You guys made some calls to the legislature in Pennsylvania about a terrible telecom bill a few weeks ago, and it looks like that bill was delayed or died. Beth McConnell has more on the details.

The FCC has also delayed its vote on the AT&T-Bellsouth merger for one day, with Republican-appointed Commissioner Robert McDowell recusing himself from the vote because of conflicts of interest.  We'll see what happens - it seems like McDowell has integrity and a willingness to stand up to the enormous pressure he's probably under. The Republican Party desperately needs more people like McDowell.  

With the Commissioners at 3-2, this makes things very interesting.  The two Democrats are actually, you know, public servants looking out for the public.  Kevin Martin can't push this through with a 2-2 vote, so he's going to have to force McDowell to vote or delay this.  He's giving himself a day, I suppose.

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This is stunning news.  The Justice Department has OK'd, with a simple press release, a massive merger between Bellsouth and AT&T with no conditions and without a consent decree or judicial review, effectively reconstituting much of the old AT&T monopoly.  The new AT&T will control nearly half of the landlines in the country, and the CEO of AT&T is already on record essentially saying he's going to get rid of net neutrality.

Over the past decade, there has been a wave of telecom mergers, and these have concentrated the telecommunications business quite radically.  Prior to a merger, the DOJ usually goes through with consent decree in which it describes possible concerns and conditions for a merged entity, which are then reviewed by a judge.  That's what both Republican and Democratic Congressmen asked the Department of Justice to do in this case as well.

Two influential senators urged the FCC and Justice Department to consider imposing conditions on the proposed AT&T and BellSouth telecommunications merger.

In a letter to both agencies, Sens. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and Herb Kohl, D-Wis., said divestitures of company assets may be needed, along with curbs on the ability of the merged parties to "warehouse" spectrum, thus restricting it from competitors.

They also offered this warning: "The significant expansion in size and scope heralded by this merger makes it important for your agencies to be mindful of the general competition policy concern" of maintaining open markets.

Their proposals are at odds with last week's recommendation from Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin that no conditions be placed on the transaction, which would create the nation's largest telecom company.

Meanwhile, two House members -- Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and John Conyers of Michigan, the panel's top Democrat -- urged Justice to refrain from ruling on the merger until a court review of two previous telecom deals is complete. Under the so-called Tunney Act, the U.S. district court in Washington is automatically reviewing the MCI-Verizon Communications and AT&T-SBC Communications mergers.

This move, to sidestep judicial review of this merger, is a slap in the face of Senator Dewine and Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, who already had his Judiciary committee's jurisdiction stripped by Hastert and Barton earlier in the net neutrality fight.  This is the equivalent of one of Bush's signing statements, where he simply goes around the regular legislative process.  This is a slap not only at Republicans and Democrats in Congress, it's also a slap at the Judicial branch, which the DOJ has stripped of power, because judges have shown an unwillingness to accept the idea that concentrating power like this has no anticompetitive effects.

The last check on this merger is the FCC, which may make its decision tomorrow.  The FCC needs to include net neutrality provisions as part of the merger conditions, or else AT&T is going to begin its massive merger and planned capital expenditures with the understand that it can discriminate against content. Write the FCC using this tool provided by Freepress.  You can find out a lot more about the AT&T-Bellsouth merger here: http://www.freepress.net/att/

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In the spirit of all politics being local, I thought I'd make sure that all of my fellow Wisconsinites had the full skinny on the various Mark Foley connections to be made.  For those keeping score, we can slightly ding Mark Green (who is currently running for Governor), bother F. Jim Sensnenbrenner (running for re-election in the WI-05), and nail John Gard (running to replace Green in the  WI-08).  The connections and links to the good guys are all below the fold.

If you need to know more about the actual Foley scandal itself, well, where have you been, under a rock?  Check the front page, why don't ya!

(This is condensed and edited from two posts done earlier today at my Milwaukee-based blog.)

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Cross-posted.

So I had lunch today with about a dozen very nice and very influential people here in the greater Milwaukee area.  Several of them are in the picture there on the right:  In the background, you can see Bill Elliot, who is running for the open Wisconsin 23rd Assembly District.  The woman up front is Bonnie Joseph, among the area's biggest Dem fundraisers.  And the very happy guy in blue--of course!--is Bryan Kennedy.  Not pictured is the reason we were all there at lunch, a guy named Walter Ludwig.

Ludwig, some of you may know, is a former member of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, as well as the head of a PAC known as Project 90.  (He tells me their website should be back up by next week, but for now, there's no link.)  What is Project 90, you might ask?  Good question.

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A couple of updates on the net neutrality fight.  The tech companies are wading into the fight, gingerly (with eBay as the most effective).  I'm hearing, though I can't confirm, that the telcos are spending between ten and fifty million dollars on this fight.  Their ads are splashed all over local TV in DC, and in other areas of the country, though it's hard to track because the money is channeled through front groups like Hands off the Internet and TV4US (along with indirect costs, such as money to think tanks).

This money has bought a lot of support in the House, though less in the Senate.  The overall telecom reform bill that's passing is called the COPE Act, and that includes the evisceration of net neutrality.  We always thought that it would go through the House; what's surprising is how long it's taken.

We've set up this fight in the House so that the Senate takes the issue seriously.  Now we're in the last throes of the House fight.  This Wednesday, the Rules Committee is going to rule on which amendment or bill to bring to the floor, or whether to vote on any amendment or bill at all.  The competing bills are the Markey Amendment and the Sensenbrenner-Conyers Bill.  Lobbyists seem to think that the Sensenbrenner-Conyers Bill will get more votes, but either way we go, net neutrality is going to be a Senate fight since COPE is going through one way or another without net neutrality protections in place.  The House vote will let us see which Democrats are serious about internet freedom, and whether any Republicans are.  

In the Senate, the key players are the Nelson's, Ted Stevens, and John McCain.  This is a key test for McCain, where he might have to pick between the Republican establishment and his good government principles.  Ted Stevens is a wily Senator who will probably end up slotting net neutrality into a Defense Appropriations Bill at midnight, so we'll have to be on the lookout.

So that's where we are.

And to end this blog post on a note of levity, here's really funny video with Moby about net neutrality.

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