Monday night, as promised, we still have some catch up work to do. So let’s start with those Amazon Taxes, those Internet sales taxes of dubious Constitutionality. Colorado’s got tossed in federal court and Illinois’s didn’t raise any money. Obeying the Constitution counts, folks. Pass a true interstate compact through the Congress first.

Also as promised, there’s the matter of the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act. This is the one where ACU has come out against Jim DeMint, and that caught my attention. I have to side with the bill DeMint is sponsoring. I think ACU simply misunderstood what’s at stake here and had good intentions, but the excessive complexity of the regulations defeated them here.

The bill does not let cable providers become free riders, retransmitting others’ streams for free. It just stops the law from trying to dictate the parameters of the negotiations on retransmissions. I see no harm in that, and potentially much good.

Here we go again. Apparently we’re supposed to be unhappy with the CISPA information sharing bill by Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger because it potentially could be used against copyright infringement. And SOPA is invoked against that. SOPA wasn’t defeated because everyone hates copyright. It was a power grab. Take your anti-copyright anarchy battles home, Reddit kiddies. You and your Anontard buddies.

More cybersecurity still: We cannot and must not have DHS start regulating the Internet. Government can’t even secure itself yet and so has no standing to dictate to others. Information sharing in the private sector, without government gatekeepers, is far more useful for protecting our country’s Internet resources. Further, with the irrationality and secrecy of TSA and its regulations, how can we trust them at all?

Going back to SOPA, Comcast was apparently for it, which doesn’t surprise me. Comcast is an ISP particular vulnerable to Bittorrent users flooding the network with high volume copyright infringement dragging down service for everyone.

Is a problem with tech patents, including software patents, that the system isn’t scaling well? Size, not just speed?

Apparently all the fuss over FCC reform, using white spaces as an excuse to oppose all FCC reform out of the Congress, was resolved with white space use marching on. This could be interesting. We’ll have to watch and see how it works, or whether we just get a tragedy of the commons.

An interesting development in the Do Not Track saga: Radicals and businesses are interpreting them differently, but frankly, the interpretation of the radicals is stupid. There already is a way to not be tracked at all, and not just exclude third parties: Disable cookies, dummies. The radical agenda apparently to be promoted by the FTC is out of touch with the actual technologies involved.

Apparently the FTC folks don’t understand that if you don’t want tracked by, say, Amazon’s recommendations, then you simply shouldn’t log into Amazon all the time.

LightSquared may be on the verge of bankruptcy, but Chuck Grassley is still fighting tenaciously for FCC transparency with respect to LightSquared, and is going to maintain his holds on the new FCC appointees. Go Chuck Go!

Here’s a potentially huge deal in the tech/copyright nexus that I hadn’t heard about at all Google is under concerted attack by a number of copyright holders in a move that potentially risks undermining the whole DMCA safe harbor system. Google has taken many steps to curb copyright infringement on YouTube, but they’re being dogpiled upon anyway by firms going after those deep pockets. If being a rich and popular website that gets taken advantage of by copyright infringers is enough to knock down the Safe Harbor, then it seems to me that the entire Safe Harbor system of the DMCA is at risk. That’s not good, as that was a careful balancing of interests in that bill. We cannot let the scales get tilted one way.

If the Youtube case goes too far, new legislation may be needed, and that’s going to be a big old mess. Especially when the MPAA and RIAA interests will inevitably be comingled with legitimate international concerns of Chinese and other foreign firms ignoring US copyrights

November 20. That’s the day the Obama administration has chosen to regulate the Internet after what even The Hill calls “a partisan vote” at the FCC to pass the Net Neutrality regulations. I’m hoping Verizon and/or MetroPCS will sue and win a stay before that date, though I don’t know how likely that is for a court to act that strongly.

I’ve said much about the House and its strong opposition to Barack Obama’s regulatory overreach, but Senators are unhappy as well. Kay Bailey Hutchison is ready to fight. It looks like she will push to get the Senate to go forward with using the Congressional Review Act, as the House already did, to repeal Net Neutrality.

