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DC Revolving Door: Ex-FCC Commissioner Is Now Head CTIA Lobbyist
jfruh (300774) writes "Up until three years ago, Meredith Attwell Baker was an Obama-appointed FCC commissioner. Now she's the newly minted CEO of the CTIA, the nation's largest lobbying group for the mobile phone industry. How can we expect regulators to keep a careful watch over industries when high-paying jobs in those industries await them after retirement? One of the most damning sentences in that article: 'More than 80 percent of FCC commissioners since 1980 have gone on to work for companies or groups in the industries they used to regulate.'"
wow. being purposefully ignorant is twice as blissful.
98% of the voters approve... You gotta give them what they ask for, or they might end up voting for somebody else, right?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's still a conflict of interest and ripe for quid pro quo job opportunities. Essentially, don't make our company suffer and we'll land you a lucrative job you'll be able to retire on once you leave government.
That is not the issue. The issue is if the regulator, instead of stopping abuse, let it slide for the promise of a future high paying job. In my book that is bribery, and I'm sure many people agrees with me.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
So how much did you send to the Obama campaign?
What I can't put my finger on is exactly when this behavior and conflict of interest in general because fine. It's rife throughout government. We see it in a big way in the SCOTUS, and the state governments are even worse than the federal government. But *NO ONE* seems to care. This wasn't the same in the 70s and 80s, or perhaps it was and the difference is that these idiots aren't even embarrassed by it any more.
Regulator and lobbyists do not have a 'field', their skills are not related to any particular domain or technology. They could leave the FCC and go work for the farm industry and have pretty much the same transferability.
This is rewarding regulators with well paying jobs.
They have an incentive not just to 'let it slide' but to actively help the telcos just to ensure any kind of job security.
if all she knows is telecom, then it makes sense that she would go work at a telecom lobby. She was a top dog in the FCC, dozens of companies probably tried to hire her for name recognition.
The cream rises to the top. In charge here, switch jobs, go be in charge there.
Should she have to start at the bottom everywhere she goes to work?
STUPID ARTICLE
The current FCC Chairman was a paid lobbyist for the Telecommunications industry before he became the FCC chair....
As long as our politicians are bought and paid for, things will never change for the better.
I mean the recent issue with Verizon and the state of NJ, NJ let them off the hook for not building out the infrastructure promised in the early 90's by a mere technicality by considering heavily capped LTE as an alternative to wiring the entire state. Then stating that they would wire areas that do not have wireless service, only if 35 or more people request it.. except they know that wireless reaches every spot in NJ where there is no VZ service, so it is a cop out, they know, the PUC knows it, and how anyone in their right mind could possibly think that this is good for consumers. This only benefits the telecoms.
This is what we have in stall for our FCC chairs of the future.. not exactly this scenario, but people that would vote in a similar vein under the pretense it is good for the consumer.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Anyone remember who said that?
I seem to remember a President saying that.
Who could it have been?
And this is one of the many reasons why the US really isn't a democracy.
That's exactly the excuse they use when they appoint cushy top public administration jobs to members of the current ministers cabinet in Belgium. "Well hey, they happen to have the credentials, know the business and have the network!".
Regulator and lobbyists do not have a 'field', their skills are not related to any particular domain or technology.
Yes we must purge the FDA of all doctors, the NRC of all engineers, FWS of all biologists, etc because clearly they are all beholden to their special interests and thus can't be trusted.
http://wh.gov/lwhr8
yes, but knowing all the relevant laws and regulations and the workflow of the agencies you will work with is a big help
The iron fist has been revealed slowly. We're not sure when the fat lady went from humming a few bars to singing a mournful tune. The frog? Its dead, Jim. Gradually boiled by a thousand conspiracies...none of which exist, apparently.
if you don't want any conflict of interest. pay the agency heads $20 million a year and stipulate they are not allowed to work for any private entity for 5 years after they leave government
No, I am not a big proponent of this action as it "smells" funny. That being said...
Did anybody else notice she held the position from 2009-2011 in a two year appointment? She didn't jump right from the FCC to the CTIA.
