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Archive for April, 2019
April 22nd, 2019 at 1:09 pm
WSJ Urges Regulators to Approve T-Mobile/Sprint Merger
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We at CFIF have steadfastly highlighted the consumer benefits of the proposed T-Mobile/Sprint merger, and cautioned the federal government against any pointless and destructive objection to the deal.  In today’s Wall Street Journal, its editorial board encourages the Department of Justice (DOJ) to move forward on the deal:

The Justice Department lost its lawsuit to block AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner.  Yet now the antitrust cops are holding up T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint even though it could give AT&T more competition in wireless.  What gives?

A year ago, T-Mobile announced plans to acquire Sprint for $26 billion in stock, yet the merger is still stuck in government antitrust purgatory.  The Federal Communications Commission keeps pausing its 180-day shot clock on the merger review to let staff and third parties dig through documents to trash the deal.”

The piece goes on to neatly summarize the benefits the merger would bring:

With more than 100 million customers, the new T-Mobile would be a stronger competitor to Verizon Wireless (118 million) and AT&T (94 million).  It would also offer a broader mix of spectrum that would improve service.  T-Mobile boasts low-band spectrum that increases coverage in rural areas.  Sprint is sitting on mid-band spectrum that can transmit more data at higher speeds in urban areas.”

Simply put, it’s time for regulators to approve the merger to release the fruits that it promises.

April 22nd, 2019 at 12:49 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Show Lineup
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Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM/99.1FM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”

Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT: Jonathan Wood, Senior Attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation: Earth Day and Environmental Progress;

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT: Charles “Cully” Stimson, Senior Legal Fellow and Manager, National Security Law Program at The Heritage Foundation: Julian Assange and the Legal Case Against Him;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT: Jonathan Williams, Chief Economist and Vice President for the Center for state Fiscal Reform at the American Legislative Exchange Council: Rich States, Poor States Report;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT: Lawrence Mead, NYU Professor and Book Author: “Burdens of Freedom: Cultural Difference and American Power”;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT: Demian Brady, Director of Research for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation: How the Trump Tax Cuts Lowered the Compliance Burden;

5:15 CDT/6:15 pm EDT: Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment: Rising Prescription Drug Costs; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT: William J. Conti, Partner at Baker & Hostetler: The Mueller Report and the Latest 2020 Presidential Candidates.

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

April 12th, 2019 at 1:39 pm
House Democrats Revive Obama FCC’s Ruinous Effort to Regulate Internet
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What’s old is somehow new again on the political left.

Desperate for what they perceive as street cred, leftists continue to repackage failed policies as somehow novel, in a destructive race to claim the most extreme realms of the political continuum.

Merely three decades after it was consigned to the dustbin of failed ideas, socialism actually maintains renewed popularity on the left.  According to Gallup, a majority of Democrats no longer view capitalism favorably, but almost 60% view socialism positively.

People like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D – New York) advocate a return to income tax rates not seen since President John F. Kennedy began cutting them.  Thirty-five years after Jeane Kirkpatrick delivered her famous 1984 Republican convention speech castigating those who “blame America first,” people like Representative Ilhan Omar (D – Minnesota) tweet, “We must confront that our nation was founded by genocide and we maintain global power through neocolonialism.”

Not to be outdone, Democrats in the House of Representatives have joined the fray by attempting to resuscitate one of the Obama Administration’s most foolish and demonstrably destructive agenda items – to begin regulating the internet as a public utility.

Think of it as socialism for the internet.  What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, it turns out.

From 1996 through 2015, the internet flourished like no other innovation in human history, precisely because the federal government from the Clinton Administration forward employed a “light-touch” regulatory approach.  Just ask yourself what was “broken” about the internet that somehow cried out for a federal bureaucratic “fix” during that two-decade stretch of unprecedented innovation and transformation of our lives.

But like so many other realms of American economic and civic life, the Obama Administration decided in 2015 that the internet merited its trademark brand of hyper-regulation.  Specifically, its Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suddenly decided to regulate internet service as a “public utility” under statutes enacted in the 1930s for copper-wire telephone service.  In Orwellian fashion, the Obama Administration and its apologists throughout the media and entertainment industries labeled it “Net Neutrality,” when by definition federal commandeering of an entire industry and picking winners and losers via the business model it imposes is anything but “neutral.”

So how did the Obama FCC’s scheme work out?

Disastrously.  For the first time in history outside of a recession, private investment in network infrastructure by service providers actually declined.   By way of comparison, investment in wireless alone had increased almost 33% – from $25 billion to $33 billion – between 2010 and 2013, even amid the most sluggish cyclical economic “recovery” in history under the Obama Administration.  But in the first year alone following the Obama FCC’s bright idea to regulate the internet, investment declined by an astonishing $5.6 billion.