In AT&T/T-Mobile news, Sprint Nextel has stopped pretending its antitrust lawsuit is even about competition. Sprint wants the deal stopped, yes, but only because Sprint wants to merge with T-Mobile. And that’s not me saying that. See this quote of Sprint CEO Dan Hesse from the Wall Street Journal:

“I don’t believe that what the DOJ said in any way, not even a little bit, should be viewed as we want to keep four [major telecom carriers]” Hesse said at an investor conference today, according to Deal Journal colleague Shara Tibken. “My view is [the DOJ] would look at other consolidation very differently.”

Yup. The Justice Department’s own lawsuit AT&T is just the government choosing to prop up Sprint Nextel and protect them from lower prices. They’ll never admit it as Sprint does, though. This isn’t about protecting the public from oligopoly-created high prices at all. Good on AT&T for calling out Sprint as well.

Sprint truly is having trouble, too. Their big marketing campaign, hoping to swipe customers from Verizon and AT&T, has been promoting their unlimited, unthrottled data… but now they’re announcing plans to cap some data. Oops. They just can’t compete.

It’s been a bad week for Anonymous, heh. Just after they announce a “Day of Vengence [sic]” for Saturday the 24th, the FBI pounces and rolls up some of the members. Frogmarch! Frogmarch!

Free State Foundation says cable set top box regulations should die. I have to agree, because I know they are ineffective. Providers have already worked around CableCARD regulations by using new technologies to increase channel bandwidth, which happen not to work with CableCARD. So just give up already and try something new.

Quick hits: Moonbeam signed the Amazon tax bill, keeping California on its path to enforce an unconstitutional Internet sales tax.

Samsung is trying to get iPhones and iPads banned in Europe over patent issues, in retaliation for Apple’s legal successes against Samsung, as well as Apple announcing plans to drop Samsung as a supplier of even more iPhone and iPad parts. If patents get all gadgets banned, can we just repeal them? Thanks.

A note to regulators and legislators: People don’t actually care about privacy. We know this because they’re not actually doing anything about it. People talk about it because the teevee says to talk about it, but talk is cheap.

November 20. That’s the day the Obama administration has chosen to regulate the Internet after what even The Hill calls “a partisan vote” at the FCC to pass the Net Neutrality regulations. I’m hoping Verizon and/or MetroPCS will sue and win a stay before that date, though I don’t know how likely that is for a court to act that strongly.

I’ve said much about the House and its strong opposition to Barack Obama’s regulatory overreach, but Senators are unhappy as well. Kay Bailey Hutchison is ready to fight. It looks like she will push to get the Senate to go forward with using the Congressional Review Act, as the House already did, to repeal Net Neutrality.

In AT&T/T-Mobile news, Sprint Nextel has stopped pretending its antitrust lawsuit is even about competition. Sprint wants the deal stopped, yes, but only because Sprint wants to merge with T-Mobile. And that’s not me saying that. See this quote of Sprint CEO Dan Hesse from the Wall Street Journal:

“I don’t believe that what the DOJ said in any way, not even a little bit, should be viewed as we want to keep four [major telecom carriers]” Hesse said at an investor conference today, according to Deal Journal colleague Shara Tibken. “My view is [the DOJ] would look at other consolidation very differently.”

Yup. The Justice Department’s own lawsuit AT&T is just the government choosing to prop up Sprint Nextel and protect them from lower prices. They’ll never admit it as Sprint does, though. This isn’t about protecting the public from oligopoly-created high prices at all. Good on AT&T for calling out Sprint as well.

Sprint truly is having trouble, too. Their big marketing campaign, hoping to swipe customers from Verizon and AT&T, has been promoting their unlimited, unthrottled data… but now they’re announcing plans to cap some data. Oops. They just can’t compete.

