Tales of the Sausage Factory

An insider’s view of the media hegemony

John Boehner and Conservatives In Exile Make Cakes For The Queen of Heaven; New Generation Dems Prepares To Blow Trumpets and Bring Down Walls.

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Recognizing that some professed conservatives in Congress have some trouble remembering all that “Old Testament” stuff, allow me to clarify the reference. At the end of the Book of Jeremiah, the Babylonians come and do everything Jeremiah predicted would happen if the Children of Israel didn’t stop all their idolatry and oppressing the poor and the helpless, i.e., they destroyed the Temple and took King Zedekiah and a greater part of the people into exile. After the assasination of the Jewish Governor Gedaliah, the remaining remnant of the people hit a new low and — against the express command of God as relayed through Jeremiah — flee down to Egypt. Because the people are basically total a–holes, they drag Jeremiah down with them.

Once in Egypt, God sends Jeremiah with a final prophecy in which he reviews all the times God warned the Israelites to turn away from their idolatries — notably the worship of the “Queen of Heaven” — and how each time Israel refused. God patiently moved from warnings to punishments, and still the people stubbornly refused to repent. In fact, they got worse. Now they have come down to Egypt as pathetic refugees suffering a miserable existence, and God is going to give them one last chance to learn their lesson or “He will give unto them the Bitch Slap Of His Wrath so hard they shall not knoweth whether it be Sabbath or the Day of Atonement.” To Jeremiah’s astonishment, the people give him a big “F-you! What the heck do you know anyway? You radical far left prophet you!” Rather than amend their ways and repent, they tell Jeremiah:

“It is only since we have ceased to burn incense and make offerings to the Queen of Heaven that we have known want, and died by the sword and by famine. And when we burned incense, and poured out drink offerings, and made cakes to the Queen of Heaven, were not our men then with us?”
— Jeremiah 44:18-19.

Or, in other words, the lesson the exiled Israelites learn from suffering defeat after defeat, humiliation after humiliation, is that Jeremiah can’t possibly know what he is talking about and the only way to finally win is keep doing exactly the same thing, but even more so. And, if possible, be even more obnoxious about it.

Connection back to today’s politics below . . . .

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Matt Stoller Interviews Me Over On OpenLeft

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As anyone reading the sidebar can tell, I’m a big fan of the folks over at OpenLeft. So I was extremely happy when Matt Stoller asked to interview me on what the November 4 white spaces vote at the FCC means for the future of media and telecom policy.

You can find the interviews here:

Day 1: Broadband and Breaking Up Telecom/Cable/Broadcast Monopolies.

Day 2: Real Use Anywhere ‘Skype-style’ Phone In The Offing.

I have no idea if the Obama people — or anyone else for that matter — agree with me on this stuff. The views expressed in the interviews are my own, just like any other time I talk to the press. In particular, I am pretty sure no one else agrees that our priority should be to “crush monopoly incumbents, drive them before us, and hear the lamentations of their shareholders.” “have a strong national broadband policy that includes federally funded fiber-to-the-home and greater access to federal spectrum for intelligent devices.”

But I hope we can persuade them to agree with me.

Stay tuned . . . .

Why Did AT&T Get Left Off The Cable Investigation List — A Very Boring Answer.

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While killing time waiting for the Nov 4 meeting to start FCC Chair Kevin Martin discussed the recently opened investigation into cable pricing. To the surprise of those who conceive of Martin as simply having a “vendetta” against cable, the list of companies getting notices about the investigation included Verizon. OTOH, it did not include AT&T. Needless to say, the “Martin can do no good because he is EEEEVVVVVIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!” crowd hit on this as proof that Martin is merely doing the bidding of his telco masters (Verizon having been added to the investigation merely for protective coloring).

Well, I’ve given my views on Kevin Martin repeatedly. As I have said time and again, I may disagree with him a lot, but I don’t think he is an industry shill. He does what he thinks is right and the devil with the consequences. While this has its disadvantages, notably his managing to piss off the other four Commissioners and thus secure for himself a series of policy set backs and rack up a record of number of votes actually lost by the Chairman, it does mean I tend to look for an explanation that goes beyond “Martin is a bastard 24/7 and therefore this is part of an evil plot.”

Here, I think the non-AT&T conspiracy theory answer is fairly straightforward. It has to do with the particular practice the FCC is investigating — forcing customers to migrate to digital. As AT&T does not seem to be behaving in the same way as the named cable operators that got letters from the Enforcement Bureau, they are not being investigated.

OTOH, even if the FCC does find evidence of deceptive advertising practices or anticompetitive conduct, it may lack authority to act.

Thoughts below . . . .

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A Promising First Step

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O.K., it is only a modest first step, but it is still nice to see.

In keeping with that whole “use the internet and new technologies, government transparency, yadda yadda yadda” stuff from the campaign, Obama and his transition team have now set up a new website for the transition at change.gov.

