Verizon Throttled Firefighters' Data As Mendocino Wildfire Burned

Thomas Middleditch, actor and star of the hit series Silicon Valley, taking "sellout money" (his phrase) and shilling for Verizon, the company most strongly associated with killing net neutrality

by Gaius Publius

There's no way to sugarcoat this. As one commenter noted, this is "pure evil."

It looks like Verizon, already the greedy face of the death of net neutrality, throttled the data speed of California fire-fighting equipment during a 300-arce wildfire in an attempt to force them to upgrade to a more expensive data plan.

During a 300-acre wildfire.

Sounds like blackmail for money to me, with lives and homes held hostage. ArsTechnica tells the story. Since their focus in on the net neutrality angle, I'll present what they present in a little different order (emphasis mine throughout).

Start here:

"County Fire has experienced throttling by its ISP, Verizon," Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration. "This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services."

[...]

"In the midst of our response to the Mendocino Complex Fire, County Fire discovered the data connection for OES 5262 [the county's command-and-control vehicle for in-the-field firefighting] was being throttled by Verizon, and data rates had been reduced to 1/200, or less, than the previous speeds," Bowden wrote. "These reduced speeds severely interfered with the OES 5262's ability to function effectively. My Information Technology staff communicated directly with Verizon via email about the throttling, requesting it be immediately lifted for public safety purposes."

Verizon did not immediately restore full speeds to the device, however.

"Verizon representatives confirmed the throttling, but rather than restoring us to an essential data transfer speed, they indicated that County Fire would have to switch to a new data plan at more than twice the cost, and they would only remove throttling after we contacted the Department that handles billing and switched to the new data plan," Bowden wrote.

All "in the midst of our response to the Mendocino Complex Fire."

This is not the first time Verizon has done this to the Santa Clara County Fire department, and the department anticipates it won't be the last:

Verizon throttling also affected the department in a response to previous fires in December and June, emails show.

Bowden argued that Verizon is likely to keep taking advantage of emergencies in order to push public safety agencies onto more expensive plans.

"In light of our experience, County Fire believes it is likely that Verizon will continue to use the exigent nature of public safety emergencies and catastrophic events to coerce public agencies into higher-cost plans, ultimately paying significantly more for mission-critical service—even if that means risking harm to public safety during negotiations," Bowden wrote.

In other words, this is part of the plan — disaster capitalism, county by county.

Psychopathic Corporate Capitalism

It's difficult to use a word like "psychopathic" to describe this behavior and still be taken seriously, but it's hard not to use it too. Among the characteristics of psychopathic behavior are these: "antisocial violence, a selfish world view that precludes the welfare of others, a lack of remorse or guilt, and blame externalization."

Verizon's "antisocial violence" is clear, as is their world view, which "precludes the welfare of others." As for "blame externalization," this was their initial response:

Verizon also noted that the fire department purchased a data service plan that is slowed down after a data usage threshold is reached. But Verizon said it "made a mistake" in communicating with the department about the terms of the plan.

"We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan," Verizon said. "Like all customers, fire departments choose service plans that are best for them. This customer purchased a government contract plan for a high-speed wireless data allotment at a set monthly cost. Under this plan, users get an unlimited amount of data but speeds are reduced when they exceed their allotment until the next billing cycle."

In the meantime, here's what their serial "mistakes" make worse:

Ranch fire takes another 4,000 acres for new acreage total of 361,562 

The Mendocino Complex fires now are at 410,482 acres, having added about 4,000 acres to the total Tuesday night into Wednesday.

The newly burned acreage, part of the gargantuan Ranch fire, is an incremental increase to the combined totals of the Ranch and River fires. The two fires took off in late July and raced east into and across Lake County, threatening numerous towns and communities and burning at least 157 homes. One firefighter has been killed.

Cal Fire officials early Wednesday reported the added acreage came in the Ranch fire’s north and northeastern sections. Some of the growth came from backfiring operations by firefighters. More backfiring was slated for Wednesday if weather allowed.

Containment on the Ranch fire, which is at 361,562 acres, remained at 67 percent. Cal Fire officials still are looking at Sept. 1 for full containment.

By the way, human beings at Verizon did this; corporations are just buildings and paperwork. I don't think a legal construct, acting alone and in secret, pulled those switches and shut down their data feeds. Policy start with a person saying yes.

As I said, it's hard not to use "that word" for this behavior. Ask yourself how the law would react if a living person had acted in this way. Then ask what the newspapers would call him.

The Net Neutrality Angle

Now the net neutrality angle, which ArsTechnica featured up front in the story:

Bowden's declaration was submitted in an addendum to a brief filed by 22 state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, Santa Clara County, Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, and the California Public Utilities Commission. The government agencies are seeking to overturn the recent repeal of net neutrality rules in a lawsuit they filed against the Federal Communications Commission in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Verizon did say something about whether the throttling had anything to do with net neutrality. They said it didn't:

Update: The Santa Clara fire department has responded to Verizon's claim that the throttling was just a customer service error and "has nothing to do with net neutrality." To the contrary, "Verizon's throttling has everything to do with net neutrality," a county official said.

The death of net neutrality — which Verizon and its former counsel (and now FCC chair) Ajit Pai want desperately to bring about — is all about money, very large piles of it. And while this (that word) industry successfully killed net neutrality at the federal level, the issue is very much alive in California:

California’s net neutrality bill is back and as tough as ever

California lawmakers will be moving forward with tough provisions in a legislative proposal that could turn into one of the most ambitious net neutrality laws in the country. [...]

“This will be the most comprehensive and the strongest net neutrality protection in the United States, where we are restoring what we lost when Donald Trump’s FCC obliterated net neutrality,” [state Sen. Scott] Wiener told reporters Thursday, referring to the Federal Communications Commission’s decision last year to repeal its national-level regulations for Internet service providers.

