Regulator to Join Comcast After OK of NBC Deal

Meredith Baker

A top telecommunications regulator who voted to approve Comcast Corp.’s takeover of NBCUniversal in January is leaving to join the company as a lobbyist.

Meredith Attwell Baker, one of two Republicans on the five-member Federal Communications Commission, will become senior vice president of government affairs for NBCUniversal.

Comcast said it did not begin discussions with Baker about a possible job until after the transaction had closed. Baker will leave the FCC on June 3, less than a month before her term was set to expire. She joined the agency in July 2009.

Craig Aaron, head of the public interest group Free Press, called the move an example of “business as usual in Washington — where the complete capture of government by industry barely raises any eyebrows.”

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV company, bought a controlling interest in NBCUniversal after the FCC and the Justice Department approved the deal with conditions following a yearlong review. The FCC’s vote was 4-1.

Baker, 43, will be based in Washington and will report to Kyle McSlarrow, who joined Comcast in April to head the company’s Washington operations. McSlarrow previously headed the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the cable industry’s top trade group.

“I am privileged to have had the opportunity to serve the country at a time of critical transformation in the telecommunications industry,” Baker said in a statement. “The continued deployment of our broadband infrastructures will meaningfully impact the lives of all Americans. I am happy to have played a small part in this success.” [Right! For the worse!]

Such moves between the private sector and the government are common in Washington. Following McSlarrow’s departure, former FCC Chairman Michael Powell took the helm the NCTA.

At the FCC, Baker was a reliable pro-business voice who frequently expressed concern that the agency was imposing unnecessary and onerous regulations on phone and cable companies.

Along with fellow Republican commissioner Robert McDowell, Baker opposed the controversial “network neutrality” rules approved by the commission’s three Democrats last year. Those rules, which prohibit phone and cable companies from interfering with Internet traffic on their broadband networks, are now facing legal challenges from Verizon and Metro PCS.

The companies are suing the FCC in the same federal appeals court that ruled against the agency last year in a case involving Comcast. The court said the agency had exceeded its legal authority in sanctioning Comcast for discriminating against online file-sharing traffic on its broadband network. The FCC had said that Comcast violated broad net neutrality principles first established by the commission in 2005, which became the foundation of the formal rules adopted last year.

Before joining the FCC, Baker was head of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, where she helped oversee the transition from analog to digital broadcasting.

___________________________________________

BEFORE YOU TAKE ACTION…let’s stop for a second to think about what this request for action signifies in our lives.

Consider:
In an utterly corrupt, tyrannical Third World nation, which abound, largely as a result of our corporate-controlled foreign policy, people rarely petition their government.  They have learned from experience it’s a useless act.  When they’ve had enough, when they’ve been abused enough…they revolt.

In America, where the fiction of having a working representative government dies hard, and some remnants of democracy manage to throb on here and there, probably limping on their way to extinction, many Americans spend daily a considerable amount of time, energy, and hope, writing or calling their representatives to do the right thing, to do the obvious.  I repeat: to do the obvious.  Thus, on any given day, millions of us get urgent messages begging us to press our politicians to save the polar bear, the gorillas, the eagles, the condor…(the lists of species in danger is almost interminable), or we are asked to clean up Congress from the influence of lobbyists, do something about the world’s climate (or is it the Amazon forest under assault, or the raped mountaintops of West Virginia, or the ecosystem next door?), or put high-handed Wall Street and war criminals behind bars (they’re often the same), where they belong, in sum, enact the kind of  legislation or policy that will really address the issues that pollute our life with unnecessary stress and threats, if not downright ruin it.

It’s a frustrating exercise, to say the least, and few can escape it.  The nation’s political fabric is so broken that the crises keep multiplying (and getting worse) with ruthless abandon. Because, in truth, photo-ops and pomposity aside, there’s really no one at the helm of the ship of state, only impersonators with an agenda that has little to do with our interest, the questions that concern people who must work for a living.

Against this backdrop, more and more Americans are waking up to the reality that such a scandalous waste of time is not a natural thing in a democracy, that a real, well-run democracy, while nurtured on vigilance and participation,  does not require citizens to be telling their leaders the obvious around the clock, and that such a “culture of petitioning” —of constantly begging those in power—is a symptom of its nullity, its decomposition, of a state of affairs in which equality has been abolished and the citizens hurled back to a covert form of feudalism.

