Proposed FCC fines compared

Rolling Stone has an article up in which they compare fines issued by the FCC under a proposed new law to those issued by other government regulatory organizations. Under the proposed legislation the FCC will be able to levy a maximum fine of $500,000 per violation.

I can understand some of the feelings towards forcing the FCC to crack down on open airwaves, yet we seem to have a real punishment mismatch versus crimes committed attitude going on in this country. Selling marijuana on a college campus getting you more time than manslaughter and all that.

I think you’re overly charitable. When a ridiculous proportion (99.8%) of the FCC’s complaints about indecency come from these assholes, it’s clear we have a distortion of the actual popular pressure for these sorts of actions. Can’t parents just be parents for once?

The FCC does exactly one useful thing: regulating the usage of frequencies in an industrial sense (ie allocating bands, enforcing inter-state standards, etc). Everything else it does is an executive regulation of things that shouldn’t be government mandated (like, morality and stuff) with neither legislative nor judicial oversight, and which ought to be permanently done away with.

Am I the only one who said “shit! the government needs higher fees for nuclear infringments and testing pesticides on people”?