The vote on Senate Joint Resolution (S.J. Res) 6 – the Resolution of Disapproval to undo the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s illegal, unilateral Network Neutrality Internet power grab – is a watershed moment for the members of the Senior Circuit.

The FCC – in fact no federal Agency, Department or Commission – can do anything unless and until Congress writes a law that says “Yo – do this.”

As a unanimous D.C. Circuit Court pointed out in April of 2010, Congress has never done this for the FCC with regard to the Internet and Net Neutrality.

The Commission clearly, simply doesn’t have the juice to do what they again did last December.  It is an egregious overreach, and it must be undone.

Senators – not agencies like the FCC – write laws.  That’s their gig.  Each and every Senator that votes against S.J. Res 6 is giving up on what they asked their constituents to send them to Washington to do.

To vote No is to give up on being an elected representative of We the People.

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President Barack Obama last week unveiled his latest attempt to divert attention away from his horrendously failed economic policies and record.  In his ongoing effort to “fundamentally transform America” and his loomingly piteous campaign to get reelected, the newest phraseology is “We Can’t Wait.”

From his weekly radio address on Saturday:

“The truth is, we can no longer wait for Congress to do its job….So where Congress won’t act, I will.”

There is so much disingenuousness contained in just this tiny excerpt.  The truth is, there is nothing at all new about this.  President Obama has been end-running Congress to unilaterally “fundamentally transform America” since (at least) November 2, 2010. That election day was a stinging, historic rebuke of the Leftist, Big Government policies of President Obama and his Democrats.  Not just in D.C. but throughout the nation, at the state and local levels as well.  It was a crashing, crushing wave that Obama himself described it as a “shellacking.”

We the People elected Republicans in huge numbers up and down the ticket to (amongst other things) serve as a blockade to the Socialism being further emplaced by Donkeys. Unfortunately, the will of We the People remains utterly irrelevant to Obama. After the brutal Congressional slog that was the jamming-through of ObamaCare, over the expressed objections of We the People, the President had enough of the legislative (or constitutional) way of doing things, so he began his regulatory fiat power grabs.

Can’t pass the energy sector-assault that is Cap & Trade?  No problem, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has. Can’t pass the workplace-assault that is the Big Union-payoff Card Check?  No problem, President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)  and Department of Labor will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has.

So for the President this weekend to pretend his democracy denying-dictaorial-ism is something new is mendacious.  He’s been going at it at a pretty good for years and he’s only announcing that he’s now really going to ramp it up. He isn’t tired of “wait(ing) for Congress to do its job.”  He long ago lost any interest in anything having to do with Congress — save their utility as an electioneering punching bag. Congress is in fact doing exactly the job we (in part) elected them to do: Be an impediment to the President’s overarching, overreaching Leftist agenda. And they have been largely successful when Obama isn’t illegally, serially, wantonly going around them.

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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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Americans for Prosperity’s Phil Kerpen has released a new book: Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – And How to Stop Him.

In this work, Kerpen lays out the Obama Administration’s serial abuse–in fact, outright violation–of our Constitutional republican form of government. President Obama is using the panoply of federal Departments, Commissions, Agencies and Boards to illegally force feed us new “laws.” Yet they aren’t laws at all, as Obama is bypassing Congress and the legislative process.  They are being foisted upon us by executive branch regulatory fiat. This is not democracy but dictatorship, as Kerpen’s excellent tome exhaustively proves.

Here is but a sampling of the research he presents to make his case. Chapter II: Democrats can’t pass the energy sector-assault that is Cap & Trade?  No problem, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has. Chapter IV: Democrats can’t pass the workplace-assault that is the Big Union-payoff Card Check?  No problem, President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)  and Department of Labor will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has.

Chapter V: ObamaCare–which did get shoved, bribed and cajoled through Congress–left WIDE latitude for Health & Human Services (HHS) regulators to go to town on our health care sector. And here’s a shocker; they already are. Chapter VI: The Dodd-Frank financial sector-attack slipped through Congress under cover of economic crash-fueled panic and also left WIDE latitude for a host of regulatory agencies to go to town. Shocker– so are they. And the list goes on, and on, and on… (more…)

It looks like it is finally going to happen. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has finally gotten their net neutrality regulations through the bureaucratic mess, and now it [IS] only a matter of times before they start to take effect.