The California proposal goes further than the defunct federal rules. The revised bill will contain tougher language that not only bans Internet service providers from blocking and slowing websites, but, for example, it will also ban “abusive” forms of a practice known as zero-rating, the lawmakers said. Zero-rating occurs when an ISP exempts its own apps and services from customer data caps but counts other app usage against those monthly limits.

Which takes us back to Thomas Middleditch, the cool new Verizon spokesman. You probably love him if you like the cool series Silicon Valley. Verizon bought his services so his cool lovable persona would rub off on them, and he happily sold his services to them. 

Interestingly, Middleditch called their cash "sellout money" in this glowing interview with the New York Times:

Did you ever expect that playing [Richard on Silicon Valley] would also land you a Verizon endorsement deal?

Ten, 15 years ago, if you were on a successful TV show or in a movie, and you did a commercial, everyone would go, “Oh, his career’s over.” But now, it’s the opposite. Studios look at it and go, this major corporation put a ton of money behind this person — he must be marketable. You get your sellout money and a nod from studios.

I don't for a minute think his is behavior could be characterized by ... that word. He just sounds clueless. Dangerous, of course, given the rest of this story, but clueless in that Hollywood way.

Maybe someone should talk with him about his choices. Yes, the cash is good, but cash isn't everything — unless you're (that word) Verizon, who pays him to cover for their crimes. Which he does.

GP
 

Verizon and the Death of the Internet

In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the Internet into "packages" — so much for email service, so much for social media, and so on. You don't buy the service, you don't get access (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

There are two stories here, one about net neutrality — which Trump's FCC is about to terminate — and one about a corruption of the process by which the FCC arrives that decision.

About net neutrality itself, consider an analogy. Should companies that control the telephone wires control (a) who gets to use them, and (b) what is allowed to be talked about? In the U.S. a long time ago, the answer was no. Telephone wires were declared "common carriers" in the same way that roads are common carriers — a resource that should be open and available to all.

The same with the transmission lines and pathways that carry the Internet, or so the thinking goes. For most of its life, the Internet was treated like a utility, and Internet "wiring" was treated like a common carrier. That made sense and happened almost automatically, since early Internet traffic was carried by phone wires (via modems and DSL), to which established common carrier rules already applied.

In short, in the early days, the Internet was treated the same way the phone system was treated — like a public utility whose transmission lines were mandated to remain open to anyone who wants to use them.

The Internet, Big Money and Political Speech

Then three things happened. First, "ecommerce" grew, becoming a sizeable percentage of both Internet traffic and company profit. The Internet wasn't just about communication, it was about Money, not just for large existing companies. Dedicated ecommerce giants were created — Amazon, for example, and Netflix. The people who love money more than anything now had a stake in how the Internet was treated under the law. Meaning, they had a stake in making sure their Internet traffic was special, privileged.

Second, Internet traffic spread from phone lines to wired coax and fiber optic cable networks (Comcast, Time Warner) and wireless channels like satellite transmission (DirecTV). Were cable and satellite systems considered "common carriers" under the law? No, and it made no original sense to consider them so, since traffic on those channels was typically one-way, from the company to the customer, and never in the other direction. Internet traffic, of course, changed all that, turning cable lines and satellite transmissions into virtual common carriers, even though they weren't considered as such under FCC regulations.

Finally, the Internet became an organizing tool for opponents, not just of Big Money, but of what I would broadly call "rule by the rich" — which includes, among other things, the establishments of both political parties. It's the Internet that allows dissidents all around the world to organize resistance to powerful elites, from Cairo to Beijing to Washington D.C. The world of power hates the Internet, and works in every way it can to subvert it.

All three of these changes made the Internet vulnerable to perversion no matter which party was in power, and open Internet, or net neutrality, advocates have been fighting ever since to keep the Internet as we now understand it open and free, which was always its developers' original intention.

The FCC and the Open Internet

President Obama's FCC looked for a while like it would write rules that benefited the wealthy, since his choice for FCC chair, Tom Wheeler, had ties strong to the industry. Surprisingly, though, the Wheeler-led FCC preserved net neutrality — the open Internet as we know it today.

Trump's FCC chair is also an industry insider, Ajit Pai, and this time the threat to net neutrality is almost certain to be realized.

The Federal Communications Commission took aim at a signature Obama-era regulation Tuesday, unveiling a plan that would give Internet providers broad powers to determine what websites and online services their customers see and use.

Under the agency’s proposal, providers of high-speed Internet services, such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, would be able to block websites they do not like and charge Web companies for speedier delivery of their content.

The FCC’s effort would roll back its net neutrality regulation which was passed by the agency’s Democrats in 2015 and attempted to make sure all Web content, whether from big or small companies, would be treated equally by Internet providers.

According to Free Press, the new FCC order would:

• End Title II protections and erase the three Net Neutrality rules passed at the FCC in 2015 and upheld in court last year.
• Legalize internet blocking and discrimination by Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, no questions asked.
• Permit throttling back the speeds of different kinds of websites and apps.
• Encourage paid prioritization — sticking most sites and apps in the slow lane and reserving the fast lane for the few wealthy companies that can afford special treatment.

Ajit Pai is a former general council at Verizon, and most recently a partner in a lobbying firm specializing in "communications practice." He also has strong anti-government views. If you consider him an industry advocate (or shill), you wouldn't be wrong.

From a Trump administration perspective, Ajit Pai is to the FCC what Scott Pruitt is to the EPA — a destroyer. His "new rules" are set to be decided in December.

Ajit Pai's FCC Is Stone-Walling NY AG Schneiderman

The second story here involves the corruption of the process by which the FCC will make its decision — in particular, the "public comment" process.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, in an open letter to Pai posted at Medium, writes (my emphasis):

In April 2017, the FCC announced that it would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning repeal of its existing net neutrality rules. Federal law requires the FCC and all federal agencies to take public comments on proposed rules into account — so it is important that the public comment process actually enable the voices of the millions of individuals and businesses who will be affected to be heard. That’s important no matter one’s position on net neutrality, environmental rules, and so many other areas in which federal agencies regulate.

