Logic is So Convoluted it’s a Spirograph
You pay your tax dollars to the Washington, which then gives some of them to the FCC so that it can dream up new ways to take more of your tax dollars. The latest bit of unconstitutional moonbattery:
The Federal Communications Commission is eyeing a proposal to tax broadband Internet service.
The move would funnel money to the Connect America Fund, a subsidy the agency created last year to expand Internet access.
The FCC issued a request for comments on the proposal in April. Dozens of companies and trade associations have weighed in, but the issue has largely flown under the public’s radar.
Now, as everybody who ever took Econ 101 knows, if price goes up, demand goes down. So the FCC is going to tax broadband — reducing demand — in order to expand supply to people who already can’t afford it.
Forget for a moment that the FCC created out of thin air a sub-agency to justify a tax it has no constitutional power to create and no authority to collect…
Actually, I take that last part back, as I have no ability to forget all of that for even one moment.
This whole thing is an assault on reason and on the law, but in DC, it’s what passes for brains.
I’m surprised this hasn’t provoked more outrage from the online community.
We’ve been kinda distracted by the pictures of Jessica Alba at a fun^wgun range. Give it a day or two.
Do you know why I don’t have a landline phone? Because I was paying as much in fees and taxes as I was for my actual phone line. If my home internet bill ever morphed into that kind of monster, there would come a point where I’d simply ditch it in favor of cellular data/tethering. Of course, then we’ll have a tax per e-mail sent and per MB of data used, I imagine.
The nature of a bureaucracy to expand itself. WTF does the FCC get off having anything to do w/ the internet. It was created to keep over the air broadcasters (everyone at the time) to keep outfits from stepping on each others signals. They have as much authority to regulate/tax the net as they do to tax regulate the distribution of motion pictures to theatres
But every Fed agency will try to claim more authority till someone calls em on it. We need to elect a congress/president who’ll tell em to sit down and shut up.
They are only doing it so you will not be as outraged when they confiscate YOUR 401k so Obama can bail out his cronies if he wins a second term.
That’s some of the “fundamental transformation” that 4 more years will bring…
I thought this was what the Algore tax on our cell phones was intended to cover. Could this mean that money is gone?! SHOCKER!
They’re expanding the Gore tax? I’m paying something on my phone bill for this, have been for 15 years now?
On the Constitutional issue, Congress has “Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises“, and since internet access is a good, there’s no reason they can’t put an excise on it.
It’d be a statutory question whether or not Congress allowed the FCC to levy an excise on that particular communication service, or any of them at all; I suspect very strongly that it has done so, though I’m far too lazy to dig into the convoluted mess of the law to find the justifying statute.
I think the Constitutional argument won’t hold water – the “stupid and needless waste of effort and expansion of bureaucracy for its own ends” one is much stronger.
(Note that the fine folks at Heartland, no friends of the Administration or big government, don’t try and claim it’s unconstitutional, just a terrible idea and waste of effort and money.)
(Also, who can’t get “broadband” now? Phones get broadband internet. When, in God’s name, did convenient streaming video become So Vitally Important that it needs a Federal giveaway?)
About the time that candidates realized that YouTube channels were cheaper than TV airtime.
love that spirograph reference, one of my favorite toys as a kid.