November 2016

Rep Walden Leaving National Republican Congressional Committee After Two Successful Cycles

Current House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) is hardly a household name. But the bespectacled Oregonian may have more to do with helping his party maintain its grip on Washington than most Republican heavyweights.

As chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee for the past two cycles, Rep Walden helped Republicans win and preserve a historic majority. He’s spent 281 nights on the road and logged the mileage equivalent of 10 trips around the world, visiting districts across the country and raising nearly $8 million for the committee since becoming Chairman in 2012. And now, with election night behind him, the nine-term member, who grew up on an 80-acre cherry orchard, is ready for his next move. He’s vying against a member with more seniority for the gavel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “You’ve got to take care of your NRCC chairman,” said former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, himself a former chairman of the group who went on to beat several members with more seniority to take the helm of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Rewarding successful chairmen is important, Davis said, because it sends a message to members to pay their dues and support their team.

Shakeup on Senate Intelligence Committee: Sen Warner Becomes Top Democrat

A shakeup among Democrats has positioned Sen Mark Warner (D-VA) as the top minority voice on the Senate Intelligence Committee, a key role overseeing the nation’s spies.

Sen Warner, who joined the panel in 2012, ascends to the role of vice chairman following Sen Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) decision to replace Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT) as Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee. Sen Leahy in 2016 opted to become the senior Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. As Ranking Member of the panel, Sen Warner will work along with Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) to guide oversight of the CIA, National Security Agency (NSA) and other secretive intelligence agencies. The panel will have a key role to play in 2017 as lawmakers contemplate whether to reauthorize a key portion of the 2008 update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which undergirds controversial NSA data collection programs.

FCC Tells Court to Reject Auction-Related Legal Challenge

The Federal Communications Commission has told the US Court of Appeals to reject a court challenge to its decision not to protect low-power TV (LPTV) stations from being displaced in the post-broadcast incentive auction repack of TV stations. The petition for the court to review that decision was filed by Free Access & Broadcast (FAB) Telemedia.

In its filing, the FCC said the court did not even have jurisdiction over the petition to review that decision because "the petition raises issues that were resolved in prior FCC orders and were not reopened in the orders on review," which were "measures to help displaced LPTV stations find new channels" rather than a revisit of the decision not to protect them. The FCC says it is settled that the statute creating the auction and repack did not mandate protecting LPTVs from displacement and the FCC, in its discretion, chose not to do so. The FCC pointed out that in an earlier case, the same court had concluded the commission "reasonably declined to protect LPTV stations from displacement in the repacking process because doing so would ‘severely limit… recovery of spectrum to carry out the forward auction, thereby frustrating the purposes of the Spectrum Act.’” The FCC argues that FAB is trying to relitigate settled decisions through to succeeding decisions—on channel sharing and when wireless companies could commence operations on reclaimed TV channels.

Congress had an office that gave expert tech analysis; let's bring it back

[Commentary] In 1995, the Congressional Office of Technological Assessment (OTA) was abolished. The OTA existed from 1972 to 1995 and was tasked with providing congressional members nonpartisan analysis on complex scientific and technical issues. When the OTA was abolished, legislators really did not contemplate the impact and the future need for such an office. They did not anticipate the rates of obsolescence and the "Malthusian" advances in science and technology. They also did not envision the economic implications for manufacturing and the corresponding economic sectors of energy, health, security, agriculture, finance, communications and transportation that constitutes the new American economy.

The time is ripe for the next Congress to consider the value of OTA as it pertains to the future applications of new technologies and processes.

[Brooks serves as the vice president for government relations and marketing at Sutherland Government Solutions. He is also vice chairman of CompTIA's New and Emerging Technologies Committee. Logsdon is the senior director of public advocacy for CompTIA.]

Public Knowledge Urges President-elect Trump to End Cable Box Rip-off

Public Knowledge sent a letter to President-elect Donald J. Trump encouraging him to end the cable box rip-off affecting millions of Americans -- and costing consumers billions of dollars. Public Knowledge President and CEO Gene Kimmelman said, “We hope the President-elect and his transition team will move quickly to stop cable monopolies and media giants from ripping consumers off to the tune of almost $15 billion dollars per year with outrageous cable box fees.” The letter reads, "President-elect Trump, these outrageous cable box rental fees have dogged consumers for decades thanks to powerful Washington insiders and cable lobbyists. We urge you to join with millions of Americans to get the FCC to unlock the box, a proposal that benefits all Americans."

