My old friend Jay Stuckey had a saying that has stuck with me for decades: "Don't let them piss on your leg and tell you that it's raining."
When Jay used it he was referring to politicians who lied to scare up votes. Today, this adage refers to powerful corporations that lie to scare politicians.
The companies in question are AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. And the piss that they're spreading is misinformation about Internet regulation and America's jobless recovery.
Today, a phone and cable-funded "think tank" joined a chorus of others claiming that the Federal Communications Commission's efforts to provide common-sense oversight of Internet providers would kill jobs in America.
Deregulation Dystopia
The path the FCC is considering is whether to "reclassify" Internet access services under a category - Title II - that would allow it to protect Net Neutrality and foster universal access to broadband. Both of these goals are priorities of President Obama's economic recovery plan.
The FCC wants to restore common-sense open Internet protections. Under the Bush administration, the FCC deregulated high-speed Internet providers by relinquishing its Title II authority. At the time, the agency claimed this shift would foster competition and drive down broadband prices for consumers. Instead, it unleashed a torrent of industry consolidation that raised prices, slowed broadband services and otherwise left the United States far behind in every international measure of Internet success.
This radical move undermined the long-held assumption that nondiscriminatory communications networks were essential to free speech, democratic participation and economic opportunity.
Now, just as the FCC is on the cusp of reasserting its Title II authority to fix past mistakes, along come a slew of "studies" that claim that doing so would scuttle efforts to put Americans back to work.
Coin-Operated Analysis
Citing speculative job losses, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) study, released today, calls for a two-year moratorium on all FCC efforts to restore the agency's role in safeguarding our Internet rights and spreading broadband adoption.
The study is part of a desperate strategy to spread fear and obscure the facts about Internet regulation, and pave the way for carrier control over online content.
What the study doesn't say is that PPI has received funding from AT&T, as well as from the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation. I'm sure you've heard of the former. The Bradley Foundation, for its part, funds a right-wing cabal of anti-Neutrality groups, including the American Enterprise Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The PPI study, like other industry-funded efforts that came before it, is completely void of any actual evidence connecting broadband reclassification to job losses.
The Politics of Fear-Mongering
"Policymakers should recognize this 'study' for what it is -- part of a transparent attempt by the biggest phone and cable companies to raise unfounded fears about job losses in an election season," says Free Press Research Director Derek Turner.
PPI's report assumes that if the FCC has basic oversight authority, it will lead to bad outcomes. But history tells a different story. When the Bell companies were subject to the full weight of Title II, they increased employment by 15 percent, according to their own SEC filings. But once the FCC began dismantling these pro-competitive rules through massive deregulation, these companies shed nearly 40 percent of their work force, even as their revenues increased and profits soared.
AT&T and Verizon alone are responsible for tens of thousands of layoffs over the last two years. Verizon is accelerating its layoffs, while AT&T laid off 12,000 workers through 2009 and thousands more in 2010.
"Sadly, this pattern of ISPs destroying good jobs while reaping higher profits will likely continue with or without reclassification and Net Neutrality," Turner says.
Telco Doublespeak
Here's the rub: While the telecom companies are telling Washington that government oversight will freeze investment, they're telling Wall Street just the opposite.
Time Warner Cable COO Landel Hobbs told an investor conference, "Yes, we will continue to invest, yes, we will participate in the Notice of Inquiries and we will have an open, healthy dialogue with the FCC throughout the whole process."
Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said, "The government is not a big worry." And a reporter from the investment newsletter SNL Kagan covering Roberts' remarks at an industry trade show wrote, "Given the potential impact of reclassification on broadband pricing, Roberts said he expects the industry to continue to invest, innovate and work through the government issues."
Verizon Wireless Chief Executive Lowell McAdam told the Wall Street Journal that the company has no plans to slow investment in its wireless broadband network as a result of the FCC's move.
In effect, the phone and cable business appears to be "recession-proof," even as these companies do nothing to prevent their hardworking employees from feeling the effects of the jobless recovery.
But the facts won't stop them from treating your leg like a fire hydrant.
Follow Timothy Karr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimKarr
End of discussion.
I guess I should have included the /rollseyes mark after my original post.
