After approving NBC buyout, FCC Commissioner becomes Comcast lobbyist

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/after-approving-comcastnbc-deal-fcc-commish-becomes-comcast-lobbyist.ars

by kmfrk • 15 years ago

155 69 15 years ago

arstechnica.com

sandipc• 15 years ago

It's amazing that there aren't conflict of interest laws or regulations to prevent this sort of thing.

jkeel• 15 years ago

No joke. Every time I see a story like this I think, "is this type of stuff legal in other developed countries?"

hugh3• 15 years ago

Let me see... in the Australian context such things can and do happen, but happen much less because "lobbyist" is a bit less of a job category than it is in the US.

Part of the reason, I think, is that individual parliamentarians make fewer of their own decisions than they do in the US. It's almost unheard of for an individual member of parliament to vote against their party on a given issue, so all decisionmaking on whether to support a given law is done at the party rather than individual level. And you can't persuade a whole party to support a law just by buying it steak dinners and hookers, you have to convince 'em that it's actually a votewinner. (Or you could just get your industry group to donate huge sums of money to the party, which is how, for instance, the Australian Hoteliers' Association keeps liquor licencing laws written to their advantage in most states).

hexis• 15 years ago

Gerhard Schröder, former chancellor of Germany, had a similar situation with Gazprom a few years back. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom

benmathes• 15 years ago

How would such laws be created with such a personnel system in place? If they existed, who would enforce them?

I'd love to be proved ignorant on this and see some unrelated-to (and therefore incorruptible-by) enforcement agency slap the fuck out of Ms. Corrupt Lobbyist, but I'm doubtful.

reginaldo• 15 years ago

They would establish something like time-limited non-compete agreements: when you accept a position, you'll know that, when you leave it, you'll have to spend 2-3 years without working in a related field. Hell, they could even be 2 paid years.

phlux2• 15 years ago

You have a law that states:

---

(that) any official in a position within a government body, whether elected or appointed, which regulates a particular industry, area of industry, or the laws and compliance of said industry, may not take a position within any company that benefited directly from any regulatory or oversight decision of the oversight body within the last 5 years on any case where the stated company or organizations competitive status with respect to monopolies, anti-trust, or anti-competitive business environment was considered.

---

This would mean that anyone who was in a position of oversight for a given industry and who had to consider, directly, regulations which may or may not benefit a particular company may not accept a position with that company for at least 5 years after their departure from that official position.

tesseract2• 15 years ago

Every now and then I contemplate a system where, after leaving office, former high-level government officials are provided with a generous pension but subjected to a 100% tax on any income whatsoever from non-government sources. Obviously such a system has plenty of disadvantages - but apart from those, I wonder whether it would help the revolving door problem at all, or whether cronyism would persist even without financial motivation.

eli3• 15 years ago

Though Ms. Baker was appointed to what is considered an independent regulatory agency, she signed the administration’s ethics pledge upon taking office in July 2009. Under the pledge, she will not be allowed to lobby anyone at the F.C.C. for two years after her departure.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...

runevault• 15 years ago

While part of me isn't surprised, if both Comcast and she gets away with this without repercussions, I'm going to be seriously disgusted...

edit: Actually a question comes to mind. What can we as the voting/etc public do to make our will felt in this scenario? With the parties involved I don't know of a way and that really, really irks me.

stretchwithme5• 15 years ago

In a free society, you make your own choices and live with the consequences.

But when government has its fingers in every pie, we all have to "make our will known" about every freakin' pie.

And then watch as it is ignored because there are way too many pies for people to notice everything everyone is saying about every pie.

But each pie is of special concern to some well-monied interest and they will make their views known to those stuffing their pie holes.

ntownsend• 15 years ago

Libertarian clap-trap. Governments and pies only become a bad combination when there is no meaningful oversight or regulation. Your point of view makes sense in America where this is the case.

eschulte• 15 years ago

That's a really good question. I don't know what specific action American voters could take.

After some searching the best I could find is this group (http://www.citizen.org/), which seems to be a non-profit working in the general area of disentangling government/corporate interests.

ck2• 15 years ago

Corruption may exist in all forms of government but in the USA we have it perfected (and legalized).

Did you know that lobbyists now meet across from the whitehouse to keep their visits unrecorded?

This is almost as bad as the supreme court justices taking special interest money through their spouse.

stretchwithme5• 15 years ago

The greater the concentration of power, the more likely it is that it will be used for personal gain. And the less likely it is more meaningful competition and choice to exist.

This can only happen when people don't have a choice. If a government is bad, people should have a way to remove their property from its domain.

Cities and towns should be able to become part of a neighboring state or start their own. The Swiss have this ability and can change cantons and create new ones. Its rarely used, but its always there if needed.

And if the people had to approve many actions of the national legislature (again, as they do in Switzerland), ridiculous actions are less likely.

