NHTSA Backtracks On Its Dumb Opposition To ‘Right To Repair’

Say That Again

from the you-are-not-helping dept

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has backed off of its ill-advised opposition to right to repair after presumably getting an earful from reformers and the Biden administration.

This past June, NHTSA issued guidance advising the auto industry to basically ignore Massachusetts’ new right to repair law, which required that all modern vehicle systems be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform allowing owners and repair shops to access vehicle data via a mobile device. The industry’s justification: the new law would harm consumer privacy and security:

“While NHTSA has stressed that it is important for consumers to continue to have the ability to choose where to have their vehicles serviced and repaired, consumers must be afforded choice in a manner that does not pose an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety.”

Except that’s… not true. Not only was the NHTSA’s intervention not helpful and not based in fact, it effectively undermined the Biden Administration’s claims it supports extremely popular right to repair reforms. It also undermined Massachusetts voters, whose representatives had approved the law 75-25.

An auto-industry lawsuit had already delayed implementation of the law. The industry also ran ads falsely claiming it would somehow aid sexual predators. That right to repair reform will harm consumer privacy and security in a litany of terrible ways is the standard argument for repair monopolists like the auto industry, though a recent FTC report found that the lion’s share of those claims simply weren’t true.

According to 404 Media (a new tech news outlet created from Motherboard folks fleeing the Vice bankruptcy mess), the NHTSA is backtracking from its June announcement. In a letter to MA Assistant AG Eric Haskell, the NHTSA said it found a way to “advance our mutual interest in ensuring safe consumer choice for automotive repair and maintenance. NHTSA strongly supports the right to repair.”

Right to repair activists like PIRG’s Nathan Proctor tell 404 Media the damage has already been done:

“We strongly support the goals the agency puts forward—to protect repair choice and maintain safety. However, as it stands, the agency has achieved neither goal,” he said. “Instead, it has allowed a proliferation of serious safety and monopolization issues to continue without meaningful resistance. Let’s hope this new letter signals a change in approach. We don’t plan to stop our work until cars not only are safe, but also enjoy the full slate of Right to Repair protections.”

While the NHTSA doesn’t seem in any rush to hold Tesla meaningfully accountable for the growing pile of corpses created by Tesla’s undercooked and clearly misrepresented “full self driving” car technology, it somehow found the time to undermine a hugely popular, grass roots reform effort. Great job.

Of course that’s how regulatory capture works. Repair monopolists like John Deere, Apple, and the auto industry seed the landscape with all kinds of bullshit about how being able to affordably and easily repair things you fucking own is somehow diabolically dangerous. Captured lawmakers, regulators, and governors then use those claims to either prevent right to repair laws from passing (see: California), or to undermine them if they already have (see: New York).

Filed Under: auto, consumers, independent repair, joe biden, massachusetts, mechanics, nhtsa, regulatory capture, right to repair, security

FCC ‘Fines’ Right Wing Bullshitters Wohl, Burkman $5 Million For Voter Robocall Scam

Scams

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

It’s never fully appreciated the way we’ve let scammers, scumbags, and assorted bullshit artists hijack the nation’s top voice communications platform. Or that we’ve let marketing industry lobbyists slowly degrade the authority of the one U.S. regulator capable of actually doing something about it.

Case in point: the FCC this week announced that it has fined right wing propaganda and bullshit artists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman $5,134,500 for 1,141 illegal robocalls the duo made in a bid to confuse and mislead voters. More specifically, the FCC notes in a press release that the pair tried to scare marginalized voters in key neighborhoods away from voting by mail in a bid to boost Trump:

The robocalls in this case, made on August 26 and September 14, 2020, told potential voters
that if they voted by mail, their “personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card
companies to collect outstanding debts.” The recorded messages identified Burkman and Wohl by name and claimed to be made by “Project-1599.”

The problem, unfortunately, is this “fine” will likely never actually be collected. The FCC’s authority, boxed in after years of court rulings and lobbying by industries that don’t want their ability to annoy you constrained, is quite limited. It can issue fines, but it amusingly can’t actually collect them.

Actually collecting those fines falls to the DOJ, which historically either can’t track down the sleazebags in question, or can’t be bothered. For example, one study found that the FCC fined robocallers $208 million between 2015 and 2019, but only $6,790 (!!) was ever collected.

Activists and the FCC have argued for broader authority here, but our corrupt Congress has generally responded by doing the opposite and trimming FCC authority on most issues related to consumer protection (see: net neutrality, broadband privacy, media consolidation).

