Peter Suderman notes that the Federal Communications Commission is poking its nose into regulating the Internet.
But that’s not the main issue. The question is not whether we need the FCC at all:
The FCC’s entire approach is to rule by impulse and expand its reach whenever and wherever possible. Recent FCC actions include investigating the approval process Apple employs in its iPhone App Store, mulling whether and how phone companies might upgrade their networks and passing judgment on various consumer devices of minimal likely importance, such as the Palm Pixi.
The FCC is a crank-and-wire institution in a nanocircuit age:
When the FCC was launched in 1934, backers argued that airwave scarcity justified its existence. In an age of information overload, with a nearly infinite array of media choices available to anyone with a mobile phone or broadband connection, no such argument can be made. Yet rather than shrinking, the FCC has ballooned, growing its budget by more than 60 percent between 1999 and 2009.
The FCC is one of many government agencies that an administration that cared about responsible, limited, unobtrusive government could eliminate in toto without anyone noticing.
Start by cutting it’s current budget by 80%, then move onto the EPA. Cut their budget by 99%. Then go on to huge cuts to HUD, HHS, Commerce, NASA, DOE, ED, AG, Labor, International Assistance, on and on!
I should have mentioned BATFE, shut them down completely.
Sure Berg. Next you wingnutz will be calling for the closing of the Rural Electrification Program and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Froggie, didn’t you mean Chicago Transit Authority?
*buzzer*
You’re wrong on this one, Mitch. The electromagnetic spectrum needs order, else we’ll end up with what we had before the Communications Act. Set up a good 11 meter vertical and tune in to 27.185 Mhz. That’s what it will sound like – and that’s for starters.
We don’t need idiots with their 1 KW linears and 5 element beams talking over MSP Approach.
No thanks.