Of course, results are what matter and Switzerland has the highest incomes in the world and the least involvement in stupid wars. It must have something to do with the difficulty in spending other people's blood and money without their approval.

klenwell• 15 years ago

Sounds like a recipe for white flight. Switzerland was also among the last industrialized nations to allow women the vote (1970!). Provincialism is not a panacea and government isn't the only place where power can be concentrated.

On the other hand, my idealistic version of political reform is so far from reality, I won't even bother you with it here.

lawnchair_larry• 15 years ago

Looking forward to Al Franken's reaction to this one.

sriramk• 15 years ago

People change jobs all the time. The folks in government commissions are probably from that industry and when they do want to change jobs, will probably find work in that industry. It is a bit unfair to cast aspersions on people. It is also interesting that to stop this would require something akin to a non-compete policy which is typically frowned upon in HN :)

pstack5• 15 years ago

Yeah, it's wrong to cast aspersions on people who go to work for the government and act as extended arms of the industry and corporations they just left. Like the many Goldman Sachs people on the committee that authorized a trillion dollar bailout for companies that primarily included Goldman Sachs. Or the Monsanto guys who ran the FDA and other government agencies and made sure chemicals like rBGH, aspartame and others (from the DDT/agent orange corporation) were given a green light. There's nothing going on there at all! Why golly, it's just government in action! And the guys from Raytheon and GE certainly have no vested interest in agitating national fears and military spending at all.

Duff2• 15 years ago

That's the problem with big government... it size as a consumer builds in a need for companies to schmooze with and influence the government. The US government EVERY DAY than ExxonMobil makes in a year.

That doesn't excuse crony capitalism or outright corruption. But it does help to know where it comes from.

eli3• 15 years ago

It's a shame that people have voted this comment down because they don't agree with it. That's not how voting is supposed to work.

You make a good point: why would anyone knowledgable about the communications industry EVER take a job on the FCC if they knew it would bar them from working in the private sector in the future? We don't pay FCC commissioners nearly enough to make that work.

killerswan• 15 years ago

Isn't it obvious we should pay them enough so they can live without taking bribes?

pstack5• 15 years ago

Who is surprised?

The committee that granted a trillion dollar bail-out of a few companies including Goldman Sachs was staffed with plenty of current/former executives from Goldman Sachs.

The FDA and agencies involved for approving bovine growth hormone (later found to do freakishly hideous things to the poor cows and increase by incredible amounts the contamination of the milk we drink from infected utters), the Round-Up-ready patented corn seeds, and aspartame just happen to be largely staffed by current/former Monsanto executives.

The FDA and agencies involved in inspecting the food production in the states and making sure that it remains uncontaminated and safe and regularly inspected have reduced the number of inspections by something like 85% and the contamination rates increase, while under the watch of agencies staffed largely by current/former executives of the few main companies being overseen.

The US government is beyond corrupt and beyond any possible reform and nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn that almost every office and committee appointment in the country is a matter of the wolves guarding the sheep. It has been this way for decades and they are now so brazen about it that you can look at every single person in every single job and do a simple search to trace the truth of their position and appointment back and nobody gives a damn.

I mean, seriously, we let them give themselves a trillion dollars. We let them poison our food supply with largely untested and unproven chemicals. We let them cover up and manipulate right in front of our faces and we do nothing. After thirty years of looking the other way on all of these things, what on earth could possibly ever even remotely raise our eyebrows and make us do something other than participate in the attention-occupying busy-body bullshit of "durr durr republicans are stupid and evil" and "durr durr democrats are stupid and evil" my team versus yours bullshit?

Maybe if the government and corporations decided that it was just easier to require that all births be sponsored to make sure they can be cared for until adulthood and then those sponsored children become indentured servants for their sponsor company until the age of 40 . . . maybe . . . MAYBE we might possibly take our eyes off Dancing With the Stars and the football game long enough to do something other than pull the red or blue lever according to the team we've associated ourselves with and demand that we have choices that aren't part of the game and won't be part of the game and will radically change things.

It won't happen in my lifetime. I know that much.

KevBurnsJr• 15 years ago

Well not with that attitude!

_b8r04• 15 years ago

So, in the spirit of HN I'd like to foster a challenge. I challenge the people of HN to come up with a startup to challenge the status quo. How about a startup that could expose this in an easily consumable way by the public? What about a startup that makes government corruption irrelevant? Lets put our money where our mouth is.

Is there money to be made from benefiting the social good? Is there a way we can bring people together with an app or service that can bring about an end to all of this? On HN I see some of the most intelligent people that have ever lived. If we can't come up with a solution, then who can?

