Fractals of Change

The Answer is Regime Change

The question is at what point can Israel end its attacks on Hamas in Gaza. The answer is "when Hamas is no longer in power in Gaza." That does not mean that Israel, which voluntarily withdrew from Gaza, should take over governing the enclave. It doesn't guarantee that whomever takes over from Hamas, whether that's Fatah or some group less corrupt, will be much better. It does mean that Gaza won't have a government which not only tolerates but encourages rocket attacks on its neighbor.

We don't have to imagine what the US response would be if there were rocket attacks on Southern California from Tijuana that Mexico couldn't or wouldn't stop. We know that the attacks on the World Trade Center led to regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq. We know that regimes understand that encouraging attacks on the United States is not a good way to stay in power. That doesn't mean peace and freedom everywhere; it does mean less attacks on the US than there would be otherwise. Israel is entitled to protect its citizens in the same way.

The world's calls for a cease fire in Gaza would be more credible had the same governments called forcibly for an end to rocket attacks on Israel (the US did). The demonstrators in front of the TV cameras would have more moral authority if they also demonstrated against attacks on Israel or the Christmas massacre in the Congo or continued massacre in Somalia or Sunnis and Shiites blowing up each other's mosques.

I know that most families who are caught in the crossfire of war are apolitical. Civilian casualties are always especially terrible – although soldiers are people, too. In the end, though, people do suffer for the sins of the governments they elect or tolerate. Many Germans died because Hitler was their leader; Japanese civilians paid a high price for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Fortunately Israel is not targeting civilians in this conflict and has even let a hundred aid trucks through its border yesterday (did you notice that buried in the bottom of new stories?). But there are civilian casualties and those casualties are the responsibility of the leaders of Hamas.

The usual pattern after Israel responds to increasing attacks and finally counter-attacks are frenzied cries for a truce before any tangible change can take place. If you were a Gazan opposed to Hamas, you wouldn't dare express let alone act on your opposition knowing that the world will pressure Israel into leaving Hamas standing. Iraqis didn't start to oppose the militias tearing their country apart until they were assured that the militias could be put out of business. Afghans aren't there yet.

The answer isn't another "cease fire" with Hamas – sworn to Israel's destruction – still in power. The answer is regime change in Gaza.

Federal Broadband Money Should Go To States

The carriers and cablecos are hard at work trying to influence the broadband portion of the Obama stimulus package according to an article by Amol Sharma in today's Wall Street Journal. That's no surprise, of course, and their lobbyists are just doing what they're paid to do. But it would be a terrible mistake to have any of this money strengthen the duopoly whose uncompetitive nature has resulted in the US slipping from fourth to fifteenth place in broadband deployment since 2001.

The money should be given to the states with a requirement for state matching funds to assure that the states only spend federal dollars where they are willing to put some of their own very limited money. The allocation to the states ought to be similar to the allocation of federal highway funds which takes into account both population and the higher cost per capita of building infrastructure in rural areas. There should be no earmarks or congressionally-mandated "demonstration" projects. (Obama spokespeople have already promised no earmarks in the stimulus package. If Congress goes along, that will be change that I can believe in.) In 1981 and 1982 I was Secretary of Transportation in Vermont and saw firsthand both the strengths and the limitations of the federal highway program including the damage done to local planning by earmarks..

There should be very little restriction on the funds other than that they be used to build backbone and middle mile infrastructure open for any legal use by wholesale and retail providers as well as commercial users (like the highway system but with tolls). It should not be permissible for the funds to be used to have the states themselves become retail ISPs (too much big brother potential). However, separately, universal funding should be reformed and made available to the needy in order to allow them to purchase connectivity services from providers of their choice.

The states don't own the equipment to build infrastructure any more than they own the equipment to build highways: they will contract with the private sector for building and possibly operating infrastructure. They may buy or lease existing infrastructure from the carriers and cable companies that have built it; they may simply decide that in some areas there is already sufficient backbone and middle mile so that they don't have to spend any money.

The federal money should not mandate whether fiber, radio, or other technology is used to provide the needed facilities. The states'll figure that out on their own and have the opportunity to build infrastructure appropriate to their own needs. States should assure that any roadwork they do with federal highway money includes conduit for fiber whether the fiber is placed in the conduits now or not. Federal money spent to improve the electrical grid should have the proviso that high capacity fiber is part of the build.

