It's been all over the news that in 2007, executives at Verizon and AT&T donated over $42,000 to Senator John D. Rockefeller, IV, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Prior to 2007, Rockefeller wasn't getting any significant contributions from telecomm executives. But of course, prior to 2007, Rockefeller wasn't pushing his committee to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies that helped the NSA with its secret, warrantless surveillance on America's telephone calls.
There are so many reasons to be enraged by this.
As CEO of Working Assets, the socially responsible mobile and long distance company, I have watched for 15 years while big telecomm "bought" monopoly power from Congress, from the White House and from the FCC. This is how they do business. Instead of building the best phone company, they buy politicians.
Instead of the vibrantly competitive telecomm landscape promised by the deregulation of AT&T in 1984 and the Telecom Act of 1996, today we have a handful of telecommunications companies controlling legislation and policy, consolidating instead of innovating, and shutting out competitors. All with the blessing of the FCC.
Once upon a time the FCC took its role seriously, and required the phone companies to lease their networks. For a brief moment we had a competitive local telecom market offering a range of customized bundles and new features. Working Assets offered local service and doubled our donations for the customers who participated. But in due course the FCC bowed to the phone companies, and competitive local service simply vanished.
To add insult to injury, our politicians are cheap dates. For $42,000, these mega telecoms made a small but effective investment, given the magnitude of the lawsuits they are hoping to avoid, upwards of billions of dollars of damage. That's cheaper than hiring a D.C. lawyer for a week. When an issue is below the radar screen, it's easy to buy influence. But now that the issues have gone from thwarting competition to spying on Americans, I hope the public will start to pay attention, and hang up on the telecom companies' on-going campaign to buy the law that suits them best.
Working Assets is speaking out. Over 16,000 members of Working Assets sent faxes to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid protesting the amnesty. And a letter was delivered to his office yesterday signed by Working Assets Wireless along with civil liberties groups like the ACLU, EFF, Free Press and leading bloggers including Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Howie Klein, Markos Moulitsas and Matt Stoller. The letter delivered to Reid can be found at www.noretroactiveimmunity.com. Working Assets members are sending faxes and emails to the Senate here.