Is Net Neutrality really neutral?

Net neutrality is back on the table thanks to the Obama administration’s push to reinvent it after the courts struck it down. There are many otherwise freedom-loving, free market advocates who are starting to fall for net neutrality under the false assumption that it’s about keeping the Internet free. It’s anything but.

Net neutrality is a subjective term. Proponents argue it gives equal access to everyone on the Internet. That sounds fair and open but most people don’t realize there’s limited bandwidth and simply allowing everyone to “do their thing” results in a slowdown for everyone.

I like to compare it to an interstate. There are a finite number of lanes. When there’s a normal flow of traffic then everyone gets to their destinations on time. However, when a road hog like one of those wide loads with the yellow lights and the pilot car come through during rush hour it brings the interstate down to a crawl.

The Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are putting those wide loads in the HOV lane and charging them extra for it. Obama wants that stopped. The company everyone likes to hold up as an example is Netflix. They claim it’s unfair to charge Netflix more but Netflix is an Internet hog. Streaming movies takes up a lot of bandwidth and ISPs think it’s fair to cut special deals with these types of companies.

Quite frankly, I’m not sure what all the hubbub is about. I have cable Internet and Netflix. I never experience a slowdown. It would be hard to argue that Netflix has been harmed by any ISP deals. Their stock has gone through the roof and they’ve launched original hit television shows like House of Cards. In short, it’s not clear who Obama’s new proposal is designed to protect.

One thing it does is turn ISPs into public utilities with the government regulating what products and services they can offer and at what price. Sen. Ted Cruz summed it up in a tweet. “Net Neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.” Exactly. This is a solution in search of a problem.

Most folks have no problem with their Internet access. In fact, most people love their Internet access. They can do more, see more, experience more than ever before. And that’s happened without government interference. If you don’t like your ISP you have choices. Competition. That’s what makes everyone better. If the government sticks its nose in the middle of it the innovation will be stifled and your ISP will be turned into any other public utility.

Nothing against your local electric company but there’s not much incentive for innovation. The last thing we need to be doing is turning your ISP into another public utility.

At the epicenter of the net neutrality movement is an assumption that you have a right to the Internet your way. These folks forget just how recent dial-up was. The cable companies invented broadband. The phone companies followed. Our lives have been wildly enriched by the whole process. Why would we want to alter the matrix of how we got here? 

If the government wants to be useful it can stop allowing these big telecommunications companies to merge. I supported the president when he blocked the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. We should be inviting and encouraging more competition. We should be blocking attempts by the big boys to gobble up the little guys. More competition is what this market needs. The very last thing the market needs is more government control.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Carpe navitas: Seize the energy

You’ve probably noticed the lower gas prices by now. Experts say prices will go still lower through the end of the year. One of the reasons they expect prices to fall is because retailers can switch back to winter gas blends which are cheaper. Some of the mainstream media reports only nibble around the edges as to the primary reason for the low prices. Most ignore the truth altogether.

The reason oil prices are low — and, subsequently, gas prices — is because of what’s going on in North Dakota, Texas and now Ohio. North Dakota is home to the enormous Bakken shale reserves. They’re in the midst of an oil boom, with the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Thanks to innovations in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, oil companies are able to get at oil that, just a few years, was too expensive to find. And this has been primarily on private land.

The Obama administration loves to brag about our newly-found energy but all of this is happening in spite of them. Texas is now producing more oil per day than the entire country of Iran, mostly on private land. In fact, while we’re surpassing Saudi Arabia in oil production, the oil we’re getting from federal land is down six percent since 2009. Natural gas production on federal land is down a whopping 28 percent.

According to J. Winston Porter at The Hill, 87 percent of federally-controlled offshore oil reserves are off limits to oil and gas exploration. Imagine how our economy would come roaring back if we were able to get at all that oil. Experts say we could be completely energy independent inside of five years.

To put things into perspective as to how gas prices affect our economy, for every one-cent drop in the price at the pump there’s an extra $1 billion in consumers’ wallets, according to a study by Deutsche Bank. That’s $75 billion extra since just this past spring.

The irony is Barack Obama could lay claim to probably the most robust economic recovery in a generation if he would stop his war on oil. Instead, he continues to pump billions into green energy initiatives, many of which sink like the Titanic with our tax dollar aboard.

I have no problem with alternative sources of energy. In fact, as featured in our documentary, An Inconsistent Truth, I’ve made my own biodiesel. But there is simply not enough of the alternative energy to even come close to replacing oil and natural gas. It would make sense for us to squeeze out every drop of energy we can from the sources available while we wait for alternative technology to catch up. That’s how it’s done in a free economy but this administration has no interest in a free economy.

