I’m in danger of repeating myself as the AT&T/T-Mobile saga goes on, so let me open up tonight’s post with to my latest analysis of the situation. Summary: the behavior of Sprint Nextel’s and Clearwire’s share prices, combined with Sprint Nextel’s decision to sue AT&T, should lead any observer to believe that the AT&T/T-Mobile deal benefits the 4G Internet-using public at the expense of Sprint Nextel and current market leader Verizon.
Same as it ever was, as the Talking Heads said. When Sprint gobbled up Nextel, the public gained. So, too, will the public gain if the government keeps its hands off this time.
Is Sprint in trouble? Some say yes, but the point of antitrust laws isn’t reduce competition to prop up ineffective businesses.
Help the economy, President Barack Obama. Drop the suit. Encourage your subordinates to get out of the way of job creation, innovation, and technical progress. Event the San Francisco Chronicle has run a piece explaining that.
Hearings begin September 21. Ah, government. Slow, slow, slow. Imagine life or death medical decisions in the hands of this government! Maybe they’re still trolling for some evidence that just isn’t there.
And as for Sprint’s suit, AT&T is right: “Sprint is more interested in protecting itself than it is in promoting competition that benefits consumers.”
Back to the fight over the unconstitutional Internet Sales Tax California passed to punish Amazon. Zero firms are paying it. None. It’s a failure that’s costing the state revenue. And yet, Senate Democrats gutted and rewrote AB 155 to try to declare the tax ‘urgent’, for the sole purpose of nullifying the referendum against the tax. It came five votes short of the 27 needed to pass, but they may try again, incredibly enough.
Rand Paul. He was supposed to be such a disruptive force in DC. Well, it turns out, he’ll do whatever Harry Reid tells him as long as he gets to amend Democrat bills with symbolic language against the Treaury that has no substance. Yes, Rand Paul has rolled over and played dead on the America Invents Act, the bill that would turn our patent system into a European-style failure, that rewards lawyering at the expense of the first person to invent a given invention.
Given that half the world doesn’t even respect property rights, it’s asinine even to consider copying foreign countries on Intellectual Property matters.
In the House, we had the lone voice of reason in Dana Rohrabacher standing up against the awful bill of Vermont extremist Patrick Leahy’s. Senator Trainwreck may yet try to stop it in the Senate over a technicality. I don’t care about the reason, but go Tom Coburn go!
Google claims its software patents are ‘defensive.’ Well, it turns out what that means is Google will hand out software patents to business partners like HTC for aggressive action against Google’s competitor, Apple. It’s like Google’s never heard of the Cash and Carry plan, where the US pretended to be neutral in WWII, but wrote a policy that favored Britain by design. Technicalities do not change the fact that Google’s claim of defensive patents is a fraud.