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Comcast Ghost-Writes Politician's Letters To Support Time Warner Mega-Merger
WheezyJoe writes: As the FCC considers the merger between Comcast/Universal and Time-Warner Cable, which would create the largest cable company in the U.S. and is entering the final stages of federal review, politicians are pressuring the FCC with pro-merger letters actually written by Comcast. According to documents obtained through public records requests, politicians are passing letters nearly word-for-word written by Comcast as their own. "Not only do records show that a Comcast official sent the councilman the exact wording of the letter he would submit to the FCC, but also that finishing touches were put on the letter by a former FCC official named Rosemary Harold, who is now a partner at one of the nation's foremost telecom law firms in Washington, DC. Comcast has enlisted Harold to help persuade her former agency to approve the proposed merger."
Ars Technica had already reported that politicians have closely mimicked Comcast talking points and re-used Comcast's own statements without attribution. The documents revealed today show just how deeply Comcast is involved with certain politicians, and how they were able to get them on board.
Ars Technica had already reported that politicians have closely mimicked Comcast talking points and re-used Comcast's own statements without attribution. The documents revealed today show just how deeply Comcast is involved with certain politicians, and how they were able to get them on board.
When companies can "effectively" just "buy laws" (and/or Politicians) corruption knows no bounds for price gouging.
This is blown way out of proportion. Companies are made of citizens who get to persuade officials like anyone else.
I (insert Senator's name here) stake my reputation on it!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
glad to see we have the best government money can buy!
There should be a law that letters and proposed laws/amendments should require a list of all contributors (bring the companies, lobbyists into the light).
Where's the forum letter I can sign and send to the FCC against the merger as well as one to my state reps (OH) telling them not to do this shit? If someone does the work of making good arguments against them I'll add my name to it, but I'm not motivated enough to write a well researched letter on my own and figure out where to send it.
And I support Cable!
Gently reply
...get your fucking shit together...create a new political party that actually represents the people...use social media to spread the word and fucking challenge both your shitty corporate owned parties.
What the FUCK are you waiting for???
If every household in America bought $150 in Comcast stock each month instead of paying their cable bill it would take ~3 years to buy them out. If everyone canceled their account and bought stock it would take less time. Kickstarter's limit is too small for this idea btw. Then we vote out the current board and replace them with Lessig, Nader et al. and BAM gigabit bidirectional IPV6 with al a carte channels.
Too communist for you? Go fuck your self.
Just curious, are the politicians predominantly from one party?
I see their pro-merger ads on TV and the web. Why are there no anti-merger ads? The public is only hearing one side.
It would be nice to crowd-fund some ads that describe how we need more competition and more competitors rather than huge bribe-heavy oligopolies. I'd donate $10 or so to such.
Table-ized A.I.
Of course everything is fucked, etc....but does anyone else find it surprising how cheaply these guys will bend over?
10 grand to whore yourself?
Seems almost like you could troll for fun at those prices: "Hey, whore, here's the money. Now sign this petition to outlaw ostriches."
I almost read the C word as communism from Soviet Russia or Chairman Mao.
mfwright@batnet.com
Form letters have been a part of every advocacy campaign. This is news?
If every household in America bought $150 in Comcast stock each month instead of paying their cable bill it would take ~3 years to buy them out. If everyone canceled their account and bought stock it would take less time.
Only because the stock price would plummet and the company would be worth only the value of the plant. At that point Time-Warner buys it from bankruptcy for a pittance and the merger happens anyway.
What significant difference is there between nobody paying their cable bill and everyone cancelling service? A couple of months into the former and service would be cancelled automatically AND the company would have a large amount of write-off for the bad debts.
Then we vote out the current board and replace them with Lessig, Nader et al. and BAM gigabit bidirectional IPV6 with al a carte channels.
What color is the sky on your world, Cliff? Why not ask for unicorns while you're at it? Who PAYS for all this infrastructure upgrade if there are no subscribers?
I heard Mickey Mouse is a corporate stooge.
The documents revealed today show just how deeply Comcast is involved with certain politicians, and how they were able to get them on board.
