provider (ISP) – not at all problematic from a performance or free speech perspective. How do we know this? Because the Godfather of the Media “Reform” Movement – University of Illinois professor and avowed Marxist (please pardon the redundancy) Robert McChesney – says so:
“At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
Having not to the Media Marxists’ satisfaction done enough damage to the wireless Web, in April 2011 the Administration took a second poisonous bite at the apple.
Meanwhile, the Administration has serially, incessantly been an in-depth impediment to the free market business transactions that will dramatically improve and expand the Web.
This Administration hasn’t been picking Winners and Losers - they’ve been picking Losers at the expense of Winners. It isn’t Crony Capitalism - it’s Crony Socialism.
Take the Mother-May-I government approval process for mergers and acquisitions - that applies almost exclusively to the Internet-Tech sector. This Administration has abused the living daylights out of it.
A decision is supposed to be made within 180 days. This Administration has time and again delayed beyond a year some of the deals languishing before them.
Cell phone Winner AT&T wanted to buy cell phone Loser T-Mobile. The Administration dragged out the process for more than thirteen months - then denied the purchase. Which cost Winner AT&T somewhere between $3 and $6 billion - to be given to Loser T-Mobile.
When the Administration isn’t outright blocking private sector mergers, they are cramming them full of illegal “conditions.” Laws and regulations to which the parties must agree - else the Administration will deny their request.
These “conditions” are just more examples of this Administration unilaterally, unlawfully writing law - without benefit of Congress. Comcast was last year forced to swallow two dozen Administration-imposed “conditions” so as to finally - more than a year after the deal was first announced - merge with NBC-Universal.
And just last week the Administration approved Verizon’s wireless spectrum purchase from a cable company consortium - but, again, only with a whole host of illegal attending “conditions.” That, amongst other things, “restrict...joint marketing agreements.”
So not only are these “conditions” unlawfully imposed - some of them eviscerate the First Amendment. This Administration is telling these companies what they can and cannot say. And these companies will capitulate - else they cannot do business.
All of this Obama Administration hyper-activity has frozen in amber the private sector. This Administration’s myriad of higher taxes and uber-regulatory zeal have cost us growth and job creation - and force us to pay ever higher prices for ever lesser products.
And that’s just the cost we see. The advancement lost to the forced capitulation to Black Hole Government - where money, light and energy go in, and nothing comes out - is unseeable, unknowable - and incalculable.
Friday, March 1, 2013 at 09:15AM 
