Freedom Line Blog

So much for Barack Obama’s “Reset” foreign policy doctrine.

Presumably, the potential payoff from Obama’s constant prostrate manner, his willingness to meet dictators like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “without preconditions,” his repeated apologetics and public disparagement of allies like Israel would at least be improved perceptions of America abroad.  Four years after introducing that doctrine, however, we’re still awaiting the payoff.  Russia and China continue to obstruct U.S. policy, Israel is more endangered each day and the Iranians dislike us as much as ever.  According to a new Gallup survey, only 8% of Iranian respondents approve “of the job performance of the leadership of the United States,” while 67% disapprove.

This should prompt recalibration within the White House, because its foreign policy weakness is not showing results.  Meanwhile, time is running out to halt Iran’s nuclear ambition.

Dodd-Frank, the monstrous financial “reform” legislation enacted two years ago, contains hundreds of byzantine provisions targeting banks, mortgage lenders, and traders on Wall Street.  All of those new rules and regulations have been contested from both sides of the political aisle, and regulators have requested additional time to even understand its requirements.  There’s one little-known provision, however, that was snuck into Dodd-Frank at the last minute and should alarm everyone, regardless of political point of view.  Namely, new payment disclosure rules for American oil, gas, and mining companies that instantly threaten our nation’s energy security.

Typical of the current trend in Washington, Congress has tasked a regulatory agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to carry out this mandate. The new regulation, formally called “Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers,” is found in Title XV, Section 1504 of the bill. Put simply, the rule would require that any company listed with the SEC and engaging in energy production overseas must disclose literally every single payment made to a foreign government.

The rule would create a competitive disadvantage for American energy producers because not only would state-owned companies such as those in Iran and Venezuela be exempted, they would also suddenly possess detailed knowledge down to individual wells and projects.

Senator Ben Cardin (D – Maryland), one of the champions of this provision, has curiously argued that “it’s appropriate to require companies to provide project-level information…” According to him, specific, sensitive financial – even proprietary – data on particular drilling projects should potentially be surrendered, including to those countries or companies who don’t share America’s intentions.

Pete Sepp at the National Taxpayers Union recently explained the problem well:

“…Here is the painful rub with Section 1504: In essence, the rule would give foreign competitors—largely state-owned oil and gas firms—access to information about what American companies are paying to governments overseas, enabling them to outbid and outmaneuver in the global race for energy resources.”

That means that energy firms controlled by the Iranians and the Chinese would receive a huge helping hand compliments of the SEC, one that would severely undercut the international competitiveness of American companies. What’s more, the state-run energy firms that would benefit from the SEC’s new payment disclosure rule already maintain a large advantage over our domestic producers – not only financial backing from their home governments, but also ownership of the lion’s share of proven oil and gas reserves worldwide.   (According to The Wall Street Journal, state-run companies now control more than 75 percent of global oil production.)

And, quite simply, after the rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline and renewed calls for new tax hikes on American oil and gas companies, this new SEC regulation would deal yet another blow to an industry that is essential to our economic recovery. Why then would Congress and the SEC side with petro-dictators over American motorists and manufacturers?

An alternative would be for the SEC to implement a payment disclosure rule on a country-by-country basis, which could help protect American companies’ interests in specific projects abroad.  Or, preferably, Congress could reconsider that section of Dodd-Frank altogether.  Recall that Capitol Hill spent significant time more than 30 years ago hashing out the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which already specifically addresses  the transparency and payment issues at hand in Section 1504. For the sake of American future energy and economic security, our chief securities regulator must keep America’s interests first – not Russia’s or Iran’s or Venezuela’s.

On Monday, a U.K. court took the wind out of The Pirate Bay’s sails via a ruling that may sink the popular file sharing website in England’s online seas.  Like other courts in other countries, that court ruled that The Pirate Bay is a copyright infringer because it actively encourages its 30 million worldwide users to engage in widespread theft.

The operators of The Pirate Bay — alongside many other illegal file sharing websites — don’t just passively violate laws.  Rather, they’re downright brazen in using online consumers as pawns for making millions of dollars from illicit activities – up to $3 million per month, according to expert testimony in this case.  The Pirate Bay again illustrates the toxic presence of bad actors out there on the Web who couldn’t care any less about whose property is stolen, whose jobs are threatened or even whose hard drives are being infected by online piracy.  The need to combat digital theft is therefore still very prevalent, and last month’s hysterical website blackout to protest proposed Congressional rogue sites legislation did absolutely nothing to address that issue.