As a result, every six months the FCC comes out with some big announcement about how they’ve implemented some new half-assed effort to address robocalls. And while there has been some progress, the data still tends to speak for itself:

One reason is that the multiple industries that have shredded FCC authority and robocall rules via lobbying and legal victory have ensured the feckless bureaucrats at the FCC keep the focus fixated securely on scammers (not that we’ve addressed those either). When in reality, the vast majority of robocalls come from “legit” companies utilizing many of the same tactics as scammers:

The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has spent years providing insights and solutions on this problem. They issued a recent report that’s worth a read if you’re at all curious why we’ve allowed a major communications platform to be hijacked by garbage merchants and snake oil salesmen.

The group has testified for years how numerous industries have lobbied to ensure robocall rules have vast loopholes, so their own harassment of consumers (using many of the same tools “scammers” use) isn’t included in any solution. This, of course, includes debt collectors, who have been shown to harass people they already know can’t pay with sometimes hundreds of calls per day.

Another problem: for years (especially back when they netted money from call minute volume) telecom giants received a cut of the proceeds, so they were glacially slow in cracking down (much like they were on text message scams) because they were getting a cut of the proceeds. That led to decades of delays the industry-friendly FCC still kind of just pretends never happened.

That’s not to say the FCC hasn’t made some progress within the confines of their steadily eroded authority. They’ve glacially pushed the industry toward implementing more concrete anti-call spoofing tech, and they’ve taken aim at smaller sleazy middlemen if they know the case will be a slam dunk. But like most things consumer protection, the FCC’s lack of backbone is apparent.

But the broader problem remains that traditional industries have once again lobbied our federal consumer protection regulators into apathetic tatters, and we’ve normalized the end result. Most of us simply don’t answer our phones anymore, and act as if fixing this problem is some complex and impossible algebra. But the path forward was obvious for years, it just required shaking off corruption. And, well…

Filed Under: fcc, fraud, jack burkman, jacob wohl, lobbying, regulatory capture, robocalls, scams

Eshoo, Booker Bill Would Kill Dumb, Monopoly-Backed State Bans On Community Broadband

Broadband

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

We’ve noted for decades how telecom monopolies convinced corrupt state legislatures to pass counterproductive bans on creative community broadband networks. The bills are protectionist crap that are ghost written by telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast, and designed to protect their regional broadband monopolies from grass roots competitive disruption on a town by town level.

The harmful nature of such bills were highlighted during COVID, prompting several states (Arkansas and Washington) to roll them back. But 17 states still have such laws in the books, hampering the creation or expansion of cooperatives, city-owned utilities, municipalities, and public private partnerships and other creative attempts to expand access to faster, more affordable broadband.

Enter U.S. Reps. Anna G. Eshoo (CA), Jared Golden (ME) and U.S. Senator Cory Booker (NJ) who have reintroduced their Community Broadband Act, which would strip away state restrictions, allowing communities to decide for themselves whether to build their own broadband networks:

“The Community Broadband Act would empower cities, towns and villages in every state to choose for themselves whether and how to invest in locally-owned broadband infrastructure. Without this flexibility for communities, federal broadband grant programs will not be able to reach their full potential.” –National League of Cities

In short, the bill would amend the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to not only eliminate such protectionist bans already on the books, but also prohibit states from blocking communities from building their own broadband networks.

For decades U.S. telecom monopolies lobbied for such bills under the pretense they were simply looking to protect U.S. taxpayers from wasteful spending. In reality, the U.S. doles out untold billions of dollars to entrenched telecom monopolies that then routinely fail to deliver the next-generation networks (or jobs) they’ve long promised in exchange for a rotating crop of regulatory favors.

Booker and friends also introduced this bill several years ago, but it routinely struggles to gain any traction in a corrupt Congress slathered in Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and Charter campaign contributions. Said corruption is so extensive, most U.S. regulators and lawmakers lack the courage to even acknowledge telecom monopolies are real, much less that they cause very obvious consumer and market harm.

Instead, we generally enjoy throwing billions of dollars at companies like AT&T with a long history of taxpayer fraud, who then, time after time, fail to fully deploy the next-generation networks promised. As a result, local communities have been frustrated for decades by the lack of competition, high prices, spotty coverage, slow speeds, and terrible customer service that results.

But when communities decide to take action (often at direct voter behest), they often run face-first into hostile, captured state lawmakers or regulators, as well as a bevy of lawsuits from companies like Comcast very keen on protecting the very broken, but very profitable status quo.

