Regulation

IPI comments opposed both petitions because a state has a constitutional right to use its prerogative as a state to restrict municipal broadband.

What can be done about a federal agency that has become despised, politicized and marginalized?

The FCC should stay within its bounds and let the private sector work, said IPI in comments recently filed regarding the Comcast and Time Warner Cable merger review, and additionally in regard to two U.S. cities calling upon the FCC to overturn state laws regulating municipal broadband networks.

The FCC has no authority to sweep aside state law in order to promote municipally owned broadband networks.

President Obama’s complete inability to pass liberal legislation that actually works—or now to pass any legislation at all—has driven him to rely on the honor system in the hope that people will do the right thing in several policy arenas.

It would be unconstitutional for the FCC to preempt prudent state laws restricting municipal broadband projects, which have largely been wastes of taxpayer dollars,

For decades Congress has taken the “carrot approach” to imposing mandates on them by making certain federal funds contingent on states agreeing to Congress’s demands.

The growing efforts by state and local governments to stop hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to extract natural gas could end up in the Supreme Court—because they may unconstitutionally limit property owners’ ability to profit from their mineral rights.

Fourteen groups representing free-market advocates opposed to Internet regulation, filed comments with the FCC, calling on the Commission to delay any effort to issue "Network Neutrality" regulations until Congress has provided the agency clear authority to do so. 

IPI recommends passage of a "clean" reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA).