But in other bad news, Jacob Sullum reports: Trump's Pick To Run the FCC Wants To Restrict the Editorial Discretion of Social Media Platforms.
Announcing his choice of Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump described him as "a warrior for Free Speech," which sounds good until you ask what Trump means by that. Carr, who has served as a Republican FCC commissioner since Trump appointed him during his first term in August 2017, believes that promoting freedom of speech requires curtailing liability protections for social media platforms and restricting their editorial discretion.
Carr's agenda for "reining in Big Tech," as described in the chapter that he contributed to the Heritage Foundation's 2025 Mandate for Leadership, includes new FCC rules aimed at restricting the liability protection offered by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Carr also supports regulations that would "impose transparency rules on Big Tech" and legislation that "scraps Section 230's current approach." He favors "reforms that prohibit discrimination against core political viewpoints," which he says "would track the approach taken in a social media law passed in Texas."
To his credit, Carr is a foe of Network Neutrality, which is pissing off some of the right people. (Example, Karl Bode at Techdirt: Trump Tags Brendan Carr To Dismantle What’s Left Of Broadband Consumer Protection At FCC)
But apparently, as Sullum details, that's not due to Carr (or Trump) having a principled bias against big-government regulation. That goes out the window when you can use "regulation" as a weapon against your political enemies.
The right answer is provided by Thomas W. Hazlett in Reason's "Abolish Everything" issue: Abolish the FCC.
On February 23, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge—on the advice of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, America's first regulator of radio—signed the Radio Act. In policy folklore, this law salvaged the rational use of frequencies according to "public interest, convenience or necessity." As the U.S. Supreme Court later summarized it: "Before 1927, the allocation of frequencies was left entirely to the private sector, and the result was chaos. It quickly became apparent that…without government control, the medium would be of little use because of the cacaphony [sic] of competing voices."
Misspelling cacophony was not the only grievous error in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969). In 1927, mass-market electronic communications had already arisen under the common law rule of "first come, first served" and did not need federal micromanagement. What the new Federal Radio Commission later deemed "five years of orderly development" (1921–26) was disrupted by strategic regulatory dancing that preempted enforcement of such property rights. Sen. Clarence Dill (D–Wash.), author of the 1927 Radio Act, explained that the purpose "from the beginning…was to prevent private ownership of wave lengths or vested rights of any kind in the use of radio transmitting apparatus."
The FCC was a bad idea back then, created amidst the increasing popularity of progressive/socialist/fascist reactions against free-market liberalism. Time for it to go, not look for new ways to boss private companies around.
Also of note:
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Newsflash: Old dog still performing old tricks. James Freeman notes that Biden Still Hasn’t Learned.
How much damage can a president do in two months? America may be about to find out as the man considered mentally unfit to be prosecuted or run for re-election embarks on a mad dash to advance a failed agenda.
Fatima Hussein, Matthew Daly and Collin Binkley reported on Friday for the Associated Press:
Biden administration officials are working against the clock doling out billions in grants and taking other steps to try to preserve at least some of the outgoing president’s legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
Also in the works: another unconstitutional end run around Congress on student loan "forgiveness".
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We have met the enemy and he is us. Kevin D. Williamson fingers Public Enemy No. 1. And that would be the Federal Debt. Excerpt:
At the end of Trump’s first year in office, federal debt was 102 percent of GDP; by the time Joe Biden was elected, debt was 122 percent of GDP. Pandemic-related spending accounted for much of that spike, sure, but the debt was on its way up in the years leading up to COVID-19, too. The Biden administration has been no great shakes on spending, but it is worth pointing out that debt as a share of GDP is slightly lower today than it was at its peak during the first Trump administration. Of course, presidents are not uniquely responsible for debt and deficits—Congress has a say, too. But what congressional Republicans mainly have said to Trump is: “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
How many days in a row have I been saying this? We'll see how that turns out.
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Ssh. Don't tell them. If the MSM were smart, they would listen to Megan McArdle: Liberal media bias is hurting Democrats. Really.
I used to spend a lot of time complaining that liberal media bias hurt Republican politicians and conservative causes. I no longer make that argument.
Oh, I still agree with conservatives that the mainstream media is biased toward the left. It could hardly be otherwise, given the political leanings of journalists: A 2022 survey showed that fewer than 4 percent identified as Republicans. In the worst cases, this leads to reporting that treats “Republicans like a crime beat and Democrats like friends in need.” More commonly, it subtly affects what stories journalists choose to cover, what angle they take, whose experts they give more credence and whose feelings they are careful not to hurt.
This effect has grown pronounced over the past decade, in part thanks to pressure from progressive staffers at media organizations. But along the way, something ironic happened: I started to believe that media bias had stopped helping Democrats. Instead, it started to hurt them, along with the institutions themselves.
During this election cycle, I watched in astonishment as left-wing critics complained that the mainstream media was botching this election by “sanewashing” Trump, failing in our duty to cover “not the odds, but the stakes” and trading in false equivalence. I was not astonished that progressives wanted us to spend more time criticizing Trump and less time pointing out the flaws of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. I was amazed because they were talking as if this might affect the election’s outcome.
I assume Megan's under no illusions that her criticisms will affect the trajectory of MSM distrust in the general population.
![[The Blogger and His Dog]](/ps/images/me_with_barney.jpg)
