Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:48:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/14141312658/what-corruption-looks-like-87-congressional-reps-supporting-comcastnbc-merger-got-money-comcast.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/14141312658/what-corruption-looks-like-87-congressional-reps-supporting-comcastnbc-merger-got-money-comcast.shtml overreacting to the Comcast/NBC merger. I think that it's likely to be a bad business decision, but I see no reason why the government should block it. If anything, it seems like it'll just be a modern updating of the AOL/Time Warner catastrophe, as management won't really know what to do and will just make things worse off. That said, the companies have been fighting hard against opposition to the merger, and one way to fight is with money. So it comes as little surprise to find out that 84 of the 97 Congressional Reps, who signed a letter urging that the FCC approve the merger without conditions, received campaign contributions from Comcast.

Now, this is not to say that those 84 are corrupt. But, as Larry Lessig has pointed out, whether or not there is actual corruption here obscures the point that it certainly looks corrupt, and certainly decreases citizens' willingness to trust that their government is acting in the interests of the people they're supposed to represent.

If anything, this brings more support to the idea that if our elected officials are going to accept large donations from companies and then legislate in their interests, it would make sense to require those elected officials to wear patches indicating who's funding them, a la Nascar uniforms.

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]]> how-government-work-gets-done http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110113/14141312658 Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:59:11 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100722/16060410325.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100722/16060410325.shtml massive financial support from the biggest broadband players around when it came to raising money for his political campaigns. Given that, it seemed worth looking into the sponsors of a new bill designed to prevent the FCC from implementing net neutrality rules. Now I'm still not convinced the FCC really has the authority to do what it's trying to do, but I find it even more troubling when a group of Senators get together and call a new bill the "Freedom for Consumer Choice Act (FCC Act)," and it seems like they're all funded by AT&T. Somehow, I don't think that AT&T is supporting "freedom for consumer choice" when it comes to broadband. Over the years, they've done exactly the opposite, and worked hard to limit competition.

So, let's see. The bill's main sponsor is Senator Jim DeMint. Over the course of his career... AT&T is the second largest contributor to his campaigns. Ditto for Senator Tom Coburn. John Cornryn no doubt knows that AT&T is the 4th biggest contributor to his campaigns over the years, and Orrin Hatch must be happy that AT&T is the fifth largest contributor to his campaigns over the years (amusingly, AT&T is the only non-healthcare company in the top 8 on Hatch's list).

There are three other co-sponsors who don't have AT&T among their top contributors, but apparently they all want to start. If you drill down and look at campaign contributions this year all three -- John Ensign, Jeff Sessions and John Thune see AT&T appearing on their list of top contributors after being absent in previous years.

Funny how that works.

Now, of course, you could argue that AT&T contributes to politicians who have the same views as AT&T, rather than that these politicians are responding to AT&T's bidding. But, either way, it's hard to argue with a straight face that this particular bill has anything to do with protecting consumers, when it's pretty clearly designed to protect AT&T.

I've seen people suggest in the past that elected officials should have to wear "sponsorship patches," like Nascar racers, to show who funded their campaigns. While I think the idea was a joke, I have to admit, it's growing on me. Also, a special thanks to Karl Bode for inspiring me to write this post, in noting that none of the press coverage of the newly introduced bill seems to note the AT&T contributions to these Senators...

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