The National Journal reports:

Open Internet regulations, or network-neutrality rules, have cleared the final regulatory hurdle before getting on the books, a Federal Communications Commission spokesman said on Monday.

The rules, which limit how cable and phone companies can treat legal Internet traffic, are strongly opposed by Republicans in Congress, who have unsuccessfully attempted to repeal them on several occasions.

The FCC passed the regulations in December over Republican objections, creating the defining saga of commission Chairman Julius Genachowski’s tenure so far and fulfilling an Obama campaign promise.

The Office of Management and Budget, which had a procedural role in OK’ing the regulations thanks to the Paperwork Reduction Act, had to review new data-collection responsibilities that the rules apply to Internet service firms. “OMB signed off late Friday,” an FCC spokesman said in an e-mail.

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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One of my life’s maxims is:

Education and knowledge are often mutually exclusive.

With the Barack Obama Administration’s all-out assault on the for-profit higher education industry, one of the books I have long intended to write is becoming ever more true:

College IS for Dummies.

We the People who closely follow politics have assuredly noticed an incessant trend on Talking Head TV.  Very often the Leftist debater is – a college professor.  Often teaching some very Leftist, completely pointless “scholastic” field.

For instance, National Review’s John Derbyshire rightly calls for an end to all collegiate programs that end in the word “Studies.”  Do a little Web search, and you’ll quickly reach the same conclusion.

The point being – college campuses are rife with hard Left ideologues posing as “educators.” Hiding there because their worldview doesn’t jibe with Reality.

And because they are paid handsomely to spout utter nonsense to the next generations – at a $100,000+ premium to the victims…I mean students.

The new meat can’t even get through orientation – the indoctrination is already underway.

Is this claptrap Leftist racket worth your time and considerable coin?  Hardly.

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We have spent the last three-plus years in the Third Age of Bailout.

During which we have spent trillions of public dollars trying to create (“or save”) private sector jobs.

The results have been simultaneously disastrous and completely ineffectual.  And utterly predictable.

We on the Right were all along explaining that we have historical evidence aplenty that the public sector stealing money from the private sector to

1. Waste a goodly portion thereof (as government always does) and then
2. Slosh the remainder around to political supporters and cronies

is not the way to create jobs.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deepened and deeply prolonged the Great Depression by so doing.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson increased and ensconced permanent, intergenerational poverty – by declaring War on and setting us up to spend trillions of dollars subsidizing it.

For resisting this serial economic and governmental folly, the Left has incessantly accused the Right of not having a plan to create jobs.

This ludicrous charge simultaneously reveals two immutable truths:

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As the Tea Party and its Less Government agenda continue its ascendancy, Leftists and the DC GOP,  the establishment, chequed-golf pants Republicans, have gone through serial ideological and numerical contortions.

So as to feign the appearance of getting with the government cutting program – while carrying on with the Huge and Huger Government status quo.

One need only momentarily, cringingly recall the debt ceiling debacle for recent evidence of the Big Talk, No Action nature of all of this.

Where we saw the Tea Party, Insurgent-supported plan – which would have seriously cut and capped spending, started the ball rolling on a Balanced Budget Amendment and averted U.S. credit downgrade – be almost summarily dismissed by the DC Establishment so that they could instead force feed us a non-cutting, Super (Stupor) Committee alternative that fails utterly to address our catastrophic deficits and debt.

Wonder why Congress’ poll numbers are so low these days?  This is why.

Perhaps the worst faux government cutting offenders of all are to be found in the Barack Obama Administration.  Members thereof have been making so many head fakes towards Less Government that many must by now be suffering from whiplash.

(Luckily for them, ObamaCare has not yet gone into effect.)

Leading this disingenuous charge is the Commander in Chief his own self.