Entrenched incumbent monopolies could have responded to these organic, grass roots efforts by providing better, faster, cheaper service to neglected areas, but quite often it’s simply much cheaper to effectively buy a state law or a state or federal lawmaker. As billions in new infrastructure bill broadband subsidies head to the states, the debate has taken on renewed importance.

Numerous studies have consistently shown that community broadband networks (which take on a wide variety of forms ranging from direct municipal builds to cooperatives) provide better, faster, cheaper broadband service. Our recent Copia study on America’s broadband problems outlines how embracing such alternatives are a great way to spur real competition in a very broken market.

Filed Under: anna eshoo, broadband, community broadband, competition, cory booker, fcc, gigabit, high speed internet, jared golden, monopoly, regulatory capture, telecom

Meta Correctly Calls The EU Plan To Impose A Broadband Tax On ‘Big Tech’ Arbitrary Nonsense

Broadband

from the please-pay-us-billions-of-additional-dollars-for-no-coherent-reason dept

In case you’d missed it, the EU is currently proposing a telecom-industry backed plan to effectively tax Big Tech companies, and throw that money at Big Telecom companies for broadband expansion.

On the surface, the proposal is part of the EU’s efforts to craft digital policies for the next few decades, with an eye on shoring up lagging broadband access.

In reality, the effort is a lobbying gambit by telecom giants looking to offload their network deployment and maintenance costs onto somebody else. All being pushed by EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, himself a former CEO of France Telecom.

It’s effectively an extension of the net neutrality wars, in which telecom monopolies insisted they should be paid even more money if you want to access their networks — for no coherent reason.

We’ve repeatedly noted there are several problems with the proposal. One, the whole effort is based on the lie that Big Tech companies “don’t pay their fair share” for broadband (in reality they pay countless billions for bandwidth, cloud storage, CDNs, transit, and even undersea cables). Two, it’s being driven by telecom monopolies with long, rich histories of bullshit on this subject (not to mention subsidy fraud).

It’s effectively yet another effort by the telecom lobby to “double dip,” dressed up as a serious, adult policy proposal. But throwing billions of dollars at telecom monopolies (without reforming existing broadband subsidy programs) in the hopes that this just magically fixes the digital divide this time is a fool’s errand. Yet here we are, having learned nothing from decades of policy experience.

Both Google and Netflix have come out swinging against the EU’s Big Tech tax, pointing out how the claim they “don’t pay their fair share” and should be directly responsible for paying to bridge the digital divide is telecom industry nonsense.

And now Meta’s Kevin Salvadori, VP of Network, and Bruno Cendon Martin, Senior Director of Wireless Technologies, have issued a blog post also pointing out that Facebook has spent more than $100 billion of capital expenditures and operational expenditures on global digital infrastructure:

proposals by some European telecom operators to impose network fees on Content Application Providers (CAPs) such as Meta are not the solution. Network fee proposals are built on a false premise because they do not recognise the value that CAPs create for the digital ecosystem, nor the investments we make in the infrastructure that underpins it.

Facebook/Meta has no shortage of dumb problems (including clumsy and sometimes predatory missteps on efforts to shore up global broadband access), but they’re correct here.

While broadband subsidy programs in the U.S. and EU do need shoring up, that shouldn’t necessarily be the job of Big Tech companies. Especially given that, in both the EU and U.S., telecom monopolies have routinely driven up the cost of essential broadband access for everyone through regulatory capture and relentless attacks on disruptive competition.

When it comes to telecom monopolies, nobody gets a “free ride.”

Some groups have warned that the EU’s telecom industry’s plan to tax Big Tech giants would simply drive up online costs for consumers, given Big Tech companies would just pass these added costs on to users already paying an arm and a leg for bandwidth. Some groups have warned the internet could also become less stable as online companies try to reroute their traffic around such fees.

And in South Korea, where telecoms convinced regulators to implement a similar tax on Big Tech companies, ISPs have taken to suing Netflix simply because Squid Game was popular with consumers and that resulted in a bandwidth consumption spike.

Content companies and consumers already pay an arm and a leg for bandwidth due to corruption, regulatory capture, and monopolization. It’s the telecoms’ responsibility to use that money — in addition to the billions in taxpayer subsidies they already get — to ensure their networks are ready for customer bandwidth demands. Suggesting it’s Netflix’s fault because you weren’t prepared is preposterous.

