7 ms·

After approving NBC buyout, FCC Commissioner becomes Comcast lobbyist

155 points by kmfrk 16y ago

sandipc 16y ago
It's amazing that there aren't conflict of interest laws or regulations to prevent this sort of thing.
- jkeel 16y ago
  No joke. Every time I see a story like this I think, "is this type of stuff legal in other developed countries?"
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Let me see... in the Australian context such things can and do happen, but happen much less because "lobbyist" is a bit less of a job category than it is in the US. Part of the reason, I think, is that individual parliamentarians make fewer of their own decisions than they do in the US. It's almost unheard of for an individual member of parliament to vote against their party on a given issue, so all decisionmaking on whether to support a given law is done at the party rather than individual level. And you can't persuade a whole party to support a law just by buying it steak dinners and hookers, you have to convince 'em that it's actually a votewinner. (Or you could just get your industry group to donate huge sums of money to the party, which is how, for instance, the Australian Hoteliers' Association keeps liquor licencing laws written to their advantage in most states).
  - hexis 16y ago
    Gerhard Schröder, former chancellor of Germany, had a similar situation with Gazprom a few years back. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom
- benmathes 16y ago
  How would such laws be created with such a personnel system in place? If they existed, who would enforce them? I'd love to be proved ignorant on this and see some unrelated-to (and therefore incorruptible-by) enforcement agency slap the fuck out of Ms. Corrupt Lobbyist, but I'm doubtful.
  - reginaldo 16y ago
    They would establish something like time-limited non-compete agreements: when you accept a position, you'll know that, when you leave it, you'll have to spend 2-3 years without working in a related field. Hell, they could even be 2 paid years.
  - phlux 16y ago
    You have a law that states: --- (that) any official in a position within a government body, whether elected or appointed, which regulates a particular industry, area of industry, or the laws and compliance of said industry, may not take a position within any company that benefited directly from any regulatory or oversight decision of the oversight body within the last 5 years on any case where the stated company or organizations competitive status with respect to monopolies, anti-trust, or anti-competitive business environment was considered. --- This would mean that anyone who was in a position of oversight for a given industry and who had to consider, directly, regulations which may or may not benefit a particular company may not accept a position with that company for at least 5 years after their departure from that official position.
    - iuguy 16y ago
      Then all you do is increase the cost by about 5 years worth of pay and we're back to square one. Admittedly, it'll handle lobbying at the local level for construction jobs for example, but it won't stop the oil lobby in Alaska.
    - btilly 16y ago
      The immediate reaction to this proposal will be the argument from every corner that you have just barred anyone with industry knowledge or expertise from being willing to take any government regulation position. Thereby guaranteeing incompetent regulation. (Insert long list of examples where unknowledgeable regulators have proven incompetent to regulate.) You can be sure that this argument will be accompanied by large donations to lobbyists, and by outrage among all government regulators who were expecting to wind up in the industry that they regulate (and that they frequently came from).
- eli 16y ago
  Though Ms. Baker was appointed to what is considered an independent regulatory agency, she signed the administration’s ethics pledge upon taking office in July 2009. Under the pledge, she will not be allowed to lobby anyone at the F.C.C. for two years after her departure. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast/?partner=rss&emc=rss http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...
runevault 16y ago
While part of me isn't surprised, if both Comcast and she gets away with this without repercussions, I'm going to be seriously disgusted... edit: Actually a question comes to mind. What can we as the voting/etc public do to make our will felt in this scenario? With the parties involved I don't know of a way and that really, really irks me.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  In a free society, you make your own choices and live with the consequences. But when government has its fingers in every pie, we all have to "make our will known" about every freakin' pie. And then watch as it is ignored because there are way too many pies for people to notice everything everyone is saying about every pie. But each pie is of special concern to some well-monied interest and they will make their views known to those stuffing their pie holes.
  - ntownsend 16y ago
    Libertarian clap-trap. Governments and pies only become a bad combination when there is no meaningful oversight or regulation. Your point of view makes sense in America where this is the case.
    - stretchwithme 16y ago
      So the problem is that government is making non-meaningful regulations? And is regulating in a non-meaningful way? What would give their activities meaning? And how do you define clap-trap?
- eschulte 16y ago
  That's a really good question. I don't know what specific action American voters could take. After some searching the best I could find is this group (http://www.citizen.org/ http://www.citizen.org/), which seems to be a non-profit working in the general area of disentangling government/corporate interests.
ck2 16y ago
Corruption may exist in all forms of government but in the USA we have it perfected (and legalized). Did you know that lobbyists now meet across from the whitehouse to keep their visits unrecorded? This is almost as bad as the supreme court justices taking special interest money through their spouse.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  The greater the concentration of power, the more likely it is that it will be used for personal gain. And the less likely it is more meaningful competition and choice to exist. This can only happen when people don't have a choice. If a government is bad, people should have a way to remove their property from its domain. Cities and towns should be able to become part of a neighboring state or start their own. The Swiss have this ability and can change cantons and create new ones. Its rarely used, but its always there if needed. And if the people had to approve many actions of the national legislature (again, as they do in Switzerland), ridiculous actions are less likely. Of course, results are what matter and Switzerland has the highest incomes in the world and the least involvement in stupid wars. It must have something to do with the difficulty in spending other people's blood and money without their approval.
  - klenwell 16y ago
    Sounds like a recipe for white flight. Switzerland was also among the last industrialized nations to allow women the vote (1970!). Provincialism is not a panacea and government isn't the only place where power can be concentrated. On the other hand, my idealistic version of political reform is so far from reality, I won't even bother you with it here.