I've read articles stating that over 60% of cable and satellite TV subscribers, are dissatisfied with the services they pay for (count me amongst them). In order for me to provide the 3 or 4 channels that my elderly mother would like to watch for her only remaining form of entertainment, we must pay for 70 or 80 channels that never see the light of her television screen.
Competition is supposed to "self regulate" any industry. It' doesn't. We don't have competition, we have a monopoly shared by 3 or 4 big players that collude with each other to control the market, and who only compete for "new customers" with bogus introductory rates.
Big business abhors competition. America is run by big business, and their dollars control our Congress. Supply and demand simply doesn't work, when someone has their hands on the throttle that controls supply. Right now big business has their hands in, and control, just about everything in America, and it shows.
You're right though, cable is a cartell of a few companies and it is not effective in bringing consumers choices and value. If the government added an additional regulation allowing individual cable channels to sell directly to consumers on existing networks, consumers would have much more choice and value. I'm not actually informned enough on the subjet to be certain this would take another regulation, it could be one of those things that is supposed to happen already uunder existing anti-trust laws, but just doean't.
Deregulation = Oligopolies & Monopolies
If you cut business taxes it will create jobs (a majority of the big companies don't pay any tax at all).
Corporate welfare creates jobs (see current economic climate).
Highly paid CEOs create jobs (we can outsource the CEOs cheaper and save tons of money)
Destroying unions create jobs (it just downgrades salaries and benefits).
Offshoring and outsourcing creates jobs.
Cutting wages creates jobs.
If any of the above were true this country be swimming in jobs right now.
For years business has blackmailed the government over jobs and now that we've given them everything they wanted and there are no jobs, business wants to keep playing their game of "you need to give me more".
Also, despite what the article claims above, internet access continued to grow across the country over the past five years, as has the average connection speed. This is because, under the 2005 framework, carriers actually had an incentive to invest, as they would be able to profit. Amazing how that works.
No one has made a reasonable case that more regulation will improve the internet; only that it will drive up the costs.
http://www.freepress.net/files/Telco_Title_II_History.pdf
In case you missed it:
1. Internet access providers invested more when regulated under Title II, and less when not.
2. Internet access providers employed more when regulated under Title II, and laid off more when not.
Personally, I think the Internet was improved when the FCC ordered Comcast to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic. I was then able to download various Linux distributions in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days. Comcast sued and won because, under Dubya, the FCC had relinquished the power to mandate neutrality.
A politically astute Comcast seems to be refraining from discriminatory traffic management for the time being. But given ISPs' high level of concentration and cross-ownership with content providers and competing channels of delivery (cable TV, cellular data, etc.), network neutrality regulation is the bare minimum government ought to be doing. Break-ups, spin-offs, and pro-competitive public investment would probably be in order. Maybe then we'd start catching up with our peer countries, which offer over twice the speed for half the price.
"Question 1
Republicans have spent decades talking about how great tax cuts are and saying that they create jobs. The problem with this claim is that there is exactly zero evidence to support it. Bush cut taxes (increasing the deficit, as you can see from the chart to the right) and the result of that tax cut was the smallest number of jobs of any President since the DOL started keeping records.
The question is, if tax cuts create jobs then why did the Bush Administration pass huge deficit-inducing tax cuts only to result in so little job growth?"
"Question 2
The Chamber of Commerce presented ideas to President Obama yesterday for job creation. Their solution is deregulation. They are claiming that overregulation hampers job growth and that deregulation creates jobs.
Once again we have to ask – if deregulation creates jobs, then why weren’t we creating jobs over the Bush years when everything was deregulated to the point that corporations were writing their own regulations.
The Republicans are telling the same lies now that they have been for decades. It’s up to us to make sure people know these are lies."
http://bluewavenews.com/2010/07/17/tax-cuts-deregulation-two-important-questions-about-republican-claims/
(Not sure how to type in a Jersey accent) 'Those are some nice jobs ya got right there. Ya wouldn't want anything to happen to the jobs now would ya?'
And they add charges to your phone bill and then they tell you it behooves you to tell them what is not a correct charge on your bill. Unreal!