The chances that the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will investigate ISPs’ use of bandwidth caps now seem decidedly slim. Unnamed sources have toldThe Wall Street Journal that President Barack Obama is poised to nominate Tom Wheeler, a venture capitalist and “former top lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries” to serve as chairman of the FCC. The Journal notes that Wheeler in the past has signaled that he would have been willing to approve the now-dead merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, which puts him at odds with outgoing FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, who was instrumental in blocking the AT&T-T-Mobile deal.
Genachowski was slightly better than the average mobbed-up industry insider, and he did a few good things while he was head of the FCC. Having some industry lickspittle in charge is only going to make the awful situation with wireless and broadband worse.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Just out of curiosity, is there any regulatory commission in DC that *isn’t* run by industry?
Tokyokie
And the United States will fall further behind the likes of Japan, South Korea and France in terms of connectivity. But hey, FREEDUM!
c u n d gulag
Oh, wonderful, Mr. President – put a tiger in charge of the cat-house, why don’t you?
Schlemizel
I know this will hurt a lot of feelings but I have to say it anyway
I am eternally grateful we do not have a Republican President but I really wish we had a Democratic one.
The same can be said for the Senate
MomSense
Unfortunately any nominee that I would want would never make it through confirmation.
I honestly think we need to start a media revolution. It is actually one of the few places where we have the power of the purse.
JGabriel
@Schlemizel:
Seconded. I couldn’t agree more.
Schlemizel
@JGabriel:
Careful there – we are in real danger of being accused of being firebaggers and having impure thoughts!
To which we will be forced to respond by calling those people Obots since a difference of opinion is ALWAYS disloyalty or blind obedience. As Freud said “There are no accidents . . . oh, and no honest disagreements among friends”
Chyron HR
@Schlemizel:
Careful there – I think circlejerking in public probably violates some indecency laws.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Schlemizel:
Yes.
Baud
The guy hasn’t even been nominated yet and he’s already being declared a failure. I’ll stay off this bus.
MomSense
@Schlemizel: @JGabriel:
Wow, Schlemizel–you can have the same old arguments all by yourself. Well played.
The thing is that our President will be only as liberal/progressive as the last votes needed to pass legislation or confirm nominees. Same was true of FDR, Clinton, all of them really.
Social Security left out people like my grandmother (she was only able to participate in the last year she worked and she was well above retirement age) because FDR had to compromise with the conservative Southern Dem members of the Senate Finance Committee. Was FDR a Republican?
But keep directing your disappointment at the President and give a pass to the Conservadems and Republicans until the Dems are good and disappointed and depressed because that worked like a charm in 2010 (for the Republicans!!).
Chet
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
No, but who else would run them? It’s not like you can get a master’s degree in “being head of the FCC.” I appreciate your view may be that any old asshole could administer the nation’s complex, interdependent telecommunications infrastructure, or at least do it better than it is currently run. But I feel like we ran that experiment – for instance, Michael D. Brown, head of FEMA, had no industry ties at all except to the Arabian horse industry. Now, I guess you can say “yeah, but that man was an idiot” but the only previous indication of that was that he was appointed by George W Bush.
And isn’t Genachowski basically falling out of this position and into a cushy industry job?
Industry monopoly is bad, sure, but infrastructure monopoly is usually good. There’s no reason to have a nation blanketed by six incompatible cell networks.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Oh, I dunno. Putting Gary Gensler in charge of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission seemed like an industry set-up, too, given his background as an investment banker-trader (Goldman-Sacks?). But it seems the whole industry wants to castrate him now for trying to “over-regulate” the international banking casino. Sorta like FDR’s appointment of Joe Kennedy to the SEC. Who knows what evil lurks…? Maybe a case of trying to catch a crook by appointing a crooked overseer?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Chet:
Well, how about *not industry* for starters? I’m sure you could scrounge up a few lazy asses with master’s degrees in telecom or policy from, IDK, MIT or Stanford, for instance. Moron.
RP
I know extremely liberal communications lawyers in DC who thought Genachowski did a lousy job both in terms of the politics and policy. And communications is hardly a black and white, liberal/conservative area. Maybe we should withhold judgment for a few minutes.
RP
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): And most of those people would have no idea what the f*** they were doing. The FCC needs people like that, but they also need a healthy dose of people with industry experience.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@RP:
I love how people get the idea that a regulatory agency is just a bunch of yobs who get together occasionally.
Schlemizel
@MomSense: I can be disappointed in the President AND conservadems at the same time – not my whole comment
RP
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): How did you get that from my comment?
