Freedom Line Blog

Timothy Lee, Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs at CFIF, discusses the increased regulatory uncertainty for the Internet sector and U.S. economy caused by FCC and Obama Administration policies, and American foreign policy in an age of uncertainty in the Middle East.

Listen to the interview here.

Is this what our Internet sector and economy need?  More uncertainty from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Obama Administration?  The tech sector remains a positive outlier in terms of job creation, innovation, new networks and private investment, but regulatory misdirection threatens all of that.

The latest affront involves usage-based pricing for Internet service.  In order to facilitate Internet growth and accommodate ever-increasing consumer demand, service providers must be granted flexibility to at least explore alternative pricing models.  The outdated, flat-rate, all-you-can-eat model increasingly threatens service quality, as a small number of Internet users sap capacity through data-heavy applications like videogames and online video.  To illustrate, viewing a single streamed high-definition film consumes approximately four gigabytes of data.  Utilities aren’t forced to charge a flat rate regardless of electricity use, so why should Internet service providers be straightjacketed in that way?  It’s not fair, and it’s not effective.

Enter FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who just four months ago explicitly praised pricing flexibility and experimentation in the name of fairness and efficiency:

Business model innovation is very important particularly in new areas like broadband.  There was a point of view that said a couple of years ago that really there was only one permissible pricing model for broadband, and I didn’t agree with that and the Commission didn’t agree with that.  And we said that business model experimentation and usage-based pricing could be a healthy and beneficial part of the ecosystem that could help drive efficiency in networks, increase consumer choice and competition and increase fairness, because it can we said result in lower prices for people who consume less broadband.  So experimentation in this area with those goals in mind is something that’s completely appropriate.”

Other voices on the political left actually concurred, including Tim Wu, the man who coined the deceptive term “Net Neutrality.”

Speaking to a different audience last week, however, Genachowski appeared to reverse himself.  “Anything that depresses broadband usage,” Genachowski claimed, “is something that we need to be really concerned about.”  He added, “We should all be concerned with anything that is incompatible with the psychology of abundance.”

A “psychology of abundance?”  Easy to say when you’re not the once providing that so-called “abundance.”  Perhaps Genachowski is unfamiliar with the timeless economic adage, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  Or perhaps he simply says whatever he thinks his present audience wants to hear.

Regardless, Genachowski’s latest comments only add regulatory uncertainty to an atmosphere that already faces too much of it.

In a letter delivered on Friday, a coalition of 14 free market organizations, including the Center for Individual Freedom (”CFIF”), urged the Federal Communications Commission (”FCC”) to approve a private deal between Verizon and cable companies that will free currently unused spectrum to help alleviate the growing “spectrum crunch” that many wireless consumers – particularly those in densely populated areas of the country – are already feeling.

The letter, which was organized by ATR’s Digital Liberty, reads in part:

Demand for wireless broadband is more than doubling annually, but vast swaths of valuable spectrum – the lifeblood of mobile communications – remain unavailable to wireless carriers. Consumers in densely populated urban areas are already suffering from inadequate wireless capacity. While meeting this robust demand will require wireless carriers to adopt an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach, increasing spectrum availability is unquestionably the most fundamental and cost-effective means to meet wireless demand.

Unfortunately, spectrum auctions that will enable wireless carriers to bid on additional spectrum remain years away. Verizon Wireless’s proposed transfer presents a rare and crucial opportunity to deploy currently unused spectrum for wireless broadband. The spectrum at issue is ideally situated in the 1700/2100 MHz AWS bands, covering over 80 percent of the U.S. population (259 million POPs). Consumers will see substantial net benefits from expanded coverage enabled by additional spectrum, especially compared to more costly and time-consuming undertakings such as cell splitting.

With demand for wireless broadband more than doubling annually, the FCC’s own estimates predict that demand for wireless spectrum will exceed supply in 2013.  Yet Obama’s FCC has done little if anything at all to make additional and much-needed spectrum available to wireless network operators. 

