The Government is responding to who about the supposed lack of broadband? I don’t think I have heard one complaint from anyone about lack of internet access, but supposedly there is a serious injustice going on out there. Luckily for us Captain Government is here to fix it.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are considering whether the government should take greater control of the Internet and ask consumers to pay higher phone charges in order to provide all Americans with cheaper access to broadband Internet service.

The Federal Communications Commission Wednesday will lay out the case for expanding broadband Internet service, outlining current obstacles to making it widely available. The agency is considering whether to force Internet providers to share their networks with rivals and raise fees charged on consumer phone bills to pay for the broader access.

The proposals, which have sparked criticism from telecommunications and cable companies, represent a reversal from the Bush Administration, when regulators cut back on government control of Internet and telephone service.The new commission, controlled by Democrats, is considering whether more government control is needed to ensure competition and more affordable Internet service.

via Feds Mull Rules, Fees to Spur Net Access – WSJ.com

I’m pretty sure the free market has done a great job expanding broadband access without government intervention. Not that long ago, I remember having dial up. Then I got cable with 400k download speeds. Then cable gave 1mb, then 2mb, then 6mb, and now Verizon has jumped in, and you can get 20mb for $60/month. Are you telling me competition isn’t working?

Also, because of competition, you have different levels of service to fit your budget. You can get DSL from Verizon for $15 month. Granted, the speed is slower than other plans, but it’s still light years ahead of dialup and fits the needs of many consumers.

So government is going to increase competition by forcing people to pay more for phone service. Does this sound like competition, or does it sound like a tax? Many people don’t even have regular phones anymore. That’s the beauty of the internet. You can ditch your old phone for a free or extremely cheap phone service. So, how is the government going to make those who use something like Skype for their phone pay increased phone rates? Are they going to force you to have a phone service like they are going to force you to have health insurance?

Democrats say that they want more affordable internet service. Are you serious? There are even free dialup services out there now. What they want is everyone to have the same exact service despite what consumers decide they need. This does not help competition, and it sure doesn’t incentivize providers to innovate and consumers to make wise decisions. This will be the beginning of the end for the internet revolution.

Well, one must ask why is the government pushing this if there doesn’t even seem to be a problem? Could it have something to do with controlling you? Maybe the smart grid? The smart grid is just one entry way for the government to step into your house. There will be more. Once everyone has broadband, it will be easy to put new monitoring and control measures in place. Think the government isn’t already spying on your internet usage?

We used to believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We gave up the right to life with abortion. Conscription also says you don’t have a right to your life. While we don’t have it now, there have been talks of it, whether it be a draft or mandatory “National Service”. We gave up the pursuit of happiness, because it’s not fair that your are achieving happiness while someone else isn’t. All along we’ve been giving up liberty.

We’ve replaced those rights, with the right to health care, welfare, education and now broadband. Americans better wake up. We have not cracked the code of building a righteous government, and history has shown how all societys progress from limited governments to tyranny. There is a reason civilizations never last, and we are about to find out why this one won’t either.

The latest mile marker on our road to fascism is the regulation being crafted by the administration and Barney Frank and the alternative being crafted by Chris Dodd. The two people most responsible out of politicians for the mess we are in are now the ones claiming they are going to fix it.

Both bills are intended to cover more than just companies that are engaged in financial activities. Following the administration’s lead, both provide that a company engaged in a financial activity “in whole or in part, directly or indirectly” could be subject to enhanced regulation and supervision.

The Frank bill seems intended to regulate all financial firms as though they are banks. Thus it requires financial activities to be transferred out of operating companies into a separate entity, which would then be regulated like a bank (even in its relations with its parent company).

The Dodd bill is a blunter instrument, proposing to regulate all companies that include financial activities “in whole or in part.” But almost all companies—retailers, manufacturers and service organizations—engage in some financial activities, if only to promote the sale of their products and services. If the administration’s health-care proposal has the potential to nationalize one-sixth of the economy, Messrs. Frank and Dodd are bidding to cover the rest.

“in whole or in part, directly or indirectly” and “in whole or in part” sure sound all encompassing. It would seem to me that every business is “engaged in financial activity” to a point. Add the control of government health care to this equation, and you pretty much have complete control of business.

The administration’s original legislation would give the Federal Reserve authority to regulate and supervise all large nonbank financial institutions and, if they are in danger of failing, take control of them and resolve their problems outside the bankruptcy system. The underlying notion is that the failure of one of these companies—which include bank holding companies, securities firms, insurance companies, finance companies, hedge funds and possibly others—could cause a systemic collapse.

