Internet Neutrality: Regulate Like It's 1887

The latest atrocity in the ever expanding regulation of everything by the Obama Administration is regulating the internet as a common carrier justified by enforcing internet neutrality.  The putative purpose of the regulation is to make sure that all internet traffic is treated equally.  No company should be able to buy a fast track for its traffic.  The problem is especially acute in “the last mile,” where local municipalities have sold monopoly positions to cable and telephone companies which have jacked up prices.  If the problem is geographical monopolies on the last mile, then the solution is a federal law that outlaws them because they are an illegal local burden on interstate commerce. This would be a use of the Commerce Clause as it was actually intended.

The solution is not to allow the Feds to regulate the internet based on a law passed in 1934 for regulating telephone companies as common carriers, which itself was based on common carrier railroad regulation which was originally passed into law in 1887. The Interstate Commerce Commission powers to regulate railroads bankrupted a lot of them. Railroads were deregulated in 1980 and the ICC was abolished in 1995. Jimmy Carter signed the bill in 1980 and Bill Clinton signed the 1995 bill. The ICC was such bad news two Democrats signed bills to dismantle and kill it. Why would we want to resurrect this mess for the internet?

As a side comment, a nice Constitutional Amendment would be to make all laws expire in 50 years. If Congress doesn't see fit to reenact them, they should be gone. We could avoid 80 year old laws being used as excuses to regulate us. Why 50 years, you might ask?  Because we might need Democratic votes to get the 2/3 majority of votes in both Houses of Congress  needed to propose the amendment.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413854/obamacare-you-will-love-obamanet-deroy-murdock

Truth in Spending: Outlaw the Current Services Budget

Sorry, but it’s time to get a little wonky.  There’s a spending bias that built into how the government budgets called the current services budget.  This calculation is a baseline cost of doing next year exactly what the government did this year. Then budget "cuts" are measured from this base. If it would take $90 billion more to duplicate the current activities of the federal government next year, then spending $80 billion more next year than this year is a "cut" of $10 billion. As you can see, this builds in a bias for increased spending every year. What needs to be done is simple. No money should be spent by any federal agency to make a current services budget calculation. All budget baselines will be calculated based on current year actual spending. No need for a 50 page comprehensive bill. Stick it in a budget bill and let the Smartest President Ever try to explain why these two lines make the rest of the bill something he has to veto. I'm sure low information voters will love it. 

Death By Terrorism Unlikely, So No Worries?

Some people say that since the odds of being killed by a terrorist right now are much less than being killed by lightning, we shouldn’t spend much time worrying about it.  This position, that we don't need to fight terrorism because so far the odds of being killed by a terrorist are very, very low, reminds me of a bad joke. A man jumps off the Empire State Building. Half way down he comments, "OK so far!"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413932/why-terrorism-more-frightening-lightning-charles-c-w-cooke

Feckless Policies May Leave No Time To Recover

In the article linked below, Professor Thomas Sowell remarks that today’s feckless policies mirror similarly feckless policies of the 1930’s.  The Isolationism in the US and the appeasement of Hitler in Europe lead to World War II.  He then notes that during the war, the Allies took a long time to make up for the position their feckless policies left them in.  He commented that in a modern nuclear war we may not get the chance to make up for our mistakes.  I would like to explain further why that’s the case.

During World War II the Allies were able to trade space for the time needed to build up the armed forces we needed to win. In those days, flying across the Atlantic or Pacific was done in a B-17 bomber with a cruising speed of 182 miles per hour. Since the bombers range was only 2,000 miles you needed refueling bases to get all the way across. The need for airbases was the reason for the island hopping campaign in the Pacific. Today, a B-2 bomber has a cruising speed of 560 miles per hour and, with air to air refueling, can fly nonstop from its base in Missouri to anywhere in the world. While the distances are the same, the time you can get for a given distance is much less. And, as Professor Sowell says, the destructive power of nuclear weapons also destroys military forces much more quickly than conventional weapons did in World War II. War today is a come as you are affair with very little room for second chances. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413953/nows-no-time-happy-talk-thomas-sowell