It’s been a bad week for Anonymous, heh. Just after they announce a “Day of Vengence [sic]” for Saturday the 24th, the FBI pounces and rolls up some of the members. Frogmarch! Frogmarch!

Free State Foundation says cable set top box regulations should die. I have to agree, because I know they are ineffective. Providers have already worked around CableCARD regulations by using new technologies to increase channel bandwidth, which happen not to work with CableCARD. So just give up already and try something new.

Quick hits: Moonbeam signed the Amazon tax bill, keeping California on its path to enforce an unconstitutional Internet sales tax.

Samsung is trying to get iPhones and iPads banned in Europe over patent issues, in retaliation for Apple’s legal successes against Samsung, as well as Apple announcing plans to drop Samsung as a supplier of even more iPhone and iPad parts. If patents get all gadgets banned, can we just repeal them? Thanks.

A note to regulators and legislators: People don’t actually care about privacy. We know this because they’re not actually doing anything about it. People talk about it because the teevee says to talk about it, but talk is cheap.

The can has been kicked for another year.

Lawmakers on Friday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a compromise bill that delays California’s effort to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect the state’s sales taxes while retailers lobby Congress for national rules governing online sales taxes.

Essentially, California legislators passed a bill earlier this year that ‘exploited’ a loophole in federal case law that would have required Amazon.com (and others) to collect sales tax on purchases made by California residents.  Amazon.com (and others) promptly ended the affiliate program that provided the loophole.  California legislators blinked with surprise, because apparently they completely missed noticing that Amazon.com always does this (except in New York, where they’re fighting the law in court).  Shockingly, California legislators have now apparently gotten a rush of oxygen to the brain and delayed ‘implementation’ of the tax until September of 2012; this time is supposedly to allow Amazon.com and other online retailers to petition Congress to straighten out national sales tax guidelines (something that Amazon.com has been pushing for, actually). Assuming that Governor Brown signs off on this – and, given that the original bill has pretty conclusively been already shown to be wildly if not insanely optimistic in its estimated revenue*, he’d have to be extremely dumb not to** – Amazon.com will turn its affiliate program back on.

Background on the whole sorry mess that is the Amazon tax here***: suffice it to say that there are a lot of state governments – typically Democratic ones – that cannot seem to grasp the notion that online companies with no physical presence in their states AND a nigh-universal market saturation are harder to push around than brick-and-mortar ones. I’m actually moderately impressed that California legislators were able to even partially see reason on this; the economic situation in that state must be worse than I thought.

The real question, of course, is what happens next year…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Full disclosure: I am an Amazon.com affiliate for Maryland.

*$200 million a year; what actually happened, of course, was that Amazon.com terminated its affiliates, which not only eliminated the state’s justification for trying to make Amazon.com collect the sales tax; it also eliminated a source of state income tax from the affiliates themselves.

**But, well, it’s Moonbeam, so your guess is as good as mine.

***For those who don’t feel like clicking the link:

Very short version of the Amazon tax controversy: online retailers don’t have to collect sales tax for a state unless they have a physical presence in the state (thanks to a Supreme Court decision). Various state governments (typically Democratic-controlled ones), usually at the instigation of big-box brick-and-mortar retailers who hate the idea that online retailers might do to them what the big-boxes did to small brick-and-mortar retailers*, have decided to get around this by defining an in-state affiliate of an online retailer as being that retailer’s physical presence in the state. When this becomes a state law, Amazon.com responds by immediately terminating its affiliate program in that state, thus neatly eliminating its obligation to collect sales tax**. The last iteration of this happened in California, where Amazon.com simply dropped roughly 25,000 affiliates without even breaking stride.

The can has been kicked for another year.

Lawmakers on Friday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a compromise bill that delays California’s effort to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect the state’s sales taxes while retailers lobby Congress for national rules governing online sales taxes.

