Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
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More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 18, 2024 • 03:11 PM

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Home Press Room CFIF Comments on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Remarks on “The Future of Internet Regulation”
CFIF Comments on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Remarks on “The Future of Internet Regulation” Print
Wednesday, April 26 2017

Today, Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") Chairman Ajit Pai delivered a highly-anticipated speech entitled "The Future of Internet Regulation," setting forth his proposal to reverse radical internet regulations imposed by the Obama Administration FCC. 

In response, Center for Individual Freedom ("CFIF") Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs Timothy Lee issued the following statement: 

"Since the 1990s, the internet has flourished and transformed our lives like no other innovation on record.  As Chairman Pai cogently stated in his remarks, 'The internet is the greatest free-market success story in history.'  And that occurred because administrations spanning two decades and both political parties, beginning with Clinton/Gore, wisely chose a 'light touch' regulatory approach to the internet.

"Unfortunately, two years ago the Obama Administration's FCC radically reversed two decades of bipartisan consensus by needlessly reclassifying internet service as a 'public utility' under 1930s laws enacted for copper-wire telephone service.  That reversal was not based upon evidence, law or logic.  The internet wasn't 'broken' or in need of a heavy-handed federal regulatory 'fix.'  Rather, it was a scheme to extend government control over yet another sector of our economy. 

"The negative consequences of the FCC's reclassification of internet service as some sort of Depression-era 'public utility' were immediate and profound.  As the Chairman noted, domestic broadband capital expenditures declined by 5.6%, or $3.6 billion, which marked the first time that such investment declined outside of a recession during the internet era.  That applied to both large and small internet service providers. 

"Proponents of heavy-handed internet regulation will now roll out their usual litany of scare tactics and hyperbole.  Don't believe them. Chairman Pai is simply restoring the bipartisan light-touch regulatory status quo that existed for more than two decades. 

“Simply put, the principle of a free and open internet is something on which all parties agree.  What American consumers didn't need was a hyper-partisan FCC suddenly regulating the internet as a 'public utility' under the pretense of 'protecting consumers.'  Accordingly, CFIF applauds Chairman Pai for moving to restore common sense to internet regulation and the FCC."

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