Originally posted at American Thinker.
Barack Obama exhibits a pattern of behavior Americans should recognize by now. Whenever this president starts talking about “loosening the grip” of corporations, increasing competition, and opening markets to ensure lower prices it’s a sure sign that the noose of government is about to become tighter around America’s neck.
For nearly eight years, under the guise of shielding the American people from harm, Obama has methodically shifted power away from the private sector toward the most powerful and corrupt conglomerate on the face of the planet –- the U.S. federal government.
Let’s not beat around the bush; the prospect of thwarting corporate America gets the president all excited.
Obama began his reign of terror by “loosening the grip” of health insurance companies. The problem is that in order for his administration to rush in and patch things up, he first needed to break what wasn’t broken.
When the Affordable Care Act was being foisted on America, the president spent a full year attempting to convince the wary that insurance companies needed to be accountable. Americans were incessantly lectured to about how competition would lower prices, improve care, and expand access.
At the time, the president argued that:
In the end, this isn’t about politics. This is about people’s lives and livelihoods. This is about people’s businesses. This is about America’s future, and whether we will be able to look back and say that this was the moment when we made the changes we needed and gave our children a better life. I believe we can, and I believe we will.
ObamaCare has done none of that. Rather than be rescued by “changes we needed,” ever since healthcare reform was enacted Americans have been suffering the ramifications of ‘changes no one needed.’
Now, with an eye toward a government bailout, health insurance companies are citing unsustainable losses. Meanwhile, consumers are overburdened with high premiums, rising copayments, increasingly second-rate care, and exorbitant deductibles.
In response, drooling statists are anticipating the right moment to step forward and absorb a mess that was specifically created with a government fix in mind.
And so, contrary to popular opinion, ObamaCare is not nose-diving.
The whole process, from implementation to failure, was a government coup designed to bring America closer to having no other choice but to accept a single-payer system.
Moving right along, the elderly will next be denied medical care, but not before Obama persuades baby boomers that government absorption of 401Ks ensures a secure retirement.
In the interim, Barack is biding time golfing and undermining big business.
That’s why, as ISIS increases in power and North Korea ignites the fuse on the end of a nuke pointed toward California, instead of devoting energy to critical matters, the president is working hard to ‘fundamentally transform’ the future of cable boxes.
As the number of illegal immigrant children tunneling across our border rises 1,200% and peculiar bacteria kills 18+ and shootings in the gun-control capital of Chicago are up 200%, Obama’s FCC appointee, Chairman Tom Wheeler, and America’s Chief Executive have agreed that the pay television industry must be open the market to competition.
How nice of Barack Obama, who supports making the Internet into a public utility, to volunteer to support the F.C.C.’s effort to break up cable cartels that wrongly monopolize the sale of service.
Seems that Barry the Cable Guy would rather Americans buy their boxes from third parties who have the cutting-edge technology to gather, via smart TV,information currently unavailable on electronic health records.
Either way, to convince cable companies to “loosen their grip” on the black set-top boxes that deliver pay TV, the federal government plans to push a broad federal effort intended to increase the type of competition government intervention notoriously obstructs.
Speaking of competition, the president, who gained experience dabbling in the free cell phone business, had this to say about how the economic system he despises will benefit the cable industry:
One of America’s greatest strengths is our free market. A thriving private sector is the lifeblood of our economy — it’s how we create jobs, expand opportunities, and give everybody a shot at success. It’s what has made America the strongest country on Earth.
That kind of disingenuous rhetoric issuing forth from the mouth of a man with such antipathy towards private enterprise is a sign that another industry is about to become entangled in Barack Obama’s tentacles.
The only thing missing from that hogwash is the pledge that ‘if you like your cable box you can keep your cable box.’
The reasoning behind muscling into the cable business is that lonely little converters symbolize corporate dominance over the same folks Obama shamelessly exploits in his pursuit of power. So, to justify throwing the full weight of his office behind the FCC, Obama will probably emphasize the plight of poor people paying too much for cable, which is true.
However, what the Fundraiser-in-Chief forgot to mention when he announced his support for Unlock the Box was that, just like the insurance donors that profited handsomely from Obamacare, the “competition” effort he currently supports benefits a tiny group of top Democrat techie donors like Apple, Amazon, and Google.
By bailing out banks, the auto industry, and destroying health care, this president has contributed mightily to the expansion of the federal behemoth. That’s why; peering into every citizen’s home makes pay TV setups the obvious next step.
So, as always, the goal of Obama-fairness has zilch to do with competition, consumer protection, or the broader economy. Instead, Obama’s support of smashing up cable companies has everything to do with rewarding political friends and expanding an insidious regulatory organism that already controls too much and puts too much money in the pockets of the CEOs running the Washington DC monopoly.
In the end, government control of cable will likely result in the further loss of personal security protections. Moreover, it will bring America one-step closer to the type of statism Barack ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Obama is in the business of building all by himself.
