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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.'"
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.
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
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.
I would say once enough of the middle class are unable to continue throwing billions of dollars at the corporate entities and that bubble does finally pop, mass starvation will hit. I would believe that is when the revolution and major changes will take place. It is not a question of If but when (is that the question anymore?).
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
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.
Why should anyone donate to have a government servant put in place? It's pretty ridiculous. There should be no donations allowed. And there should be voting on issues, rather than people. Being a politician should just be a job, not a popularity contest.
which is totally what she said
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!
I would say once enough of the middle class are unable to continue throwing billions of dollars at the corporate entities and that bubble does finally pop, mass starvation will hit.
I would believe that is when the revolution and major changes will take place. It is not a question of If but when (is that the question anymore?).
This is why I'm glad I own a remote farm and know how to work it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Replace above with giant asteroid collision, ultrabug, or any other favorite apocalypse. All matters of when, not if. But the honest will admit that despite the likelihood of happening eventually, and the significance of the impact, it is not necessarily something we need to worry our little noggins over at the moment.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
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.
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?
Because it's not going to put them out of business -- it just means that they can't keep gouging their customers for mediocre service. Government exists to serve the public interest, which public broadband clearly does. If a national quasi-monopoly wants to try and offer better/cheaper service, then they're welcome to try.
What they have no right to do, however, is interfere with the political process. They do not get a vote, because they are not people, and I've never seen any viable argument for allowing corporations (or anyone else) to buy votes.
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?
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.
And there should be voting on issues
LOL, are you drunk?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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 you supply GPS coordinates and a harvest date?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What kind of remotes do you grow? And can you teach my grandmother? She can never figure out how to work her remote.
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
According to one of my history teachers, the only reason public servants were originally paid is because they didn't think people would do the job otherwise. Of course, back then politician was rarely a full time job.
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!"
It is free. It's called "Go to your local library."
I have a remote farm too. We refer to it as the coffee table.
We have separation of church and state.
There should also be a separation of corporations and state.
Not yet, but I guess Switzerland must be.
which is totally what she said
This is not to put Comcast out of business. It's to make Comcast compete better and provide a better service at a reasonable price, instead of gouging consumers and making massive profits. Things like this need to happen because there is no competitive market for internet access. If we did have a competitive market, then we would not need these government based efforts.
Have a look at the competitive electricity markets a few places have set up. This is how we need to do the internet. One company would operate the physical infrastructure (the dark fiber). Multiple companies would lease it out between them and their customers. Comcast can be one of those companies, and would be able to reduce costs by not having to maintain the physical infrastructure. But they would prefer to have no competition so they can jack up the prices to ten times as much, and be a gateway for nation networks to get them to pay, too.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yes, this would be similar to the electric competition many cities have. One entity (private or government) running physical infrastructure under regulation. Then the people buy service from the provider of their choice with price (and other) competition aspects. For internet, it would be a fiber run (or multiple) to each home that can be used by the network stack provider (even Comcast) to connect each of their customers. Less regulation of the providers will be needed when there is competition.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
No, that's not going to happen. This isn't 1930. Agriculture is a solved problem in the USA, with near zero marginal cost of production and almost no dependence on human labor.
Nothing short of total nuclear war is going to interrupt the flow of bread or circuses in America. You'll have to find some other trigger for your revolution.
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.
Unfortunately most of the people who became pols were lawyers in their other job, so they were able to create the wonderful revolving door of writing laws so that only they are able to property exploit the loopholes that they inserted.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
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
What kind of remotes do you grow? And can you teach my grandmother? She can never figure out how to work her remote.
Those universal ones that work with every TV in the world except the one you own.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
You're joking right? Most farms are actually barely making profit, the ones that do are largely owned by corporations and even then aren't nearly as profitable as you would like to think. Especially when you have companies like Monsanto bending them over a barrel over seed prices and lawsuits. The cost to produce crops has been steadily rising (Johnson, 2012) (USDA ERS)
??? 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?
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,"
Not sure about your HOA but there is a federal law superseding local and land covenants with regards to satellite dishes.
But I think municipal Internet would be a great thing.
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.
Agreed, McGinn has been an unmitigated disaster, almost as useless as ex Mayor Nickels (who's only footnote in history will be the crime ridden homeless camps named after him.)
There are many communities thinking of using the dark fiber laid at tax payers expense, and left dormant for over a decade. All the promises made when this stuff was installed have never come to fruition.
But if we have learned anything about the tragedy of the commons over the years, it is that any commodity or utility opened to all will become unusable in short order without some regulation and fees.
Opening public wifi all over the city would be a bad idea. A fountain of porn and a haven for hackers.
The best possible use of this fiber will be to open neighborhoods for competition, because like much of the US, most neighborhoods only have a single viable provider because that is how neighborhoods were wired. By using the city broadband to link neighborhoods, you remove the lock in.
(Although most neighborhood wire plants are still owned by the provider that wired the neighborhood, and those will be hard to pry loose.).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I hope you have your sextant ready, as I wouldn't count on GPS satellites staying in operation if society collapses to that extent.
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.
Just a thought, but would it really make a difference? I mean corporations pay to have their points of view publicized over any one else's. Since swaying public opinion is how it all works to begin with wouldn't they just advertise their point of view anyway and sway elections even without donating.
once more into the breach
I meant to say lat/long. Oh well.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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...
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.
It's not a supply or demand thing in this case, rather it is a matter of what people actually want. Money can help spread your message (i.e. "vote for me") but it doesn't actually "buy" votes. Go look at how much money the democrats dumped into the anti-recall efforts in Colorado vs how much money was spent by the recall petitioners. It was no contest; the democrats outspent them 11 to 1, yet the democrats lost anyways.
Why did this happen? Pretty easy, actually: A bunch of "enlightened" folks from out of state seemed to think that they knew how to best run their lives. They wanted gun control, but the constituency did not. No amount of money can "fix" that.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I hope you have your sextant ready, as I wouldn't count on GPS satellites staying in operation if society collapses to that extent.
GPS is run by the military; it'll still be there.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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.
And all those farms not dependent on human labor are dependent on oil. For everything. If the flow of oil stops, or is significantly disrupted, you have no food production or distribution aside from those few acres not dependent on oil.
Do you really want our food supply in the hands of a few (or possibly just one) mega-corp farms? The current situation with Monsanto is bad enough as it is.
Agreed, not to mention the simple fact that a failure of a single entity that produces the vast majority of food would be catastrophic.
Could you supply GPS coordinates and a harvest date?
Yea, sure thing:
It's somewhere between 32.20 N, 64.45 W | 18.5 N, 66.9 W | and 25.48N, 80.18 W.
Harvest is between June 1 and November 30; come on down, the more the merrier.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This.
I don't care how big the farm is (and, btw, most farmland in production is still not corporate-owned, they are still family farms: see http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/demographics.html), the industry is heavily dependent on the flow of oil. Not just for the tractors and combines: most all of the chemicals (and, face it, a farm MUST rely on chemicals to meet demand in this day and age, as bad as it is) are petroleum based as well. The output of a farm is only as good as it's ability to get the product to the market: again, fully dependent on oil.
If oil goes away, so does our food. If oil goes away, we as a country will starve. Those of us who still live in rural America will be OK and will be able to survive, but I feel for you guys who live in urban America.