Government
Everyone Discriminates Under the FCC’s Proposed New Rules
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) proposed digital-discrimination rules hit the streets earlier this month and, as we say at Hootenanny Central,…
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The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) proposed digital-discrimination rules hit the streets earlier this month and, as we say at Hootenanny Central, they’re a real humdinger.
It looks like the National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA) got most of their wishlist incorporated into the proposed rules. We’ve got disparate impact and a wide-open door for future rate regulation.
Here’s the tl;dr version of the new rules. More details at the end of this post.
- The rules are intended to foster equal access and to prevent discrimination in access to broadband internet service;
- Equal access means equal opportunity for consumers to subscribe to broadband service;
- Consumers include both potential subscribers and existing subscribers;
- Broadband service includes every element of a consumer’s broadband-internet experience, including speeds, data caps, pricing and discounts;
- The rules prohibit intentional discrimination, as well as policies and practices that can be demonstrated to result in a disparate impact on protected groups of consumers;
- In addition to typical broadband providers, the rules broadly apply to “entities outside the communications industry” that “provide services that facilitate and affect consumer access to broadband,” which may include municipalities and property owners.
From a distance, these rules seem sensible. They cover many of the most obvious allegations of digital discrimination, like “digital redlining” or providing different speeds for the same price within a city.
But on closer inspection, the rules are overly broad when it comes to who is covered and what policies and practices could be subject to digital-discrimination claims. As written, the proposed rules pooh-pooh intentional discrimination as something that is nearly nonexistent: “By commenters’ own admission, there is little to no evidence of intentional digital discrimination of access.” (¶ 56). Thus, the FCC argues, “most of the gaps in access to broadband internet service in our country … stem from policies and practices that are neutral on their face” (¶ 42) and invite scrutiny under a disparate-impact approach.
But many policies and practices are explicitly discriminatory—especially those based on income–except that their effect is to benefit the poor. For example, Xfinity’s Internet Essentials program for low-income households could run afoul of the rules’ prohibition on income-based discrimination.
Local government efforts to expand or preserve broadband subscriptions could also be subject to the new rules. For example, in 2021, the City of Portland, Oregon handed out 8,000 debit cards preloaded with $364 each to cover the cost of internet access for one year. Low-income households and people of color were given priority in distribution of the cards. That program would be a clear violation of the FCC’s proposed rules. The city would be a covered entity, because it “facilitates the provision of broadband internet access or affects consumer access to broadband internet access.” The prioritization is explicit: intentional discrimination based on race and income level.
In Tennessee, Hamilton County Schools’ EdConnect program offers free high-speed internet access to eligible students, where eligibility is based on income level—i.e., students who receive free or reduced-cost lunch, attend any school where every student receives free or reduced-cost lunch, or whose family participates in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or other economic-assistance programs. Both the school district and the nonprofit that runs the program would also be covered entities. The fact that the price (free) is available only to those of a certain income level is explicit, intentional discrimination.
Each of these programs were intended to increase broadband adoption. But how will the FCC handle well-intentioned programs that are intentionally discriminatory?
The FCC says it will take a case-by-case approach to discrimination claims. But if it determines that some discrimination is OK and some discrimination isn’t, then we’ll end up with a mishmash of decisions that offer no useful guidance to providers.
Economist Michael Munger often says: “Never make a sword you don’t want to see wielded by your worst enemy right after the next election.” It’s looking like the FCC is now forging such a sword with its digital-discrimination rules. By taking such an expansive approach to the rules, the agency is fostering a future FCC with the tools to use those same rules to eviscerate many well-intentioned and effective programs, policies, and practices to expand broadband access and adoption.
If you’re a tl;dr person, you can stop here. If you’re a details person, here come those details.
