private sector

Last week the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (i.e. the government) received a court order (i.e. from the government) that would force private computer giant Apple to write a program (a “backdoor”) to break the privacy-protecting encryption of their iPhone.

The seven years of the President Barack Obama Administration have provided us with two diametrically opposite things. The government time and again failing utterly in just about everything it tries to do – economic recovery, job creation, health care, defense of our borders and our nation, budget stewardship,…. Meanwhile, the Administration and its Democrat Party keep usurping and pushing to usurp as much of the private sector as possible – to add it all to the government’s (ir)responsibility portfolio.

One of the advantages Big Government advocates have in their efforts to end the private sector – is the size of the victim. A $17-trillion-a-year economy is so huge – it almost always takes a lot of time to dismantle.

With many cities and states struggling to balance their budgets and financially strained taxpayers unable to sustain liberal spending sprees, elected officials are being compelled to choose between raising taxes and service fees or cutting back on the quality and quantity of services provided.

Remember the “Buffet Rule?”

Penn Jillette, the world-famous magician (and fellow of the Cato Institute), has a saying: “Everybody got a gris-gris.” By that, Jillette means everyone has some irrational belief or superstition, something one believes even when knowing it is an unreasonable. We carry these superstitions through life like talismans, and we defend them when confronted with the cold light of reason. My gris-gris is NASA.

We have before us – and the government – Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

Which the Leviathan and the Left view as an opportunity to outright blockade the free market. Or, barring that, unilaterally impose many, many a la carte regulations – that they otherwise can’t get imposed – in exchange for Mother-May-I government-transaction-approval.

Your average government – anywhere in the world – has more resources at its disposal than just about any private company on the planet.

So when a government sets its sites on making a private company’s life miserable – it almost always can. Because it can put the full weight of the Leviathan behind the push – and it is spending Other People’s Money to do it.

Mary Najarrian, principal of Saint John of San Francisco Orthodox Academy in San Francisco, joins The Heartland Institute for a podcast about how an orthodox school balances conflict and education.

FCC staff just muffed an easy opportunity to advance the IP transition on the FCC’s timetable in the National Broadband Plan. Apparently FCC staff missed the big picture here.

Following a rough week for Obamacare, the President, understandably, wants to pivot to anything other than the devastating coverage of HealthCare.gov.