Now that the mid-term elections are behind us, it’s time for the congress to start focusing on energy, which has a real impact on us all, especially those at the lower end of the economic spectrum. The drop in gas prices just since spring means an average of $15 each time we fill up. If the average person fills up once a week, that’s an extra $780 a year that can go to buy something else besides gas. Certainly this administration sees how beneficial that is to lower-income households.

While oil prices have dropped, electricity prices have risen, primarily due to Obama’s war on coal. Let’s face it, this administration’s war on affordable energy is a war on the American economy and it’s time congress fought back.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Who creates jobs in Hillary's world?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s a question that’s been pondered for, perhaps, thousands of years. We may never have a definitive answer. There’s another question that’s been broached by the liberals in this country. Who creates jobs? Hillary Clinton recently stated, “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” Oh, really? Then who creates jobs?

Hillary didn’t elaborate but some of her apologists did. Bob Beckel on Fox News said consumers create jobs. Beckel, and those who echo this sentiment, have a basic misunderstanding of how the economy works. Consumers don’t create jobs. Consumers create demand, which may or may not result in a job.

Let me give you an example. Consumers for years demanded airplanes. Inventors dating back to da Vinci had dreamt, even sketched, flying machines. It wasn’t until the Wright Brothers came along and made it happen that the first job in the aircraft industry was created.

By the way, consumers have been demanding flying cars since before I was a kid. There still aren’t a lot of jobs in that industry.

So, why would Hillary make such a ridiculous statement? To answer that, one has to realize that she’s not alone in her belief. Remember President Obama’s famous “you didn’t build that” line? Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts made similar comments. That’s probably why Hillary was making hers in Warren’s back yard of Boston. It was Warren who said, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody! You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” It doesn’t occur to these shallow thinkers that if these people didn’t have jobs they wouldn’t be able to pay the taxes that provide all these services.

I guess a more important question is, which came first, the job or the taxes? The answer would be the job. Whoever the first person was to hire the first employee changed economics forever. It’s certainly possible to have an economy without jobs. In the early days, a farmer and his family would trade corn or cattle with someone else who made whatever they needed. Once currency came along it became possible to sell your goods for cash and hire someone to help you produce them. Those were the first businessmen and they created the first jobs.

To say that businesses don’t create jobs is foolish but Hillary said something even more outrageous. In that same speech, she said raising the minimum wage creates jobs. Yes, she said she had voted to raise the minimum wage several times and her husband had raised the minimum wage and each time it created jobs.

Now, let’s study on that for a second. No matter your position on raising the minimum wage, there’s no way you can argue that raising it creates jobs. In fact, the vast majority of studies show it kills jobs. Again, you’re talking about a fundamental misunderstanding of how the economy works. With people like this already in charge, is it any wonder that our economy continues to struggle years after it should’ve recovered?

Hillary was attempting to exploit that innate dislike people have for the boss. She sought to demonize businesses and convince people that they were responsible for creating jobs all by themselves. In the process, she demonstrated just how unqualified she is to be president of the United States.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Why Ebola is nothing like AIDS

The day after Eric Duncan died of Ebola in a Dallas hospital, CDC Director Tom Frieden said this to a conference of the World Bank in Washington: “In my 30 years in public health, the only thing that has been like this is AIDS. We have to work now so that this is not the world’s next AIDS.”

Comparing AIDS to Ebola is like comparing murder to suicide. The only commonality is death. I’ve stated this before but, obviously, it needs to be repeated. AIDS is the single-most preventible disease ever known to man. We know exactly how you get AIDS and we know exactly how to stop AIDS. It’s a behavioral disease.

Ebola, on the other hand, afflicts people at random. Knowing now Dr. Frieden’s mindset it’s no wonder that when Ebola first hit our shores the warnings of how you contract it were eerily similar to AIDS. It’s not transmitted through casual contact, they claimed. You can only get it through bodily fluids. What they didn’t tell us is, unlike AIDS, those bodily fluids included spit and sweat. That makes Ebola considerably more dangerous than AIDS.

Outside of those who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion — which is extremely rare these days — the transmission of AIDS was then, and still is, purposeful and reckless. It’s transmitted primarily through promiscuous sex. It can also be transmitted by sharing a needle with someone infected. Hardly as innocent as someone sneezing on you but such is the political correctness of our CDC.

In framing Ebola in the same terms as AIDS, Frieden may have put many more people at risk. Many were initially lulled into a false sense of security that was eroded as time wore on and facts about Ebola began to surface. Facts that laid waste to the CDC contention that you could not contract the disease through casual contact.