In May 2017, researchers and reporters discovered that the FCC’s public comment process was being corrupted by the submission of enormous numbers of fake comments concerning the possible repeal of net neutrality rules. In doing so, the perpetrator or perpetrators attacked what is supposed to be an open public process by attempting to drown out and negate the views of the real people, businesses, and others who honestly commented on this important issue. Worse, while some of these fake comments used made up names and addresses, many misused the real names and addresses of actual people as part of the effort to undermine the integrity of the comment process. That’s akin to identity theft, and it happened on a massive scale.

My office analyzed the fake comments and found that tens of thousands of New Yorkers may have had their identities misused in this way. (Indeed, analysis showed that, in all, hundreds of thousands of Americans likely were victimized in the same way, including tens of thousands per state in California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and possibly others.) Impersonation and other misuse of a person’s identity violates New York law, so my office launched an investigation.

Successfully investigating this sort of illegal conduct requires the participation of the agency whose system was attacked. So in June 2017, we contacted the FCC to request certain records related to its public comment system that were necessary to investigate which bad actor or actors were behind the misconduct. We made our request for logs and other records at least 9 times over 5 months: in June, July, August, September, October (three times), and November.

We reached out for assistance to multiple top FCC officials, including you, three successive acting FCC General Counsels, and the FCC’s Inspector General. We offered to keep the requested records confidential, as we had done when my office and the FCC shared information and documents as part of past investigative work.

Yet we have received no substantive response to our investigative requests. None.

Ajit Pai and Trump's FCC are stone-walling the New York Attorney General, who is investigating an apparent scheme to grossly pervert the FCC public comment process so that it produces a result Agit Pai strongly favors. Whoever is behind the scheme, Ajit Pai is protecting them.

Are big-money "friends of Ajit Pai," or big-money "friends of Verizon," engaged in such a scheme? Agit Pai is acting like they are.

For all we know, he or a subordinate could be behind the scheme, or the author of it. 

The Death of the Internet — Mourned or Avenged?

I'll make one tenuous prediction. If Pai and Verizon's plan goes through, it's possible the tired and harried masses will accommodate themselves to it. After all, betting on the willingness of most Americans to surrender their liberties was an easy call, ever since 9/11 "changed everything."

But look at the graphic at the top. Note that social media content is blocked in Portugal unless you pay extra. Same with video, music, messaging and email. Will people really stand for that?

In addition, without net neutrality, some content — for example, political discussion groups and websites — may never be accessible, no matter what you may want to pay, turning the U.S. into China in that regard. Will people really stand for that?

So this prediction: I could be wrong, but it may just be that this shocks Americans so much that they won't stand for it. And in this case, "won't stand for it" happens to have a convenient and effective target for expression — and punishment.

Verizon.

Ajit Pai's former employer, and one of the key companies pushing for this change.

Are you a Verizon customer? A paying customer? Time to change that perhaps.

Is there a Verizon office near you? Care to make a little visit? I hear they welcome the public with open arms.

Maybe you could bring your friends, or organize a group excursion via social media ... while you still can.

GP
 

Hey New Yorkers, Let's Be Honest-- Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary And Bernie?

Yesterday we talked about how telecomm whores among our political elite passed a bill that could kill net neutrality. Every Republican and 5 wretched, corrupt Democrats-- Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Scott Peters (CA), Jim Costa (CA), Collin Peterson (MN) and Albio Sires (NJ)-- crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans.

Verizon is a major player in federal elections. In the 2014 cycle, their PAC handed out $2,783,015 to congressional candidates, including $30,000 each to the crooked party operations (DCCC, DSCC, NRCC, NRSC) that work to rig the system, as well as to the Blue Dog PA and the New Dem PAC. They gave fat bonuses to the most corruptible members of both parties through the member's Leadership PACs, criminal congressmembers like:

• Harry Reid
• Paul Ryan
• Fred Upton
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz
• Mitch McConnell
• Roy Blunt
• Steny Hoyer
• Chuck Schumer
• Claire McCaskill
• Joe Crowley

Overall they give significantly more to Republicans than to Democrats, although they are extremely generous to Democrats from the Republican-wing of the Democratic Party. So in 2014, for example, the gave Chris Van Hollen $3,000 but gave Donna Edwards nothing. They gave Patrick Murphy $4,500 and gave Alan Grayson nothing. And in recent House races they gave $2,000 to Donald Norcross but zero to Alex Law. $15,000 went to Debbie Wasserman Schultz but zero to Tim Canova. See a pattern? All but one of the 5 Democrats to vote for the GOP anti-consumer bill yesterday are all on the Verizon gravy-train (2014 + so far in 2016):

• Jim Costa- $7,000
• Scott Peters- $8,000
• Kyrsten Sinema- $3,000
• Albio Sires- $14,000

Last week Ben Norton reminded Salon readers that while Bernie was supporting the Verizon strikers, Hillary was, as with most of the bad players in American electoral politics, raking in the dough from the company. It's real ethical acrobatics to disdain Republicans for this kind of behavior while ignoring it in a Clinton campaign that stinks from the exact same kind of corruption. Norton reminds his readers that she is "a Wall Street-backed multimillionaire, served for six years on the board of directors of Walmart, the world’s largest company based on sales. She remained silent at a time when the mega-corporation was viciously cracking down on workers’ attempts to unionize. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has been unflinching in his support of the labor movement. Sanders has spoken passionately in support of striking Verizon workers on multiple occasions. The Hillary Clinton campaign, meanwhile, has received tens of thousands of dollars from Verizon executives and lobbyists." And, of course, she didn't just allow the Wall Street bansksters to funnel shady contributions to her by paying for "speeches;" she did one of those awesome $225,000 speeches for the Verizon union-busting excecutives as well.

