FCC’s regulatory overkill kills 96,000 jobs in blocked AT&T, T-Mobile merger

I’m not a fan of AT&T anyway. Every time I deliberately change providers to get away from them, they end up buying my new provider. Same thing seems to happen with Chase Bank. Perhaps I should change providers again and buy stock in my new providers?

A company wanting to leave a market can sell to a competitor, just not to any of the top three. The FCC is preventing the top three from getting bigger by consuming the smaller players because it would reduce competition. There was no competition in the US auto industry controlled by the big 3, until Japan entered the market.

Our more than equal elite betters in high government are here to take care of us, for we are not We The People but ignorant bleating sheep who are clueless and lost without our due dictatorial guidance.  Comrade citizen, you know that. 

Yes, Rick, as you said, “it is a little more complicated than that.” And your ceaseless bias against any kinds of controls – such as on pollution, monopolies, etc. – are all too apparent here, as you sarcastically – really, that kind of nonsense ought to be below you – say that the FCC did this because they feared ATT might do “too good a job.” Get a grip, Rick. The Federal Government, the state governments, and Obama do NOT come into these things to try to make things worse or make sure someone doesn’t do something good. Your piece is a blast, completely unfocused, against the FCC, and gives us NOTHING in the way of real facts to help us deliberate about the matter. How about some clarification; how about if you really try to understand their logic, instead of, as you often seem to do, feel that you’ve just got to come in with another way it’s wrong to have any regulation of industry. By now I pretty much expect from you the notion – maybe you’re a Ron Paul kind of guy – that we basically live in a jungle, that might makes right, and there are really no considerations beyond how a few people can make the most profit. We already have Bill playing that note, over and over. Every consideration as to how an enterprise might be harmful, and every proposal to curtail that, is blasted as “job killing,” to the point that the thoughtful reader wonders whether you have any understanding of the complexities at all. It took years to get the Microsoft monopoly business straightened out, and there were a lot of conflicting considerations. You make it sound as if this is “real simple” and of course here comes the job killing Obama administration to get in the way of a man looking to make an honest buck. You must know better – or, maybe you don’t . . . in which case, why are you presuming to write a column like this? Just to be alarmist?

Like I have said over and over again.  Come on CONGRESS,  defund the FCC, the FDA, the EPA, the NLRB and every other agency that is run by a czar and start over without Obama’s appointees and no more czars.

What rock have you been living under the past 3 years, Jwatersphd?

You got that right, pduffy.

This administration had already learned all it ever intended to learn, before it was elected.  It has stuck to it’s plan of obfuscation and double talk, while deliberately trying to destroy the USA from under the table.  It’s working fine so far, so why would they change course now?  Just give them one more term to finish the job.

The myriad Czars, the selective enforcement, using the Constitution as toilet paper and the so called “Recess Appointments” taking place when there is no recess of congress, are just the begining of the end.  Stick around and see what’s next.

I have NEVER seen a merger of any type lead to more jobs.

Yeah, Dean, you said it, man. Who cares if our food and drugs are safe, if someone’s poisoning your air and making your rivers so polluted they catch on fire? We’re real men, after all, and everyone deserves to make a buck no matter what the cost to the rest of us. And while we’re at it, let’s go back to gold coins. We don’t need no stinkin’ banking system … or, if we do, of course the bankers will take good care of us, they don’t need no oversight. You got it, man; let’s have a free for all! But don’t come crying to me if you get sick from the milk you drink – just stop buying it. Don’t bitch if thalidomide produces thousands of monsters with no arms and legs. Let market forces take care of it – they’ll probably stop making dangerous drugs once people catch on . . . won’t they? Caveat emptor, I say. Don’t trust anything until you’ve tried it. If you live long enough to discover it’ll kill you. C’mon man, the idea of safe food and drugs can’t really be that hard for you to understand – can it?

Oh, by the way – where do you think the FCC, FDA, EPA and NLRB came from? They came from Congress, and if they try to push your naive ideas through by “defunding” the agencies, they’ll just be like the “activist” judges you probably despise, by making laws by budgetary means. Would you like that? 