Schlemizel
@Chyron HR:
I have witnessed it often enough that I assumed it was required on BJ. I had hoped to head it off here by stating that it was obvious.
Schlemizel
@Schlemizel:
that shout have been note my whole comment.
Neither side of the team is helping us out.
And mom, I can assure you that the people who are serious here did not screw up 2010. this ground has been covered often enough here that I thought it wouldn’t be required but taken as read.
for some reason no criticism, no matter how mild can be tolerated. If I wanted that sort of bullshit I would remove half my brain & become a Republican.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@RP:
combining it with the comment above from Chet.
Any regulatory commission is going to have a staff of trained people to advise on policy and practice. I’d much rather see a balance of people who represent the people who *use* the industry’s products than a board stuffed with people who *are* the industry, if that makes sense.
For example, I’d much rather an SEC that has representation from the people who are potentially screwed if the banks fuck up the market than an SEC that is a pet of the banks.
Regulating is not rocket science, and there are plenty of people who aren’t industry shills who can do so competently and ethically.
Cassidy
@Schlemizel:
We do have a Democratic POTUS who has accomplished quite a few Democratic, even liberal, things. That’s one thing I never get about you guys: you’re so quick to accuse him of being a conservative moderate or any number of things when he does something less than blessed from the green gods of purity leftyism, but you all also never give him credit for what he has accomplished.
RP
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): Yes, I agree. Any regulatory agency needs a mix of people. But the revolving door issue/industry capture is overblown IMO. Most of the people with the necessary expertise and experience are going to come from the industry and/or go to the industry after leaving the agency. It’s important to have people who represent the consumer’s POV, but as a practical matter is extremely difficult to get a significant number of people like that with the necessary skills and experience.
I’m not trying to be a pollyanna. Sometimes it’s a problem, and I think the SEC is the prime example. But I don’t think it’s much of an issue for the FCC.
amk
@Cassidy: prezinent sanders. win.
RaflW
Eh, whatever.
Let second-world countries have faster, better and cheaper internet. Its not like they’re gonna eat our lunch and further drive the competitiveness of the US into the dirt. Short term profit now! Short term profit until we offshore our whole corporation!
Eghad we have shitty leadership. I’m lookin at you, Barack.
Mino
Waiting for a Walmart heir to be appointed to the NLRB. The biggest employer theory, ya know.
Schlemizel
@Cassidy:
Who, exactly, are you guys?
I have been a supporter of this President. I have often supported him, commiserated with his situation and even called, written and emailed (and marched) in support. Am I NEVER allowed to express disappointment at his actions? Must I ALWAYS accept whatever crumb falls from the table no matter how small?
Your problem seems to be that you take any criticism, even as insignificant as I made, even when coupled with the criticism of the rest of the Democrats as hair on fire attacks. I don’t get that just like I don’t get people who defend the President being attacked as Obots.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@RP: We’ll have to agree to disagree here. I think there have been way too many cases where the FCC has been too lenient with the industries they cover. Some of that has doubtless been helped along by the anti-regulatory spirit of many in Washington.
I don’t know how to stop the revolving door, but I wish there were a way to do so. Someone leaving the FCC and going to industry won’t be as big a deal as someone leaving the SEC and going straight to the big banks, but – IMHO – it’s problematic.
RaflW
@RP:
I totally disagree about the “its not a problem” part. I get that agency staff will tend to come from/go to the related industry. But the specific individuals who get selected to lead these agencies far too often are entirely cosy with the profiteering, anticompetitiveness, and general shityness of global oligarchical capitalism.
This dude sounds like a rubber stamp to more expensive/more crappy comms services for consumers. What you got that suggests he won’t be?
Cassidy
@Schlemizel:
If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding!
You guys, is the collective lot of you that are quick to call the POTUS everything but a white man when he does something that is deemed less than perfect or not progressive enough, etc. But, no, I don’t see you all giving him due praise when he does accomplish Democratic or progressive ideals. It’s always about what he hasn’t done today and, honestly, if find the criticism lacking in good faith as it only harps on the negative, coutnerproductive in that we should be talking up what our side has done, and finally, it seems you all, collectively, are constantly on the lookout for what he’s done wrong [according to you]. The negativity of it is tiresome.
I’m genuinely tired of the conversation that starts with “well, he did (blank), but it’s not enough”. And that doesn’t even take into account the pragmatic necessities of running a gov’t that has to represent the country, even if half of them are batshit crazy and deserve to be raptures with a baseball bat.
