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There Are Ajit Pai 'Verizon Puppet' Jokes That the FCC Doesn't Want You To Read (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission is refusing to release the draft versions of jokes told by Chairman Ajit Pai at a recent dinner, claiming that releasing the drafts would "impede the candid exchange of ideas" within the commission. In December, Pai gave a speech at the annual FCC Chairman's Dinner and played a video that attempts to lampoon critics who accuse Pai of doing the bidding of Verizon, his former employer. The video was shown less than a week before the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules, a favorable move for the broadband industry requested by Verizon and other ISPs. The satirical skit shows Pai planning his future ascension to the FCC chairmanship with Verizon executive Kathleen Grillo in 2003, the last year Pai worked as a Verizon lawyer. The video shows Pai and the Verizon executive plotting to install a "Verizon puppet" as FCC chair. In response, Gizmodo filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request for "any communications records from within the chairman's office referencing the event or the Verizon executive," the news site wrote yesterday. "Nearly a dozen pages worth of emails were located, including draft versions of the video's script and various edits," Gizmodo wrote. "The agency is refusing to release them, however; it is 'reasonably foreseeable,' it said, that doing so would injure the 'quality of agency decisions.'" The FCC searched for the records in response to Gizmodo's request and "returned no communications whatsoever with Kathy Grillo," the article said.
Obama never had trillion dollar deficits, the deficits during his presidency were holdovers from when the Bush administration was charging things to the national credit card without including them in the budget. Exclude the spending that Obama was obligated to make because of the wars and the economy that Bush crashed and he'd be nowhere near trillions in budget dollars.
Face it, the GOP never cared about the budget, they just get upset whenever people who aren't already massively wealthy get something from the government. The GOP hasn't had a President that left office without debt since Eisenhower. It's always the Democrats that get stuck balancing the budget and paying off the debt while the GOP throws stones and tries to blow it up as best they can.
Pointing out that there is no alternative who wouldn't do exactly the same thing feels so very passé, but still I feel it must be said, since it's just as true today as it was 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and so on. You're proposing a free-market solution where there is and can be no free market. You're proposing that we switch to AT&T to punish Verizon when Pai's policies benefit both. What do you say about fixing the actual problem - corporate stooges being put in charge of our government? Or do you think the stooge from Comcast would be a bit nicer?
Ajit Pai: If you don't want people to characterize you as an industry puppet, don't be an industry puppet.
It's not that complicated.