    - stretchwithme 16y ago
      Government isn't the only place power can be concentrated to be sure. But it is the only place where power is concentrated using coercion. Everywhere else, some value must be delivered in exchange and there are competing choices. For example, the media has a lot of power but also a lot of competition. And the more technology and choice we have in general creates even more competition. Your version of reform may not be reality, but nothing is until discussed.
lawnchair_larry 16y ago
Looking forward to Al Franken's reaction to this one.
sriramk 16y ago
People change jobs all the time. The folks in government commissions are probably from that industry and when they do want to change jobs, will probably find work in that industry. It is a bit unfair to cast aspersions on people. It is also interesting that to stop this would require something akin to a non-compete policy which is typically frowned upon in HN :)
- pstack 16y ago
  Yeah, it's wrong to cast aspersions on people who go to work for the government and act as extended arms of the industry and corporations they just left. Like the many Goldman Sachs people on the committee that authorized a trillion dollar bailout for companies that primarily included Goldman Sachs. Or the Monsanto guys who ran the FDA and other government agencies and made sure chemicals like rBGH, aspartame and others (from the DDT/agent orange corporation) were given a green light. There's nothing going on there at all! Why golly, it's just government in action! And the guys from Raytheon and GE certainly have no vested interest in agitating national fears and military spending at all.
  - Duff 16y ago
    That's the problem with big government... it size as a consumer builds in a need for companies to schmooze with and influence the government. The US government EVERY DAY than ExxonMobil makes in a year. That doesn't excuse crony capitalism or outright corruption. But it does help to know where it comes from.
- eli 16y ago
  It's a shame that people have voted this comment down because they don't agree with it. That's not how voting is supposed to work. You make a good point: why would anyone knowledgable about the communications industry EVER take a job on the FCC if they knew it would bar them from working in the private sector in the future? We don't pay FCC commissioners nearly enough to make that work.
  - killerswan 16y ago
pstack 16y ago
Who is surprised? The committee that granted a trillion dollar bail-out of a few companies including Goldman Sachs was staffed with plenty of current/former executives from Goldman Sachs. The FDA and agencies involved for approving bovine growth hormone (later found to do freakishly hideous things to the poor cows and increase by incredible amounts the contamination of the milk we drink from infected utters), the Round-Up-ready patented corn seeds, and aspartame just happen to be largely staffed by current/former Monsanto executives. The FDA and agencies involved in inspecting the food production in the states and making sure that it remains uncontaminated and safe and regularly inspected have reduced the number of inspections by something like 85% and the contamination rates increase, while under the watch of agencies staffed largely by current/former executives of the few main companies being overseen. The US government is beyond corrupt and beyond any possible reform and nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn that almost every office and committee appointment in the country is a matter of the wolves guarding the sheep. It has been this way for decades and they are now so brazen about it that you can look at every single person in every single job and do a simple search to trace the truth of their position and appointment back and nobody gives a damn. I mean, seriously, we let them give themselves a trillion dollars. We let them poison our food supply with largely untested and unproven chemicals. We let them cover up and manipulate right in front of our faces and we do nothing. After thirty years of looking the other way on all of these things, what on earth could possibly ever even remotely raise our eyebrows and make us do something other than participate in the attention-occupying busy-body bullshit of "durr durr republicans are stupid and evil" and "durr durr democrats are stupid and evil" my team versus yours bullshit? Maybe if the government and corporations decided that it was just easier to require that all births be sponsored to make sure they can be cared for until adulthood and then those sponsored children become indentured servants for their sponsor company until the age of 40 . . . maybe . . . MAYBE we might possibly take our eyes off Dancing With the Stars and the football game long enough to do something other than pull the red or blue lever according to the team we've associated ourselves with and demand that we have choices that aren't part of the game and won't be part of the game and will radically change things. It won't happen in my lifetime. I know that much.
- KevBurnsJr 16y ago
  Well not with that attitude!
MatthewB 16y ago
There is a ton of inbreeding on capitol hill and top corporate companies. This is ridiculous but not more ridiculous than banking ex-CEOs giving bailouts to their former companies.
natmaster 16y ago
The idea that the government is out to protect your interests is an incredibly naive viewpoint. The government is not some mystical ideal immune to corruption - it is a collection of people as weak and human as you. This is why the only humane, practical government is one with significant checks and balances, limitation of power. Libertarianism is the only way to solve real world problems, instead of idealistic naive thoughts.
- msg 16y ago
  Your comment is eating its own tail. Let's get really practical: public-only financing of elections, plus conflict of interest rules with teeth (no job in the industry you regulated for X years after you left) will make it significantly harder for special interests to exert undue influence on our elected officials. At least, if they sell out to corporations, it will be out of deeply felt corporatist convictions rather than for intellectually bankrupt cash considerations.
  - natmaster 16y ago
    Non-sequiter?
sachinag 16y ago
The best part about this, under Obama's ethics rules, she's not allowed to lobby the FCC on any matters, nor can she lobby any executive branch member about the Comcast/NBC merger until President Obama leaves office[1]. So she's being hired as a lobbyist even though she won't be able to lobby anyone. [1] http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast/?hp http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...
- lurchpop 16y ago
  As a commenter on the article mentions it doesn't prevent her from Lobbying congress or simply doing it through a proxy to the FCC.
- 18pfsmt 16y ago
  In this case, the "lobbying" was done from the inside as a regulator, and now comes the cushy job in which she can barely operate except to dump her rolodex and manage people.
rglover 16y ago
It's really become a sad state of affairs in the telecom industry. All of these "leaders" claim to foster innovation with their decisions when they're actually just lining their pockets. It's comforting to know that the old regime is slowly dying off. Let's hope the future wave of leaders call out the bullshit and actually do something with their time. Really disappointing to see this taking place.

