Giants control Congress

Over the last year, AT&T (amongst others) spent a small fortune lobbying congressional members (and that includes their underpaid staff, who are easy pickings) to ensure that the FCC does not force cell phone (3G and 4G) Internet access to be free nor even regulate it.

The small fortune? It is to you and me: $11 million. The year before that they spent a similar amount on congressional campaigns to make sure their “boy” or “girl” were elected to office. And this next year they are about to spend the same amount again as it is election time again.

Since some politicians consider corporations as “people, too,” and the Supreme Court has said corporations can make direct campaign corporations, you can expect companies like Verizon and AT&T to increasingly try and sway, cajole, influence, strong-arm or otherwise manipulate your so-called elected law-makers. And remember, once a law is made it takes three times the effort to get it off the books.

What I want to know is this: If companies want to act like the Mob, strong-arming politicians, why the heck are congressmen and women being bought so cheap?

Look, if you want to sell a company, you expect to spend 10 percent of turnover on making the company look good — advertising and marketing something special.

When Columbia Pictures sold itself to all bidders in 1979-1980, the only pictures making any money were Cheech and Chong (reefer pictures). When Stone, the head at the time in New York, asked me what I thought he should do, I responded that he should dust off some rights for family fare and spend a small fortune with big names, making a movie you can show to shareholders, as Cheech and Chong were hardly a middle America/Wall Street image.

So, they dusted off Annie, spend a whopping $40 million making the picture with big stars and promptly sold the company to that American institution, Coca-Cola, for exactly $395 million. Ten percent was about right.

Now AT&T wants Congress and the various Washington agencies and administrations to approve their takeover of T-Mobile without any fuss.

Why do they want T-Mobile? They claim it is because the $32 billion price tag will allow them to expand using T-Mobile’s existing 3G and 4G network to become America’s leading high-speed cell phone company.

Problem is, that’s not entirely true. An AT&T Wall Street statement and a press release reveal that to install a premier coast-to-coast similar 3G and 4G network would only cost $3.2 billion. Did they make a math mistake with a decimal point?

Nope, the truth is they want to take the only company offering customer service and bury it. That way what’s left for cell phone service will be nonexistent customer care and absolutely as close to a tri-opoly as possible. And like the airlines, I am sure they don’t compare and collude on prices. Yeah, sure.

So, let’s see, they want to spend $32 billion and sell this bill of goods to Washington? I say they should fork over $3.2 billion, about 10 percent, as bribes — oops, inducements or lobbying fees — to our hard-working congressmen and women.

Since we are going to be sold down the river anyway (a paltry $11 million has worked before, every year), what is wrong with the goodfellows making a bit extra from the dons?

After all, if you are going to be the Mob you might as well act like the Mob.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.