The court will rule this summer on whether or not to block The Pirate Bay from U.K. Internet search results, but this decision comes on the heels of last summer’s blocking of a British content aggregator, Newzbin2, which also facilitated theft of copyrighted content en mass.  Which serves to show that site blocking is already underway in other advanced democratic nations, yet the Internet continues to thrive despite the false predictions of opponents of rogue website legislation.

It all goes to show that it’s time that we here in America also face the music.  Namely, that the U.S. remains behind in enforcing property rights, especially as relating to the online realm.  To be sure, the Internet should remain free within the bounds of law.  But it is not, should not, and cannot be lawless.  Outright theft does not become sacred simply because it occurs on the Internet, and the consequences are compounded when foreign criminal networks (e.g., MegaUpload) are turning illegal clicks into pocket-lining treasures.

My nominee for quote of the day goes to Texas Governor Rick Perry, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal on the absurdity of the Obama Administration’s “insufficient time” rationalization for rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline and the thousands of domestic jobs it would create:

Hoping to appease environmental radicals, President Obama said no, claiming that he didn’t have time to adequately consider the pipeline.  This despite the fact that the original request was made in September 2008, and Keystone was the subject of dozens of meetings on multiple levels of his own administration, as well as exhaustive environmental impact reviews.  Certainly, three-and-a-half years is more than enough time to make his decision.  His reasoning becomes even more laughable when you put it up against his massive, ill-conceived stimulus bill, which he muscled through Congress and signed within the first month of his presidency.”

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 (CST)/5:00 pm (EST):  Diane Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at Manhattan Institute:  How Obama’s Gender Policies Undermine America;

4:30 (CST)/5:30 pm (EST):  Vincent Vernuccio, Labor Policy Counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute:  Indiana’s Enactment of Right to Work;

5:00 (CST)/6:00 pm (EST):  Dr. Paul Broun (R-Georgia):  Budget or Bust Legislation;  and

5:30 (CST)/6:30 pm (EST):  James Pinkerton, co-chair of RATE (Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably) Coalition, Corporate Tax Reform.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

Today’s Department of Labor report that unemployment declined slightly from 8.5% to 8.3% in January will surely be celebrated and trumpeted by the Obama Administration.  Which only serves to illustrate the terrible quality of his economic performance in office.

First of all, today’s announcement means that unemployment has now exceeded 8% for 36 consecutive months, three entire years.  That’s an all-time record since recordkeeping began.  Second, that new record is not somehow a reflection of the fact that the most recent recession was “the worst since the Great Depression,” as Obama and his apologists constantly claim.  Unemployment actually reached a higher peak in the early 1980s recession, but quickly plummeted from 10.8% to 6.7% following implementation of Reagan’s tax cuts.  In contrast, unemployment has increased under Obama from 7.8% to over 10% and three straight years over 8%.  Moreover, inflation and interest rates were far higher in the early 1980s recession, and monetary policy was much tighter, meaning that conditions were less hospitable for economic improvement.  Third, for all of the deficit spending the Obama Administration heaped upon American taxpayers, it promised that unemployment under its agenda would be down to around 6% by now.

Instead, we’re barely treading water and mediocre news is characterized as wonderful.  This is the Age of Obama.

In the ongoing battle over Congressional legislation to target foreign rogue websites, opponents falsely characterize the battle as one pitting sinister liberal “Big Hollywood” against underdog champions of Internet freedom.

That characterization was always false, but too many conservatives and libertarians unfortunately fell for it.  The truth is that hundreds of businesses and employers, from the NFL to EA Sports to Ford Motor to 1-800-Contacts to Burberry supported the bill.  Why?  Because their property, employees and innovations actually suffer from the menace of online piracy.  Meanwhile, groups like Google have no property right at stake from online piracy.  Indeed, they benefit from uninterrupted rogue website traffic.  So no wonder they opposed anti-piracy legislation.

Today, just days before the Super Bowl, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency announced a major bust of 307 rogue websites selling millions of dollars’-worth of counterfeit merchandise:

Special agents this week seized a total of 307 websites and snatched up 42,692 items of phony Super Bowl-related memorabilia along with other counterfeit items for a total take of more than $4.8 million – up from $3.72 million last year.  Sixteen of the sites the agency shut down during this operation known as Fake Sweep, were illegally streaming live sporting telecasts over the Internet, including NFL games.  Two hundred ninety-one website domain names were illegally selling and distributing counterfeit merchandise, ICE stated.”