In fact, under the Obama Administration the FCC has worked to delay and outright block private-sector deals to alleviate the growing spectrum crunch.  Last year, the FCC took unprecedented steps to block the then-pending AT&T-T-Mobile merger, going so far as to publicly release a biased draft staff report in opposition to the merger that the commissioners themselves never approved and quite  possibly didn’t even read.  Had that merger been approved, AT&T was promising to deploy high-speed mobile broadband to 95 percent of all Americans.  And the FCC has been over-scrutinizing and slow-walking approval of the Verizon-SpectrumCo deal since December.

Read the full coalition letter to the FCC here.

When it comes to highlighting federal inanity, Holman Jenkins hits a home run with his take in a Wall Street Journal article on the current FCC’s bureaucratic approach to the wireless industry.

As Jenkins describes the situation, “Like food rotting on a dock, only politics and policy prevents spectrum from getting where it’s needed.”

Jenkins goes on to articulate the point by aptly noting that wireless companies are “being starved of spectrum [their] customers would willingly pay for because of an archaic government allocation system in which economic logic does not penetrate.”

So why care?  Primarily because the wireless industry’s massive investment involved in developing spectrum for the public’s use is one of the few unmitigated bright spots in the US economy. Wireless carriers delivered approximately $27 billion in investment in U.S. mobile networks last year alone.  And continued wireless investment holds the potential to revolutionize our nation’s educational system, healthcare and so much more.

In employment terms, a Deloitte study last fall pegged 4G wireless investment as creating between 371,000 and 771,000 new jobs.  That includes the teams that deploy new cell towers, engineers and software developers, among others.

But the government’s dithering threatens to sideline billions in new investment that would otherwise be pumped into the economy and drive these benefits for consumers.

What’s especially ironic about the delays is that Obama’s FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the “looming spectrum crisis” that threatens “continued innovation in broadband wireless.”  Similar acknowledgements continually have been made directly from the White House.  Yet, when it comes to spectrum policy, the FCC and the Obama Administration have been driven by politics and ideology instead of sound economics and logic — a mindset that not only exacerbates the spectrum problem, but threatens (if not stops cold) private investment to deal with the problem.

Indeed, when wireless providers seek to overcome government obstacles to spectrum and move to address the crunch on their respective networks, they are met with hostility.  Jenkins points to the two obvious examples:

To meet demand of its customers for more and more bandwidth, AT&T laid out $39 billion for T-Mobile, a retreating, second-rank player, only to have the proposal nixed by Washington after many months of torture.

Verizon has been undergoing months of torture over its proposal to buy, for $3.9 billion, several blocks of spectrum sitting idle in the hands of cable TV companies.

That, coupled with the FCC’s counterproductive obsession with putting use conditions on auctioned spectrum to the point of rendering it less desirable or frankly, economically unfeasible, is only making the spectrum problem worse.

Everyone, including the FCC and the Obama Administration, agrees that the spectrum crunch must be resolved… and fast.  “The solution,” as Jenkins points out, “is to permit any spectrum that’s immediately deployable to be immediately deployed by those who can make use of it.”  And it must be deployed without burdensome government conditions and discriminatory bidder qualifications to ensure its most efficient use.

In other words, the FCC and Obama Administration must set aside politics and ideology, stop trying to pick winners and losers in an effort to shape some utopian vision of perfect competition in an already ultra-competitive market and allocate more spectrum for consumer use… now.

Just months ago, T-Mobile became another unjustified casualty of the arbitrary and capricious Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  It was bad enough that the FCC curiously opposed T-Mobile’s proposed merger with AT&T, which would have upgraded wireless service for tens of millions of American consumers and created thousands of new jobs.  Compounding that injustice, however, the FCC committed the unprecedented transgression of releasing a confidential staff report that inaccurately maligned the proposed merger’s justifications.

Sadly, T-Mobile now seeks to employ that same FCC as a bureaucratic bludgeon to cripple a market competitor, by asking it to block a private spectrum purchase by Verizon Wireless.   Whereas T-Mobile announced a few months ago that, “The U.S. wireless industry will remain fiercely competitive”  by allowing acquisition of 50 MHz of T-Mobile’s spectrum as part of the AT&T deal, it now claims that Verizon’s proposed acquisition of 20 MHz of unused spectrum will somehow “unduly tip the scales” in Verizon’s favor.  Moreover, T-Mobile itself seeks to acquire 20 MHz of spectrum, which it claims is in the public interest and “seeks only to assign spectrum licenses and no other assets.”

