Reason #5899 That Trump Was Elected

Some Steel and Aluminum Makers to Restart Plant Operations Amid Tariff Plans

Some U.S. steel and aluminum makers are restarting idle mills and boosting capacity to make up for imports that face being priced out of the market if President Donald Trump’s proposed import tariffs take hold.

United States Steel Corp. on Wednesday said it would fire up a blast furnace in Granite City, Ill., and call back 500 workers. Century Aluminum Co. said last week it will restart lines at a smelter in Kentucky that have been curtailed since 2015, doubling its workforce there to 600.

“Our Granite City Works facility and employees…have suffered too long from the unending waves of unfairly traded steel products that have flooded U.S. markets,” U.S. Steel Chief Executive David Burritt said. The company had idled the furnaces and laid off hundreds of workers in 2015 as a flood of cheap imports pushed down domestic prices.

U.S. Steel shares rose 2.6% Wednesday to $45.69, making for a 28% increase in the past 12 months.

I'm generally free trade, but America needs to retain the ability to make it's own strategic metals. Either that, or plan on conquering Canada the next time we go to war seriously.

Reason #5893 - 5897 That Trump Was Elected

5 things Trump did this week while you weren't looking

It was a week of typically unpredictable headlines in the Donald Trump presidency: One of the president’s closest advisors resigned; Trump announced his support for gun-control proposals on national TV only to walk back his position a day later; and he surprised his staff by announcing major tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, possibly precipitating a trade war.

For all that commotion, gun control policies still look dead on Capitol Hill and the tariffs haven’t actually been implemented yet. Outside the spotlight, however, the Trump agenda has steadily marched forward, as his cabinet appointees—from Betsy DeVos as the Department of Education to Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency—continued to impress a new conservative agenda on their agencies. And there are some curveballs in the mix as well, such as a move back toward Obama’s labor rules. Here’s how Trump changed policy this week:

1. The Department of Education boosts charter schools, lightens civil-rights scrutiny . . .

2. In Mexico, Trump’s trade agenda moves forward . . .

3. EPA weakens a rule on methane emissions . . .

4. Treasury closes a loophole in the tax law  . . .(carried interest)

5. After a reversal of a reversal, an Obama labor policy survives

Four out of five ain't that bad. One of the reasons the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are always so furious at Trump is that he is slowly but surely wearing away much of the damage they have done in the past 8 years. To them, none of this is good, and they won't report on it as good, if they report on it at all.

Net Neutrality: A Solution in Search of a Problem

Like Y2K, the Net neutrality crisis is way overhyped

You may remember Dec. 31, 1999. That’s the last time the Internet was expected to die, because millions of computers were going to crash when their internal clocks failed to turn over to the year 2000. I sat in the Globe’s newsroom, waiting for the end. Nothing happened. It was quite a letdown.

Now here comes another “apocalypse.” On Dec 14, the FCC is expected to abandon the Obama administration’s policy on so-called Net neutrality, in which the government forces Internet providers to treat all data equally. Activists say it’s the end of the Internet as we know it, with giant Internet providers like Comcast and AT&T free to block or slow down access to key online services unless they’re paid extra to let the data flow.

But I’m betting hardly anything will change. Not the day after Dec. 14, the month after, or the year after.

I’m as subject to panic as the next guy, but I can’t see much reason to freak out over the supposed death of Net neutrality.

I’m on board with the principle that Internet carriers should not be allowed to block certain Internet services or deliberately slow them down to make them less accessible. Many activists go further and reject “paid prioritization,” or giving superior “fast lane” service to consumers willing to pay extra.

Serious breaches of Net neutrality are pretty hard to find. An activist group called Free Press published a “greatest hits” list of alleged violations. They found 12. Oops . . . make that 10. In two decades of widespread Internet use in America, they couldn’t find even a dozen significant violations, so Free Press padded the list with two cases from outside the United States. Even the remaining 10 are questionable cases that may have been driven by network security or traffic management disputes, rather than by efforts to stamp out rivals.

I get it. We all hate our ISPs for what? Bringing us all the world's entertainment and knowledge into our houses for what seems to be an outrageous price. Punish them!

The reality is that it's a case of regulations for regulations sake; it exists, therefore the government (meaning liberal democrats) should control it. And you know that's  exactly how they'll use it.

Everybody Is Wrong About Net Neutrality

. . . While the scare stories are legion — my favorite is a bizarre rant in the Globe and Mail arguing that the end of net neutrality would mean doom for “the resistance” — and the technical details are often mind-numbingly complex, this is still a simple story. Between 2005 and 2015, competition produced a 1150 percent increase in broadband speeds. Free markets and unfettered capitalism built out the fast internet. Now the government wants to step in and help. . . 

That help needs scare quotes.