After approving NBC buyout, FCC Commissioner becomes Comcast lobbyist
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The committee that granted a trillion dollar bail-out of a few companies including Goldman Sachs was staffed with plenty of current/former executives from Goldman Sachs.
The FDA and agencies involved for approving bovine growth hormone (later found to do freakishly hideous things to the poor cows and increase by incredible amounts the contamination of the milk we drink from infected utters), the Round-Up-ready patented corn seeds, and aspartame just happen to be largely staffed by current/former Monsanto executives.
The FDA and agencies involved in inspecting the food production in the states and making sure that it remains uncontaminated and safe and regularly inspected have reduced the number of inspections by something like 85% and the contamination rates increase, while under the watch of agencies staffed largely by current/former executives of the few main companies being overseen.
The US government is beyond corrupt and beyond any possible reform and nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn that almost every office and committee appointment in the country is a matter of the wolves guarding the sheep. It has been this way for decades and they are now so brazen about it that you can look at every single person in every single job and do a simple search to trace the truth of their position and appointment back and nobody gives a damn.
I mean, seriously, we let them give themselves a trillion dollars. We let them poison our food supply with largely untested and unproven chemicals. We let them cover up and manipulate right in front of our faces and we do nothing. After thirty years of looking the other way on all of these things, what on earth could possibly ever even remotely raise our eyebrows and make us do something other than participate in the attention-occupying busy-body bullshit of "durr durr republicans are stupid and evil" and "durr durr democrats are stupid and evil" my team versus yours bullshit?
Maybe if the government and corporations decided that it was just easier to require that all births be sponsored to make sure they can be cared for until adulthood and then those sponsored children become indentured servants for their sponsor company until the age of 40 . . . maybe . . . MAYBE we might possibly take our eyes off Dancing With the Stars and the football game long enough to do something other than pull the red or blue lever according to the team we've associated ourselves with and demand that we have choices that aren't part of the game and won't be part of the game and will radically change things.
It won't happen in my lifetime. I know that much.
Is there money to be made from benefiting the social good? Is there a way we can bring people together with an app or service that can bring about an end to all of this? On HN I see some of the most intelligent people that have ever lived. If we can't come up with a solution, then who can?
I think the key thing is to disrupt the lobby structure. If we can do that as well as MP3 downloads disrupted the RIAA then we win.
This would need someway to make sure that the politician was actually looking at the site and not just the delegating it to subordinates. Having a direct line to these politicians (that cuts past all of the subordinates that answer email, snail mail, etc) is one of the strengths of lobby groups.
This is why I suggested to start in a small community first. In order to keep it relevant to people that live in that community, the only thing that made sense was to authenticate users via post cards (with OTP passcodes) sent to an address within a zipcode (In my town they send out a community news page with my water bill). My thought was to keep it to short messages realted to only municipal maintenance issues and try to build from there. Funding it would be the biggest obstacle in my mind, so if anyone has specific ideas there, that'd be great.
Anyway, there are certainly already-existing entities that serve the public good, but government corruption isn't irrelevant as long as there is government corruption. You can benefit social good all you like, but how exactly is it going to wholly displace the existence, expense, and function of a government office or committee?
The FDA example. Or the Goldman Sachs example. How are you going to displace the need for the FDA to exist or for the SEC and the Treasury to exist? Or the need for the military industrial complex? These are all functions that seemingly need to exist and be performed for the good of the people. The problem is that they require oversight. The public needs to be aware of the corruption and given the power to do something about it and it seems we either don't or won't. (And I'm part of that group, because if I knew how to change it, I would).
It is so massive. So complex. So layered. And so corrupt. I really almost can't expect someone busy trying to keep a roof over their head and their children clothed and educated to somehow be aware of many of these corruptions, much less have a way to change it (beyond the trivialities of voting, which mostly seems to just serve us as a way to make us feel better about ourselves).
When we have lots of regulation, we're told that the solution is to deregulate and then industries are singularly corrupt. When we don't have enough regulation, we're told the solution is to regulate. Then the regulator positions are staffed with people from the companies being regulated and corruption is there.
If there are some great solutions, I'm all ears. :)
Talk to some minimal-government libertarians for some ideas.
A (quite conservative) method to get rid of the FDA would be outsourcing that function to the EU, or perhaps push it down to the states.
> Or the need for the military industrial complex?
You can make it much smaller, if your government follows an isolationist foreign policy.
