News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Mar. 8, 2013: We find the real Barack Obama not the hype in issues big and small.
First a few definitions for this week’s commentary:
Jackal: a person who serves or collaborates with another especially in the commission of base acts.
Oligarchy: A small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.
So why is Barack Obama a jackal for the big telecom companies? Read on.
And why is it important if that is even a serious question? It is important most of all because it is illustrative of the entire character of Obama and his Administration. In the more focused issue of this commentary, it is as important as you think the Internet is and where Big Business interests really lie; and it’s not with USA.
Too much of Big Business has only one allegiance – GREED. And once again this OLIGARCHY which controls America is again aided and abetted by their own JACKAL – President Barack Obama. And it is insidious!
Here are the facts and my source this week – the highly respected Financial Times, and their article on 2/24/13, “ Corporate Ties Bind U.S. To A Slow Internet.”
Allow me to “richly” quote from this article to inform us all of the Truth.
The Financial Times article begins …
“If Dwight Eisenhower had General Motors and George W. Bush had Halliburton, Barack Obama arguably has Comcast. US presidents are often linked to one or two corporations that donate a lot of money to them and then benefit from their actions. Comcast, which is America’s largest cable television and Internet provider and is a near monopoly in most of its largest cities, is no exception.”
“The company’s meteoric rise in the past decade parallels the relative decline of internet service in the US. In the late 1990s the US had the fastest speeds and widest penetration of almost anywhere – unsurprisingly given that it invented the platform. Today the US comes 16th, according to the OECD, with an average of 27 megabits per second, compared with up to quadruple that in countries such as Japan and the Netherlands.”
“The contrast on price is just as unflattering. The average US cost for 1 Mbps is $1.10 compared with $0.42 in the UK, $0.34 in France and $0.21 in South Korea. It is not only places such as Hong Kong that put the US into the shade. Countries such as Estonia, Portugal and Hungary offer a significantly better internet service. South Koreans joke that when they visit the US they are taking an internet vacation. Yet bringing the US up to speed appears to be low on Mr. Obama’s list of priorities (it did not even get a mention in his State of the Union address last month).”
Thank you Barack Obama! We have gone from the fastest Internet service in the world to 16th while you have been President, putting us ahead of some but not all third world countries, and with Americans paving some of the most expensive Internet service.
How can this possibly be? Read on from The Financial Times …
“The story of Comcast’s ascent helps explain why. So too does its relationships with politicians across the spectrum. In the coming weeks Mr. Obama will nominate the next head of the Federal Communications Commission to replace Julius Genachowski, his former Harvard Law School colleague. Comcast, which employs many former FCC staff, including Meredith Atwell Baker, one of the four commissioners who voted to approve its contentious 2009 merger with NBCUniversal, has a keen interest in whom that will be.”
“The FCC has been a good friend to Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two largest cable providers that dominate US broadband. In contrast to the spread of electricity and telephones, where the US was far ahead of the rest of the world, Washington has abjured the same regulatory promotion for the internet. Through brilliantly effective lobbying, US cable companies have escaped the universal access and affordability clauses that were imposed on telecoms and electricity companies in earlier eras.”
So in “fairness,” it is not just Comcast benefiting by Barack Obama being President, it is also Time Warner and the rest of this Oligarchy. The rest of us are just the victims.
Here are more of the outrageous details of this internal screwing of Americans …
“Countries such as Japan and France have embraced competition to push the rapid adoption of high-speed internet. The US is happy to tolerate duopoly (Comcast is one of two fixed-wire internet providers in 22 of America’s largest 25 cities). As a result, only 7 per cent of American homes are served by fiber optic wire compared with more than half in South Korea and Japan. It is the difference between a steam train and a bullet train. Yet, there is little outcry in Washington.”
ARE YOU READY for this …
“Comcast’s most influential employee is David Cohen, its senior vice-president, and one of Mr. Obama’s largest fundraisers. Mr. Cohen raised several million dollars for him in 2012 (the campaign only disclosed who took in more than $500,000 rather than the exact amount). Comcast is also bi-partisan. It gave a lot of money to Mitt Romney’s campaign. One of its biggest supporters is Michael Powell, the former Republican head of the FCC, who last month became president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the industry’s main Washington group.”
Switching away from The Financial Times at the same time the Obama Administration is providing us slow expensive Internet service to please Comcast, TimeWarner, ATT and the others under the approving supervision of the FCC, look what else is going on …
The GREEDY telecoms want more. They are trying to prevent municipalities all over the U.S. from offering their local residents and businesses an attractive Internet alternative to this Oligarchy – cheap, very high speed fiber Internet.
These facts are provided by the Wall Street Journal on 3/6/13 in a article titled “Telecom Firms Seek To Curb Publicly Funded Web Services.”
This article opens with this painfully hilarious claim by the Oligarchs …
WASHINGTON—“Sensing a threat to their business model, telecom companies are pushing more states to curb the spread of publicly funded high-speed Internet access, arguing the networks could squash competition.”
That is right, the Giant Telecoms which are providing us slow Internet service at ridiculously expensive rates while destroying American competitiveness are unsatisfied they want to SCREW us even more going into state after state, city after city, towns after town, wherever local government is trying to offer an alternative to their abuse – trying to and increasingly shutting them down or preventing these municipal services by claiming – don’t hurt yourself laughing too hard – claiming they are eliminating “competition” in the marketplace by offering an alternative to Big Telecom ABUSE.
So the Big Telecoms destroy competitiveness then rant and rave they are the victims. HILARIOUS!!
How can they get away with this?? EASY! Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, ATT and the rest are using the expensive rates they charge us all for slow Internet to hire thousands of lobbyists while also buying every politician who is for sale which is many of them.
What is their Jackal Barack Obama doing to stop them?
Nothing of course. Why would he???
President Barack Obama is their Jackal.
As he is for so many of the Rich & Powerful in America.
Enjoy your slow expensive non-fiber Internet.
It’s not going to get better anytime soon for most Americans.
While more and more of the rest of the world passes us by.
About The Writer: Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