Essentially, California legislators passed a bill earlier this year that ‘exploited’ a loophole in federal case law that would have required Amazon.com (and others) to collect sales tax on purchases made by California residents.  Amazon.com (and others) promptly ended the affiliate program that provided the loophole.  California legislators blinked with surprise, because apparently they completely missed noticing that Amazon.com always does this (except in New York, where they’re fighting the law in court).  Shockingly, California legislators have now apparently gotten a rush of oxygen to the brain and delayed ‘implementation’ of the tax until September of 2012; this time is supposedly to allow Amazon.com and other online retailers to petition Congress to straighten out national sales tax guidelines (something that Amazon.com has been pushing for, actually). Assuming that Governor Brown signs off on this – and, given that the original bill has pretty conclusively been already shown to be wildly if not insanely optimistic in its estimated revenue*, he’d have to be extremely dumb not to** – Amazon.com will turn its affiliate program back on.

Background on the whole sorry mess that is the Amazon tax here***: suffice it to say that there are a lot of state governments – typically Democratic ones – that cannot seem to grasp the notion that online companies with no physical presence in their states AND a nigh-universal market saturation are harder to push around than brick-and-mortar ones. I’m actually moderately impressed that California legislators were able to even partially see reason on this; the economic situation in that state must be worse than I thought.

The real question, of course, is what happens next year…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Full disclosure: I am an Amazon.com affiliate for Maryland.

*$200 million a year; what actually happened, of course, was that Amazon.com terminated its affiliates, which not only eliminated the state’s justification for trying to make Amazon.com collect the sales tax; it also eliminated a source of state income tax from the affiliates themselves.

**But, well, it’s Moonbeam, so your guess is as good as mine.

***For those who don’t feel like clicking the link:

Very short version of the Amazon tax controversy: online retailers don’t have to collect sales tax for a state unless they have a physical presence in the state (thanks to a Supreme Court decision). Various state governments (typically Democratic-controlled ones), usually at the instigation of big-box brick-and-mortar retailers who hate the idea that online retailers might do to them what the big-boxes did to small brick-and-mortar retailers*, have decided to get around this by defining an in-state affiliate of an online retailer as being that retailer’s physical presence in the state. When this becomes a state law, Amazon.com responds by immediately terminating its affiliate program in that state, thus neatly eliminating its obligation to collect sales tax**. The last iteration of this happened in California, where Amazon.com simply dropped roughly 25,000 affiliates without even breaking stride.

I’m in danger of repeating myself as the AT&T/T-Mobile saga goes on, so let me open up tonight’s post with to my latest analysis of the situation. Summary: the behavior of Sprint Nextel’s and Clearwire’s share prices, combined with Sprint Nextel’s decision to sue AT&T, should lead any observer to believe that the AT&T/T-Mobile deal benefits the 4G Internet-using public at the expense of Sprint Nextel and current market leader Verizon.

Same as it ever was, as the Talking Heads said. When Sprint gobbled up Nextel, the public gained. So, too, will the public gain if the government keeps its hands off this time.

Is Sprint in trouble? Some say yes, but the point of antitrust laws isn’t reduce competition to prop up ineffective businesses.

Help the economy, President Barack Obama. Drop the suit. Encourage your subordinates to get out of the way of job creation, innovation, and technical progress. Event the San Francisco Chronicle has run a piece explaining that.

Hearings begin September 21. Ah, government. Slow, slow, slow. Imagine life or death medical decisions in the hands of this government! Maybe they’re still trolling for some evidence that just isn’t there.

And as for Sprint’s suit, AT&T is right: “Sprint is more interested in protecting itself than it is in promoting competition that benefits consumers.”

Back to the fight over the unconstitutional Internet Sales Tax California passed to punish Amazon. Zero firms are paying it. None. It’s a failure that’s costing the state revenue. And yet, Senate Democrats gutted and rewrote AB 155 to try to declare the tax ‘urgent’, for the sole purpose of nullifying the referendum against the tax. It came five votes short of the 27 needed to pass, but they may try again, incredibly enough.