I'm not saying those are good ideas---just that it's possible.
These industries require domain expertise gained over years in order to understand the fundamentals of these industries at macro and micro levels, So, who better to help regulate them then people directly from the industry with that expertise. Career politicians and bureaucrats simply have no real world experience, so we must get industry insiders to provide insight.
The question you have to ask is what's the motivation to approve (or deny) a given application or law? If it's because it's the 'right thing to do' (broad term I know) then fantastic. If it's to 'help out a mate' or 'it may be the right thing to do, but meanwhile there's incentives for me to vote this way' then that's where integrity has to be questioned.
Just as an auditor doesn't need to be a domain expert to audit a companies books, a regulator doesn't need to be one, at least from an industry POV.
That's not a useful stance to take on things. "Anyone who disagrees with this is ignorant or didn't understand" is a recipe for never having a useful conversation.
You want people to change their minds? Spend at least a little time listening to them. Not "I'm waiting for you to shut up" fake listening, actual listening. Learn why they think what they do. You have to counter their biases/ignorance/arguments on their own terms, anything else is more self-important posturing on your part than useful debate.
Nobody on this thread could say/articulate a single point or argument that could possibly counteract the sheer amount of corruption that is occurring not only in the US, but everywhere. Hence my ears are essentially closed for business.
What I was saying was that the OP is absolutely right, and anybody who even considers disagreeing hasn't done their research or has not registered the seriousness of the situation when reading the comment. I was hoping to add weight to an already very good point, hence the seriousness of my tone.
The US government is beyond corrupt and beyond any possible reform and nobody cares.
my team versus yours bullshit
It won't happen in my lifetime. I know that much.
Or do you just bitterly complain about the irredeemably corrupt nature of US government on online message boards?
Your cynicism, and those of people like you, is also a large contributor to our nation's innumerable problems. There exist honest, well-meaning, hard-working people working in government and politics to attempt to fix these issues. Unfortunately they're outnumbered by people like you, who tar all of them with same brush you use for the most corrupt business lobbyist. That's probably because it's much easier to complain than fix the problem.
The few people with any power in politics are expelled by the system itself. They're either not viable to begin with or if they somehow absurdly get into the system, it marginalizes them. They're called crazy or otherwise derided and made irrelevant through all the modern mediums we have available to us and society itself is too pre-occupied with what church they go to or if they ever smoked pot.
I didn't say I have any meaningful way to contribute or improve the process. Nobody else really does, either. It's not merely as simple as "well, run for office and be the first honest person in the government!". Very few people can even stand up against a single company and fight injustices. What hope does anyone have against the corrupt government plus all of the companies - together?
I know, this is all very anti-American. We're raised to believe that there's always hope and "we the people" and "power to the people" and all. Just check the right box in the voting booth or volunteer your time to support the right magic politician that we've been waiting a couple centuries for.
There is a critical point past which an organism is so consumed with cancerous tissue that nothing can be done to save it.
Maybe one of the talented designers around HN could spin up a nice site to pledge to march on DC if/when 10 million people sign up? I'd write the copy and donate some hosting $.
This is after 40 or so years of dictatorship in every single one of those countries; and peaceful previous attempts did not work (were mostly met with deadly force)
In the US, most people have the illusion that they are actually voting for THEIR representative, and thus it will take 400 years (not 40) until something will happen. Douglas Adams described this very well:
"Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
(copied&pasted from http://www.virtualeconomics.co.uk/2008/05/keeping-the-liz.ht... )
> There exist honest, well-meaning, hard-working people working in government and politics to attempt to fix these issues. Unfortunately they're outnumbered by people like you, who tar all of them with same brush you use for the most corrupt business lobbyist.
I don't see how the OP's attitude affects the good people working to fix the issues. They clearly want the same thing the OP does. If they think he's wrong--prove him wrong! Get things reformed in his lifetime.
[1] http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...
edit: Actually a question comes to mind. What can we as the voting/etc public do to make our will felt in this scenario? With the parties involved I don't know of a way and that really, really irks me.
But when government has its fingers in every pie, we all have to "make our will known" about every freakin' pie.
And then watch as it is ignored because there are way too many pies for people to notice everything everyone is saying about every pie.
But each pie is of special concern to some well-monied interest and they will make their views known to those stuffing their pie holes.
What would give their activities meaning?
And how do you define clap-trap?