She hasn't been working for the FCC as a regulator in three years. My guess is her contract or appointment included a clause restricting her from working for the CTIA or other groups she regulated for at least 1-2 years.
Naturally, the CTIA wants her as they hope she has the connections to make things move more smoothly in their direction. But, has she done anything unethical or otherwise illegal?
Allowing only business people to sit on these boards means they inevitably ignore the commons in favor of business. We need someone to chair the FCC that understands that internet connectivity should be regulated as a utility and the only way to make more profit is to offer faster service. The bare minimum of service is 1 GB/sec (just like 240v/120v standard electric service). If you cant provide that level of service, you dont get right-of-way. Further, this person needs to re-instate the rules of old where is you transmitted media you couldn't own the media you were transmitting. NO business person is ever going to do that. We need the heads of our nation to represent the people, not represent them with progress through profit.
Good-bye
The conflict of interest is pretty unmistakable, here... but we have to keep in mind that even absent that conflict, this would still be the most obvious choice for both the former FCC commissioners and for the lobbying groups. The commissioners obviously have an interest in the field, and the lobbying groups would want to hire someone who knows more then a little bit about the inner workings of their "arch nemesis."
I mean... sure, moves like this will always have that sort'a greasy slimy feel to them, no matter how you cut it. But where else are they going to go?
(Plus, there's some pretty darned good scratch in going all turncoat!)
"Hope"
"Change"
And please don't ASSume that we live in some sort of binary world where criticizing Obama means I think Bush 2 was any less of a piece of crap. However, I don't recall Bush 2's election(s) being accompanied with the sort of priapic panegyrics about how "everything was going to be different" and the administration was going to be "lobbyist-free", either.
-Styopa
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Shitbags that go in & out of industry into areas of gov't. that regulate it (paid off with bribes (cut the "lobbying" bullshit term that's meant to desensitize you to the REAL CRIME occurring here, bribery))? No thank you. They go in, change the rules or lay off of the company that's going to hire them after their political term (or that put them into the job in the 1st place - since let's face it. that IS how it REALLY works in that case too)) - that's utter outright insane bullshit, & yet it keeps on happening. We're fucked.
Interest groups and lobbyists run the country. Voters enable it.
Votes do not.
Welcome to the new world order. The age of enlightenment seems to be over.
Money can't buy you love, but can and does buy influence.
This isn't unusual, nor should it be unexpected. Regulatory agencies are there to provide advantages for the established companies over upstart competitors and their customers. The stories about working for the interests of the consumer are just what the politicians tell voters, as they take money from politically connected companies, to create bureaucracies that further the interests of those companies.
It's how a fascist (a.k.a. mercantilist, cronyist) economy works.
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That's a poor-ass strawman and you know it.
This isn't about fields of expertise. This is about being beholden to specific economic interests. You can get doctors in the FDA that aren't beholden to Pfiser or Eli Lilly.
The "oh, but they are experts" is a very weak defense of corporate behavior that captures regulatory organizations.
Like the other article yesterday about net neutrality, this just goes to show people that in the end big company's like Verizon can just buy anything they want and make the regulators and politicians dance to their tune and it's the general public that gets the short end at every turn and the regulators who are supposed to protect the interests of the people are not doing their jobs.
That should be considered a form of treason...
This was going on in the 70's and 80's and before that. The difference now is we have the Internet and the 24x7 news cycle so you are actually hearing about it. It also isn't just the regulatory agencies that are in on this scam. Look how many former members of congress land at suspiciously cushy jobs after they retire. My fear is that what we have here is effectively a bribe laundering scheme. Oh yeah you do what we want and you get a nice office, important sounding title, generous salary and a big benefits package for your post Government life.
That isn't the only such scheme in place in government either. Look at politicans setting up various not for profits, charities and think tanks. That looks like outright bribe laundering. Also some of the members of congress have really suspicous investment dealings that look like outright money laundering.
