Freedom Line Blog

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.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Less than 24 hours after the release of undercover video showing National Public Radio (NPR) senior executive Ron Schiller slamming the Tea Party movement as “seriously, seriously racist people” and “scary,” and proclaiming the organization would be better off without federal funding, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) this morning announced her resignation.

As Politico.com reports the story:

Vivian Schiller, the chief executive of NPR, resigned Wednesday in the aftermath of controversial comments from a fundraising executive and as congressional Republicans push to end federal funding for public radio.

“The Board accepted her resignation with understanding, genuine regret, and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past two years,” board chairman Dave Edwards said in a statement. “I recognize the magnitude of this news and that it comes on top of what has been a traumatic period for NPR and the larger public radio community.” …

David Folkenflik, NPR’s media reporter, said on air Wednesday morning that sources had indicated to him that Schiller had been forced out by the board.

In related news, President Obama’s FY 2011 budget proposal calls for more than $450 million in taxpayer funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service.  In response to a question today about whether it was time for taxpayers to stop subsidizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made it clear that the president stands by the funding request.  “They are worthwhile and important priorities as our budget makes clear,” stated Carney.

In the newest bit of explosive guerilla video from conservative gadfly James O’Keefe, National Public Radio senior executive Ron Schiller tells a pair of undercover filmmakers that NPR would be better off without federal funding. When you hear his denunciations of the Tea Party, “middle America”, and “zionists” in the media, you’ll be only too happy to grant his wish. Watch the truly stunning video below:

Previous threats of suicide notwithstanding, Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) isn’t doing much these days to tamp down speculation he might run for president next year.  In an interview with National Review, Christie says he knows he could win the presidency if he ran.  The issue holding him back is his belief that he isn’t ready to be successful.

He added, “The issue is not me sitting here and saying, ‘Geez, it might be too hard. I don’t think I can win.’ I see the opportunity both at the primary level and at the general election level. I see the opportunity. But I’ve got to believe I’m ready to be president, and I don’t. And I think that that’s the basis you have to make that decision.”

“I think when you have people who make the decision just based upon seeing the opportunity you have a much greater likelihood that you’re going to have a president who is not ready. And then we all suffer from that. Even if you’re a conservative, if your conservative president is not ready, you’re not going to be good anyway because you’re going to get rolled all over the place in that town.”

The most attractive aspect of Christie’s character is his ability to be direct and honest in public.  It’s true that history waits for no man, but Christie is watching President Obama make the kind of rookie mistakes on governing, foreign policy, and communication that Christie – rightly – wants to avoid.

America could use more self-aware politicians like Chris Christie in 2012, 2016, and beyond.

Britain’s The Guardian has a funny quiz listing statements made recently by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen, and asking people to pick which comment belongs to which personality.  The top ten are:

(1)   I have defeated this earthworm with my words – imagine what I would have done with my fire-breathing fists.

(2)   Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.

(3)   Life without dignity is worthless.

(4)   I’m extremely old-fashioned, I’m a nobleman, I’m chivalrous.

(5)   I am like the Queen of England.

(6)   I am much bigger than any rank, for those who are talking about rank, I am a fighter.

(7)   Every great movement begins with one man.

(8)   These resentments, they are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my sabre.

(9)   I woke up at 4am, before dawn.  You should be asleep.  You’re all tired after a sleepless night.

(10)  The US commission report on 9/11 was ‘an absolute fairytale, a complete work of fiction’

To take the quiz, click here.

H/T: Political Wire

A sobering bit of news for college administrators about to go on spring break:

“The current prolonged recession means that we can no longer expect new revenue to pay for increasing attainment in higher education,” said Jane V. Wellman, Executive Director of the Delta Cost Project, which does a study every year on the cost of higher education. “In the next decade, we are going to be lucky to hold onto the resources we have. That means that all institutions – from the Ivies to the community colleges –are going to have to develop investment strategies that support goals for attainment. That will require new habits: looking at spending, and promoting the values of efficiency and cost effectiveness as co-partners to the never-ending search for new revenues.”

At first, one might be tempted to think that higher education needs to take a financial haircut just like the rest of the economy.  While that is undoubtedly true, the consequences will be enormous.

Federal higher education loans like Stafford and Grad Plus (and their state counterparts) are used like entitlements, though you’d never hear a recipient saying so.  Though only 1 in 4 Americans eventually graduate with a college degree, nearly everyone qualifies for the loans to finance one.

Because the cost of attendance continues to grow at several times the rate of inflation, grads and non-grads are piling up huge debt loads; prompting some to call the looming student loan crisis our next financial disaster.

The coming cuts in state and federal budgets for higher education financing will significantly decrease the subsidies available to students.  That means fewer students going to college, leaving enrollments peopled with those able to count on private financing.

Since passage of the 1944 GI Bill an essential part of the American dream has been having the opportunity to go to college by removing cost as a consideration.  The same bill did the same thing to spur home ownership via the VA-backed mortgage.  We all know how slippery that slope turned out to be.

Austerity is coming to America.  Hopefully, we can adjust to reduced expectations.

Over at The Corner, the incomparable Yuval Levin has a great explainer on why President Obama’s accomodationist tone on health care in yesterday’s White House speech to the National Governors Association was a headfake. He notes:

Speaking to a group of governors yesterday, the president said he would support legislation that would allow states to opt out of some of Obamacare’s requirements (including the individual mandate, the employer mandate, and the state exchanges) if they show they can achieve exactly the same results in some other way. Obamacare itself actually already contains such a provision, but it would allow states to apply for such waivers starting in 2017—after these mandates and requirements have been in place for three years. Obama now says he would let states apply for waivers in 2014, when the new rules begin.

This change of heart, like the one regarding the CLASS Act, is a concession to the fact that the law’s requirements are understood by many state officials (of both parties) as immensely burdensome and problematic. But like the one regarding the CLASS Act, it is also not an actual concession in practice. The states would be required to show that their alternative policies would provide the same or greater insurance benefits to the same or greater number of people, presumably as assessed by HHS. So it allows no flexibility regarding ends, and therefore very little flexibility regarding means. In fact, while it would allow conservative-leaning governors essentially no freedom to move in the direction of greater competition and more consumer-driven health care (which conservatives tend to see as the actual path to reducing costs and therefore insuring more people while improving quality) it would give liberal-leaning governors significant freedom to move in the direction of more government control. Indeed, as the New York Times notes today, while the approach Obama supports would not allow for many consumer-driven reforms it “might allow interested states to establish a single-payer system in which the government is the sole insurer.”