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Heartland Institute Science Director Jay Lehr was interviewed by the “Today Show” on NBC on this morning to talk about the “milestone” of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hitting 400 parts-per-million (ppm). Dr. Lehr was the “skeptical” voice in what was mostly a story of panic.

As is typical in a story such as this, the non-alarmist side got 9 seconds of air time in a 3-minute segment. Better than nothing, I suppose. Heartland, actually, is flattered that when one of the most important morning news programs in the country needs to find a “skeptic,” it reaches out to us first.

Watch the video below.

The Chronicle of Higher Education tells us the median salary of public university presidents rose 4.7 percent in 2011-12 to more than $440,000 a year. This increase vastly outpaced the rate of inflation, as well as the earnings of the typical worker in the U.S. economy. Perhaps, most relevant for this community, it also surpassed the compensation growth for university professors.

Moreover, the median statistic masks that several presidents earned more than double that amount. Pennsylvania State University’s Graham Spanier, best known for presiding over the worst athletic scandal in collegiate history, topped the list, earning $2,906,721 in total compensation. (He was forced to resign in November 2011 and was indicted in November 2012 on charges related to the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal.)

Spanier’s package will get the attention. But the outrage should be spread around. University presidents are becoming ever more plutocratic even as the students find it harder and harder to pay for their studies. University leaders claim institutional poverty as they enrich themselves. A perennial leader of the highest-paid list, Gordon Gee of Ohio State University (more than $1.8 million last year), paid $532 for a shower curtain for the presidential mansion.

There appears to be neither rhyme nor reason for vast differences in presidential pay. David R. Hopkins, the president of Wright State University — an unremarkable commuter school ranked rather poorly in major-magazine rankings — makes far more than the presidents of the much larger, and vastly more prestigious, University of California at Berkeley, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, or the University of Wisconsin.

The four-year graduation rate at Wright State is 18 percent, whereas at Berkeley it is 71 percent. The president of my college (Ohio University), Roderick McDavis, has seen the school’s US News & World Report ranking fall considerably in his tenure of almost nine years. But he made more in 2011-12 than Berkeley’s Robert J. Birgeneau, who stepped down in 2012 after nine years as chancellor of the school ranked first in the US News list of public universities.

My associate Daniel Garrett analyzed the relationship between presidential compensation and academic performance for 145 schools, using the Forbes magazine rankings of best colleges. (Full disclosure: My Center for College Affordability and Productivity compiles those rankings for Forbes.) Adjusting for enrollment differences, no statistically significant relationship was observed between academic quality and presidential pay.

I informally asked five college-educated friends: What criteria should be used in determining college presidential-salary increases? I got five different answers. One said that those most successful in fundraising should be rewarded the most (the argument often used to justify Gordon Gee’s lavish pay and perks). Another friend stressed the postgraduate performance of students. A third’s answer was that it is all about reputation – - if you improve in the U.S. Newsor Forbes rankings, you should get a nice salary increase. Still another friend stressed retention and graduation rates.

In short, there is no consensus. Among competitive free-enterprise companies, profits, share price and competitor chief-executive-officer pay are considered the metrics upon which compensation decisions should be largely determined. But what is the bottom line in higher education? Did the University of Virginia have a good year in 2012? How would you know?

We know little about some fundamental questions. Are the students at the University of Colorado learning more than those at the University of Kansas? Are they learning more now than five or 10 years ago? These and other schools are either clueless as to the answer, or if somewhat knowledgeable, they typically keep the findings a secret. Public comparison with peer schools is considered bad form by the university presidents I know. Trustees are usually part-time cheerleaders for the institution, not hard-nosed representatives of the public demanding accountability, efficiency and transparency.

University enrollments fell in the closing academic year nationally for the first time in more than a decade. More and more individuals are questioning the value of American higher education as it now exists — the benefits seem to be stagnating, while the costs are rising.

Some new university leaders get this, and believe higher education needs to be leaner, more adaptive to change and include performance-based rewards for achievement. The best example is Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University. While still governor of Indiana, Daniels chatted with me about how to devise a presidential contract that tied compensation to achievement of goals. The Purdue board adopted such a system, cutting Daniels’s pay compared with his predecessor’s, yet including provisions allowing the president to earn significant performance bonuses. Daniels has already frozen tuition fees for two years — and also has frozen salaries for most administrators.

