Monday June 20, 2005

Out of Commission

As regular readers will know, I’ve been watching with interest what the FCC will do under the leadership of Bush yes-man Kevin Martin. The good news is that the answer appears to be not much—at least this year. The commission is currently deadlocked with two Dems and two Republicans, and the appointment of a fifth commissioner, a Republican, is nowhere in sight. Until then, the FCC will be more or less useless when it comes to rolling back regulation and/or staging show trials against obscenity.

TVWeek, which requires registration, has all the gory political details. The weekly trade also reports on the riches—and in one case, infamy—that has historically befallen former commissioners. Snip:

Payoffs can be uniquely sweet for former FCC chairmen. Mark Fowler and Dennis Patrick, who chaired the agency during the Reagan administration, both used their connections in the telecommunications industry to become multimillionaire entrepreneurs.

Dick Wiley, who chaired the agency during the Nixon and Ford administrations, now heads Wiley Rein & Fielding, one of the nation’s most powerful telecommunications law firms. Charlie Ferris, FCC chairman during the Carter administration, is one of the industry’s most influential cable TV attorneys as a senior partner at the law firm Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo.

Of course, an assignment at the FCC offers no guarantee of a free pass through life ever after. In one of the agency’s most notorious recent examples, Stephen Sharp, a Republican commissioner during the Reagan administration, served time in prison after a conviction on child molestation charges.

Can you believe that? Multimillionaire entrepreneurs?