And the bust wasn’t limited to counterfeit NFL merchandise:

During this operation, an additional 22,570 items of counterfeit merchandise and clothing representing other sports leagues, including Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League were seized by law enforcement. In total, this operation netted 65,262 counterfeit items worth $6.4 million, ICE stated.”

This is a critical example to keep in mind as the battle against foreign rogue websites moves forward.  That sort of illegal activity is already subject to seizure if it occurs within the U.S., but foreign sites remain largely beyond American law.  Piracy apologists want to make this look like anti-piracy legislation is just some sort of Big Hollywood handout, but this bust illustrates the falsity of that claim.

In today’s world of crushing deficits and bureaucratic overreach, government has no business venturing into the world of operating communications networks.  That sort of adventurism merely competes with private investment dollars and creates even more debt for which struggling taxpayers are ultimately liable.

Broadband expansion itself is obviously a good thing, but the history of public broadband is simply one of failure.  The city of Marietta, Georgia provides just another example.

In 1996, Marietta entered the marketplace as an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Predictably, the city struggled to keep pace with rapidly-changing technology and developments in the broadband arena. Eight years later, the city realized the effort was lost, so it sold its broadband network, FiberNet, for $11.2 million.  Unfortunately, that boondoggle meant a huge loss for Marietta taxpayers: the city had sunk $35 million into FiberNet before unloading it.

Marietta’s experience is far from isolated.  As I pointed out in testimony last year to the North Carolina legislature, from Taiwan to Sydney and Houston, Texas to Burlington, Vermont, recent history is rife with public broadband network failures.  North Carolina lawmakers wisely approved legislation placing additional requirements on cities and municipalities entering the broadband market.  Elsewhere, however, government-owned networks (GONs) continue to place taxpayers at great risk, stifling private sector investment and job creation and paradoxically causing fewer Americans to have access to broadband.

Because they are at such risk of failure, GONs also receive tax and regulatory advantages by the governments that ultimately build and operate them.  That is not only unfair, it’s highly destructive.  It discourages private owners from expanding their networks and bringing jobs to an area.  Furthermore, GONs have a particularly damaging effect on rural broadband access.  After all, private investors are less likely to risk precious capital in areas where they will have to compete directly with the government, not to mention compete on a tilted playing field.  That leaves consumers with fewer choices – the public network – for broadband.  And when the public network fails like the one in Marietta did – and like most do – these consumers are left with a big bill and diminished broadband.

Fortunately, some leaders recognize the problem and take action.  Georgia State Senator Chip Rogers  recently introduced legislation (SB 313) that would make Georgia cities and politicians answer the tough questions before betting millions of taxpayer dollars on costly broadband networks.  The legislation would require cities and municipalities to hold hearings on proposed GONs, and then put their plans to an actual vote.  Those requirements seem more than fair considering that public broadband networks have failed virtually everywhere they’ve been attempted.  Indeed, taxpayers and consumers would be best served if cities and municipalities stayed out of the broadband market altogether.  Nonetheless, we applaud Sen. Rogers and call on his colleagues to swiftly pass the legislation he has introduced.

Today, the Department of Labor announced that the 2011 union membership rate fell to a new record low of 11.8%.   Disturbingly, the rate among public-sector workers now stands at 37%, whereas the membership rate for private-sector employees stands at a historic low of just 6.9%.

Now, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) chairman Mark Pearce has announced that Obama’s NLRB will push for new rules forcing employers to turn over lists of employees’ private phone numbers and email addresses in a shameless attempt to assist Big Labor in its desperate organizing activities.  After all, unless labor leaders can wrench more dollars from employees’ paychecks, they won’t have as much to spend on Obama’s reelection campaign.  Meanwhile, the government also announced today that the U.S. economy only grew a lackluster 2.8% in the fourth quarter of 2011.  That illustrates once again that Obama’s policies aren’t helping the economy, they’re subduing what should by now be a much sharper recovery.

As we have observed, if the Obama Administration behaves this thuggishly during an election year, just imagine how heedlessly it would behave during a second term when it needn’t worry about reelection.

During tonight’s State of the Union speech, Barack Obama will trot out his usual energy platitudes, Solyndra now excepted.

