We less government types believe in the Yellow Pages Rule: If you can find it in the Yellow Pages, the government shouldn’t be doing it.
But just before the 2008 election, soon-to-be-President Barack Obama proudly proclaimed, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” His transformational aim? To repeal the private sector by any means necessary — and replace it with government.
Obamacare is an excellent example. The law’s architect is accidental-video-star Jonathan Gruber — who acknowledges the heads-government-wins-tails-
And then there’s President Obama’s latest assaults on the private sector Internet, about which college professor and avowed Marxist (please pardon the redundancy) Robert McChesney said “(T)he ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
How very Hugo Chavez of him. Totally end the private Internet — then seize their assets and consign us all to government. It appears the President couldn’t agree more. Just after the American people rebuked him and his in historic electoral fashion, he issued an edict to the allegedly-independent Federal Communications Commission (FCC):
“I believe the FCC should create a new set of rules protecting net neutrality and…reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.”
Get that? The FCC can’t create anything — it can only execute what Congress creates, because it exists within the confines of the executive branch. This is a constitutional nuance that President Obama seems not to have grasped.
Will Obama’s gi-normous regulatory attack clear out the private sector? You bet.
“A recent paper by Kevin Hassett and Robert Shapiro entitled ‘The Impact of Title II Regulation of Internet Providers On Their Capital Investments’ projects that Title II reclassification could reduce total investments by cable companies, traditional telephone operators and other wireline Internet providers…(by) 20.8 percent.
“Using data provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), a team of economists estimated that a million dollars invested into wired broadband yields 14.74 jobs….Translating the $11.8 billion investment decline using the employment multiplier thus yields a total of 174,233 fewer jobs created in 2019.”
Will the President in fiat fashion have government rush to fill the government-created private sector void? You bet:
“Mr. Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to override state laws that keep communities (read: governments) from providing high-speed Internet….Nineteen states restrict cities’ability to provide high-speed data service….Mr. Obama’s initiative includes an effort by the Commerce Department to help communities (read: governments) build broadband infrastructure.”
More federal government money – to fund more crony local governments’ attempts at Internet. More – because President Obama has already tried it. With $7.2 billion in the 2009 “Stimulus.” The results? Predictably, disastrous:
These types of uber-failures are precisely why nineteen states have passed laws prohibiting local governments from trying to replace private Internet. The laws the President wants to steamroll because, you know, federalism. And these government Internet fails predate Obama’s “Stimulus.”
Municipal Broadband’s Record of Failure
For Taxpayers, (Government) Broadband ‘UTOPIA’ Anything But: UTOPIA has been a failure and a thorn in the side of Utah taxpayers from the beginning. Since 2004, UTOPIA was running operating losses for nine years straight. According to UTOPIA’s own financial reports, at the end of FY 2013 UTOPIA had net assets of negative $146 million. Despite asking local governments for $13 million in sales taxes annually, UTOPIA has struggled to stay alive over the past decade. As if that wasn’t bad enough, UTOPIA has accrued more than $500 million in debt for Utah taxpayers with no path to success in sight.
Ironically, after these inevitable government uber-failures, Obama-crony private companies divest governments of their assets — for a song:
If you’ve ever visited your local Department of Motor Vehicles, or post office — or experienced Obamacare, or the Veterans Administration — you have to wonder why anyone thinks governments should be expanding their To Do lists. You would be thinking that the private sector does everything better, faster and cheaper than government does.
You would be exactly right. But you would not be thinking like President Obama and his Democrats. Because better, faster and cheaper is not their objective — repealing and replacing the private sector is.
