An extensive search of my memory and the Internet for an example or two of the left getting a public policy prediction correct was utterly unfruitful.
They are the Lou Gehrigs of Wrong. Record-breaking, utterly consistent deliverers of the incorrect. They show up every day, take the field — and then run from home plate to third base. They’re the ones in the outfield with catcher’s mitts.
You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting examples of the Left being un-correct (and/or deceitful). To brush past a couple:
ObamaCare
“If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan”
“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
Obama: ObamaCare will save “$2,500 per family per year” on health care premiums.
The 2009 “Stimulus”
Obama: Stimulus will create 4.1 million jobs.
Stimulus Money for ‘Shovel Ready’ Projects; Where Did It Go?
Obama: $90 billion in green energy stimulus, five million new green energy jobs in the next 10 years.
Nowhere is their incompetence better demonstrated than in the Internet/Technology sector.
Let’s begin with the uber-doubtable uber-Leftist Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in Economics and a house mouth of the New York Times. Who in 1998 wrote:
“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in “Metcalfe’s law” – which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants – becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
Right on the money. Someone fax him the Nasdaq numbers. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook: Founded 2004) will buy him a small country out of petty cash.
Let’s get policy-specific. How does the Left do on, say, Network Neutrality? Which a Leftist college professor (please pardon the redundancy) made up out of whole cloth in 2003 — and yet the left somehow claims the 1996 Telecom Act authorizes the government to impose it.
Net Neutrality was not imposed throughout the 2000s. During the which the Internet continued its rocket-ride ascension — an ever-improving, free speech-free market Xanadu.
Did the left acknowledge that their Net Neutrality power grab was thus rendered utterly unnecessary? Of course not — they remained, throughout, impervious to facts.
Network Neutrality – Broadband Discrimination (2003)
“Communications regulators over the next decade will spend increasing time on conflicts between the private interests of broadband providers and the public’s interest in a competitive innovation environment centered on the Internet.”
Google’s Comments on “Broadband Extortion” (2006)
“If comments like that don’t tell you why principles of net neutrality must be codified, then I don’t know what will.”
Net Neutrality: We’re Still Waiting (2010)
“It’s time for the FCC chairman to stop dithering….(T)he FCC must enact Net Neutrality rules that safeguard the open Internet for all users, no matter how they get online.”
They now want to go even further backwards — and:
“Go back in time to 1934 (and even before) – and impose landline telephone regulations on the Web. The government regulates the daylights out of landlines – so Progressives want the government to jam the Web in there too. Which would allegedly allow them to reimpose Net Neutrality – and tax the Net, and…. This move is called Reclassification.”
Right on the money. Let’s retrograde back to rotary dial-up. Why are progressives so anti-progress?
Now comes word that Comcast wants to buy Time Warner Cable. Free market people engaging in free market commerce. Can the left let that happen? Of course not:
Comcast + Time Warner Cable = Disaster
Tell Congress to Oppose The Comcast/Time-Warner Merger
Senator Al Franken Says This Merger is Going “Exactly in the Wrong Direction.”
The Left has demonstrated a century-plus long knack for knowing the wrong direction — and heading full steam that way. In 2000, America Online (AOL) and Time Warner wanted to merge. The left freaked:
Consumer Groups Fight AOL-Time Warner Merger
An AOL / Time Warner Merger Will Harm Competition in Internet Online Services
It didn’t kill the Internet — it killed AOL. The Internet kept growing ever more amazing.
In 2010, Comcast and NBC-Universal wanted to merge. The left freaked.
Opponents Line Up Against Proposed Comcast/NBC Merger
Comcast/NBC Merger Takes Media Consolidation to the ‘Disaster’ Level
Comcastrophe: Comcast/NBC Merger
What has followed is thus far three-plus years absolutely free of “disasters” and/or “Comcastrophes.” The Web and our TVs just keep rolling along — growing ever greater with every passing day.
So with this never-ending avalanche of Left wrong-ness, why on Earth do we still listen to them – let alone actually implement public policy predicated upon their prognostications?