Daily Archives: 18 December 2017

The Question is a Non Sequitur

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John McKinnon and Brent Kendall, in their Wall Street Journal piece, asked Is FTC Up to the Task of Internet Regulation?

His piece is about the split between what the FCC (the erstwhile “regulator” of the Internet, courtesy of the Obama administration) and the FTC are qualified to regulate.

The question is a bit of a non sequitur, though. The Internet is merely a transport medium, and it needs very little regulation. The FTC is fully up to the task of regulating (ideally with a similarly light touch) trade, which is independent of the medium—highway, railroad, snail mail, or electronic—over which the traded products are transported.

And: lightly regulated commerce is highly conducive to innovation.  Just look at our communications system since the breakup and deregulation of Ma Bell.  And the Internet between its inception and the Obama FCC-imposed impediment.

“SALT and School Taxes”

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That’s the title of a recent Wall Street Journal Notable and Quotable.  The excerpt cited a Bloomberg piece (link in the N&Q) in which that piece’s author, Sahil Kapur, went on at length about how the tax reform and rate reduction bill currently on offer in the Congress will hurt the poor, over-taxed citizens of New Jersey and the State’s education capacity.  Because for the children.

How cynical.

If Kapur and others of his ilk don’t like New Jersey’s high taxes (or New York’s, or California’s, or Illinois’) or how those revenues are allocated, they should stop looking for Federal handouts and get to work on their State governments. After all, it’s Kapur and his fellows, and the rest of the citizens in those States, who’ve been busily electing those overtax and misspend governments.

It’s also true enough that some of those States send more of their citizens’ tax money to the Feds for redistribution than they get back from the Feds, but that just emphasizes the need to put an end to such redistribution of OPM.  It has nothing to do with whether the SALT tax distorting deduction should be preserved.