Digital Discrimination Defined
Paragraph 31 (emphasis added):
Section 60506(a) first declares “the policy of the United States that, insofar as technically and economically feasible … subscribers should benefit from equal access to broadband internet access service within the service area of a provider of such service … [and that] the Commission should take steps to ensure that all people of the United States benefit from equal access to broadband internet access service.” Section 60506(b) then directs the Commission to “adopt final rules to facilitate equal access to broadband internet access service, taking into account the issues of technical and economic feasibility presented by that objective,” and mandates that those rules include “preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin” and “identifying necessary steps for the Commission[] to take to eliminate” such digital discrimination of access.
Paragraph 32 (emphasis added):
The “equal access” that we are to ensure and facilitate is defined in subsection (a)(2) as “the equal opportunity to subscribe to an offered service that provides comparable speeds, capacities, latency, and other quality of service metrics in a given area, for comparable terms and conditions.”
Disparate Impact and Intentional Discrimination
Paragraph 33 (emphasis added):
Policies or practices, not justified by genuine issues of technical or economic feasibility, that
(1) differentially impact consumers’ access to broadband internet access service based on their income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion or national origin or
(2) are intended to have such differential impact.
Paragraph 38 (emphasis added, citations omitted):
Based on the record before us, we do not expect to encounter many instances of intentional discrimination with respect to deployment and network upgrades, as there is little or no evidence in the legislative history of section 60506 or the record of this proceeding indicating that intentional discrimination by industry participants based on the listed characteristics substantially contributes to disparities in access to broadband internet service across the Nation.
Paragraph 56:
By commenters’ own admission, there is little to no evidence of intentional digital discrimination of access.
Paragraph 42 (emphasis added, citations omitted):
Equal access can be denied by policies and practices having discriminatory effects even where no discriminatory motive is present, and it is our considered view that most of the gaps in access to broadband internet service in our country … stem from policies and practices that are neutral on their face, rather than from intentionally discriminatory conduct on the part of covered entities and other industry participants.
Paragraph 46 (emphasis added, citations omitted):
We find that by defining the goals of section 60506 in terms of “equal access” and “equal opportunity,” especially in light of the 52-year history of disparate impact analysis in civil rights law, Congress expressed its intention that the Commission’s implementing regulations address business conduct having the effect of denying designated groups of consumers the equal opportunity to subscribe to an offered broadband service, regardless of the motivation for such actions.
Limits to Disparate-Impact Analysis
Paragraph 49:
[A]ny determination of differential impact that relies on observed disparity must point to a specific policy or practice that is causing the disparity.
Paragraph 50:
[T]he rules will give covered entities an opportunity to present justifications for discriminatory policies and practices. Section 60506 sets out such limitation by requiring that our rules facilitate equal access while taking into account “issues of technical and economic feasibility.
Entities Covered by the Rules
Paragraph 85:
Covered entities include, but are not limited to:
- Broadband providers;
- Contractors retained by, or entities working through partnership agreements or other business arrangements with, broadband internet access service providers;
Entities facilitating or involved in the provision of broadband internet access service;- Entities maintaining and upgrading network infrastructure; and
- Entities that otherwise affect consumer access to broadband internet access service.
Paragraph 87:
Thus, to the extent that entities outside the communications industry provide services that facilitate and affect consumer access to broadband, they may be in violation of our rules if their policies and practices impede equal access to broadband internet access service as specified in the rules.
Paragraph 87 also mentions “a landlord restricting broadband options within a building even if multiple providers are available” may be subject to the rules.
Paragraph 88 (emphasis added):
Lastly, we acknowledge that commenters disagree on whether to include infrastructure owners and local governments within the scope of our rules, but we decline to expressly carve out specified entities from the scope of coverage at this time. … Additionally, Local Governments request that we not categorize local governments as “covered entities” based on their roles as right-of-way managers or franchise regulators. While there may be tension in the record as to the role these entities play, our rule is clear that any entity that meaningfully affects access to broadband internet service is subject to our digital discrimination of access rules.
