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.

Re:Vote out the Republicans.

[GLMDesigns]

But the Democrats are not? Right. What other fairy tales do you believe in? The Great Pumpkin?

A LOT more than 70K

[SeattleLawGuy]

AT&T alone is in the 4-15M range per year: https://www.opensecrets.org/or...

Telecom has a big lobby.

Democrats too

[Okian Warrior]

[Republicans are] all owned by corporations and do their bidding.

Have you been avoiding the news recently?

Google Clinton and "pay for play", or Clinton and "foundation", or Clinton and "Wikileaks". (Or just wait a week or so for that last one.)

Here's cash flowing into the Clinton Foundation from corporations benefiting from selling Uranium to Russia.

Here's cash flowing into the Clinton Foundation from corporations benefiting from selling dual use technology (private and military uses) to Russia.

Here's $17 million that disappeared from the Clinton Foundation.

We've complained for years that the political elite is owned by the corporations, and that there's no difference between having a D or R after a candidate's name.

Don't blame corruption on just the Republicans, it's not intellectually honest and distracts people from the true problems.

Re:Democrats too

[fustakrakich]

I blame corruption on the voters. They're only looking for politicians that will *bring home the bacon*. How else can you account for 10% approval ratings combined with a 95% reelection rate?

Re:Democrats too

[epine]

Here's cash flowing into the Clinton Foundation from corporations benefiting from selling dual use technology [nypost.com] (private and military uses) to Russia.

In case you haven't noticed, most of our "dual use" technology has been shared with the Russians for a long time already. For example, the decimal number system.

In some instances, we might even consider ourselves better off if the Russians did choose to adopt our technologies, such as fail-safe command and control systems responsible for nuclear weapons (supposing our technology is actually better; I suspect the Russians have had 8" floppy disk drives for quite a while already).

Just about any improvement in the Russian commercial space would probably trickle down to the Russian military (trickle down seems to work much better in some directions than others). Are we still in the middle of a 1950s-style total economic blockade? Not that I've heard. Our bigger technical battles are with countries who have not yet produced thousands of nuclear warheads.

In summary, all of this is all a lot of hand-wavy durf, durf, durf.

Point to a real technology and describe an actual scenario where the Russian military benefits, and then explain how the Russian benefit A) is a serious NATO concern, and B) wasn't going to happen anyway sooner rather than later. Having met that bar, then maybe this issue will start to seem important to people outside your particular Kool-Aid enclave.

Hint #1: you might need to avail yourself of sources other than wnd.

Hint #2: just about every dollar given to a politician comes from someone with an interest who wants something.

Arguably the Saudi's and their Wahhabist agenda have done more damage to American foreign interests over the last thirty years than anything the Russians have done. That line of thinking would probably lead you straight back to the Bush Foundation.

Bush's Newest Secret: Who's Funding His Library?

In this piece, Mother Jones at least displays the decency to tar the Democrats and the Republicans with the same brush.

Re:Democrats too

[TigerPlish]

They're called "rigged elections". It's nothing new; during the 1968 presidential election, Hubert Humphrey's mic would randomly and abdruptly cut off in mid-sentence....

Puerto Rico, 1980: A vicious campaign season, which yielded much two great little campaign jingles...

Anyway, the night of the count, the incubment proclaims he's the winner, while the official count had the challenger way ahead.

Then, the power went out at the counting center. The computers crashed. When they came back online, the challenger was up by only 1000 votes, with the San Juan Metro area still to count - an area which favored the incumbent.

Roughly a month later, the results were certified. The incumbent had won by roughly 3000 votes. You shoulda heard the shouting and hand-wringing during that month. It was a comedy of epic proportions, at least for our little island. I was 10 then. Learned a lot about politics that year but especially with the election itself.

I'm not buying that power-out story.. although to be fair, late 70's power in PR sucked so bad my house in a nice 'hood had four kerosene cold-blast lanterns and they got used a lot. I loved the light they put out, I have two here myself even today. Blowing transmission-line towers with TNT was a tactic used by the linemen union. Lots of sags and outright outs.

Still.... I'm still not buying that power-out.

Couldn't find an English version of this farce.

Then again, USA claims a similar fiasco.. 2000.... x.x

We are doomed, aren't we..

Re:Vote out the Republicans.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when it comes to telecoms and ISPs, yes the Democrats are MILES better than the Republicans. The Republicans aren't even shy about being in the ISP's pocket, and anyone who reads Slashdot knows that everything they've said about Net Neutrality has been pure, 100% Industry-fed horseshit.

Re:Contribution limits?

[MountainLogic]

There are two types of federal campaign limits. Those to candidates and those to political action committees (PACs). Candidates have some limits, but PACs lost those restrictions in the suprime court ruling known as Citizens United. While candidates and PACs can not coordinate, many politicians have their own PACs dedicated to their pet interest. Another pernicious effect of Citizens United is that disclosure rules do not apply to most of these organizations. The truth is we no longer have any idea how money is being dumped into US politics. We do know that the Koch Brothers had planned to spend $899M on the US elections this year, but the republican primary did not turn out to their liking so they be spending a bit less than planned.

Error in story

[viperidaenz]

AT&T donated at least $70,000 to back Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan

Should be

AT&T bribed Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan at least $70,000

Re:I wish I could purchase laws...

[mrchaotica]

Try buying local ordinances instead. It should be cheaper than buying Federal laws.

Re:Vote out the Republicans.

[FatdogHaiku]

I'm a moderate... I believe in "The Pretty Good Pumpkin"...

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".

Re:It's all true

[jodokast98]

If we could only somehow convince all the millions of guns in this nation to stand up and revolt ... you know cuz, guns somehow have minds of their own and ... Sadly, I think the only solution at this point is for violence and the citizens to revolt. Don't think it's going to happen though, as the general public is nothing but a bunch of sheep who would rather have their MTV. Anonymous should start a Million Anarchist March on Washington; bring your friends and bring your guns.

Re:Vote out the Republicans.

[TigerPlish]

You do realize the problem is party-agnostic, right? It doesn't matter what party the congresscritters belong to -- they're bought and paid for. Been like this for ages, but it seems to have gotten real bad in the early 70's.

I wonder... perhaps as payback for the whole anti-war movement? That's part of the Powell memo... the schools are teaching anti-corporate sentiments.. therefore the scools must be silenced or "encouraged" -- via generous "donations" to change their teachings, and the Rabble (that's us) needs to be silenced and our vote diminished.

Go read it, AC. There's copies of it all over the 'net.

Re:Vote out the Republicans.

[kn9sli01]

But the Democrats are not? Right. What other fairy tales do you believe in? The Great Pumpkin?

Donald Trump IS the Great Pumpkin just look at him ,and your right I don't believe in him.

Re:Is there any doubt left that Commerece rules Go

[blackanvil]

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?

Nope, the corporations and state own the ammo box as well. Time to think outside the boxes they've convinced you you're stuck with.