CFIF supported T-Mobile’s right to enter into a bargained-for exchange between private parties during its proposed merger with AT&T, which the FCC and Obama Justice Department improperly blocked.  But by the same token, it should not turn around and attempt to interfere with other parties’ market transactions.  T-Mobile is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telecom, the world’s fourth-largest telecommunications company, which itself is partly owned by the German government.  So it’s not exactly David fighting Goliath, unable to contend in the marketplace without exploiting the FCC as some sort of protective big brother.

Verizon Wireless merely seeks to purchase unused spectrum, which will bring desperately-needed wireless service improvements for U.S. consumers.  That’s none of T-Mobile’s business, and the FCC is not some sort of instrument to be used as a competitive weapon.

With the unemployment rate holding steady above 8% for over three long years now, it’s obvious that the United States must pursue policies that spur rather than retard job creation and economic growth.  One continuing economic bright spot already exists in the telecommunications sector, where several prospects for generating new jobs exist.  Unfortunately, federal bureaucrats continue to obstruct those prospects.  The leading current example is spectrum and, specifically, Big Labor special interests pressuring the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block telecom companies from buying unused wireless broadband.  That pressure only serves to obstruct economic recovery, because more access to spectrum for service providers would mean greater incentive to invest, and in turn more business opportunities that would raise revenue and create jobs.

For example, a recent study by NDN found that from April 2007 to June 2011, broadband companies created some 1,585,000 new jobs in their transition from 2G to 3G wireless technologies and Internet infrastructure.  NDN also noted that “the investments being undertaken today to upgrade wireless network and Internet technologies from 3G to 4G hold comparable promise for job creation.”  Similarly, a Deloitte study from last year agreed with NDN’s assertion, estimating that U.S. investment in 4G networks could generate anywhere from $25 to $53 billion in economic revenue between 2012 and 2016.  Furthermore, according to their study, these investments could produce between 371,000 and 771,000 new jobs and account for $73 billion to $151 billion in GDP growth.

Unfortunately, union bosses oppose spectrum transactions in favor of their own self-interest.  For instance, in comments filed with the FCC, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) falsely claimed that the transaction “agreements would appear to limit the availability of competitive services, dividing up geographic service areas for particular companies, leading to reduced investment in infrastructure, job losses, and ultimately, higher prices for consumers.”  As noted above, however, independent studies refute their allegation and attest to the economic and job benefits of allowing spectrum to be sold to companies that will apply it toward better customer service.  The spectrum sale will not only boost the economy and create jobs, but also benefit consumers by alleviating the oncoming spectrum crunch.   Greater access to spectrum will also create additional incentive to invest more toward innovation, which in turn means new devices, applications and services.  Providers will be able to upgrade their networks to a 4G LTE that has further geographic reach, faster downloads and greater capacity.

If the FCC continues to obstruct the sale , however, the quality of Internet service and our economy more generally will suffer due to the gradual exhaustion of existing spectrum.  In order to ensure that the domestic telecom sector continues to flourish, spectrum must therefore be made available to those who need it and who have the ability to use it in the most constructive way.   Union leaders should stop playing games that harm actual workers, and the FCC must put an end this obstruction.

Oh, those champions of free expression on the left. From the Daily Caller:

Three stalwarts of the feminist movement — Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan — have added their voices to the calls to take radio giant Rush Limbaugh off the air.

The co-founders of The Women’s Media Center put pen to paper over the weekend to request that the public complain and urge the Federal Communications Commission to revoke the licenses of stations that carry “The Rush Limbaugh Show.”

…

“This isn’t political. While we disagree with Limbaugh’s politics, what’s at stake is the fallout of a society tolerating toxic, hate-inciting speech,” they wrote. “For 20 years, Limbaugh has hidden behind the First Amendment, or else claimed he’s really ‘doing humor’ or ‘entertainment.’ He is indeed constitutionally entitled to his opinions, but he is not constitutionally entitled to the people’s airways. It’s time for the public to take back our broadcast resources.”