Verizon has also given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which investigative journalist Ken Silverstein has referred to as a “so-called charitable enterprise [that] has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich family friends.”

Moreover, the Clinton Foundation has partnered directly with Verizon, which is notorious for its vehement opposition to unions. The corporation is a partner in the Clinton Health Matters Initiative, and said it is “proud to partner with the Clinton Foundation.”

Journalist Zaid Jilani reported in AlterNet in October, when Sanders spoke in support of a Verizon strike, that the corporation’s executives and lobbyists had poured money into Clinton’s campaign or PACs.

...While Clinton’s campaign is receiving Verizon cash, Sanders is delivering powerful impromptu speeches physically on Verizon workers’ picket lines.

“Today, you are standing up not just for justice for Verizon workers; you’re standing up for millions of Americans who don’t have a union,” he proclaimed at a New York City strike on April 13.

Sanders continued: “On behalf of every worker in America, those facing the same kind of pressure, thank you for what you are doing. We’re gonna win this thing!”

Clinton’s campaign released a statement of tepid support for the employees, stating “Verizon should come back to the bargaining table with a fair offer for their workers.” But her paltry remarks were overshadowed by Sanders’ heartfelt speech.

...Sanders called Verizon “just another major American corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans.”

What was left out of many media reports on the story, however, is that this very corporation has been overwhelmingly supportive of Clinton, to whom it has close ties.

Aside from the tens of thousands Verizon executives and lobbyists have given to the Clinton campaign and pro-Clinton PACs, the Clinton Foundation has worked directly with Verizon.

...While Sanders works with grassroots organizations like unions and stands with the workers themselves, the “New Democrat,” of which the Clintons are the progenitors and the embodiment, rubs shoulders with big business.

This critical distinction is reflected in the respective longtime contributors to past campaigns of the two presidential candidates.

According to data collected by the watchdog NGO Open Secrets, 18 (90 percent) of the top 20 contributors to Hillary Clinton from 1999 to 2015 were corporations or firms that provide services to corporations.

On the other hand, 19 (95 percent) of the top 20 contributors to Bernie Sanders from 1989 to 2015 were unions.

Perhaps this is not surprising given the Clintons’ history. On their first date, in fact, Bill and Hillary crossed a picket line.

Years later, just before her 50th birthday, she wanted NPR listeners to understand why she's still basically a conservative: "I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with... I'm very proud that I was a Goldwater Girl."

Meanwhile, Bernie is fighting-- as he has been fight his entire life-- the battles that Democrats and progressives fight, not the battles Republicans and conservatives fight. Watch that video, especially if you're a New York primary voter... and remember, Verizon gives massively to Republicans and to Blue Dogs, New Dems and the Clintons. There's a reason.

Verizon may have pulled back on that $2 fee for paying bills online, but this is a battle that's only begun

Companies like Verizon and Time Warner Cable don't need masks and guns to rob us, as long as they have pricing power over us.

"It’s not just about the money (though if you’re like me, you don’t have extra cash to be sending to a giant phone company in order to pay your own bills). It’s that Verizon thinks it can do anything to its customers, and that we’re powerless to stop it."

-- Molly Katchpole, in a change.com e-mail (see below)

"At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time."

-- Verizon CEO Dan Mead, in a statement

"Pricing power is the ability to raise your prices beyond the inflation rate and expect that most people will pay. It occurs in monopolies and oligopolies and in necessities during crises (how much is a loaf of bread worth if you'll die without it?)"

-- Ian Welsh, in his post "You don't get the payroll tax 'cut' "

by Ken

By now I'm sure you've heard about Verizon's latest plane -- already rescinded (we'll come back to this in a moment) -- for sticking its hand in our pockets. The plan was to slap on a $2 fee, as of January 15, every time a customer makes a one-time payment by credit card or debit card, either online or by phone. I had a feeling this wasn't going to happen, that the uproar would be too great, and indeed before I could even write about it, Verizon has pulled back ("Verizon scraps $2 fee to Pay Bills Online").

But you can be sure they'll be back -- Verizon and everyone else who's in a position to stick their hands in our pockets. Which is why the e-mail from Molly Katchpole of change.org seems to me every bit as pertinent now as when she sent it out.

Remember when together we beat Bank of America -- and the whole banking industry backed away from charging us just for using our debit cards?

Well, it’s time to get the band back together. Verizon just announced a new fee for paying your bills online. Really. Even though paying via internet is fully automated.

It’s not just about the money (though if you’re like me, you don’t have extra cash to be sending to a giant phone company in order to pay your own bills). It’s that Verizon thinks it can do anything to its customers, and that we’re powerless to stop it. (Spoiler alert: We’re not.)

By the way, I found out that a recent report says Verizon paid zero federal income tax from 2008-2010, and actually got almost a billion dollars in rebates from taxpayers. So they definitely shouldn't be nickel and diming us.

As a Verizon customer, I've started a new Change.org petition demanding that the phone company drop the fee for paying bills online. I'd be grateful if you signed it. You can click here to add your name. [Bear in mind, again, that Verizon has already rescinded the payment fee. -- Ed.]

We can win this. And, if we do, we’ll save a lot of money for millions of people, many of whom are like me - not exactly swimming in a billion dollars of rebates.

But we’ll also prove again that times are changing. People like us have real power when we organize together! Lots of people will see this petition, and maybe some of them will start their own, realizing that they can change something in their own community.

First things first, though. Let’s stop Verizon from charging us a fee to send them money. Click here to sign my petition.

Thanks! And happy new year!