Consumers, Not Just Subscribers
Paragraph 89 (emphasis in original, citations omitted):
The definition of digital discrimination of access adopted today includes “policies and practices … that differentially impact consumers’ access to broadband internet access service … or are intended to have such differential impact.” We today define “consumers” in this context to mean both current and potential subscribers, which includes individual persons, groups of persons, individual organizations, and groups of organizations having the capacity to subscribe to and receive broadband internet access service. We define “subscriber” as a current recipient of broadband internet access service as defined in section 8.1(b) of the Commission’s rules.
Rate Regulation
Paragraph 100 (emphasis added):
The rules we adopt today apply to any lack of comparability in service quality, as indicated by the metrics specifically listed in the statutory definition of “equal access” as well as any “other quality of service metrics in a given area,” and to any lack of comparability in terms and conditions of service, including but not limited to price. We find this scope of coverage to be consistent with section 60506’s statutory text and necessary to effectuate its purpose.
Paragraph 105 (emphasis added):
Finally, regarding the inclusion of pricing within the scope of our rules, we find that the statutory language encompasses discriminatory pricing. We emphasize that the rules we adopt today do not set rates for broadband internet access service and are not an attempt to institute rate regulation.
Paragraph 106:
Verizon argues that our rules can only address policies and practices concerning the consumer’s ability to sign up for service (i.e., contract formation), but cannot address whether the service is actually rendered on equal terms (i.e., contract performance). We disagree with this interpretation. We acknowledge that the definition of “equal access” in section 60506(a) refers to the “equal opportunity to subscribe to an offered service ….” But we find the word “subscribe” in this context means more than simply signing up for service. It refers, instead, to the ability to receive and effectively utilize the service so as to allow full participation in the social, educational, political and economic life of our Nation.
The post Everyone Discriminates Under the FCC’s Proposed New Rules appeared first on Truth on the Market.
congress
Government
Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?
Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?
Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The headlines coming out of the Super…
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Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The headlines coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries have got it right. Barring cataclysmic changes, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the Republican and Democratic nominees for president in 2024.
With Nikki Haley’s withdrawal, there will be no more significantly contested primaries or caucuses—the earliest both parties’ races have been over since something like the current primary-dominated system was put in place in 1972.
The primary results have spotlighted some of both nominees’ weaknesses.
Donald Trump lost high-income, high-educated constituencies, including the entire metro area—aka the Swamp. Many but by no means all Haley votes there were cast by Biden Democrats. Mr. Trump can’t afford to lose too many of the others in target states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Majorities and large minorities of voters in overwhelmingly Latino counties in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and some in Houston voted against Joe Biden, and even more against Senate nominee Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas).
Returns from Hispanic precincts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts show the same thing. Mr. Biden can’t afford to lose too many Latino votes in target states like Arizona and Georgia.
When Mr. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015, commentators assumed he’d repel Latinos. Instead, Latino voters nationally, and especially the closest eyewitnesses of Biden’s open-border policy, have been trending heavily Republican.
High-income liberal Democrats may sport lawn signs proclaiming, “In this house, we believe ... no human is illegal.” The logical consequence of that belief is an open border. But modest-income folks in border counties know that flows of illegal immigrants result in disorder, disease, and crime.
There is plenty of impatience with increased disorder in election returns below the presidential level. Consider Los Angeles County, America’s largest county, with nearly 10 million people, more people than 40 of the 50 states. It voted 71 percent for Mr. Biden in 2020.
Current returns show county District Attorney George Gascon winning only 21 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan primary. He’ll apparently face Republican Nathan Hochman, a critic of his liberal policies, in November.
Gascon, elected after the May 2020 death of counterfeit-passing suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis, is one of many county prosecutors supported by billionaire George Soros. His policies include not charging juveniles as adults, not seeking higher penalties for gang membership or use of firearms, and bringing fewer misdemeanor cases.