Rand Paul. He was supposed to be such a disruptive force in DC. Well, it turns out, he’ll do whatever Harry Reid tells him as long as he gets to amend Democrat bills with symbolic language against the Treaury that has no substance. Yes, Rand Paul has rolled over and played dead on the America Invents Act, the bill that would turn our patent system into a European-style failure, that rewards lawyering at the expense of the first person to invent a given invention.

Given that half the world doesn’t even respect property rights, it’s asinine even to consider copying foreign countries on Intellectual Property matters.

In the House, we had the lone voice of reason in Dana Rohrabacher standing up against the awful bill of Vermont extremist Patrick Leahy’s. Senator Trainwreck may yet try to stop it in the Senate over a technicality. I don’t care about the reason, but go Tom Coburn go!

Google claims its software patents are ‘defensive.’ Well, it turns out what that means is Google will hand out software patents to business partners like HTC for aggressive action against Google’s competitor, Apple. It’s like Google’s never heard of the Cash and Carry plan, where the US pretended to be neutral in WWII, but wrote a policy that favored Britain by design. Technicalities do not change the fact that Google’s claim of defensive patents is a fraud.

I’m in danger of repeating myself as the AT&T/T-Mobile saga goes on, so let me open up tonight’s post with to my latest analysis of the situation. Summary: the behavior of Sprint Nextel’s and Clearwire’s share prices, combined with Sprint Nextel’s decision to sue AT&T, should lead any observer to believe that the AT&T/T-Mobile deal benefits the 4G Internet-using public at the expense of Sprint Nextel and current market leader Verizon.

Same as it ever was, as the Talking Heads said. When Sprint gobbled up Nextel, the public gained. So, too, will the public gain if the government keeps its hands off this time.

Is Sprint in trouble? Some say yes, but the point of antitrust laws isn’t reduce competition to prop up ineffective businesses.

Help the economy, President Barack Obama. Drop the suit. Encourage your subordinates to get out of the way of job creation, innovation, and technical progress. Event the San Francisco Chronicle has run a piece explaining that.

Hearings begin September 21. Ah, government. Slow, slow, slow. Imagine life or death medical decisions in the hands of this government! Maybe they’re still trolling for some evidence that just isn’t there.

And as for Sprint’s suit, AT&T is right: “Sprint is more interested in protecting itself than it is in promoting competition that benefits consumers.”

Back to the fight over the unconstitutional Internet Sales Tax California passed to punish Amazon. Zero firms are paying it. None. It’s a failure that’s costing the state revenue. And yet, Senate Democrats gutted and rewrote AB 155 to try to declare the tax ‘urgent’, for the sole purpose of nullifying the referendum against the tax. It came five votes short of the 27 needed to pass, but they may try again, incredibly enough.

Rand Paul. He was supposed to be such a disruptive force in DC. Well, it turns out, he’ll do whatever Harry Reid tells him as long as he gets to amend Democrat bills with symbolic language against the Treaury that has no substance. Yes, Rand Paul has rolled over and played dead on the America Invents Act, the bill that would turn our patent system into a European-style failure, that rewards lawyering at the expense of the first person to invent a given invention.

Given that half the world doesn’t even respect property rights, it’s asinine even to consider copying foreign countries on Intellectual Property matters.

In the House, we had the lone voice of reason in Dana Rohrabacher standing up against the awful bill of Vermont extremist Patrick Leahy’s. Senator Trainwreck may yet try to stop it in the Senate over a technicality. I don’t care about the reason, but go Tom Coburn go!

Google claims its software patents are ‘defensive.’ Well, it turns out what that means is Google will hand out software patents to business partners like HTC for aggressive action against Google’s competitor, Apple. It’s like Google’s never heard of the Cash and Carry plan, where the US pretended to be neutral in WWII, but wrote a policy that favored Britain by design. Technicalities do not change the fact that Google’s claim of defensive patents is a fraud.

