Congress To Investigate FCC

SirLurksAlot writes to let us know that Congress is planning to question the FCC on the way the commission is run. From the article: "The FCC — and Chairman Kevin Martin in particular — are in hot water with Congress... While Martin was at CES, telling all who would listen that the FCC will investigate Comcast's traffic-shaping practices, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced a formal investigation of the FCC. The news couldn't be more welcome to the industries that the FCC regulates.'"

Cash Cow Concerns

Yeah, I heard that Congress was concerned the FCC wasn't corrupt enough.

Or perhaps this is just a remedial course on how to milk your cash cows [comcast.com].

Every so often congress has to look like it's investigating something when a source of income is threatened [cnn.com]. Is anything ever done about it? Not really [wikipedia.org].

But magically, without fail, the citizen is screwed in the end. Congress just wants to make sure some of that money ends up back at the top.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

Is anything ever done about it? Not really.

The difference here is that the Congress controls the FCC's budget, whereas it has essentially no control over Microsoft or the oil industry. Only the FTC can really do anything to Microsoft/Big Oil directly, so there is a dilution of congressional oversight. Yes, congress having a hearing with oil execs or with microsoft is more for show. If they wanted to achieve anything in those two arenas, they would haul FTC folks in and say, "Why are you letting oil/microsoft fleece the public?"

With government agencies, though, Congress really does wield power. That power is called the budget. The Congress can, and hopefully will, fund portions of the FCC that are more to its liking, and not approve portions of the FCC's budget that it does not agree with (for example, budget line item 1643: Chairman's Salary? Yeah, we don't like how high that's gotten, we'll only approve this much).

Some day, I hope that democracy starts working again...let's see if this is a start?

Reid.out

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

If anything, this is a start to a goverment for the corporations. Did you notice that everyone in the article listed as unhappy are megacorps upset they can't screw consumers anymore? "Traffic shaping" means colluding to make internet access more profitiable for them, and costly to us. Exclusive contracts are a means of keeping a monopoly on cable, when what's really benefical is more than one unit being able to provide cable services (which include TV, internet and phone).

Let's hope nothing comes of this, because if there are major changes, it won't benefit us.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

Until capitalism is abolished in this country we will have no freedom.

And replace it with what?

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

And replace it with what?

A regulated economy that balances the benefits of the free market (innovation, economic growth, job creation, etc) with the legitimate concerns of the population about abuses of that market (monopolies, shareholder protection, environmental protection etc).

I look at the corporate world as it exists now and I'm utterly disgusted. The message of the last 10-15 years seems to be "consume, consume, consume". No consideration is given towards stupid questions like "Can we afford it?" or "Is this sustainable". It's all about consumption and short-term profits. And they aren't even limiting themselves to just screwing over customers and the public anymore -- they are screwing over their own shareholders with some of these policies. Meanwhile the CEOs get golden parachutes worth tens of millions, regardless of the shape of the company after they leave it.

Hell, look at the recent stuff going on with the economy. Everything I've heard and read says that the economy is going south, unless people spend and consume. No consideration is given towards "Can people afford it?" If our economy is completely dependent upon deficit spending (both at the individual level AND the Governmental level) then it probably deserves to be cut down to size. Credit cards and Governmental Debt are not investments for the future.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

The message of the last 10-15 years seems to be "consume, consume, consume".

Then don't buy things (as someone below your comment has said) if you don't need them. Or, you might be interested in trying what these folks [sfgate.com] set out to do [goodmagazine.com].

I won't say I've gone anywhere near as far as these folks have done (I just picked up three Calphalon pans which were at least 50% off regular price as replacements), but as a rule, I don't buy something unless I absolutely need it. Cell phone? Don't have. Newest, latest, blingiest PC? Nope. 18 different electronic devices? Nada.

It's amazing how much money people can accumulate if they exercise a bit of self-control. I mean supposedly we're the smartest animals on this ball of rock, dirt and water. How about we use some of that intelligence.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

Corporations are forcing people to overextend themselves and buy things they cannot afford? You miss the point. No one is forced, but they are rewarded. Our current model does not encourage or reward long term thinking: everyone is to worried about the next quarter's numbers. You can't ignore the short term either, but we might try to find a way to reward those who plan for the long haul occasionally. A case in point would be someone who purchased a house within in their means in order to live there for many years who sees their property values and quality of life utterly destroyed when their neighborhood collapses into foreclosure. You can't research all of your neighbor's credit ratings, so saying that they should have seen it coming is nothing but hindsight justification.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

Anarchy comes to mind.