"on board" ... "in bed" - whatever. Wear a condom Congress-critters and feel lucky. Most of "we the people" have to wear two when taking it from - I mean "dealing with" - Comcast.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Drag a hundred-dollar bill through Congress, you never know what you'll find."
(Original here)
Like it or not, the corporations have more or less rigged the game.
There is no chance in hell we get what we want, because the politicians have all quite literally been bought and paid for, and are little more than corporate shills.
This is precisely why all of those people who bray about deregulation and the free market are either deluded, or in on the scam -- because these systems will always become horribly corrupt, and be sold to the highest bidder. And it's a lie to believe that system is self correcting -- because the system is rigged.
American politics (and, indeed, much of the world) is a cesspool of cronyism, and rich assholes cutting through the laws which prevent other rich assholes from raping the system.
Corporate lawyers and lobbyists have far more clout than "the people".
Welcome to the dystopian future where the corporations and the surveillance state work hand in hand, but the state is on the corporate payroll -- at least, the ones who hold any real power.
This is the reason why the bankers who ripped us all off in the housing meltdown never saw any charges -- because they all advise the fucking presidents on economic policy.
It really is time to eat the rich, because they're not in the least concerned about us in this equation.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I think we should find and post the list of politicians who are in the pockets of Comcast. I'm thinking a list of names, and each name is a link to the instance(s) where they pulled a stunt like this. Anyone who would spout talking points verbatim by a company (any company, but ESPECIALLY Comcast) without disclosing that the company wrote them would never get my vote. Let's get that knowledge out there.
If every household in America bought $150 in Comcast stock each month instead of paying their cable bill it would take ~3 years to buy them out.
That only works assuming that every single share of Comcast stock is available to purchase. That is not necessarily true. Do you even know how the stock market works?
They eat the children.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Yeah, you should get Anonymous to do this for you.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If everyone stops paying their bill, the stockholders will be eager to sell.
Did. Articles ain't lists though. Just thinking something a little more curated and easily referenced (instead of four separate articles).
How many hookers Comcast has provided to various people with influence on this issue. 100? 1000? If congressional aide sees the same hooker twice, we count that as two. Similarly if one hooker sees two different state lawmakers, we count that as twice as well.
Not that I'm disagreeing with your point, but it should be noted that the Koch companies are somewhere around #15 on the list of top donors. The top 10 are names like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch who give millions to Hillary Clinton. The cable industry also spends more on Clinton than the Koch brothers spend opposing her.
Time Warner is the largest contributor to Hilary Clinton other than Wall Street firms, which make up her top six.
Cablevision is #10 on the list of top Clinton owners^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H contributors.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pol...
The money in politics is a problem, obviously.
Also, I think I should be able to write about why I think this merger is bad and distribute flyers. Copying those flyers costs money. Therefore, in order to make my voice heard, I have to spend money to influence politics. If we're not allowed to spend money on politics, that means I can't print a flyer, I can mention politics on my blog that costs $5/month for hosting. A MAJORITY of Slashdot users think it should be illegal to make a video criticizing the current goons. Citizen's United did so, and most Slashdot users think that should be illegal. Fine for Michael Moore to do it, though.
Many people have said the solution is that COMPANIES shouldn't be allowed to spend money commenting on political issues. So for example Tesla shouldn't be allowed to talk about franchise laws? SpaceX can't make a YouTube video criticising the administration's handling of space contracts? Uber and Lyft spend money on their web sites, so it should be illegal for their sites to mention the taxi cartels' relationship to incumbent politicians?
If you decide that Tesla, Uber, and SpaceX should be allowed to have their voice heard, but it should be illegal for Citizens United to have their voice heard, I guess the rule is "it's illegal to disagree with me"?
It's a hard problem, with no obvious solution.
That makes logical sense, and the law reflects that distinction. However, if during the 2014 election season you had encouraged people to vote for the guy speaking out against H1-B fraud, that's almost the same thing as contributing directly to his campaign. Any many places, police and firefighter unions run ads for local candidates saying "candidate X will keep you safe". That's virtually indistinguishable from from handing the money to the campaign to spend on making ads.
Similarly, if in 2012 you talked publicly about bad things Obama has done, that has virtually the same effect as contributing to his opponents campaign.