155 points by kmfrk 16y ago

sandipc 16y ago

It's amazing that there aren't conflict of interest laws or regulations to prevent this sort of thing.

jkeel 16y ago
No joke. Every time I see a story like this I think, "is this type of stuff legal in other developed countries?"
- hugh3 16y ago
  Let me see... in the Australian context such things can and do happen, but happen much less because "lobbyist" is a bit less of a job category than it is in the US. Part of the reason, I think, is that individual parliamentarians make fewer of their own decisions than they do in the US. It's almost unheard of for an individual member of parliament to vote against their party on a given issue, so all decisionmaking on whether to support a given law is done at the party rather than individual level. And you can't persuade a whole party to support a law just by buying it steak dinners and hookers, you have to convince 'em that it's actually a votewinner. (Or you could just get your industry group to donate huge sums of money to the party, which is how, for instance, the Australian Hoteliers' Association keeps liquor licencing laws written to their advantage in most states).
- hexis 16y ago
  Gerhard Schröder, former chancellor of Germany, had a similar situation with Gazprom a few years back. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom
benmathes 16y ago
How would such laws be created with such a personnel system in place? If they existed, who would enforce them? I'd love to be proved ignorant on this and see some unrelated-to (and therefore incorruptible-by) enforcement agency slap the fuck out of Ms. Corrupt Lobbyist, but I'm doubtful.
- reginaldo 16y ago
  They would establish something like time-limited non-compete agreements: when you accept a position, you'll know that, when you leave it, you'll have to spend 2-3 years without working in a related field. Hell, they could even be 2 paid years.
- phlux 16y ago
  You have a law that states: --- (that) any official in a position within a government body, whether elected or appointed, which regulates a particular industry, area of industry, or the laws and compliance of said industry, may not take a position within any company that benefited directly from any regulatory or oversight decision of the oversight body within the last 5 years on any case where the stated company or organizations competitive status with respect to monopolies, anti-trust, or anti-competitive business environment was considered. --- This would mean that anyone who was in a position of oversight for a given industry and who had to consider, directly, regulations which may or may not benefit a particular company may not accept a position with that company for at least 5 years after their departure from that official position.
  - iuguy 16y ago
    Then all you do is increase the cost by about 5 years worth of pay and we're back to square one. Admittedly, it'll handle lobbying at the local level for construction jobs for example, but it won't stop the oil lobby in Alaska.
  - btilly 16y ago
    The immediate reaction to this proposal will be the argument from every corner that you have just barred anyone with industry knowledge or expertise from being willing to take any government regulation position. Thereby guaranteeing incompetent regulation. (Insert long list of examples where unknowledgeable regulators have proven incompetent to regulate.) You can be sure that this argument will be accompanied by large donations to lobbyists, and by outrage among all government regulators who were expecting to wind up in the industry that they regulate (and that they frequently came from).
eli 16y ago
Though Ms. Baker was appointed to what is considered an independent regulatory agency, she signed the administration’s ethics pledge upon taking office in July 2009. Under the pledge, she will not be allowed to lobby anyone at the F.C.C. for two years after her departure. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast/?partner=rss&emc=rss http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...

