Wisconsin Senate Democrats Making Best Effort to Become Minority

You do not need to be a conservative to demonstrate the hubris that characterizes the arrogance of power.

Fresh from a victory in last fall's elections, Wisconsin Democrats are now determined to advance legislation on cable television that is anti-consumer and anti-choice.

The great irony of it is that AT&T, the author of the bill, backed better legislation in Illinois. Wisconsin progressives and consumers are asking for something AT&T could live with in Illinois. They are asking for legislation that will open up competition in the cable industry and protect consumers.

Yet Senate Democrats are determined to weaken their electoral base. It is similar to the arrogance shown in the 1980's and 1990's when the Democrats lost their majority. The logic went like this:

We are the last bastion of protection for the people of Wisconsin on such critical issues as choice and civil rights. Our electoral base has no choice but to reelect us no matter what we do to sell them out on other issues.

Wrong.

It would be interesting to have the Senate Democratic leadership and the representatives of AT&T sit down and publicly answer a few questions:

• AT&T, here in Wisconsin, can you live with the same legislation you supported in Illinois?
• AT&T, isn't it true that the Illinois legislation opens up competition just the way the present bill does?
• Senate Democrats, if the Illinois legislation provides AT&T what it needs and the Illinois bill is more consumer friendly, why do you refuse to support it?
• What are we not being told?

Allow me to answer: when it was time to wheel and deal, the Wisconsin Senate Democrats wanted to prove they were pro-business. They basically told AT&T they would support a cable bill. AT&T could make a deal with one of two parties: either the existing cable companies and screw the consumer, or with the consumers and risk incurring the opposition of the cable companies.

AT&T choose to work with the cable companies, not the citizens, and the Senate Democrats bought the deal. Now the Senate Dems do not want to back out of the deal.

They were so quick to buy into the bill they never checked to see if there was better, alternative legislation.

Screw the public.

The writing was on the wall and we know that President Bush pushed forward with his disastrous war in Iraq despite mounting pubic opposition. Last month Madison's mayor was blindsided when the public resolve stiffened against his trolley's and crime rose to the forefront.

Anyone in touch with the people knew that these leaders were themselves out of touch.

There may be no way to save the Democrats in the Senate from themselves.

Comments

[Rich Eggleston]

Are we the victims of the arrogance of power or the ignorance of power?

Megahertz is a very difficult concept for a legislator who thinks we're talking about a really big car-rental company. And gigabyte is hard to grasp when a legislator thinks we're talking about a very large takeout pizza.

Of course, these folks have attorneys to do their work for them, so we should be OK, shouldn't we? Unfortunately, the attorneys that the bill's sponsors went to were attorneys for industry, not for the public. It's in the public record.

As a result, the bill before the Legislature has no technical standards as well as an abysmal lack of consumer protections and a be-damned attitude toward local government and the public's right to know.

And my point is? We once lived in a state we could be proud of, a state run overseen by progressive public officials, both Republicans and Democrats, that we could be proud of. People like Warren Knowles and Gaylord Nelson.

Folks who could flirt with business without going to bed on the first date.

Now, AT&T makes $109,000 in individual and PAC contributions to candidates over an 18-month period and bats its eyelashes at members of the Legislature, and gets into a long-term relationship. No background checks, no prenuptial agreements.

We don't need the Big 10 Network or the NFL Network. We need a Legislature that will look to see whether the next sweet talker that comes along can really deliver on his promises.

[Neil Shively]

Paul: Thank you for saying it!! They sell out at the drop of a, well Pac. We need to keep plugging away at changing the deal. Speaking of Knowles and Nelson, don't forget Pat Lucey who by the way is the subject of a book I'm working on. I know you have some Lucey stories from your mayoral days....Maybe you would like to share them with me?? Neil Shively, Cambride, ex Sentinel bureau chief

[Bruce Luecke]

I have been an original shareholder of the "real" AT&T who, in a regulated environment, developed products and innovations making the U. S. telecommunications system among the best in the world. The present owner of the name is a Texas-based opportunist company which asked me, as a shareholder, to testify in support of their interests in the cable bill. I felt then, and feel more strongly now, that they are pinning their hopes on becoming an unregulated monopoly in our state. Greed, not the interests of he public, is their motivation.