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As the CWA picketing of Verizon continues it seems some of the union leadership is becoming more and more unhinged. Apparently one member of the union leadership went so far as to instruct his members, by way of publicly accessible telephone hotline, that it is now “open season” on “managers and scabs”. The thug went on to say that union members should “follow them” and “torture them, torture them with chants and noise”. (h/t Moon Bat Tracker)

The best part of WSYR’s report, though, has to be when they call another union boss to ask them about the ridiculous instructions and the guy basically says they’re cool with it. According to him there’s nothing wrong with “militancy”. How insane can you get? Is it any wonder that unions have such a terrible reputation anymore? Have they not earned it?

The sad thing, as the Verizon rep WSYR interviewed alluded to, is most union members aren’t violent nuts. Most of them just want to go to work, make a living, and support their families. It’s thugs like this that give them all a bad name.

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We have oft-written about the flagrant disingenuousness of very many of the D.C. political class.

What those of us here in the Real World refer to as “lying.”

This serial falsehood-ity is executed in large part to buttress and bolster a Huge Government agenda – which these D.C. Denizens wish to continue implementing, but to which We the People are demonstrably opposed.

How else, for example, to explain the Democrat-led United States Senate defiantly and illegally refusing for more than 800 days to pass a budget?

They would rather shirk a fundamental job responsibility – and break the law doing it – than tell We the People just how much they want to grow the already obscenely obese federal Leviathan.

Which brings us to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Which has – in pursuit of their portion of the Barack Obama Administration Huge Government itinerary – taken serial liberties with the truth.

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It’s only been a few days since 45,000 CWA and IBEW members walked off their jobs at Verizon, however, incidents of harassment, sabotage, and illegal picketing have already begun to pile up.

On Tuesday, Verizon obtained an injunction in Pennsylvania and filed for one in Delaware “to prevent ‘illegal’ and ‘reprehensible’ strike activities such as keeping managers out of buildings.”

In one deplorable incident, a foul-mouthed IBEW member in New Jersey put his young daughter in front of a Verizon truck turning into a driveway as he berated the driver using expletives.

[Language Warning]

[Note: After this video of an IBEW striker using his daughter as a roadblock was posted and began circulating the internet, it was removed by the user.]
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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 fallout from the S&P downgrade of our credit rating, the false “Tea Party Downgrade” spin from Democrats and the Verizon’s union strike.

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.

Related Links:

The credibility and integrity of S&P’s ratings action
S&P Seen Surrendering to Tea Party Costing U.S. Taxpayer
“Tea Party Downgrade”? They Can’t Possibly Sell That
Second Recession in U.S. Could Be Worse Than First
45,000 Verizon Workers Go On Strike Over Contract

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Follow Francis on Twitter

The entire political landscape is currently engulfed in debt ceiling flames, for largely artificial and concocted reasons.

This man-made inferno is now centered around and fixated upon the August 2 so-called “drop dead” date for reaching a deal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

If we do not by then do so, we are told, America will go into default.

Which is little more than repetitive absurdity.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has already given us numerous such “drop dead” dates.  March 31?  April 15?  May 16?  May 31?  July 8?  July 22?  These were all “drop dead” dates with which Geithner previously tried to concern us.

Now we’re even being told it’s as likely to be August 10 as any of the others.

In short, on this federal government power grab disguised as a fiscal “crisis,” Lil’ Timmy Geithner is many times over the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

These ever-rolling “drop dead” dates prove (at least) one additional thing: conservative Republican leverage for a deal to their liking indubitably increases every day after the date passes – else Geithner would not be so keen on repeatedly moving it.

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More Breaking News: As you may have noticed, the sun rose again today.

The Huge Government crowd always demands ever more regulations of and more taxes on those who do the hiring in the United States – the “evil corporations” who don’t care about anything but “obscene profits.”

The Huge Government crowd is, of course, woefully ignorant about how businesses – and business – work.

The “evil corporations” can’t make “obscene profits” unless they care about something else – what their customers want.

Customers almost always want the same thing from every company – the best possible goods/services at the lowest possible price.

The companies that best deliver this do well.  The ones that do not, do not.

Pretty simple stuff.  But it is stuff that fully eludes the Huge Government crowd.

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When it comes to the Barack Obama Administration and “deregulation,” their words are often belied by their actions.

In January, President Obama placed quill to parchment for the Wall Street Journal and claimed his Administration had since Day One worked tirelessly “to strike the right balance” between the free market – which works – and the federal government and its pantheon of regulations – which mostly do not.