RP
@RaflW: This issue doesn’t have much to do with the anti-regulatory spirit, short term profit, or Obama’s lack of leadership. The US is a huge country with a 100 year old copper wire network. Getting high speed internet to the whole country is a huge task, one that’s made much more difficult by the fact that cable isn’t regulated at the federal level for the most part.
RaflW
@Schlemizel:
Dude, the overton window has moved so far to the right that most people don’t actually recognize what a liberal is. I support Obama, certainly over the two horrors and their dangerously naive sidecars put up by the GOP in ’08 and ’12, but he’s a moderate and centrist. He is not a liberal.
That may well be what this country needs right now. But it also needs a functional opposition party, not a bunch of evil fuckwads who are hell-bent on blocking moderate progress, at the expense of real human lives.
There also just isn’t much maneuvering space for moderates. Despite all the crap shoveled by the Bobos of this world, moderate centrists are much more vulnerable to what Molly Ivins said: There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.
G-d I miss that woman. She helped keep me sane while I lived through 14 twisted years in Texas.
Higgs Boson's Mate
No one expected Obama to appoint someone from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the FCC post. No one expected the appointee to be someone like Newton Minow either. There is a wide ideological spectrum between those choices and a “former top lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries.” It’s difficult for me to believe that no one else in that spectrum could have been successfully appointed.
catclub
There is a slight hope, that because he was a lobbyist for new and up and coming communications companies, rather than the entrenched dinosaurs, that it could turn out a little better than horrible. That is the extent of my expertise.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
I say go with Larry Lessig and fuck ’em all. :)
RaflW
@RP: Cellular internet is certainly becoming more important in this country. Oligarchists who would approve an ATT/T-Mobile merger sure don’t sound interested in competitive mobile internet pricing.
I hear all the time about how the last-mile copper problem is teh hard. But then again, Comcast made $1.2 billion in profit in just a single quarter last year. Methinks that publicly regulated profit-machines like that should be induced to reinvest a bit of that $1.2 bn quarterly profit earned at the public teat, back into fixing the damn wire infrastructure.
If the FCC isn’t the locus to do that, OK. But the FCC does regulate cellular. And having actual downward pricing pressure – via the magic of the markets!™ – won’t be helped by mergering the big cellular companies. ‘Cause that’s the conservative-approved theory to get Comcast and their buddies to invest in internet infrastructure: let them see marketshare wandering off to a competitor.
ericblair
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
It is problematic, and pulling someone out of academia into a high-profile political senior executive position is problematic as well, and so is installing an experienced outsider who will need over a year to get spun up on the issues.
I believe in other countries there aren’t usually as many political appointees, and the department/agency senior leadership are predominantly civil servants. That makes the capture problem less, but you can get stuck with a serious hangover from previous administrations (coughBUSHcough).
MomSense
@Schlemizel:
So why go with the stupid Obot v Firebagger schtick?
Brandon
What happened to the “Obama’s worse than Bush” tag. Fox guarding henhouse is about as close an approximation to W’s reign of (t)error as their is.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
This. It would be kind of nice to, I don’t know, have the guy actually be officially nominated before we declare yet another OBAMA FAIL!
Hill Dweller
The Republicans filibustered Hagel, who was a Republican. They’re currently holding up Obama’s EPA, Labor Secretary, CFPB nominees.
Until the Supreme Court reviews the DC Circuit’s ridiculous decision, it is nearly impossible for Obama to make recess appointments.
Anyone pretending Obama could get someone other than an industry hack is ignorant, willful or otherwise.
The biggest problem we have in this country is Republicans. Stop pretending it is something else.
anon
@MomSense:
That’s a lie. Obama nominated Kagan for the USSC when he could have nominated Diane Wood. All indications were that Wood would have been confirmed—she was such a towering intellectual and master of compromise that a considerable number of conservative legal luminaries would have been willing to testify on her behalf at confirmation hearings.
gwangung
There’s a difference, I think, between appointed and successfully appointed.
anon
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
[Emphasis added]
This is very well put and exactly the point.
anon
@ericblair:
Wha? Why would anyone with an IQ over, say, 130 need over a year to get spun up on the issues?
These aren’t single people operating in a vacuum. They have staffs and other resources. And the fact of the matter is that the issues aren’t rocket science—they mostly concern monopolies and scarcity of particular natural resources (e.g. EM spectrum). Those issues have been around for a long time; the scarcity issue in particular has been around since the dawn of agriculture.