Here in Vermont the legislature has authorized forty million dollars of state revenue bonding for communication infrastructure. The Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA) has already issued an RFI so that carriers and others can help shape the process of putting together the infrastructure improvements we need in Vermont. We'll go ahead with or without federal help but we'll do more faster if there is a federal allocation. On our own, we'll give Vermont equal or better telecommunications to any other state in the US; with federal money we could be part of a plan to raise the standard for the whole country so that America again leads the world in Internet quality and availability.

Full disclosure: My wife, Mary, is Chair of the VTA (a volunteer position) and I also volunteer doing odd jobs for that organization. We have a personal although not a financial stake in the success of this program. The opinions in this blog, however, are mine alone and are neither approved by or attributable to any organization.

How a Gas Tax Increase Can Help Economic Recovery

One of the few economic bright spots is the historically low prices of gasoline; it's even possible that the amount Americans are saving both by buying less and paying less for the gallons they do buy will let us replenish our damaged balance sheets quickly enough to avoid a prolonged downturn.

So what kind of idiot would want to raise pump prices with a gas tax increase? Well, me, for one. So would the editors of the New York Times and Tom Friedman (but that doesn't mean that any of us are right). The trick is how to raise these taxes without further cratering the economy; read on for the Fractals of Change proposal.

Friedman writes:

"Have a nice day. It's morning again — in Saudi Arabia.

"Of course, it's a blessing that people who have been hammered by the economy are getting a break at the pump. But for our long-term health, getting re-addicted to oil and gas guzzlers is one of the dumbest things we could do."

A gas tax is highly regressive; this is not the time for sucking money out of the bottom of the economy so it can trickle down from the top. Friedman and I agree that any increase in gas taxes must be rebated immediately, probably through reduced social security taxes (he says "payroll").

The Times recommends a tax which raises prices up to the four or five dollar level but diminishes and disappears when and if untaxed prices approach this level on their own. Sounds like a good idea but it isn't. This plan is an invitation to OPEC and friends to raise oil prices since pump prices'll stay level thanks to the diminishing tax and demand won't be further reduced. The extra dollars Americans pay will flow overseas again rather than back into our own pockets. We've been there. On the other hand, if the tax is additive to any "natural" increase in the price of oil, producers will have a strong incentive to keep their prices low.

Here's the trick, Mr. Obama: announce a $1.50 gallon gas tax increase to take effect eighteen months from now with appropriate rebates through payroll taxes and a schedule of further $.25/gallon increases every six months for a while. This doesn't disturb the positive dynamic at the pump today but gives us the proper advance information to use when we decide to buy a new car. If we don't need a truck (some people really do), we won't buy one. We'll look for economy. We'll even buy the cars that Detroit has promised Congress it'll make instead of switching to foreign-made SUVs.

Assuming that fuel-efficient cars will include a healthy mix of plugin hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and pure electrics, it'll make economic sense both to upgrade our electric grid and bring on new sources of electricity including solar, wind, nuclear, and clean coal. The economics of each of these improves against $4.00/gallon gasoline even without continuing subsidies. And we really don't want continuing subsidies since government then needs to decide what and whom to subsidize – not something it does very well. See corny ethanol.

A new fuel-efficient auto fleet, a rebuilt smart electric grid, new generating facilities – all equal lots of jobs. Government can and should kick start this some by building required infrastructure; but we won't get back to sustainable prosperity until private investment once more kicks in. We will draw private investment back by making clear what the future price of gasoline and diesel (and eventually home heating oil) will be.

With 20-20 hindsight, one of the biggest mistakes of the Bush administration was not recognizing that a gas tax would have been an appropriate response to 9/11. Friedman points out that gas prices today are almost exactly what they were back in 2001 (actually lower because there's been inflation in the meantime). He says:

"Today's financial crisis is Obama's 9/11. The public is ready to be mobilized. Obama is coming in with enormous popularity. This is his best window of opportunity to impose a gas tax. … But if Obama, like Bush, wills the ends and not the means — wills a green economy without the price signals needed to change consumer behavior and drive innovation — he will fail."

Civilization Means Dealing with Pirates

The pirates released by the German navy with a wrist slap will be back; sooner or later they'll kill someone. The blame for those deaths belongs to the politicians who ordered the pirates released and to the pirates themselves. One of the main reasons we put up with all the expense and nonsense of governments and restrictions on our own freedoms is that we need protection against pirates – on Wall Street and on the high seas. This post is about the latter.

Consider this from CNN:

"The German sailors captured the pirates and disarmed them, destroying the weapons, the ministry said.

"The German government in Berlin later ordered the Somali pirates released because they were not caught while harassing German interests, according to BBC."

The pirates did wound a crewman on the Egyptian ship they attacked; that didn't matter to whomever ordered their release.

The pirate business is a good one: if you capture a ship, you get a multimillion dollar ransom; if you fail and get captured, your weapons are destroyed but will be replaced by your financial backers (pirates have always depended on capital just like any other business).

In the unpolitically correct old days, there was a special provision in maritime law which allowed captains to immediately hang captured pirates since it was too dangerous to keep them aboard until reaching port. Now no nation wants the responsibility for trying and punishing pirates – might get accused of running a Guantanamo Bay. The EU would have to keep them forever if it convicted them since it doesn't allow capital punishment. So they get released. Also, according to a CNN special, many of the pirates are forced into this career by poverty (better-advantaged people commit white collar crimes, according to me).

Huge naval forces are now deployed off the Horn of Africa in the hopes of deterring piracy. But piracy will rapidly spread around the world if we can't deal with it. Here's a plan:

1. Get the UN to outlaw the payment of ransom. Commercial crews from that point on will know that's the rule. It'll be tested by pirates; some people will die – many less than if ransom payments and piracy are allowed to continue.
2. Get the UN to set up a special court where captured pirates can be tried. Maybe the US deeds Guantanamo to the UN for incarceration.
3. Failing #1 & 2 (after defunding the UN), decide that pirates are always to be handed over to the nation who's ship they attacked. In this case these pirates would have gone to Egypt for trial. Yes, Egypt has capital punishment. Yes, Egyptian courts aren't fair. The pirates chose to attack an Egyptian ship.

Piracy is an easy test for world governments; right now they're failing.

Babysitter’s View of the Future

Grandson Jack went to sleep bravely with just a few complaints about the pain of teething. As babysitters do, Mary and I turned on the big screen… and watched the future of TV.

Like most young couples Hugh and Kate don't have a landline phone although of course they both have mobiles and use Skype Video to keep Jack in touch with grandparents who aren't in town. But Kate and Hugh also don't have any sort of network TV connection: no rabbit ears, no cable, no satellite. Their at home news and entertainment is all web-based.

The movie Mary and I watched was streamed from Netflix. 12,000 of Netflix' 100,000 total movie and tv show titles are available for instant viewing on a PC. That's not a huge collection but we had little trouble finding something we had missed and wanted to see. All but the cheapest of the Netflix plans for mailing-order DVDs include unlimited hours of watching streamed video. You can pause and backspace a movie which is being streamed but you can't (without hacking) save it.

The PC was hooked to the big LCD screen for good viewing from the couch. The movies are NOT downloaded in high def (presumably too big and slow for most Internet connections in the US today) and the presentation occasionally had brief freezes which could have been either transmission hiccups too big to be handled by the buffer or interference from some other process on Kate's Mac (my guess).

Kate and Hugh say they generally don't miss having a "real" TV connection except that they have to page through their news rather than have it being presented to them. I'm sure they'd be happy for a link to any web-based news shows. Kate's never watched sports on TV and Hugh's Irish so doesn't miss being able to watch the NFL or NBA. If he cared, he could pay to watch baseball on MLB.com.

As our bandwidth gets broader, our Internet connections'll become the only connections into our houses. Programming will still exist as will serial and movie production. The concept of the "channel" will simply disappear. Some sorts of aggregators will replace TV networks as places where we find stuff prepackaged to accommodate our tastes or simply as a place to buy content as Netflix is today. Cable companies will split into content providers accessible over Internet connections and physical providers of Internet connections giving access to all content. at&t and Verizon will find that they went into the "cable" business just in time to get out of it but can still benefit if they sell fast enough connections cheaply enough.

So, speaking of the future of entertainment, where did Kate and Hugh go while we were babysitting? The movies, of course.

