In 1952, during the Korean War, the United Steel Workers of America had gone out on strike. The union was demanding pay increases beyond what steel firms said they could afford to pay, unless they were to raise prices beyond what would be approved by the government’s Wage Stablization Board (set up for the war to attempt to keep costs in line despite inflationary government policies).

President Harry Truman, Democrat, unilaterally declared the steel firms to be at fault for the strikes, which were set to cripple Defense contractors’ ability to keep the war supplied. So, the President nationalized America’s steel manufacturing plants with the plan of dictating his own terms to the unions, appeasing them as part of his political base, while keeping afloat an early front of the Cold War.

The Supreme Court two months later shut the President down, denying the administration’s claim that he had broad implied or residual powers to do whatever he wanted as President of the United States. Had he relied on the Selective Service Act to take control, he might have gotten away with it, but he refused to use it because it had too many pesky controls to protect property rights. Had he relied on Taft-Hartley to stop the strikes, he might have gotten away with it, but he refused to use it because the unions were his allies.

So today, it is surely with the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube co. vs Sawyer in mind that the Congress debates giving President Barack Obama, Democrat, sweeping authority over Internet Service Providers, including the authority to nationalize whatever Internet resources he declares to be important.

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Meet Susan Crawford, the co-chair for the Federal Communications Commission transition team for Barack Obama, and special assistant to the President in the Obama Administration (she has a blog here). A former law professor at the University of Michigan–one presumes that she has either departed permanently, or is on leave–Professor Crawford has some interesting ideas concerning the Internet. Namely, she wants it treated like a public utility (subscription required):

Crawford stressed that the stimulus money is a down payment on future government investments in the Internet. “We should do a better job as a nation of making sure fast, affordable broadband is as ubiquitous as electricity, water, snail mail or any other public utility,” she said.

Of course, the use of the term “public utility” denotes nationalization:

Most of the time when I talk about the need to treat internet access like a utility, I get amused smiles.

That’s the thing we have to change — the idea that it’s unthinkable (amusing, even) that we could take this increasingly singular but private relationship of people to broadband internet access and make it a public relationship.

But end-users really don’t care whether their provider is a cable company or a telephone company — they think they’re getting the internet. They’re probably not even aware that a private company is providing internet access to them. And there are even a few people out there in the U.S., despite our best efforts, who don’t understand that these private companies have every incentive to prioritize and manipulate their way into showing us “channels” instead of the internet.

One wonders whether the Obama Administration’s penchant for nationalizing anything and everything under the sun will ever be abated.

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The landline provider in my neighborhood in New York City is Verizon. I’m in the middle of a support incident with Verizon that I’ll describe in a bit of detail, for a couple of reasons. First, because it happens on an infrequent but regular basis. Second, because it vividly illustrates how a government-protected industry deals with its customers.

Why does this matter? Because we’re now talking about taking vast chunks of American industry into that happy zone where they have little to fear from market competition, or even from their shareholders and debtholders. Today, Verizon is in that place. Almost immediately, they’ll be joined by the Detroit automakers, and by America’s largest and most powerful banks. Sometime before Obama’s first term ends, America’s healthcare delivery system will also be there.

I was in the middle of a phone call yesterday morning, when the line went dead. Fair enough, this happens all the time. I live in New York City, where our infrastructure was once the most advanced in the world. And today, we still have exactly the same infrastructure. The central office that handles my phone service is now more than 100 years old. A lot has changed: Ernestine the telephone operator no longer works there, and they’ve painted over the windows.

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