On Sunday, June 29, 2014 the Los Angeles Times ran an article
in its business section titled "Comcast's Growing Reach". On both
Friday and Saturday preceding the running of this article the Times advertised
this piece as an insight into the issues surrounding the proposed merger of
Time Warner and Comcast. What a grand disappointment. The article seems to be
written by Comcast’s PR department.
The article mentions that after their Time Warner takeover, Comcast
would control most of the major urban markets in the United States for both
cable television and Internet, as if this was a good thing. The only true
competition to cable television is the Internet, but the article failed to
mention that fact. The important issues of net neutrality and media
consolidation were simply glossed over with a few words. How can the issue of
one person, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, controlling 50% of the Internet in the
United States not be a major issue? Faux journalism.
After the proposed merger Comcast will control 1.5 million
homes in the Los Angeles area for both cable television and Internet. Does the City
of Los Angeles have a position regarding this merger or has it just kept quiet
in order to maximize its political contributions? The growing reach, which is
spoken of, is the growing control of the lives and media of all the citizens in
Los Angeles and most other major urban markets.
The article discusses Comcast as an evolving player in the
tech industry. While they may be evolving they are not evolving into a major
player, they are already the major player. As evidence of Comcast's evolving
participation in the technology field the article points out that Comcast has
more software engineers than any other cable television company. That would
only seem to make sense since they are the largest cable television company in
the country by far. That is not news but simply faux journalism.
The article wastes time telling us about the cafeteria for
Comcast employees as well as the new large office building they plan to build
in Philadelphia. Do we really care about this? No! The issues that are
important to us are net neutrality and the consolidation of media.
Comcast claims they will not compete with any system that is
owned by Time Warner. This goes without
saying since cable television systems in major metropolitan areas were illegally
awarded as government-protected monopolies.
Local governments were able to create monopolies that
private enterprise could not. They were created by politicians who received
large political contributions in order to protect the monopolies that were
issued in violation of the United States Constitution. The monopoly cable
companies were able to pay pennies on the dollar (through political
contributions and other gratuities) for the economic benefits that it received. You
and I pay the price. The taxpayers are the ones now paying the price for these
grand monopolies created by cities such as Los Angeles. Los Angeles alone spent
more than $10 million to protect illegal monopolies for cable television
companies. The US Supreme Court in the case of Preferred Communications vs City
of Los Angeles established the protection for competition but was ignored by
the City.
As Comcast has taken over the Internet it is now seeking to
end the concept of “net neutrality” by having the FCC institute laws and
regulations that will effectively give them control of the Internet. In the
brief discussion of opposing viewpoints the important issue was hidden in deep
into the article. It stated, "Comcast is cornering a market…the Internet
and the flow of information". Cable
television, as it exists today, was created by the corruption of local
governments, being led by the City of Los Angeles.
Allowing one company
to purchase government as is being done by Comcast on the federal level is a
major danger and a disgrace to free enterprise and our Constitution. This corruption
is now being extended to the federal government and the FCC in order to take
even more control. The current chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, was the chief
lobbyist for cable television and the former chairman of the FCC, Michael
Powell, is now the chief lobbyist for the cable television industry.
The proposed changes of the net neutrality laws are designed
to provide additional revenue to the cable television industry whose revenues
from cable television are declining annually. That increased revenue must come
from us. The free market be damned, buying politicians is the new economy.