When aid workers returned from Africa with Ebola despite treating patients dressed in hazmat suits, it became clear that Ebola was far more easily transmitted than we were told. The fact that so many thousands in West Africa have come down with it destroys the myth that it’s not easily contracted.

So, why the purposeful confusion?

That’s a very good question for which immediate and easy answers are not available. Perhaps the comparison to AIDS was designed to calm our fears and stave off a panic. After all, we’ve come to understand AIDS and to no longer be afraid to interact with AIDS patients. Surely the CDC understands this is nothing at all like AIDS. If they truly believe it is then we’re in deep trouble. The way you manage and contain the two diseases is completely different.

Beating AIDS is simple. You simply educate the public on how it’s transmitted. You discourage promiscuous sex — most specifically between men — and you warn of the dangers of shooting up. Oh, well what about all those women who are getting AIDS? It’s true that women account for about 20 percent of new HIV infections but those women are getting AIDS either from a man who’s had sex with a man or through sharing a dirty needle with someone with AIDS.

In short, AIDS is about personal responsibility. Ebola strikes randomly. In fact, even though AIDS kills about 15,000 people per year in America and only 1 person has died of Ebola, I have a much better chance of getting Ebola than AIDS. That’s something the CDC would never tell you but it’s true.

When this administration and the folks at the CDC lie, people die. It’s as simple as that.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Why so mysterious about Ebola patients?

If one were to go to Central Casting to find that stereotypical authority figure whose omnipresent face is on television to tell the public there’s nothing to fear in the face of certain catastrophe, it would be Dr. Thomas Frieden from the CDC. Of course, that’s not to say we’re facing certain catastrophe. Far from it. The chances of any of us contracting Ebola is slim. However, our chances are increasing daily by the bungling of this crisis by our government.

Normally, in times like this when there’s the potential of a pandemic, citizens are given an abundance of information in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease. Ebola is different and it’s different for one simple reason. Its coming from Africa has made it a political hot potato.

Early on, before the disease ever reached our shores, Dr. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said, “We must be careful not to characterize Ebola as an African disease.” She said we needed to ensure that the “affected countries aren’t stigmatized and isolated.”

Of course, everyone knows what you do with a disease you can’t cure. You isolate it. Not this one. Over 150 people come to America each day from the three countries in Africa where the outbreak is most severe. Everyone from President Obama on down tells us that banning flights from these countries would not help and might even hurt. That makes no sense whatsoever unless one applies liberal logic. Dr. Frieden says it’ll “backfire” because banning people from going to these countries will cut off precious resources they need to fight Ebola. Dr. Frieden, no one’s talking about banning people from going over there. We’re worried about people coming in this direction.

He says we can never reduce the risk of Ebola spreading in America to zero. Well, guess what, Dr. Frieden. If we had banned travel before, like any country with common sense would, Ebola would not be in America right now.

But you have to understand where Thomas Frieden is coming from. This is the guy behind New York Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on smoking, trans fats and his attempt to ban large soft drinks and limit salt. The very essence of Frieden is control, so it’s no wonder that when a disease escapes the confines of Africa and comes here he wants to control all the information about it. His expertise is in manipulating the public.

There’s absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t know everything the CDC knows when it comes to those with Ebola. Frieden withheld everything about Eric Duncan when he came to America with Ebola. It was the news media who discovered his name, his flight schedule, where he’d been staying, etc. There’s no reason we shouldn’t have been told all that from the beginning. 

The CDC is worried we’ll panic but what does panic look like? It doesn’t look like hysterical people running the streets in front of Godzilla. If I knew I was on a flight with Eric Duncan or sitting next to him at an airport restaurant and I started having symptoms of a stomach virus I would immediately seek medical attention. Otherwise, I ride that illness out. If it’s Ebola and I wait three or four days, I’m dead. And I’ve also spread it to who knows who in the meantime.

Of course, Frieden still doesn’t get it. With the cold-hearted cadence of an Orwellian authority figure he refers to Eric Duncan as “the index patient.” He continues to obfuscate while a potential 55,000 carriers of Ebola per year stream into America.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Defining marriage — gay or otherwise

People are presuming that the recent Supreme Court decision not to hear gay marriage cases in five states means it's unconstitutional for a state to ban gay marriage. That presumes that the federal government has any authority over marriage in the first place.

The 10th Amendment clearly states that what's not in the Constitution is under the authority of the states. But, do the states, themselves, have any right to require a license? There are many who believe they do not. In fact, the marriage license is, historically, a fairly new invention. The first marriage licenses in America didn’t appear until after the Civil War

and were not commonplace in all states until the 1920s. Marriage was regarded — and still is by some — as a purely religious affair.

