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Conflict of Interest May Taint DTV Delay Proposal
Anonymous writes "Ars Technica has discovered that one of the Obama transition team members advising on the digital TV transition has a conflict of interest that would benefit WiMAX carrier Clearwire over Verizon. 'Barack Obama's call to delay the DTV transition would affect not only millions of analog TV viewers, but also powerful companies with a vested interest in the changeover date — including at least one with an executive on Obama's transition team.'"
...Obama's not even in office yet and he's already got the beginnings of a corruption scandal going. I think this is a new record!
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
We've already ruled out the possibility that there _might_ just be a consumer-beneficial reason for pushing back the changeover date? I mean, because it's political, it _has_ to be so someone or some company can game the system and reap megabucks?
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
Richardson, Geithner, TV scandal ...
Even "Whitewater" Hillary starting to look good in comparison.
Odd how this is the sort of post that pops up when it's a problem with the budding Obama administration but not so much when it has anything to do with Bush...
Well I'm not going to defend the OP, since I am cynical and I see no reason to defend Obama from the completely true accusation that he is a politician. Nor am I going to defend a conflict of interest.
But the simple fact is that the scale we're talking about, Bush vs Obama, is ridiculously different. Some low level advisor might get a temporary benefit from a suggestion Obama made regarding delaying DTV switchover, a relatively minor issue. Bush's vice president's former company was handed multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts (where in most cases the claim that this was because only halliburton could do it were flat wrong), to the point of even outsourcing our military's kitchens to this company. That's a conflict of interest that concerns me. If this was Bush, then it'd be his FCC chairman or Secretary of Commerce that was a VP for Verizon, who'd have already been given an exclusive contract for government wifi.
Bush's administration had plenty of minor conflicts of interest of around this level that I really never gave a rats ass about. They suck, but they're largely unavoidable. The difference is basically how important and high up these conflicts go, and how blatantly and severely they direct policy. We'll see how things turn out with the new guy, but right now just looking at the Cabinet-level picks Obama is no Bush and saying that is not inherently 'bias'.
The enemies of Democracy are
the only way they're going to actually get a converter is if they get kicked in the pants sufficiently hard by, let's say, having their TV stations go dark.
Honest question here: is the plan actually to have the stations go completely dark at the switchover date?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have those channels broadcast a continuously looped message that explains in detail how to switch over to digital TV? The message could be maintained for a month, say, after which time the channels would truly go dark to free up the bandwidth. Otherwise people who were not paying much attention will just think their TV is broken.
Even better would be a multi-stage approach; starting with occasional advisory ads and text-overlays (which I guess they are doing now?), then have every commercial replaced with an advisory, then have a perpetual "this channel will stop functioning soon!" overlay on the channel, then a continually looped message explaining the switchover, and finally the channels go dark.
I know that they "shouldn't have to" beat people over the head with this information--but the fact is that many people are probably still not aware that the switchover is going to happen, and could probably use some more insistent messages.
The surprising (and I don't think thats even the right word - perhaps "wrong") thing is not that the airwave advising team has members with ties to companies who use airwaves.
According to TFA, Obama, who wants to delay the DTV switch, is doing so (at least in part) based on the input of someone who stands to directly profit from having the transition delayed.
Why: It would seem that this Salemme guy is a Clearwire executive. Verizon, in an attempt to compete with Clearwire, spent $9.4 billion to be allowed to use the spectrum that analog TV is currently on. Obama, on the advice of Salemme, wants to deny Verizon use of that chunk of spectrum, preventing them from competing effectively with Clearwire.
Halliburton was responsible, amongst other things, for chow halls in Iraq. KBR specifically, a Halliburton subsidiary. Still are, to my knowledge, though Halliburton spun off KBR in early 2007.
Another company, AISG, was responsible for the chow hall at the location I inhabited for about 6 months in 07-08. KBR chow halls were all over the place: they were premier providers of this kind of service. At many of my remote stops, KBR DFACs were available. So I got to sample both in quantity.
Anecdotally, the AISG personnel were mostly inexperienced, except for the most senior leader. The AISG people put out moldy bread for months on end, served decaying cold cuts and ran out of simple things like breakfast cereals, a staple of any chow hall. They also made sure all the lettuce was frozen and white by the time it got to us. The help were all Filipinos except for the leadership. The Filipinos were notorious for sexually harassing a couple soldiers that were detailed to help out with the food service. A frequent comment was "I felt harassed just watching that", referring to the fondling of the soldiers' bodies, who were too terrified and embarrassed to report it properly.
I actually requested MREs from my chain of command. I was refused, but not with disdain, as the issues with the food were well known. We just had an insufficient supply of same to distribute, and had to rely on the crappy food.
The KBR people appeared to have their head withdrawn from their asses and seemed to know what was required to get quality foodstuffs delivered and cooked. The help was US in origin, mostly. The food was solid, not great by US standards but certainly a welcome relief after the rotten stuff at the AISG location. Facilities were well constructed. No rotten anything. Clean, at least clean by Iraqi standards. Adequate washbasins and such (dust is always a problem there, washing is required constantly).
Bottom line, I think the assertion that Halliburton/KBR was the 'only source' for such services might well be true. I have seen when others try: it sucks ass.
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