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Comcast Gets Hard Up At FCC Meeting
alphadogg notes a story over at portfolio.com claiming, and presenting evidence, that Comcast paid people off the street to take up room at yesterday's FCC hearing in Massachusetts. Comcast acknowledges that it paid people to hold places in line for its employees. But Save The Internet claims that people were bussed in by Comcast and then took up almost all available seats in the meeting room 90 minutes before the meeting opened, blocking scores of interested people from attending. Such tactics are not unheard of in Washington DC, but how appropriate are they in a regional meeting on a college campus?
Such tactics are not unheard of in Washington DC, but how appropriate are they in a regional meeting on a college campus?
Huh? I am all for thinking that this is dick move but to ask "how appropriate" it is seems a little ridiculous. It's a fucking college campus -- if anything, it shouldn't be permitted in "Washington, DC" (whatever that means) but if someone wants to fill a campus auditorium with highlighter toting narcoleptics, so be it.
All this shows is that Comcast is willing to play dirtier than ever to ensure that their network operates in the manner they deem necessary. Normally I couldn't care less what a private business does with its customers but when they have a permitted monopoly in as many areas as they do, they should be held accountable for the bullshit they have been pulling using pipes that my tax dollars helped fund.
It wasn't as much for blocking competition from other companies but from blocking the public from speaking out. There's gotta be some law against this kind of thing...
Oh wait...
It's always confirmation bias!
... about the people who accepted money to "attend" a meeting they knew nothing about? Pretty shitty ethics on both sides of this transaction.
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Just look at who is running the FCC these days. Comcast, Time-Warner, the telcos, have all paid 'campaign contributions' to pack the FCC with anti-consumer/anti-competition appointees. I'm sure that they also sleep through meetings since all they need to do is get their orders from industry and pass it on to staff for implementation. The only decision making is when the telcos and cable operators disagree on who gets to screw consumers harder.
Seems to me that if it's your job to go to a meeting that you should sit your own rear end in line.
Besides, the more you have these lobbyists tied up waiting, the less you have them actually lobbying--so perhaps the congresscritters might have to listen to their constituents for once, if only out of sheer boredom.
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Comcast should be censured for it's behaviour but it's Amerika, if you've got money, it doesn't matter what you do. That's what's really wrong with America too.
Who got bribed? Are you replying to the right article?
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Is it any surprise? Our political and business leaders have been teaching us more and more all that the path to success is scumbaggery. Lie, chisel, and cheat; and as long as you are powerful enough to get away with it, you will be richly rewarded. Honor, ethics, and good reputation are quaintly outmoded concepts, and those who cling to such silly traditions are in a race to be the last sucker.
The problem is not that people will attempt such venality to get ahead; this has always been the case. The problem is that, increasingly IMHO, the rest of us let them get away with this crap with their reputations intact.
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If the frat boys are showing up because they have an agenda or they are generally interested in a topic than thats fine. I wouldn't even have minded if Comcast employees had shown up en masse, but paying people who are going to sleep through the event is despicable since it prevents members of the public who have a legitimate interest in participating in government from attending.
Ethics are a lost cause. Ethics and being unethical used to be a serious issue. Honesty and Ethics used to be the characteristic of a great person. These days, no one expects ethics, no one even values ethics. When the majority of people act ethically and honestly, there is negative feedback to unethical behavior. When the majority of people don't care about ethics, unethical behavior is the norm.
So much of a free society depends on ethics and the deal of ethics will be the death of freedom.