Help Wanted, No Skills Required

Comcast is taking heat for packing a recent FCC meeting on internet neutrality. The topic of net neutrality has pitted the telecom companies against wide segments of the public, including groups as diverse as ACLU, Gun Owners of America, American Library Association, Christian Coalition of America and the Parents Television Council. At issue is whether all data should be treated equally or if the telecoms can do “traffic shaping”, favoring some types of data over others.

The FCC often holds public meetings to allow citizens to voice their opinion. At the recent meeting in Harvard Comcast paid a group of people to fill the available seats. Interested individuals who arrived as much as 90 minutes before the meeting found the room nearly full. Comcast admitted to the payoff and stated that the seats were being held for Comcast employees, most of whom did not show up.

Linestanding is a common practice at congressional hearings but this appears to be the first time it’s been used at a public meeting outside of Washington. Lobbyists pay linestanders between $10 and $15 an hour, many of whom will queue up for a hearing the day before. This practice has been common since the early ’90s and several linestanding companies exist to serve the lobbyists. The end result is that the public rarely gets a chance to attend. Senator Claire McCaskill, freshman Democrat from Missouri, has recently introduced a bill to ban lobbyists from employing linestanders.

Comcast packs the room
Sen. Claire McCaskill
Washington Post interviews linestanders

Drive Another Stake, George. It’s Rising Again.

It’s no revelation that the Bush administration has been secretive. John Ashcroft, Bush’s first Attorney General, issued directives that government information should be considered secret unless there was a good reason to make it public. Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) requests have languished and many journalists and concerned individuals have had to go to court to force the release of documents.

This stonewalling had not gone unnoticed by Congress. For five years Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) have been trying to pass legislation that would create a tracking system for Freedom of Information Act requests. Impose penalties for exceeding a 20-day time period, and allow people who had to go to court to be reimbursed for their legal fees. In addition, it created an ombudsman who could step in before FOIA disputes went to court.

The Senate unanimously passed the Open Government Act. The House followed suit and passed it by voice vote. In December, 2007 the bill was given to the President to sign. He did so on New Year’s Eve.

Now, buried in Bush’s $3.1 trillion budget, “on page 239, at the appendices of the Commerce Department section, which had nothing to do with the Justice Department, is a phrase that does not mention FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, does not mention the Office of Government Information Services, which is the name of the ombudsman, does not mention the National Archive. It just has this, you know, pithy little phrase that says, ‘This position will no longer exist.’” [quoting Rebecca Carr, national correspondent for Cox Newspapers, On The Media broadcast, 8 Nov 2008]

Duties of the ombudsman will transfer to the Department of Justice, the main target of criticisms for not enforcing the FOIA.

In a 3.1 trillion dollar budget and its funding for the war in Iraq, it is unlikely that this will cause much stir unless a major noise is made.

Great Lakes Report Suppressed

Six years in the making, a study on hazardous materials around the Great Lakes has been buried by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a division of Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Despite extensive review by the EPA, International Joint Commission, state agencies from New York and Minnesota, independent academics and the ATSDR itself, the director of ATDSR has claimed the study “well below expectations.”

The study contains warning that more than nine million people may face elevated risk from dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury or other pollutants. It found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer.

According to Dr. Peter Orris, one of the reviewers of the report, it “…is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of.” Christopher De Rosa [former] director of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine complained in a letter to the CDC director and the director of ATSDR that not publishing the study had “the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable communities.” Mr. De Rosa has since been relieved of his job.

For a more complete story see The Center For Public Integrity