When we in this country fail to cast a critical eye at nearly every grab at power and money, assuming only the best from "Corporate America" or our major political parties, we have made a grave error that will lead only to the loss of our power as public citizens.

[Chic Young, PE, CSM, CET, EHF]

Paul: You are right again... Remember when we were both on Mayor Dyke's Ad Hoc Committee working on the Cable Ordinance for Madison? This was before you successfully ran for Mayor ... We were doing our best to look our for our citizens back then - and for the future of all in our City. We are both still doing what we can to continue those efforts. I have communicated to several Senators, but only one, Senator Risser called me back, and understands how some of us are really looking out for the Citizens of our State.

Earlier today I E-mailed Governor Doyle, and of course received the automatic thank you response. I will call his office in the morning, and hope that many others will do so.

Even the Ordinance that I wrote for Watertown in 1980, that anticipated potential government attempts to do things to the public, instead of ones for the public - did not have the capability of overcoming such a complete sellout to corporate power!

[Ron Legro]

I ran the City of Milwaukee's cable regulatory office in the late '80s and had my hands full dealing with the city's cable franchisee. The cable company, as my office carefully documented, was all too willing to flout consumer standards and otherwise treat the franchise agreement lightly. City politicians on up to the mayor nevertheless were loathe to take on the company. Why? Well, in part, because the company was not shy in passing around campaign contributions. Or in bad-mouthing hard-working civil servants who dared to point out their transgressions. So in the end, the city actively violated its own cable ordinance in order to work out a deal with the recalcitrant franchise.

At one point after Milwaukee's franchising process in the early '80s, the FBI was looking into whether there were illegal quid pro quo deals involving aldermen who unaccountably chose (does this sound familiar?) the lower-rated applicant for the franchise.

Decades later, most cities have monopoly cable operations. Nevertheless, I suspect cable firms actually welcome AT&T's bill. Because that bill merely replaces a bad monopoly with a bad duopoly, while downsizing regulatory control and moving it away from localities. That change is not going to create meaningful diversity in programming, or lower rates. It will mean less revenue staying within local communities. It will mean the death of local public access. But this is all somehow better, according to our state legislators.

Exactly when did Wisconsin Democrats cross over to the dark side, embracing the notion that deregulation and privatization of public resources are a good thing?

AT&T, let us not forget, is one of the big media outfits that allowed the US government to use its equipment to spy illegally on Americans. No matter that; let the State of Wisconsin reward this consumer-unfriendly, democracy-averse behemoth with a permanent license on local public rights of way -- a license that almost certainly will never be undone. So much for local control over precious public resosurces.

While we're at it, why not cede to out-of-state lumber companies permanent logging rights in our state forests? Or, maybe, we should simply cut to the chase: Change the state constitution and fill legislative seats not with elected representatives but with lobbyists from the state's biggest businesses. That surely would save a lot of pesky delays in enacting even more corporate-friendly laws. And it would cut way down on expensive lobbying costs, too.

The telecomunications industry has a history of sweet-talking and gifting policymakers, and then -- like George W. Bush -- screwing them the moment the deal is sealed. Of course, taking money in exchange for a screwing is called prostitution. And by every reasonable measure, state policymakers are looking more and more like whores for Big Media. What's nearly as shameful is that newspapers like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have editorialized in favor of this bill, knowing full well that it's been crafted almost entirely by AT&T. Newspapers increasingly portray themselves as watchdogs protecting consumers, but in the case of the Journal Sentinel, we have a sleepy watch puppy.

The fact is that AT&T doesn't need this bill to compete. It needs this bill to ensure that its inevitable entry into the wired video market will be as profitable as possible, while minimizing competition.

The "video competition act" is a complete sham and very bad legislation. The Democrats should hang their heads for playing Republican Lite on this and similar pro-business legislation.

There's nothing wrong intrinsically with supporting business. There's everything wrong with supporting it at the expense of consumers and taxpayers, especially when legislators have come to depend on large campaign contributions from those same businesses. It's not only prostitution; it's corruption.