About Scott Cleland
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You are hereRegulationThe Dangers of Over-Regulating CompetitionSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2011-06-06 16:00As a regular reader of Steve Pearlstein's Washington Post's business column, I was dismayed at the consistent pro-regulation frame of Sunday's piece on the AT&T-T-Mobile acquisition: "The Revenge of the Baby Bells." The hallmark of longstanding bipartisan competition policy has been that if market players have the freedom to succeed or fail at differentiating, innovating and investing to meet consumers' rapidly evolving needs, market forces can maximize consumer welfare much better than FCC regulators can.
Thus it is dismaying that Mr. Pearlstein crafted a false choice in his column: "...stick with the competitive, lightly-regulated model and... block a merger... or it could acknowledge... the "telephone" market is a natural oligopoly... and... requires much stronger government regulation."
Denying Competitive Substitution is Weakest Link of FCC's De-Competition PolicySubmitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2011-05-31 18:32In order to justify broadband price regulation in the Open Internet and Data Roaming orders, the FCC and FreePress must continue to undermine Congress' competition policy by denying the increasingly obvious and incontrovertible facts that users competitively substitute broadband services between various broadband technologies like copper networks/DSL, cable modems, fiber, WiFi/WiMax, wireless broadband, and satellite.
Pro-regulation FreePress' Fact-Challenged Opposition to AT&T/T-MobileSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2011-05-26 18:19FreePress' radical anti-business, anti-capitalism politics lead it to make up or contort facts and analogies in order to promote its world view of a publicly-owned and regulated Internet commons. In FreePress' latest opposition to the AT&T-T-Mobile merger, FreePress continues to nonsensically analogize this merger with the Ma Bell monopoly.
How FCC Data Roaming Order Undermines FCC's Net Neutrality RegulationsSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2011-05-26 09:51The FCC's Open Internet Order is even more likely to be overturned in court than before because the FCC's extraordinary delay in publishing its December net neutrality regulations has oddly moved the FCC's April Data Roaming Order to the front of the line of cases challenging the FCC's overall legal authority to regulate broadband.
Consequently both cases are now more likely to be heard in the FCC-unfriendly D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. FCC's In Search of Relevance in 706 ReportSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2011-05-23 09:24The FCC's latest arbitrary and capricious torturing of the facts, law, and common sense, in its most recent 706 report, makes it obvious that the FCC is "in search of relevance" and highly insecure about its authority and role in the broadband competition era.
Thus the pro-regulation forces at the FCC are increasingly and proactively seeking to discredit competition policy wherever possible by ignoring and torturing any facts, evidence, logic and common sense that do not forward their government-centric-view that "expert" FCC regulators invariably know best. Consider the common thread between: Pro-Regulation Camp Seeks to Undermine Competition Policy in AT&T/T-Mobile ReviewSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2011-05-09 15:00Like pro-regulation forces did everything they could to undermine competition policy to justify FCC net neutrality regulation last year, those same FreePress-led pro-regulation forces are focused in 2011 on trying to characterize the AT&T/T-Mobile combination as a threat to competition -- so that they can impose new regulations on AT&T that they can then try and force on the rest of the industry. The problem is that the FreePress-led pro-regulation forces are trying to convince people of the preposterous claim that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will reconstitute the Ma Bell Monopoly when the obvious facts are that AT&T is no longer dominant 27 years after the Bell-break-up. The Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearing on the AT&T-T-Mobile merger is entitled: "The AT&T/T-Mobile Merger: Is Humpty Dumpty Being Put Back Together Again?"
Just like it was preposterous last year that the U.S. was falling behind on broadband because of insufficient competition, it is preposterous that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will reconstitute the the Ma Bell monopoly.
The Big Unanswered Net Neutrality QuestionsSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2011-05-05 19:26The latest debate over net neutrality regulation in the House Judiciary Committee today spotlighted for me three big fundamental questions that the FCC has still not answered.
FreePress Continues to Divide Not UniteSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2011-04-20 12:30FreePress' campaign director, Tim Karr, continues to overuse its main political tactic of demonizing anyone that disagrees with FreePress' goal of ridding the world of free market capitalism and property ownership. FreePress' play book is all about the politicization of issues -- dividing people, not uniting them. Read Randy May's Great NRO Piece "Rolling Back Regulation at the FCC"Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2011-04-19 14:41Kudos to Randy May of the Free State Foundation for his outstanding must-read piece in the National Review Online: "Rolling Back Regulation at the FCC --How Congress Can Help Competition Flourish." It is a very important reminder that Congress nearly unanimously set U.S. communications policy in 1996 "to promote competition and reduce regulation," in stark contrast to the FCC's Open Internet de-competition policy.
Randy is also dead right that the FCC looks backward to preserve its regulatory raison d'etre, rather than looking forward, obeying the law and trusting competition to drive consumer benefits. We so need an FCC that genuinely encourages competition and lets consumers and the market choose market winners and losers, not the FCC.
The Net Neutrality Accountability GauntletSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2011-04-12 13:33The House's rejection of the FCC's December Open Internet order 240-179 is just the latest in an ongoing high-profile accountability gauntlet for the FCC's unauthorized, unwarranted and unjustified net neutrality rules.
The Net Neutrality Accountability Gauntlet:
First, the President's January Executive Order, "Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review" to seek the "least burdensome" regulations, was a big post-mid-term election political pivot by the Administration to be more sensitive to business, economic growth and job creation concerns.
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