The post government employment surtax by libertarian Glenn Reynolds:
50%, no deductions, no credits, just outright confiscation to ensure less profit from leveaging any potential leads from the government to win insider deals.
"Up until three years ago, Meredith Attwell Baker(D) was an Obama(D)-appointed FCC commissioner. Now she's the newly minted CEO of the CTIA, the nation's largest lobbying group for the mobile phone industry."
TFTFY
In theory, true.
Just like a good manager can manage anything.
In practice, however, a lobbyist is much more valuable if he or she has cultivated contacts and inside access to a particular regulatory bureaucracy. They guy pestering the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary in the lobby is vastly less effective, and commands much less money, than the guy who can dial the private phone number of the department head's own secretary and schedule a couple hours with his immediate successor in the job of department head.
And that's where the conflict of interest lives: a person gained access and personal trust in the context of public service. He cashes in on that asset, originally conferred for the benefit of the public, for his own personal benefit (bigtime lobbying contracts) and the benefit of his private clients (in the regulated field). Plus, you know, regulatory capture.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
careful, push hard and someone will decide it's a brilliant idea to give outgoing regulators a lifetime stipend so they won't be tempted by this sort of thing... then we'll be paying for them forever... And they will still make decisions based on the hope that they will be hired on as well afterwards. Doesn't have to be an agreement, it could just be person after person making calculated decisions for their own future and hoping it works out...
What I can't put my finger on is exactly when this behavior and conflict of interest in general because fine. It's rife throughout government. We see it in a big way in the SCOTUS, and the state governments are even worse than the federal government. But *NO ONE* seems to care. This wasn't the same in the 70s and 80s, or perhaps it was and the difference is that these idiots aren't even embarrassed by it any more.
What changed? The size of the federal government.
Federal, State, Local Spending in 20th Century
At the start of the 20th century, government spending was principally local government spending. Out of a total of 7 percent of GDP, a full 4 percent was spent at the local level. Federal spending spiked in World War I, but in the 1920s, local government still represented about half of all government spending. In the 1930s this changed, and federal spending surged to about half of all government spending. After the spike of World War II the federal share increased again and state government spending also began to increase as a percent of GDP, so that by the 2010s federal spending checked in at over 20 percent of GDP, state spending amounted to 8 to 9 percent of GDP and local spending exceeded 10 percent of GDP.
Spending equals power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So why the hell do people think we can solve our problems by giving this government MORE power?
Giving this out-of-control power-mad government more money and more power will make things BETTER? For WHO?
If we don't fight for new protections, we will lose our rights forever.
Oh you mean DC.....
In general a person who makes contracting or regulatory decisions must wait a year after leaving government before working for a company related to their government work in the US. Other countries have different waiting periods (e.g. France is three years).
That's not perfect, but I don't see anyone suggesting a better alternative. A permanent ban on working in the industry after government service is unrealistic; Ms. Baker is 45 years old and has spent her entire career in telecom, I doubt you could get anyone with telecom experience if it meant their career was over when they left the government job.
I suppose you could eliminate political appointees altogether and fill those positions from career civil servants, but that has its own problems.
> How can we expect regulators to keep a careful watch over industries when high-paying jobs in those industries await them after retirement?
We can't.
The same one that said they'd have no lobbyists working for them? Sadly, nothing...
Regulator and lobbyists do not have a 'field', their skills are not related to any particular domain or technology.
Yes we must purge the FDA of all doctors, the NRC of all engineers, FWS of all biologists, etc because clearly they are all beholden to their special interests and thus can't be trusted.
You mean they haven't done that already?!
I see that there's the potential for abuse there, and I'm sure it is abused this way sometimes, but I don't see the job offers as proof that it's happening. It DOES make good sense for these companies to hire people with inside, high profile jobs from the governing organizations, whether or not the policies they enacted hurt the company (in some ways probably more so). These are very strong job candidates even without bribery being a consideration. Even if we were omnisciently certain that no quid-pro-quo existed, these are people who would get (and arguably deserve) great job offers.
The questions then become how do we identify actual abuse (vs normal labor market forces) and how do we stop it?