After some searching the best I could find is this group (http://www.citizen.org/), which seems to be a non-profit working in the general area of disentangling government/corporate interests.
Part of the reason, I think, is that individual parliamentarians make fewer of their own decisions than they do in the US. It's almost unheard of for an individual member of parliament to vote against their party on a given issue, so all decisionmaking on whether to support a given law is done at the party rather than individual level. And you can't persuade a whole party to support a law just by buying it steak dinners and hookers, you have to convince 'em that it's actually a votewinner. (Or you could just get your industry group to donate huge sums of money to the party, which is how, for instance, the Australian Hoteliers' Association keeps liquor licencing laws written to their advantage in most states).
I'd love to be proved ignorant on this and see some unrelated-to (and therefore incorruptible-by) enforcement agency slap the fuck out of Ms. Corrupt Lobbyist, but I'm doubtful.
---
(that) any official in a position within a government body, whether elected or appointed, which regulates a particular industry, area of industry, or the laws and compliance of said industry, may not take a position within any company that benefited directly from any regulatory or oversight decision of the oversight body within the last 5 years on any case where the stated company or organizations competitive status with respect to monopolies, anti-trust, or anti-competitive business environment was considered.
---
This would mean that anyone who was in a position of oversight for a given industry and who had to consider, directly, regulations which may or may not benefit a particular company may not accept a position with that company for at least 5 years after their departure from that official position.
You can be sure that this argument will be accompanied by large donations to lobbyists, and by outrage among all government regulators who were expecting to wind up in the industry that they regulate (and that they frequently came from).
Let me give you an important example. David Bois won his anti-trust case against Microsoft, and then proposed a penalty that was a slap on the wrist. He turned around, and then was handed an endless stream of revenue from the SCO case. There is evidence that said legal proceeding was funded behind the scenes by Microsoft. Coincidence? I think not.
As for the argument that I said you would face, I didn't make it up. That is the bog standard argument that is always trotted out to support the standard practice of having regulators come from, and then return to, the industries that they regulate. In practice people really do get swayed by the argument that a person who knows the industry is at an advantage in understanding it well enough to get involved in regulation. Either that or they pretend to be while accepting donations, but it works out to the same thing in the end.
If you look farther, I am sure that more specific rulings in favor of ABC and Time Warner can be found. Let's see. For instance see http://seekingalpha.com/article/119975-time-warner-cable-fcc... in favor of Time Warner.
It might be possible to do something about the friends/family issue with careful crafting of the laws - or maybe I'm just a closet monarchist. ;)
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...
Did you know that lobbyists now meet across from the whitehouse to keep their visits unrecorded?
This is almost as bad as the supreme court justices taking special interest money through their spouse.
This can only happen when people don't have a choice. If a government is bad, people should have a way to remove their property from its domain.
Cities and towns should be able to become part of a neighboring state or start their own. The Swiss have this ability and can change cantons and create new ones. Its rarely used, but its always there if needed.
And if the people had to approve many actions of the national legislature (again, as they do in Switzerland), ridiculous actions are less likely.
Of course, results are what matter and Switzerland has the highest incomes in the world and the least involvement in stupid wars. It must have something to do with the difficulty in spending other people's blood and money without their approval.
On the other hand, my idealistic version of political reform is so far from reality, I won't even bother you with it here.
Everywhere else, some value must be delivered in exchange and there are competing choices. For example, the media has a lot of power but also a lot of competition. And the more technology and choice we have in general creates even more competition.
Your version of reform may not be reality, but nothing is until discussed.
I mean, think about it: Would you secede from a city that used your own tax dollars to humiliate you on buses and at water fountains and lunch counters? And then beat you in the head when you object?
This is why the only humane, practical government is one with significant checks and balances, limitation of power. Libertarianism is the only way to solve real world problems, instead of idealistic naive thoughts.
Let's get really practical: public-only financing of elections, plus conflict of interest rules with teeth (no job in the industry you regulated for X years after you left) will make it significantly harder for special interests to exert undue influence on our elected officials. At least, if they sell out to corporations, it will be out of deeply felt corporatist convictions rather than for intellectually bankrupt cash considerations.
That doesn't excuse crony capitalism or outright corruption. But it does help to know where it comes from.
You make a good point: why would anyone knowledgable about the communications industry EVER take a job on the FCC if they knew it would bar them from working in the private sector in the future? We don't pay FCC commissioners nearly enough to make that work.