In the U.K.?

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

But, if we ever vote in anarchy how do we vote it out?

You don't vote it out. The warlord who comes out victorious in the ensuing battle for power will end up abolishing the state of anarchy.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

"Anarchist" is to "left-wing" (or socialist) as "libertarian" is to "right-wing" (or capitalist). You can argue with either flavor of these fuckwits--who hate each other more than they hate you, despite the near-identical effect of their philosophies--until you're ultraviolet in the face. You can demonstrate their errors with rigorous logic, by pointing to real-world examples, by computer modeling, hell even with all three dozen fallacies ... and they can not and will not comprehend their errors. They'll look at you like stunned sheep. They'll even shut up about it. But come the next discussion: oh look, here comes a fuckwit, singing "all we need is freeeeeeeeeeeeedom" all over again.

Freedoms have no inherent meaning without an authority (even the physical capacity of other people to force you to do their will counts as authority) to exercise them against, and no freedom can exist without an authority to enforce that freedom. These can be one and the same authority (the State itself enforces most of your freedoms against the State), but other people are, basically by definition, not one and the same, they are many and varied. Without an authority over all of you to keep you honest and decent to each other, you have no redress for the wrongs other people might do to you. Any system of redress capable of enforcing its decrees would amount to a State.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

If you only want to live a free life, and enjoy the things nature gives you, Anarchy is perfect.

...until somebody else's "free life" comes at the expense of your own wellbeing. Then you're fucked.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

Neither of these ideologies is perfect. I don't believe there is such a thing as a perfect ideology. Quite the opposite, I think going down the path of a single ideology is, and has always been, the perfect path towards destruction and tyranny. Fanatics believe that a singular ideology can deliver the goods. Reasonable people know quite different.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

Half the article was talking about the cable and telephone companies being pissed at the FCC for bitchslapping them (from cable ownership rules and 700MHz auction rules)

Hey, I'm all for consumer protection laws and regulation, but with regards to the cable ownership rules I fail to see how they help me.

My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) of the issue at hand is that the FCC wants to limit cable ownership to a percentage of the population, i.e: nobody can own more then 40% of the cable subscribers in the United States.

That's all well and good in theory, but how the hell does it help me? That regulation isn't going to magically encourage another cable company to set up shop in my Time Warner dominated area. As long as the cable companies have local monopolies I'm sure they will see no reason not to continue to raise prices and screw their customers.

More meaningful reform would be to separate the physical layer from the service. One neutral not-for-profit entity owns the fiber/copper/coax and leases it to whomever is interested in providing service. It will never happen but I'm at a loss for how else you'd encourage local competition for the last mile, at least with regards to non-wireless technology.

Re:Cash Cow Concerns

I agree wholeheartedly. In our modern world the internet is as vital to the nation as its roadways. And just like how we don't have our roads privately owned and charging users for the privilege of driving on them, we all pitch into their expansion and maintenance via taxes. So the same we must do for our network infrastructure. The government needs to own the airwaves and the networks, and tax money must go towards supporting them.

More immediately however, we need to really bust the telco/cablecos' balls for collusion. There is absolutely no way cellular and land-broadband rates need to stay at their current state. There is absolutely and obvious collusion going on here, and we need to get them for it.

Here in Canada we've recently launched a governmental investigation into price fixing of chocolate. This is laughable. Here we are going after confectioners, when it is patently obvious that gas stations, telephone companies, and a whole slew of much-more-important vendors are doing the same, and gouging at even worse margins! But I suppose the chocolate industry doesn't buy enough politicians to avoid their wrath...

"Couldn't be more welcome"

The news couldn't be more welcome to the industries that the FCC regulates.

Probably true.

They probably don't like the way the FCC is regulating them, so a few "campaign contributions" later, their bought-and-paid-for, em, concerned Representatives and Senators just "happen" to investigate the FCC.

When are Pelosi and Reid getting around to earmark reform, anyway? Or will they be too damn busy investigating steroid use in baseball?

Meh, no wonder their approval rating is half of W's.