So it's largely a distinction without a difference. I haven't heard any proposals that really make that much difference without making it illegal to talk about politics - loudly. Are you going to make it illegal for Comedy Central to bash Boehner, because they spend millions of dollars doing so. If you allow that, it matters little whether they actually send money to to his opponent or not - they've done his opponent's bidding.
Time Warner wouldn't be able to buy them if we did the same thing to them.
That was a typo. I meant pay your bill and buy stock.
The infrastructure is paid for by retained earnings and not paid out to executive compensation and dividends. Also the existing infrastructure in many places has been totally deprecated. we have had cable since 1984 at my house. They have paid for their capital costs MANY times over. If google can provide gigabit fiber from scratch a a lower price than cable even with content and ad revenue then Comcast could too. Their business model is based on artificial scarcity both in terms of bandwidth & dividing voice, data, TV.
Once we own the company as a customer owned utility it functions exactly like my electrical utility which provides excellent customer service at some of the lowest power prices in the nation. You have to pay your bill but it is lower and the company on the other end works for you. I can see how my typo made this unclear.
I have been investing since I was 12. I called the last two major collapses to within 3 months. the 2000's bubble by asking why Rambus was able to lock intel into a exclusive deal and the housing collapse by looking at the number of people getting an associates degree in real estate (learned that by reading that that was an indicator for the tech bubble) "When economic profit is available more people will enter the market and drive the profit to zero." As to your direct criticism why would any institutional investor keep a stock that was being driven into the ground in a hostile customer driven takeover?
Rent seeking behavior; it is cheaper to buy a congressman than to build a better business.
This article doesn't tell who signed letters which were sent to them by Comcast. But it does tell who sent letters to the FCC backing the merger, which of these people got contributions from Comcast, and how much they got.
More information here. Click on the "Center for Responsive Politics data on lobbying contributions here." link on this page, to get to the data page.
Smithers: [over intercom] Principal Skinner, this is your secretary. There is one last student here to see you.
Skinner: That's odd. I don't have a secretary...or an intercom. But send him in.
[Burns enters dressed like Jimbo]
Burns: Ahoy, there, Dean. I understand you're taking suggestions from students, eh?
[sits on desk; groans as his knee bends painfully]
Well, me and my fourth form chums think it would be quite corking if you'd sign over your oil well to the local energy concern.
Skinner: [clears throat] Mr. Burns?
Burns: Buh!
Skinner: It was naive of you to think I would mistake this town's most prominent 104-year-old man for one of my elementary school students.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Why is Comcast cast as the villan? This is SOP for any major letter writing campaign I've ever heard of - outside group offers supporters 'sample' letters to send to those making the decision, supporters simply copy-and-paste the 'sample' letter, and everyone pretends it means something.
The anger should directed at the compliant and lazy politicians that never learned how to copy someone else's work and avoid detection.
Ken
I'm not 100% clear on what you're suggesting. As I read it, you said one thing, then said the opposite. Maybe you can clear this up for me.
Consider the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who describes themselves thusly:
About EFF
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. We work to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows.
Let's apply this sentence to the EFF and an example so I can understand you:
> Also any organization whose members seek to influence a political outcome cannot use the
> resources of that organization in any way to influence that outcome [list of possible ways to seek change]
The EFF is of course an organization "whose members seek to influence a political outcome". You propose that the people "must not use the resources of that organization in any way to influence that outcome". So you're proposing it should be illegal for the EFF seek to get rid of NSA dragnet spying, correct?
Dr. Martin Luther King's group was called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The purpose of the SCLC was to organize black churches to effect political change. That would be illegal under your proposal, because I might donate a car to SCLC, that car may not be used to drive MLK to a rally - that would be "to influence a political outcome" and therefore illegal. Do I understand you correctly?
Let's have a citation. Thanks in advance.
Cheap storage VM.
Get money out of Politics! wolf-PAC.com
help us support a constitutional amendment, via an article V convention that routes AROUND Congress. Money is not speach. Corporations are not people. Our democracy should not be for sale, yet it IS.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pol...
That happens to be the first Google result for "Hillary Clinton donors". I see there are many sources with the same information.
