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Comcast Donates Heavily To Defeat Mayor Who Is Bringing Gigabit Fiber To Seattle
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Andrea Peterson reports in the Washington Post that one of Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's big policy initiatives has been expanding the quality and quantity of high-speed Internet access throughout the city. However incumbent providers, particularly Comcast, have invested heavily in defeating McGinn in the mayoral election. While Comcast denies there is any connection between McGinn's broadband policies and their donations, the company has given thousands of dollars to PACs that have, in turn, given heavily to anti-McGinn groups. One of McGinn's core promises in the 2009 campaign was to 'develop a city-wide broadband system.' The mayor considered creating a citywide broadband system as a public utility, like water or electricity. But aides say that would have been too expensive, so the mayor settled on public-private partnerships using city-owned dark fiber. This dark fiber was laid down starting in 1995, and the mayor's office now says there are some 535 miles of it, only a fraction of which is being used. In June, the partnership, called Gigabit Squared, announced pricing for its Seattle service: $45 dollars a month for 100 Mbps service or $80 a month for 1 Gbps service plus a one-time installation cost of $350 that will be waived for customers signing a one-year contract. For comparison, Comcast, one of the primary Internet providers in the area, offers 105 Mbps service in the area for $114.99 a month, according to their website. If Comcast is indeed attempting to sway the election, it would fall in line with a larger pattern of telecom interests lobbying against municipal efforts to create their own municipal broadband systems or leveraging city-owner fiber resources to create more competition for incumbent providers. Peterson writes, '...if Comcast's donations help Murray defeat McGinn, it will send a powerful message to mayors in other American cities considering initiatives to increase broadband competition.'"
Money can only buy so much. At some point, the cost to buy out our lives and hearts will grow and grow and grow until we reach the intersection on that curve between cost and "demand". My oh my, I hope that time is soon.
It's good for the gov't, and good for the corps too!
Shame We the People get screwed when they use it
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
For those looking to get into office and competing against candidates with a non-incumbent broadband policy.
The only reason corporations have this power is because the people don't donate for good causes..
Instead they donate towards corporations.
Why wouldn't they oppose a government program to put them out of business? Would car dealerships be upset if the city government opened up a lot and undercut their sales with taxpayer money? Is the government entering a market really competition when they can have all the tools of government to help them succeed?
It would be nice if they'd offer 10Mbps to $10.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
...Lobbying needs to be illegal. Period.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
If you've got the population density... go for it! I would love to see this happen. Although, a lower cost option would be great as well. I pay $25/mo for 2 mbps. I'd love to get 10 mpbs for the same price. Although if costs to maintain/recouple floors the price at $45, I'd still rather give my money to this than ever give Comcast any of my money.
Local politicians really are in it for their communities. Challenging them with outside money will just give them all the more reason to push ahead with reforms.
IF?! As opposed to civic minded charity, a general interest in our political process?
If it's to run like a public utility, then it should dig the trenches up people's houses, fill them up with fiber, and rent them out to private service providers at a price that covers the costs of building it. This would break the technical monopoly of the ISP (good reach), without exposing the city to the complexities of running a data network.
people will continue to parrot the line that the reason the U.S. has expensive and slow internet service is because the country is too big.
"It's too big!"
Nonsense. If it's too big, how in the world did you get those water, sewer and phone lines?
Watch how many people will say the same thing again and again in comments below.
"It's too big!"
. . .life will be just one vast run-on sentence, but I think that, past the joke here, the broader point is that you need both punctuation and a feedback loop because LOBBYING HAPPENS whether you have a law to stop it or not and if lobbying is outlawed then only outlaws will lobby, reaching the broader (band) conclusion that the appropriate thing to do in the fact of lobbying is exactly what's going on here: get the information out there and let the (presumably non-low-information) voters figure it out because maybe Comcast IS the badguy in this equation, maybe not
I'm shocked! How could a large company possibly do something as awful as donating money to an organization that looks out for its interests? That's absurd. That would be almost as unheard of as a tech company lobbying for more H1Bs, or labor unions supporting the candidates that will get them better treatment, or big banks paying to promote policies favorable to them; simply not possible!