Universities are nonprofit institutions that get special privileges, such as government subsidies and tax exemptions, based on the assumption that they are good stewards of the public trust. Big corporations pay their leaders more, but those institutions pay taxes that partially benefit universities. They have a bottom line as well as stockholders and corporate boards that often fire leaders who perform poorly.

University presidents aren’t corporate executives. If higher education wishes to maintain its privileged position in American society, it needs to contain its spending. A good place to start is at the top.

[First Published by Bloomberg  L.P.]

The Chronicle of Higher Education tells us the median salary of public university presidents rose 4.7 percent in 2011-12 to more than $440,000 a year. This increase vastly outpaced the rate of inflation, as well as the earnings of the typical worker in the U.S. economy. Perhaps, most relevant for this community, it also surpassed the compensation growth for university professors.

Moreover, the median statistic masks that several presidents earned more than double that amount. Pennsylvania State University’s Graham Spanier, best known for presiding over the worst athletic scandal in collegiate history, topped the list, earning $2,906,721 in total compensation. (He was forced to resign in November 2011 and was indicted in November 2012 on charges related to the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal.)

Spanier’s package will get the attention. But the outrage should be spread around. University presidents are becoming ever more plutocratic even as the students find it harder and harder to pay for their studies. University leaders claim institutional poverty as they enrich themselves. A perennial leader of the highest-paid list, Gordon Gee of Ohio State University (more than $1.8 million last year), paid $532 for a shower curtain for the presidential mansion.

There appears to be neither rhyme nor reason for vast differences in presidential pay. David R. Hopkins, the president of Wright State University — an unremarkable commuter school ranked rather poorly in major-magazine rankings — makes far more than the presidents of the much larger, and vastly more prestigious, University of California at Berkeley, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, or the University of Wisconsin.

The four-year graduation rate at Wright State is 18 percent, whereas at Berkeley it is 71 percent. The president of my college (Ohio University), Roderick McDavis, has seen the school’s US News & World Report ranking fall considerably in his tenure of almost nine years. But he made more in 2011-12 than Berkeley’s Robert J. Birgeneau, who stepped down in 2012 after nine years as chancellor of the school ranked first in the US News list of public universities.

My associate Daniel Garrett analyzed the relationship between presidential compensation and academic performance for 145 schools, using the Forbes magazine rankings of best colleges. (Full disclosure: My Center for College Affordability and Productivity compiles those rankings for Forbes.) Adjusting for enrollment differences, no statistically significant relationship was observed between academic quality and presidential pay.

I informally asked five college-educated friends: What criteria should be used in determining college presidential-salary increases? I got five different answers. One said that those most successful in fundraising should be rewarded the most (the argument often used to justify Gordon Gee’s lavish pay and perks). Another friend stressed the postgraduate performance of students. A third’s answer was that it is all about reputation – - if you improve in the U.S. Newsor Forbes rankings, you should get a nice salary increase. Still another friend stressed retention and graduation rates.

In short, there is no consensus. Among competitive free-enterprise companies, profits, share price and competitor chief-executive-officer pay are considered the metrics upon which compensation decisions should be largely determined. But what is the bottom line in higher education? Did the University of Virginia have a good year in 2012? How would you know?

We know little about some fundamental questions. Are the students at the University of Colorado learning more than those at the University of Kansas? Are they learning more now than five or 10 years ago? These and other schools are either clueless as to the answer, or if somewhat knowledgeable, they typically keep the findings a secret. Public comparison with peer schools is considered bad form by the university presidents I know. Trustees are usually part-time cheerleaders for the institution, not hard-nosed representatives of the public demanding accountability, efficiency and transparency.

University enrollments fell in the closing academic year nationally for the first time in more than a decade. More and more individuals are questioning the value of American higher education as it now exists — the benefits seem to be stagnating, while the costs are rising.