Again, if policymakers were serious about bridging the digital divide, they’d embrace policies that take aim at concentrated telecom monopoly power. They’d reform telecom subsidy programs that, for decades, have thrown billions of unaccountable dollars at these monopolies in exchange for networks that are always only half completed. And they’d more seriously police fraud by major telecoms.

Forcing tech giants to pay telecom giants billions of dollars for no coherent reason isn’t actually a solution for the digital divide, but telecom lobbyists have convinced many captured regulators otherwise. And if the push in the EU is successful, you can be absolutely assured it will see a renewed push in the U.S. by the likes of AT&T and Comcast, with captured regulators like the FCC’s Brendan Carr at the fore.

Filed Under: big tech, digital divide, eu, high speed internet, lobbying, net neutrality, regulatory capture, sender pays, telecom, thierry breton

Biden FCC Makes Some Empty Noise About Cracking Down On Bullshit Cable & Broadband Fees

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the consumer-protection-theater dept

The broadband and cable industry has long perfected the use of bullshit fees to jack up subscriber bills. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate — then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. They’ll then pretend they haven’t actually raised rates because the advertised rate remains inaccurately low.

Enter the FCC, which last week announced that it might take a closer look at the problem (at least by cable TV providers) by demanding that they provide consumers an “all in” price that includes fees both in advertising and on subscriber bills:

“We’re working to make it so the advertised price for a service is the price you pay when your bill arrives and isn’t littered with anything that resembles junk fees. Not only will this reduce cost confusion and make it easier for consumers to compare services, but this proposal will also increase competition among cable and broadcast satellite providers through improved price transparency.”

But there are a few problems.

One, the FCC may lack the voting majority to actually implement this thanks to the telecom industry’s successful derailment of the Gigi Sohn nomination, which, by industry design, has left the agency mired in partisan gridlock at a 2-2 commissioner split after a year-long smear campaign against Sohn.

The FCC’s Democratic leader, Jessica Rosenworcel, couldn’t be bothered to provide meaningful messaging support for Sohn during the industry smear campaign. Now her FCC lacks the majority to do much of anything deemed “controversial” by industry, without the approval of the agency’s two Republican commissioners, who generally, with the occasional exception, tend to side with industry.

The Biden administration shares plenty of blame for Sohn’s scuttled nomination. It nominated Sohn 9 months late — the largest appointment delay in FCC history — allowing the industry ample runway to solidify its attack campaign. Biden’s team also failed utterly to apply any meaningful pressure on the three key Democratic Senators (Kelly, Manchin, Masto) who ultimately doomed Sohn’s nomination.

Even when properly staffed, the FCC generally lacks the courage to actually stop cable and broadband giants from engaging in bad behavior. They’re terrified of being accused of dipping even a single, sad, solitary toe into the concept of “rate regulation.” So instead the focus is usually on mandating transparency into how exactly you’re getting ripped off, without actually stopping it.

You can see this over in the FCC’s long-stalled efforts to require a broadband “nutrition label” documenting hidden service charges, which proposes mandating transparency labels for service quality and cost, but don’t actually stop predatory broadband monopolies from ripping you off.

You also see it more broadly with the government’s Affordable Connectivity Program, which pays regional monopolies to temporarily lower prices for poor people — ignoring that consumer prices are only made high by these companies’ monopolistic behaviors in the first place.

A 2019 Consumer Reports study found that about 24% of consumer bills are comprised of bullshit fees, generating cable giants $28 billion in additional revenue annually. The problem is just as bad over in broadband (see CenturyLink’s utterly nonsensical “Internet Cost Recovery” fee), where ISPs routinely rip users off (unless they live in a state with an AG interested in broadband consumer protection).

While it’s nice to see the FCC occasionally acknowledge that the problem exists, this is an agency long-ago defanged by industry. The FCC’s political animals are generally terrified of standing up to cable and broadband giants consistently. Even Democratic FCC commissioners, often slightly better on telecom policy, are generally afraid to even acknowledge broadband monopolies exist in public statements.

You wouldn’t want to upset campaign contributors, intelligence gathering allies, or future revolving door employers. So instead you get a sort of consumer protection theater, where the agency talks a big game about protecting consumers from harm, but isn’t particularly interested in stopping the actual harm, or meaningfully penalizing companies that have spent decades ripping U.S. consumer off.

