Oh, now I get it.
It’s well known that Democrats have taken large contributions from labor unions and trial lawyers, while Republicans have significant financial backing from the tobacco industry. However, the single largest career backer of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is the same: telecom giant AT&T.
Spy away!!
The degree to which Haley Barbour is owned by big oil is kind of staggering.
i sincerely hope you’re being snarky with “now i get it”, because you should have gotten it a few years ago.
i’m 99% sure i’ve remarked on reid’s cozy relationship with AT&T a few times.
Someone should prank reid the way they pranked Rumsfeld with TIA. remember that? a bunch of hackers published aerial maps of his home address in Maryland. that same thing should be done to every single rep or senator that supported retroactive immunity. In fact, it’s my primary motivation for calling senators and goading their offices into yelling, and then publishing the conversations.
Yes, it’s snark, although I didn’t know that AT&T was his largest contributor.
I doubt that ATT’s bribes are primarily about retroactive immunity. That decision was pretty much a slam dunk from the start: nobody goes against the wishes of the “intelligence community”.
ATT’s concerns revolve more about maintaining the monopolistic practices in the telco industry, destroying Net neutrality, preempting price regulation, and controlling content on every medium from cable tv to the Net to communications standards. Their nightmare is being relegated back to being a mere common carrier of bits and bytes. The outcome of those battles will be far more significant for freedom and democracy than even retroactive immunity.
“I doubt that ATT’s bribes are primarily about retroactive immunity. “
they were at the time. first of all, AT&T is NOT a member of the intelligence copmmunity, they’re a phone company. and in any event, by breaking the law, they were exposed to a lot of lawsuits.
Yeah but any investigation of their spying would have involved the agencies that told them to do it in the first place. When does Congress or any administration bring down the hammer on intel agencies? They knew they had little to worry about except bad publicity.
Net neutrality is far more important to me than telecom immunity.
The Democrats are all behind that, right?
http://www.credoaction.com/campaign/74_dems/?rc=homepage
Yup. That’s where we see our dollars at work. And they may get away with it because the media, including most of the leftysphere, thinks total corporate control of our communications medium is not as important as some pol getting laid.
An end to net neutrality will be the official end of any independence when it comes to media. We might as well throw in the towel if they get away with it.
I always thought it was interesting that the little prize bags handed out to the delegates at both major party conventions looked like NASCAR uniforms. With the largest and most conspicuous logo being ATT. This was just after the FISA vote and the rather large soft money donations to actually put on the show ( dem’s case ) of the Denver convention. I heard 50 million plus.
So where is the quid pro quo? Hmmmmmm
bille