Regardless of Obama’s rhetoric, however, the real-world facts speak perfectly clearly.  Since the final week of 2008, according to the Thomson Reuters Datastream, the price per barrel of crude oil has increased an astounding 161%.  That year, Obama famously suggested that his election would mark the date on which Earth began to heal, the seas stopped rising and magic unicorns began delivering free In ‘n’ Out burgers to those of us on the east coast.  Instead, we’ve seen deficits rising, unemployment rising and oil prices rising.  As they say in Latin, “res ipsa loquitur” – “the fact speaks for itself.”   Namely, that Obama’s grandiosity and his actual performance maintain an inverse relationship.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 (CST)/5:00 pm (EST):  Megan Brown, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP — United States Supreme Court’s October 2011 Term and Hosanna-Tabor case on First Amendment rights of religious groups;

4:30 (CST)/5:30 pm (EST):  Margaret Hoover, Fox News contributor and author — South Carolina and Florida primaries, and American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives can save the Republican Party;

5:00 (CST)/6:00 pm (EST):  Ashton Ellis, Contributing Editor at CFIF — Keystone Pipeline Debacle;  and

5:30 (CST)/6:30 pm (EST):  Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author — Economic policy, and How Obama’s Gender Policies Undermine America.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

Increasingly desperate, Newt Gingrich has hurled a spaghetti bowl of slurs against Mitt Romney in the hope that something will stick.  Curiously, one strand includes the following quote to a South Carolina audience:  “Why would you want to nominate the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama?”

That illogic, however, could have just as easily been used against Ronald Reagan in 1980 by his own Republican opponents.  After all, Reagan lost the 1976 Republican nomination race to Gerald Ford, who obviously went on to lose to Carter.  “Why,” they might have asked, “would you want to nominate the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Jimmy Carter?”  At this point, Newt’s attacks resemble a food fight more than principled defense of his own candidacy.

With the New Jersey state Senate session ending this coming Monday, January 9, time is running short for it to enact common-sense telecom reform.

This past year, state Senator Raymond Lesniak (D) introduced S-2664, which would modernize New Jersey government rules for the telecommunications industry by eliminating unnecessary and costly red tape that hampers investment and growth.  The bill passed in the New Jersey State Assembly with overwhelming bi-partisan support, but now the State Senate must act.

The proposed legislation preserves important consumer protections, but at the same time modernizes the outdated regulatory structure developed when the primary means of communication was a rotary telephone.  In our modern marketplace, regulations must reflect evolving realities, but without these reforms New Jersey risks losing valuable ground.  Unless changes are made, telecommunications providers will be discouraged from increasing investment and innovation in New Jersey, so it’s in the state’s best interest to stay on the cutting edge of telecommunications technologies and the jobs they provide.

Accordingly, the Senate should enact S-2664 in the time that remains.  There is simply no reason to delay the reforms outlined in Senator Lesniak’s legislation, which New Jersey needs to ensure a more prosperous future.

Today’s jobs report from the Labor Department shows that unemployment has now exceeded 8% for 35 consecutive months, the most since the federal government began keeping records.

The reason that 8% number is important is that the Obama Administration promised in January 2009 that unemployment would not exceed it under his $1 trillion spending “stimulus.”  They also projected that unemployment would peak in October of that year, and be down to approximately 6% today.  Instead, the jobless rate ascended past 10%, and has never come in below 8% since.  Moreover, the incremental decrease from November’s 8.7% rate was due to a decline in the size of the nation’s workforce.  Further, the 200,000 jobs added is barely sufficient to tread water with population growth.

By this point in our cyclical recovery, employment growth should be much stronger, and unemployment much lower.  To compare alternative economic strategies, Ronald Regan dealt with even higher unemployment than has Obama (not to mention far higher inflation and interest rates back then).  But Reagan’s tax-cutting and smaller-government policies slashed unemployment from 10.4% on the effective date of his tax cuts to 7.0% in the same 35-month span Obama has had.  The answer to the Obama jobs freeze is clear.  It’s simply up to the American electorate to demand it.

Earlier this year, state Senator Raymond Lesniak (D) introduced a bill (S-2664) to modernize New Jersey government rules for the telecommunications industry by eliminating unnecessary and costly red tape that hampers investment and growth.  The State Assembly passed the bill with overwhelming bi-partisan support, but the measure has yet to be considered in the State Senate.  With only weeks left in New Jersey’s legislative session, lawmakers must therefore act swiftly to pass these much needed reforms.

