Freedom Line Blog

Throughout the “Net Neutrality” debate over whether the federal government should begin regulating Internet service under 1930s Depression-era laws intended for copper wire telephone service, we and others have warned that Obama Administration efforts to impose such regulation would dangerously stifle private investment and innovation in the telecommunications sector.

In his weekly “Information Age” column today, L. Gordon Crovitz highlights how quickly our somber prediction has proven true.  In “Obamanet Is Hurting Broadband,” Crovitz summarizes how “The predictable effect of more regulation has arrived:  Investment is plummeting”:

New data show the Obama Administration’s decision to regulate the Internet as a utility has already caused a steep drop in Internet Investment…  [I]n the first half of 2015, as the new regulations were being crafted in Washington, major ISPs reduced capital expenditure by an average of 12%, while the overall industry average dropped 8%.  Capital spending was down 29% at AT&T and Charter Communications, 10% at Cablevision, and 4% at Verizon. (Comcast increased capital spending, but on a new home-entertainment operating system, not broadband.)  Until now, spending had fallen year-to-year only twice in the history of broadband:  in 2001 after the dot-com bust, and in 2009 after the recession.”  [emphasis added]

Since the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the Internet has thrived and played a central role in maintaining America’s status as the most prosperous, most entrepreneurial and most innovative nation in human history.  That didn’t happen by accident, nor was it due to coincidence.  Rather, it occurred precisely because the federal government during both the Clinton and Bush administrations refrained from suffocating it with destructive and politically-motivated overregulation.  But Obama apparently thought he had a better idea.  Unfortunately, we’re already witnessing the regrettable result.

Meanwhile, Gallup just released its annual survey of public approval of various sectors of American life.  Standing at or near the top once again are the computer industry, the Internet industry and the telephone industry, all with high net positives.  And at the bottom, once again, is the federal government, with an atrocious -29% net negative.

All of this suggests that we would likely be better off if the computer/Internet/telecom industries regulated the federal government, rather than vice-versa.

A revealing commentary this week in The Wall Street Journal on reduced competition and insurance industry consolidation under ObamaCare coincides in an interesting manner with a new Gallup poll showing very low public confidence in big business.

In “How the Affordable Care Act Is Reducing Competition,” physician and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident fellow Scott Gottlieb lays out how ObamaCare by design requires industry consolidation to accommodate its massive regulatory burdens and higher operating costs:

To sustain themselves, insurers must spread fixed costs over a larger base of members.  The bigger they are, the easier it is to meet the government-imposed cap on their operating costs while cutting their way to profitability.  This pressure discourages new health plans from launching.  Startups often must channel more money into initial operating expenses.  But the caps largely prevent this, so the market stagnates…  ObamaCare’s architects saw these trends coming – and welcomed them.  They mistakenly believed that consolidation would be good for patients, on the theory that larger companies would have more capital to invest in innovations that are thought to improve coordination of medical care, such as electronic health records, integrated teams of medical providers and telemedicine.

This was a profound miscalculation.  The truth is that the greatest innovations in healthcare delivery haven’t come from federally contrived oligopolies or enormous hospital chains.  Novel concepts – whether practice-management companies, home healthcare or the first for-profit HMO – almost always have come from entrepreneurial firms, often backed by venture capital.  That venture capital has been drying up since ObamaCare was passed.”

Meanwhile, a new Gallup survey reveals that is precisely the sort of big-business favoritism that Americans distrust:

Americans are more than three times as likely to express confidence in small business as they are in big business.  Sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults report having a ‘great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in small business, far eclipsing the 21% who are similarly confident in big business.  Confidence in small business is up slightly from last year’s 62%, while confidence in big business is unchanged.”

This helps explain why, despite Barack Obama’s ongoing protestations and false assurances, the healthcare law bearing his name remains widely unpopular with Americans it affects.  Each week brings a fresh wave of bad news about ObamaCare, such as this week’s news of skyrocketing costs unanticipated only by those who supported the law.  Its unpopularity, along with the unpopularity of big government and big business more generally, provide optimism that Americans remain open to conservative and libertarian efforts toward replacement and reform.

As an organization whose very name prizes individual freedom, it cannot escape notice that as liberty in all aspects of American life seems under siege, citizens’ confidence in major institutions reaches historic lows.  According to a Gallup survey released today, only the military and small business remain notable (and telling) exceptions:

Americans’ confidence in most major U.S. institutions remains below the historical average for each one.  Only the military (72%) and small business (67%) – the highest-rated institutions in this year’s poll – are currently rated higher than their historical norms, based on the percentage expressing ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in the institution…  From a broad perspective, Americans’ confidence in all institutions over the last two years has been the lowest since Gallup began systematic updates of a larger set of institutions in 1993.”

