The current administration’s controversial federal regulatory policies (the US Treasury Department’s stunningly bad bet on Solyndra, the NLRB’s tone death sanction against Boeing, the EPA’s onerous new rules imposed on, well, everything) place heavy-handed bureaucrats in Washington squarely behind the wheel on the road to America’s economic future.  In each of these cases, the White House has empowered federal regulators to decide outcomes best left to the free market.  Washington, it seems, knows best. Against this backdrop of regulatory overreach, we await another major decision – the approval by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission of the potential merger between AT&T and T-Mobile.

Of economic concern, however, is not the Federal government’s decision to approve or reject the deal, but whether the FCC will use its responsibility and power to approve the deal to also impose new regulations on the entire telecom industry. Doug Holtz-Eakin warns, “already we are seeing calls for a presumptive regulatory response.” He worries that “the U.S. will continue down an overly regulatory, prescriptive approach to competition that is doomed to fail.”

The greatest risk to a free, wide-open Internet is that overreaching regulators are using the merger review process to mandate new policy – circumventing the congressional review process to impose regulatory restrictions such as the controversial “net-neutrality” rules. “The job of regulators should not be to choose the best market strategy,” wrote James Gattuso, a Senior Research Fellow with The Heritage Foundation in a May report.  “It should be simply to make sure that the marketplace itself is working. In wireless, it’s working remarkably well, and there is every reason to believe it will continue to do so after the acquisition is completed.”

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In recent weeks, I have been interested in Google and in the telecommunications companies.  It’s not the typical “institutional left” topic on which I usually tend to focus.  At least, not on the surface.  The truth is, these industries ARE about the institutional left.  And if the Obama administration and the media reformists on the left get their way, the institutional left will achieve some very significant goals over the next few years in their push to see all media publicly owned.  That is, unless we all start paying more attention.

Before I give you the big picture, let me start with a recent example.

Last month, Sprint, one of the big three telecommunications providers, raised its early termination fees (ETFs) on “advanced devices.”  These devices are smartphones, tablets, netbooks and notebooks, as Sprint outlines in one of its support documents online.  As MSNBC.com explains, ETFs are the carrier’s way of retaining customers, and Sprint has essentially doubled its fees to $350 beginning September 9^th.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Bruce Walker talks about the government’s attempt to stop the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, and Elizabeth Blackney and Benjamin Domenech walk through the HPV vaccine issue in response to Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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It’s funny what a million dollars in political contributions, support for the right candidate and a liberal meme can buy you in Washington these days.  For Google, it is buying them a free pass as they amass growing power in Washington and the marketplace.

AT&T, while unionized, does not have the same liberal bent as Google.  They are more a traditional Beltway player.  Open Secrets.org describes their strategy as “Although the company has historically favored Republicans in its political giving, people and political action committees associated with AT&T have as of late generally split their contributions between Democrats and the GOP.”

Recently both Google and AT&T made strategic acquisitions.  How they were treated by the politicized Department of Justice makes an interesting statement.

Google is a giant and growing by the day. Google purchased Motorola and ITA Software, which builds online flight and ticket information software for travel websites.  Google paid $700 million for ITA and Motorola for $12 billion.  The acquisition of ITA allows Google to corner the market for travel and Motorola gives Google monopoly on thousands of patents that will help stave off competitive threats and patent-infringement lawsuits.

Despite howls of protests from the travel industry, that feared Google would crowd out other travel websites when combined with Google’s search engine.  Yet the Justice Department approved Google’s purchase with a caveat, Google must also set up a formal reporting system for anyone who believes it is acting unfairly.  With regard to the purchase of Motorola, DOJ seems poised to approve the purchase as well.

But for AT&T, the Department of Justice has been less than hospitable.  DOJ has filed a lawsuit trying to block the purchase of T-Mobile, arguing that it will hurt competition.

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The media reform cabal is at it again.  The same professional Soros-funded astroturfers who brought us Van Jones to demand “media justice” and SaveTheInternet and Net Neutrality have been focused on a new target.  For months now, Free Press, Media Access Project, Public Knowledge, Consumers Union, and the New America Foundation have been thwarting the proposed merger of cell phone providers AT&T and T-Mobile, saying the move would raise prices for consumers and cost jobs.  As the deal sits with the FCC, which just this week temporarily halted its review of the proposal, AT&T and T-Mobile have tried to reassure consumers and activists that the merger would lower prices, increase access to service in rural areas and give consumers better choices.  The AFL-CIO, which represents 42,000 AT&T workers through the CWA, agrees with AT&T and T-Mobile.  Ironically, that puts the country’s most powerful labor federation on the opposite side of its progressive media reform allies.

But as these supposed media reformers actively work with community groups and state and federal agencies to oppose corporate interests on behalf of consumers, they fail to divulge their own ties to competitive corporate interests. And now, there are reports that a state commission may also have played a role in helping the competition.

As Amanda Carey has detailed at The Daily Caller, these Net Neutrality advocates have a long history of opposing these very companies, with the support of corporate competitors.

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(And we do not mean this august publication.)

John Donne famously said no man is an island.  He didn’t live to see the Media Marxists and their absurd policy positions.

These Leftist alleged media “reformers” incessantly demand massive government insertion into and interference with every free market-media nook and cranny.

Insertion and interference in which almost no one else has any interest.

Save, of course, for the other forces of Big Government – Big Government being always interested in expanding its authoritarian sway.

We have noted this previously.  For instance, the Media Marxists have all along been strident proponents of Network Neutrality – a government takeover of the Internet that was and remains the kid sitting by himself in the high school cafeteria – almost no one else wanted anything to do with it.

Except, again, Big Government.  President Barack Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) joined the Media Marxists at the lonely lunch table – and unilaterally and illegally imposed Net Neutrality.

So radical and foolish is Net Neutrality that – in addition to 302 members of the then Democrat-controlled Congress and a unanimous D.C. Circuit court – a gaggle of normally pro-government groups are opposed to its imposition.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC), the Urban League and the Sierra Club, to name but a few.

And then there were the unions.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the war in Libya, and the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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Net neutrality supporters have long argued that institution of “open internet” rules is critical for job retention and creation.  However, according to some opponents of the proposed policy, a study released on Friday by Entropy Economics undercuts that assertion—just as much discussion in the political world is re-centering on the topic of job creation and as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) continues to move closer to a decision on controversial, proposed net neutrality rules.

The study, entitled “What Would Net Neutrality Mean for U.S. Jobs?”  analyzes comments submitted by companies within the Internet industry to the FCC as of January 15, 2010.  It excludes those submitted by trade associations, individuals, and academics, and breaks commenters down into two categories: Supporters and Skeptics.  It also attempts to exclude “non-U.S. employees of foreign-based Skeptics” but includes “any foreign employees of Supporters.”

The results are bound to unsettle net neutrality advocates: Even with the filtering out that Entropy conducted, Skeptics—many of whom have expressed concern about the negative ramifications of net neutrality on their businesses— employ nearly ten times the number of employees that Supporters do.  More specifically, Skeptics directly employ 1,440,021 workers, whereas Supporters directly employ just 148,936 workers.

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