The proposed legislation exemplifies smart reform.  It preserves important consumer protections, while modernizing the outdated regulatory structure developed when the primary means of communication was a rotary telephone.  Regulations must reflect the realities of the modern marketplace, but that is unfortunately no longer the case in New Jersey.  Unless changes are made, telecommunications providers will therefore remain unable to expand investment and innovation in the state, and it’s in New Jersey’s own best interest to stay on the cutting edge of telecommunications technologies and the jobs that provides.

So before lawmakers in Trenton call it quits on yet another legislative session, they should enact S-2664.  There is simply no reason to delay the reforms outlined in Senator Lesniak’s legislation, which are exactly what New Jersey needs to ensure a more prosperous future.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 (CST)/5:00 pm (EST):  Craig Shirley, Author – “December, 1941:  31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World”;

4:30 (CST)/5:30 pm (EST):  Peter Ferrara, Institute for Policy Innovation – Obama and the Crash of 2013;

5:00 (CST)/6:00 pm (EST):  Dr. George Nash, Hoover Institution – “Freedom Betrayed”;  and

5:30 (CST)/6:30 pm (EST):  Quin Hillyer, CFIF – The Obama Justice Department.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

Here’s something that continually puzzles me.

Media figures, often suggesting hope as much as sober analysis, counter Barack Obama’s terrible standing in opinion polls by pointing out that Congressional Republicans are even less popular.  The first problem, of course, is that Obama’s opponent in November 2012 won’t be named “Congressional Republicans.”  Secondly, animosity toward Congress is typically uncentered, as illustrated by the fact that incumbents maintain phenomenal reelection records even in anti-incumbent years.  In other words, people walking into the voting booth seem to think, “Congress is full of bums, but my Representative is OK.”

But here’s another point nobody seems to highlight.  If Congressional Republicans are so unpopular, or constitute such a nice foil for Obama, why is it that they consistently outperform Congressional Democrats in public esteem?  Take a look at this accumulated record of Rasmussen polling on the matter.  Since January 2010, the earliest date Rasmussen lists, Congressional Republicans have not trailed Congressional Democrats in voter preference even once.  Obama can’t seek a job extension based upon his performance record, but the reality is that this particular strategy might not be any more promising.

While federal bureaucrats dither, the ever-evolving telecom market continues to move at warp speed.  As Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal observed, “The half life of regulatory know-it-allism gets shorter and shorter.”

Under an agreement announced last week to rave reviews, Verizon will pay $3.6 billion for 20 MHz of  unutilized spectrum on which Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks – collectively part of the SpectrumCo joint venture – were sitting.  As part of the agreement, Verizon will also offer cable television services for those entities while they can in turn resell Verizon’s wireless service.  But here’s the takeaway point of it all.  Spectrum is the critical conduit by which wireless technology operates, and this cooperative accord will more promptly make idle spectrum available for consumer use via such cutting-edge devices as tablets and smartphones.  By way of contrast, it would take years under even the rosiest scenarios before Congress and federal regulators got around to making desperately-needed spectrum available for consumer use.

With consumer demand continually placing greater demands upon finite capacity, this deal will increase wireless breathing room.  In so doing, it will thereby ensure better customer service and open more doors to foreseeable and unforeseeable innovations.  It’s a win for consumers, and it once again illustrates the possibilities that markets provide when we allow them to operate more freely and cooperatively.

When Barack Obama entered office and proposed his nearly $1 trillion spending “stimulus” bill, his administration promised that unemployment would peak at 8% in the fall of 2009 if we passed his plan.  They also predicted that unemployment would be down to approximately 6% by now.

Instead, following today’s latest report from the Department of Labor, unemployment has now exceeded Obama’s promised 8% ceiling for a record 34th consecutive month.  Although some will focus on the decline from 9.0% to 8.6%, most of that statistical decline is due to people giving up and dropping out of the labor force, rather than from sudden job creation.  That is illustrated by the fact that only 120,000 net jobs were added, less than the anticipated number.  That’s also fell far below the 200,000 new jobs needed each month to reduce the unemployment rate by just 1% over the span of a year. Additionally, the broader labor participation rate again declined and now stands at 64%.

In contrast to the destructive effects of Obama’s borrow-and-tax-and-spend agenda, Ronald Reagan’s tax-cutting agenda saw unemployment plummet from 10.4% to 7.1% over the same period of time.  As the old Latin saying goes, “res ipsa loquitur” – the fact speaks for itself.

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.