As the 2016 presidential race accelerates, this has important implications for the candidates and potential candidates.  That’s particularly ominous for Hillary Clinton, who in effect demands “Four more years!” from the American electorate in the face of historical fact that only once since World War II has a party been elected to a third consecutive White House term (George H.W. Bush in 1988).

President Barack Obama is on pace to have the most polarized approval ratings in history, according to a new Gallup poll.

Polarized approval ratings mean the gap between those in a president’s party that approve of him compared to those in the opposition party that don’t. “So far in his presidency, there has been an average party gap of 70 points in Obama’s approval ratings, which, if it continues, would be easily the highest for a president to date,” says the Gallup summary.

For context, former President George W. Bush “is second with a 61-point gap throughout his presidency, followed by Clinton (56) and Reagan (52). The other presidents [going back to Eisenhower] had party gaps of no more than 41 points.”

As Tim explained in his column last week, it’s no surprise that people concerned about the country’s fiscal future disapprove of Obama’s job performance. Economic growth is in a nine-year rut, the percentage of the U.S. population with jobs is as low as when Jimmy Carter was in office, and the median income has actually declined since Obama’s economic “recovery” was announced.

The real question after reading through the Gallup results isn’t, What’s the matter with Republicans? It’s, How in the world can Democrats see the current president as worthy of such lofty praise?

Fifty-six percent of Americans disapprove of ObamaCare, the highest number disapproving of the controversial health care law since Gallup began asking the question.

Approval of ObamaCare peaked just before the 2012 presidential election, but has cratered since then.

The culprit is reality.

The beginning of ObamaCare’s nosedive in popularity “occurred in early November 2013”, according to Gallup’s analysis, “shortly after millions of Americans received notices that their current policies were being canceled, which was at odds with President Barack Obama’s pledge that those who liked their plans could keep them. The president later said, by way of clarification, that Americans could keep their plans if those plans didn’t change after [ObamaCare] was passed.”

In other words, the law has continued to grow less popular with each new revelation that it was sold on a pack of lies.

Though completely repealing the entire law seems unlikely because the new Republican Senate majority is less than the number needed to overcome a certain Obama veto, the increasing levels of voter disapproval could convince some Senate Democrats to join Republicans in dismantling large parts.

Unless, that is, they want to risk involuntary retirement when their next election arrives.

Gallup released a new poll this week showing that a sizeable portion of an important cohort for Obamacare’s success is planning to pay fine rather than foot the bill for most costly insurance.

The so-called young invincibles – defined by Gallup as Americans under 30 years old – is the group whose purchase of health insurance on Obamacare exchanges is most coveted because they are projected to pay for more services than they use. The money made off their premiums will cover the cost of care for older and sicker people in the risk pool.

But the financial coercion desired by Obamacare’s operators could likely hit a snag this year because the penalty for not buying insurance is only $95, or less than any monthly premium available on an exchange.

Unfortunately for Obamacare’s supporters, Gallup says that 26 percent of young invincibles are planning to pay the fine instead of buy insurance. If enough do so, Obamacare’s cost structure gets up-ended, putting the feds on the hook to cover the overruns. Private insurers will then spike premiums in future years to compensate.

The big question is, “What number is ‘enough’?” No one knows the answer.

That’s because the key number for making the Obamacare exchanges financially workable is a ratio. For Healthcare.gov – the federal exchange – the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 38 percent of the risk pool needs to be young invincibles in order for the system to operate.

That means that the critical number for Healthcare.gov isn’t whether it actually enrolls the 7 million people it originally projected; it’s whether 38 percent of whatever population enrolls is made up of young invincibles, says Ezra Klein.

Early returns aren’t boding well, reports Breitbart News. The Obama administration so far has refused to release a breakdown of federal enrollees by age bracket, but the State of Kentucky has. The Bluegrass State runs its own exchange and only 19 percent of its enrollees are between the ages of 18-34 – a span that includes more years than Gallup’s. If that trend holds throughout the enrollment period that runs through March, Kentucky – and any other exchange with less than 38 percent of young invincibles – could face the dreaded ‘death spiral’ where premium costs soar to cover a sicker population that anticipated.

For now, we’ll have to wait and see whether the Obamacare-affiliated exchanges hit the magic number by the enrollment deadline. My guess is that the lack of transparency is directly related to the failure to meet the goal.