- Molly Katchpole

As it happens, I'm not a Verizon customer, even though Verizon is my local phone company. I'm not a Verizon wireless customer either, simply because when I finally had to get a cell phone to maintain contact with my declining mother a thousand miles away, I picked a provider more or less blindly, and it was someone else. However, in the years when I was taking care of my mother's bills as well as my own, I came to depend heavily on online bill-paying, which was actually a godsend. Nowadays I probably pay 98 percent of my bills that way.

Which of course, multiplied by all those millions of other online billpayers, has contributed so much to the financial crisis of the Postal Service. I mean, with two sets of bills to pay by mail I used to feel as if I were buying first-class stamps by the truckload. Now that the USPS is out of the billpaying picture for so many of us, the people who collect our money are now in a position to soak us.

They don't even bother trying to pretend that they're just making up for costs incurred in processing these newfangled payments. As we all know, there aren't any such costs -- they're saving money, and I'm guessing tons of it. We're now plugging our payments directly into their computer systems. Why do we think they encouraged the transition to begin with? But as I say, they don't even pretend to have a rationale, at least not seriously. (I wouldn't be surprised if there was some lame-ass assertion to that effect buried somewhere in the original Verizon announcement. I didn't bother to dig into the innnards of it.)

No, as Molly says quite rightly in her e-mail, Verizon unveiled the plan because they thought they could get away with it. And while this time there was plenty of pushback, I wouldn't be surprised if they anticipated that, and already have Plans B through J ready to roll out when the times are ripe. Just the way the banks have been adding new sets of fees every month, based not on costs incurred or even necessarily their financial needs -- it's all based on what we can get away with.

As it happens, there's a standard economics term for this: pricing power. It's not something most of us think about, but for some time now as I've eavesdropped on my economically more literate friends and colleagues, it's a term I've heard come up a lot. And by chance Ian Welsh just wrote about it again. And as it happens, the example he uses, the case in point that set off this post, concerning the incessant price increase of Time Warner Cable, does strike me personally, because I am a TWC customer -- for cable TV, online service, and phone service. And for years now I've been watching my TWC bill soar, despite everything I've tried to do to control it, short of canceling the services, which I'm afraid I'm pretty well addicted to. The result is a love-hate relationship with the company -- they actually provide some pretty good services, which I rely on heavily, and yet I always feel that their only interest in me is how much more money they can squeeze out of me each month.

Because what am I going to do, cancel my cable (remember, in Manhattan we basically don't get TV reception without cable), online access, and phone service?

Anyway, here's Ian's take.

You don't get the payroll tax "cut"

2011 December 27

by Ian Welsh

There has been much ballyhoo about how there is a payroll tax cut and that an extra $40 per paycheck (every two week) will make a big difference.
Sure, if you get to keep it (via Americablog):

Some rates will be significantly higher, such as a 27.4% increase to $17 from $13.34 just to receive local broadcast channels. Others will be modestly higher, such as a 9.5% increase to $69 from $63 for broadcast plus basic cable channels, or a 7.3% increase to $58.99 from $54.99 for the digital video package. Compare that with a 3.5% annual inflation rate as of October. "The cable industry maintains a near-monopoly over television services," said Doug Heller, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group. "Their prices are completely disconnected from the real lives of their customers."

Pricing power is the ability to raise your prices beyond the inflation rate and expect that most people will pay. It occurs in monopolies and oligopolies and in necessities during crises (how much is a loaf of bread worth if you'll die without it?)

American consumers and workers, as a group, do not have pricing power and they do not have alternatives. They cannot charge more for their labor, because there is a huge surplus of workers. Because almost every major industry is an oligopoly or a local monopoly, as consumers, they cannot move from one company to another, as the companies are almost all in collusion and raising prices more or less in lockstep. There is no real competition on price in most industries (certainly not in telecom).

Until Americans have the ability to opt out, things will not get better. And tax cuts will do NOTHING. If you give money to ordinary people corporations with pricing power will take it away. If you give money to corporations or rich people, they will use it for leveraged financial plays (job destruction), offshoring or outsourcing (job destruction) or on luxury consumption like $50,000/night hotel rooms and private jets (some job creation, but destroying the quality of services you get.)

What the US needs right now is a massive tax increase on the rich and corporations. They are not spending their money usefully, and in the case of corporations are sitting on billions. In fact, every extra dollar of profit makes things worse, not better. If corps and the rich can't use money to create growth, and in fact are using it in destructive ways, you take it away and use it to create growth (assuming the Obama administration knew how to do that, which it doesn't. But theoretically, assuming competent individuals of good will in power. Yes, you can laugh hysterically now.)

If you're not accustomed to thinking in terms of pricing power, the way I'm not, now is a good time to start. It really is essential to trying to understand the world around us. Not that, in the grand scheme of things, there's much you or I can do about it. At the least, though, we can be vigilant for more schemes like this Verizon one, but I don't kid myself that we can do more than stick a finger in the dike. Still, maybe -- and I really mean maybe -- there's some value in knowing how our guts are being squeezed out of us.

#

Verizon GOP Xmas Party

- by Juan

The Verizon "All I want for Christmas is my 20 MHz" Holiday bash for the GOP was held yesterday. I was lucky to have as a housemate, not only a fly on the wall but a fly who brought home some scallops wrapped in bacon, heavenly cheese puffs and some divine crab cakes which I am devouring as I blog. My housemate tells me that these assholes get the royal treatment from Verizon every year. It's always over the top especially when it's tied to something like a reward for bitchslapping AT&T. But this year Verizon also needs the GOP to allow for them to secure more bandwidth with the 4G quickness, as it were. Thus, partisan holiday lobbying cheer. Feeling the warmth? They'll probably have Newt's pickaninny housekeeping kids clean up after the soiree in exchange for some heating bill vouchers, but I digress.

Anyway, my housemate tells me that he detected an overwhelming silence as the Republicans tried sounding out an actual agenda over clinking cocktail glasses. Grasping for an elusive positive while confronted with a "Sophie's Choice" dilemma. Newt or Willard? This party was full of House members and many have all actually worked with Newt. They are shielded by and invested in but not blinded by the Republican media machine (which is far more influential than any so called lame stream media.) They know, first hand, that Newt is a time bomb. "Running against Obama" might be a rallying cry and a sufficient curtain behind which to hide for the media's sake. But while all dressed up and all liquored up, there was a decided lack of delusion where one would expect it to thrive. The process is winding down to Willard and fucking Newt! Trump has re-injected himself as Grand Dame. They just
couldn't get it up. Not with beer goggles. Or "the donald" working the poll (which he says he learned about at Wharton... who knew?)

My friend says there was almost no talk of Big Daddy Cain's going out with (or because of) a bang. Or Romney, who probably was not even invited. Bachman? nope. Perry? Who? Santorum? [crickets...] There was no cheerleading which one might expect at an all-Republican, way open bar, black tie, holiday hoedown. Could it be that the sinking is sinking in? I won't hold my breath but I did enjoy having their crab cakes and eating them too!

REPUBLICAN POLITICIAN, EX-CONGRESSMAN MARK SILJANDER INDICTED FOR CONSPIRING WITH THE TALIBAN AGAINST THE U.S.

Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar-- If you thought Dana Rohrabacher was the only Republican congressman supporting the Taliban... think again

We don't get a lot of Republicans at DWT. You know when they're here though because they squeal like stuck pigs when we point out that Republican politicians are so obsessed with power, greed, selfishness and the narrowest imaginable partisanship that they commonly cross over into treason. Oh, how the Bushies and Rovians hate hearing that and oh, how they whine and fume! And deny. But even the craziest of far right extremist maniacs isn't denying today.

But how could she? A former Republican congressman, Mark Siljander, was indicted this morning as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to a dangerous al Qaeda and Taliban supporter and war lord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The Chicago-born Siljander was a crooked real estate broker from Michigan who was elected to Congress in a special election when David Stockman resigned in 1981. He was re-elected twice and then defeated in a Republican primary by current Congressman Fred Upton. At that point Reagan appointed Siljander to the U.S. delegation to the UN General Assembly. He moved to Virginia and ran for Congress in 1992 and was defeated by Jim Moran.

Currently he runs a DC consulting firm, Global Strategies, Inc, and has a talk show. He wrote a book scheduled for release in June, A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide. He's an evangelical nutcase who seems to have fallen in love with radical Islam of late. It isn't that far of a jump, in essence, from Jerry Falwell to Mullah Omar.

The Republican politician was paid $50,000 to "lobby" for what Republicans usually call Islamofascists. The money had been stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Siljander is hardly the first Republican politician to have stolen money from the U.S. government during Bush's regime-- and that isn't why he was indicted today. He will be facing 46 counts on charges ranging from money laundering and conspiracy to obstruction of justice and lying to federal investigators.

One more thing, if you check the references for Siljander's shady company (linked above), you find some very unsavory characters, starting with ex-President George H.W. Bush, Ed Meese, Bob McFarlane, and current presidential hopeful and all around corrupt slimebag Duncan Hunter (R-CA) to an assortment of some of the worst congressional miscreants to ever darken the halls of Congress: James Inhofe (R-OK) and Frank Wolf (R-VA)-- as well as Lawrence Babbio, the president of Verizon who the Bush Regime and their congressional allies are trying to grant retroactive immunity for illegally spying on American citizens. Nice bunch! (One has to wonder if any of the Republican money sent to help the terrorists was responsible for this.)

Imagine if this had been Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama. Do you think you would have seen anything else on TV in the last 48 hours?

BEYOND POLITICS-- THE CASE FOR CHRIS DODD

While Beltway Insiders are flocking to Hillary Clinton's campaign to keep things as they are, Dodd's vow to take on that Insider Establishment and filibuster the slimy deal worked out between the Bush Regime and status quo, bribe-besotted senators of both disgraceful political parties, has electrified many grassroots and netroots activists who have heretofore been yawning complacently about the presidential election.

Are you looking for someone to support for president who you can actually be proud of? Senator Dodd explains why what he's doing is important, not just for Democrats, but for all Americans who aren't eager to see the further erosion of our basic constitutional rights. Let's put aside the partisan bickering for a moment and all get behind Chris Dodd's brave and selfless stand. Watch:

FISA BILL MOVES TO THE SENATE-- WHERE IT GETS EVEN WORSE

Yesterday we spent some time going over the debate in the House about FISA and how the Bush Regime uses it for unconstitutional domestic spying. Today the action moves to the Senate. I'm not thrilled by the tenor so far. The draft bill includes amnesty and retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that broke the law. So even though there were at least two companies that actually stood up to Bush-- and for the Constitution-- and refused to comply, the companies that went along, especially mega-campaign contributors AT&T and Verizon, get retroactive immunity for anything they’ve done wrong in cooperating in illegal domestic spying for the past six years. (Note: the criminal Bush Regime even penalized Qwest for standing up for the Constitution and refusing to get drawn into their illegal schemes.)

Further, Taylor Marsh points out that both the House and the Senate "cave in to Bush’s fear-mongering in a major way: it does NOT required the government to get an individual warrant before wiretapping Americans' phones and emails. Instead, it allows for program or basket 'warrants,' which aren't really warrants at all. They're the modern-day equivalent of allowing government agents to sit in our living rooms, recording our personal conversations. Only they're more frightening, because the government now has the capacity to monitor us remotely and without our knowledge, and to save the information in a secret database forever."

Last night we heard from half a dozen Democratic office-holders and candidates who are outraged by this. Matt's got a great overview at OpenLeft that he and I worked on together. As this debate moves over to the Senate, I thought it would be especially useful to highlight a statement from Maine's Congressman Tom Allen since he's running for the Senate seat currently occupied by Bush rubber stamp hack Susan Collins. Here's what Rep. Allen said:

"There is no question that the Bush Administration is responsible for an unprecedented and widespread infringement upon basic civil liberties. It is equally disturbing to know that phone companies took part in this. Just as we must hold Bush and his Administration accountable, we cannot let private sector businesses off the hook for breaking the law."

Two especially good progressive candidates-- Donna Edwards (MD-04) and Dan Grant (TX-10)-- have had to spend a good deal of time thinking about this issue because of the opponents they are facing. Dan is challenging rubber stamp Republican Mike McCaul who is more the representative in Congress for his father-in-law's company, Clear Channel Communications, than he is the representative for the good people of his central Texas district.

"I spent the past decade helping Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and other trouble spots around the world try to strengthen their law enforcement systems and constitutional protections.  Little did I think my own government would violate those very rights by offering amnesty to telecommunications firms back home.

"My opponent Mike McCaul, whose family owns Clear Channel Communications, bears a special responsibility not to rubberstamp the Bush-Cheney administration's attempt to let his and other big telecom firms break the law. Is he representing Central Texas or his family's monopoly? His failure to speak out on this outrageous attempt to let unreasonable search and seizure go unchecked provides the answer-- Mike McCaul is the Congressman from Clear Channel."

And Donna Edwards is running against one of the big telecom companies worst whores, Al Wynn, a man who has financed his career with their bribes and gifts. Her comments are worth thinking about too:

"Congress must not give in to the President on the issue of immunity for telecommunications companies who have violated the law. These companies and their powerful lobbyists have given generous contributions to members of Congress including Congressman Wynn. They must be held accountable. These companies had a choice and some chose to break the law and violate our civil liberties. No amount of money or influence should prevent the companies and their senior decision makers from being held accountable if they broke the law. Corporations cannot be allowed to break the law under the thinly veiled guise of 'national security' and walk away without penalty."

Of course it isn't just candidates who are alarmed. People For the American Way has a new campaign they just launched, Help Congress To Grow A Spine. Worth checking out, especially since they say that the Senate version looks like it will be even worse than the House version, more in line with all of Bush's demands. Thanks Jay Rockefeller, a senator from West Virginia is practically owned by AT&T. By the way, if you want to call him and the members of the Select Committee on Intelligence who might be persuadable, this is a reliable list.

*Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Chairman — (202) 224-6472
*Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — (202) 224-3841
*Sen. John Warner (R-VA) — (202) 224-2023
*Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) — (202) 224-5244
*Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) — (202) 224-4224
*Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) — (202) 224-5623
*Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) — (202) 224-4654
*Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — (202) 224-5344
*Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) — (202) 224-5274

The guys we know we can already count on-- Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)-- plus the total Bush hacks who would rather cut off their own peckers than go against Bush-- like Saxby Chamberpot (R-GA) and Richard Burr (R-NC)-- aren't on the call list.


UPDATE: NOT ALL DEMOCRATS THINK HOLDING THE TELECOMS ACCOUNTABLE IS A GOOD IDEA-- ESPECIALLY NOT THE ONES WHO ARE ON THE PAYROLL

Yesterday Matt Stoller and I started contacting candidates we talk to regularly about their read of this FISA bill Congress is working on. As you can see, we've had some great answers from the candidates who have been endorsed by Blue America and BlogPAC. But I got a curious e-mail from the manager of one of our most forthright and combative young candidates. The pollster for the campaign Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, quintessential Inside the Beltway corporate hacks who have helped make the Democrats an Insider party rather than a true party of working families, started screaming that the candidate shouldn't cooperate with Blue America and BlogPAC and should just not take a stand. Hit that link and look at who their corporate clients are and you'll see why this "Democratic" polling firm is telling candidates not to take a stand on FISA.


LET'S END TODAY'S FISA STORY ON A HIGH, EVEN VISIONARY NOTE-- FROM ANDREW RICE, SENATE CANDIDATE FOR SENATOR FROM OKLAHOMA

Andrew's statement sums the whole FISA debate up perfectly. Can you imagine having a guy who said this in the Senate instead of a yutz like Inhofe?

"Having lost my brother in the World Trade Center on 9/11, I am very sensitive to the importance of the U.S. intelligence community's ability to effectively monitor foreign terrorist targets. However, our country must preserve our constitutional principles and such monitoring must be accomplished without compromising the civil liberties of American citizens. I am hopeful that Congress is on the verge of finally properly scrutinizing the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance programs, and can create reasonable legislation that provides our government the tools it needs to monitor legitimate international threats, while at the same time not compromising the personal liberties of law-abiding Americans. Members of congress must ensure that any surveilance of U.S Citizens be granted with the proper warrant. If they fail to accomplish this, then we will have lost something very sacred about America and what our system of values is supposed to provide for all Americans.

The provision for corporate immunity for the telecom companies who may have violated federal law is unacceptable and unfortunately another example of the Bush administration wanting the legislative branch to craft legislation that protects the executive branch from its own incompetance. "

WHY DID VERIZON BACK DOWN IN THEIR BID TO CENSOR PRO-CHOICE TEXTING?

As Wendy Melillo writes in the new issue off Adweek, the Bush Regime, and the dysfunctional proto-society that thrives on it, are threatening democracy with their mass media tactics and policies. They're not at the Myanmar level of repression yet... but so far they haven't been tested-- and "their tactics lately are equally threatening. If we think our speech is truly free, we are deluding ourselves."

Nothing illustrates the chilling effect of media consolidation more than Verizon Wireless' move last week to block the messages of the abortion rights group Naral, claiming it had the right to prohibit "controversial or unsavory" text from being carried across it network.

That Verizon reversed its decision the next day offers little comfort, since the company has not made its text-messaging policy available to the public and claims it still has the right to decide what messages can be transmitted in the future.

Verizon is among the carriers on the forefront of addressing this issue. How does the company draw the line between what's permissible and what isn't? Gun messages from the National Rifle Association might be fine, but abortion messages are out?

The TV and radio networks using the public's airwaves reserve the right to prohibit anything that is distasteful when it comes to sex, offensive content and advocacy issues. But they argue that they do this because they operate on behalf of the public. Cellphones are a different story.

The AdWeek story makes a great case for Net Neutrailty and attributes Verizon's backing down on blocking the text messaging from Choice groups to the vigilance and efforts of citizen activists and bloggers.

Verizon will have to invest some serious time and money to recover from the damage it just did to its own corporate reputation. Look at what the blogosphere thinks is the real reason Verizon made this decision in the first place.

Ouch. As for executives who don't think the blogosphere is important when it comes to corporate reputation, they fail to understand their customers.

Glad I could be of service.


UPDATE: BYRON DORGAN TO THE RESCUE?

Timothy Karr has a great wrap-up of the whole Vernon brouhaha from last week over at HuffPo and he agrees that the company's transparent damage control offensive isn't fooling anyone but "is just the latest example in a laundry list of phone company efforts to block, filter or interfere with the free flow of information on cell phones and the Internet." Karr points to John Dingell (D-MI), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) as 3 lawmakers who are taking this serious threat seriously. Dorgan: "Verizon may have reversed its initial decision in this case, and I'm glad they did. But the fact that they were willing and able to take their initial action is very troublesome. The network service providers often claim that the effort to ensure network neutrality is a solution in search of a problem, but this is fresh evidence that the problem is real and with us now. We need to protect network neutrality by law." Yep; couldn't agree more-- and people need to wake up to this before its too late the compromised legislators give in to big money corporate imperatives. Whether it's the entire Republican congressional caucus or rogue corrupt Democrats like Al Wynn (D-MD), this giant telecommunications companies can't be allowed to interfere with basic American freedoms that have evolved technologically.

WHY DID VERIZON REALLY AX NARL'S TEXT MESSAGING? MEET TOM TAUKE, ANTI-CHOICE FANATIC AND VERIZON EXECUTIVE VP

Verizon claims it was-- oops!-- all a great big misunderstanding; they meant no harm and it was certainly nonpartisan. Big mistakey-poo. Sorry, sorry, sorry; you can trust us. You won't read about it in the NY Times and you won't read about it in the Washington Post-- more because their reporters are lazy and coopted by the comfy system they thrive in than because of politics per se-- but Verizon did not make a big mistakey-poo; they were out for revenge and out for partisan gain.

Today's front page Times coverage was very tepid and... what's the opposite of hard-hitting? Soft-hitting?

Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless last week rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

But the company reversed course this morning, saying it had made a mistake.
“The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident,” Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, said in a statement.

“It was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy,” Mr. Nelson said. “That policy, developed before text messaging protections such as spam filters adequately protected customers from unwanted messages, was designed to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children.”

Mr. Nelson noted that text messaging is “harnessed by organizations and individuals communicating their diverse opinions about issues and topics” and said Verizon has “great respect for this free flow of ideas.”

Do they? Are you reassured? The Times reporter may be. But DWT readers better not be. Maybe he was satisfied by reading on the Verizon Foundation website how antiseptically neutral the company is when it comes to... ewwww... politics. But that's a big pack o' lies.

One doesn't have to look very hard or very long-- not that that matters to the Times or Post-- to get to the root of the problem between NARL and Verizon. Sniffing around among Verizon's top political donors, the one who stands out is Executive Vice President and chief lobbyist Thomas Tauke, a former far right Republican congressman (1979-91) from Iowa. When he ran unsuccessfully against U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin in 1990, the virulently anti-choice Tauke was publicly targeted for defeat by NARL, which spent at least $100,000 on behalf of the pro-choice Harkin who won with 54% of the vote. Planned Parenthood and NARL both campaigned against Tauke and his hateful constitutional amendment criminalizing abortion. Tauke talked about NARL a lot and harbors great hatred towards them for ending what he thought was a promising political career on the fringes of the extreme right.

Tauke and his family have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to far right anti-choice Republicans. He personally has made $192,032 in major political donations to Republicans. Dennis Strigl, president and vice chairman, and his wife Amanda have given over $63,000 in politcal donations, primarily to Republicans. I guess the traditional media doesn't find this relevant, certainly not as relevant as Norman Hsu donating money to Hillary Clinton, which has been ginned up into a month-long major media clusterfuck. But had the Times or Post bothered to check, back copies of the National Journal from July, 1990 and March, 1991 they certainly would have found the context of the Verizon jihad against NARL. In fact, the Post wouldn't have even had to leave home! On October 15, 1989 the Post ran a story, "Abortion-Rights Group Targets Nine '90 Races," which quotes Kate Michelman, then NARL Executive Director, talking about targeting anti-choice Republicans. "To elected officials, we say: If you remain out of step on abortion rights, you will soon be out of a job." This was a departure for NARL, which previously had only rewarded their friends, not gone after their enemies. The Post story mentions "The 'NARAL Nine' target list includes:…Rep. Thomas J. Tauke (R-Iowa), who is challenging abortion-rights supporter Sen. Tom Harkin (D)."

In one of the National Journal stories (July 23, 1990) Tauke is quoted saying "When NARAL comes into the state, I'm not going to sit back and take it." Apparently he hasn't moved on.

But the real takeaway here is that-- like with the recent AT&T/Pearl Jam censorship travesty, these mega-telecoms, who spend millions of dollars on politcians, cannot, must not, be trusted to ever do what is right for the public. This disgraceful incident underlines the absolute need for Net Neutrality. Remember, text messaging is an important new tool for advocacy organizations seeking to educate and alert their members. It is constitutionally protected political speech. Verizon's very partisan decision to block this new form of political speech interferes with its users' right to get information and is clearly illegal. Do you think the recipients of their campaign largesse will do anything about it? You know, the ones who condemned the anti-war citizens' ad yesterday?