18pfsmt5• 15 years ago

I've banged my head over a similar idea for a while, and I have failed to figure out a viable monetization strategy that won't compromise such a service eventually. The best I've come up with is that it must start at bottom and move up. From local communities and the governments that manage them, the power could be slowly drained away from the federal level (and even the state) eventually leading to a more decentralized system that is less susceptible to corruption (which obviously requires constant vigilance on the part of the local communities).

eli3• 15 years ago

I don't think it's a problem of awareness. NPR just now aired a brief story on the Comcast lobbyist.

pstack5• 15 years ago

I know it's not quite the same thing, but wasn't there a "startup" of sorts awhile back that focused on exposing documented evidence of different levels of corporate and government corruption? I can't remember what it was called, but I'm pretty sure the guy behind it had to flee the country and was charged with several counts of rape and a lot of the people he was trying to expose the information to about their own government said that they wanted him executed.

Anyway, there are certainly already-existing entities that serve the public good, but government corruption isn't irrelevant as long as there is government corruption. You can benefit social good all you like, but how exactly is it going to wholly displace the existence, expense, and function of a government office or committee?

The FDA example. Or the Goldman Sachs example. How are you going to displace the need for the FDA to exist or for the SEC and the Treasury to exist? Or the need for the military industrial complex? These are all functions that seemingly need to exist and be performed for the good of the people. The problem is that they require oversight. The public needs to be aware of the corruption and given the power to do something about it and it seems we either don't or won't. (And I'm part of that group, because if I knew how to change it, I would).

It is so massive. So complex. So layered. And so corrupt. I really almost can't expect someone busy trying to keep a roof over their head and their children clothed and educated to somehow be aware of many of these corruptions, much less have a way to change it (beyond the trivialities of voting, which mostly seems to just serve us as a way to make us feel better about ourselves).

When we have lots of regulation, we're told that the solution is to deregulate and then industries are singularly corrupt. When we don't have enough regulation, we're told the solution is to regulate. Then the regulator positions are staffed with people from the companies being regulated and corruption is there.

If there are some great solutions, I'm all ears. :)

18pfsmt5• 15 years ago

I agree with you, but here's my attempt at devil's advocate:

These industries require domain expertise gained over years in order to understand the fundamentals of these industries at macro and micro levels, So, who better to help regulate them then people directly from the industry with that expertise. Career politicians and bureaucrats simply have no real world experience, so we must get industry insiders to provide insight.

bennysaurus• 15 years ago

Absolutely agreed, but the industry insiders have to be impartial and use their knowledge and experience to come up with a decision.

The question you have to ask is what's the motivation to approve (or deny) a given application or law? If it's because it's the 'right thing to do' (broad term I know) then fantastic. If it's to 'help out a mate' or 'it may be the right thing to do, but meanwhile there's incentives for me to vote this way' then that's where integrity has to be questioned.

Duff2• 15 years ago

Regulation and control is by its nature an adversarial relationship. You cannot be an effective adversary if that will compromise your ability to be an advocate or employee of whomever you're regulating.

Just as an auditor doesn't need to be a domain expert to audit a companies books, a regulator doesn't need to be one, at least from an industry POV.

pstack5• 15 years ago

The "employ a hacker to catch a hacker" methodology of hiring is fine, if your hacker is going to catch other hackers. If you're actually just hiring thieves to help themselves to all they can carry in their pockets, then their expertise really isn't relevant beyond their own self-serving exploitation of that knowledge domain.

onedognight2• 15 years ago

I would counter that anti-trust decisions are not industry decisions, but population wide decisions and hence they should be made not by industry focused bureaucrats but by more accountable general politicians.

ams6110• 15 years ago

I'd argue that in general there is far more regulation than is really necessary, and this is what creates the opportunity for corruption.

geoffw82• 15 years ago

Very well said. IMO anyone who disagrees either doesn't know enough of "the situation" or has simply scanned over your words, not actually digested them.

awj• 15 years ago

> IMO anyone who disagrees either doesn't know enough of "the situation" or has simply scanned over your words, not actually digested them.

That's not a useful stance to take on things. "Anyone who disagrees with this is ignorant or didn't understand" is a recipe for never having a useful conversation.

You want people to change their minds? Spend at least a little time listening to them. Not "I'm waiting for you to shut up" fake listening, actual listening. Learn why they think what they do. You have to counter their biases/ignorance/arguments on their own terms, anything else is more self-important posturing on your part than useful debate.

stephenjudkins• 15 years ago

  The US government is beyond corrupt and beyond any possible reform and nobody cares.

  my team versus yours bullshit

  It won't happen in my lifetime. I know that much.

Have you ever volunteered for a local politician? Paid close attention to an particular issue? Gone to your state capitol to lobby for a particular bill? Took notice of any substantive differences between politicians of both major parties running against each other? Have you ever spent a substantial amount of your own time and effort to attempt to fix any of these issues?

Or do you just bitterly complain about the irredeemably corrupt nature of US government on online message boards?

