“After moving to a new building on the corner of 11th Street and New York Avenue, Google’s Washington office got a face lift that made it as hip and colorful as the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. But Google’s top Washington lobbyist, Richard Whitt, won’t be spending much time amid the bouncy balls, LEGO bricks, and foosball tables this autumn. Come October, Whitt expects three times the usual number of meetings with members of Congress and Obama Administration officials. ‘Google and the others on our side will step up our advocacy,’ he says,” Olga Kharif reports for BusinessWeek.
“Why the flurry of activity? Whitt is gearing up for what’s likely to be the biggest telecom regulatory fight in more than a decade: prying open the nation’s $200 billion wireless networks to a broader range of handsets and software-based tools, games, and entertainment. On one side are such tech companies as Google, Amazon.com (, and Skype, which want to ensure that their services are as widely available as possible on the gamut of wireless devices,” Kharif reports.
“Lining up against them are communications providers, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which oppose regulations that might constrain how they set prices, run expensive networks, and help design devices,” Kharif reports. “‘Virtually everyone has a stake in this,’ says Darrell West, a vice-president at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. ‘This will be the mother of all political battles.'”
Full article here.
… and the congressmen will have their hands out for any and all payoffs.
Then they will screw everybody. Welcome to DC.
When it comes to wireless, Congress is clueless.
Barney Frank in control of your phone??? Brings strange pictures to my mind.
Ron,
I think that goes for just about everything
(ron – my first was in response to your first)
@ron
Thank you ron “the Republican”.
You know ron, we get it – you don’t like Democrats or “Liberals”. Hey MDNers, let’s give a round of applause for ron, who never misses a chance to inject partisan politics into every topic he can.
Note to ron (as if he’ll really listen to me): This is an Apple-centric tech blog – please do us all a huge favor and leave your petty, partisan politics at the door. Your incessant, silly, off-topic political jabs don’t contribute in any positive way to the dialog we all come here to read and participate in.
ron? ron? are you listening ron? …
This will be the mother of all political battles.
Until the next big battle comes along.
I’ve been watching The National Parks series on PBS this week, and was struck by how greedy, stupid, short-sighted, venal, and etc. Congress was over 100 years ago.
Somethings never change.
DataDude this is a highly political topic. Ron might inject politics into a lot of topics where it does not belong, but this topic is inherently political.
Barney Frank in charge of your proctologist??? You’d never be able to get an appointment.
@ twilightmoon
Yes, this is a highly political topic, but the discussion doesn’t have to degenerate into petty, partisan politics, which if you look at the bulk of ron’s past posts, are ron’s speciality. I assume that most MDNers are just as tired as I am of reading the juvenile political potshots that folks like ron let fly every time a topic comes up that is even remotely political (and actually even sometimes when the topics AREN’T remotely political).
This whole net neutrality issue is very complicated with reasonable and differing viewpoints on both “sides” (the web-based businesses vs. the telecoms, etc.) and it has very significant implications for everyone whose work or play depends on the internet. However, making childish negative comments about Barney Frank adds absolutely nothing to the discussion.
1982, 2009: Networks Find Identical Unemployment Numbers ‘Good’ News for Obama, But ‘All Bad’ for Reagan
Unemployment is currently at a 26-year-high of 9.7 percent and expected to continue rising. The last president to govern with such high unemployment was President Ronald Reagan.
But in 1982, when unemployment was rising similarly to the way it has in 2009 the network news media were merciless quoting attacks from Democrats, union leaders and the unemployed to attack Reagan’s “sadistic” fiscal policies.
2009 was a different story, for a different president. Even though unemployment has shot up from 8.1 percent since February, network reporters looked for “hopeful signs” of an economic turnaround in their jobs report.
The Business & Media Institute just released a Special Report: Networks Flip Flop on Jobs that exposes that double-standard of unemployment coverage from 1982 and 2009 (See video below). The full report is available here, but here are some of our major findings:
Network Reports 13 Times More Negative Under Reagan than Under Obama: An overwhelming majority of stories mentioning the Reagan administration were negative 91 percent (20 out of 22) while only 7 percent (1 out of 15) of Obama administration mentions were negative. Additionally, Obama mentions were favorable 87 percent of the time, but there were zero positive mentions of Reagan.
Networks Connect Reagan White House to Negative Jobs Numbers Almost Twice as Often as Obama: Unemployment stories in 1982 mentioned the Reagan administration 71 percent of the time (22 out of 31), but 2009 stories mentioned the Obama administration only 40 percent of the time (14 out of 35).
Charles Gibson: 9.4% Unemployment ‘Good News’ (Obama) and also ‘All’ Bad (Reagan): The unemployment rate reached 9.4 percent under Reagan and Obama. But ABC’s Charles Gibson covered the identical rate very differently in 1982 than in 2009. Gibson told viewers May 7, 1982, “[T]here really isn’t any good news in the statistics. All the numbers are bad.” But by 2009, Gibson had turned into an optimist citing “good news” June 5 and “hope the economy may be finally turning the corner” Aug. 7.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/julia-seymour/2009/10/01/1982-2009-networks-find-identical-unemployment-numbers-good-news-obam
TheDataDude, Elmer – Tristan, or whatever your name is, the only politics in this country IS partisan politics, in case you haven’t noticed. If we are not diligent we’ll be silenced in the future. Just like the peons in Venezuela are. Watch Glenn Beck, he’ll let you in on the plot.
I’m ready to go wireless. DataDude – really.
I agree with The DataDude, close-minded, partisan rants are worthless and a colossal waste of time. The existence of people like lowercase ron and hypocrite rush and his ilk provides some justification for the beliefs of the far left in the political spectrum. After all, the further away you are from agreeing with ron, the better…
Hey Ron/F’ing (same people?): Get a friggin’ clue. Just because you can quote numbers doesn’t mean that your comparisons mean anything. Reagan was boosting defense spending while cutting taxes (for a few) and claiming that the benefits would trickle down to everyone else. He jacked the deficit out of sight and, in combination with Congress, set us up for the precedent-setting Savings & Loan bailout. There is absolutely no valid reason of which I am aware to be a Reagan lover. He was nothing special, and yet another example of the mystery in how Americans choose their political leaders.