Unspecific

The article has lots of speculation about who wants what, but it doesn't mention whether Congress is trying to intervene on behalf of the telcos and such, or against them. Kind of makes a big difference.

Re:Unspecific

Do you honestly think that they're investigating the FCC as a way to say "Thanks FCC, great job standing up to those telcos!" Give me a break. The telcos have called in their bribes amd slapped their bitches into line (i.e. "Congress") to get them to bring the hammer down on the FCC for daring to actually stand up for the consumer on some issues.

TFA says

Well that's exactly what the article implies if you read it to the end. They are investigating FCC for not being corrupt enough: The cable operators are upset about the FCC's attempt to regulate their industry, along with the Commission's decision last year to nullify many of their exclusive contracts with apartment buildings. The telephone companies aren't thrilled about the FCC's 700MHz auction conditions (Verizon even sued), and everyone wants the FCC to keep away from their traffic monitoring and shaping practices. That would please the industries regulated by the FCC. Multichannel News reports that AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast all bashed the agency in a CES panel yesterday, with each group wanting to see major changes in the way that the FCC operates Perhaps the strongest criticism came from Verizon's Tom Tauke, who argued that the FCC just isn't set up to deal with the modern world. "The FCC is structured about broadcast, cable and telephone," he said. "That isn't the world we are live in, and it isn't the world we are going to. The FCC has to be overhauled for the Internet world."

The best Congress money can buy

For all of those who doubt that the Democratic and Republican party aren't just the same wolves in different sheepskins...I present to you exhibit A.

Re:The best Congress money can buy

I'll take the corrupt oligarchy without all the Jesus in it.

The news couldn't be more welcome ...

The news couldn't be more welcome to the industries that the FCC regulates.'"

I don't know about that. In a recent action [tmcnet.com], the FCC gave away the store to "the industries that the FCC regulates". In spite of overwhelming outcry from consumers, the FCC handed industry what they wanted.

That's Great

One corrupt organization investigating another. What could possibly go wrong?

Ads

That's good, but I'd like to see them work on fixing advertising. I'm of the opinion that we should go back to the old stance (80s or so?) that drugs shouldn't be able to be advertised on TV. I think that would help quite a bit with healthcare costs. But I'd also like them to investigate the ads we have now. I remember reading something in the last week or so that someone was pushing them to do that over the Lipitor ads with Dr. Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the artificial heart, testifying about how good Lipitor is.

The problem is that he has never had a license to practice medicine in the US. He dropped out of a US medical school because of his grades and got his degree from a school outside this country. It's really questionable that he is qualified to talk about the drug.

I wish they'd work on advertising. So much of it is so blatantly wrong. Just deal with a few of the worst offenders, and the rest will self-correct before they get investigated.

Wait a minute...

Some of the things that the Congressmen are investigating in the article seem to be the only good things the FCC has done...

1) Regulating the Cable industry (ok, that's a bad one if it falls under censorship. But they do have the power to force a la carte services, which would be a good thing for most people).
2) Putting conditions on the 700Mhz auction (which is a good thing overall)
3) Net neutrality (The FCC is actually for net neutrality, to the detriment of internet providers).

So 2/3 are clearly meant to help consumers, and the other one could help consumers (although it is just as likely to harm us).

So once again it looks like the industry paid off the right Congressmen to shake down a government commission just before it actually did something right.

But first...

What we first need to do is change the FCC so that it's not headed by appointed officials, but rather by elected representatives.

The FCC's power has grown far beyond it's original intention (regulating airwaves frequencies in the U.S.). Apparently they only do things in response to complaints. Or at least that's how it once was. But the really fucked up thing is 99% of complaints come from one organization [arstechnica.com].

So essentially this one single organization is responsible for most of the - detrimental in my opinion - changes to what is allowed to be broadcast or not.

It's not the popular decision. People just think it is because this one fucked up organization has such broad powers and people just assume that it's the popular opinion. It is not.

The organization responsible for all this? The Parent's Television Council [parentstv.org]. The sick thing is they're proud to be the nation's most influential advocacy organization [parentstv.org] yet have barely a million members [parentstv.org]. That's right one million up tight fucks are responsible for 99.8-99.9% of all FCC regulation that affects 303 million people [census.gov].

And the FCC allows it.