In non-government positions, if this were a concern (not to the public, but to the original employer), there would be a non-compete clause of some sort. I'm not aware of government jobs ever having non-compete clauses, but it would probably be prohibitively difficult to do (not that it shouldn't be done, but it's so difficult to fire most US government employees that I can't imagine it being easy to implement even more labor restrictions). We could perhaps lobby for that, but it's doubtful to happen. I'm open to suggestions, but without other options this just seems like unconstructive complaining.
Right, an individual passing through the revolving door does not represent a conflict of interest, but rather just the hiring of experienced/knowledgeable individuals. Here are some cherry picked statistics to prove my point /s
Please tell me this isn't where the PR spin is headed, because I fully believe people will buy it (if it's repeated often enough and made tribal). I mean, the spindoctors have already convinced too many people that bribery is "free speech" and 99% of climate scientists are frauds.
People are told to hate corporations and give the government more power. That power gets co-opted by corporate interests to be used against the people.
Will anyone ever learn that power should not be concentrated in government hands?
Government agencies regard the people as a rancher regards his cattle.
wow. being purposefully ignorant is twice as blissful.
Yeah, ignorant - and only HALF of the story in this headline.
Tom Wheeler, the new incoming FCC Chairman is a leading industry lobbyist. GIGO.
"Wheeler has been around telecommunications policy circles for years and has served as a lobbyist for the cable industry's trade group, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and the wireless industry's trade association, CTIA-The Wireless Association. He spent 12 years as the head of the CTIA."
http://www.cnet.com/news/senate-confirms-tom-wheeler-as-fccs-new-chairman/
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Have you bothered to look up Meredith Attwell Baker's history? She Is a Lawyer & Lobbyist by profession with connections to various politically families (Bushes, Bakers, etc). Her education is in Spanish & journalism, what about this would make her a good fit for the mobile phone industry. She is a career lobbyist, nothing more, nothing less. Why she was ever the FCC commissioner is beyond my comprehension.
I can easily see why this would cause problems, but the one thing no one seems to address is what is the alternative? If we want someone to head the regulatory body for telecommunications (for instance) we need someone who has a vast knowledge of the telecommunications field. That means pretty exclusively someone who has worked for years in telecommunications businesses. You can't pull someone from another field because they don't know anything about what they are meant to be regulating. When these people leave the government regulation jobs, they are obviously going to go back to the telecommunications field (with the other option being lobbying for the telecommunications field since they now have telecommunications experience and government experience).
So what are our options? We can't ban them from going back and working in the field, since that is what their expertise is in no one would take the job. We can't the hiring to people not in the field, since that is just silly. We could try to limit hiring of industry insiders but that severely limits your hiring pool and potentially swings the pendulum too far the other way. The only thing I can think of that is reasonable and doable is to try and regulate the quid pro quo going on, but that is all but impossible. So what exactly is the fix?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Silly activist! You've never heard of "regulatory capture" before? It didn't occur to you that big bad media corps rely on "compliance" rent seeking behavior by the FCC to flush out the little guys and FCC hacks rely on big bad media for upward mobility in the so-called private sector? Sheesh, you'd think that we'd be able to appoint a Moses to head the FCC to implement social justice just the way Cmdr Taco and similar self-appointed experts would expect them to do.
Innovation, not regulation, folks. Regulators are self-interested bureaucrats, and bureaucracy gives you the status quo.
We keep voting for these politicians - BUT - the politicians who make it through the primary process are the only ones we are allowed to vote for, and they are already beholden to those special interests which facilitate their victory. 3rd parties are aggressively suppressed.
Very interesting TED talk by Lawrence Lessig on the issue: "There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That's the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig."
There are many countries in the world where a de facto "Supreme Council" determines which candidates are allowed to stand at election. They are sham democracies. We are falling into that model more and more.
The issue is if the regulator, instead of stopping abuse, let it slide for the promise of a future high paying job. In my book that is bribery, and I'm sure many people agrees with me.