Many Libertarians believe if the state is going to issue anything regarding marriage it should be a certificate, not a license. Marriage is a right and should not be licensed anymore than a birth should require a license. At birth our parents receive a birth certificate. It’s merely a record of a notable event that can be carried forward in life as proof of the event for any entity that requires it, but one should no more be required to obtain a license to marry than to be born.

Although the history of licensing marriage is murky the origins of what entity invented the license is not. The first marriage licenses came from states and spread to other states. They did not come from the federal government therefore it’s folly to believe that the federal government has any jurisdiction whatsoever over marriage.

The point of confusion is the difference between the right to marry and the right to license. I have a right to marry anyone I like insofar as I can find someone in an official capacity to perform the marriage. They are under no obligation to do so. Marriage is a personal commitment between people, sanctified, historically, by a church. However, if I want the state to sanction the marriage I must first obtain a marriage license. That doesn’t make me any more married. I just makes it official with the state. Think of it like a copyright. I automatically have a copyright on this material as soon as I create it and lay my thoughts down for others to read. I can go through the formality of obtaining an official copyright on the material but that doesn’t mean I’m any more entitled to copyright protection than if I didn’t.

What a marriage license basically signifies is that the people of that state recognize your marriage as legit. That’s why the current system of some states recognizing gay marriage and others not has worked out just fine. If you’re gay and you want to be officially married then congregate with people who think that’s cool.

If you don’t believe marriage is a state issue then remember what the justice of the peace used to say. We’ve seen it dozens of times in movies. "By the power vested in me by the state of Such-and-such..." The power over marriage licensing belongs to the state and the state alone. The power of marriage itself belongs to the individuals.

If the states ever want to wrest any power back from the federal government it's time for some governor somewhere to have the guts to tell these federal judges that they have no authority in regards to marriage. In other words, "Thanks for your opinion, now go pound sand."

I'm still waiting for a governor to stand up and say just that.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Oil will save the economy

Two interesting phenomena are happening simultaneously that may prove to reduce the price at the pump dramatically over the next couple of years. First of all, the old “peak oil” predictions seem to be a thing of the past. So-called experts inside and outside the oil industry have predicted for years that we would run out of oil. Heck, J.D. Rockefeller’s partner at Standard Oil, John Archbold, famously sold some of his shares of stock at a discount in 1885 over fears the oil was running out.

Recent leaps in technology — specifically hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — have brought once-dormant oil fields back to life. North Dakota is in the midst of an oil boom. The United States is set to overtake Saudi Arabia in oil production for

the first time since 1991. And this is happening on private land. This country could be completely energy-independent if the Obama administration would allow drilling on public land.

Instead, Obama has gone in the opposite direction, subsidizing green energy with direct payments and loan guarantees. There’s nothing wrong with green energy but wind and solar have been around longer than oil and they still haven’t managed to become commercially viable enough to make up a significant percentage of our energy sources.

The second phenomenon that we’re witnessing is the wholesale collapse of the global warming argument. This was the pretext for shifting away from oil to a so-called green economy. You wouldn’t know it was collapsing by the rhetoric coming out of the White House or the UN. They have doubled down on the notion that somehow we’re destroying the planet with harmless carbon dioxide. When one takes a step back, it’s laughable that something as essential to life on earth as carbon dioxide has been so demonized. It’s the equivalent of demonizing oxygen.

No one is denying that the production of carbon dioxide has gone up. In fact, this has been the plan all along. Inventions like the catalytic converter change harmful gases into harmless CO2. We should be encouraging more CO2 production. Any time CO2 is being released from an exhaust pipe or smokestack it is in place of something harmful and deadly. Yet the preachers of doom tell us that CO2 production causes temperatures to rise and the earth to bake. Turns out that over the last 18 years temperatures have remained steady while CO2 has gone, literally, through the roof. What happened?

What happened was the theory was seriously flawed from the beginning. The theory that more CO2 caused global warming was akin to the theory that a crowing rooster makes the sun rise. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

Temperature fluctuations are caused by all sorts of complicated combinations from solar output to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The climate is far more complicated than the over-simplistic notion that carbon dioxide causes warming. In fact, there’s a good reason why no one has been able to prove manmade global warming. Because it’s not happening.

According to Gallup, the percentage of people skeptical of manmade global warming has more than doubled since 2001. Much of the reason is because, with each passing year, the evidence of the global warming theory is evaporating.

Which means we’re in a great position for economic growth. Oil fuels the engine of our economy. When it’s cheap we have all sorts of disposable income to spend on other things. 

At the end of the day, it won’t be Obama, the Democrats, or green energy that get our economy going again. Much to their chagrin, it’ll be oil.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.