Brain Drain, Admin Failures Threaten the FCC's Role 121
coondoggie writes "The Federal Communications Commission has brain drain and administration problems that could decrease its effectiveness at a time when advanced service technologies such as wireless and broadband present significant regulatory challenges. On the brain drain front, a report out today (PDF) from watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office stated that from fiscal year 2003 to 2008, the number of engineers at the FCC decreased by 10%. Similarly, the overall number of economists decreased by 14%. While the total number of engineers and economists in the workforce has decreased from 2003 to 2008, the percentages remained the same. The GAO also criticized the FCC's public comment policy, saying, 'While FCC relies heavily on public input to inform its decisions, it tends to do so without giving the public access to the actual text of a given proposal. If parties are able to submit vague summaries that may not fully reflect meetings between FCC officials and outside parties, then stakeholders will continue to question whether commission decisions are being influenced by information that was not subject to public comment or rebuttal and that, in some cases, is submitted just before a commission vote.'"
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Except it wasn't the FCC who really wanted to do it, but the fact that a puritanical lobby group got offended, and flooded the FCC with complaints. The Parents Television Council offers ways to easily send in complaints, and it's estimated that 99% of the complaints came from the PTC.
IIRC, the FCC has since reformed their counting process specifically because of groups like the PTC.
The FCC now discounts cookie cutter and form letters because, like you said, they were making up 90%+ of the complaints.
[Citation Needed] but I can't seem to dig up any articles I had read on the topic.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing I've never understood is that the same people who complain about the "liberal media" seem to think that liberals want to shove the fairness doctrine down the public's collective throat. Yes it's a bad idea, yes some bonehead dems bring it up every once in a while, but the thing has no legs. And whats more, if there were such a thing as the liberal media, the fairness doctrine would necessarily increase conservative views on the airways.
Now, to address your tangent, nationalization is what we did to GM and AIG.
Nationalization of healthcare would require the government to actually step up to the plate and fund healthcare, something Washington is clearly too chickenshit to do - probably because a government run insurance plan isn't likely to make campaign contributions.
If you want my opinion, the reason healthcare is now unpopular is because were the senate to take up the National Everyone Gets a Pony Act they'd probably attach a mandatory dog food provision to it.
The question, in my mind, is why has public opinion on universal healthcare soured so dramatically since November 2008? The only answer I can come up with is that while no one wants to see good sausage being made, we've spent the last year watching Harry Reid let Nelson, Lieberman et al stuff that sucker with the foulest ingredients imaginable.