Some new university leaders get this, and believe higher education needs to be leaner, more adaptive to change and include performance-based rewards for achievement. The best example is Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University. While still governor of Indiana, Daniels chatted with me about how to devise a presidential contract that tied compensation to achievement of goals. The Purdue board adopted such a system, cutting Daniels’s pay compared with his predecessor’s, yet including provisions allowing the president to earn significant performance bonuses. Daniels has already frozen tuition fees for two years — and also has frozen salaries for most administrators.

Universities are nonprofit institutions that get special privileges, such as government subsidies and tax exemptions, based on the assumption that they are good stewards of the public trust. Big corporations pay their leaders more, but those institutions pay taxes that partially benefit universities. They have a bottom line as well as stockholders and corporate boards that often fire leaders who perform poorly.

University presidents aren’t corporate executives. If higher education wishes to maintain its privileged position in American society, it needs to contain its spending. A good place to start is at the top.

[First Published by Bloomberg  L.P.]

San Jose State University faculty recently decided the best way to address scientific criticisms of alarmist global warming theory was to burn the books containing such criticisms. Pierre Gosselin, administrator of the No Tricks Zone website, pointed out disturbing parallels between the book burning at San Jose State and book burnings in Nazi Germany.

Last week marked the 80th anniversary of a massive book burning event in Nazi Germany. The book burning, conducted by people affiliated with German universities, was designed to purge what the book-burners called un-German literature.

“Literary and philosophical works that did not conform to the ideological standards of the Nationalist Socialist Party were collected from prestigious university libraries and burned in public. They included some of the greatest works ever written. Much of the burning was zealously carried out by students and academics,” Gosselin explained.

After noting the recent book-burning at San Jose State, Gosselin observed, “Recently a University of Graz professor called for the execution of climate science skeptics. Aren’t the parallels eerie? This ought lead us to pause and reflect deeply for a moment.”

On Friday, senior IRS official Lois Lerner offered an apology of sorts after nonprofit organizations that were applying for tax-exempt status were targeted for IRS audit if the groups’ names included “Tea Party” or “patriots.” Lerner said she had learned of this activity only last year.

Few places seem less likely to find humor than a New York Times article about rogue IRS agents, but this line from Friday’s article was laugh-out-loud funny: “[Lerner] insisted that the move was not driven by politics.” Nearly as ridiculous was Lerner’s assertion that the behavior was little more than the activity of overzealous low-level employees and that more senior IRS officials were unaware of the “absolutely inappropriate” behavior.

Lerner did herself no further favors during a subsequent conference call with reporters in which she couldn’t calculate one quarter of 300, saying “I’m not good at math.” Then she and her staff complained about “repetitive” questions, prompting liberal Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston to say, according to a Washington Post report (entitled “The IRS’ public relations disaster”), that “it was because they weren’t answering the questions.”

One wonders whether anybody, even New York Times readers, believed that the actions were only those of low-level IRS employees in Cincinnati. If so, they couldn’t believe it for long: Barely 24 hours later, the Associated Press revealed that a draft of an IRS inspector general’s report shows, contrary to lying Lerner’s assertions that the Tea Party-targeting was confined to 2012, that senior IRS officials including Lerner learned of the targeting no later than June 29, 2011.

While the report says that Lerner ordered an immediate “change” regarding how groups would be flagged for audit, that should not be read as an immediate “stop” to political targeting. According to the AP story, “On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to, ‘political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,’ the report says.”

USA Today adds that extra scrutiny was given to groups that “had a goal of educating the public via advocacy or lobbying to ‘make America a better place to live’” or that had “any statements in the case file critical of how the country is being run.”

Part of the targeting of Tea Party groups included requesting donor lists, a clear threat to anyone willing to contribute money to anti-Obama or simply pro-limited government organizations.

It is unclear how far up the IRS food chain this rot goes, though it probably did not reach the very top since the IRS commissioner at the time, Douglas Shulman, was an appointee of George W. Bush. In March 2012, Shulman testified before Congress that “there’s absolutely no targeting.” Unlike lying Lerner, it is more likely that Shulman was simply kept in the dark by pro-Obama officials in his organization.