If unicorns flew out of my butt, well that would hurt. Bad. :)
The fact is people DO disagree, and GROUPS of people disagree. Groups of people do have power, so power does need to be balanced.
In local elections, the police union or firefighters union can often swing an election by just saying "Smith for mayor will keep you safe" - without spending any money. If you DON'T think that your local elected officials should be indebted to the police department, you need a group to send a different message. That's just real life.
That was a typo. I meant pay your bill and buy stock.
"Instead of" is a typo for what? And then you said more stock could be bought if everyone cancelled their service!
Also the existing infrastructure in many places has been totally deprecated.
I'm sure it has, and I'm sure it has been fully depreciated too. But if the company has no money because nobody is paying their bills or everyone has cancelled service (the second option you gave) then what money will they use to upgrade?
If google can provide gigabit fiber from scratch a a lower price than cable even with content and ad revenue then Comcast could too.
The reasons that Google can do it at a lower price are two-fold. First, they don't have existing plant to maintain while they're over-building the existing stuff. Existing cable companies cannot just ignore the existing customer problems while they string new fibers all over; Google has no existing customers to deal with. Cable has a staff that is sufficient to maintain what they have, they have to hire or subcontract for the install of fiber; Google has one staff busy doing installs. Labor costs are a major part of your fixed costs.
And second, Google is focusing on a very limited number of cherry-picked markets and can dump loads of money into the system until it begins to turn a profit. It's the same way that Walmart can come into a city and cut prices until the competition goes out of business because Walmart has thousands of other stores operating at a profit that can subsidize that. And it's the same reason why municipal cable systems are an unfair competition to the market: a city can dip into the general fund (taxpayer dollars) to cover shortfalls from operating costs, a private company cannot. We have laws about dumping and fair trade for just such activities.
Once we own the company as a customer owned utility it functions exactly like my electrical utility which provides excellent customer service at some of the lowest power prices in the nation.
The problem is that getting to the point where you own it will destroy it. A cable system without customers cannot afford to maintain what they have, much less suddenly build out a complete new fiber system, and it will have zero say in negotiating contracts for content. You want a full set of ala carte channels? ESPN won't care and won't make that deal, and the customer-less Comcast will have no money to make it happen. You said it would take 3 years. That's a long time in a technology-driven industry. Three years of stagnation because there is no cash flow. Long before you reach the goal of ownership, your plan will drive the company into bankruptcy.
The same bargain-basement stock prices that you count on to gain control of the company in the first place will not go unnoticed by everyone else (like TW, or Google, or Microsoft) and they'll be busy buying stock for their own takeover.
It's a pipe dream filled with unicorns and pixies who magically maintain a company that has zero customers. And the only way you can suggest that TW wouldn't step in and complete the merger by buying the stock before you do is if you do the same thing to TW at the same time.
And THEN you say you'd want to put Lessig and Nader in charge. Neither one of them have run a company before and are political fringe thinkers who alienate people who do run companies. That's pixie dust in a nutshell.
I can see how my typo made this unclear.
What made it unclear is saying "instead of" and then continuing with a call for cancelling service so even more stock could be purchased. No, I think the only unclear thing here is how bankrupting a company is going to force it to build a full fiber system and give you cheap high-speed broadband.
That link lacks the "millions" you, it seems far less the the above stated $900 million. I guess there is technically "millions", $2 milion of you total the 3 banks. You'll note that this website you use as a reference indicates it doesn't track Koch PACS because that money is not hidden, https://www.opensecrets.org/or....
Here's a good estimate of the Koch PAC spending, http://www.republicreport.org/...
Cheap storage VM.
You can spin the numbers any way you want. We could go back and forth all day. One thing that's undeniable is that Clinton is financed by Time Warner and Wall Street.
It would be nice if there was a link to let our Congress people know we know what's going on here. Maybe it would be the first time they heard the people's actual thoughts. You know the people (not wall street) they are supposed to work for? DAMN Comcast and big media. The news is worthless these days, notice? Put up a stink people.
Your right eye is blind, your only seeing out the left one.
http://www.opensecrets.org/ind...
-hint... There are way more donations to Republicans by these banks.
and these hedge funds, http://www.opensecrets.org/ind...