Last week, we highlighted how Obama’s hyperkinetic expansion of federal government power has only served to drive Americans’ trust in it to a record low:

Presidents like Reagan and Clinton who publicly commit to moderating federal government expansion have increased Americans’ trust in government competence.  In contrast, President Obama seeks at every turn to enlarge the federal government, but has degraded trust in it to all-time lows.  We can thank Obama for few things, but reaffirming Reagan’s observation that government has become more of a problem than a solution is one of them.”

This week, a separate Gallup poll affirms Obama’s unintended causal relationship.  Specifically, the belief that the federal government is too powerful has reached a record level:

Six in 10 Americans (60%) believe the federal government has too much power, one percentage point above the previous high recorded in September 2010.  At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the government has too much power.  Thirty-two percent now say the government has the right amount of power.  Few say it has too little power.”

When Obama entered office, the disparity between those saying the federal government possessed too much power versus those saying it possessed the right amount or too little power was just 1 point, 50% to 49%.  Today, the disparity has ballooned to 21%, proving welcome confirmation that Americans still tend to believe that limited government is the best government.

Beware of financial bureaucrats posing as economists. That’s my main takeaway from some pre-analysis of Friday’s unemployment numbers by Gallup’s lead economist, Dennis Jacobe.

As is sometimes the case when using metrics to understand reality, it looks like the federal government isn’t counting the right economic event if it truly wants to understand the employment market.

According to Jacobe, “The current government job measures leave a lot to be desired in terms of face-validity. For example, [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke noted in his testimony to Congress that the Fed’s unemployment target may need to be adjusted, depending on the labor participation rate. A declining participation rate can artificially lower the unemployment rate as job seekers give up looking for work, while an increasing participation rate can do the reverse.”

The problem is particularly acute when one considers how the feds count part-time jobs.

“Similarly, the establishment survey can be distorted by a surge in part-time jobs – a factor that may need to be considered when one evaluates Friday’s report,” writes Jacobe. “Part-time jobs not only count as new jobs for this survey, but if an American having one part-time job adds an additional part-time job, it counts the same as the creation of a new full-time job.”

This kind of counting completely misrepresents the rise in multiple part-time jobs. By treating two-part time jobs as the equivalent of one full-time job, the metric leaves out the fact that unlike just about every full-time job, almost no part-time job provides health or retirement benefits. Thus, while the hours worked my be roughly the same, the overall compensation is not.

What makes this an especially pernicious way to describe today’s employment market is the well-documented impact ObamaCare is having on the decline of full-time employment. If the federal unemployment survey continues to equate workers with multiple part-time jobs and those with full-time employment, a huge net loss in millions of workers’ standard of living will be lost because the official formula simply doesn’t account for it.

That’s a point worth remembering if Friday’s unemployment numbers come back better than expected.

As full implementation of ObamaCare approaches, each passing day seems to bring new negative revelations about how it’s making employers reluctant to hire, it will increase the budget deficit, medical costs will rise, insurance options will decline, physicians will be driven from practice, and so on.  Today, Gallup released a survey suggesting another casualty:  Americans’ confidence in the medical system.  Gallup summarizes the results in its usual understated manner:

This year marks the ramp-up to the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act next January, and the resulting attention the ACA has received could be a factor in Americans’ lower levels of confidence in the U.S. medical system.”

Paraphrasing Nancy Pelosi, they passed the bill, and now Americans are finding out what’s in it.

A new Gallup poll provides more proof that the liberal fixation on gun control and immigration reform isn’t even on the Top Ten list of the most important issues for Americans:

This suggests to me that one way to inject issues 1-10 into the deliberations about gun control and immigration is for Republicans in Congress to ask rhetorically, “Why are we discussing restricting guns and legalizing illegal immigrants when 1) 86 percent of Americans want us help create jobs and help the economy grow, 2) 81 percent want us to make the government work more efficiently and fix our schools, and 3) 77 percent want us to address the financial problems with Social Security and Medicare?”

Rather than letting Democrats pick the two issues that most divide Republicans, GOP members of Congress should be picking issues that divide the opposition. Any of Gallup’s Top Ten are natural strong points for Republicans, and especially conservatives. All they need to do is pick one and start reframing the debate.

Now.

A very well-written report at the Huffington Post details how a few decisions by Gallup administrators caused the venerable polling company to miss key pockets of support for President Barack Obama in the run-up to last November’s presidential election.

