‘If You Like Your Internet, You Can Keep Your Internet’ and Other Government Lies

Conservatives and Libertarians inherently have little faith or trust in government. We know the institution is inherently flawed – and self-serving.

Government violates the Wallet Rule. Which is:

You go out on a Friday night with your wallet. You go out the following Friday night with my wallet. On which night are you going to have more fun?

Government is always working with our wallet – theirs is empty until they first fleece ours. They will thus never spend our money as prudently, wisely or well as do we.

Government is just another organism. Like any other, its first priority is self-preservation – its second self-expansion. And worse than just about any other – it will do whatever it takes to accomplish these priorities.

Including lie its collective face off.

The Barack Obama Administration is the most government-expansive administration in our nation’s history. To that end, they have used any means necessary – including lying its collective face off. For instance:

“If you like your health care plan/doctor – you can keep your health care plan/doctor.”

This Administration’s obsessive government expansion occurs in the face of it being just like any other administration and government entity – incessantly, serially incompetent at doing just about anything.

All of which has led people – well beyond conservative and libertarian circles – here:

CNN Poll: Trust in Government at All-Time Low

Gallup Poll: Trust In Government Problem-Solving Reaches New Low

Which brings us to the current debate over the government power grabbing huge now authority over the Internet.

President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – and its Obama-appointee Chairman Tom Wheeler – are contemplating fundamentally transforming how the government regulates the Web. It’s called Title II Reclassification.

Title II is the uber-regulatory superstructure with which we have strangled landline phones – you know, that bastion of technological and economic innovation. Which do you find more impressive – your desktop dialer or your iPhone?

Title II regulations date back to the 1930s – so you know they’ll be a perfect fit for the ultra-modern, incredibly dynamic, expanding-like-the-universe World Wide Web.

This would be the most detrimental of all Information Superhighway road blocks. Rather than the omni-directional, on-the-fly innovation that now constantly occurs, Title II is a Mother-May-I-Innovate, top-down traffic congest-er. Imagine taking a 16-lane Autobahn down to just a grass shoulder.

But fret not, the regulators tell us. They will wield just some – and not all – of their massive new powers. They will practice “forbearance.”

“(F)orbearance” refers to a special magic power that Congress gave the FCC…which gives the FCC the power to say “you know that specific provision of law that Congress passed? We decide it really doesn’t make sense for us to enforce it in some particular case, so we will “forbear” (hence the term ‘forbearance’) from enforcing it.”

Can we trust government to – forever and for always – leave regulatory powers on the table unused?

Can we trust this Administration – the most government-expansive ever – to do so?

Can we trust this particular FCC?

Coalition Warns FCC Chairman about FCC’s Increasing Politicization

In a letter sent today to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, a coalition of groups expressed concerns over the agency’s loss of objectivity and impartiality in recent proceedings, especially the FCC’s ongoing Open Internet rulemaking.

The letter urges the Commission to keep partisan politics out of its decision-making process, to avoid spinning media coverage, and to focus on substance, not the total number of comments filed in controversial proceedings.

This FCC?

‘Most Transparent Ever?’ Behold the FCC’s Secret, Crony Socialist Meetings

This FCC?

FCC Chairman Won’t Allow His IG To Hire Any Criminal Investigators

We certainly can not. In what can we trust?

Aesop Knew: Regulators Regulate – It’s Their Nature

When Bureaucrats Determine Their Own Limits – There Are No Limits

You bet.

So when the government tells us – as it ramps up new, massive government power grabs – “If you like your Internet – you can keep your Internet?”

Don’t you believe it.

Editor’s Note: This first appeared in Human Events.