Fairness in Bailouts

The UAW is pushing for the incoming Obama administration to release them from the requirement that their members receive reduced salaries comparable to what non-union transplants building in the US pay their workers. "The bankers didn't have to agree to such onerous terms" is one of the arguments for relief.

There's a better way to fix the unfairness than agreeing to above-market salaries for Detroit car makers: make the terms of the bankers much larger bailout similarly strict (and constructive).

Now I know that a Republican administration somehow convinced a Democratic congress to be much easier on banks than either congress or the administration was prepared to be in the case of car makers. Hopefully a Democratic administration, which won office with heavy union backing, will tighten the terms for banks rather than loosening them for cars.

So banks which have already received huge dollops of our money without meaningful restrictions should be required to either repay all of our money with interest within a year or agree to much tougher terms which would include:

• Bailed-out bankers may be paid no more than 200% of what the average country banker (in Vermont, for example) makes in the comparable position including CEO.
• Bailed-out banks can't have corporate planes (or rent jets for their executives).
• Bailed-out banks need to show a plan for resuming lending (similar to the green requirements for car makers).
• Bailed-out banks need to show a plan to return to profitability and repay us or they will be forced to repay immediately.
• I can't bring myself to say there should be government banking czar (nor do I think there should be a car czar).

Investment banks like Morgan Stanley will lobby, of course, that they are different from mere consumer banks. But they have voluntarily switched to regulated bank status in return for all the help and guarantees available to regulated banks. They're no longer taking the risks of failure that we thought they were taking before we found out they were "too big to fail".

My guess is that so many banks will repay rather than accept these terms that the second tranche of TARP funds'll clearly be unnecessary. Solvent banks will say "no thanks" just as Ford is staying out of the car bailouts for now because they can afford to. The UAW is right that the bank bailouts shouldn't be any more cushy than the Detroit bailout. Right now financial industry bailouts are so condition-free that everyone wants one.

GM Bails out Cerberus

GM is bailing out private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management while waiting for its own bailout from the rest of us. The details are in a barely-noticed filing with the SEC (which is not, of course, responsible for the accuracy or content of such filings).

"On December 9, 2008, General Motors Corporation ("GM") and GMAC LLC ("GMAC") agreed on a temporary basis to adjust GMAC's terms for making advance payments to GM for wholesale financing of vehicles sold to GM dealers. GM typically has an increase in its inventory levels in advance of the year-end shut down and this adjustment will help finance purchases of this inventory. Ordinarily, GMAC pays GM the invoice amount for a vehicle shipped by GM to a GMAC financed dealer on the first business day after the shipping date. Beginning on December 9, 2008, GMAC will be obligated to pay GM the invoice amount when such amounts are due from dealers. As a result of this change in payment terms, GMAC will be able to defer payment until December 30, 2008 of up to $1.5 billion in cash due to GM. During the shipping period GM will have a security interest in the financed vehicles."

No mention of Cerberus in here so you have to remember that "a group led by Cerberus Capital Management LP" owns 51% of GMAC which is in tense negotiations with its creditors to get them to take a haircut so GMAC can become a bank and be eligible for bank-type bailouts. GM owns the other 49% of GMAC.

Now let's look at the reality of the transaction. One of GMAC's normal functions has been to provide credit for dealers to buy cars from GM so the dealers can put those cars on their lots and so GM can get cash for the cars before the dealer actually sells them to people; this is been the way the auto industry has worked almost forever. GMAC, collects interest from the dealers for this financing activity, of course. But now GMAC DOESN'T have to pay the cash to GM – which tells us it is starving for cash – until "such amounts are due from dealers"; presumably GMAC still gets the interest from the dealers, though (I've quoted the full text of the SEC filing above which does not mention GMAC waiving interest to dealers.). So GMAC is performing no useful function here; GM isn't going to get cash until the dealers would have paid it anyway. And, if GMAC should go bankrupt, GM may not get the money at all.

Huh?

I understand GM's need to ship the cars and get them on dealers lots if it's going to have any hope of selling them. And maybe GMAC has no cash left to lend. But GM would have been in the same position if it simply financed the purchases to the dealer itself; and it wouldn't have had any extra exposure to the prospect of a GMAC bankruptcy nor would GMAC been in line for any fees or interest on loans it didn't really make. GM could have collected the interest from the dealers or waived it to help the dealers.

