1) Biden’s FCC Poised To Turn the Internet Into a Regulated Utility
Our new study was released this week ahead of tomorrow's FCC vote to reverse Trump's deregulatory approach despite its overwhelming success.
The WSJ issued a blistering critique of the power grab by the Biden regulators:
The FCC on Thursday is expected to vote to reclassify broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act...
To minimize legal risks, providers will have to ask FCC permission to do almost anything. This will create enormous regulatory uncertainty that will slow innovation and investment. After the Obama FCC imposed Title II, broadband investment fell for the first time outside of a recession.
That changed after the Trump FCC scrapped the Obama rule. Investment and access to high-speed Internet surged. By the end of 2019, 94% of Americans had access to high-speed fixed and mobile broadband, up from 77% in 2015. In 2022 broadband builders laid more than 400,000 route miles of fiber, more than 50% more than in 2016.
Prices fell with more competition. A study by Casey Mulligan and Phil Kerpen for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity found that, from September 2017 to September 2023, the price index for wired internet services fell 11% compared to the overall consumer-price index. The CPI for wireless fell 21% in real terms. The biggest winners from this price decline were low-income households, which pay a higher share of their earnings on broadband.
We would add to the WSJ argument that these new FCC regulations will be tantamount to a regressive tax on internet users with the poor suffering the most:
And continuing with the great coverage, our friends at Fox Business ran this op-ed covering the new report.
You can read the full report by clicking the image below!
2) Oracle's Larry Ellison to California: Drop Dead
Stop us if you've heard this a hundred times from the Hotline: Another iconic high-tech icon is high-tailing it out of California. CNBC made the alert last night:
Oracle is moving its world headquarters to Nashville
As we noted in the Hotline on Monday, Silicon Valley is being steadily drained of its tech-industry supremacy.
Oracle says that they are moving to Tennessee because Nashville is a healthcare capital and the firm is big into healthcare services. CEO Ellison added that Nashville's a "fabulous place to live."
Left unsaid is that Tennessee has no personal income tax and California's rate can go up to 14%.
Hmm, you're a billionaire and you and your company can pay up to a 14% tax rate or none at all. Gee, that's a tough call.
3) Convenience Store Chain Prosecuted for Obeying the Law
While we are on the subject of our unjust "justice system," here's a story you couldn't make up.
Sheetz is a familiar 70-year-old convenience store/gas station chain based in Pennsylvania with 10,000 employees. This week, the Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued it for discriminatory hiring practices.
Let's peel back this onion. The EEOC lawsuit accuses Sheetz of disproportionately rejecting black, Native American, and multiracial job candidates in the criminal background checks it conducted.
But firms are required to conduct background checks and Sheetz is being sued for using the very same background checks for its employees that the EEOC uses to hire THEIR workers. The EEOC is guilty of what they are accusing Sheetz of.
The Office of Personnel Management, which handles hiring for federal executive branch positions including at the EEOC, says on its website:
Background evaluations...seek information about an applicant’s employment, criminal, and personal history in an effort to investigate behavioral reliability, integrity, and personal adjustment.
Background evaluations are conducted to determine whether there are any historical facts that would interfere with an applicant’s ability to perform the job, including violations of statutes, regulations, or laws.
But now the EEOC is saying that background checks are discriminatory because they disproportionately disqualify certain minority groups - such as blacks - with higher rates of criminal records.
This is a classic government Catch-22. The government often requires criminal background checks, but now wants to penalize companies for using background checks. They get you coming and going.
Gail Heriot, a law professor who is a conservative appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights notes: “The EEPC will go after an employer even when the employer is simply following a state law that requires it to exclude job applicants with a felony record for a particular job. So far, Congress has been too timid to intervene.”
It's just another example of what we reported earlier this week: Biden has declared war on small and medium sized businesses.
Meanwhile, the Biden people just can't stop regulating:
On a 3-2 party-line vote the FTC adopted a blanket ban on all non-compete agreements. The US Chamber immediately announced a lawsuit.
Since its inception over 100 years ago, the FTC has never been granted the constitutional and statutory authority to write its own competition rules. Noncompete agreements are either upheld or dismissed under well-established state laws governing their use. Yet, today, three unelected commissioners have unilaterally decided they have the authority to declare what’s a legitimate business decision and what’s not by moving to ban noncompete agreements in all sectors of the economy.
States have a lot of different approaches to noncompete agreements, but most allow them at least for sophisticated high-wage and executive positions because they allow companies to invest in human capital without the investment immediately benefiting a competitor. Any changes should be debated and duly enacted in state legislatures.
Under the Biden FTC order, a company could not agree to pay for your graduate degree in exchange for you agreeing not to work for a competitor. How can such an arrangement be made illegal in a free society? How does this benefit workers?
