July 2009 Archives
One of the joys of being a grandparent is that you get to watch the 1939 film version of the Wizard of Oz all over again. And again. And again.
Still, for those of us who tromp the halls of tech public policy in Washington, there is a potent lesson in the Wizard's booming refrain of "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..." when the great Oz turns out to be a fraud. A lession that played out this week at the US Department of Justice.
For those who have been on vacation, this is the week in which we hit a new all-time high for unemployment in the US, and the stock market again began to tank with no end in sight. The FBI announced that mortgage fraud is so rampant (and growing) that they simply can't keep up. Someone (possibly North Korea) launched a cyber attack against the computers of the US Treasury, the Secret Service, the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Transportation. Spam is out of control, as is identity theft.
Oh, and the US Department of Justice announce that it would launch a new anti-trust investigation into cell phone companies seeking to determine...ummm, something. Or maybe nothing. They aren't sure, and probably won't be until they have spent untold millions of our dollars. They think, just maybe, they may decide that cell phone companies have too much power, and want to investigate that.
Understand, no crime has been committed. In fact, when Sen. Herb ("I spent eight trillion dollars of your tax dollars and all I got for it was this crummy tee shirt") Kohl launched a similar investigation of the cellular companies, he could not find anything wrong. He did, however, ask the the Department of Justice to launch an investigation of these non-crimes.
The reality is that the US cellular industry, for all of its faults, remains one of the best things about this country. It is highly competitive. It offers an incredible array of services. It has continued to innovate, to improve services, to improve coverage, and to lower prices over the past two decades.
If you've read my columns in print publications (including my Bleeding Edge tech columns), you'll know that I am no particular fan of the cellular companies. For the past 15 years, I have devoted two to three columns per year to berating those companies for their junk phones, goofy policies and bizarre advertising claims. But I do so out of love, not hate. Like a wayward child, I chastise them when they are wrong but otherwise love them for who they are:
The very best cellular services in the world. Innovators. Successful private companies that bring value to the nation and to their shareholders. And companies that just might, if we don't let their competitors use cheap political games to bring them down, solve the problem of ubiquitous broadband in rural America.
In today's challenging environment, the DOJ intention to investigate these companies based merely on speculation and gossip is an outrage. An outrage that the White House should put an immediate end to, but probably will not.
As for me, I'm saddened to think that the Justice department I once thought was the great and powerful OZ -- an agency I believed was committed to justice and the law -- looks more and more like a political hack in a cheesy suit pulling levers behind a curtain.
Time to go back to Kansas.