If GMAC were the sole owner of GMAC as it used to be, this bailout of its subsidiary wouldn't have made much difference. But GM is a minority owner of GMAC; seems like the Cerberus-led group majority owner which is not putting more money in or making new loans to GMAC is the beneficiary.

So why is GM bailing out Cerberus? Truth is I don't know. Could it be some way to make clear to the administration that the survival of GM and GMAC are intertwined to gain leverage in the negotiation of the bailouts of GM and Chrysler (mostly owned by the Cerberus and friends)? If GMAC goes under GM will be out another $1.5 billion. Could it be part of a side deal between GM and Cerberus who are now reported to be back in discussions about merging GM and Chrysler?

Either this is a very one-sided deal or the other side of it somehow got omitted from the SEC filing. Think anybody reads those things?

Full disclosure: In by far the worst business decision of my life (which I thought was right at the time, of course), I recommended the sale (actually a reverse merger) of ITXC, the company Mary and I founded, to a Cerberus-owned entity. I stayed on for a while as non-executive Chairman and left under unpleasant circumstances.

Blocking BitTorrent in Britain

Virgin Media announced its intention of restricting BitTorrent traffic on its new 50Mbps service according to an article by Chris Williams in The Register. Does this mean that net neutrality is endangered in the UK? The question is important because advocates of an open Internet like me hold the UK up as a positive example of net neutrality achieved through competition rather than through regulation.

One of the major benefits of a competitive rather than a regulatory approach to net neutrality is that users get to decide what sort of network they would like to be on. With a regulated approach, the regulators decide. In the US the FCC has reproved Comcast for blocking BitTorrent traffic. On the other hand, we net neutrality advocates think that it is acceptable to throttle heavy users in times of network overload because this is non-discriminatory as far as applications are concerned. Heavy users who don't use BitTorrent would probably rather be on a BitTorrent-blocking network than one which blocks them. In a free and competitive market they would get a choice; BitTorrent users, obviously, would prefer a network which doesn't block BitTorrent explicitly; they would have a choice as well.

The market might satisfy both sets of users by offering them a choice of services or one or the other type of service might prove uneconomic because not enough users like it. Nothing wrong with that. Moreover, a network which blocks BitTorrent, as Comcast was suspected of doing, to favor its own entertainment content, might find itself with no users. All sounds like competitive utopia.

Reality might not be so simple, however. If there are only a small minority of users who care about BitTorrent and Virgin Media can cut costs and/or improve service for most users by restricting BitTorrent, it may gain enough competitive advantage so that other providers emulate it and BitTorrent ends up being restricted everywhere in the UK. Would that mean that a competitive market is not enough to protect net neutrality? Some net neutrality advocates would say "Yes. Any system which results in a particular legal application being banned is bad and needs to fixed."

I'm not ready to go there. I think that if we have a competitive market (which we don't in the US) and if there is no market-fixing or other arrangements between competitors to restrict competition and there is full disclosure of the rules of each network, we have to accept that the result is a neutral Internet – which might not be exactly the kind of network we Net Neutrality advocates think the world should have. We're not the fabled Internet czar either.

Net Neutrality and The Obama Stimulus Package - Discussion

Good challenging questions from reader brooke oberwetter showed up on CircleID where Fractals of Change is sometimes cross-posted in reponse to yesterday's post on net neutrality. Since those don't show up in the comment stream for the original post so I'm reposting his questions and my responses here. I'm also urging CircleID and other places which cross-post FOC to support DISQUS for comments along with it so that commenters in one place can see comments and responses on the other and we can have one discussion instead of fragmenting the discussion across sites.

If it ain't broke...

Tom,

You say that "with a few exceptions" we've had a neutral Internet (and all of those exceptions fell within the FCC's already-existing statutory authority). So why the need for regulation? Why the need for nationalized infrastructure? You seem very familiar with the dangers of regulation--the rent seeking of the incumbents, the possibility of unintended consequences--but still call for more far-reaching regulation to respond to a problem that you admit doesn't really exist?

And most disturbingly, you think nationalization of the infrastructure will be BETTER? Have you seen a lot of efficient or effective repairs made to interstate highways? Is there a lot of investment going into making the highway system better or more efficient? Does anyone have an incentive to make sure the highways operate as smoothly and effectively as possible? And most important, is traffic well managed on the interstate highway system? Try I-95 my friend.  The answer to all of this questions is a resounding "NO!"