The end result are “transparency” efforts that shift the onus of responsibility to the consumer, but don’t genuinely stop the underlying behavior by industry or hold industry accountable. That’s not to say greater transparency can’t help, but it’s still generally been a substitute in the U.S. for regulators with the backbone needed to competently police billing fraud and false advertising.

Filed Under: broadband, false advertising, fcc, fees, monopoly power, nickel and dime, regulatory capture, regulatory recovery fee, telecom, truth in advertising

Biden Administration Makes It Clear Broadband Consumer Protection Has Never Been Much Of A Priority

Policy

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Earlier this month we noted how a successful, often homophobic smear campaign scuttled the nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The GOP and telecom sector, as usual, worked in close collaboration to spread all manner of lies about Sohn, including claims she was an unhinged radical that hated Hispanics, cops, puppies, and freedom.

But there was no shortage of blame to be had on the Democratic side as well.

Unlike the shock and awe Khan nomination and promotion, the Biden administration waited nine months to even nominate Sohn, giving industry ample runway to create its ultimately successful campaign. Maria Cantwell buckled to repeated GOP requests for unnecessary show hearings, used to push false claims about Sohn that the industry had seeded in the press via various nonprofits. Chuck Schumer failed to whip up votes. Senators Masto, Kelly, and Manchin all buckled to industry fear campaigns, preventing a swift 51 vote Senate confirmation.

And nobody in the Biden administration thought it was particularly important to provide any meaningful public messaging support as Sohn faced down a relentless, industry smear campaign, alone. The entire process from beginning to end was a hot, incompetent mess.

And from every indication, there’s also no real evidence that the Biden administration had a plan B in the wake of Sohn’s nomination falling apart. Weeks after the fact and the White House still hasn’t pulled Sohn’s name from consideration or proposed a replacement candidate:

In a note to financial types, former top FCC official Blair Levin, now a media analyst, said a growing list of people apparently interested in the open seat suggests  it would be a fair assumption that the White House did not have a plan B. “It may be sometime before it selects a new nominee, further delaying the moment when the Democrats obtain an FCC majority,” Levin said.

Given this was the industry’s entire goal, I’m sure they’re pleased.

AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and News Corporation want to keep the nation’s top telecom and media regulator gridlocked at 2-2 commissioners, so it can’t take action on any issues deemed too controversial to industry, whether that’s restoring net neutrality, forcing broadband providers to be more transparent about pricing, or restoring media consolidation limits stripped away during the Trump era.

Whoever is chosen to replace Sohn will surely be more friendly to industry in a bid to avoid a repeat. Assuming that person is even seated, it won’t be until much later this year, at which point they’ll have very little time to implement any real reform before the next presidential election. The policies that will be prioritized probably won’t be the controversial or popular ones, like net neutrality.

I’m not sure who has been giving Biden broadband policy advice of late, but it’s pretty clear that for all of the administration’s talk about “antitrust reform” (which has included some great work on “right to repair”), a functioning FCC with a voting majority and competent broadband consumer protection has never actually been much of a priority.

Yes, the Biden administration has done good work on pushing for an infrastructure bill that will soon throw $45 billion at industry to address the digital divide. But most of that money will be going, as usual, to entrenched local monopolies that helped create the divide in the first place through relentless efforts to crush competition and stifle nearly all competent oversight.

And without a voting majority, the agency will have a steeper uphill climb when it comes to basic things like shoring up broadband mapping, or holding big ISPs accountable should they provide false broadband coverage data to the FCC. The current FCC says all the right things about that pesky “digital divide,” but its leaders are generally terrified to even mention that telecom monopolies exist, much less propose any meaningful strategy to undermine their power.

It seems clear that Biden’s advisors don’t really think the FCC’s role as consumer watchdog is important (they’ve shoveled a lot of the heavy lifting to the NTIA), or didn’t think fighting over the FCC’s consumer protection authority was worthwhile. And given the current DC myopic policy focus on Big Tech, having a functioning media and telecom regulator willing and able to hold the nation’s hugely unpopular telecom monopolies accountable has easily just… fallen to the cutting room floor.

There’s a reason that Americans pay some of the most expensive prices for mediocre broadband in the developed world. There’s a reason that 83 million Americans live under a broadband monopoly. And it’s in no small part thanks to a feckless, captured FCC, and politicians who don’t have the backbone to stand up to major campaign contributors bone-grafted to our intelligence gathering apparatus.