Although the administration likes to give the impression that its proposal is limited to exceptional cases and the largest financial institutions, its draft legislation, and the Frank and Dodd bills, use very broad language to describe the triggering event for either enhanced supervision or a subsequent bailout.

Putting it bluntly, the administration’s proposal, and the House and Senate draft bills, would establish too big to fail as national policy. Whether the companies are regulated by the Fed or by a new agency, they will still have been marked as threats to economic well-being—and thus seen by creditors and investors as specially protected by the government. This will give them the same advantages enjoyed in the mortgage business by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with the same result for competitors and taxpayers.

This sure sounds like welfare for the rich to me. Basically if you are lucky enough to have your business labeled “too big to fail” (I’m sure we’ll see more lobbyist pushing to have their business classified as such), then you basically do not have to worry about your actions. Take your profits while you can and things are good, and when things get bad, don’t worry about it. The American taxpayer will have to eat it. The investors and the executives reap the rewards and have all upside.

The Frank bill would explicitly authorize the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) to provide financing that would restore a failed company to health. The craftier Dodd bill implies that creditors will take a hit, but then authorizes the FDIC to pay off creditors in full if that would avoid “serious adverse effects to financial stability or the United States economy.”

Moreover, under the Dodd bill, after the government has settled with its creditors, a failed company can have a public offering of its shares and return to the competitive fray. That’s good news in one sense, of course, but not for everyone; under the Dodd plan, the government is authorized to recover what it spent by taxing all financial firms—that is, firms such as bank holding companies and others involved “in whole or in part” in financial activities—with total assets of more than $10 billion.

In effect, the legislation creates moral hazard by transferring the risks and losses of a failing company from its creditors to its competitors. The protection of taxpayers may be a mirage anyway, since the FDIC is authorized to put off these collections indefinitely to avoid an “adverse effect on the financial system or economic conditions.”

via Peter J. Wallison: The Permanent TARP – WSJ.com.

This regulation amounts to “there are no losers here” policies. It’s like all the kids participating in a sporting event getting a trophy, because they are all winners. Meanwhile, they lose their sense of competition and drive. There is no downside for a company once it’s classified as too big to fail. This is a scary proposition. If they have bad management, they don’t have to worry. The government will step in, usher them back to “health” with tax payer money, and then more bad management can come in and make profits until it falls apart again. Talk about wealth distribution. I didn’t know Obama meant this when he was talking to Joe the Plumber. I should have known when he said he was for “Trickle Up Economics” instead of Reagan’s “Trickle Down Economics”. Apparently with trickle up economics, the wealth that the poor and middle class have moves up to the rich that have political connections.

While reading this article in the Wall Street Journal this morning, it struck me that we have some lessons we should learn ourselves.

This is not to suggest an endorsement of the status quo. Cardinal Rodríguez has plenty of criticism for a system that has left so many Hondurans mired in poverty while a small number live extravagantly. He denounces the lack of equality under the law which has damaged economic mobility. “In Latin America, when you have money, you can buy justice.” Such corruption is what led to “the implosion” of political parties in Venezuela,” he says. “And in the vacuum there was this messiah, Chávez, who came. This is the danger in all our nations.”

Yet the cardinal also recognizes progress since the birth of the constitutional democracy in 1982. “Now the army is respected, because they have dedicated themselves to the constitutional role of defending the law and the borders.” The trouble, he says, is that with the advent of democracy, “the political parties took politics as an industry for enrichment. We need to change that.”

Cardinal Rodríguez sees the rule of law as an important link to development. “The key is to assure justice,” he says, “because if you don’t have legal security, you are not going to invest. Investment is very important. With investments there are more jobs for our people.”

Speaking of investors, the cardinal says, “of course they are not all saints,” and human rights must be protected. “But what should we do without those jobs?” he asks. Then he adds, “Maquilas [assembly plants] are especially important for women, because their jobs have been a source of dignity. When they earn their own money they are no longer slaves to the macho man in their lives, who often is not even their husband.”

Honduras will hold a presidential election on Nov. 29, and many hope Mr. Zelaya will soon be a bad memory. Yet the struggle for liberty, and the social justice that comes from equality under the law, will continue. Cardinal Rodríguez says he hopes the political class has learned a lesson. Amen to that.

via Mary O’Grady: The Cardinal and the Constitution – WSJ.com.

Cardinal Rodríguez mentions that because of corruption in Venezula, the populace turned to “this messiah, Chavez”. Hmm, sounds familar. Because Americans were fed up with government manipulation by Wall Street and the excesses of bad monetary and fiscal policy, we fell for the very demagogic but vague messiah, Barack Obama. Americans, in wanting to corruption removed from Washington, turned to a corrupt politician to do it. Sadly, Obama is turning out to be the most corrupt. He’s in bed with Wall Street and the Fed.