That's part of it, but there's more. The topic is called regulatory capture. An inherent problem in all regulation is that those being regulated have a vested interest in "capturing" the regulators and influencing them for their own interests. It's often not as simple as bribery or a promise of a future job. It can be (and often is) things like convincing regulators that certain kinds of regulation are great ideas, regulations that 1) make the regulators think they are doing something, 2) can be easily implemented by that regulated entity, and (entirely coincidentally!) 3) hinder the competitors of the regulated entity. Whenever you read about bankers being in favor of Dodd-Frank, or health insurers being pro-Obamacare, or a large company that supports raising the minimum wage, look for something like #3. Such support does not usually come from the goodness of their hearts.
As pointed out in this thread, who knows the complexity of a set of regulations better than someone who used to be in charge of them? So too much separation between regulators and regulated would be dysfunctional: you don't want carpenters regulating doctors, or vice versa. But the whole field shows some of the inherent problems of all regulations, especially complex ones.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
So... can we have less government power over everything in everyone's life then? Since it ends up being used against us by Washington insiders...?
If we want to get top-quality people for a job like FCC Commissioner, which doesn't last that long and doesn't pay well, but don't want them to take industry jobs when they leave, we need to pay them more. Pay the Commissioners $2 million a year each, plus $1 million per year for the ten years after they leave the FCC, but make a condition of taking the job that they can't take outside employment in the industry during that ten year period. The incremental cost to the budget would be trivial, and it would remove the revolving door.
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As long as our politicians are bought and paid for, things will never change for the better
"When the buying and selling is controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators."
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when they leave the place they work for, move to companies in a similar field?
wow
people with a knowledge of telecom/rf going on to work at telco's unpossible
No, its far more sinister than that. It isn't even really a job, it is basically just a cushy retirement package. They get paid for doing nothing. They offer this AFTER the person has already plaid ball for years. Everyone in government knows this, and knows if policy offends too many in the industry, their retirement is screwed. Why do you think presidents because millionaires after they leave office? They get hundreds of thousands of dollars for what amounts to giving 30min inspirational speeches. Bill Clinton is a great example and G.W. Bush is quickly catching him. Obama will do the same. You think those speeches are really worth that kind of money to industry execs?
You're naive.
Often, such abuse only surfaces after the damage is done, and after fabulous sums in attorney's fees are paid, with a likely outcome of plea deal-- if it gets that far.
The ethics problem here is huge. These were insiders, and party to all of the internal sausage that makes decisions work, and know intimately, the vulnerabilities. Fueled with the grease of lobbying money, they arrive again with seemingly wonderful arguments, except that instead of representing the people of the United States, they now represent shareholders looking for revenue, two completely and potentially opposite ideals.
This very constructive complaining, as net neutrality is the egalitarian backbone principal of Internet access. It's being destroyed with a "more equal than other equals" sort of Orwellian lie perpetrated by the telecoms strictly for favor of their shareholders. Open your eyes to what's happening in front of you: a new privileged Internet, where privilege comes directly out of your wallet.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
No more so than currently, and there are simply fixes for preventing such situations even in pure democracies (require 2/3 or more vote to pass basic laws, 85% or more to modify constitution, etc). A few years ago you could have made the claim that "well reps have more time to analyze the issues" but I think that myth has been pretty much debunked. Most congressman/woman don't actually read the legislation they are passing & can't even answer basic questions in regards to it. At bare minimum I think we need a "third branch" of congress, a group of randomly selected citizens that would act as a buffer against the current engrained culture in Washington. Say 100 randomly selected citizens from all states, after legislation is passed by the senate & house it goes to them. If even 1/3 vote in favor it goes on to the president, if 65% vote against its kicked back to congress, if 90% vote against it the sponsors of the bill get permanently ejected from federal government work.
It's not an innocent employment move. It's retroactive bribery.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I doubt that would solve anything... "There is substantial academic literature suggesting that smaller government units are easier for small, concentrated industries to capture than large ones. For example a group of states or provinces with a large timber industry might have their legislature and/or their delegation to the national legislature captured by lumber companies. These states or provinces then becomes the voice of the industry, even to the point of blocking national policies that would be preferred by the majority across the whole federation. Moore and Giovinazzo (2012) call this "distortion". - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
But what difference does that make. People have realized that voting, if you even still believe your votes are valid, doesn't make a difference.