Filed Under: 5g, antitrust reform, biden, broadband, digital divide, fcc, fiber, gigabit, gigi sohn, high speed internet, jessica rosenworcel, monopoly, regulatory capture, telecom

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves Signs Dumb New Restrictions On Electric Vehicles

Policy

from the not-so-free-market dept

If you’re an automaker or oil giant keen on slowing the rise of electric vehicles, there’s no shortage of captured lawmakers ready and willing to implement your terrible ideas, however harmful or impractical.

In North Carolina, Republican leaders have pushed a bill demanding locals destroy any free electric vehicle stations on public land, if local authorities don’t build free gas and diesel pumps alongside them. In Wyoming, state Republican leaders tried to implement a ban on electric vehicles, though the ban itself is little more than performative, oil industry ass kissing.

In Mississippi, Republican Governor Tate Reeves signed a bill recently restricting electric car manufacturers from selling vehicles in person unless they open traditional, franchised dealerships. Reeves is pretending the move, clearly a futile bid to protect oil interests and automotive companies that have lagged on EVs, is all about protecting small businesses:

“Almost 200 small businesses in communities across our state are seeking assurances that big manufacturers can’t just destroy their businesses. That’s fair!” Reeves, a Republican, said in a statement posted to social media. “I also recognize that innovation in this industry is inevitable. And with innovation comes new companies with new business models. I am committed to find long-term solutions—in an ever changing market.”

That justification, of course, makes absolutely no fucking sense in context of what the bill actually does.

Republicans have spent decades pretending to be dedicated to free market innovation. Though their actual track record of coddling giants (see: telecom, banking, energy, airlines, insurance, health care) widely disproves the claim. More recently, they’ve pretended to be a party super interested in “antitrust reform,” though those efforts are also as hollow as a cheap Easter chocolate bunny.

In this case, Mississippi’s more “traditional” restrictions don’t ban the sale of electric cars, but if you’re oblivious or indifferent to Musk’s reputational implosion and in the market for a Tesla, they’ll force you to visit the state’s only sanctioned (via carve out) Tesla dealer in Brandon. EV makers in general are restricted from opening any new stores unless they adhere to the traditional, dated and convoluted franchise model people have been complaining about for decades.

Granted there are still some Republicans that realize this kind of mindless oil and traditional auto industry ass kissing is both harmful and idiotic:

Republican Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, had hoped Reeves would veto the legislation. Lawmakers were aiming to attract Tesla to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, an area Wiggins called the state’s economic driver.

“In today’s world, if you don’t innovate, you lose out. We as a state cannot afford to lose out,” Wiggins told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “My vote against the bill was a vote for capitalism, competition and innovation rather than for a policy of protectionism.”

Yet the new restrictions still passed the state legislature 39-13, driving would be EV buyers to a neighboring state. You know, out of an undying love of small business innovation.

Filed Under: big oil, climate change, corruption, electric vehicles, ev, franchise dealership, mississippi, regulatory capture, republican, restrictions, tate reeves

White House Anonymously Throws Gigi Sohn Under The Bus After Screwing Up Her FCC Nomination

Politics

from the you're-not-helping dept

Earlier this month we noted how a sleazy telecom and media giant smear campaign successfully derailed the FCC nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn, keeping the agency gridlocked (quite intentionally) without the voting majority to do much of anything deemed “controversial” by industry.

While the GOP and telecom giants deserve the lion’s share of the blame for Sohn’s derailed nomination (they want a feckless FCC that can’t hold AT&T and Comcast accountable for anything), there were also plenty of screw ups on the Democratic side and in the White House, where there’s also no shortage of folks without the courage or integrity to stand up to telecom lobbyists.

Biden’s White House nominated Sohn nine months late (that there was any delay at all was a surprise to one White House communications staffer I interacted with last year).

From there, Maria Cantwell repeatedly buckled to Republican calls for unnecessary, redundant show hearings. Chuck Schumer failed to whip the votes. Senators Masto, Kelly, and Manchin all ultimately buckled to bad faith industry attacks, preventing her from getting the 51 votes needed in the Senate. Sohn’s future colleagues at the FCC, Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks, couldn’t be bothered to offer a single instance of meaningful support as she faced down attacks, alone.

The whole thing was an embarrassing, corrupt mess, and a clear example of why government struggles to hire game-changing reformers, especially at major regulatory agencies. Yet via an anonymous quote in the Washington Post this week, some White House staffer apparently thought it would be a good idea to throw Sohn even further under the bus:

A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the nomination, said they “worked tirelessly to move Gigi’s nomination” and that at her hearings Sohn “had the chance to push back and dispel the misconceptions that dark money and influence were trafficking in.”

