FCC Boss Under Fire For Facts-Optional Attack On Low-Income Broadband Programs

from the science-schmience dept

Tue, Apr 3rd 2018 6:28am — Karl Bode

For a while now, we've noted how FCC boss Ajit Pai professes to be some kind of a hero to the poor, despite the fact that his policies are quickly making broadband and TV services more expensive for Americans. His extremely unpopular net neutrality repeal, for example, will only wind up driving up costs for consumers as entrenched ISPs jack up costs for competitors and consumers alike. And when Pai wasn't busy killing net neutrality, he was busy killing efforts to make cable boxes more competitive and affordable, or making it easier for prison phone monopolies to rip off inmate families via absurdly over-priced services.

Pai has also been taking aim at a government program dubbed Lifeline, which makes expensive American telecom services slightly less expensive for poor families. The program, started under Reagan and expanded under Bush Jr., simply gives low-income homes a $9.25 credit they can use for home phone, broadband, or wireless service (they have to pick one). Traditionally, this program has had pretty broad, bipartisan support, and is uniformly seen as pretty much the least the government can do to help those struggling to make ends meet.

But Pai's attack on Lifeline has come via death by a thousand cuts, and is starting to alarm folks that actually try to help poor people for a living. Most recently, Pai tabled a proposal that would declare that smaller wireless MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators, like Boost or Virgin Mobile) could no longer participate in Lifeline. While Pai has claimed that these changes will somehow magically boost broadband deployment, he hasn't been able to offer the slightest shred of data to support that contention.

Even Pai allies like Verizon, who didn't even ask for this deregulation favor, have stated that Pai's changes won't do what he claims and will harm the poor. It's pretty strange to see an instance of deregulation pushed through that the industry itself didn't push for, just as it's strange to see Verizon and consumer advocates agreeing on something.

That said, a group of 10 Senators including Ron Wyden wrote Pai last week expressing concern that Pai's actions are in stark contrast to his breathless support of closing the digital divide:

"Your proposal impacts over 70 percent of current Lifeline-recipient households by eliminating their wireless providers from the program, leaving less affordable and fewer Lifeline options, while making it more difficult for the companies trying to serve Lifeline customers," Senate Democrats wrote in the letter to Pai yesterday. "Instead of cutting the program, we should ensure Lifeline reaches more Americans in need of access to communication services."

The Senators were also quick to point out that the FCC offered no hard evidence to support its claim that reducing participation in the program will somehow expand broadband availability:

"The December 1, 2017, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) provides no evidence, analysis, or data to support its assumption that the FCC’s proposed changes to Lifeline will spur facilities-based broadband deployment and additional affordable services for low-income families. Provide any specific data, analysis, academic studies, economic reports, etc. that you relied on to support this assumption. Explain why the NPRM included no evidence or data to support this assumption."

The FCC has yet to vote on this proposal (the public comment period ended last week), but is likely to in the coming months. Hopefully Pai shows a little more flexibility than he did during his attack on net neutrality when he not only used debunked lobbyist data to justify his positions, but directed journalists to telecom lobbying organizations if they had questions. That said, if Pai has made anything clear, it's that he's on an ideological crusade that's not only viciously unpopular, but isn't likely to have its trajectory altered by pesky things like the welfare of the public, or, say... facts.

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Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, fcc, lifeline, low income, ron wyden

29 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 6:47am

Wow, what a dick. I didn't even know low-income Americans could get a rebate on their telecom services. I hate hearing about cool things for the first time right when they're about to be eliminated.
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ios app promotion, 3 Apr 2018 @ 7:13am

thanks for this cognitive and interesting post
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Christopher (profile), 3 Apr 2018 @ 8:23am

He needs to go.
He's just so bad at executing the basic mission of the FCC, and in typical lawyer fashion, routinely tortures the law to suit himself.

Yes, I am damning all lawyers without prejudice.

-C
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Anonymous Hero, 3 Apr 2018 @ 8:39am

A case for a public option?
The ability to communicate, disseminate, and consume ideas fosters innovation, creativity, and understanding. This would be a good area for which the USA could take a leading role by providing a public option for broadband connectivity.

Many countries already provide free health care to their citizens. I imagine it would be less expensive to provide free broadband.
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SSDD, 3 Apr 2018 @ 8:45am

Re: A case for a public option?
"The ability to communicate, disseminate, and consume ideas fosters innovation, creativity, and understanding."

And this would interfere with their grifting - so .....
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 8:52am

Re: He needs to go.
Ah! I see you've stumbled upon the reason he was hired for the position!
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 9:01am

Ajit Pai under attack. Oh boy, out_of_the_blue's not going to like this.
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Anonymous Hero, 3 Apr 2018 @ 9:10am

Re: Re: A case for a public option?
> And this would interfere with their grifting

Nah. The government could sell it as a corporate handout to the broadband players. What big USA corporation doesn't want lots of free taxpayer money?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 9:12am

Re: A case for a public option?
“Free broadband”? No such thing. Someone has to pay, and if not a user then from the bank accounts of taxpayers.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 9:30am

Re:
It's just Masnick sucking up to Google again.

