Policymakers

Top House Commerce Committee Democrats rebuked their GOP colleagues for failing to hold any oversight hearings of the Federal Communications Commission amid the FCC's efforts to strike network neutrality regulations.

Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) and Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA), the top Democrat on the technology subcommittee, suggested in a letter that House Republicans are trying to “shield the FCC from having to explain its push to install such unpopular policies,” like the repeal of net neutrality rules. “This Committee has an obligation to perform oversight on behalf of the American people and ensure that the American people understand the consequences of the FCC’s actions,” they wrote in the letter to full Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).

Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has a reputation as a nice guy who remembers co-workers’ birthdays and their children’s names. After he was targeted by trolls on Twitter, he took it in good humor, participating in a video where he read and responded to “mean tweets”. This is the man who could destroy the open internet.

Chairman Pai argues that if the US introduced strong net neutrality protections, authoritarian states would have an excuse to clamp down on online freedoms – in spite of the fact that authoritarian states don’t need an excuse to do so. He also says that legislation should only be applied if there’s a market failure. However, as Pai has said, “nothing is broken” and the rules were established on “hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom”.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that he has appointed Tina Pelkey as Press Secretary for the Chairman. Pelkey will report to the director of the FCC’s Office of Media Relations. Pelkey most recently served as senior vice president at Black Rock Group, focusing on strategic communications and public affairs. She previously worked in Brussels, Belgium, for Weber Shandwick, a global public relations firm. Prior to that, she worked at DCI Group and served as national press secretary for Senator John Cornyn of Texas. Pelkey is a native of Lenexa (KS) and a graduate of the University of Kansas with degrees in journalism and political science.

[Commentary] Like some contrived, rigged Russian voting block, the new proposed Republican Commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, has been selected to make sure that the current direction set by Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Michael O’Reilly will always end up in a vote that almost always benefits the phone and cable companies over the public interest.

[W]e need a Republican that is going to stand up for Republican values of ‘less government’, states’ rights and competition because it was a Republican-based Congress in 1996, under President Bill Clinton, that voted to bring the Telecom Act into existence, to open the monopoly “ILEC” phone networks so that customers could choose their own ISP, cable, phone broadband providers. In short, Brendan Carr should not be appointed and some Republican who will work for the public and wants a free market and competition, and doesn’t believe in government corporate financial assistance, should be made commissioner instead.

[Bruce Kushnick is the executive director of New Networks Institute]

President Donald Trump entered office pledging to cut red tape, and within weeks, he ordered his administration to assemble teams to aggressively scale back government regulations. But the effort — a signature theme in Trump’s populist campaign for the White House — is being conducted in large part out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts.

Most government agencies have declined to disclose information about their deregulation teams. But ProPublica and The New York Times identified 71 appointees, including 28 with potential conflicts, through interviews, public records and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Some appointees are reviewing rules their previous employers sought to weaken or kill, and at least two may be positioned to profit if certain regulations are undone. The appointees include lawyers who have represented businesses in cases against government regulators, staff members of political dark money groups, employees of industry-funded organizations opposed to environmental rules and at least three people who were registered to lobby the agencies they now work for.

With a full set of commissioners and a chief economist named, the Federal Communications Commission is set to undo network neutrality rules put in place during the Obama administration, but thorny issues around industry consolidation remain.

Former FCC commissioners, antitrust scholars, and at least one GOP senator share competition-related concerns about discarding net neutrality — the idea that internet service providers, who perform a gatekeeping function, should treat all data online equally, with no blocking, throttling, or unreasonable discrimination of legal content. On July 5, FCC Chairman Aji Pai announced that Jerry Ellig, a senior research fellow at George Mason University with a focus on competition policy, will lead economic analysis for rule-makings. President Donald Trump nominated Brendan Carr to the FCC for a Republican-designated seat, along with former FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel for a Democratic opening. That will make for a 3-2 Republican majority, up from the current 2-1 edge, with Pai and GOP-appointed Commissioner Michael O’Rielly often on opposite sides of votes with Democrat Mignon Clyburn.

The director of the independent Office of Government Ethics, who has been the federal government’s most persistent critic of the Trump Administration’s approach to ethics, announced that he is resigning nearly six months before his term is scheduled to end. Walter M. Shaub Jr. repeatedly challenged the Trump administration, publicly urging President Trump to fully divest from his business empire and chastising a senior Trump adviser for violating ethics rules. His outspokenness drew the ire of administration officials and earned him near-cult status among Trump’s opponents. Fans started a Facebook page in his honor, and his name has occasionally appeared on posters at anti-Trump protests. Shaub made no reference to those clashes in a resignation letter he posted Thursday indicating he will step down July 19. Instead, he praised the work of federal ethics officials, pointedly noting their commitment to “protecting the principle that public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws, and ethical principles above private gain.” In an interview, Shaub said he was not leaving under pressure, adding that no one in the White House or the administration pushed him to leave. But the ethics chief said he felt that he had reached the limit of what he could achieve in this administration, within the current ethics framework.

[Commentary] On Election Night 2016, a few hours before the results were fully in, I wrote a blog post titled “Why I’m staying at 18F”. I felt it was important, to me, to make a decision based on principle before I knew the outcome. Earlier in July, I decided to leave government service.

They may seem completely unrelated to most, but I’ll try to explain why to me they were evidence of the same dangerous “denormalization” of our government. The first thing that happened was the release of the written testimony of the former FBI Director, James Comey. For anyone in public service to ask for the personal loyalty of anyone else in government is an affront to our core values. For the President to ask it of the FBI Director is beyond “not normal." The second thing that occurred that very same day is that the technology and design organization I have worked for since before its public launch, 18F (and the larger service we created for it and its sibling organizations, the Technology Transformation Service), is being reorganized via administrative order into the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the appointment of Jerry Ellig as chief economist for the FCC. Dr. Ellig currently serves as a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Dr. Ellig’s work focuses on the role of economic analysis in the U.S. regulatory process, competition policy in telecommunications, broadband and electronic commerce, and performance management in government agencies. Most recently, he has published a series of papers that assess the quality and use of regulatory impact analysis in both executive branch and independent agencies. These papers identify best practices, shortcomings, and reasons for variation in the quality of agencies’ analysis.

Dr. Ellig has worked as a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University since 1996. He previously served in the federal government as deputy director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission (2001-03) and as a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress (1995-96). He has also served as an associate professor of economics and adjunct professor of law at George Mason University. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, and a B.A. in economics from Xavier University in Cincinnati.

Federal Trade Commission Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen announced that Abbott (Tad) Lipsky, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, retired effective July 3, 2017. Lipsky was previously a partner in the law firm of Latham & Watkins LLP, and brought 40 years of experience in antitrust law to the position, including previously serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General to President Reagan’s first Assistant Attorney General, William F. Baxter. He also served on the Trump administration transition team for the FTC.

Alan Devlin, an Acting Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition also left the Commission July 3, 2017, for private practice.

Markus H. Meier, who has served as Acting Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition since November 2015, replaces Lipsky as Acting Director of the Bureau of Competition. Meier has led the Health Care division within the Bureau of Competition since 2006. He brings nearly 30 years of experience in antitrust, serving previously in private practice and the U.S. Army. As part of these changes, Acting Chairman Ohlhausen has also appointed Haidee L. Schwartz as an Acting Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition. Schwartz previously served as an Attorney Advisor to Acting Chairman Ohlhausen, and as a counsel practicing antitrust law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in Washington D.C. Marian R. Bruno will continue to serve as Deputy Director, Bureau of Competition, a position she has held since 2008. She will continue to bring her strong leadership, immense skills and expertise to the Bureau’s mission.