Big Telecom Wants A Cookie For Pausing PAC Donations After Hoovering Up Billions In Trump Favors

from the had-enough,-huh? dept

Outside from perhaps military contractors, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find a US business sector that benefitted more from Trumpism that the telecom sector. AT&T nabbed a $42 billion tax break in exchange for roughly 42,000 layoffs and a reduction in network investment. T-Mobile, after hiring Corey Lewandowski and throwing money at Trump's DC hotel, nabbed approval for a Sprint merger most objective experts warned would result in tens of thousands of job losses, less competition, and higher prices. And telecom giants convinced the Trump FCC to effectively lobotomize its consumer protection authority.

The telecom industry also managed to kill net neutrality, neuter local municipalities' abilities to stand up to wireless giants in negotiation, and kill some modest FCC broadband privacy rules before they could even take effect. Topping that off, the telecom sector spent several years convincing the lion's share of DC that "big tech" is the only real monopolistic threat in America, resulting in the entirety of our regulatory and antitrust enforcement being fixated on Silicon Valley while giving telecom (natural monopolies with a thirty year track record of anti-consumer, anticompetitive behavior) a complete pass.

All in all, that's a pretty good haul in a four year span. And I omitted a lot of unidirectional regulatory favors for fear of boring you.

Throughout this period, telecom giants were happy to look the other way as brown-skinned kids were locked in cages, bigotry was used as a political bludgeon, racism flourished, rampant corruption ballooned, and the country descended into chaos at the every whim of an idiot king. Only now, that public opposition has ballooned in the wake of Trump supporters beating a cop to death, has the industry had enough. And by "enough," we mean temporarily suspending select PAC spending for a few weeks until the outrage dies down:

"A large and growing number of tech and telecom companies are freezing their political contributions to Washington lawmakers after President Trump incited a mob that attacked the US Capitol last week. And some companies – including telecom heavyweights AT&T, Verizon and Comcast – are specifically targeting lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo), who opposed President-elect Joe Biden's election victory."

Keep in mind, AT&T and Comcast alone were some of the heaviest donors to Republicans that spread bullshit claims to undermine a free and fair election, resulting in riots and casualties. And AT&T was almost certainly playing a major role in the GOP attacks on Section 230, a law essential to the basic functioning of online discourse. And who can forget that time AT&T threw $600,000 under the table at Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen to gain additional insider access to the President as it pursued the very successful lobotomization of the FCC.

Now the same companies that threw millions at Trumpland while ignoring or downplaying every last scandal want a cookie for temporarily suspending PAC spending for a few weeks until public outrage dies down. Something that usually happens anyway right about now as companies adjust to the new political realities of a new incoming administration and a shifting Congress. And because the US press is routinely incapable of calling a duck a duck (fascism, racism, corruption, hypocrisy), it will probably work.

Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: donations, insurrection, pac, politics
Companies: at&t, comcast, verizon


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    NoLongerBreathedIn, 13 Jan 2021 @ 6:23am

    OK, so let’s give them a cookie. Chocolate and chipotle.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Jeroen Hellingman (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 7:21am

    Re:

    With a generous serving of scorpion sauce...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Bloof (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 7:22am

    'We'll happily support you while you're ignoring a pandemic, stripping away minority rights, tearing immigrant children from their families and destroying the economy in the name of trickle down economics, but when you try to seize power and fail, you've gone too far! Now people that may act on campaign financing and work to break down our taxpayer subsidised monopolies are going to be in positions of power, and that is unacceptable! Bad republicans! No cookies, until the next election cycle!'

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Mononymous Tim (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 7:35am

    There's no honor in openly admitting you're stopping your bribery for any length of time.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    Stephen T. Stone (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 7:38am

    Nobody should get credit for doing the bare minimum way too late to make a difference. And if they really want to make a difference now? They should pull all of their money out of politics.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    ECA (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 12:24pm

    And what happens

    When you stop feeding the monkey?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    ECA (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 12:27pm

    Re: And what happens

    Excuse me, thats wrong.
    That should be the GORILLA.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 13 Jan 2021 @ 3:01pm

    Re: And what happens

    When they refuse to file for copyrights and release their works under a CC license.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Jan 2021 @ 8:45am

    Re:

    Not just their money -- ever since Gingrich axed internal funding for congressional aides, it's been the likes of AT&T lobbyists who are actually writing the laws floated on the floor of Congress.

    THAT needs to stop even before the PAC money.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.