In other words, investment declined in just one year by almost the entire amount that wireless investment had increased from 2010 to 2013.

When the Trump Administration arrived, one of its first priorities under new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was to reverse that destructive Obama Administration boondoggle.

Latenight comedians and leftists in media and politics attempted to convince Americans that the sky was falling, and that this would “break the internet.”  But as noted above, it was the Obama Administration’s 2015 effort that was breaking the internet, while the Trump FCC under Ajit Pai was merely restoring the light-touch regulatory approach that had allowed the internet to evolve and flourish from 1996 to 2015.

The results have been immediate and positive, as highlighted by a Recode piece entitled “U.S. Internet Speeds Rose Nearly 40 Percent This Year”:

The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet.  Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report.  The growth in speed is important as the internet undergirds more of our daily lives and the wider economy.  As internet service providers continue building out fiber networks around the country, expect speeds to increase…” 

 

But now, House Democrats have introduced legislation to return to the Obama Administration’s destructive internet regulation regime.  Perhaps airheaded latenight comedians like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver find that prospect soothing, but nobody else should.

“The United States has turned the page on the failed broadband policies of the Obama Administration,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr announced this week.  “By getting government out of the way,” he added, “internet speeds are up 40%, the digital divide is closing across rural America, and the U.S. now has the world’s largest deployment of next-generation 5G networks.”  Carr continued, “There’s a lot of common ground on net neutrality, but this bill studiously avoids it.  It elevates the partisan politics of Title II over widely supported rules of the road, and would turn back the clock on the progress America is making,” he concluded.

Wise words.   We all want net neutrality, but heavy-handed federal regulation of internet service is precisely the opposite.   We’ve already witnessed the unwelcome consequences of that scheme, as well as the beneficial consequences of reversing it under the new FCC leadership.  House Democrats’ legislation must be swiftly rejected accordingly.

 

 

April 10th, 2019 at 2:27 pm
Image of the Day: Three Cheers for Capitalism
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Think a dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to?  Think again.  Let’s hear it for capitalism and the underappreciated progress that it brings:

Three Cheers for Capitalism

Three Cheers for Capitalism

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April 5th, 2019 at 10:35 am
Image of the Day: U.S. Leads World In Carbon Reductions, No “Green New Deal” or “Green Real Deal” Necessary
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In this week’s Liberty Update, CFIF wonders what Congressman Matt Gaetz (R – Florida) was thinking in throwing Congressional climate alarmists and their “Green New Deal” a lifeline with his “Green Real Deal.”  We noted how the U.S. already led the world in carbon reductions, which they claim is their goal, even without either bill and the economically disruptive policies they’d impose, and after President Trump rightfully withdrew us from the indefensible Paris climate accord.  This helpful image from the American Enterprise Institute illustrates our leadership in that regard:

 

April 4th, 2019 at 10:16 am
CFIF Urges Opposition to the Importation of Foreign Price Controls
ALEXANDRIA, VA — In November of last year, the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) joined with 57 free-market organizations and individuals on a coalition letter opposing the importation of foreign price controls on prescription drugs, a proposal currently under consideration at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”).  In a coalition video released last week, several leading free-market voices, including CFIF, spoke out once again against the perils of imposing foreign price controls.

Unfortunately, recently introduced legislation by Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) entirely ignores that overwhelming opposition from conservatives and the free-market community and seeks to import foreign price controls into the U.S.  This legislation, known as the “Transparent Drug Pricing Act” (S.977), would fix U.S. drug prices to the lowest cost of the same drugs sold in five other countries: Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany.

It is CFIF’s strong belief that importing socialist price controls in an effort to lower drug prices is the wrong approach and will reduce access to medicines, kill innovation and harm patients.  Therefore, CFIF urges Senators not to cosponsor or vote in favor of this harmful legislation.

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April 1st, 2019 at 2:09 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Lineup
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Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM/99.1FM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.” Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT:  John York, Ph.D., Policy Analyst, B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics – Electoral College and Cyber Insecurities;

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT:  Karlyn Bowman, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – Why Does Community Matter?

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Ilya Shapiro, Director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute – Constitutional Issues of Interstate Trade Among Marijuana-Legal States, Cato’s Latest “Funny” Brief, and Student Speech in Rhode Island;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT:  Nathan Lewis, Author of “The Magic Formula” – Making the Case for Lower Taxes and Stable Currency;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  Craig Bannister, CNSNews.com – Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation;

5:15 CDT/6:15 pm EDT:  Sally Pipes, Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy, President and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute – Why Medicare for All is Not the Answer; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs: In the News – The Green New Deal, College Admissions and International Drug Pricing.

Listen live on the Internet here Talkradio 99.1. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.