Just wait, I'm right, you're wrong, you'll see.

This will actually help the poor, because... Hilary Clinton!
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James Burkhardt (profile), 3 Apr 2018 @ 9:31am

Re: Re: A case for a public option?
Ummm....Yeah. Thats what he is saying. Taxpayer funded public broadband would provide immensive public benefit, and at a lower cost than single payer healthcare. Not sure what insight you think you are providing.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 9:47am

Re: Re:
/s ?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 9:58am

Re: Re: A case for a public option?
Why complain about helping those in need?

Do you complain about taxes being used to destroy the planet?
Only when it is in your own back yard I presume.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 10:00am

Re: Re:
How will we hear about the Hillary emails if we no longer have internet access?

Oh yeah, we are all supposed to tune in to sinclair for our daily mandatory propaganda - right?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 10:01am

Re: Re:
I see that the cuts to funding for mental health care have already started to take their calamitous toll...
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Ninja (profile), 3 Apr 2018 @ 11:26am

So basically he is doing what politicians love to do with children. Screw them for their own good. For the children!

Seriously, brains like Ajit Pai's should be studied to understand how they can handle that much cognitive dissonance.
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ShadowNinja (profile), 3 Apr 2018 @ 11:37am

Re:
He probably bought into the attacks on this program a few years ago from some conservative groups.

Essentially, some people only discovered that this program existed while Obama was in office, hence they wrongly thought that Obama created it. There were some Youtube videos of poor people thanking Obama for help getting affordable cell phones.

This caused some conservative groups who think everything Obama did must be bad to label this system 'Obama Phones', even though Obama didn't start the system. And because it was an 'Obama Phone' that Obama 'started' that met the program was bad and had to go.

I bet that's probably the whole reason why Pai is going after this system, because he still thinks of it as 'Obama Phones'.
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Stan (profile), 3 Apr 2018 @ 11:46am

Re: cognitive dissonance.
An interesting question: does being a lawyer in the government sector cause one to develop cognitive dissonance? Or does having cognitive dissonance drive someone into being a lawyer in the government sector?
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An Onymous Coward (profile), 3 Apr 2018 @ 1:46pm

Re:
There is no dissonance if one of the two competing "ideas" is all a lie fabricated to protect the other. He gets paid, he does his "job" for the telcos. That just happens to involve lying to the nation about why he's doing it.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 1:57pm

Re: Re:
I'm still waiting for my obama phone.
I was caught up in the Jake Helm invasion of Texas and am still being held in a FEMA camp without any communication to the outside world so I could really use that obama phone right now.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 1:58pm

Re: Re: cognitive dissonance.
I think you have to sell your soul to the devil first.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 2:41pm

Re: Re:
Nah, Pai is a true libertarian crusader. He is working for an agency he is ideologically against and thus is bit by bit decomposing it. As a true libertarian, though, he hates state regulation with an equal vigour. What he ends up doing is - like for his mentor, il duce - anyones guess...

In the name of the nightwatch state, he is a hero of the ruling Sinclair cartel!
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 3:14pm

How long until Pai can be fired for obvious incompetence at facts?
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Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 3 Apr 2018 @ 6:18pm

Reality Itself Has A Liberal Bias
Which is why Republicans feel entitled to special-snowflake treatment to let them dispense their brand of “alternative facts”.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2018 @ 8:39pm

Re: Re:
Close, but not quite. You're missing the allusions to "censorship", multiple replies to oneself, and using the subject line as your main post content.

A for effort, but a C- for the resemblance to out_of_the_blue. You look more like Paint Chip Anarchist.
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Mike-2 Alpha (profile), 3 Apr 2018 @ 9:58pm

So this is probably just my paranoid brain working overtime, but stay with me here. Pai, who is in Verizon's pocket from day one, gets installed as the head of the FCC by a sympathetic government. He does the job he's paid to do by gutting things like net neutrality and doing a few other favours along the way. Then, with his list of targets exhausted, he goes after a program that might be seen as a bridge too far. That same government that installed him then turns around and villifies him before firing him before he can do anything to that program. He rides off to his cushy job at Verizon or some industry-supported lobby group.

He gets his payoff. They get their scapegoat. Verizon gets the regulatory changes it wanted. And the senators who arranged his ouster get to look like heroes without having to actually reverse the damage he's done.

Eh. I'm probably just jumping at shadows.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Apr 2018 @ 7:21am

Why does the gop hate poor people?
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Dirkmaster (profile), 4 Apr 2018 @ 10:51am

Re:
Because they don't pay their fair share of the bribes.
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Wendy Cockcroft, 5 Apr 2018 @ 7:20am

Re: GOP hates the poor
http://thehill.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumb_small_article/public/alamosagop.png?itok=d2Zr71B 7

Apparently they lack dignity.

To be fair, though, the person responsible for that tweet has resigned.
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