Across the centuries, centralized power has sought to impose its will on people out in the provinces. It’s a classic political science issue: the core vs. the periphery, and it usually involves the arrogance of core power.
For instance, back in the 18th century, King George III and the Crown’s government in London tried to push around the 13 American Colonies—and we know what happened in 1776.
Today, it’s Joe Biden, the “king” of a deep administrative state in Washington, D.C., seeking to micromanage the 50 states, in defiance of a law that Biden himself signed. It’s the arrogance of power; all a part of the same long train of abuses and usurpations, from the 18th century to the 21st century.
You see, over the last three years, the Bidenites have done what woke Naderites always do: They have piled on red tape, both to build their own bureaucratic empires and to help their activist allies, such as the trial lawyers.
Happily, there’s been strong pushback from beyond the D.C. Beltway. In two environmental cases, folks in West Virginia and Minnesota took on the Biden Environmental Protection Agency—and won in the Supreme Court. In two other high court cases, real people defeated the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Disease Control.
Oh, and conservatives in Nebraska won a SCOTUS victory on student loan forgiveness. By “forgiveness” we mean the court disallowed transferring debt from former students to all taxpayers. Yet the Biden administration has simply chosen not to lose. Defiance, not compliance.
On February 21, the president said that “MAGA Republicans” and “special interests” had challenged his student-loan forgiveness. “The Supreme Court blocked it,” he crowed, “but that didn’t stop me.” In the tart opinion of The Wall Street Journal, “He apparently thinks defying the law is a virtue.” In fact, Biden has managed to wheedle “forgiveness” of $138 billion in student loans. As an aside, we might ask: Should that $138 billion count as an in-kind contribution to the Biden-Harris re-election campaign? Total student-loan debt, by the way, is $1.7 trillion, so we’ll have to see how much more the Bidenites can cadge away.
We could cite plenty of other issues where the administration is pushing, if not actually breaking, the law, from the border,to electric vehicles, to plastics, to artificial intelligence.
But for the sake of brevity, let’s focus on just one issue where the centralized blue dot in D.C. intends to crush the surrounding red zone. Telephone and cable regulation might seem arcane, and it is, even if the fine print of anything tends to be dull. However, one top-line number ought to attract attention: $42 billon. That head-turning sum comes from the infrastructure bill that President Biden signed into law in 2021.
Within that multi-trillion-dollar total was the $42 billion; those funds are, in effect, a golden hammer to be wielded by the Crown of D.C., so as to pound the states into submission.
Specifically, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a unit of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has been allocated $42.45 billion for its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. If the word “equity,” when used by progressives, is starting to ring an alarm bell, good. Because the “E” in BEAD has the same intention as the “E” in DEI.
Broadband, getting everyone connected, is for sure, a good idea, although maybe spending $42 billion on it at a time when the federal government is already borrowing nearly $2 trillion a year isn’t the best idea.
In any case, broadband is happening. In fact, it’s worth recalling the impressive internet gains made before anyone ever thought up BEAD. The internet was at near zero four decades ago, and three decades ago, less than five percent of Americans used the net; today, more than 93 percent use it. And as for internet access, that’s about 99 percent; it’s worth keeping in mind that not everyone chooses to be online. As for broadband access, it’s over 90 percent. So maybe there’s not that much of a problem for BEAD, and its borrowed $42 billion, to actually solve.
But if broadband is a problem that needs to be solved, Congress had a clear intent when it passed the infrastructure bill: the states, not BEAD, should take the lead. The states are, after all, the proper and obvious “laboratories of democracy.” The authors of the Constitution, including the Tenth Amendment, never knew about the internet, and yet they knew for sure that whatever the issue, it was best to let the locals have the first crack at the problem. Out of such freedom, who knows what sort of innovation and creativity can emerge.
In the meantime, the federal government has done what it so often does: it has gummed things up. As of March 2024, as we approach the third anniversary of the infrastructure bill, a grand total of one state has seen its BEAD program approved by the feds.
If we drill down to just a single state, Virginia, we see it was allocated $1.5 billion in BEAD money. But here’s the catch: the BEAD-crats want to tell Virginia, and its Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, precisely how to spend that money, because, of course, in their royal view, the central Crown knows best. Notably, in its dictate, BEAD demanded that Virginia lay out, in advance, the “exact price or formula” for its broadband plans. If Virginia doesn’t bow down, then BEAD could withhold the $1.5 billion, or dribble it out at a pace only a bureaucrat could love; the government just eye-dropped $18 million. So Virginia can’t be a laboratory of democracy; instead, BEAD will be a citadel of autocracy.
But there’s just one thing: That 2021 infrastructure bill prohibits federal rate regulation, it’s at Sec.60102(h)(5)(D)NTIA for those who wish to see for themselves. In the words of the R Street Institute, the administration is showing a “blatant disregard for Congressional intent in its attempts to impose price controls on broadband internet access service.”
The Free State Foundation’s Andrew Long adds a further useful point: “Competitive forces are ideally suited to the task of driving prices to their optimal levels. A heavy regulatory hand, by contrast, tends to clumsily set prices too low, thereby disincentivizing entry and innovation, or too high, thereby discouraging adoption.”
Yes, that’s the danger: BEAD and the rest of the federal government will so tangle up broadband in red tape that it won’t expand—it might even contract, as the money is used up by consultants, lawyers, environmental impact statements, etc. (This is the same Biden Administration, after all, that has managed to turn a simple rehab of D.C.’s Union Station into a two-decade crawl and managed to build just seven electric vehicle charging stations—just a bit shy of the 500,000 it says it will get with its $7.5 billion “investment.”)
Given that sort of sclerosis, what will happen with BEAD and Virginia—and to all the other states? Some pieces of good news: Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) has been trying to chip away at its costs. And at a recent conference in Washington held by the Free State Foundation, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blasted the Biden administration's attempts at "Orwellian control.”
For a longer perspective, we might think on the events of 250 years ago. In 1774, when the King’s Crown still ruled America, the dot-heads in London promulgated the Coercive Acts (their term), meant to crush the colonies. For their part, the American patriots rejected being coerced; they called them the Intolerable Acts—and the rest is history.
A quarter-millennium later, Americans out in the states are much stronger relative to the arbitrary dot-power of Biden’s Crown. For starters, we have the Constitution, which decentralizes power. Moreover, we have plenty of legal and peaceful ways of registering protest and securing justice. Notably, this year we have elections in which we can replace BEAD-y zealots with trust-the-people leaders who wish to see broadband develop, but, even more, wish to see freedom protected.
Yes to broadband, but always, Liberty First.