The Cardinal then goes on to explain that investors aren’t angels, but they are the ones who create the opportunities for the rest of society to participate in the economy. This participation is what brings dignity, not the government.

Social justice is usually code for socialism, but I love how the Cardinal turns it, “the social justice that comes from equality under the law”. He is right, social justice comes from equality under the law. It does not come from government coercion of one group to the benefit of another. The very act of coercion is the destroyer of “social justice”.  Good call Cardinal, and Amen to that. Let’s just hope Americans wake up and realize that the government is not our messiah, and that we should not be looking to the government to impose “social justice”.

There is something seriously wrong when a communist government is lecturing us on our monetary policy, and they are right. Then again, it seems the communist government of China understand capitalism and it’s benefits more than our President.

BEIJING — China’s top banking regulator issued a sharp critique of U.S. financial management only hours before President Barack Obama commenced his first visit to the Asian giant, highlighting economic and trade tensions that threaten to overshadow the trip.

Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said that a weak U.S. dollar and low U.S. interest rates had led to “massive speculation” that was inflating asset bubbles around the world. It has created “unavoidable risks for the recovery of the global economy, especially emerging economies,”

via China’s Blunt Talk for Obama – WSJ.com.

Appparently, GE doesn’t believe in growing business by supplying goods and services that the consumer wants. Instead it believes in coersively taking money from the consumer via governments to grow their business. I guess it doesn’t hurt to have helped elect the President with your TV networks. It also doesn’t hurt to fake concern for the favorite causes of the left with “Green weeks” and “Service weeks”. I’m pretty sure on the road to fascism, this is a rest stop.

General Electric Pursues Pot of Government Stimulus Gold

BY ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON AND PAUL GLADER

The financial crisis hasn’t been kind to General Electric Co. Its stock has lost almost half its value, the government has stepped in to prop up its enormous financial arm, and sales have slumped in core industrial businesses.

But Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt now has his eye on a huge new pool of potential revenue: Uncle Sam’s stimulus dollars. Mr. Immelt, a registered Republican, quips about the shift in thinking in the nation’s corner offices: “We’re all Democrats now.”

GE has high hopes for the strategy. It says that over the next three years or so it could bring in …

via General Electric Pursues Pot of Government Stimulus Gold – WSJ.com.

Popular Science just released it’s Best Of What’s New 2009 list with 100 innovations. With a small glimse of the the winners, you will see the ingenuity of the human mind. There is no crisis (ie Health Care) that cannot be solved by unleashing human innovation, which is best driven by the self interested entreprenuer. While innovation is possible with government intervention, the innovation is in spite of the intervention not the result of it. If government encouraged innovation, the Soviet Union would have been the most innovative nation on earth.

Take some time to look at some of the innovations, and then tell me the unleashed innovation of the free human mind can’t solve the government created health care “crisis”.

The standards by which we judge the year’s greatest innovations are simple. The objects don’t necessarily need to be beautiful (although some, like the all-glass TKTS building in Times Square, certainly are). They don’t have to be eco-friendly (although the packaging made of biodegradable fungus certainly is). They don’t even have to be difficult to build (with all due respect to the telescope designed to find Earth-like planets).

They just have to push past what we thought was possible just twelve months ago. And the following 100 innovations have all blown us away, beginning with the headliner, our product of the year: something so simple yet so smart, with the ability to improve countless lives.

via Best Of What’s New 2009 | Popular Science.

Here’s a great post with examples of how the free market is already solving health care issues. Now if we can just get the government out of health care completely, we’d be set.

So while Congress now debates how to control rising healthcare costs and expand access to medical care through government intervention and a public option, the private marketplace has already started many healthcare reforms on its own—providing affordable access at more than 1,000 retail clinics in pharmacies, truck stops, and workplaces around the country; lowering drug costs with prescriptions for $4 or less anywhere in the country; introducing innovative prepaid medical and concierge plans that restore the direct patient-doctor relationship; and covering eight million employees with HSAs.

When it comes to lowering costs and improving quality and service, government enterprises have a miserable track record, and competitive markets have a proven, excellent record. If we want to make healthcare affordable and accessible, we should encourage greater competition and more market-based solutions like the examples above; and less government intervention, not more. Unfortunately, the politicians in Washington have it backwards.

Check ou the full article at Congress to Healthcare Market: Drop Dead — The American, A Magazine of Ideas.

In my home town, they have been talking about a Maglev train for years now. Here is an example of government waste at it’s finest.