An Open Letter to President-elect Donald Trump

Dear President-elect Trump,
We, a group of diverse journalism associations representing thousands of journalists from the nation's capital to every corner of the country, begin this letter on a hopeful note. Your administration is a blank slate and we are eager to work with you to perpetuate one of this nation's great strengths: our freedom of the press. As the new leader of the free world, we expect that you will preserve longstanding traditions that ensure coverage of the Trump presidency. The idea of a press pool that covers all of the president's movements is one that dates back to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. Every president of both parties has treated this important tradition with respect. The role of the press pool is critically important to our country, whose citizens depend on and deserve to know what the president is doing.

This isn't about access for the press itself, it's about access for Americans in diverse communities across the country. Your constituents receive information from a variety of platforms to learn about what our president is doing. We also call for access to you via regular press conferences and pool sprays and to your key decision-makers. You have an opportunity as incoming president to set the tone for your staff speaking on the record for the sake of transparency. We also hope your administration will improve response rates to FOIA requests as a way to show the American people, and the world, that the republic belongs to the people.

A “nation-state” used Wikileaks to influence the US election, the head of the NSA says

The head of the US’s National Security Agency, Michael Rogers, said Nov 15 that a “nation-state” consciously targeted presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in order to affect the US election. In response to a question, Michael Rogers, a Naval officer and NSA director since 2014, said that Wikileaks was furthering a nation-state’s goals by publishing hacked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s presidential campaign weeks ahead of the election. “There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s minds, this was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect,” he said.

President-elect Trump vs. AT&T: A Signal Test of How Business Will Fare in New Washington

AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson made an $85 billion wager in Oct that would turn the giant telephone company into one of the world’s biggest media companies by swallowing Time Warner. The same day, Donald Trump told supporters in Gettysburg (PA) he would block the deal if elected president. “It’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few,” he said, calling the merger “an example of the power structure I am fighting.”

Few companies had more at stake in the presidential election than AT&T, which expected Hillary Clinton to be in the White House, said one former AT&T executive in Washington. Other businesses in a similar position are watching to see if the merger survives a still-undefined Trump administration. For the telecommunication industry, President-elect Trump could usher in an era of deregulation, a change from what many companies viewed as a strong-arm era under President Barack Obama. Yet President-elect Trump’s talk on the campaign trail about crushing the AT&T deal has left executives, lobbyists, bankers and others wondering what his view will be from the White House.

A Bigger AT&T Is the Last Thing We Need

The American mainstream media spent the last year normalizing and propping up a racist, xenophobic, misogynist candidate whose closest advisers include white nationalists and politicians with a track record of oppressing women, people of color, and the LGBTQI community. In the days since the election, hundreds of hate crimes have been reported. We’ve seen our friends and families living in fear. And yet the media continues to treat President-elect Donald Trump like he’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s never been more apparent that the corporate media have failed the people of this nation. But the march toward centralized, consolidated media and communications platforms pushes on.

Look no further than AT&T, which just before the election announced its plan to buy Time Warner, the owner of CNN, HBO and TNT. If approved, it would be one of the biggest media mergers ever. Whether President-elect Trump will remain opposed is an open question. But one thing is clear: The last thing we need right now is a more powerful media gatekeeper. We must block this deal.

AT&T Fiber Locations Expand to Four Additional Markets, Now Reaches 3 Million Locations

AT&T Fiber locations now reach 44 markets across the US, with the announcement of four new metro areas coming online with the gigabit capable fiber-to-the-premises service. AT&T eventually plans to reach 67 markets/metro areas nationwide, covering 12.5 million locations by mid-2019. The new markets include Baton Rouge (LA), Birmingham (AL), Charleston (SC), and Reno (NV). AT&T also announced expansion of AT&T Fiber in 16 existing markets. AT&T claims they now have an addressable AT&T Fiber audience of 3 million locations, of which over 500K are apartments and condo units, or MDUs. AT&T is expanding their AT&T Fiber locations, just as Google fiber retracts. They have made a point of highlighting this, gleefully so in some instances. As an incumbent provider with an extensive existing network, AT&T has distinct advantages over upstarts like Google fiber, who must overbuild markets at great expense and time.

Benton

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