Which is a quintessentially disingenuous statement.  The Executive Branch panoply of departments, agencies and commissions was during that time frame in overdrive to execute as many power grabs via regulatory fiat as possible.

To briefly discuss but a few….

The Democrat Congress couldn’t pass the energy sector-killing Cap & Trade?  No problem, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just began to implement it as if it did.

The Democrat Congress couldn’t pass the union-payoff, anti-free choice Employee Free Choice Act?  No problem, President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) just began to implement it as if it did.

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We have recently heard very much about the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)-induced flood of released documents.

They show that the anti-free market group Free Press worked quite closely with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) uber-Democrat Commissioner Michael Copps in advance of the December 21 FCC Internet power grab, executed so that the Commission could then impose the ridiculous Network Neutrality.

This knowledge certainly helps explain why the technologically inept Free Press was cited fifty-three times in the FCC’s absurd write-up of their absurd December Internet folly.

Which makes Free Press’s outrage at said order – for allegedly not going far enough – more than a mite bizarre.

It makes one wonder if this outrage is also perhaps in part a perpetually predetermined inevitability.

Sure, Free Press wants the whole Huge Government hog on all things, and they’re disappointed when they don’t get it.  But they are, like all Leftists, patient incrementalists.

They’ll push for as much as they can get, “begrudgingly” take it – and come back soon thereafter for even more.

The federal government didn’t get to spending 25% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) overnight.  It took little additional incremental nibbles for decades – until one day we woke up to find a federal Leviathan consuming one-fourth of all we produce.

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We have oft discussed the Orwellian manner Leftists do, well, everything.

And specifically how they go about naming their gaggles – the groups they form to advance their Leftist agenda.

The Media Marxists looking to eradicate all private ownership of news and communications – so as to have the government be your sole provider of news and communications – are a part of the Leftist misdirection that calls themselves “public interest” or “consumer interest” groups.

What could be better – and less innocuous – then that?

Just about everything.

—–

As far as the “consumer interest” – let’s rationally examine who has a real stake in it.

Is it the Media Marxist groups – who represent no one and nothing save for a shaved shard of a pro-government, free market-loathing constituency consisting almost exclusively of themselves?

Or is it the media companies – who seek to everyday deliver whatever it is the most consumers possible are interested in?  So as to entice these consumers to hire, watch, listen to and read them?

Obviously, it is the latter.

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We have seen a wide array of Barack Obama Administration wings make up jobs numbers and claims in an attempt to bolster un-bolsterable policies.

First there were the gigs – not created, but allegedly “created or saved” – as the supposed result of the simply awful February 2009 nearly $1 trillion “stimulus” bill.

That didn’t play very well – it was roundly, rightly ridiculed for its obvious absurdity.

So when it came to the recent General Motors – i.e. Government Motors – claims to job wizardry, the Administration masters knew they had to come up with something different.

They didn’t get very creative:

GM announces it will add or preserve 4,000 jobs

GM to add or preserve 4,000 jobs, invest $2B in plants

General Motors $2 billion investment expected preserve up to 2,000 local jobs

“Added or preserved” – not “created or saved.”  Get it?

The Obama Administration has reached a new zenith of ridiculousness with the latest from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Which is now trying to feed us jobs (and economic opportunity) to which Americans are “denied access.”

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From the Washington Post:

Verizon Wireless sued the Federal Communications Commission to overturn a recent data-roaming rule, saying the agency overstepped its jurisdiction with the order.

The wireless giant filed its appeal last Friday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the same court where it filed a lawsuit to overturn the FCC’s so-called net neutrality rules. The court overturned Verizon’s appeal in that case mostly on a technicality — the FCC hadn’t put the rules in the national Federal Register, a step necessary before appeals can be fought.

Verizon noted in its data-roaming appeal, that the FCC rules were implemented in the Federal Register on May 6. The data-roaming rules, passed last April, force national carriers such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T to allow regional wireless customers to roam on their networks.

And it argued that the same court in early 2010 said the FCC in a legal battle with Comcast, exceeded its authority as a regulatory of broadband Internet services when it sanctioned the cable giant for blocking Internet traffic.

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