This is one of those weeks when all the important stuff happens at once, and there’s much to cover. I’ll start with the big national story. As I previously covered, The Eric Holder/Barack Obama Justice Department is coming after AT&T, using its own odd brand of economics to claim that the merger with T-Mobile would make the wireless market less competitive. When in fact, as history has shown with deals like Sprint/Nextel, prices are only going to come down as the market gets more competitive.

But, nonsensical as it is, the Obama administration is pressing on with the same tired thinking that gave us zero net job creation last month, and downward revisions in prior months. So let’s sweep around and look at what’s going on, what others are saying both about the news and about the prognosis, beyond the Culture of Corruption aspect I already covered.

First, let’s look at the FCC. I find the reactions interesting. The day after the announcement, I saw no reaction on the FCC mailing list from Chairman Julius Genachowski, but only from fellow Democrats Mignon Clyburn and (Free Press’s pet commissioner) Michael Copps. Copps, of course, is cheerleading. Also interesting beyond Genachowski’s silence was the statement by Clyburn. Is it just me or does Clyburn sound defensive, like she’s taking offense at the DoJ’s implication that the FCC wasn’t looking out for the public on this?

Rick Perry’s reaction is good to hear. He’s all for the merger. Again, party lines aren’t always great predictors on tech issues, so I’m glad that a leading Republican Presidential candidate has made such a strong statement.

At Forbes and at TLF, Larry Downes points out all tech firms should be concerned about Obama’s campaign promise to “reinvigorate” antitrust, and ought to take an interest in promoting smaller government.

I mean, sure, it’s great news to see Obama slapping down the EPA due to Republican pressure on the heels of the FCC erasing the Fairness Doctrine. But this is still an administration that loves to expand its reach. The net growth of government has been positive under Obama, and that threatens innovation, growth, and jobs. And the President seems to be encouraging an activist Justice Department.

Don’t be too discouraged, though. Mike Wendy says it’s not over yet, despite Clearwire and Sprint Nextel stocks surging in response to the massive favor Obama just did R. Gerard Salemme and Craig McCaw.

And again, remember: the reason those stocks are rising is that the Obama/Holder DoJ is taking action to reduce competition in the 4G market, currently occupied nationally by just Verizon and Sprint/Clearwire.

As for AT&T itself, the consensus seems to be they’ve been caught flat footed, and didn’t see this coming but perhaps should have. In any case, they’re now floating offers to sell a minority stake in the firm, though I don’t see how that will appease anyone when the motivation behind this lawsuit is ideology, not facts or practical observation of the market.

The number of seminar commenters even a nobody like me gets is amusing to watch, as they all come on and pretend to be Republicans as they push a big government, corporatist ideology.

So you may have heard that California is trying to extend beyond its Constitutional authority and make an out-of-state firm Amazon pay taxes to California. California isn’t the only state to propose this, but it’s one of few pig headed enough to push so hard at it. Why? In state businesses are grumbling that Amazon, with its innovative inventory and Internet techniques, can sell for less. They claim that if only Amazon charged sales tax, they wouldn’t succeed so well. It’s nonsense, but it doesn’t take much to get tax-and-spend politicians to tax and spend, does it?

Amazon responded to California’s plan by cutting all ties with California affiliates in the Amazon Associates program (I was one of them). As a result, California lost jobs and lost revenue, making a mockery of the delusional claims that this power grab would raise revenue. Amazon though also proposed a compromise: the firm would bring jobs to California above and beyond the affiliate program if the state would hold off on the tax long enough that Amazon could lobby for a national plan to pass the Congress.

But, the state is siding with Wal-mart against Amazon. Now, I like Wal-mart, but I don’t like government taking sides to pick winners and losers. So even a member of the Board of Equalization (that’s the socialist name for California’s tax organization) likes the Amazon compromise.