Any way you look at it, it doesn’t make sense. For if we elect people in this country who don’t know the logical and elementary requisites to protect the people’s well-being (see below), what the hell are we bothering with elections for?

I suggested  earlier that a politician representing the public weal, from ancient Greece to our day, doesn’t have far to go to figure what needs doing, nor does it require a genius.  If you’re minimally smart, decent and honest, the issues and answers practically fall into your lap.

Public office demands that you look after the public interest, especially the weaker and poorer segments of the population; that you insure the nation is not hoodwinked into criminal and expensive wars; that the national patrimony—our lands, parks, forests, waterways, air, mountains, oceans, and animals—is adequately shielded from reckless exploitation and abuse for the enrichment of a puny minority or the whim of a depraved segment of the population. Following the same logic, a true democratic politician will assure that the “economy” functions to serve the people and not the other way around. And that accumulated wealth will not create a gigantic mechanism to “legally” rip off the population in a zillion different imaginative ways (a capitalist economy naturally seethes with thievery unless carefully regulated and constantly scrutinized). And last, but not least, that simony will not be tolerated at any level of government, under penalty of felonious conduct.

Now let’s talk a minute about this specific alert. Is it worthwhile?  Yes, by all means, and that’s why we run it. The Freepress people fight to make the Internet, and media, in general, more democratic and responsive to the majority’s needs.  As most of us know, the Internet is a precious resource to safeguard our freedoms and to roll back the corporate (read: plutocracy) attacks on our political and economic future. The Internet—while shared with plenty of reactionaries, corporadoes, and rightwing lunatics—is currently our ONLY major self-defense/organizational mechanism. Where would progressives be if this venue was effectively closed to their inputs?

But these appeals, usually from liberals or left-liberals at best (think MoveOn.org, for example), normally carry conceptual and ideological errors worth noting. In the appeal below, there’s a veneer of unreality to the tone used by Aron. Considering what has transpired in the last 10 years, and now under Obama’s watch, it sounds surrealistic to speak of Congress as “being concerned” about Internet freedoms (in a positive way as it relates to us, the peasants), or for that matter to imply that California Republican multimillionaire Darrell Issa—is actually making noises that would signify a welcome development for our side. (A former businessman, and a leading reactionary, Issa’s net worth has been estimated at more than $250 million, making him the “richest member of Congress”.  Money per se is not prima facie evidence of an inimical attitude toward the majority’s interest, but it definitely tends to bend a person’s ideology toward the hard right.).

Well, there you have it. Read Aron’s ALERT and decide what to do. I guess that putting aside his political naiveté (he may see it as mere “pragmatism”) the reason for his fury is amply justified and action should be taken. —Patrice Greanville

_________________________________________________

ACTION ALERT

Outrageous!

FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker is leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for Comcast – just four months after she voted to approve the Comcast-NBC merger.¹

This is just the latest – but perhaps most blatant — example of so-called “public servants” cashing in on companies they are supposed to be regulating. But Baker’s jump to Comcast is particularly egregious. As recently as March, the commissioner was giving speeches complaining that the Comcast-NBC deal “took too long.”

And you wonder why the American people are disgusted with Washington.

Stop the Revolving Door: Demand Congress Investigate Baker’s Conflict of Interest

Congress is already concerned about how the FCC conducts itself. Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been making a lot of noise recently about alleged ethical violations at the agency. By signing this letter to Congressman Issa, you’re urging him to launch an investigation of Commissioner Baker’s seemingly blatant conflict of interest.

Outside of Washington, people of every political stripe have expressed near unanimous contempt for a system of government that favors powerful corporations at the expense of the many. Sadly, the complete capture of government by industry barely raises an eyebrow inside the Beltway anymore. That’s why Congress needs to hear from you.

Urge Congress to Investigate this Conflict of Interest at the FCC

The revolving door at the FCC erodes any prospect for common-sense public policy — such as strong Net Neutrality rules or a rigorous review of mega-deals like AT&T’s proposed takeover of T-Mobile.

Unless we speak out now and demand an investigation, business as usual in Washington will undermine our media system and endanger our democracy.

Thank you for taking action,

Craig Aaron
President and CEO
Free Press Action Fund
www.freepress.net

___________________________________________