WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- The UPI Think Tank Wrap-Up is a daily digest covering brief opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events, and position statements released by various think tanks.
Competitive Enterprise Institute
(CEI is a free-market think tank that supports principles of free enterprise and limited government, and actively engages in public policy debate.)
WASHINGTON--CEI C:\Spin--Broadband: No Dingell Bills This Christmas, but the FCC May Be Coming to Town"
By James Gattuso,
Vice President for Policy, CEI
After weeks of anticipation -- and a full-scale lobbying war between various parts of the telecom industry -- the House leadership (Monday) put off its scheduled vote on the Tauzin-Dingell broadband deregulation bill (HR 1542). Reportedly, the bill was rescheduled for March -- but whether that will really happen is anybody's guess.
However, the real broadband story this week wasn't on Capitol Hill, but 17 blocks away, as the FCC initiated two proceedings aimed at reducing broadband regulation. These and other FCC actions are more likely to determine broadband's future than anything that can be expected from Congress.
This time of year, most normal people are focusing on getting their Christmas shopping finished. The last thing on their minds is telecommunications policy. But the issue is pressing. With the tech sector at low tide, and the economy as a whole struggling, high-speed Internet access could be a linchpin to recovery. While nothing is certain in tech, one study put the potential economic benefit at $500 billion.
Broadband connections are, of course, already being made available to consumers, but Tauzin-Dingell supporters say it could be deployed faster were it not for government regulation. Among other things, they point to "mandated unbundling" rules requiring that telephone companies allow competitors access to use their facilities.
They make a straightforward, common sense argument -- why would a firm take an investment risk if it must share the benefits with competitors? And their view received some weighty support last month from the National Academy of Sciences. In a long-awaited report, a committee of experts put together by the NAS agreed that unbundling requirements, when applied to infrastructure used for advanced services, are "a disincentive for investment by the incumbent in such enhanced facilities, because the incumbent cannot capture all the benefits of its investment."
Unfortunately, neither common sense nor good economics often carries the day in Washington. Even before yesterday's postponement, it was hard to see how anything approaching real deregulation could successfully emerge from Congress. Even if Tauzin-Dingell or similar legislation passed the House, it would certainly hit a brick wall in the Senate. In fact, with Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-SC) -- a man who's rarely seen a regulation he didn't like -- holding the reins at the Senate Commerce Commission, Senate legislation could end up increasing regulation, and setting back broadband.
That's where the FCC comes in. The Commission has broad powers to shape the broadband rules of the road, and in recent months FCC Chairman Michael Powell has indicated the Commission will be stepping to the plate. On Wednesday, the commission took two notable steps: First, it initiated a rulemaking to review broadband regulation of incumbent carriers. Second, it began a review of all mandated unbundling rules, and whether more targeted rules would be appropriate. More such initiatives may be coming in the future.
Certainly, these are tentative first steps. Chairman Powell, for instance, took pains to keep expectations down, colorfully cautioning that these steps are not a "signpost heralding a new direction," but rather "another arrow to the regulatory quiver we will use to ... subdue the broadband beast." And, given the famously slow pace of FCC decision making, it's unclear that regulatory relief will come fast enough.
Nevertheless, these are promising developments: both proceedings clearly target regulation that is hindering broadband deployment (as well as competition in general). And they signal that the Commission may, on its own authority, do something about it.
Together with the setback to Tauzin-Dingell, the lesson is clear: The main venue for the broadband debate has changed from the Capitol to 445 12th Street.
(James Gattuso is the vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.)
The Cato Institute
It's Time, Finally, to End the Cuban Embargo
By Aaron P. Lukas
War has a way of bringing clarity to international relationships. As president Bush has repeatedly announced, "You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists."
That test is appropriately applied to our black-sheep neighbor in the Caribbean. For Cuba, however, it might better be phrased as, "You are either with the terrorists, or you are with us." Held to that standard, it's clear that Cuba is not in the terrorist camp, and therefore is not against us. And so the time has come to end the Cuban embargo.
It's true that many Cubans have long been suspicious of the U.S. government. But they don't, in the main, wish Americans harm. Indeed, 80,000 U.S. citizens visit Cuba each year and are warmly received. At the same time, thousands of Cubans risk their lives to cross the 90 shark-infested miles to Florida. Without the estimated $800 million in annual remittances from friends and family in the United States, many Cubans would starve.
In other words, except at the official level, relations between Americans and Cubans are anything but hostile.
Even the despicable government headed by Fidel Castro doesn't seriously threaten us. Cuba's military impotence is accepted fact. The island no longer serves as a base for Soviet intelligence operations, nor does it attempt to export the Communist economic system that has so spectacularly failed at home.
Perhaps more salient today is the fact that Cubans don't commit acts of terror on our shores, hijack U.S. planes, or attack us with microorganisms. Cubans aren't, in short, our enemies, and most Americans know it. But unlike the sanctions on Iraq, we're told, the Cuban embargo isn't designed to punish a dangerous enemy. Rather, it's a gift to the Cuban people; a sort of "tough love" that is ultimately in their own best interest.
That line is wearing thin after four decades. In a new Cato study, interviews with leading Cuban dissidents reveal a preference for engagement and little support for the embargo. If Mr. Castro's staunchest opponents think the embargo has helped keep him in power, we shouldn't doubt them.
History shows that isolation isn't necessarily an effective means of fostering change. In 1970, 17 of 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean had authoritarian regimes. Today, only Cuba has a dictatorial regime. Yet only Cuba has been subjected to a comprehensive embargo.
Elsewhere, economic engagement has been the rule. That the Cuban people have suffered under a brutal tyrant is indisputable; that the embargo has made their plight worse is equally obvious.
No significant U.S. industries would be threatened by scrapping the embargo since Cuba has few competitive exports, making the political costs of freeing trade with Cuba lower than is the case with other countries.
American exporters, however, pay a hefty price. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates U.S. firms lose between $684 million and $1.2 billion worth of business per year. Those contracts go to Canadian, European, and other firms.
Not only has the embargo backfired, it wastes American resources that are needed to fight terrorism. Treasury officials who could be unraveling terrorist financial networks are instead tracing property owned by Spanish hotels in Cuba to make sure it wasn't stolen from Americans decades ago. INS agents that could be watching our borders for suicide bombers are instead worrying about tourists who may have spent money in Havana.
These shouldn't be our top priorities. In fact, they shouldn't be priorities at all.
Along with an end to the embargo, funds currently wasted on attempts to de-legitimize the Castro regime could be diverted to more productive uses. For instance, money currently spent on Radio Marti (which is electronically jammed by the Cuban government) could go instead to a Radio Free Afghanistan--a region where the broadcasts might actually do some good.
But perhaps most significant would be the message that scrapping the embargo would send to the Taliban and other regimes that sponsor terrorism: Foreign governments need not follow the American model, but states that attack us forfeit the right to choose their own destiny.
Of course, the reason that the embargo has persisted in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's failed has been the strength of the Cuban-American lobby in Congress. Yet pro-embargo sentiment is weaker than ever for a variety of reasons, including bad press garnered by Miami Cubans over the Elián González standoff. Moreover, armed conflict has a way of lending political capital to presidents that is unavailable in times of peace. President Bush thus has a unique opportunity to change direction on Cuba that his predecessors lacked.
The Cuban embargo long ago outlived its usefulness. With war now raging against radical Islam, it's time to let go of a policy that only serves to punish the innocent and antagonize our friends. Let Cubans freely taste the carrot of our prosperity through trade and let's save the sanctions stick for true enemies.
(Aaron Lukas is an analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies.)