Now, I oppose the current talk in Washington pushed by Dick Durbin, as I believe it’s a first step toward a Canada-style Harmonized Sales Tax, including our equivalent of Canada’s Goods and Services Tax, a national sales tax. But if you wanted to tax revenue long term, Amazon’s plan is great. Once Amazon builds a distribution center here, then it becomes much easier on the long run to tax them.

The Democrats’ refusal to work with Amazon seems tor prove this plan is more about punishing Amazon than about “fairness.” It’s corrupt and it’s shameful.

Some quick hits to finish: Wikileaks strikes again, but cowardly tries to pass the buck.

The terrorist gang Anonymous continues to get rolled up in the UK. Ah, justice.

Media neo-Marxists like Free Press are well-funded astroturf, and here I am fighting them without a penny of funding. This is just me, all volunteer, folks.

This is one of those weeks when all the important stuff happens at once, and there’s much to cover. I’ll start with the big national story. As I previously covered, The Eric Holder/Barack Obama Justice Department is coming after AT&T, using its own odd brand of economics to claim that the merger with T-Mobile would make the wireless market less competitive. When in fact, as history has shown with deals like Sprint/Nextel, prices are only going to come down as the market gets more competitive.

But, nonsensical as it is, the Obama administration is pressing on with the same tired thinking that gave us zero net job creation last month, and downward revisions in prior months. So let’s sweep around and look at what’s going on, what others are saying both about the news and about the prognosis, beyond the Culture of Corruption aspect I already covered.

First, let’s look at the FCC. I find the reactions interesting. The day after the announcement, I saw no reaction on the FCC mailing list from Chairman Julius Genachowski, but only from fellow Democrats Mignon Clyburn and (Free Press’s pet commissioner) Michael Copps. Copps, of course, is cheerleading. Also interesting beyond Genachowski’s silence was the statement by Clyburn. Is it just me or does Clyburn sound defensive, like she’s taking offense at the DoJ’s implication that the FCC wasn’t looking out for the public on this?

Rick Perry’s reaction is good to hear. He’s all for the merger. Again, party lines aren’t always great predictors on tech issues, so I’m glad that a leading Republican Presidential candidate has made such a strong statement.

At Forbes and at TLF, Larry Downes points out all tech firms should be concerned about Obama’s campaign promise to “reinvigorate” antitrust, and ought to take an interest in promoting smaller government.

I mean, sure, it’s great news to see Obama slapping down the EPA due to Republican pressure on the heels of the FCC erasing the Fairness Doctrine. But this is still an administration that loves to expand its reach. The net growth of government has been positive under Obama, and that threatens innovation, growth, and jobs. And the President seems to be encouraging an activist Justice Department.

Don’t be too discouraged, though. Mike Wendy says it’s not over yet, despite Clearwire and Sprint Nextel stocks surging in response to the massive favor Obama just did R. Gerard Salemme and Craig McCaw.

And again, remember: the reason those stocks are rising is that the Obama/Holder DoJ is taking action to reduce competition in the 4G market, currently occupied nationally by just Verizon and Sprint/Clearwire.

As for AT&T itself, the consensus seems to be they’ve been caught flat footed, and didn’t see this coming but perhaps should have. In any case, they’re now floating offers to sell a minority stake in the firm, though I don’t see how that will appease anyone when the motivation behind this lawsuit is ideology, not facts or practical observation of the market.

The number of seminar commenters even a nobody like me gets is amusing to watch, as they all come on and pretend to be Republicans as they push a big government, corporatist ideology.

So you may have heard that California is trying to extend beyond its Constitutional authority and make an out-of-state firm Amazon pay taxes to California. California isn’t the only state to propose this, but it’s one of few pig headed enough to push so hard at it. Why? In state businesses are grumbling that Amazon, with its innovative inventory and Internet techniques, can sell for less. They claim that if only Amazon charged sales tax, they wouldn’t succeed so well. It’s nonsense, but it doesn’t take much to get tax-and-spend politicians to tax and spend, does it?

