State Senator Admits Cable Industry Helped Write Pro-Industry Legislation

jamie sends in news of comments by David Hoyle, a State Senator in North Carolina, about recently defeated legislation he sponsored that would have limited the ability of government to develop municipal broadband. Hoyle readily admitted that the cable industry had a hand in writing the bill. We discussed the cable industry's extensive lobbying efforts in that region last year. From the article: "The veteran state senator says cities should leave broadband to the cable companies. 'It's not fair for any government unit to compete with private enterprise,' he says. In the last legislative session Sen. Hoyle tried to put a moratorium on any more local governments expanding into municipal broadband. When the I-Team asked him if the cable industry drew up the bill, Senator Hoyle responded, 'Yes, along with my help.' When asked about criticism that he was 'carrying water' for the cable companies, Hoyle replied, 'I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community — the people who pay the taxes.'"

Comments

So is he against municip run power and gas too ?

[SirGeek]

Where I live in Western Mass, I live in a city with municipal run power and our bill is always cheaper than the cities around us with the "business" run power.

I'm very tempted to write up a proposal to have:

1. City run cable business instead of Charter.
2. City run municipal broadband.

Wouldn't it be tons cheaper and better for the people of my town if the city could provide the sorta service this would require ? And new jobs would be created IN THE CITY...

What a concept, huh ?

Businesses Pay Taxes?

[tekrat]

Apparently this guy has never heard of Exxon!

Once any business gets large enough, they do creative accounting or move all their "official" offices offshore (do you kow how many businesses are incorporated in Bermuda as a tax haven?) to avoid taxes.

http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/04/07/exxon-says-it-does-pay-u-s-income-taxes/

If the USA could actually collect what it is owed by big business, we wouldn't *have* a national debt!

Re:US citizens pay more taxes than corporations

[magus_melchior]

The soundbite "corporations fund the government" is probably better expressed as "corporations contribute more than individuals to political campaigns"-- and with the Citizens United decision, corporations are poised to dump millions of dollars into campaigns this year, such as the recent $1 million donation by NewsCorp to the Republican gubernatorial fund. This gets the politicians' interests, not tax money-- taxes are what they use to piss off voters and get themselves re-elected, so they can cut more off the top rates. Democrats are especially clumsy at handling this because (1) they're just as complicit as Republicans in accepting corporate money-- though the corps are starting to abandon them; (2) Democrats, unlike Republicans, have never had a cohesive tax message (it is hard to beat "NO MOAR TAXES!"), and can get themselves in very hot water if they screw up planning or communication (case in point: Japanese PM Kan talking about raising the VAT in the fortnight before the Councilors' election; yes, he's Japanese, but the DPJ is largely cut from the same ideological cloth as the Third Way Democrats in the USA).

Furthermore, the idea that individuals pay more than corporations can be a bit misleading, as there are many more individuals than corporations, and corporations pay a larger amount per return (at least, those who are honest). Still, the question of why government does the bidding of corporations when ordinary Joes pay more into the system is a valid one. This isn't a refutation of this part of your argument, by the way-- this is essentially what a pro-business conservative/libertarian would bring up.

Re:US citizens pay more taxes than corporations

[rjstanford]

And as a small business owner myself, I'd say that if corporations really weren't taxed at all that the number of not-really-a-company private-contractor corporations would balloon like crazy... and they're already pretty crazy. Of course, those aren't generally accessible to those at the lower end of the food chain (so to speak), so the rate at which the top few percent left the bottom 50% of the country behind would just grow even faster.

Re:US citizens pay more taxes than corporations

[dkleinsc]

Problem is that the modern Democratic party has now shown us quite convincingly that even when campaigns are funded mostly by small individual citizen donations, they still rule for the benefit of corporations once they get into office (I'm looking squarely at you, Mr. Obama - you fucking disgrace).

Yes and no. Obama's campaign started out funded significantly by small individual citizen donations, and more funded by smaller donations than either the Clinton or McCain campaigns, but as soon as it became clear he was going to win a lot of the big corporate donor types jumped in to fund him as well and effectively bought him off somewhere between the NH primary and the Democratic convention.

Howard Dean's 2004 campaign, by contrast, was mostly funded by small individual citizen donations, but as soon as it became clear he was actually going to try to implement his policy proposals (like health care reform not written by insurance companies) his campaign was derailed by carefully applying sound editing to a campaign speech he made in Iowa to make it look like he was some sort of wild crazy man.

ATT has been doing this for years

[jfoust2]

Here in Wisconsin, two years ago ATT came to the Capitol with more than a dozen lobbyists and started handing out campaign contributions. They picked a conservative Democrat and a Republican from the Senate and Assembly who would play ball. They handed them a "bill mill" draft of how they'd like to revamp Wisconsin's cable television laws. They did not invite anyone else to the meetings. They didn't invite the over-the-air broadcasters, they didn't invite the cable industry, they didn't invite the community television stations. They listened to ATT. They removed local city control and oversight of cable franchises and replaced it with a state-level franchise system with little to no oversight. They assigned minimal regulatory powers to the department of financial institutions - not the existing Public Service Commission that handles all other telecom. The only powers they assigned were to accept the annual $5,000 franchise application. They were not given any powers to reject any applications. They sunset the ability of cities to assign a surcharge on bills to fund their community television operations. All this, in the name of allowing ATT to be able to cherry-pick which neighborhoods would get U-Verse, without having to offer it to entire communities.