It’s amazing, isn’t it? The left — which see McCarythism around every corner — instinctively turns to government force to squelch the opinions of those they despise. And as for “toxic, hate-inciting speech” … well, Limbaugh wasn’t the one cheering on the Viet Cong, Ms. Fonda.

For the past three years, those of us who eat, sleep and breathe the principles of limited government and free enterprise have been banging our heads against the wall because of the devastating and rampant overreach of executive departments and agencies in the Obama Administration.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)… the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)… the Department of Justice (DOJ)… Enough said.

But perhaps there has been no agency more guilty of abusing its power and imposing its regulatory overreach than the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  After all, it is the FCC that unilaterally – by a 3-2 party-line vote – imposed so-called “Net Neutrality” regulations against a bipartisan majority in Congress, a unanimous federal court of appeals and 2-1 public opinion.  It is the FCC that, despite acknowledging a national spectrum crisis as more and more consumers use smart phones and tablet computers, continually works to block any and all productive efforts to relieve said crisis.

So it was refreshing to read earlier today that AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson is calling out the FCC’s overreach, charging that the Commission is “intent on picking winners and losers rather than letting these markets work.” 

For too long the FCC has interfered with the free market, which has created an unlevel playing field that unfairly props up politically-favored companies less likely to invest their own capital in new job-creating and economy-enhancing infrastructure at the expense of others that will. 

And, that’s precisely why Congress must act, not only to refrain from granting the FCC’s request for additional flexibility on spectrum auction authority, but also to tighten the reins on the FCC in order to prevent it from further skewing the wireless market. 

Instead of permitting the FCC to, by definition, pick “winners and losers” in the wireless marketplace by unfairly limiting and excluding certain companies from participating in spectrum auctions, Congress must pass legislation that that will facilitate the proper and fair functioning of spectrum auctions that are open to all willing buyers. 

That the FCC thinks otherwise, coupled with its recent history of abusive regulatory overreach, should spark a long overdue and serious discussion about clearly defining its proper authority once and for all.

In an interview with CFIF, Thomas W. Hazlett, professor of law and economics at George Mason University and former chief economist of the FCC, discusses the ramifications of the recent Senate vote to reject an attempt to overturn the FCC’s net neutrality rules and his recent Encounter Books Broadside titled, “The Fallacy of Net Neutrality.”

Listen to the interview here.

So federal bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), those known master micromanagers of the American economy, concluded in their wisdom to oppose the proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, two independent, free, private parties.  Along the way, the FCC went to the improper and unprecedented extreme of releasing a staff report gratuitously and inaccurately critiquing the justifications offered for the merger.  Again, we’re talking about a merger between two consenting, informed parties.  We’re also talking about a merger application that was voluntarily withdrawn by the parties.  Yet the FCC, for reasons still unexplained, broke with decades of administrative protocol and published the staff report.

Remember, this is the same supposedly omnipotent federal government that managed the housing market so well in recent decades through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not to mention the splendid business acumen it displayed in the energy sector with such examples as Solyndra.  And it’s the same FCC that incompetently attempted to commandeer Internet service through so-called “Net Neutrality,” which earned it a unanimous rebuke from the D.C. Court of Appeals and Congress.

Turning its eye toward the telecommunications industry, the FCC decided in its considered expertise that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger was not in the best interests of the American people.  As one particularly curious example, the FCC staff report claims that the proposed merger would cause job losses.  One would think that federal regulators would be more circumspect in asserting job projections in light of the slow-motion “stimulus” disaster that was supposed to cap unemployment at 8% in October 2009.  Instead, unemployment stands at 9% and has exceeded 8% for a record number of months.  Moreover, if the merger was a likely job-killer, why would even the Communication Workers of America (CWA) labor union support it?  The FCC asks us to believe that the labor union most impacted by the proposed merger would somehow seek fewer dues-paying members?

Moreover, the FCC itself within the past month claimed that its own $4.5 billion fund to deploy wireline broadband to just 7 million Americans would create “500,000 jobs and $50 billion in economic growth.”  Yet it now contradicts itself by claiming the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger, which would deploy broadband service to the far greater number of 55 million Americans, would somehow destroy jobs?  In other words, the FCC seems to think that smaller amounts of government spending to bring broadband to a smaller number of people will create jobs, but much larger amounts of private investment to bring broadband to a much greater number of people will not.