People basically feel that a) this is wrong b) no one listens c) there is nothing they can do
And if you think this is going to go on forever, look at BLM and Nevada. People are starting to feel their only means of stopping such corrupt government beauracracy is the use of arms.
That is sad...we should never be at that point.
This wasn't the same in the 70s and 80s...
Actually, it is. Reelection rates were pretty much the same back then as they are now, about 90%. Despite all our fancy internet, we are making very little, if any, progress in governance.
About the only thing that has changed dramatically since then is airline safety. So, at least the government is doing something worthwhile
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Most of the FDA are lawyers and beauracrats and would have a tough time telling a cow apart from an ass, without looking in a mirror.
So instead of choosing smaller government overlords or bigger government overlords, let's just not have any level of government control most of the things in our lives.
But if there has to be government control, then it should be as local as possible so it's easier to escape by just moving away.
The law would state that government employees with regulation powers are prohibited from working in the industry they regulated for a period of 10 years after they leave their government position. This would apply to commissioners as well as congressmen.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
> plaid ball
Usually referred to as a ceilidh.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Among others. It's a huge conflict of interest.
In the USA they call it 'lobbying'. The rest of the world calls it by it's true name: corruption.
"More than 80 percent of FCC commissioners since 1980 have gone on to work for companies or groups in the industries they used to regulate" Guess what folks they didn't get those jobs by pissing people off in the industry while performing their duties for the government. Needs to be some non-compete in their contracts that prevents them from taking a job in the industry they regulated for a certain amount of time. These politicians are screwing the citizens at every chance they get. I guess there is no way to stop the corruption in Washington. We need to take control of our government again, we need term limits for all elected and appointed officials.
The problem is at this point it's been systemic of people in lobbying moving into the regulator role and people in the regulator role moving into lobbying, including congress critters. I don't care how versed you are in the topic, when virtually all of the people are specifically from lobbying when going into regulation, then place lenient regulations in place, then go back to lobbying, there is a major problem. Lobbyists should not be regulators and regulators should not be lobbyists. It's corrupt. The way you stop it is by putting people in the role who actually understand the implications, i.e. the engineers, the people who actually do the work. I find it hard to believe that someone with a communications or a liberal arts degree is *always* the best choice for leading a technical regulatory group.
So guys... what can we DO about this BLATANT EROSION of our Internet rights? Net neutrality must be maintained. Lets try and come up with solutions and suggestions to take action.
"Constructive" implies offering suggestions not just criticism.
Lots of easy constructive ideas:
1) vote
2) boycott
3) inform those in Wash DC of their folly
4) vote with $$ just like the big guys do
5) present the facts, and let people decide.
Etc. Doesn't take imagination. We've been here before.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I don't know if I'm naive... I admitted it happens, although I may underestimate how much (and you may overestimate how much; it's really difficult to know). But I asked for possible solutions; I even offered non-competes as a conversation starter. I suppose there's some value in just complaining about it, since it brings attention to a topic, but it's MORE constructive to actually discuss solutions as well as the problem. What do you propose? Force someone who retired from a government job to avoid any conflict of interest until death? Limit lobbying to make these post-retirement positions less attractive? We need to attract more qualified people into government jobs, so any solution that provides a disincentive to work for the government could backfire in that regard.
I ask in earnest. I'd like to see transparency and I agree that in general the power-sway between corporations and citizens seems imbalanced when it comes to lobbying, but I truly don't see any conversation about a workable solution in the article, and little in the ./ threads.
You offer binary solutions to a problem that has none. There's often a time-out period for government employees that's imposed as a condition of their employment, before they can lobby the entity from where they were employed. It's a good practice.
Your voice == 1. Paid voices, those that hold the purse strings to campaign funds and legal bribes== an exponentiation of 2.