Amazon responded to California’s plan by cutting all ties with California affiliates in the Amazon Associates program (I was one of them). As a result, California lost jobs and lost revenue, making a mockery of the delusional claims that this power grab would raise revenue. Amazon though also proposed a compromise: the firm would bring jobs to California above and beyond the affiliate program if the state would hold off on the tax long enough that Amazon could lobby for a national plan to pass the Congress.

But, the state is siding with Wal-mart against Amazon. Now, I like Wal-mart, but I don’t like government taking sides to pick winners and losers. So even a member of the Board of Equalization (that’s the socialist name for California’s tax organization) likes the Amazon compromise.

Now, I oppose the current talk in Washington pushed by Dick Durbin, as I believe it’s a first step toward a Canada-style Harmonized Sales Tax, including our equivalent of Canada’s Goods and Services Tax, a national sales tax. But if you wanted to tax revenue long term, Amazon’s plan is great. Once Amazon builds a distribution center here, then it becomes much easier on the long run to tax them.

The Democrats’ refusal to work with Amazon seems tor prove this plan is more about punishing Amazon than about “fairness.” It’s corrupt and it’s shameful.

Some quick hits to finish: Wikileaks strikes again, but cowardly tries to pass the buck.

The terrorist gang Anonymous continues to get rolled up in the UK. Ah, justice.

Media neo-Marxists like Free Press are well-funded astroturf, and here I am fighting them without a penny of funding. This is just me, all volunteer, folks.

As is usual, tonight I’ll give priority to the things we had posted at RedState, and mention those first. Especially My own post on the latest on the California Amazon Tax referendum, and more specifically on the plans of Democrats to nullify the constitutional referendum process, in service of their unconstitutional Internet sales tax. We need to pressure Republicans to vote the right away, at least.

We also have a post by streiff on regulation, and how we need to do something about it. He asks a great question, on the relative levels of oversight the Congress gives to the military and to the post-New Deal alphabet soup: “So why should the commissioning of a lieutenant or the promotion of a mid-grade officer merit positive action on the part of Congress but an EPA regulatory regime that seems focused on making the use of coal illegal allowed with no action?”

More on why PROTECT IP is a bad bill and must be defeated. Patrick Ruffini and David Segal make the case, including one key facet of the process the bill creates: “The entities accused of infringement wouldn’t even get their day in court until after they’ve been shut down – they could appeal to the courts for relief only after the fact.” Tell me this isn’t giving government too much power too easily abused. Just tell me.

David Gerwitz has another great point about PROTECT IP: If US-based DNS services become compromised with censorship, then people will just stop using US-based DNS. Much as people outside of China don’t use Chinese censored DNS, and people in China do their best to proxy around it, people outside of the US will stop using any US-based service, and people in the US will.. yup, proxy around it if they have to. It won’t secure anything, and it’ll just expand government power. Defeat PROTECT IP.

Big telecommunications firms do more for Americans in a crisis than the radical left ever will.

Left-on-left battle as radicals call for FCC action against BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system that services San Francisco and Oakland. I’m rooting for injuries.

I’m not sure what to think of Google’s latest problems, though. Google is in trouble with the FTC for running lots of advertising for bad drug companies. Now it’s being alleged that Larry Page knew about the problems all along, but chose to do nothing about it, it seems. Pass the popcorn.

I just hope all the bellyaching about Google+’s names policy, the one Facebook may copy, doesn’t lead to regulation or legislation. Guess what? If you don’t want to use it, don’t use it! I pulled just about all my data off of Facebook and I never signed up for Google+. In fact, I don’t keep one Google account. If I have need for a specific service, I create a new account to use it. No data aggregation. I control what I share. We don’t need regulation for that, so let’s fight the urge to regulate.

AT&T seems confident its deal with T-Mobile won’t be blocked, as AT&T has rolled out a 4G LTE test in Chicago. Exciting. That takes us one step closer to having four national 4G networks. I love competition.