runevault 16y ago

While part of me isn't surprised, if both Comcast and she gets away with this without repercussions, I'm going to be seriously disgusted... edit: Actually a question comes to mind. What can we as the voting/etc public do to make our will felt in this scenario? With the parties involved I don't know of a way and that really, really irks me.

stretchwithme 16y ago
In a free society, you make your own choices and live with the consequences. But when government has its fingers in every pie, we all have to "make our will known" about every freakin' pie. And then watch as it is ignored because there are way too many pies for people to notice everything everyone is saying about every pie. But each pie is of special concern to some well-monied interest and they will make their views known to those stuffing their pie holes.
- ntownsend 16y ago
  Libertarian clap-trap. Governments and pies only become a bad combination when there is no meaningful oversight or regulation. Your point of view makes sense in America where this is the case.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    So the problem is that government is making non-meaningful regulations? And is regulating in a non-meaningful way? What would give their activities meaning? And how do you define clap-trap?
eschulte 16y ago
That's a really good question. I don't know what specific action American voters could take. After some searching the best I could find is this group (http://www.citizen.org/ http://www.citizen.org/), which seems to be a non-profit working in the general area of disentangling government/corporate interests.

ck2 16y ago

Corruption may exist in all forms of government but in the USA we have it perfected (and legalized). Did you know that lobbyists now meet across from the whitehouse to keep their visits unrecorded? This is almost as bad as the supreme court justices taking special interest money through their spouse.

stretchwithme 16y ago
The greater the concentration of power, the more likely it is that it will be used for personal gain. And the less likely it is more meaningful competition and choice to exist. This can only happen when people don't have a choice. If a government is bad, people should have a way to remove their property from its domain. Cities and towns should be able to become part of a neighboring state or start their own. The Swiss have this ability and can change cantons and create new ones. Its rarely used, but its always there if needed. And if the people had to approve many actions of the national legislature (again, as they do in Switzerland), ridiculous actions are less likely. Of course, results are what matter and Switzerland has the highest incomes in the world and the least involvement in stupid wars. It must have something to do with the difficulty in spending other people's blood and money without their approval.
- klenwell 16y ago
  Sounds like a recipe for white flight. Switzerland was also among the last industrialized nations to allow women the vote (1970!). Provincialism is not a panacea and government isn't the only place where power can be concentrated. On the other hand, my idealistic version of political reform is so far from reality, I won't even bother you with it here.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    Government isn't the only place power can be concentrated to be sure. But it is the only place where power is concentrated using coercion. Everywhere else, some value must be delivered in exchange and there are competing choices. For example, the media has a lot of power but also a lot of competition. And the more technology and choice we have in general creates even more competition. Your version of reform may not be reality, but nothing is until discussed.

lawnchair_larry 16y ago

Looking forward to Al Franken's reaction to this one.

sriramk 16y ago

People change jobs all the time. The folks in government commissions are probably from that industry and when they do want to change jobs, will probably find work in that industry. It is a bit unfair to cast aspersions on people. It is also interesting that to stop this would require something akin to a non-compete policy which is typically frowned upon in HN :)