Hill Dweller
@anon: Again, have you been paying attention to what Senate Republicans have been doing to the confirmation process?
There is currently no functioning NLRB, because the wingnuts on the DC Circuit nullified Obama’s recess appointments. While the case was ostensibly about the NLRB, a lot of people think they knocked down 100 years of precedent in order to prevent Obama from recess appointing a judge to the DC circuit(there are currently 4 vacancies, because all of Obama’s nominees have been filibustered).
The Republicans are blocking Obama’s Labor, EPA, CFPB and NLRB nominees. They’re also blocking several judicial nominees and refusing to recommend judges from their states for nomination.
No President, arguably since Lincoln, has had to deal with this level of obstructionism. The Republicans have shattered filibuster records. They’re nothing but nihilists now.
Everything Obama does has to be viewed through that lens.
Schlemizel
@MomSense:
Because I knew that someone would be upset & I was not disappointed. It happens every time someone comments around here about the Prez. The commentor is either too mean or too nice for some group of people so they call them names rather than discuss the issue raised.
anon
@Cassidy:
LOL.
One of the enumerated “accomplishments” in the list you linked to is “Through an executive order, he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.” How is the Simpson/Bowles Catfood Commission a “Democratic or progressive ideal” as your link text would have it?
anon
@Hill Dweller:
Of course. That’s why I pointed out that all evidence is that Diane Wood would have been confirmed.
You’re merely using he fact that the Republicans are obstructionists on both legislation and confirmation as an excuse to justify making “Obama appoints the most liberal people possible who are also confirmable” a nonfalsifiable claim.
RalW above gets it. Obama is not a liberal; he’s a moderate and a centrist. It’s entirely plausible to argue that Obama is the best president we could have under these conditions, or that Obama’s a very good president given the circumstances. But that doesn’t make him liberal.
Hill Dweller
@anon: Conservative jurists publicly supported Goodwin Liu and Caitlin Halligan, but they were still filibustered.
Nevertheless, Kagan has turned out to be a good pick. She is more liberal than people thought when Obama nominated her.
Cassidy
@anon:
Way to catch up. Thanks for joining the rest of us.
Keith G
@Schlemizel: Well, there is that small slice of the American electorate who feel the same way Cassidy and others here do. For the rest of us, Obama is a fallible human politician who at times needs to be reminded what the common folk who voted for him need from him.
Ted & Hellen
Oh come on! PBO won’t do this. After all, hope and change.
Cygil
@Ted & Hellen: While I don’t care about whether I get an apology, I have been calling Obama a fake progressive since 2009, with his first decision not to investigate warrantless wiretapping or bush war crimes, and his cozying up with people like Larry Summers, and on “centrist” sites like BJ, all I have ever gotten is vicious flames. I realize I’m a jerk and a purity troll and all, but how long does it take for some people to come round?
Cygil
@Hill Dweller: Ok, how about DINO Obama advisers like Larry Summers or Rahm Emmanual. Congress doesn’t pick those. And for that matter, Reagan nominated movement conservative Bork for the Supremes, instead of pre-emptively surrendering, and that confirmation battle galvanized a generation of conservative activists who were outraged when Bork was defeated. A similar battle over a movement progressive would show that the Obama white house backs progressives and, like Bork, even a confirmation defeat would change the momentum of the national debate.
Obama is governing exactly like Bush did. He is appointing industry puppets to key positions just like Bush did. Where were you when and he is governing exactly like McCain would have done, even, in Hagel, some of the same people McCain would have had. Other than avoiding VP Palin, your vote presidential vote literally didn’t count in the last two elections. Please consider.
Cygil
@Cassidy: Us firebaggers really should make a list of Things Obama Has Failed To Do, That An Actual Progressive Would Have Actually Attempted. Things like:
* Holding fast to 2008 promise not to cut social security
* Using Democratic majority 2009-10 to close Guantanomo prison, fix debt ceiling issue, allow Bush tax cuts to expire
* Appoint special prosecutor to investigate Bush crimes, war and otherwise
* Declare a permanent offshore drilling moratorium after deepwater horizon spill, instead of a fig leaf kabuki dance
* Declare action on global warming a critical prioritiy, made it central focus of state of Union address 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, use his surrogates (Daily Kos, etc) to get progressives on board
* Declare rule of law will be respected WRT terrorism prosecutions, no scandals like the Gitmo prosecutors /reading defense emails/.
* Select advisors from public citizen bodies, instead of corporate shills and lobbyists. Make appointments from same, where practical