FCC regulators want to provide wider and cheaper broadband access by subsidizing it, raising taxes, and forcing network owners to share their network infrastructure with competitors.

A few things the FCC should consider:

-Subsidies don’t make broadband access any less expensive. They just change who pays for it. In this case, that would be anybody with a phone. Which probably includes you. The great economist Ludwig von Mises observed that “A government can no more determine prices than a goose can lay hen’s…

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Last week the House of Representatives passed HR 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which allocates $816 billion to stimulate the economy. Environmental policy figures prominently in the House’s stimulus package, including $72 in direct spending for green energy and $20 billion in clean energy tax incentives. According to the liberal Center for American Progress, this $92 billion will create 459,000 green jobs by 2010, at a cost of $196,000 per job. What a deal!

The Senate will soon begin…

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Great. Now USDA head Tom Vilsack is saying the US ethanol industry needs to be protected in the borrow-and-spend bill, and beyond:

“The ethanol industry is under particular strain,” Vilsack said in a
conference call with reporters.

Loan guarantees for the industry, distributed by the USDA as part of the
2008 Farm Bill, “can help more of these companies stay in business,” Vilsack
said, though he warned that “there will be a premium on ethanol producers who
can stay efficient,” a clear warning that there…

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