Use your brains voters. People who vote based primarilly on high-priced ads and candidate marketing (not to mention on inflammatory and biased media "reports") are idiots and shouldn't be allowed to vote IMHO. Instead, learn the candidates true positions on issues you might care about, and vote accordingly. I know it's way to much to ask from most citizens, but it's really not that complicated and would completely deflate all the big lobbying money and help level the playing field without even needing major campaign finance reform (which would also be a good idea, but never seems to actually happen due to internal forces working against it).
Votes, not money, decide the answer; but you can campaign untruthfully with no ramifications. At that point money = votes.
Corporations don't live or breathe, people do. And the people who run those corporations and profit from them have the exact same weight in the ballot box as anyone else. Anyone who is used to getting their way every day because they have money finds this equality to be horribly unfair.
Here's the thing: if Comcast made a product that was so fabulous that nobody would even want a government run version we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This is just the way capitalism works in the US. Corporations buy politicians (and get rid of politicians who don't go along with their program).
The free market is wonderful.
USA is number 1 !!!!
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Isn't this what Google wanted? I've always been under the impression that Google didn't necessarily want to become a large ISP, but instead wanted to spark competition.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
I'm shocked that businesses and politicians are playing hard ball!
Businesses aren't people, they can't vote. Why are they allowed to donate vast sums of money to politicians? And we wonder why we are in the lobbyist->politician->corporation mess we're in now.
According to the numbers in the article a Comcat executive contributed $700 and the company contributed $10,000 to PACs. Sorry buit I doubt that $10,700 will buy an election.
Look at all contribution to People for Ed Murray. The total contribution are $122,800 making Comcast's contribution 8.7%.
Money is speech. Citizens United vs. FEC said so. THIS IS 'MERIKA.
Already in the US, we pay more per Mb/s than pretty much any other 1st world country. This isn't due to the size, as some would have you believe, but rather due to the lack of oversight, regulation and, most importantly, competition. There are no laws preventing the formation of what basically become monopolies from companies such as Comcast, where they can charge what they want and basically print their own money. I sincerely hope that they are not successful in basically paying to avoid having real competition. I know I, personally, would love to have "real" Internet speeds provided to me at world-comparable rates, no matter if they came from State, county, city or private sources. Just bring it on!
Internet access should be free, especially since The Ministry of Truth needs it so badly
I feel that DVRs are vital to a healthy democracy. Being able to skip all political ads, I feel, has made me a more informed (or, rather, less misinformed) voter this year.
I don't care what any of these companies do as long as they aren't my only choice.
...in the US is called "lobbying".
Quite sad, actually.
It's far from obvious that providing broadband using public infrastructure is a good idea. Why shouldn't Comcast oppose it? If not companies who have an interest in not seeing it happen, then who is going to oppose it?
Exactly. Although, an intelligent person should be able to ignore or disregard most of the crap in political ads anyway, the intelligence of the U.S. voting public on average seems to be something around 3rd grade level. As such, I'm all for anything that keeps people from watching those expensive, and usually misleading if not completely false, political ads.
Don't forget, the employees are given a line about how they need to defeat this candidate and to contribute to the other side.
I once got into a discussion with a Comcast employee. He was outraged that I called his company a local monopoly. He explained how they have to pay for access and other stuff - and the whole "not having any competition" was completely lost on him.
In other words, he drank Comcast's management's Kool-Aid hook line and sinker. I guarantee you that Comcast employees like him are contributing to the other side.
In an earlier time, the voters would have approved of broadband access as a public utility without much hesitation. We still have some public utilities today in the wake of those times (thank God). But such debates today are off-limits due to corporate ownership of the media. Notice how quickly Obama threw the single-payer advocates under the bus when the debates over health care began. That was a complete capitulation to the health insurance industry.(And some of you are naive enough to believe Obama is a liberal or even a socialist). Look for the Mayor of Seattle to be demonized as a "communist" throughout the right wing echo chamber.