Federal bureaucrats are unequipped to micromanage the telecom industry, just as they’re incompetent to tell Boeing (America’s top exporter) where it can and cannot operate manufacturing plants.  It’s yet another example that the FCC is out of control, and threatening American jobs by its malfeasance.

If you need another reason to hope for a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate next fall, here you go: a resolution to overturn net neutrality — the Obama Administration’s attempt at a government takeover of the internet — failed today in the upper chamber by a narrow vote of 52-46 (it had previously passed in the House, 240-179).

Of the Republicans who fought the good fight, none put the issue in as sharp relief as Florida freshman Marco Rubio. This a man who gets the bigger picture, as the Daily Caller reports:

“The FCC and the federal government cannot keep pace with the Internet and the technology industries, and the government should not attempt to catch up through regulation or legislation,” said Rubio.

“And that’s an important point. We are asking this government, we are asking this bureaucratic structure which struggles to keep pace with issues we have been facing for the last 20 years, to somehow keep pace with issues and the technology and the innovations that arrive in the Internet world. Not only do I think that is asking too much, I think it’s impossible.” 

Rubio is right on the money, sounding the same cautionary note that CFIF’s Timothy H. Lee has repeatedly emphasized. America has had no more dynamic sector of the economy in the last two decades than the internet, a development that would have been impossible without a relatively light hand from the federal government. If Washington gets in the driver’s seat, we should expect the same results that have characterized government involvement in everything from health care to postal service to education: lower quality at higher prices with less convenience. It’s a Wi-Fi world and we’re handing off the internet to a dial-up government.

At this time of “shared sacrifice”, the political class is fond of telling us that there are “no easy choices” to combat the nation’s crisis of overspending. Yet as private companies have cut back on their payrolls to cope with the Great Recession, Washington hasn’t even been firing on the merits, according to USA Today:

Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.

The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.

The 1,800-employee Federal Communications Commission and the 1,200-employee Federal Trade Commission didn’t lay off or fire a single employee last year. The SBA had no layoffs, six firings and 17 deaths in its 4,000-employee workforce.

Six months ago this coming Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its Chairman Julius Genachowski – Barack Obama’s old comrade and Harvard Law School classmate – hastily imposed the infamous and deceptively-named “Net Neutrality” regulations.  Just days before Christmas and fresh off the Administration’s effective takeover of the automobile, banking and healthcare sectors, Genachowski and his two fellow Democrat Commissioners rammed those regulations through against the wishes of (1) a solid majority of Americans, (2) a rare bipartisan Congressional majority and (3) a unanimous U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which declared the FCC’s “Net Neutrality” effort illegal mere months earlier.

The FCC’s maneuver move marked the first time in history that the federal government appointed itself authority to micromanage how Internet service providers operating in the ostensibly free market could and could not operate their own private networks.  Never mind, of course, the years and hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment required to build out and maintain those private networks – desperately-needed investment that continues to create rapid innovation and well-paying jobs.

The FCC’s illegal and unwise “Net Neutrality” regulations immediately jeopardized those billions of investment dollars, and will continue to do so should they somehow withstand judicial scrutiny.

Now, making things even worse, as the bare one-person Democratic majority moves full speed ahead with unnecessary and counterproductive Internet regulations on both wired and wireless Internet networks, Chairman Genachowski appears to be playing games by dragging his feet in order to obstruct the lawsuits and legislation to repeal the FCC’s unauthorized “Net Neutrality” rules.  Specifically, Chairman Genachowski appears to be delaying the publication of the FCC’s order in the Federal Registry to go forum-shopping and avoid the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit where the FCC lost last year and will likely lose again.

Thus, just like Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the FCC has become a rogue government agency willing to act beyond its statutory authority to commandeer both the wired and wireless Internet.  As our economy and employment market continue to struggle, now is the time for us to stop the Obama FCC’s rogue effort via the courts and Congress.

Quote of the day from The Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz, writing in his weekly “Information Age” column:

In high-tech, by the time the political and legal systems catch up to an issue, the issue is moot.”

Whether anti-trust, so-called “Net Neutrality,” public broadband endeavors, wireless data roaming mandates or anything else, you can always count on bureaucrats to be a day late and a dollar short.  Are you paying attention, FCC?

One would think the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had learned its lesson by now.

In the past calendar year, the FCC’s extralegal power grabs have brought judicial rebuke from a unanimous Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, widespread public opposition and rare bipartisan Congressional condemnation.  But instead of internalizing those lessons, the FCC has once again endeavored beyond its legal authority by voting to impose data roaming mandates on private wireless carriers.  In a correspondence to the FCC, CFIF set forth the ways in which its latest rogue action is not only without legal foundation, but also unwise as a matter of public policy.

First, Section 332 of the Communications Act explicitly states that private mobile service providers “shall not be treated as a common carrier for any purpose under this Act.”  By  requiring wireless providers to forcibly enter agreements with other wireless carriers and allow non-customers to roam on their data networks, the FCC has violated that express provision. 

Second, a vibrant market for data roaming agreements already exists, meaning that this FCC action is unnecessary.  Carriers large and small already engage in very high rates of partnership, including Rural Cellular Association (RCA) members.  These agreements cover 3G and even 4G networks, contrary to extremists’ claims.  Indeed, numerous smaller carriers currently advertise nationwide broadband data coverage despite possessing relatively narrow license areas, meaning that they already have secured data roaming agreements.  Further, the prices negotiated in roaming agreements continue to decline. 

Third, the FCC’s bureaucratic intrusion into this realm will have the perverse effect of discouraging new investment and job creation in this cutting-edge sector.  After all, the FCC’s mandates will create incentives to piggyback on other networks rather than invest in new ones.  Carriers must be able to differentiate themselves and compete against counterpart carriers in the free market, which the FCC’s proposed mandates will undercut.  As data use continues to increase and smart phones impose new demands on network capacity, the inevitable result will be congestion, delay, fewer jobs and less investment.

Today’s FCC vote thus exceeds its legal authority and undermines new investment, while ignoring the fact that data roaming agreements are already prevalent.  It merely provides the latest evidence that the rogue FCC must be brought back to Earth, whether via Congress or the courts.

In this era of bureaucratic overreach and unsustainable spending and deficits, should government also enter the business of competing against private communications service providers?  Doesn’t it already have its hands full?

We at CFIF think so.  In fact, we testified last month before the North Carolina legislature on behalf of thousands of supporters and activists across that great state in support of H.B. 129, which would restrain government bureaucrats from unfairly competing against private providers of communications services.   And with good reason.  From Taiwan to Australia, from Chicago to Houston, and inside North Carolina itself, the history of public broadband is without exception one of failure.  Every single public broadband project of which we’re aware has failed to so much as break even.  Ultimately, taxpayer bailouts become necessary as government endeavors lose money and require constant upgrades to keep pace with evolving technology.  Moreover, government broadband boondoggles undermine the billions of dollars invested in private network improvement and expansion, and discourage future private investment.  After all, why risk one’s capital to compete against governments that can manipulate the rules and go to taxpayers for bailout?  Inevitably, poorer service and layoffs in the vibrant tech sector result.  Rural communities particularly suffer.

But none of that logic seems to matter to Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.   In a statement Monday, Clyburn attacked the North Carolina’s sensible legislation and defended the concept of government entering yet another portion of the private sector.   Perhaps that’s not surprising, considering Clyburn’s vote last December to impose so-called “Net Neutrality” in the face of two-to-one public opposition, a unanimous Court of Appeals decision that the FCC didn’t possess such authority and condemnation from bipartisan groups in Congress.

Predictable or not, however, it is critical that Americans at the federal, state and local level vocally oppose the sort of government tech sector overreach that she advocates.

Yesterday, the new House of Representatives took another step to make good on its campaign promises last fall to the American people.

The House Energy & Commerce Committee, by a 30 to 23 vote, approved a resolution prohibiting Obama’s rogue Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from imposing so-called “Net Neutrality” on the nation’s Internet sector. This follows last week’s 15-8 vote by the Communications and Technology Subcommittee on the same issue. The FCC doesn’t possess the legal authority to regulate the Internet via “Net Neutrality” in the first instance, as a unanimous court of appeals ruled last year.  Further, Americans oppose this sort of Internet regulation by a solid two-to-one margin, and a rare bipartisan majority of 300 from Congress has formally instructed the FCC against pursuing this lawless course.  Ignoring all of that, the FCC rammed through “Net Neutrality” by a partisan 3-2 vote in December.

