Is trying to get around the telecom industry:
Telecom regulators don’t usually have public followings, except perhaps among other telecom regulators. But as soon as rumors began circulating that Julius Genachowski planned to resign as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), petitions appeared on sites like BoingBoing, Reddit, and Daily Kos calling on President Barack Obama to appoint a 50-year-old law professor and former administration official named Susan Crawford as Genachowski’s successor. It’s not hard to see why she has acquired an enthusiastic fan base in these precincts of the Internet. With an appealing blend of earnestness and feistiness, Crawford is set on turning the sorry state of broadband and wireless services in the United States into the biggest populist outrage since Elizabeth Warren went after the banks.
Dropped calls, patchy Internet, and exorbitant bills are experiences many Americans are already angry about. But to Crawford, the telecom industry is a problem not just because of its dreadful service, but because it is undermining the future of the U.S. economy. Like Warren, she has a knack for making her case against the most powerful companies—she refers to them dismissively as “the incumbents”—in ways the average person can understand. At a public hearing in California, Crawford scoffed at a contention by AT&T and T-Mobile that local wireless markets were competitive: “This is like asserting that my former hometown of Washington, D.C., has several football teams: the Redskins, the Georgetown University team, and the Gonzaga High School team.” Discussing broadband with Bill Moyers, she observed, “The rich are getting gouged, the poor are very often left out, and this means that we’re creating, yet again, two Americas.”
Susan Crawford!? Wow. She’d be dynamite. She really is the “Elizabeth Warren” of telecommunications. Super-smart, informed, and understands which end is up.
So there’s not a chance she’ll be appointed.
No, Obama is about to appoint an industry lobbyist.
Speaking of Elizebeth Warren, her silence on the Boston lockdown was very disappointing. Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe said today that the, “People were so tired of these two (brothers) running around loose that they were willing to give up their civil liberties.” She was responding to a question about the legality of the lockdown in Boston. Her answer proves once again that setting up a police state won’t be all that difficult given the fact that most American’s have no understanding about how our constitutional democracy is suppose to function. The silence of our public officials is offensive and dangerous. It’s also guys like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell who keep American’s dumb.
It’s also guys like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell who keep American’s dumb.
Fortunately, we have hard-working folks such as Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Malkin, Beck, Coulter, Trump, Palin, and Hannity to smarten us up.