Most of the time people want to speak to their government about the decisions being made –
Most of the time we don’t get a chance
Here is a chance to have your voice heard.
The FCC – your phones, your TV, your radio, your internet, community broadband.
This is the big stuff, important stuff, the big dollar stuff we use daily and you can possibly make a difference by signing a petition.
Most times the voice of the public is ignored in the area of appointments – where the voices of the billionaire telecoms get their way.
Most times the voice of the public is ignored in the running of the FCC – where the voices of the billionaire telecoms get their way. Much of that problem stems from who is running the FCC – which is usually executives pulled from the large telecoms or lobbyists who worked for the telecoms.
A new appointment to chair the FCC is coming up and we have the chance to let the White House know who we want considered for the position.
I am asking that you look at the information that I am giving you below and hopefully, you will agree that signing the petition is the thing to do.
Please read the snips I have provided, then read the articles and after that - please consider signing the petition.
White House.gov Petition Text:
Appoint Susan Crawford as FCC Chairman
America is ranked #16 in the world for broadband penetration, speed and price. Where high-speed service is available, it is often expensive and unreliable — and frequently there is only one monopoly service provider.
The United States needs new leadership at the Federal Communications Commission to help establish a competitive regulatory climate and to encourage new entrants into the market. Susan Crawford has spent her career studying the global telecommunications industry and has a keen sense of the history that brought us to this point.
Ms. Crawford would facilitate changes at the Federal level which could help America become the leader in global telecommunications innovation again. President Obama, please appoint her as FCC Chairman in 2013
.
100,000 signatures are needed.
Please consider signing the White House Petition
Susan Crawford
Susan Crawford is the (Visiting) Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard's Kennedy School and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. She was a board member of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2005-2008, and served as Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy in 2009.
Here's one of many articles about Susan Crawford's beliefs about broadband:
Should broadband Internet service be treated as a basic utility in the United States, like electricity, water, and traditional telephone service? That’s the question at the heart of an important and provocative new book by Susan Crawford, a tech policy expert and professor at Cardozo Law School. In Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly in the New Guilded Age, released Tuesday by Yale University Press, Crawford argues that the Internet has replaced traditional phone service as the most essential communications utility in the country, and is now as important as electricity was 100 years ago.
“Truly high-speed wired Internet access is as basic to innovation, economic growth, social communication, and the country’s competitiveness as electricity was a century ago,” Crawford writes, “but a limited number of Americans have access to it, many can’t afford it, and the country has handed control of it over to Comcast and a few other companies.”
SNIP
By taking on one of the most powerful industries in the United States, Crawford knows that she will not endear herself to the CEOs of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon. “I’m not going to be on their Christmas card lists this year,” she quips. And given the entrenched influence of these companies in Washington, D.C., many — if not most — of her policy prescriptions seem a tad far-fetched. Is the U.S. government about to mandate low-cost broadband Internet access for all Americans? It’s not likely any time soon. But her book does provide a vivid and eye-opening description of what ails America’s cable and telecom market, and for that reason, it should be required reading for anyone interested in tech policy. Crawford’s book also lays out a road-map for solutions, quixotic as they may be. But, as Crawford says: “There is always hope.”
And there is this - from a piece from muninetworks.org
What is our FCC Chair doing about this problem? He helped Comcast to grow even bigger, with more market power to crush those rivals that he is calling on to build gigabit test beds.
Chairman G wants to spur hundreds of David's while refusing to curb Goliath's power. Bad news, Mr. Chairman, Goliath actually wins most of the time. Rather than doing his job, Genachowski is begging others to do it for him.
More and more, he sounds more like a cable lobbyist than a public servant. This is actually a pattern: the head cable lobbyist in DC is a former FCC Chief himself and a recent FCC Commissioner left for a job at Comcast just months after pushing for the Comcast/NBC merger.
The revolving door helps to explain why the FCC has refused to take meaningful action that might threaten the cozy relationship between supposed competitors that have divided the market to their benefit.
SNIP
We need an FCC Chair that will wrestle with the real problem: far too much of our essential telecommunications infrastructure is controlled by de facto monopolies unaccountable to the communities that depend upon them.
Having Susan Crawford as the Chair of the next FCC would do wonders to making the FCC responsive to the needs of all America, not just the cable and telephone companies.
Snips from an older piece from Susan’s blog on HuffPo
"The television is just another appliance -- it's a toaster with pictures." That statement was made by Mark Fowler, Ronald Reagan's FCC Chairman who spearheaded a deregulatory trend that has continued for over three decades. … Fowler and the FCC have one thing right: with markets like these, consumer choice is toast.
It's as if we've allowed General Electric to have a monopoly on selling electricity to your home and then allowed them to leverage this advantage into the market for their toasters. Imagine the spiel: "If you buy our GE toaster, you get higher-speed electricity that will cook your bagels faster. But only our bagels fit in the GE toaster." Today, rather than tangling with your tastebuds, Comcast is making decisions that affect what your ears hear, what your eyes see, and what your keyboard can reach. Comcast can give its own video on demand service an advantage via its Internet connections by removing it from the constraints of a monthly data cap. But unaffiliated content like Netflix - that'll cost you extra. It's the price you'll pay because you like a different brand of bread.
We are stuck in this primitive state with company lobbyists who are buttering up policymakers just to jam consumers.
Read another of her many articles here:
The House GOP Plan to Gut the FCC
By Susan Crawford 03.22.12 3:56 PM
Surely we shouldn’t slip farther behind as a country to serve the interests of a few large companies.
In 1901, Republican Theodore Roosevelt took on another utility industry that had consolidated and was gouging Americans. “The railway,” he said, “is a public servant. Its rates should be just to and open to all shippers alike. The government should see to it that within its jurisdiction this is so and should provide a speedy, inexpensive, and effective remedy to that end.”
Leadership within the FCC and oversight by Congress will provide those remedies. Strangling the FCC’s ability to regulate will drive us backwards.
She was on Obama’s transition team for the FCC.
Susan Crawford, Kevin Werbach Named Obama's FCC Review Team Leads
Nov 14, 2008 7:01 PM PST
And finally here’s a snip from the NY Times– please take the time to read the whole thing.
Op-Ed Contributor
An Internet for Everybody
By SUSAN CRAWFORD
Published: April 10, 2010
But if the F.C.C.’s labeling of high-speed Internet access providers undermines its ability to tell them what to do, how can it ensure that consumers get the information they need about real speeds and prices? How can it ensure that basic communications services — which, these days, means Internet access — are widely available?
The F.C.C. has the legal authority to change the label, as long as it can provide a good reason. And that reason is obvious: Americans buy an Internet access service based on its speed and price — and not on whether an e-mail address is included as part of a bundle. The commission should state its case, relabel high-speed Internet access as a “telecommunications service,” and take back the power to protect American consumers.
After all that reading –
ask yourself the question –
Who do we want for the Chair of the FCC?
An executive from Comcast?
A lobbyist for the telecom industry?
A white haired old guy who doesn’t understand technology?
A white haired old guy who doesn’t care what the public wants or needs?
OR
Someone that just might be a real public servant?
Someone who apparently understands the needs of the public?
Someone like Susan Crawford.
100,000 signatures are needed.
Please consider signing the White House Petition
If you choose to sign it – please re-tweet to all your friends and family suggesting that they do the research and possibly sign it also.
THANKS!!!