Still, whether or not Shulman knew, the fact remains that even the liberal media, including even MSNBC and CBS News, recognize how damning it is for the IG’s report to implicate “senior Internal Revenue Service Officials” in using one of the most feared government agencies to target organizations due to the political views of those groups’ members.

Apologists suggest that the IRS’s “shortcuts” were an effort to prevent tax-exempt status for “sham” groups which either wanted to misuse the tax code or keep their donor lists secret.

Hogwash.

This is the United States of Alinsky in its full glory.

The IRS’s actions are something one would expect in Venezuela or Cuba, where the central government considers it a proper function to kneecap any opposition.

The left is not trying to hide from a story they know they can’t hide from. The ACLU is condemning the IRS, with the chief of staff at their Washington Legislative Office saying, “Even the appearance of playing partisan politics with the tax code is about as constitutionally troubling as it gets.” And Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA) said on NBC television on Sunday that “I think we have to understand why” the IRS “would give extra scrutiny” to conservative groups. Not exactly righteous indignation, but not the stonewalling we’ve come to expect from Democrats when it comes to Obama administration failures.

Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots (cruising for double-extra IRS scrutiny with that organization name) put it succinctly: “The IRS lied.” The group’s website says, “We reject a simple apology that does nothing to alleviate the danger of this happening again. Only immediate and public actions on the part of the IRS and the president will suffice.”

They are exactly right. In her first “apology,” Lois Lerner said that the IRS agents who took part in this behavior — which likely cross from the unethical into the criminal — have received no punishment or disciplinary action.

Furthermore, according to the Post story, “Lerner said she disclosed the information because someone asked her about it Friday morning — indicating that she had no plans to release the information publicly, despite the confirmed wrongdoing. When asked how they found out about the wrongdoing, Lerner said the investigation stemmed from media reports about conservative groups claiming that they were targeted, not from any internal review.”

It is frightening that the most powerful domestic arm of the federal government has become an untrustworthy pawn of Obama administration partisanship. One need not expect White House involvement to see the danger to civil society when high-ranking bureaucrats think that targeting citizens based on political views would be approved of and desired by their superiors. The erosion of the last shreds of governmental ethics bodes ill for our Republic, especially if not harshly punished.

IRS employees involved in this scandal should be fired and charged with crimes — but only after giving as many low-level agents as possible the chance to earn immunity (but not to keep their jobs) if they turn state’s evidence against their bosses. With an Obama Justice Department run by people too unconcerned with the rule of law to get jobs in Venezuela or Cuba, such prosecutions are unlikely.

Liberal media outlets, anxious to avoid reporting anything which would reflect badly on the Obama administration, were hungry for a story they could cover instead of Benghazi. Unfortunately for them, this story may even be worse for the Obama administration and for Democrats more broadly — and the details are so understandable to the ordinary citizen that even the most left-leaning outlets have been compelled to cover it.

The Obama administration has stunk of incompetence, corruption, and hyper-partisanship throughout its feckless reign. It is not surprising to see officials of the Obama IRS targeting the president’s political opponents; after all, absolutely everything is viewed through the most political lens by the Obama crew, from the top down. And sadly, it is not surprising that it took this long for the slightly-weakening-in-their-Obama-fealty media to turn up the story.

But better late than never.

Despite the fact that the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups seem to have nothing in common, they are about to have one critical similarity: desperation by the administration to insulate the highest levels of the Obama administration, whether former Secretary of State Hillary “What difference does Benghazi make?” Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Tim “TurboTax” Geithner, or President Barack “I must have been golfing when this happened” Obama himself.

How far up the ladder will the story climb? Will it reach a cabinet secretary? That’s not as likely as with the Benghazi cover-up. TheWall Street Journal reports that “a government official said the report will note that IRS officials told investigators that no one outside the IRS was involved in developing the criteria the agency now acknowledges were flawed.”

But the fact that the notoriously uninterested-in-foreign-policy public now has credible news of the federal government using the hated tax man to target Americans for their political beliefs may, even without implicating those at the highest levels of the administration, have a substantial political impact.