It’s argued that a multibillion-dollar, taxpayer-fleecing Pittsburgh maglev line would make the region the epicenter for this technology across the country. Except the country needs maglev as much as it needs more debt.

In remarks last week to state lawmakers, Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute explained why expensive high-speed magnetic-levitation trains are beyond the realm of reasonable implementation.

Just ask China.

The 19-mile maglev line from Pudong Airport to downtown Shanghai rarely sees more than one out of four seats filled, says Mr. O’Toole, an expert in transportation issues. Which explains why China opted for less costly conventional high-speed trains between Shanghai and Beijing.

A $5 billion-plus proposed line between Pittsburgh International Airport and Greensburg wouldn’t fare better.

Even an optimistic projection of 28,000 round-trip passengers daily is a fraction of Pittsburgh travelers, O’Toole said. Moreover, research shows rail service to U.S. airports typically carries only 2 percent to 15 percent of air travelers, he said.

And because maglev uses vastly more energy than conventional high-speed trains, it produces that much more pollution, according to the Center for Clean Air Policy.

Economically and environmentally, Pennsylvania can’t afford to be taken for maglev’s ride.

via Maglev’s myth – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

$5 billion for an train from Greensburg to the Airport? This will do absolutely nothing to boost the economy. The $5 billion would have to be taken from the pockets of productive citizens to fund a useless train. Those people who have been robbed would have used $5 billion for purposes that would result in economic value and job creation. Instead, slime ball politicians believe their pet projects are more important.

If the Maglev was such an economic boon, the private sector would be producing it already. Instead the free market and entreprenuers would use that money for other more profitable ventures. Those ventures would create more wealth and more jobs. Central planning resulted in disaster for Soviet economies, but yet here we are, the supposed capitalist country doing the exact same thing.

As part of the health care reform bill, house Democrats put a new surtax into the bill of 5.4%. This is going to increase the effective capital gains rate by 69%. Capital gains is the tax term used by our government to explain investment income. For example, if you buy a stock at $5 and sell it at $10, you have a capital gain of $5. Now, capital gains also counts real estate investments, and Democrats were talking about repealing the owner occuppied housing exeption in the last election. So potentially, this could effect every American if Democrats get their way in the long run. As we know, anytime government wants more money they just seek out profitable sectors of our economy and decide to tax it. If most American’s have their saving sitting in their houses, surely you will see government eventually targeting that for more revenue.

That surtax takes effect on January 1, 2011, or the day the Bush tax rates of 2001 and 2003 expire. Today’s capital gains tax rate of 15% would bounce back to 20% because of the Bush repeal and then to 25.4% with the surtax. That’s a 69% increase, overnight. The last time investors were hit with anything comparable was 1986, when the capital gains rate jumped to 28% from 20%, a 40% increase, as part of the Reagan tax reform that lowered income tax rates.

The 1986 experience was not a happy one. Tax revenues from capital gains surged before the increase took effect in 1987, as investors moved to cash in at the lower rate. Revenues then plummeted. Total realized capital gains didn’t again reach their 1985 level of $172 billion until 1996. By 1992, the federal government was barely getting more in revenue ($29 billion) at the 28% rate than it did in 1985 ($26.5 billion) at the 20% rate.

Rate reductions, as in 2003 when Republicans cut the rate to 15% from 20%, have typically had the opposite effect. Treasury receipts from capital gains climbed to an estimated $117.8 billion in 2006 from $49 billion in 2002.

via Health-Care Surtax Applies to Capital Gains – WSJ.com.

Ok, so how is this going to effect the stock market? It will definitely hinder the stock market growth. If you are buying and selling stocks, your return will be decreased, which means you are less likely to take the risk. If less people are willing to take the risk, there will be less capital to fund businesses. On top of that, businesses, especially small businessses, have capital gains as well. If their capital gains is taxed more, they are less likely to invest in expanding their business because the investments now become more risky. Businesses look at after tax profits. As the article says, capital gains revenue to the government actually went down after increases in the rate. That means there was less investing and less turner of investment. Capital was held up in the system instead of flowing through the system.

Government is  the land of idiocy. They think we live in a static world where they can say, hey look at all that money. Let’s take some, and for some reason people are going to just say “Oh ok George, here you go.” Reality is much different. People’s behavior changes, and the government does harm to all of us. This increase will hinder our economy, and worst yet, it will destroy more jobs.

The truth be told.

The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let’s give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that “it’s important to be clear about what the reform amounts to.”

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. “The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment,” he writes. “Let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.”

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of “making the United States a more equitable country” and furthering the Democrats’ “political calculus.” In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, “Putting on my amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted.”

No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill.

via John Cassidy on ObamaCare – WSJ.com.