Now, I don't usually report what radio guys are doing or saying, not that I don't like them or that I find them somehow illegitimate, but because they have their own fora from which to make their waves and they can get their ideas out without my assistance. But, I do listen to several talkers and enjoy some of them, as well.
One of the talkers I like is Hugh Hewitt. He is the reason I have stepped up my blogging and why I started a Town-Hall blog, too. I find he is usually a Reagan styled conservative and I agree with him very often. So, when he says something I usually give it consideration.
However, he said something in the last hour of his show today that amazed me.
Hewitt had a very short, sort of throw away segment on the last hour of his show last night (Thursday the 30th) where he seemed to advocate one of the worst apostasies in Conservative thinking: a big government take over of a private sector industry.
Worse, it was a take over of an industry that makes Hugh Hewitt's world; Internet domain registration.
Currently, the ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) handles all domain registration, charging $6 a year for that internet domain name, Hewitt reported. These are brokered through hundreds of domain sellers, but the actual issuance of the domain name is handled through ICANN no matter from what service provider one originally purchases the domain. This Brings the ICANN service several hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Yet, despite that ICANN registers and controls these domains, they are given that mandate by the US government. Congress periodically approves ICANN's authority to control all domain names basically issuing them a license to do so and has recently renewed ICANN's rights for another 6 years.
So, what did Hewitt say about ICANN? Well, he wondered aloud why the government has to "allow" ICANN to be the domain registration service and why all the hundreds of thousands of dollars that ICANN makes can't stay with some US government agency or another? He wondered why the government can't just register domains themselves and "keep all that money".
Just think of what Hewitt offhandedly posited! We are paying $6 a year for domain name registration with this privately held corporation. Does Hewitt think that this extremely reasonable fee would stay as low as it now is if domain registration fees were to be turned over to another bloated government agency?
Worse, doesn't Hewitt realize that control of these fees would give politicians just another avenue to continue raising more and more tax revenue, hiking them year after year until fees were so high NO ONE could afford to register a domain name at all?
And for a man who claims to be an internet guru, does he NOT realize that this would end up putting an end to the wonderful growth that the internet now enjoys? As Supreme Court Justice John Marshall is so famous for saying, the power to tax is the power to destroy!
I certainly hope that Hewitt was not advocating a government take over of yet another private industry! I sure hope he had not thought through his rash suggestion and is not serious that the government should take over the registration of domain names and the fee structures that comes with such! PLEASE tell us, Hugh, that this was just some half-cocked scheme that you did not fully consider before saying?
After all, we ALL say stupid things once in a while. Let's hope Hewitt just spoke out of hand without being truly serious about this ruinous idea.
On the other hand, if this was a serious suggestion by Hweitt, he needs a slap on the hand from EVERY conservative in the country.
Come on, Hugh. What do you say? Mea Culpa, I hope!