Big-government activists claim that “Net Neutrality” is somehow necessary to prevent Internet service providers, who invest the tens of billions of dollars necessary to create the networks on which the Internet passes, from blocking various websites or maliciously discriminating in Internet traffic.  But they cannot explain why that hypothetical epidemic of blockage has never occurred despite two decades of explosive Internet growth in our lives.  And with good reason – any service provider that did so would quickly find itself out of business due to irate customers.  But never mind that.  What are facts, after all, against the desire to add yet another sector of the American economy to the Obama Administration’s regulation?

Fortunately, Americans know better.  And just as fortunately, Congress and the courts are doing something about it.

As we predicted from the start, so-called “Net Neutrality” continues down its path toward inevitable defeat.

Today, the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee voted by a lopsided 15-8 margin to overturn the rogue effort by Obama’s FCC to add the Internet to the Administration’s laundry list of commandeered industries.  The American public opposes “Net Neutrality” Internet regulation by two-to-one margins, a court of appeals unanimously ruled it beyond the FCC’s proper authority and a bipartisan group of 300 members of Congress instructed the FCC to refrain from this abusive effort.  Despite those realities, the FCC arrogantly voted in December to impose “Net Neutrality,” just as the Obama Administration seeks to impose card check, carbon cap-and-tax and other unpopular schemes via unaccountable and unelected federal agencies.

Today’s resolution will now proceed to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, and a similar legislative effort to overturn “Net Neutrality” is underway in the Senate.  Meanwhile, a lawsuit proceeds in the same court that last year overturned “Net Neutrality,” meaning that the only question now is whether this ill-advised bureaucratic overreach will meet its end legislatively or judicially.  Either way, it can’t come soon enough for investors in our nation’s critical Internet sector.

Two months ago, when Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed its “Net Neutrality” proposal by a partisan 3-2 margin, we guaranteed that it would inevitably be defeated via legislation, the courts or both.

Sure enough, last month Verizon Communications challenged the FCC’s rogue vote in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the same court that unanimously ruled last April that the FCC doesn’t possess lawful authority to impose Net “Neutrality.”  Now this week, both the House and Senate introduced resolutions to repeal the FCC’s rogue action.  The resolutions were introduced pursuant to the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to review and overrule federal agency regulations via simple majority.  Importantly, such resolutions are not subject to normal Senate filibuster hurdles.

“Net Neutrality” constitutes a destructive and illegal federal intrusion into the Internet, which has managed to flourish just fine over the past two decades without Obama Administration micromanagement, thank you very much.  The American public opposes it by a 2-to-1 margin, courts have rejected it unanimously and Congressional opposition is bipartisan.  While “Net Neutrality’s” demise is a matter of when, not if, it is still absolutely critical that we as citizens maintain our resolve to spare the Internet sector from becoming bureaucrats’ tech version of ObamaCare.

Last month, President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted by a partisan 3-2 margin to regulate Internet service via Net “Neutrality.”  On that date, we predicted,”The FCC’s reckless effort to regulate Internet traffic will now begin a slow death march to ultimate defeat from legal challenges and Congressional action.”

Exactly one month later, the judicial front in that battle is underway.

Yesterday, Verizon Communications challenged the FCC’s rogue vote in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  That’s the same court that unanimously ruled last April that the FCC doesn’t possess lawful authority to impose Net “Neutrality,” but the FCC defiantly pressed ahead despite that unequivocal ruling.  In so doing, the FCC also defied 2-to-1 public opposition and a bipartisan group of 300 from Congress.  Obama took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal this week to profess a new commitment to regulatory restraint in pursuit of a healthier economy, job creation and more humble federal government.  But his own FCC belies that supposed commitment with its Net “Neutrality” agenda.

Leaders of the new 112th Congress have also committed to overturning the FCC’s destructive attempt to regulate Internet service.  Whether the demise of Net “Neutrality” comes legislatively or judicially, it can’t come soon enough for American consumers, investors and employers.