-although the hedge funds have way more independent group spending, probably because the hav less shareholders to answer to...
Time Warner does seem to lean Democratic, but those donations are lifetime and I don't see any for Clinton in the recent election cycles.
Cheap storage VM.
The assets of the company do not vanish instantly as the stock price drops.Once we have 51% of the vote we can vote in a new consumer friendly board of directors to fire the current executives. Comcast is one of the worst run companies in America. It has the worst customer service and only maintains it function by being a monopoly. I have a friend who works with technology provider and Comcast has blown 3 deals with them strictly out of incompetence and laziness.
1st question. You don't upgrade during the transition you upgrade after. Just the roughly 2 billion they paid in dividends could be put to use.
2nd Tv is already dead is is all out IP bandwidth. The last mile doesn't have to be fiber coax is just fine. Also I don't want them to magically maintain a company with no customers, I want the executives fired and the middle management fired and rebuild a customer centric customer own utility. It not a pipe dream it a well worn business model.
3rd Lessig Nader is a joke. You could have one of on the board anyway it doesn't really matter as the economic collapse showed us many boards are just a nepotistic rubber stamp. My Dad still goes through every proxy vote to vote against people he thinks have responsibility for the collapse.
4th it doesn't have to go completely bankrupt, all we need is 51%.
The assets of the company do not vanish instantly as the stock price drops.
The value of the company drops as the stock price drops, and the stock price drops as soon as it becomes obvious that customers are all cancelling their service.
Once we have 51% of the vote we can vote in a new consumer friendly board of directors to fire the current executives.
And as you're getting all the little people to buy this 51% over a three year period, large companies who would love to take over the areas served by Comcast are buying stock at the same bargain-basement rates you are. They can afford it. The people you want to buy stock are having to cancel service so they have enough money to buy stock. You'll never make 51%.
I can safely predict, if you cut the price of a share of Comcast today by 50% TW would be tendering a takeover offer before COB. They'd be fools not to, and you just don't have the money to compete with them.
It has the worst customer service and only maintains it function by being a monopoly.
So why hasn't another company come in and taken all the customers away from them? Because as much as you hate them and think their service is bad, too many other people just don't care. They get service, they pay their bill, they watch their programs. That points out that you are likely to get less than 0.1% of the customers to follow you in your cancel service/buy stock plan, which would turn a three year plan into a 3000 year plan.
1st question. You don't upgrade during the transition you upgrade after. Just the roughly 2 billion they paid in dividends could be put to use.
If they have no customers they have no dividends, and they have no cash flow to upgrade after the transition. Maybe you don't understand how the stock market works, but when you buy 51% of a company's stock the money doesn't go to the company, it goes to the people who owned the stock. Where do you get the money for all this upgraded hardware when nobody is paying for the service? You expect the stockholders to dump more money into the company when they've had to cancel their service to be able to afford what they've already bought?
2nd Tv is already dead is is all out IP bandwidth.
TV is hardly dead, and I have no idea what you mean by anything after that.
The last mile doesn't have to be fiber coax is just fine.
You don't have to buy out Comcast to get that. We've got that here. Fiber backbone, coax to the house. Nobody had to cancel service or buy stock.
Also I don't want them to magically maintain a company with no customers, I want the executives fired and the middle management fired and rebuild a customer centric customer own utility.
And your method of getting to the firing of the executives was for people to cancel their service and buy stock. Three years of no subs will definitely require some magic if the company doesn't go under in that time.
It not a pipe dream it a well worn business model.
Sure it is, but not by your means of getting there. You get there by getting the investors together and buying the working company. You don't try to drive the company into the ground, buy the remnants, and then claim success.
It would take a fortune to rebuild Comcast as a "customer owned utility" once you kill it off over a three year period. And now there's a question that needs another answer: how much stock must someone own before they can get service from their customer-owned utility? It sounds like getting service from this new company would be a very expensive proposition. Or you don't mean "customer owned", you mean "owned by people you think care enough to run things the way you want them to."
3rd Lessig Nader is a joke.
Those are the names you promoted as being the ne
Look at the bill this person received: http://img1-azcdn.newser.com/i... http://www.newser.com/story/20... http://www.newser.com/story/20...