Except numerous sources have informed me that they did not “work tirelessly.” And it’s kind of a giant middle finger to Sohn to suggest that the onus for shaking off a massive, well-coordinated smear campaign rested entirely on her shoulders.

As Sohn notes to the Post, you’re limited as to what you can say publicly when facing such attacks, especially if you care about your personal safety as an LGBTQ+ person in the current political environment:

Sohn, who would have been the first openly gay FCC commissioner, said the implication in the articles were “clearly tied to QAnon themes about LGBTQ+ people as groomers, as perverts, as sex traffickers.” And she said she felt it put her and her loved ones at risk. 

“That was the first time I felt like ‘Oh my god, this could really rile up some crazies to come to my house … and threaten me and my family,’” Sohn said. 

Unlike the Lina Khan nomination to the FTC (which involved a prompt nomination and then shock promotion to Chair to pre-empt industry resistance), Sohn’s FCC nomination was nine months late — the biggest delay in FCC history. That provided the telecom and media industries, spooked by the Khan pick, ample runway to manufacture its ultimately successful propaganda campaign, which involved using various seedy nonprofits to falsely accuse Sohn of being a radical cop hating enemy of Hispanics and rural Americans.

The White House offered zero meaningful public messaging support of their nominee aimed at debunking any of this. Several sources have suggested to me that Sohn’s nomination could have likely succeeded if the White House had also applied more meaningful pressure on Senators Manchin, Masto, and Kelly (several of whom themselves parroted industry propaganda about Sohn). They didn’t.

That said, I also have been told that Biden personally strongly supported Sohn, prompting her to be re-nominated early this year after a contentious 2022. Even then, you never genuinely got the sense from anyone on the Democratic side that seating Sohn (or the FCC’s consumer protection authority more generally) was a meaningful priority of any kind.

That’s not just a problem for hot button issues like net neutrality. The FCC is at the heart of the White House’s plan to throw an historic $45 billion in new broadband subsidies at the nation’s digital divide. Without a functioning voting majority, the FCC can’t meaningfully hold monopolies accountable when they inevitably take subsidies for networks they fail to deliver. Or much of anything else.

Putting all of this on Sohn’s shoulders because she didn’t “push back and dispel the misconceptions” being seeded in a gullible press by telecom monopolies with unlimited budgets is a final fuck you footnote on one of the most embarrassing tech/telecom policy failures in modern history. This one will leave a mark, and sends a very clear message to popular, good faith reformers eyeing government posts.

Filed Under: broadband, digital divide, fcc, ftc, gigi sohn, high speed internet, joe biden, joe manchin, lina khan, regulatory capture, telecom, the white house

Telecom Monopolies Win Again: Gigi Sohn Forced To Withdraw From FCC Nomination

Politics

from the dysfunction-junction dept

Telecom and media giants (News Corporation, AT&T, and Comcast, mostly) have spent big bucks to scuttle the FCC nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn. That’s involved seeding all kinds of bullshit claims in the press (with the GOP’s help) about how Sohn hates rural America, police, puppies, and freedom. Some of the most recent attacks have been grotesquely homophobic.

The goal was to keep the FCC without the voting majority to do much of anything deemed controversial by industry (like restoring net neutrality or imposing media consolidation limits). And because the U.S. is a corrupt shitshow, the gambit has been very successful. Sohn has ample experience and is widely popular across both sides of the aisle. She’s actually more qualified than several key recent FCC nominees of note.

It didn’t matter.

After several years of fighting, Sohn today announced she’d be withdrawing as a nominee, pointing directly at the telecom and media industry smear campaign as a major factor:

“It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators. And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that.”

Sohn’s been in Senate confirmation purgatory for the better part of the last two years thanks to blanket opposition from the GOP (which to a man almost always supports telecom monopolies despite its pretense about loving “antitrust reform”). But Sohn’s fate was also doomed by waffling by key Democratic Senators like Mark Kelly (AZ) , Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), and Joe Manchin (WV), who kept her from getting the 51 votes needed in a Senate confirmation vote (and at times parroted false industry claims).

Manchin finally this week came out in opposition to Sohn after a year of refusing to publicly state his position one way or the other. According to his statement, Manchin claims he opposed Sohn because he’s just super concerned about partisanship at the FCC:

There’s not much that’s coherent or factual here. Sohn’s entire career has been spent advocating for broadband affordability, and there’s really nothing she’s said or done at any hearing that could be construed as problematically partisan. Especially in the context of a modern Trumpist GOP that casually tosses around calls for civil war like they’re party snacks.