If you're looking to seek a rational or workable solution, consider campaign finance reform. Consider the mandate of arduous public policy hearings to vet such radical changes. Consider that the telecoms have a monopoly attitude, and the real concept of historical common carrier law is now in a ditch, run off the road by unbridled greed in the quest for shareholder rewards in a world that is run by Wall Street, not the voting booth!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Well, cynically speaking, the evidence of the actual abuse are all around you. It's in the fact that we can't get Net Neutrality, and how they can reverse what Net Neutrality means and STILL pitch it as 'Net Neutrality'. It's in our Internet connections and wireless plans that are some of the slowest and most expensive in the world. It's in the Ham radio spectrum, a public domain resource, that continues to be fragmented up and sold to the highest private bidder. It's in the posters from other countries that are going "You really let this happen? What the hell is wrong with you?" because apparently their governments figured out that this is a bad thing.
See? That wasn't hard. :-)
How about we simply pass laws that prevent any employment in an industry that one once regulated for a period of 15 years? We might also want to back that up with laws that place an absolute income cap on former government officials.
Hell, pay me 20 million and I will sign a contract that I won't work anymore ever! :)
Right, that explains all the former FCC chairmen now lobbying for ConAgra and Monsanto.
When you grow a government to huge proportions and inject it into all aspects of your economy, you need an army of people to do all the work. When you add-in a political class to "run" things, they'll bring-in their "friends" to fill all the management spots.... and when control of the beast shifts from one party to another, the political appointees of the party losing power get the boot - and appointees of the inbound party get all those management spots. All these political appointees being human, they tend to want to buy homes, have families, and develop "roots" in their communities. As a result, there ends-up being a permanent class of people in each party who live in the vicinity of the capitol city who work in government when their party is in power and who need jobs outside government (but in their fields) when their party is not in power. There's your revolving doors. In the US, both parties have certain "friendly" companies where they "park" their friends. Goldman Sachs, for example gives money to politicians on both sides of the aisle but it's also a great place to park Democrats as are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Republicans like to park people in defense contractors. Smart companies that like the public to see them as non-partisan will happily park people from both parties.... after all, you never know when your multi-billion dollar company mign need some favors in D.C. and having some former (and future) employees there to answer your phone calls can sure be handy in in Crony-Capitalist world.....
You can ONLY end this with smaller government (NOT a panacea, but a good start). When government is small and not involved in much, businesses have far fewer reasons to get involved in government corruption, the politicians have far fewer spots to fill with appointees, and the public has far fewer people and departments to scrutinize for signs of corruption. Shrinking the government shrinks the petri dish in which corruption grows.
The more the government gets involved in the private economy through regulation, the more opportunities there will be for this kind of self-dealing ... no wonder politicians are so eager to expand the reach of government ...
There is an easy solution, re-target the NSA to spy the rats nest that is Washington. If you get a public office, it should be a given that you are held up to scrutiny. Spy on all these people, and when you catch them doing something wrong, throw them in the federal pen for 20 years. Once word gets around that relationships with elected officials are monitored and offering quid pro quo bribes will land everybody involved in federal prison, the practice will greatly cease.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Regulatory Capture is exactly what is going on here. Regulatory Capture is a failure-mode of government.
Instead having your radio go through FCC labs for Part 90 type acceptance, just say it's Part 90, pay the dues, and voila you are done. Maybe not as factious as this but it sure seems like that. Especially for some Part 15 devices which really cause havoc in radio interference and I wonder how they managed to get it on the market.
mfwright@batnet.com
You're not the first to suggest this - a surtax on earnings above the government salary is a *really* good way to deal with this.
University of Tennessee law professor and blogger Glenn Reynolds is one of the more outspoken proponents of this approach (he suggests a 50-75% surtax on earnings above the government official's salary for five years after leaving office.)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit...
Although it's just a small step in eliminating cronyism and corruption, it's a meaningful and effective one, and we should all make sure that this is a major issue in every congressional election until it passes.