The website includes many of the features that made the Obama campaign website so effective. It is also an unprecedented time to compliance with a campaign promise (even before taking office). More importantly, if you click on the technology agenda, you will observe that it is pretty much the same tech agenda as from the campaign website.

That may not seem like a big deal, until you notice the top items. Protect the Openness of the Internet and Encourage Diversity In Media top the list.

Yes, it is merely a continuation of his previous campaign commitments. Yes, simply saying protecting the openness of the internet is your top priority does not actually gaurantee you will do it. I am not some Kool-Aide drinking neophyte. But I am also not someone who thinks that cynicism substitutes for wisdom and can’t wait to rush to proclaim that all that progressive stuff was just campaign chin music. I find it pleasantly reassuring that (a) these guys continue to show the same level of discipline in planning and execution they did during the campaign, (b) they appear quite serious about the business of governing, and (c) they seem to be on track to take us in the right direction.

Not bad for Day 2 after the election . . . .

Stay tuned . . . .

As Long As We're On An Electoral Roll . . . .

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Allow me to engage in a shameless act of self-promotion.

The 2008 Weblog Awards

If you’ve enjoyed either my shamelessly biased but hopefully entertaining coverage of the FCC and other techno-policy issues, or if you enjoy the whole whacky crew here at Wetmachine, why not go and nominate either Tales of the Sausage Factory or Wetmachine for a 2008 Weblog Award. Here’s the list of categories, and the nomination FAQ. None of the categories really fit, of course, although I will note that “law” and “technology” both have relatively few nominations at the moment.

Stay tuned. . . .

Commission Meeting Happens! Begins With Gifts To Verizon and AT&T . . . .

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O.K., we finally started at 3:50 p.m. Three items left, VZ/Alltel, New Clearwire, and White Spaces. I’ll split tdo my happy dance on his in two, so I can gripe about the suckiness of the mergers while doing my happy dance on white spaces unsullied by this market consolidation.

Details of merger suckiness below . . .

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3 p.m., FCC approves another item. Crowd Thins, But Reporters and Hardcore Policy Wonks and White Space Folks Hang On.

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O.K., now coming up on 3 p.m. on the meeting that should have started at 11 a.m. The FCC has announced that the Commissioners voted another relatively non-controversial item on circulation, the grant of the Verizon C Block licenses.

As some folks may recall, Google filed a Petition with the FCC after the 700 MHz auction requesting that they put some teeth into the C Block conditions and provide further clarity on how they can enforce the conditions against Verizon if it plays games. It is expected that the item basically says “yes, we mean it,” but not give any further details. We’ll have to wait for when they publish the Order to find out.

Meanwhile, those of us desperate for a white spaces vote continue to sweat it out and hope the Order doesn’t get derailed. Those opposed, unsurprisingly, are now hoping for the opposite.

NEWSFLASH: According to FCC staff, while Commissioner Godot will not vote today, he will surely vote tomorrow!

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Vote this thing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stay tuned . . . .

2:30 P.M., Still No Meeting . . . .

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O.K., I hope tonight’s election results go better. Rumor is the hold up is on roaming conditions in the VZ/Alltel merger. Still, after the DOJ approved the merger with a few divestitures, there was no doubt that the FCC will roll over. The only question is whether Tate or McDowell will side with the Ds to exact some additional conditions for the benefit of the rural carriers or competitors. Hence the speculation that this involves roaming. But I still expect a vote today. You can almost hear the Verizon charatcer in the Alltel ads whispering “Soon Chad . . . .soon you will share your circle for the last time . . . . you ding dong.”

While we wait, here are some preliminary thoughts about the items.

Here’s the original agenda. The FCC dropped item 1, Universal Service/Intercarrier Compensation (USF/ICC), and voted the item on distributed television systems (DTS) and closed captioning on circulation.

Of these, the voted items were fairly non-controversial. DTS is designed to address the fact that DTV signals don’t work the same way as analog, and will allow broadcasters to maintain their audience after the conversion. The only possible pitfall was whether it would allow broadcasters to expand their footprint which would (a) eat into the available white spaces, and (b) give them yet more free spectrum goodies for no good reason. My info is that the order will emphasize that the intent is to maintain the status quo ante transition. I have no idea on the closed captioning item.

That leaves USF/ICC. USF/ICC is a huge mess of biblical proportions that causes even a hardened policy wonk like me to quail and flee the room screaming. It is famously broken, everyone hates it, but no one can agree on how to fix it. There is absolutely no right answer, and any piece of it impacts all the other pieces.

What is interesting is that this created another 4-1 revolt by the other offices against Martin. While I give Martin credit for trying to get hideously controversial stuff done, you are clearly doing something wrong if you have managed to uniformly piss off all four Commissioners to the point where they are making pointed public statements that boil down to “Kevin, you ain’t the boss of me.” It is always hard for a Chairman to get stuff done in the last months of an administration, but unless Martin and the other offices figure out a way to get along, it is going to be a very viscious and unproductive couple of months until January 21.

The delay on this meeting, which caught Martin totally by surprise, is not exactly an auspicious omen.

Stay tuned . . . .