Is there huge public backlash against Citizens United? Are people marching in the streets against corporate "lobbying"? Are people dumping Comcast because they disagree with their business practices? Will people come out in droves to denounce McGinn's opponent for benefiting from sweet corporate cash? Are the corporations who will do _anything_ to make a profit getting the message that the public disagrees with their business practices?
No.
Stories like this make me upset, because its the same as story about one soldier dying in a war where millions of soldiers are killed. This is one tiny example of how business works in America. Every day in every federal, state, county, and city goverment shit like this happens. Lets have a discussion about that.
Whitman's spending actually backfired on me and a lot of other voters. The state needed somebody who could manage the budget. She spent like crazy, making us sick of all her commercials. Brown timed his ads towards the end of the campaign for maximum effectiveness. I don't know how many people looked at it from that PoV. I just know I did. Aside from that, I knew Brown could get the unions to accept less when they had to because he was "one of them". Whitman would have tried to use a heavy hand, gotten a lot of pushback, and likely done nothing more than reinvigorate public union activists while disrupting services..
Anyway, she threw buckets of money to become governor and failed. I've seen a number of other big-money backed California propositions fail also. Sometimes the manipulation is so transparent that even California voters see right through it.
Read "The Fine Print" by investigative journalist David Cay Johnston. He details how big business is buying laws and politicians. He also describes some municipal victories, where a plan like Seattle's works to deliver broadband for lower costs.
Lose = not win
Could we limit how much an individual or organization can donate to a candidate? Set the max to some multiple of the minimum wage? Limit the max so that 75% of workers earn the max with a week's pay or something?
If Comcast's donations help Murray defeat McGinn, it will send a powerful message to mayors in other American cities considering initiatives to increase broadband competition.
This article was written by someone who didn't do their homework.
There are a lot of reasons McGinn is probably going to be voted out. I doubt anyone's even going to connect his defeat with his lip-service regarding city-wide fiber.
McGinn has consistently pissed off both the business community in Seattle and large chunks of its citizenry. It all started before he was mayor - a lot of people were leery he was too much of an ideologue. As candidates do, he claimed he'd be pragmatic - promising he wouldn't let his personal opposition to the Highway 99 tunnel affect his mayoral decisions regarding the voter-approved project. Of course he got into office and immediately did everything he could to derail the project (but failed miserably - in addition to being an ideologue, the dude is not an effective leader). Anyway, it's gone downhill from there...
#DeleteChrome
Boy did they point the scope right at their foot. If I were the mayor, I'd get in front of some cameras and tear them a new ass. I'd say exactly what they're doing any why, call them greedy and evil, and tell anyone who supports me to switch to another ISP. There goes a couple hundred thousands customers. Then Comcast might re-assess how wise it was from a profit standpoint to try something so stupid.
It's public tax payer money being spent to combat a private company. A company that made the investment in infrastructure and in hiring local people. There really needs to be competition. Maybe deregulation of the incumbant's fiber/coax needs to happen. When it happened to the telcos and all the CLECs popped up it didn't drive the ILECs out of business. It just doesn't seem "fair" to make the incumbant compete against the tax payers.
Damnit!
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
We have separation of church and state.
There should also be a separation of corporations and state.
Upgrade their network and drop standard def channels. It's time. That extra bandwidth means new channels available for TV and Internet use.