The petty tyrants at the IRS have added to the distrust, even dislike, of government by many Americans — not just committed conservatives or Tea Party activists. It will make every attempt to increase the size and intrusiveness of government — including the implementation of Obamacare which requires many thousands of regulatory “trust me’s” and a large role for the IRS — much harder to sell. And it will equally make those politicians who support such programs more difficult to sell to a skeptical electorate.

One legislative canary in the coalmine is the horrendous “campaign finance” measure known as the Follow the Money Act, co-sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (RINO-AK), which would require onerous registration and reporting requirements for any group spending or receiving over $10,000 in “independent federal election related activity” during an election cycle. As the Center for Competitive Politics puts it, “If enacted, this bill would dragoon the IRS into a role as political campaign enforcer, a role the IRS is ill-equipped for and does not want.”

One measure of the impact of the IRS’s current “public relations disaster” will be seen (or, more precisely, not seen) if this latest “protect the (liberal) incumbents” bill does not come up for a vote in the U.S. Senate.

We are in the early days of this scandal; we have more questions than answers. Watching Jay Carney twist in the wind trying to insulate his boss will make for satisfying viewing for many Tea Party activists. But much more must be done. In the short-term, expect a tsunami of complaints and lawsuits to be filed by aggrieved conservative (and pro-Israel) groups, and others who were unfairly targeted by the IRS.

In the longer-term, expect those very targets to use these events as Exhibit A in their arguments against expanding the size and power of our federal Leviathan.

[First Published at The American Spectator]

Late last week we learned that the Barack Obama Administration’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was subjecting conservative non-profit organizations to ridiculous levels of additional, extra-legal scrutiny.

IRS: We Targeted Conservative, Tea Party Groups With Extra Scrutiny — ‘Mistakes Were Made’

The Administration’s immediate, reflex response was to lie about it.

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

Except just “targeting” – may not be true.

IRS Accused of Leaking Confidential Tax Documents During Election

Except just “during the 2012 election” and just “low-level employees” – isn’t true.

IRS Targeted Conservatives as Early as 2010

Did the Administration tell the truth back then?  Not so much.

In (then-IRS Commissioner Douglas) Shulman’s responses, he did not acknowledge targeting of tea party groups. At a congressional hearing March 22, 2012, Shulman was adamant in his denials.

“There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people” who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman said at the House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing.

These sorts of things are why my late, great Grandfather called the IRS “The Assassins” – and wouldn’t let you call them anything else.

This is one fundamental part of why we who want less government want less government – the less government there is, the less there is to be used against us.

The IRS is one of the most powerful agencies in the federal government, with fearsome powers that the Department of Homeland Security can only dream of having. (Does DHS subject Americans to mandatory annual questioning about their personal lives, family arrangements, finances, business practices, travel, etc.?)

It has a history of being used as a tool of political retaliation, not only by the Nixon administration but at least as far back as Franklin D. Roosevelt. An agency with that kind of power, with access to sensitive information on every individual, business, church, charity, and school in the country, must conduct itself according to the very highest standards. The IRS does not.

So this is great news:

IRS to Hire Thousands of New Agents to Enforce ObamaCare

All of which casts a sinister pall on this:

Obama’s Big Idea: Digital Health Records

The better for Big Government to eat you with, my Dears.  And will the Leviathan contain its overreach to the IRS?  Of course not.

The Future of Government Power Grabs? Our Digital Data

Because Congress in many areas hasn’t yet addressed the gaping hole of protecting our data from Big Government, we are left exposed and subject to hay-yuge, illegal power grabs.

Like President Barack Obama’s illegal Network Neutrality order.  Which gives the government access to the Internet’s spine – and with it every website there is and all the data contained therein….

Like President Barack Obama’s illegal Cyber Security Executive Order.  The amount of data compiled in Cyber Security execution is massive – and Big Government wants at it:

Part of the reason lawmakers have not passed even voluntary cyber reforms is that businesses and many Republicans fear optional measures eventually could become mandatory.

The executive order did not allay those fears… (T)he Republican head of the House Homeland Security Committee expressed misgivings about the policy’s potential for mission creep.

Another “good start” towards ever growing Big Government grabs.