Your cynicism, and those of people like you, is also a large contributor to our nation's innumerable problems. There exist honest, well-meaning, hard-working people working in government and politics to attempt to fix these issues. Unfortunately they're outnumbered by people like you, who tar all of them with same brush you use for the most corrupt business lobbyist. That's probably because it's much easier to complain than fix the problem.

rooshdi• 15 years ago

Yes, there are honest, well-meaning, hard-working people working in government, but there are also lying, corrupt, self-interested politicians lobbied heavily by corporations. When news like this comes out, it just adds to the suspicion and paranoia that all the war lies and government bailouts have already brought upon the American people. It doesn't help.

VladRussian• 15 years ago

nice logic. According to you the GP is guilty of having the trillion dollars taken from him.

pstack5• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, the system is setup to expediently counter attempts to change it. Why do you think we keep getting the same results after every election? If it was just a matter of "getting a democrat" in the office or "getting a republican" in office, then problems wouldn't exist, because we have one or the other in office every few years. It's a deeper problem in that the fingers that manipulate the puppetry and the machinery are so deeply embedded in the process that with very few outlying exceptions, little occurs which isn't vetted by the corrupt process. (Also reads: There aren't really many substantive differences between viable politicians.)

The few people with any power in politics are expelled by the system itself. They're either not viable to begin with or if they somehow absurdly get into the system, it marginalizes them. They're called crazy or otherwise derided and made irrelevant through all the modern mediums we have available to us and society itself is too pre-occupied with what church they go to or if they ever smoked pot.

I didn't say I have any meaningful way to contribute or improve the process. Nobody else really does, either. It's not merely as simple as "well, run for office and be the first honest person in the government!". Very few people can even stand up against a single company and fight injustices. What hope does anyone have against the corrupt government plus all of the companies - together?

I know, this is all very anti-American. We're raised to believe that there's always hope and "we the people" and "power to the people" and all. Just check the right box in the voting booth or volunteer your time to support the right magic politician that we've been waiting a couple centuries for.

There is a critical point past which an organism is so consumed with cancerous tissue that nothing can be done to save it.

__david__• 15 years ago

You know, it's not my job to fix the problem. I have my place in society and I'm not about to start over in life and become a politician just to fix my perceived problem with the system. No more than I would start over and become a doctor because I thought that, say, doctors had bad attitudes. I'll vote the appropriate way but that's really my only recourse. I still have the right to bitterly complain about rampant corruption in politics and even be pessimistic about reform happening.

> There exist honest, well-meaning, hard-working people working in government and politics to attempt to fix these issues. Unfortunately they're outnumbered by people like you, who tar all of them with same brush you use for the most corrupt business lobbyist.

I don't see how the OP's attitude affects the good people working to fix the issues. They clearly want the same thing the OP does. If they think he's wrong--prove him wrong! Get things reformed in his lifetime.

MatthewB• 15 years ago

There is a ton of inbreeding on capitol hill and top corporate companies. This is ridiculous but not more ridiculous than banking ex-CEOs giving bailouts to their former companies.

natmaster2• 15 years ago

The idea that the government is out to protect your interests is an incredibly naive viewpoint. The government is not some mystical ideal immune to corruption - it is a collection of people as weak and human as you.

This is why the only humane, practical government is one with significant checks and balances, limitation of power. Libertarianism is the only way to solve real world problems, instead of idealistic naive thoughts.

msg• 15 years ago

Your comment is eating its own tail.

Let's get really practical: public-only financing of elections, plus conflict of interest rules with teeth (no job in the industry you regulated for X years after you left) will make it significantly harder for special interests to exert undue influence on our elected officials. At least, if they sell out to corporations, it will be out of deeply felt corporatist convictions rather than for intellectually bankrupt cash considerations.

natmaster2• 15 years ago

Non-sequiter?

sachinag• 15 years ago

The best part about this, under Obama's ethics rules, she's not allowed to lobby the FCC on any matters, nor can she lobby any executive branch member about the Comcast/NBC merger until President Obama leaves office[1]. So she's being hired as a lobbyist even though she won't be able to lobby anyone.

[1] http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...

lurchpop• 15 years ago

As a commenter on the article mentions it doesn't prevent her from Lobbying congress or simply doing it through a proxy to the FCC.

18pfsmt5• 15 years ago

In this case, the "lobbying" was done from the inside as a regulator, and now comes the cushy job in which she can barely operate except to dump her rolodex and manage people.

rglover• 15 years ago

It's really become a sad state of affairs in the telecom industry. All of these "leaders" claim to foster innovation with their decisions when they're actually just lining their pockets. It's comforting to know that the old regime is slowly dying off. Let's hope the future wave of leaders call out the bullshit and actually do something with their time. Really disappointing to see this taking place.

After approving NBC buyout, FCC Commissioner becomes Comcast lobbyist

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