That could change under the FCC’s proposal to treat the Internet as if it were a 1930s telephone company. If that happens, you could see your taxes rise sharply.

Warn Grover Norquist and Patrick Gleason of Americans for Tax Reform:

The Federal Communications Commission is in the middle of a high-stakes decision that could raise taxes for close to 90 percent of Americans. The commission is considering whether to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and, in doing so, Washington would trigger new taxes and fees at the state and local level.

The agency would like to make Internet service a public utility, placing broadband under Title II regulation of the Communications Act of 1934. This move would make broadband subject to New Deal-era regulation, and have significant consequences for U.S. taxpayers.

Under this decision to reclassify broadband, Americans would face a host of new state and local taxes and fees that apply to public utilities. These new levies, according to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), would total $15 billion annually. On average, consumers would pay an additional $67 for landline broadband, and $72 for mobile broadband each year, according to PPI’s calculations, with charges varying from state to state.

This would be doubly bad for California. State and local taxes would go up.

But the tax increases in the other 49 states and their local governments also would hit us, because the money, in the end, would come from California’s Internet companies: Netflix, Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.

And according to Avalara, which helps businesses collect local taxes, there are “more than 14,500 local taxing jurisdictions” in America.

In the 1930s, top auto brands included Studebaker, Packard and DeSoto. There were no interstate highways or passenger jets. Going from L.A. to New York City meant taking a several-day train ride. TV was a lab experiment. And calling long-distance meant dialing an operator and paying a high bill for each call.

Does that sound like our world? It does to the FCC.

They call it “net neutrality,” but it should be called “government takeover.”

Republicans in Congress, now controlling both the Senate and the House, say they will stop it. It’s an early test of whether they are determined to enact the small-government rhetoric that brought them campaign victories last November.

This has direct implications for California because of our overwhelming dependence on a largely unregulated and prospering Internet for our economy.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The FCC spent most of 2014 drafting the new rules for how broadband Internet providers manage their networks, and it plans to vote on a final rule in February. Shortly after the midterm elections, President Barack Obama called on the FCC to impose the strongest possible rules on providers by classifying broadband as a utility, which would make it subject to much greater regulation. The rules are designed to protect net neutrality—the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.

What is it with Democrats and controlling the Internet? Aren’t they supposed to be the party of social liberation? Isn’t that what the Internet does?

Internet freedom

I remember back in the late 1990s it was Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Irvine, whose Internet Tax Freedom Act kept Democrats from taxing progress. I wrote numerous editorials at the Orange County Register backing his legislation, which passed, and became a foundation of America’s internet prosperity. (Cox was less fortunate later when he was the head of the SEC during the 2008 economic meltdown.)

And as the indispensable Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, the Obama administration, including possible next president Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, has waged a continuous war on Internet freedom.

Wall Street:

Concern about the rules is playing into Republican efforts to rein in what they say is regulatory overreach by the Federal Communications Commission.

Dissension over the Internet rules is so rancorous that it could end up impeding progress on technology policy areas where there is potential for agreement, such as cybersecurity and the allocation of wireless spectrum, according to telecom lobbyists and congressional aides.

‘The News Twisters’

The GOP should consider abolishing the FCC. Since it was established in 1934, supposedly to promote a diversity of views, the FCC has done the opposite, stifling health public discourse.

If you’re old enough, you remember the dominance of the three TV network news shows — ABC, CBS and NBC — plus later PBS, in the 1960s and 1970s. They all broadcast the same “bias,” as detailed in such books as “The News Twisters,” in 1971 by Edith Ephron.

In 1972 she wrote a sequel, “How CBS Tried to Kill a Book: An Expose of the Campaign by CBS to Kill The News Twisters,” on how the network worked to protect its control over American minds.

The Internet broke that all down, providing a global free-for-all that has advanced liberty. It all happened so fast the FCC and other regulators couldn’t react fast enough.

We’ll soon find out if the FCC is successful now in stifling our freedoms.