My responses:

Brooke:

You're correct that my concerns are proactive and not reactive. The reason I think that danger is growing is that the concentration of Internet access provision in the US is growing. There were many dialup ISPs; in most locations there are just two broadband choices (in rural areas one or none). Moreover, at various times the telcos have announced their intent of using this monopoly power to double-dip by charging providers both for their own access (which is fair) and for the access to the subscribers who have already paid (which is double dipping but is the way telephony works).

Further evidence of monopoly behavior is the failure to improve quality evidenced by the US' slipping rank as a country with broadband access and the slow trend towards capping "unlimited" monthly access. So I think the danger is real.

I'd prefer to see more competition without the need for the government to provide any infrastructure or regulate further. Perhaps this will happen with the enlightened policy of making the TV white spaces available for unlicensed use.

I think the Obama economic stimulus will and should include a broadband component. That money can either make the problem worse in my view by subsidizing the incumbent duopoly OR it can provide a basis for expanded competition.

As former transportation secretary in Vermont, I do agree that the states and the feds have done a less than ideal job of maintaining the transportation infrastructure. Hopefully that'll change. You are right that a broadband backbone as bad as the I-95 corridor would be a disaster. But the Interstate system in general provided the US with a splendid transportation infrastructure despite some of the unintended consequences of having such excellent transportation.

 

 

Net Neutrality and the Obama Stimulus Package

As long as US telecom is duopoly dominated, a neutral Internet is endangered if not impossible; regulation of this kind of concentrated power is necessary but is unlikely to be sufficient. The solution, IMHO, is to dilute the power of the duopoly so that consumers can buy whatever kind of Internet access they want. Countries like the UK with a competitive ISP market do not seem to have net neutrality problems nor require net neutrality regulation and have better Internet access than we do at lower prices.

Whatever portion of the Obama stimulus package is devoted to telecommunication should be directed away from the incumbent telcos and cablecos  – whose lobbyists are indubitably doing their job and already lining up for the lion's share of federal funds – and used to create infrastructure on which competition can flourish (ideas to follow). It will be a huge squandered opportunity and a misuse of public funds if the telecom infrastructure project ends up reinforcing the telco-cableco duopoly which now controls most of our Internet access

A Wall Street Journal article on Google's hopes to locate servers within carrier networks alleges that this plan is evidence that Google has abandoned its fervent support for net neutrality. Such a change of heart is denied by Google's Rick Witt, who points out, correctly, that what Google seeks to do for its own content is no different than what Akamai and other commercial caching providers already do for content providers. The story aroused extra passion because it also says that advisors close to President-elect Obama are "softening" their positions on net neutrality. At least one such advisor, Larry Lessig, who is justly famed for inventing creative commons licensing, denies on his blog that he has changed his mind, although he does say "Some friends in the network neutrality movement as well as some scholars believe it [his own long-held position on net neutrality] is wrong -- that it doesn't go far enough."

Larry's last sentence points out part of the problem with net neutrality regulation; it's almost impossible to write workable definitions. Fervent supporters of the concept of net neutrality disagree on what is or isn't a violation of such neutrality. There is a huge danger that any regulation would result in further advantage to the incumbents who are accustomed to using regulation to their advantage. Would you want to wait for the FCC to certify your new service neutral before you could introduce it?

On the other hand, it's easy to recognize the virtues of a neutral Internet. With a few exceptions, we've had that so far. The backbone itself delivers packets to anywhere from anywhere without trying to figure out who sent them or what they might contain.  It is wide open to innovation. It allows innovative business models whether they're disruptive or not – and whether they will ultimately succeed or not. Friend Om Malik warns "Many startups might skip over this issue, which I constantly bring up, but they need to wake up and realize that in the end they are all going to be impacted if network neutrality is backstabbed to death." He's right.

If we are stuck with the current duopoly, we will need regulation– and face the very real prospect that regulation may be ineffectual or even counterproductive. On the other hand, if we build a national telecom infrastructure upon which competition can flourish – as it does on the highways, for example – we won't need FCC regulation against discrimination any more than we need the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission – founded to regulate Railroad transportation monopolies in 1887, RIP 1995) to regulate trucking.