http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/exposing-one-of-the-large_b_8767256.html
10 replies (most recent on top)
Team red created voter supression. Pros at it.
gnj, you're creating sayings out of thin air. Never heard of "drinking bong water means that you are too stoned". Drink another Budweiser my inebriated friend.
BTW, you gotta be real proud of your favored party, where they're now talking about overturning the will of their people by pulling shenanigans at the convention to take the victory away from Trump, if it appears he's going to win the primary count.
However, I applaud their transparency this time. They usually hide their efforts in suppressing popular votes. But now they're just coming straight out and essentially saying, "If things don't go our way, we're changing the rules."
I thought coups were reserved for banana republics. I'm no fan of Trump's but, should he win your party's nomination on the up and up, for party operatives to then undo the man's win is despicable. The Republican Party is now contemplating fixing elections on a level that, until now, has been reserved within the realm of Union E-Board elections. Your party is over if it comes to that.
There is no IRONY here. Just the truth. And the truth is the truth, no matter what.
-ecd, by your comment, America really is in trouble. All of those news orgs are organs of the democratic national committee. And when you are drinking bong water means that you are too stoned. Perhaps the vapes have overtaken you.
txe, they all maintain the status quo against the middle class. BTW, what's with the "bong water" comment, as opposed to just bong, or weed? Very peculiar phrasing. Do you also say marijuana cigarettes?
fwm: "right wing media"? What plantet do you live on. ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, NY Times, NY Daily Ne ws, Newsday, LA Times, Phil Enquirer, Washington Post, plus the major papers in Boston, Chicago and Dallas are all lunatic lefty outfits. Even Verizon's own Huffington post is a lefty organ. Time to put down the bong water.
'bout time. I'm tired of the right wing media dictating the agenda.
Love to see someone speak the truth, regardless of who feeds them. Finally somone not paid off.
I love the irony. One of the mouths that Verizon feeds is chomping away on the hand that saved and feeds it. Excellent strategy! Buy a failing leftwing, online news money pit, along with an old dial-up Intenet access company that publishes stories inviting the government and FCC to inspect your books. "Priceless" as they used to say in an old commercial.
Why is America not in the Top 20 in the world in wired or wireless broadband speeds? Why are America's communications prices higher than many other countries? Why is there no serious competition -- and how do we fix this mess?
Read the New Reports
Verizon's Manipulated Accounting & the FCC's Big Freeze: 15 Years of Neglect
New Networks Institute just released two reports in a new series, "Fixing Telecommunications". It is based on mostly public, but unexamined information that exposes one of the largest financial accounting scandals in American history. It impacts all wireline and wireless phone, broadband, Internet and even cable TV/video services, and it continues today with impunity.
Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, and other large telephone companies have been able to manipulate their financial accounting to make the local phone networks and services look unprofitable and have used this 'fact' in many public policy and regulatory decisions that benefited the incumbent telecommunications utilities.
But the core of this scandal, which we dubbed the "FCC's Big Freeze", is so bizarre that no one would believe it if it was detailed in some thriller about financial chicanery. I'll get to this in a moment.
Why Does this Matter to All Communications Services?
In NY State, Verizon used this so-called 'unprofitable' excuse to raise local rates multiple times, stopped deploying and upgrading the fiber optic-based wired networks used for FiOS services, and even stopped maintaining the existing copper networks with the plan to shut off the copper and force customers onto wireless. This has left most cities with deployment gaps or no upgrades at all.
But this is a national story and it impacts the price and availability of all services, as these networks aren't just the copper-based wires for phone service but are the copper and fiber wires that are used for wireless services, as almost all mobile data, video or calls end up riding over a wire, known as 'special access'. These services are mostly controlled by Verizon, and in their own separate territories, AT&T and Centurylink (they do not compete among themselves for this business in any significant way).
And this means that the incumbent utilities, AT&T, Verizon and Centurylink, also control the costs that all competitors pay to use these networks including the wireless companies, T-Mobile or Sprint. And they control the costs to wireless hot spots and any DAS, small wireless cell sites that ride over a Verizon et al. wire. And they also control the costs and access for all CLECs, Competitive Local Exchange Companies, offering phone calling, broadband, or Internet service.
Adding insult to injury, the losses were caused, not by expenses for traditional wireline local voice and DSL Internet services, but by the cross-subsidies of Verizon's other new unregulated lines of business that dump expenses into the regulated state utility. Much of Verizon Wireless's fiber wires to the cell towers, it appears, were paid for by local phone customer rate increases -- which helped to make local service look 'unprofitable'.
Finally, this impacts every aspect of the FCC's Internet Order, commonly known as Net Neutrality, which is now in court. The massive cross-subsidies between and among Verizon NY and Verizon's other subsidies have allowed the company to control the networks and services over them -- which caused Net Neutrality concerns in the first place.
The FCC's Big Freeze --15 Years of Regulatory Neglect
However, while there are multiple questionable acts, the core of this scandal is the fact that the losses were created, in large part, by the FCC, which sets the rules about the incumbent phone companies' accounting. Simply put:
In 2001, the FCC "froze" the calculations of expenses that are used in every state, based on the year 2000 -- and this freeze will continue until the year 2017. It assigns the majority of all expenses to the local phone service category.
You can't make this stuff up. And when we use the term "freeze", we are actually quoting the FCC.
"Freezing of jurisdictional separations category relationships and/or allocation factors.
"(a) Effective July 1, 2001, through June 30, 2017, all local exchange carriers...shall apportion costs to the jurisdictions using their study area and/or exchange specific jurisdictional allocation factors calculated during the twelve month period ending December 31, 2000, for each of the categories/sub-categories as specified herein."
What this gobblygook says -- all phone companies will keep the percentage of all expenses for each line of business, as if it was the year 2000. So literally, the FCC 'froze' these expenses based on the year 2000. This is the current model used in every state in America.
And so, for the last 15 years there have been no major audits and no examination by either the state commissions or the FCC. This phrase, more or less, has appeared since 2001 in FCC materials -- "until comprehensive reform could be achieved".