Tech at Night: More on Republican support of the Marketplace Fairness Act

Tech at Night

Governors Robert Bentley, Mitch Daniels, Dennis Daugaard, Bill Haslam, Paul LePage, Rick Snyder, and Tom Corbett are part of push for the Marketplace Fairness act. I’ve come across a July letter to John Boehner, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi. I find it odd they’d do so now, unless they think they have no chance under a potential Republican Congress. Could that be the case? I wonder.

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And yes, those are all Republican governors, some of whom were part of the 2010 landslide. It’s only Republicans I’m seeing back MFA, not Democrats. Democrats are fine with just passing new taxes or raising old ones. They aren’t as hard up to maximize collections of old taxes as Republicans are.

And yes, again, don’t bother to lecture me on how horribly that act is named. MFA’s big box retail supporters are its worst enemy, in the terrible rhetoric they choose. I suspect Lamar Alexander and some other supporters of MFA are doing so for all the wrong reasons. But I think the bill helps Republican governors avoid having to raise taxes or pass new ones, so I’d rather it passed in some form.

So if Verizon crushes AT&T in the LTE wars, will Obamanauts in and out of FCC continue to brag about blocking AT&T/T-Mobile?

Speaking of FCC and competition, FCC is now talking about changing the rules again on spectrum and competition. Hopefully they will do as House Republicans have asked and change the rules to make then more transparent, more consistent, and more apt to improve universal access through greater and more market-efficient spectrum allocation.

It should surprise nobody at this point that so many so-called tech libertarians, including those at ACLU, actually support the rights of the individual only when they don’t restrict government action. The radicals adopt the language of liberty when pushing extremism.

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The Chicoms are paying people to spy on American business. Be on guard, and don’t expect government to save the day. Government is only going to be of help after the fact. So no, the Cybersecurity Act would not have helped here.

What definitely would hurt though are those who would undermine cybersecurity in private business, trying to keep future spies from being able to make off with data.

Finishing with some Google: FTC’s investigation of Google finishes soon, but FTC is getting scrutiny of its own as Consumer Watchdog is suing over the WiSpy settlement, saying $22.5 million was too small. I agree that it was too small, but I’m not sure this is the way to address that.

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