Let's end the Federal Communication Commission once and for all, for plenty of reasons. The First Amendment for starters. by Dan Steward
(libertarian)
Friday, August 1, 2008
The symptoms include that we have a deadline of February 17, 2009 to convert all existing television signals to digital, we can't advertise cigarettes on t.v. and radio, and any drive-by "wardrobe malfunction" can trigger legal free speech on the airwaves to be instantly cherry picked by ever changing fiat. Please don't even get me started on those draconian FCC fines.
The actual disease is that we have an FCC in the first place. It is as repugnant to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as any single federal agency could ever be, just by existing.
It is a clearing house of absurd fascist censorship, typical government monopolistic business practices, and a continual drain on the wallets of the taxpayers lest we ever forget that this scabby arm of Big Brother is entirely funded by proceeds taken from all of us by the usual implied threat of force.
It's not that the FCC "should do this or do that...". It should instead declare itself illegal and close down forever. It can never convince me of any claim to a legitimate right to remain, as I am forever unmoved by the tears of any possible "recently unemployed" so-called servants of the public.
The doors having to shut permanently last week, will work just fine for me to soothe my Libertarian soul. I won't hold my breath until it happens, of course but, they haven't made it illegal for me to dream, right? Then on to the work of defanging the other alphabet vampires.
As any agency given power it will abuse such power and the bigger they get the more they will want to still grow. Government just can't help itself as it expands uncontrollably because a great number of voices do not stand against the behemoth and say "enough!"
That the analog channel frequencies are being sold off (Government greed can be counted on to be almost always at the root of typical Government motives) to emergency responders is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait till these bozos really get wound up.
Because it still exists the FCC may do something equally stupid to compete with it's current foolish diktat. It may decide that because cell phones have captured so much of the personal communications market, it will be illegal to use pagers and "who needs those CB radios anyway?" will be their next mantra.
Thusforth they slither about while salivating over just what they'll do with the filthy lucre obtained from selling pager numbers back to the phone companies or peddling off the frequencies of citizens band channels to rural fire departments. Dig through the boxes and trunks in the attic and get that walkie-talkie to a rummage sale, and quick!
If they don't have that power already, who would stop them from stealing it in the future? Just how much less control do you think the FCC had when it cursed the nation (while disallowing cursing) as it first spawned forth from it demon's cocoon?
Why stop there? Newspaper subscriptions are dwindling, (do it for the "trees", some cry) then decree they shut down the presses. Bloggers are mostly boring, "The National Bandwidth Reduction Act of 2011 was enacted into law earlier today". See where this goes?
We didn't need them then, we certainly have no use for their communications tyranny now. End the FCC and watch Liberty's light shine again.
With Liberty,
Dan Steward
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If you drive on a street or highway, you need some kind of traffic law. Without such law, you would have chaos. The electromagnetic spectrum is somewhat broad, but it has limits. Police and Fire and public service require use, unencumbered use of a small portion of it. Were this not regulated, people would CB chat, over-riding essential emergancy service communications. Radio and television could not broadcast unless they had exclusive local use of a piece of the spectrum. Wireless telephone and internet connections could not work without those small piece of spectrum being free of other signals. Some regulation is necessary, or electromagnetic traffic would cause chaos. There might be argument that the FCC does a poor job, but every civilized country has a similar set of laws. You just can't run a society today without some order in the electromagnetic spectrum.
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