The predictable result has been increased car thefts, burglaries, and personal robberies. Some 120 assistant district attorneys have left the office, and there’s a backlog of 10,000 unprosecuted cases.
More than a dozen other Soros-backed and similarly liberal prosecutors have faced strong opposition or have left office.
St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner resigned last May amid lawsuits seeking her removal, Milwaukee’s John Chisholm retired in January, and Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby was defeated in July 2022 and convicted of perjury in September 2023. Last November, Loudoun County, Virginia, voters (62 percent Biden) ousted liberal Buta Biberaj, who declined to prosecute a transgender student for assault, and in June 2022 voters in San Francisco (85 percent Biden) recalled famed radical Chesa Boudin.
Similarly, this Tuesday, voters in San Francisco passed ballot measures strengthening police powers and requiring treatment of drug-addicted welfare recipients.
In retrospect, it appears the Floyd video, appearing after three months of COVID-19 confinement, sparked a frenzied, even crazed reaction, especially among the highly educated and articulate. One fatal incident was seen as proof that America’s “systemic racism” was worse than ever and that police forces should be defunded and perhaps abolished.
2020 was “the year America went crazy,” I wrote in January 2021, a year in which police funding was actually cut by Democrats in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. A year in which young New York Times (NYT) staffers claimed they were endangered by the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) opinion article advocating calling in military forces if necessary to stop rioting, as had been done in Detroit in 1967 and Los Angeles in 1992. A craven NYT publisher even fired the editorial page editor for running the article.
Evidence of visible and tangible discontent with increasing violence and its consequences—barren and locked shelves in Manhattan chain drugstores, skyrocketing carjackings in Washington, D.C.—is as unmistakable in polls and election results as it is in daily life in large metropolitan areas. Maybe 2024 will turn out to be the year even liberal America stopped acting crazy.
Chaos and disorder work against incumbents, as they did in 1968 when Democrats saw their party’s popular vote fall from 61 percent to 43 percent.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
Government
Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence
Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The…
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Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reviewed no data when deciding in 2023 to keep its COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place.
VA Secretary Denis McDonough said on May 1, 2023, that the end of many other federal mandates “will not impact current policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”
He said the mandate was remaining for VA health care personnel “to ensure the safety of veterans and our colleagues.”
Mr. McDonough did not cite any studies or other data. A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data that was reviewed when deciding not to rescind the mandate. The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act for “all documents outlining which data was relied upon when establishing the mandate when deciding to keep the mandate in place.”
The agency searched for such data and did not find any.
“The VA does not even attempt to justify its policies with science, because it can’t,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times.
“The VA just trusts that the process and cost of challenging its unfounded policies is so onerous, most people are dissuaded from even trying,” she added.
The VA’s mandate remains in place to this day.
The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.
There have also been increasing concerns among outside scientists about confirmed side effects like heart inflammation—the VA hid a safety signal it detected for the inflammation—and possible side effects such as tinnitus, which shift the benefit-risk calculus.
President Joe Biden imposed a slate of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2021. The VA was the first federal agency to implement a mandate.
President Biden rescinded the mandates in May 2023, citing a drop in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. His administration maintains the choice to require vaccines was the right one and saved lives.
“Our administration’s vaccination requirements helped ensure the safety of workers in critical workforces including those in the healthcare and education sectors, protecting themselves and the populations they serve, and strengthening their ability to provide services without disruptions to operations,” the White House said.
Some experts said requiring vaccination meant many younger people were forced to get a vaccine despite the risks potentially outweighing the benefits, leaving fewer doses for older adults.
“By mandating the vaccines to younger people and those with natural immunity from having had COVID, older people in the U.S. and other countries did not have access to them, and many people might have died because of that,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times previously.
The VA was one of just a handful of agencies to keep its mandate in place following the removal of many federal mandates.