Ideally, this would apply to both elected and unelected officials, but the chances of getting congress to limit thier own feed trough is pretty slim given the heinous corruption levels we already have. (How *did* Harry Reid (and many others) get to be a multimillionaire *after* becoming an elected official?)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Do you WANT ex-farm-administrators to decide how wireless spectrum should be sold?? ARE YOU CRAZY!? No, I want someone with some experience managing bandwidth. Someone who understands how commercial, public service, amateur radio and broadcast radio all interact. Someone who understands what broadband internet means (no, Hughes/Net is NOT broadband, Mr. Farmer!).
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
The way I see it, they get your money, taken from you by a third party, allowed to do so by them.
A counter move would need some more direct democracy: a part of your taxes should be steerable by you, taxpayer. That would not be at discretion of government, but could be used for public purposes. You could allocate it to some purpose, or retract it back into vault if you feel you have been conned - somewhat like stock market, but in government spending. The only thing you couldn't legally do is to monetize it, and there would be a law that could make such a scheme punishable harshly enough.
Now comes the interesting (for matters of high officials corruption) part: you could allocate the portion of your money to an appreciation fund which will be collected by official after she leaves office, IF the taxpayers were satisfied (didn't retract the money). In a way, citizens, who are, after all, the prime source of bribe money, are short-circuiting and outbidding the middleman (briber, a company, or a lobby group) by providing a better offer for the official, which in the end costs citizens less.
Civics mandates preservation of public safety and the common good. Not your common good, rather, everyone's common good.
While a small amount of discretion is plausible, it's a slippery slope into divisiveness in the way that poor people are currently abused. It's a wonder that they have a shred of dignity left after the process that they must now go thru.
The democratic republic that we were has now become a plutocracy, especially when one considers the vastly pro-business/anti-citizen decisions made recently by the Roberts Supreme Court. We need to bend it back towards the citizenry.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"so it's easier to escape by just moving away" Moving away isn't as simple or as easy as you make it seem. I've been trying to save enough money to leave Florida for ten years, but the pay rates here are so shitty I make just enough to pay my bills and put food on the table. My point is that crowing about small government changes nothing. We've seen where small government got us in terms of worker conditions. Sweatshops in the 1800s with ten year olds sewing clothes. Companies that dump toxic waste into the backyards of low income neighborhoods. Indentured servitude. Big corporations are just as bad as big government, and in fact might be worse. At least the government's stated aim is to work for the people. Big business works only for the CEOs and shareholders. The constitution limits what government can do to you. The only control we have over business is regulation, it's our "constitution" limiting how badly they can fuck us over. If you think that removing all government regulation wouldn't return us to the sweatshop days, then you're hopelessly naive.
The Sunlight Foundation has an investigative series on government workers who go to the lobbying side. I highly recommend it.
THIS...is the problem. Easy as the practical limit, generic to remain indistinguishable (or at least harmless) yet ineffective as an aggregator of sentiment or momentum. What's missing may be more fundamental. Isn't this really about transparency and accountability (the answer is yes if you have ever ought information about such conduct). Such ethical conundrums require an element of will/desire to preserve a baseline of integrity as a first line of defense (self governance). Failing that, the cascade of increasing resistance to discovery/censure has to be de-railed and the monetary requirement removed. Corruption is a self-fulfilling prophecy in the presence of apathy...it must be prioritized. Once embedded, there is no simple solution.
There are options other than sedition. It requires organization of the electorate and fundamental and pragmatic disciplined marshalling of voter resources.
Campaign reform as a campaign agenda. Requisite methods of information dissemination in an open atmosphere. How many more must die in oil wars? What does a pledge of allegiance mean when the government is a plutocracy?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I am shocked, shocked to learn that regulatory capture continues to exist, even after I learned the name for it.
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=regul...
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Take a look at the revolving door at the Pentagon. Civilian and military personnel responsible for awarding and overseeing billions of dollars worth of contracts have been retiring from Government service to take up senior positions at the very companies they wrote giant checks to as civil servants for years.
Its one giant incestuous cesspool. They get away with it because they can.