To me, the first thing that was going to happen was ATT shell out $39B to Deutsch Telekom instead of spending that money in the US. The second thing to happen would be laying off a few thousand T-Mobile employees. Third, ATT would raise T-Mobile’s rates. What would happen if ATT spent $39B on infrastructure improvements instead?

if i attack the author, it’s not an ad hominem attack on the post. An ad hominem attack is one that says the argument’s not valid because of who the person is who’s making it. I attacked the post because there is no information in it, to speak of, just a bunch of folksy “imagine that”s which oversimplify the matter beyond belief. I also attacked it because of the obvious assumption, indicated in the sarcasm, that the FCC would really be trying to make sure good service wasn’t being provided. Anyone who really believes that the people in our government are simply out to do bad things is wildly out of touch. Not everything it does is good, but we’ll get to that in a minute. I attack the author because this is typical of his articles: uninformative, cheap shots, and so on. I think we can expect more. I don’t feel like putting forth a defense of the FCC in a blog post, but you might want to look around and see that there are plenty of people writing in with defense of the FCC’s actions here. If all the FCC were trying to do was to make trouble, i don’t think you’d have people writing in to praise the outcome. I think this is probably one of the few times I’ve seen people on this forum defend anything that comes from the government. Which does NOT make what the FCC did right, all it means is that Manning’s attempt to paint this as just one more instance of how gov’t always screws things up seems to have overlooked a few subtleties. There’s plenty wrong with Ron Paul, and plenty right with him. Unfortunately, most of his strongest talking points are so inapplicable to the modern world that the country would be brought to a standstill and we’d be waiting here as isolationists. He simply has no conception of the complexities of the modern world. Sure, Iran has a perfect right to block the strait of hormuz… 

I am glad you look up the definition. Unfortunately, it does not change the fact that you attack the author and not the post. The author made some points: 1) possible jobs are lost; 2) act of gov’t interferes with free market and is unconstitutional; 3) T-mobile will not invest in its infrastructure, etc. All you did was to attack the author. May I wonder which school has awarded you a PhD?

Oh, I forgot. Do you mean to say that interfering with the free market is “unconstitutional?” Well, that’s going to be a surprise to a lot of people who’ve read it, and, probably, to the supreme court who’ve turned down challenges to regulations and a lot of other laws because they “interfere with free enterprise” time and time again. And not just “activist” judges, either. He says jobs may be lost, but, as many of the other posters have argued, jobs may also be created. T mobile not investing in its infrastructure is beside the point of whether or not a monopolistic situation is being created. What’s your point? Who cares what T mobile’s going to do? They’re going.

Jwatersphd:  Actually Sir, Congress is in the process of being gotten rid of by obummer.  He now declares “He no longer needs Congress, to get his AGENDA done”!

The fools in Congress think he will keep them in jobs.  Little do they know, a “Dictator”, only keeps those who are useful to him/her.  These idiots have given him everything he wants and are NO LONGER USEFUL to him.

So, don’t count on “Congress” to help “We the People”, in ANYTHING.  They are USELESS.

Yeah, Jwatersphd, you said it man.  Who is this fool who wants to get rid of the FCC, FDA, EPA and NLRB?  We need MORE!  We need the FCC police roaming our street with sensitive equipment to make sure we only watch and listen to government sanctioned programs paying tribute to our illustrious leader, we need to expand the FDA and have bureaucrats checking every item on our supermarkets’ shelves, the EPA better get busy to find pools of water after every rain downpour so as to find every bit of wetland that needs to be protected from greedy home builders and it is time that a representative of the NLRB is present when you go to your job to ascertain that you have the proper union card and other paperwork, signed by the appropriate Czar, with you and at the same time collect the union dues every week.  And then we need a larger police force to have oversight and be ready with their guns if any of the FCC, FDA, EPA or NLRB’s hard working bureaucrats are having any trouble with us, stupid workers.

That’s how the “Free market” is supposed to work.

This administration doesn’t need to “learn” anything. They know exactly what they are doing. Ask yourself if you wanted to destroy an economy, how would you do anything different from this administration?

 …where did the FCC, FDA, EPA and NLRB came from? These are ‘government’ agencies, and like all government they grow in size and usurp power they were not given! The problem is that Congress doesn’t keep a closer eye on them and slap them down when they deserve it. Left alone, they do what they want to do. There is always someone who desires more power, and you know what power does!