Gov performance

Democratic lawmakers weren’t happy with the Federal Communications Commission inspector general concluded that the agency "misrepresented facts and provided misleading responses to Congressional inquiries" regarding an outage of the FCC’s online commenting system.

On May 7, 2017, the Home Box Office (HBO) program “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” aired a segment in which the host John Oliver discussed the Federal Communications Commission’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” (RIF) proceeding and encouraged viewers to visit the Commission’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) and file comments.

It’s one of the cruelest ironies in education: today’s schools must build and maintain robust high-speed, fiber-optic internet connections. But the process involved in finding funds for these upgrades can feel like a laggy dial-up modem, slow to a crawl—when it’s not cutting out completely. For more than 20 years, the Federal Communications Commission has directed the multi-billion dollar E-rate program, which provides taxpayer-supported construction and service discounts that districts and libraries can use toward internet costs.

The Inspector General Report tells us what we knew all along: the FCC’s claim that it was the victim of a DDoS attack during the net neutrality proceeding is bogus. What happened instead is obvious—millions of Americans overwhelmed our online system because they wanted to tell us how important internet openness is to them and how distressed they were to see the FCC roll back their rights. It’s unfortunate that this agency’s energy and resources needed to be spent debunking this implausible claim.

For several months, my office has been aware of and cooperating with the Office of Inspector General’s independent investigation into the incident involving the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) that took place on May 7-8, 2017.

The House Communications Subcommittee held a long-delayed Federal Communications Commission oversight hearing July 25. Overall, the review of the FCC was split along partisan lines. Republican representatives generally expressed satisfaction with the work of the FCC over the last nine months. Democratic representatives felt differently.  The hearing touched on a variety of policy issues, from spectrum allocation, to cybersecurity, to emergency alerts.

The House Communications Subcommittee held a long-delayed Federal Communications Commission oversight hearing July 25. Notably, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai stood by the FCC's decision to designate the Sinclair-Tribune deal for hearing. Full House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) took the lead in pressing Chairman Pai on President Donald Trump's tweet criticizing the FCC for not approving the Sinclair-Tribune deal and his suggestion there was a need for a conservative voice like Sinclair's.

[Speech] I want to talk about the secret to smart policies about smart cities.  I can summarize my idea in one word.  Learning.

[Commentary]  Not only has voter participation in local elections fallen to dangerously low levels, but the health of local newspapers, traditional watchdogs for the most direct and abundant form of government in the United States, has also been deteriorating. The Republican Party — yes, the same party whose leader derides the media as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”  — should be particularly alarmed.

[Commentary] When Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico last fall, President Donald Trump playfully lobbed rolls of paper towels to those taking shelter. What if the reporting on the ground had been taken seriously — as something to be heeded, and reacted to, instead of summarily dismissed? What if the president had pushed for help from wherever it could be found, including from outside the overstressed federal agency?