FCC commissioner's move to Comcast shows the revolving door is still spinning

[Commentary] No political adage gets a more vigorous workout than the one about how the real scandal in Washington isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Case in point: Meredith Attwell Baker's announcement that she will be stepping down as a Federal Communications Commission member in June to join Comcast-NBCUniversal. Baker's new employer, of course, is the huge entity whose merger was blessed by the FCC only in January, after a year of scrutiny. Baker voted in favor.

"The system is fundamentally flawed," says Andrew Schwartzman, policy director of the Washington-based Media Access Project. Thanks to the revolving door, "People attain expertise which is extremely valuable to the regulated companies and turn around and make that expertise available to them at the expense of the public." The incredible speed with which Baker is transforming herself from federal regulator back into corporate lobbyist underscores why regulation in Washington has become such a spavined, toothless beast. To be fair, Baker was not a monochromatically conservative regulator. Schwartzman says she bucked Republican orthodoxy on issues such as the development of low-power FM broadcasting and public access to unused TV broadcasting spectrum. But on more momentous issues she carried water for big business, often maintaining that regulators shouldn't do much regulating. Washington has always brimmed with young lawyers who take jobs with consumer regulatory agencies to gain a little training and seasoning before launching lucrative careers in corporate law. The only way to keep these ambitious greenhorns focused on the obligations of enforcement while they're in public service is for the leaders of their agencies to take those obligations seriously. When leaders like Baker signal that it's acceptable to cash in without even waiting for a decent interval, what hope is there that government will serve the public interest, not the corporate interest?