ISP Lobbyists Pushing Telecom Act Rewrite (dslreports.com)

Karl Bode, reporting for DSLReports:Telecom lobbyists are pushing hard for a rewrite of the Telecom Act, this time with a notable eye on cutting FCC funding and overall authority. AT&T donated at least $70,000 to back Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, and clearly expects him to spearhead the rewrite and make it a priority in 2017. The push is an industry backlash to a number of consumer friendly initiatives at the FCC, including new net neutrality rules, the reclassification of ISPs under Title II, new broadband privacy rules, new cable box reform and an attempt to protect municipal broadband. AT&T's Ryan donation is the largest amount AT&T has ever donated to a single candidate, though outgoing top AT&T lobbyist Jim Cicconi has also thrown his support behind Hillary Clinton.

Comments

$70K sounds pretty low

[ErichTheRed]

I don't claim to know any political internals, but $70,000 to get legislation that you basically write yourself passed sounds extremely low. Wouldn't this cost at least mid 6 figures? How much are the industry lobbyists and body shops paying Congress to ignore issues with the H-1B program and expand it? I'd guess there's a lot of non-reported money following behind that official $70K figure.

Industry lobbying must be the ultimate blank ticket for a Congressperson. It must be nice to just call up a lobbyist, promise to do something and get whatever your heart desires. I often joke with colleagues about "golfware" products like SAP or Oracle where the salespeople just pump the senior execs full of booze, hookers and blow until they sign the deal, but this must take stuff like that to a whole new level.

Is there any doubt left that Commerece rules Gov't

[TigerPlish]

Is there even remotely a chance that this insidious cycle can be broken?

Voting party lines won't fix this. This is party-agnostic.

It's time we add something to the Constitution: The separation of Commerce and State. But this will never, everty-ever happen. That relationship predates the US, it predates most of the last 2000 years, and I bet such shenanigans went on before that, too.

Citizen's United made it bloody plain these grotesque hybrid corporation/person abominations have the right to Free Speech, and money is speech. This BS needs to be overturned, it's probably Step 1.

Step 2 may be the Lobbies must be busted. Commerce went on a union-busting binge, we need to go on a lobby-busting binge.

The Soap Box is drowned in a sea of noise, the Ballot Box is broken, the Jury Box is bought and paid for, maybe it's time for the Ammo Box?

I remember farther back.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Sigh, I remember when Slashdot used to be a news place for Nerds and not this stupid political bull crap of pointing fingers at one another.

I remember farther back. (Note that I have two fewer digits in my I.D.)

It's always been like this. We may have a few more professional grass-roots trolls now that we have a couple orders of magnitude more eyeballs. But come politics season people's political leanings come out.

Face it: Politics IS "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters".