Bruce Kushnick, Chairman of
TeleTruth has been fighting phone company lies since 1992. His latest book,
$200 Billion Broadband Scandal covers the various ways the phone companies have overcharged their customers. (The book also has a
blog.)
I was familiar with networks built purely as lobbying efforts, Potemkin villages to be torn down after favorable legislation was passed (Verizon FIOS could yet be one such effort).
I was familiar with fraudulent accounting, missing equipment, and the Bell practice of locating exchanges in the most expensive real estate and then having consumers pay for the cost in raised rates.
I was familiar with the "rate freeze" strategy which prevents price drops in a deflationary industry, keeping costs high.
But even I was surprised to read on p.262-263 that phone company expenses reported to regulators as the cost of doing business, expenses that determined the rates the phone company could charge, included lobbying efforts.
So if you've wondered where the money was coming from for all those million dollar per year lobbyists, now you know.
The money came from you. It came from your phone bills. It probably also came from your gasoline bills (regulators ensure gas prices are kept high just as they pad phone bills), your electric bills, and just about everything else that's part of your cost of living.
Don't be deceived into thinking the corporations are paying these bills. It's you.
It really makes you think, doesn't it? If we all got together, and paid just a little bit of money, each of us, we could probably have our own politicians and lobbyists! Imagine what we could do! Oh, right, that's why I'm here. Cheers.