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| Laughing Loudly at Lawyer & Lobbyist Lies |
| Friday, 13 August 2010 17:57 |
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 ying if it helps your client is expected of U.S. lawyers, codes of ethics be damned. The best in D.C. collect $2M/year because they can convince smart people that 2+2=5. That works exceptionally well in Washington, where today's enemy is tomorrow's ally. There's a code "never make it personal" that prevents plain speaking about obvious lies from another lobbyist. The spirit reminds me of frat boys who help each other getting coeds drunk and uninhibited. Meeting for drinks afterwards, they high-5 each other. Duplicity is on all sides of the D.C. debate. Prepping an advocate of neutrality on technology for an FCC hearing, I told him to take an error out of his statement. A few hours later, the word came back "our people tell me that's what will persuade the commissioners so I should leave it in."
Karl Bode at DSLR found the latest example. Rick Whitt of Google is no better and no worse than his longtime comrade in arms, Jim Cicconi.
(Both of whom are exceptionally skilled advocates and have been gracious to me personally.) Rick for MCI was Cicconi's junior partner when Jim repped the old AT&T long distance company. They did a remarkable job holding the much richer Bells in check until about 2003, when Mike Powell sabotaged the last effort to keep a third competitor in the game.
Goggle's separate peace with Verizon has Whitt saying what he has to for his company and explaining competition is strong enough to prevent abuses. Google's current position has loopholes wide enough to slip through 350 television channels.
Rick knows even better than I that his suggestion to move the debate from the FCC to Congress gives Cicconi a veto on any provision he doesn't like. Cicconi has proven he can turn out 175 Republicans and about 70 Democrats on this issue, a majority. Anyone who says "let Congress decide" either wants meaningful neutrality killed or doesn't know what's actually going on in D.C. . Rick knows what's going on in D.C.
Bode found that Whitt in 2007 said "...Wireless providers block many common Internet applications and services outright, frequently do not allow network attachment of any device but their own, and reserve the right to terminate service arbitrarily for using other services that do not conform to a short and vaguely-defined list." Whitt has said many other things that contradict his current opinions.
But what puts Rick on the DCJester site is this
"Google has a close business relationship with Verizon, but ultimately this proposal has nothing to do with Android."
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| Last Updated on Saturday, 14 August 2010 21:16 |