A privacy section in the documents outlines steps agencies must take to protect personal information while carrying out these activities. When private sector information is collected and shared with the government, concerns often arise that customer information will be exposed or abused.

Like the Obama Administration shutting down bailed out car company dealerships based upon campaign contribution data.  Like local governments in New York turning over for publication gun registration data.  Like then-President and First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton’s illegally obtained 900 FBI files getting him out of an impeachment conviction.

And now the IRS’ panoply of assaults.

And does anyone seriously think that all of this is all there is?

Oh – and when the Leviathan isn’t taking our information, it’s using our coin to purchase it:

Do You Want the Government Buying Your Data From Corporations?

You want reform?  Reduce the size, scope and sphere of influence of government – and they won’t have the juice to do most of these sorts of things. 

[First published at PJ Media.]

The public relations campaign to support Medicaid expansion frequently uses testimony by patients with serious medical conditions who have lost their private insurance. It is assumed that once they qualify for Medicaid, they will easily get their chemotherapy, hepatitis c treatment, or defibrillator battery replacement.

“The messages talk only about coverage, not care,” states Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). “But the real question is whether Medicaid provides access to care.”

An internet survey of AAPS members shows that about 47% of respondents think that it is more difficult for a Medicaid patient, compared with an uninsured patient, to get an appointment with a primary-care physician. Only 26% thought that the uninsured had more difficulty. For specialist appointments, 44% thought uninsured patients were better off, and 32% thought Medicaid patients were better off. Only 2% thought that Medicaid patients had “no problem” getting an appointment with a specialist.

When asked, “How easy is it for a Medicaid beneficiary to obtain drugs, medical equipment, or diagnostic tests?”, 48% said it could be “extremely difficult,” 27% said “moderately difficult at times,” and only 13% said it was “no problem.”

Of 166 respondents, 96 were physician specialists, 63 primary physicians, and 7 emergency physicians.

Open-ended comments were overwhelmingly negative about Medicaid. Rural patients who are unable to drive or travel may have no access to care at all except through charity. Some areas have no hand surgeons, endocrinologists, dentists, or rheumatologists who will accept Medicaid. Many cardiology tests, even echocardiograms on inpatients, are questioned or denied. Many drugs, even common generics, are unavailable without jumping through bureaucratic hoops. Treatment for chronic pain is especially difficult. It may be very challenging to get non-emergency surgery approved, no matter how necessary.

“Medicaid ends up as a jobs program for administrators and quasi-medical professionals,” writes one physician. “Very little of Medicaid money actually goes to the ‘health care’ part of the equation.” Another said that “poor customer service is the norm” and “excessive paperwork is routine.”

Because it may cost more to file a claim than a physician can hope to collect, physicians may lose on every Medicaid patient, and lose less if they just see the patients for free.

Stating that “denials were much more common than approvals for appropriate treatment options and diagnostic studies,” one physician concluded that “to expand such a horrendous program is insane.”

AAPS, which was founded in 1943, is a national organization representing physicians in all specialties.

[First published at the blog of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.]

The CTIA just released its semi-annual statistics on the wireless industry’s performance, and its bad news for all those supposed data-driven, pro-regulation proponents who are in search of evidence or data to justify regulating wireless or wireless spectrum holdings.

The data are more powerful evidence of a competitive wireless industry. Hopefully, this data will nudge the FCC to begrudgingly conclude that the industry is indeed competitive, despite their blinders to the data.

Briefly, the U.S. wireless industry:

• Grew five-times faster than the U.S. economy — ~9% to ~1.8% in 2012;

• Invested $17.2b in capital investment in the last half of 2012 up 37% from the year before period;

• Showed real competitive losses to free broadband messaging, as paid SMS text messages were down 4.9% annually in 2012, down 7.1% for last six months of 2012, and 11.3% for the last month of 2012 (Competition works!);

• The amount of data usage increased 69.3% in 2012; and

• The number of smart phones in use grew 36.4% in 2012.

These are data of a vibrantly competitive and innovative industry, not one in need of preemptive net neutrality or spectrum cap regulation.

[First published at The Precursor Blog]