George Rebane
FCC to make the Internet into another plodding government regulated utility. If tomorrow’s vote goes as expected by the progressive Left, the rapidly innovative years of the World Wide Web will be over for all Americans. The liberals’ dream of so-called ‘net neutrality’ will be achieved, sold to the true believers with the promotion of five prominent myths –
1. The internet has always been neutral;
2. Net Neutrality regulations are the only way to preserve an open internet;
3. Net Neutrality regulations improve broadband competition;
4. All prioritized network services are harmful to users;
5. Net Neutrality rules will make broadband cheaper and internet services like Netflix faster.
For anyone with even a smidgeon of knowledge about how the internet works and what motivates businesses, these pretensions are laughable. Unfortunately, the truth on all counts is exactly the opposite, but the entire initiative for additional government takeover is based on the tried and true Saul Alinsky rules (q.v.). The Mercatus Center at George Mason University gives a short and clear refutation of the matter here.
Robots will ultimately take your job, and give no guarantee to create another one that you can or are willing to do. That realization is even reaching the high towers of learning at government funded MIT Artificial Intelligence Labs. There a conclave of the country’s leading AI and robotics researchers meet monthly to discuss such matters. Heretofore, they and other such groups have been regularly issuing the pabulum that ‘not to worry, technology’s advance will create at least as many new jobs as the old ones it makes redundant.’ Well, that considerable bit of fiction hasn’t proved to be true in the recent past, and will continue to contribute to systemic unemployment with every passing year. But RR readers have known that for a long time now.
However, the advances in job eliminations are now proceeding at such a pace that it’s hard to keep putting out these agenda-driven dreams for public consumption, especially from those working in the field who still want to look at themselves in the mirror without blushing – “Experts rethink belief that tech always lifts employment as machines take on skills once thought uniquely human”. The truth, as reported here, is that the mid-level jobs are disappearing most rapidly. This leaves behind low-end jobs and more high-end jobs, but netting out to fewer jobs for humans as productivity continues to grow as shown in the nearby figure. (more here)
Is Obama also the nation’s first Section 8 president? That realization is coming to more and more people as he entered his lame duck years. He has demonstrated incomparable incompetencies in literally every undertaking that the chief executive’s office demands. His lack of planning ability reflects the reason that his background has been so assiduously hidden from us. What other president in our history has his past sealed – all of his school records, works, writings, relationships, projects, …, anywhere there might exist a record to be evaluated – so as to cover up a man of no accomplishments or demonstrated intellect. As has Elizabeth Warren with her American Indian ancestors, so has Obama with his black Kenyan father ridden the color of his skin to heights otherwise denied.
A most glaring illustration is this week’s in camera veto of the Keystone pipeline bill for the stated reason that it “cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest.” Only an office thoroughly depleted of intellectual capital would issue such a statement. Keystone has been studied and approved (even by his own administration and supporting special interests) for over an interval of six years. This pipeline “has been in regulatory limbo for about 2,300 days in perhaps the most extensive permitting review in the history of American government.” What lets him get away with such lamebrained statements is that his own constituencies are too stupid to realize that the President has called them stupid.
But it doesn’t stop at the top, the crap also flows downhill when you look at the likes of top advisor Valerie Jarrett and AG Eric Holder whose sense of justice does not go beyond the proviso that the progressive agenda justifies any and all means for its achievement. In addition to the DoJ’s scandals and cover-ups, take a peek at what he still pursues in the matter of the Ferguson shooting (here).
The latter theme is expanded by national columnist and commentator Jason Riley (Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed) in a speech he recently gave at Hillsdale College. He again highlighted the sad truth that our politicians and the lamestream hide or misreport the major reason why race relations are pandered when law enforcement comes up for discussion, and that major reason is black criminality. Riley presents and excellent review (here) of the crime statistics that arise from the cultural gulf between non-black and what is commonly called black culture. (RR also covered these arguments here.)
Riley concludes, “Blacks ultimately must help themselves. They must develop the same attitudes and behaviors and habits that other groups had to develop to rise in America. And to the extent that a social policy, however well-intentioned, interferes with this self-development, it does more harm than good.”
[26feb15 update] Stupid rules! This morning the WSJ reports, “The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to regulate Internet service like a public utility, expanding the U.S. government’s oversight of a once lightly regulated business at the center of the country’s commercial and social activity. … The vote was 3-2 along party lines and starts the clock ticking on an expected legal challenge from the telecom and cable industries.”
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