McGinn is mayor of Seattle, but not well-liked. First, he's a bully. He does the kinds of things you all condemn Comcast for doing. He uses his power to close down businesses he doesn't like. He closes roads so he can make them for bicycles. He opposed the tunnel that is going to clean up Seattle's waterfront. Meanwhile crime is up so much that it is unsafe to walk the streets. His response: Businesses should be gun-free zones. He's the opposite of the "Progressive" he thinks he is and ANYTHING that can stop McGinn is a good thing, including Comcast. Why is it okay for McGinn to do the things you condemn Comcast for doing? Living in a city like Seattle is not all about sitting home safe alone in your basement with oodles of bandwidth; it's about being able to walk to the corner grocery without being harassed by a "homeless victim" who wants you to turn out your pockets for him.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I worked in the city/cable monopoly partnership. Comcast was always bending over backwards to kiss our asses and win over support; avoiding potential problems. They had lawyers and ALWAYS won on every legal fight so one would wonder why they'd be so risk adverse but they were.
No corruption, but they were working HARD to establish "friendships" on the edge of what could be called corruption (not legal corruption but more of the subtle immoral kind.)
They have all the real power and we didn't; they just didn't want to push us into flexing the only real power we had and the negative PR mess it would create--- but if pushed into a corner they'd do it. Hell, Comcast is slowly rebranding themselves because they know people hate them by name and they are doing a lot to boost public perception and customer satisfaction. Their service is the BEST of any cable company in state history but then they don't need the peasants getting too motivated... When the risk from the people is great enough they'll make an unpopular move, such as buying off the state government; undoing that PR work will be worth the price for maintaining their highly profitable monopoly.
BTW, we would need an act of congress to find out their profit levels because no smaller political force is strong enough to find out if they are abusing their monopoly powers and keep them in check.
Back in the Stone Age, projects that were "too expensive" were paid for with bonds, which were repaid by the revenues generated by the project. Apparently now that's socialism, and we can't have that. Or nice things. Or decent broadband.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
They deserve what they get. Fucked in the ass.
Being business is not elected the only recourse to citizens to stop it is bullets this is exactly what guns were made for.
Killing these kind of mother fucks and there families.
Every time I hear about it I still get amazed that Americans allow their politicians to be sold to the highest bidder. With no caps or controls on the selling. I guess this is taking free market to the end point, but do the citizens really recognize their very liberties are for sale.
US Homeland Security act 2002 defines terrorism as
– and activity that involves an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive to critical infrastructure or key resources; and is a violation of the criminal law of the united states or any state or other subdivision of the united states and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidating or coercion or to effect the conduct of a government by mass destruction assassination or kidnapping.
Few of the terms defined what the PAC's do so should thay not be considered terrorists? "Don't do what we want we will make it hard fro you to stay in office" ..
"
()-()
America used to be a country where FREEDOM reigned and private industry could count on a level playing field. Nowadays liberals and other statists have decided for us that BIG GOVERMENT is the most important thing and that BIG GOVERMENT should get to pick and chooose the winners. Well I for one am glad to see comcast doing the right thing here by fighting the big goverment LIE , stealing from the wealthy to support the lazy, incompetent and stupid.
Vote Ron Paul 2016!
it won't be because of this, it will be because the majority of people don't like taking out general purpose traffic lanes that carry 30K cars a day to make them dedicated bike lanes carrying 200 bikes a day
In New Hampshire, legislators' salary is only $100 per year so the politicians need jobs or independent wealth.
Take a look at this. If $10,000 buys a McGinn' then the $100,000 contributed by the UFCW must mean that the incumbent must be a mere puppet of the union. Yet there is no issue with the union contribution. I see an imbalance here.
??? WHAT!!! Is this Doctor Who's younger brother who is into politics?
OMG...can he come to meet our country's leaders? (Pick your country.)
Maybe he can treat them with his sonic scalpel. There's sure something wrong with them.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
No. Comcast only offers service in part of the Seattle city limits. Many blocks, like mine, do not have access to cable. I can't get cable TV or cable Internet. Comcast decided it wasn't worth the cost so we can't get service. Also, the HOA blocks satellite dishes by requiring a sign-off by a PE so we're stuck with antennas. Where I used to live, the apartment building was at capacity and Comcast wouldn't upgrade their amplifier to add just two tenants. It's like going back to the 1970s. Most of my friends are anti-Internet so they don't mind DSL. This isn't the bay area where people are technical. Instead this city has a lot of Microsoft employees that still don't get the Internet so there isn't much of a push for faster Internet access. The Microsoft drones just don't care.