“At this time, the vaccine requirement will remain in effect for VA health care personnel, including VA psychologists, pharmacists, social workers, nursing assistants, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, peer specialists, medical support assistants, engineers, housekeepers, and other clinical, administrative, and infrastructure support employees,” Mr. McDonough wrote to VA employees at the time.
“This also includes VA volunteers and contractors. Effectively, this means that any Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employee, volunteer, or contractor who works in VHA facilities, visits VHA facilities, or provides direct care to those we serve will still be subject to the vaccine requirement at this time,” he said. “We continue to monitor and discuss this requirement, and we will provide more information about the vaccination requirements for VA health care employees soon. As always, we will process requests for vaccination exceptions in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”
The version of the shots cleared in the fall of 2022, and available through the fall of 2023, did not have any clinical trial data supporting them.
A new version was approved in the fall of 2023 because there were indications that the shots not only offered temporary protection but also that the level of protection was lower than what was observed during earlier stages of the pandemic.
Ms. Manookian, whose group has challenged several of the federal mandates, said that the mandate “illustrates the dangers of the administrative state and how these federal agencies have become a law unto themselves.”
Government
Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study
Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study
Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
People with inadequate…
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Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
People with inadequate iron levels in their blood due to a COVID-19 infection could be at greater risk of long COVID.
A new study indicates that problems with iron levels in the bloodstream likely trigger chronic inflammation and other conditions associated with the post-COVID phenomenon. The findings, published on March 1 in Nature Immunology, could offer new ways to treat or prevent the condition.
Long COVID Patients Have Low Iron Levels
Researchers at the University of Cambridge pinpointed low iron as a potential link to long-COVID symptoms thanks to a study they initiated shortly after the start of the pandemic. They recruited people who tested positive for the virus to provide blood samples for analysis over a year, which allowed the researchers to look for post-infection changes in the blood. The researchers looked at 214 samples and found that 45 percent of patients reported symptoms of long COVID that lasted between three and 10 months.
In analyzing the blood samples, the research team noticed that people experiencing long COVID had low iron levels, contributing to anemia and low red blood cell production, just two weeks after they were diagnosed with COVID-19. This was true for patients regardless of age, sex, or the initial severity of their infection.
According to one of the study co-authors, the removal of iron from the bloodstream is a natural process and defense mechanism of the body.
But it can jeopardize a person’s recovery.
“When the body has an infection, it responds by removing iron from the bloodstream. This protects us from potentially lethal bacteria that capture the iron in the bloodstream and grow rapidly. It’s an evolutionary response that redistributes iron in the body, and the blood plasma becomes an iron desert,” University of Oxford professor Hal Drakesmith said in a press release. “However, if this goes on for a long time, there is less iron for red blood cells, so oxygen is transported less efficiently affecting metabolism and energy production, and for white blood cells, which need iron to work properly. The protective mechanism ends up becoming a problem.”
The research team believes that consistently low iron levels could explain why individuals with long COVID continue to experience fatigue and difficulty exercising. As such, the researchers suggested iron supplementation to help regulate and prevent the often debilitating symptoms associated with long COVID.
“It isn’t necessarily the case that individuals don’t have enough iron in their body, it’s just that it’s trapped in the wrong place,” Aimee Hanson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge who worked on the study, said in the press release. “What we need is a way to remobilize the iron and pull it back into the bloodstream, where it becomes more useful to the red blood cells.”
The research team pointed out that iron supplementation isn’t always straightforward. Achieving the right level of iron varies from person to person. Too much iron can cause stomach issues, ranging from constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain to gastritis and gastric lesions.
1 in 5 Still Affected by Long COVID
COVID-19 has affected nearly 40 percent of Americans, with one in five of those still suffering from symptoms of long COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Long COVID is marked by health issues that continue at least four weeks after an individual was initially diagnosed with COVID-19. Symptoms can last for days, weeks, months, or years and may include fatigue, cough or chest pain, headache, brain fog, depression or anxiety, digestive issues, and joint or muscle pain.
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Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study
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