Going into Election Day, Gallup had Mitt Romney leading Obama 49-48, but the actual result was 51-47. According to analysis by HuffPost, the reason for the bad call was because Gallup’s polling methods failed to keep up with how Americans are using their telephones.  This is potentially a huge problem because calling via telephone is the primary method for contacting people for public opinion polls.

Since the number of people screening calls by using unlisted landlines and/or cell phones has risen dramatically over the last few years, polling firms who fail to find a way around the barriers run the risk of missing large segments of voters who are avoiding unsolicited calls.

It just so happens that people using unlisted numbers only (i.e. not cell phones as well) planned to vote for Obama last year by a margin of 58 to 36 percent.  But because Gallup’s methodology didn’t correctly measure this subpopulation, the company never got a chance to put this data in their polls.  Consequently, Gallup’s opinion polls did not accurately reflect the intentions of the voting public which ultimately influenced who won the presidency.

Gallup is no stranger to embarrassing poll predictions.  The famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline from 1948 was based on polling data that stopped being collected two weeks before Election Day.  The thought was why keep polling if the predictions haven’t changed?  Of course, that decision didn’t account for the voters who broke late for Truman and made the false headline iconic.

Gallup rebounded from the fiasco to become arguably the world’s most reliable polling agency.  As the process of regaining that crown unfolds, this new breakdown is a good reminder to heed the words of the Gipper – “Trust, but verify” when it comes to public opinion polls.

The thrill is gone, apparently.

According to a Gallup poll released today, fewer Americans watched yesterday’s inaugural ceremony or news coverage of it than they did George W. Bush’s second inaugural in 2005.  Only 38% said that they watched yesterday’s ceremony, down from 40% in 2005, and only 27% “watched, listened to, or read news reports about the inauguration ceremonies” yesterday versus 33% in 2005.  Moreover, Americans are less hopeful based on what they read or heard about Obama’s second inauguration than they were after Bush’s.  Just “37% of Americans said they are now more hopeful about the next four years after Monday’s presidential inauguration ceremonies,” compared to 43% in 2005.  Some 27% said that yesterday’s inauguration made them “less hopeful,” two points worse than in 2005.

The change he brought turned out to be less hope.

Remember the alleged “crisis” that demanded ObamaCare?  To hear Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their minions, that crisis demanded that we do something, anything, even if it meant passing a bill before finding out what was in it.

The overwhelming majority of Americans apparently never got the memo.  According to Gallup, fully 82% of Americans rate their healthcare “excellent” or “good,” while 11% of the remaining 18% rate their care “fair,” and only 5% say “poor” (2% said “no opinion” or “not applicable”).  As Gallup notes, “That combined excellent/good percentage has remained fairly steady at around 80% since 2001,” when polling on this question began.

Occupy the 5%!

According to a new Gallup poll, a majority of Americans now blame President Obama for the current state of the U.S. economy.  By a 53% to 47% margin, surveyed adults say that Obama shares a “great deal/moderate amount” of blame, while they also believe that George W. Bush continues to share blame by a 69% to 30% margin.  But notice something interesting.  For all the talk of hyper-partisanship from Republicans, the primary reason Bush’s numbers look worse is that Republican survey respondents split 50% to 50% on whether Bush shares some blame.  Democrats, in contrast, were far less willing to admit that their guy Obama shares blame, disagreeing by a 75% to 25% margin.  Independents by a 60% to 40% margin say that Obama shares some blame.

Here’s another noteworthy fact.  For all of Obama’s talk that he and his wasteful trillions of “stimulus” spending saved our economy from “the next Great Depression,” government economic figures show that we actually began our cyclical recovery before Bush had left office.  That’s a point that must be highlighted to voters as we approach a pivotal 2012 election in which Americans must choose between two governmental philosophies.  But in the meantime, at least most of us now recognize Obama’s role in our continuing economic struggles.

According to a new poll from Gallup, Americans rate the “Computer Industry” most positively among 25 business and government entities, with the “Internet Industry” close behind.  That’s no surprise – few innovations in human history have transformed our lives as rapidly and profoundly as the tech sector.

But here’s an irony.  The federal government, which constantly interferes with tech sector innovation via such bureaucratic assaults as so-called “Net Neutrality” and interference with the private proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, is rated least favorably by Americans.  Only 17% of Americans rate the federal government positively, which 63% rate it negatively.  In contrast, the computer industry is rated positively by a 72% to 10% margin, and the Internet industry is rated positively by a 56% to 16% ratio.

Perhaps we’d all be better off if the tech sector began monitoring the federal government, rather than the converse.  It certainly appears that most Americans would agree.