Thousands of miles of public dark fiber exists in Cook County.
This same thing was discussed but never gained any traction as it's ATT's backyard and they would have crushed it before it got out the door.
"The wrong sort of people are allowed to influence public opinion, instead of the professional influence peddlers we prefer,"
When you pay for cable TV, you're paying for political corruption. You are funding the removal of democracy from your mayoral race. Not "them," you.
And when you pirate TV shows instead of subscribing to cable TV service, you're fighting political corruption. That's $100 per month less for them to spend on lobbying to keep competition illegal (prices high), keeping DRM legal to use on the local cable franchise (so that citizens can't use their own QAM tuners), etc. That $100/month will be used directly against your own interests. It's self-destructive (and therefore, perhaps even a little bit insane) to pay that. It's a $100/month to spend on your own political voice.
Pirate. It's the only honest thing to do. It's the only civic thing to do. It's the only selfish thing to do. It's the only community-minded and neighborly thing to do. It's the only democratic thing to do. Whether you're a lefty or a righty, it's the only American thing to do.
It's the only reasonable thing to do.
And strangely, at this point, it's even the only pro-Intellectual Property thing to do. IP is being done grievous harm by DRM, and we're not going to kill DRM until people stop paying for it. Piracy is how we're going to push back toward a more traditional pre-DMCA sales/rental model, for a both healthier and more consumer-friendly IP economy.
If you, or anyone you know, isn't pirating TV yet, it's time for a think and a talk. You don't have to try to make the world a better place (but it sure would be nice if you'd please do that), but stop contributing to the problem every month.
Its how politics has worked since its inception. Sad and disgusting, but true.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What idiots, they should be installing the fiber, not fighting it. There's a gravy train there they should be getting in on.
I live in Seattle. I pay $90 for 20mbps. Just for internet, not TV, no Phone. They suck, I am looking forward to Gigabit and the $40 I will pay for 500mbps.
Yes, I will be voting this election.
Be seeing you...
fuck you, comcast.
Big media did the same thing with the Australian government recently. Now instead of fiber to the home, we get fiber to the node and a crappy copper connection to the house which is controlled by a monopoly company with no incentive to fix it, and not a good record of caring one iota about their customers.
Of course we're kind of backward in these parts .. and stupid .. and the politicians are corrupt .. and money talks.
But do a search on public broadband in NC to ruin your day.
The legal limit for corporate contributions in Seattle is......$700. Heck, if that's all it takes to win favor of the mayor's office I am cutting a check.
Mayor McGinn is very unpopular and I have not seen him pay more than lip service to supporting use of the city's dark fiber. If this is about Comcast stopping competition, they probably wasted their money. Gigabit is also useless. Gigabit's service maps show their coverage area one block away from my house. I have sent email to Gigabit several times, including adding my name on their "interested" list and received nothing but an automated response. I have written off Gigabit as a good idea that is going nowhere. In one year, they have hooked up a public library. A good use of dark fiber, but does nothing about expanding higher speed/lower cost broadband to Seattle in general. I doubt that the mayor race will make any difference to broadband availability in Seattle.
Actually, they are offering that; the plans in TFS aren't the only ones. It's a bit complicated, though...
How about 5Mbps/1Mbps (Down/Up) for FREE for 60 months after that $350 installation? That works out to less than $6/month, and after the five years are over you can switch to the 10/10 for $10/month plan.
Note that all of this is contact-free; aside from the up-front $350 cost for this option, you can stop using it (or buy something better) at any time.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The world is undergoing the biggest shift in the way we get entertainment since the first TV signals were broadcast all those years ago. More and more people are downloading and streaming content (legal and otherwise) from the Internet and shifting away from the traditional "broadcast" model of content delivery. And the companies who make the big bucks making and selling that broadcast content will think nothing of spending big bucks to make sure that doesn't happen.