The Wall Street Journal:

Perhaps you’ve read that Congress voted to empower cable providers to collect your personal information and sell it, unraveling “landmark” privacy protections from the Federal Communications Commission. The partisans and reporters pumping this claim are—let’s be kind—uninformed, so allow us to add a few facts.

The House voted this week to rescind an Obama Administration regulation requiring that cable customers “opt in” to allow data mining of their preferences, which allows companies to feature targeted ads or improve service. The rule passed in a partisan FCC vote last year but never took effect. This belies the idea that Comcast and other invented villains will have some “new freedom” to auction off your data. President Trump is expected to sign the bill, which already passed the Senate. The result will be . . . the status quo.

The FCC didn’t roll out these rules in response to gross privacy invasions. The agency lacked jurisdiction until 2015 when it snatched authority from the Federal Trade Commission by reclassifying the internet as a public utility. The FTC had punished bad actors in privacy and data security for years, with more than 150 enforcement actions.
One best privacy practice is offering customers the choice to “opt out”—most consumers are willing to exchange their viewing habits for more personalized experiences, and the Rand Pauls of the world can elude collection. Cable customers have this option now. For sensitive information like Social Security numbers, consumers have to opt in. This framework protected privacy while allowing innovation.

The FCC ditched this approach and promulgated a rule that, curiously, did not apply to companies like Google or Amazon, whose business model includes monetizing massive data collection—what panda videos you watch or which gardening tools you buy. The rule was designed to give an edge to Twitter and friends in online advertising, a field already dominated by Silicon Valley.

The crew pushing the rule say cable companies deserve scrutiny because it is easy to change websites but hard to change internet-service providers. The reality is the reverse: The average internet user connects through six devices, according to a paper last year from Georgia Tech, and moves across locations and networks. But which search engine do you use, whether on your home laptop or iPhone at work? Probably Google. Plus: Encryption and other technology will soon shield some 70% of the internet from service providers.

What this week’s tumult means for your privacy online is nothing. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and FTC Chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen issued a joint statement saying they’d work together to build a “comprehensive and consistent framework” for privacy that doesn’t favor some tech companies over others. The interim is governed by FCC guidelines that have been in place for years.

These details haven’t stopped headlines like “How the Republicans Sold Your Privacy to Internet Providers.” That one ran atop a piece by President Obama’s FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who continues to shore up his legacy as a partisan. The misinformation campaign is an attempt to bully Republicans and Chairman Pai out of reversing eight years of capricious regulation. Both deserve credit for not buckling amid the phony meltdown.

Charlie Sykes:

After the failure comes the brave talk: President Trump declares war on the House Freedom Caucus and tweets out that “Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R Party.”

Actually, there isn’t much evidence there’s a lot of either love or strength in the GOP these days. But, since making predictions is a dicey proposition in the Trump era, it’s possible that the Trump-Ryan bill is merely mostly dead, rather than thoroughly demised.

Even so, the focus on the recalcitrant Freedom Caucus misses five major dynamics that seem unlikely to change: (1) the House GOP healthcare bill was killed not just by hardline conservatives, but also by moderates, (2) whatever happens in the House, it is still DOA in the Senate, (3) only 17 percent of Americans think it’s a good idea, (4) Republicans have never before succeeded in repealing or dramatically changing a middle-class entitlement once it has been implemented, and (5) Trump himself remains woefully ignorant of the details of the bill and largely indifferent to the policy itself.

Meanwhile, Trump is embroiled in multiple investigations, chronic chaos and dysfunction, and has an approval rating of around 35 percent, a number that does not incentivize Democrats to bail him out or Republicans to quail in fear of his displeasure.

In this environment, passing healthcare legislation is the political equivalent of a Rubik’s cube and there is no indication that the feat is being attempted by geniuses. Mark Twain (or perhaps Abraham Maslow) once noted that “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Trump is a man with a Twitter account, who thinks every problem can be solved with a tweet.

The result is a case study in political incoherence. In the days following the humiliating failure on healthcare, Trump World (led by Breitbart) waged a bizarre two-front war, simultaneously attacking both Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (who supported the bill) and the conservatives who opposed it (because they had defied the president).

It’s hard to see how this ends well, because for his presidency to succeed, Trump needs his base united behind him. By lashing out at fellow Republicans he is picking exactly the wrong fight.

This has also created a dilemma for the shills: Trump-friendly media outlets faced a painful (and yet somehow familiar) choice of siding with Trump or the conservative groups who they have championed for years. (Sean Hannity’s contortions have been a wonder to behold.)

But this isn’t all Trump’s fault. The truth is that the GOP healthcare bill died from pre-existing conditions.

