Conflict of Interest May Taint DTV Delay Proposal 339
Anonymous writes "Ars Technica has discovered that one of the Obama transition team members advising on the digital TV transition has a conflict of interest that would benefit WiMAX carrier Clearwire over Verizon. 'Barack Obama's call to delay the DTV transition would affect not only millions of analog TV viewers, but also powerful companies with a vested interest in the changeover date — including at least one with an executive on Obama's transition team.'"
Impressive... (Score:4, Interesting)
So... (Score:5, Interesting)
We've already ruled out the possibility that there _might_ just be a consumer-beneficial reason for pushing back the changeover date? I mean, because it's political, it _has_ to be so someone or some company can game the system and reap megabucks?
Re:Impressive... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are certain sectors where conflicts of interest are unavoidable. Financial Investing and Politics are two them. The general remedy in these situations is full disclosure rather than suffer a chain of recuses every time you try to get something done. With full disclosure, at least the opposition can frame your decisions properly and decide whether or not they are motivated by personal interest.
That's why Cheney received only a minimal amount of heat for his Haliburton connection. Everyone knew up front what his interests were and had ample opportunity to question his motives.
how many governments fall apart before starting? (Score:2, Interesting)
Even "Whitewater" Hillary starting to look good in comparison.
Re:Impressive... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why Cheney received only a minimal amount of heat for his Haliburton connection. Everyone knew up front what his interests were and had ample opportunity to question his motives.
I feel it's important to point out that Cheney was one of Bush's closest advisers and policy makers, not to mention second in line to the presidency. This guy Salemme on the other hand appears to be an unofficial part of the transition team, advising as an expert on this one matter. He's not mentioned on Obama's website as even being a member of the transition team, although it's clear he is, he appears to be meeting with congressmen. It's not like he's writing checks to his company or pulls Obama's strings.
Re:Who released the hounds (Score:5, Interesting)
Odd how this is the sort of post that pops up when it's a problem with the budding Obama administration but not so much when it has anything to do with Bush...
Well I'm not going to defend the OP, since I am cynical and I see no reason to defend Obama from the completely true accusation that he is a politician. Nor am I going to defend a conflict of interest.
But the simple fact is that the scale we're talking about, Bush vs Obama, is ridiculously different. Some low level advisor might get a temporary benefit from a suggestion Obama made regarding delaying DTV switchover, a relatively minor issue. Bush's vice president's former company was handed multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts (where in most cases the claim that this was because only halliburton could do it were flat wrong), to the point of even outsourcing our military's kitchens to this company. That's a conflict of interest that concerns me. If this was Bush, then it'd be his FCC chairman or Secretary of Commerce that was a VP for Verizon, who'd have already been given an exclusive contract for government wifi.
Bush's administration had plenty of minor conflicts of interest of around this level that I really never gave a rats ass about. They suck, but they're largely unavoidable. The difference is basically how important and high up these conflicts go, and how blatantly and severely they direct policy. We'll see how things turn out with the new guy, but right now just looking at the Cabinet-level picks Obama is no Bush and saying that is not inherently 'bias'.
Re:Delays my ass (Score:5, Interesting)
the only way they're going to actually get a converter is if they get kicked in the pants sufficiently hard by, let's say, having their TV stations go dark.
Honest question here: is the plan actually to have the stations go completely dark at the switchover date?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have those channels broadcast a continuously looped message that explains in detail how to switch over to digital TV? The message could be maintained for a month, say, after which time the channels would truly go dark to free up the bandwidth. Otherwise people who were not paying much attention will just think their TV is broken.
Even better would be a multi-stage approach; starting with occasional advisory ads and text-overlays (which I guess they are doing now?), then have every commercial replaced with an advisory, then have a perpetual "this channel will stop functioning soon!" overlay on the channel, then a continually looped message explaining the switchover, and finally the channels go dark.
I know that they "shouldn't have to" beat people over the head with this information--but the fact is that many people are probably still not aware that the switchover is going to happen, and could probably use some more insistent messages.
Re:Impressive... (Score:3, Interesting)
When George W. Bush stocks his staff with industry insiders, who make policy decisions that directly benefit their industry, it's corruption. When Barack Obama stocks his staff with industry insiders, who make policy decisions that directly benefit their industry, it's more of the same.
I saw the red flags when Google started to get more business from the Government, after Google's CEO Eric Schmidt been seen hanging around Obama. ...What you didn't think YouTube duplicating CSPAN, Obama pushing for electronic health records, and publishing presidential speeches on YouTube just came out of the blue? (What no chance for Yahoo, Apple, or Microsoft to bid?)
Missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
According to TFA, Obama, who wants to delay the DTV switch, is doing so (at least in part) based on the input of someone who stands to directly profit from having the transition delayed.
Why: It would seem that this Salemme guy is a Clearwire executive. Verizon, in an attempt to compete with Clearwire, spent $9.4 billion to be allowed to use the spectrum that analog TV is currently on. Obama, on the advice of Salemme, wants to deny Verizon use of that chunk of spectrum, preventing them from competing effectively with Clearwire.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Impressive... (Score:3, Interesting)