pstack 16y ago
Yeah, it's wrong to cast aspersions on people who go to work for the government and act as extended arms of the industry and corporations they just left. Like the many Goldman Sachs people on the committee that authorized a trillion dollar bailout for companies that primarily included Goldman Sachs. Or the Monsanto guys who ran the FDA and other government agencies and made sure chemicals like rBGH, aspartame and others (from the DDT/agent orange corporation) were given a green light. There's nothing going on there at all! Why golly, it's just government in action! And the guys from Raytheon and GE certainly have no vested interest in agitating national fears and military spending at all.
- Duff 16y ago
  That's the problem with big government... it size as a consumer builds in a need for companies to schmooze with and influence the government. The US government EVERY DAY than ExxonMobil makes in a year. That doesn't excuse crony capitalism or outright corruption. But it does help to know where it comes from.
eli 16y ago
It's a shame that people have voted this comment down because they don't agree with it. That's not how voting is supposed to work. You make a good point: why would anyone knowledgable about the communications industry EVER take a job on the FCC if they knew it would bar them from working in the private sector in the future? We don't pay FCC commissioners nearly enough to make that work.
- killerswan 16y ago

pstack 16y ago

Who is surprised? The committee that granted a trillion dollar bail-out of a few companies including Goldman Sachs was staffed with plenty of current/former executives from Goldman Sachs. The FDA and agencies involved for approving bovine growth hormone (later found to do freakishly hideous things to the poor cows and increase by incredible amounts the contamination of the milk we drink from infected utters), the Round-Up-ready patented corn seeds, and aspartame just happen to be largely staffed by current/former Monsanto executives. The FDA and agencies involved in inspecting the food production in the states and making sure that it remains uncontaminated and safe and regularly inspected have reduced the number of inspections by something like 85% and the contamination rates increase, while under the watch of agencies staffed largely by current/former executives of the few main companies being overseen. The US government is beyond corrupt and beyond any possible reform and nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn that almost every office and committee appointment in the country is a matter of the wolves guarding the sheep. It has been this way for decades and they are now so brazen about it that you can look at every single person in every single job and do a simple search to trace the truth of their position and appointment back and nobody gives a damn. I mean, seriously, we let them give themselves a trillion dollars. We let them poison our food supply with largely untested and unproven chemicals. We let them cover up and manipulate right in front of our faces and we do nothing. After thirty years of looking the other way on all of these things, what on earth could possibly ever even remotely raise our eyebrows and make us do something other than participate in the attention-occupying busy-body bullshit of "durr durr republicans are stupid and evil" and "durr durr democrats are stupid and evil" my team versus yours bullshit? Maybe if the government and corporations decided that it was just easier to require that all births be sponsored to make sure they can be cared for until adulthood and then those sponsored children become indentured servants for their sponsor company until the age of 40 . . . maybe . . . MAYBE we might possibly take our eyes off Dancing With the Stars and the football game long enough to do something other than pull the red or blue lever according to the team we've associated ourselves with and demand that we have choices that aren't part of the game and won't be part of the game and will radically change things. It won't happen in my lifetime. I know that much.

KevBurnsJr 16y ago
Well not with that attitude!

MatthewB 16y ago

There is a ton of inbreeding on capitol hill and top corporate companies. This is ridiculous but not more ridiculous than banking ex-CEOs giving bailouts to their former companies.

natmaster 16y ago

The idea that the government is out to protect your interests is an incredibly naive viewpoint. The government is not some mystical ideal immune to corruption - it is a collection of people as weak and human as you. This is why the only humane, practical government is one with significant checks and balances, limitation of power. Libertarianism is the only way to solve real world problems, instead of idealistic naive thoughts.

msg 16y ago
Your comment is eating its own tail. Let's get really practical: public-only financing of elections, plus conflict of interest rules with teeth (no job in the industry you regulated for X years after you left) will make it significantly harder for special interests to exert undue influence on our elected officials. At least, if they sell out to corporations, it will be out of deeply felt corporatist convictions rather than for intellectually bankrupt cash considerations.
- natmaster 16y ago
  Non-sequiter?

sachinag 16y ago

The best part about this, under Obama's ethics rules, she's not allowed to lobby the FCC on any matters, nor can she lobby any executive branch member about the Comcast/NBC merger until President Obama leaves office[1]. So she's being hired as a lobbyist even though she won't be able to lobby anyone. [1] http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast/?hp http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...

lurchpop 16y ago
As a commenter on the article mentions it doesn't prevent her from Lobbying congress or simply doing it through a proxy to the FCC.
18pfsmt 16y ago
In this case, the "lobbying" was done from the inside as a regulator, and now comes the cushy job in which she can barely operate except to dump her rolodex and manage people.

rglover 16y ago

It's really become a sad state of affairs in the telecom industry. All of these "leaders" claim to foster innovation with their decisions when they're actually just lining their pockets. It's comforting to know that the old regime is slowly dying off. Let's hope the future wave of leaders call out the bullshit and actually do something with their time. Really disappointing to see this taking place.