Sohn’s major crime appears to have been calling Fox News propaganda in a tweet (undeniably true) and retweeting calls for modest police reform.

It’s worth noting that Manchin voted in support of Trump FCC pick Ajit Pai, arguably one of the most captured and nakedly partisan telecom regulators I’ve seen in more than two-decades of covering the agency.

During Pai’s tenure his agency was caught making up DDOS attacks to try and downplay public anger at shitty policies, turned a blind eye while the broadband industry used fake and dead people to stuff the FCC comment process with illusory support for extremely unpopular policies, and rubber stamped industry mergers without even reading the supporting documents.

You’re to ignore that Comcast has been slowly accumulating Manchin staffers in a bid to influence his vote. Or that the aging coal baron has generally opposed meaningful accountability for numerous industries with very obvious monopolization, safety, and regulatory capture problems.

From my conversations with numerous DC insiders, Manchin has always opposed Sohn’s nomination, he just hasn’t been willing to publicly own it until now. Manchin was a primary reason Sohn’s Senate confirmation vote was scuttled last year, making Manchin the primary reason the FCC currently lacks the voting majority to do most of the things he’s pretending to care about now.

There was briefly some hope that the midterm victory by Rafael Warnock would change the math and make Manchin’s vote less relevant. With Manchin’s vote offset by Warnock, the hope was that Sohn could get the 51-vote-majority needed via support from Senators Mark Kelly (AZ) and Catherine Cortez Masto (NV). But both, like Manchin, proved repeatedly noncommittal and easily influenced by industry.

With Sohn understandably backing away from this corrupt shitshow, the FCC will remain in 2-2 partisan gridlock until Biden nominates somebody the telecom industry deems suitably feckless. At that point, any potential candidate will have virtually no time to do much of anything before the next presidential election, exactly as AT&T, Comcast, and News Corporation planned it.

There will be a lot of press chatter that misses the central point of Sohn’s experience. Namely that a completely manufactured joint propaganda campaign by the telecom lobby and GOP prevented a popular female reformer from being seated at a key regulatory agency because the United States is comically corrupt.

From Sohn’s statement:

Unfortunately, the American people are the real losers here. The FCC deadlock, now over two years long, will remain so for a long time. As someone who has advocated for my entire career for affordable, accessible broadband for every American, it is ironic that the 2-2 FCC will remain sidelined at the most consequential opportunity for broadband in our lifetimes. This means that your broadband will be more expensive for lack of competition, minority and underrepresented voices will be marginalized, and your private information will continue to be used and sold at the whim of your broadband provider. It means that the FCC will not have a majority to adopt strong rules which ensure that everyone has nondiscriminatory access to broadband, regardless of who they are or where they live, and that low income students will continue to be forced to do their school work sitting outside of Taco Bell because universal service funds can’t be used for broadband in their homes. And it means that many rural Americans will continue the long wait for broadband because the FCC can’t fix its Universal Service programs.

While the GOP and telecom industry operated in lockstep during the attack on Sohn, Democrats carry plenty of blame. A belated nomination, a repeated failure to whip votes, repeated decisions to bow to bad-faith industry attempts to hold duplicative hearings, and a comic inability to publicly support Sohn as she faced down a relentless smear campaign alone all contributed to her nomination’s demise.

Sohn’s withdrawn nomination is a new low point for very broken U.S. telecom and media policy. For four years, the agency was a mindless marionette for industry under the Trump FCC. And in the last two years, the FCC has been intentionally mired in partisan gridlock by that same industry. That’s six straight years of total regulatory capture, and another blistering example of normalized U.S. corruption.

Our myopic internet policy fixation on “Big Tech” will ensure this story doesn’t survive for more than a few days in the mainstream press. Still, this one’s going to leave a long lasting and ugly mark on U.S. internet policy and the public trust.

I expect the next FCC nominee will be appropriately feckless, as per industry’s wishes. And the agency will stumble forth behaving precisely as the telecom and media lobby wishes: lots of nebulous chatter about how terrible the digital divide is, but nobody with the political backbone to meaningfully stand up to the massive telecom monopolies directly responsible for the problem.

Filed Under: broadband, corruption, digital divide, fcc, gigi sohn, high speed internet, joe manchin, regulatory capture, telecom