President Obama has fallen to a new low in public approval as measured by Gallup, with only 39% approval and 54% disapproval.  Even more troubling for Obama and his supporters, no President has won reelection with ratings this low at this point in their tenure.

According to Gallup, President Truman’s approval/disapproval stood at 55%/29% at approximately this stage, President Eisenhower possessed a positive 71%/16% ratio, President Nixon’s approval outweighed his disapproval by a 49%/38% margin, President Reagan remained barely underwater with a 43%/46% ratio, President Clinton possessed a 46%/43% positive edge and President George W. Bush held a positive margin of 59%/37%.  All of these Presidents won reelection, and it should be added that President Reagan, unlike President Obama, was on a steadily upward approval trajectory that had him enjoying a 53%/37% approval surplus just three months later in November 1983.  The nation’s economy was accelerating throughout 1983 following the arrival of his tax cuts that January, whereas our current economy continues to stagnate.  Additionally, although President Kennedy was assassinated before he could face reelection, he enjoyed a 56%/29% approval edge at this point, and his Vice President Lyndon Johnson won in 1964.

In terms of Presidents who did not win reelection, President Ford actually enjoyed a 45%/37% approval balance, whereas President Carter found himself in a negative 30%/55% hole, while President George H. W. Bush still maintained his post-Gulf War approval rating of 74%/19%.

So while Obama can state that he isn’t as bad as Carter, he cannot point to a single instance in which a President with his current Gallup approval/disapproval margin won reelection.

Michael Barone and our own Quin Hillyer, among others, remind us that conservatives are winning the broader debt limit debate.   But that’s not the only battle in which we conservatives are winning.

A Gallup survey released today shows that we also continue to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.  According to the poll, more Americans again identify themselves as “conservative” (41%) than “moderate” (36%), and almost twice as many call themselves conservative than “liberal” (21%).  For two decades now, conservatives and moderates have battled for the plurality, but each could consistently claim twice as many adherents as liberalism.  For the third consecutive year, however, conservatives can claim greater numbers than moderates.

That certainly isn’t the sort of change that Barack Obama might have predicted on January 20, 2009.

Here’s more encouraging news:  Americans are “getting it” on the issue of federal deficits and debt.  According to a new Gallup survey, an overwhelming 73% to 22% majority blames excess spending for the deficit, not insufficient taxation.  Barack Obama and his liberal apologists seek to blame “tax cuts for the rich” and insufficient revenues as the problem.  But as illustrated by the Heritage Foundation’s newly-released 2011 Budget Chart Book, our budget would still be approximately balanced if spending merely returned to early 2000s levels.  Does any serious person contend that government was too small in the first half of the 2000s, that government didn’t spend enough, that the poor and hungry were somehow cast out on the cold streets, that bureaucrats went unpaid?  Of course not.  The problem is explosive spending growth.  Obama oversaw an 84% increase in domestic discretionary spending, including his failed “stimulus,” in just his first two years.

Fortunately, Americans see through his attempt to demand even more taxpayer dollars to feed the insatiable leviathan he hopes to enlarge.

Gallup released a fascinating survey this week, under the heading “U.S. Steady as the Most Popular Destination for Potential Migrants.”

In fact, it’s not even close.  Using aggregated data compiled from 148 nations during the years 2007 through 2010, survey subjects were asked, “Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country?  To which country would you like to move?”  The United States was the runaway leader, with more than three times as many respondents as the next closest countries (Canada and the United Kingdom).  The U.S. led with 24%, Canada and the U.K. were far behind at 7% each, with France at 6% and Spain at 4%.  In fact, America was named as the top potential destination by as many people as the U.K., France, Spain, Germany and Italy combined.  So much for that supposedly superior European model.

President Obama may not believe in American exceptionalism, but apparently the rest of the world that he strangely seeks to follow rather than lead still does.

Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said that we mustn’t allow a “crisis to go to waste” in foisting such things as ObamaCare upon an unwilling nation.  But what if there’s no “crisis” in the first place?

This month, Gallup released a scientific survey that is a critical component in any health care policy discussion.  In what must come as a devastating shock for those who defend ObamaCare, an astonishing 82% of Americans rate their health care as “good” or “excellent.”  Some 40% place their health care in the “excellent” category, which exceeds the previous high of 38% and the long-term average of 34%.  Even those who don’t possess health insurance (which must be distinguished from actual health care) rate their health care “good” or “excellent” by a 53% majority.

Clearly, there is no health care “crisis,” only a lot of ObamaCare “waste.”