Long before Trump descended the golden escalator and announced his presidential bid, the right had become dominated by a perpetual outrage machine, roiling the already unsettled waters of political anger and alienation on the Right. Republicans, who had become adept at opposition politics, often played along, repeatedly over-promising their ability to roll back Obama-era policies.

Ironically, this helped give us Trump, despite his ideological incompatibility with many of the conservative groups pushing for more ideological purity. So, not surprisingly, his election didn’t solve the GOP’s internal problems, especially since it is hard to flip from shrill oppositionalism to the more mundane business of actual governance.

It did not help that the legislation, with its massive tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor and middle class, seemed to be a product of what Bill Kristol colorfully calls “zombie conservatism.”

The result is that the GOP options range from bad to horrible:

• They can try to push it through the House, only to watch it die in the Senate and create an electoral nightmare in 2018.
• They can move on to the rest of the GOP agenda, and hope that the public blames Democrats for the continuing failures of Obamacare. But this means abandoning a promise that Republicans have made for more than 7 years.
• Trump can administratively undermine Obamacare. But, the iron rule here is that if you broke it, you own it.
• As unlikely as it may be, Trump could also try to work with the Democrats on a compromise. But, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has made quite clear, any deal requires the GOP to give up any plans to repeal or weaken Obamacare. In other words, the price of compromise is unilateral surrender. That would mean that the GOP would simply break its promise and fail to repeal the law, it would mean that Trump (and the GOP) would explicitly embrace and ratify Obamacare.
• Finally, Trump could return to the faith of his youth and move hard-left, embracing single-payer. A leading pro-Trump intellectual, F. H. Buckley, is now urging Trump to do precisely that.

Short of a full-on meltdown of his presidency, it’s hard to envision Trump making such a radical move. But what it lacks in plausibility, it would more than make up in the entertainment value of watching Limbaugh, Coulter, and Hannity try to spin it.

Jonathan M. Trugman:

Last week the Commerce Department released its third revision for fourth-quarter 2016 gross domestic product. The number came in at a paltry 2.1 percent, meaning that growth during President Obama’s final year in office — the end of an “Error of Hope” — landed with a big thud at just 1.6 percent.

That low-water mark puts the Obama presidency in last place among all the post-World War II presidents when it comes to economic growth.

There have been 13 post-WWII presidents, beginning with Harry Truman, who had the disadvantage of beginning in the aftermath of war in 1946, during which the economy contracted 11.6 percent — four times the contraction any other negative year since — and even he bested Obama’s economic record!

Truman, a moderate Democrat, also posted the two best years of growth on record: 1950 at 8.7 percent and 1951 at 8 percent, and there was no zero percent interest rate to gin up the economy back then.

Thirteenth of 13 presidents is no mild distinction. Obama had eight full years to enact a growth policy, while many of his predecessors never had two complete terms. George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter had just four years each, Gerald Ford had less than three years and Richard Nixon had five.

I’m not the least bit surprised the Obama economy was a failure. I’ve chronicled it for more than seven years in this column.

Here are the average growth rates for each president:

• Johnson (1964-68), 5.3 percent
• Kennedy (1961-63), 4.3 percent
• Clinton (1993-2000), 3.9 percent
• Reagan (1981-88), 3.5 percent
• Carter (1977-80), 3.3 percent
• Eisenhower (1953-60), 3 percent
• Nixon (1969-74), 2.8 percent
• Ford (1975-76), 2.6 percent
• G.H.W. Bush (1989-92), 2.3 percent
• G.W. Bush (2001-08), 2.1 percent
• Truman (1946-52), 1.7 percent
• Obama (2009-16), 1.6 percent

Truman? Go back farther:

With Thursday’s final revision of fourth-quarter GDP growth to 2.1 percent from its previous 1.9 percent level, President Obama is the only president since Herbert Hoover to not have guided the US economy to 3 percent growth in any year he was in office. …

Obama’s best year, as far as growing the economy, was 2015 when it grew 2.6 percent from 2014 — after growing 2.4 percent that year from 2013.

The recovering economy — and steady job growth — gave Obama lots of momentum, but the economy sputtered again last year, Commerce reported Thursday.

The government attributed the upward revision in fourth quarter GDP to higher than expected consumer spending in the October-December period.

But even with the upward revision, the US economy was in no danger of achieving 3 percent or better growth last year.

Why is 3 percent growth important? Real Clear Markets explained last year:

From 1790 to 2000, U.S. RGDP growth averaged 3.79%. America needs at least 3.0% economic growth-the nation cannot defend itself and pay its bills without it. However, America’s elites have largely given up on growth, and are now distracting themselves with academic musings about “secular stagnation.”

If you’re being compared to Herbert Hoover, you were bad on the economy.