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.'"

Comments

Re:80% of people working in a field

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:80% of people working in a field

[CmdrEdem]

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.

Democracy

[asmkm22]

And this is one of the many reasons why the US really isn't a democracy.

Re:80% of people working in a field

[Kohath]

Government agencies regard the people as a rancher regards his cattle.

Re:80% of people working in a field

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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/

Purge the FDA

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Regulatory capture

[PapayaSF]

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.

Re:80% of people working in a field

[postbigbang]

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.