Biden Intends To Pick Lawyer Anna Gomez for FCC To End Agency Deadlock (bloomberg.com) 37
President Joe Biden intends to select veteran government lawyer Anna Gomez to serve on the Federal Communications Commission and give the agency its first Democratic majority of his presidency, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing a person briefed on the matter. From the report: Gomez's arrival would poise the FCC, after more than two years of partisan deadlock, to act on matters including restoring net neutrality rules that bar broadband providers from interfering with web traffic. Gomez's selection may be announced soon, said the person briefed on the matter, who declined to be identified because the matter hasn't been made public. The FCC has been split 2-to-2 along party lines since Biden's inauguration in 2021. An earlier nominee withdrew amid opposition from Senate Republicans. Gomez, with a long resume of Washington jobs including private law practice and work at two agencies, needs to win confirmation from the Senate where Democrats wield a narrow majority. Democrats including FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel have said they support restoring net neutrality rules that bar broadband providers from unfairly manipulating web traffic. The FCC under Republican leadership in 2017 gutted rules adopted earlier by the agency.
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gross, the "enlightened fencesitter" has joined the discussion with their magical nonsense fairytale thinking
yes democrats and republicans are far from ideal but thats the reality and most of us arent so keen to just abandon democracy as you are.
most of us are not cowards who will just run away from hard problems with blithe virtue signalling and actually work with the systems that we do in fact have.
even if theres some truth to it this type of comment its worse than wortless, its negative worth, you've act
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"My back is spineless.
"My belly is yellow.
I am the American nonvoter."
Not voting is the worst of both, you actually contribute to the shit pile and decide to have no agency to help get yourself and anyone out of it.
It doesn't matter when a mere 6 years ago a guy with 0 political experience, who everybody said had no chance defied the odds and defeated a 40 year veteran of American politics, and 4 years after that a record number of people voted to remove him from office.
The fact that cannabis is now legal i
Why not vote for the best representative in your a (Score:2)
it's about time (Score:3)
It's been quite a long time since that reeces mug toting grinning fool fled, I can't believe it's taken this long to find a replacement for him.
This should get the FCC back on track to serving the public interest instead of the corporate profits.
Re:it's about time (Score:4, Informative)
It isn't a problem of finding somebody for the job; it's corruption STOPPING putting anybody half decent in the job! Comcast alone has paid for a flood of fake citizen complaints, hired the homeless to fill up seats at public forums, has at least 1 lobbyist for each senator, and at times hired nearly ALL registered lobbyists in the field simply to take a vacation so none are available to opposing groups to hire.
The propaganda and/or bribes have 1 whole party functionally sold out and they only need a few suckers / crooks on the other side. This is why we can't pass a LAW and have to rely upon regulators who are half captured already.
Re:it's about time (Score:4, Interesting)
"An earlier nominee withdrew amid opposition from Senate Republicans." Yes that is true, but the article is leaving out the fact that Sohn couldn't get all of the Democrats to vote for her either.
There's a handful of corrupt Dems (Score:2)
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Manchin & Sinema are officially Democrats, but mostly vote against the party on anything that's even remotely controversial.
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It is much much than Manchin & Sinema, I believe there were eight Democrat Senators who refused to vote for Sohn. If Biden wants any chance of getting his FCC nominee approved first thing he needs to do is pick someone who can get ALL of the Democrat Senate votes.
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"An earlier nominee withdrew amid opposition from Senate Republicans". Opposition based on the fact the candidate could not explain what a packet was, or even how to spell TCP/IP.
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After a nice long confirmation process being intentionally held and delayed by the minority at every step. By the time she's actually confirmed, Biden will probably only have a little over a year left in office, pending re-election outcome.
Why the fuck did it take him 29 months to get a nominee in place?
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Getting a nominee is the easy part. Getting one that's a) good and b) won't get blocked by the Republicans is near impossible.
The Republicans like the status quo, and nothing can change will the committee is split 2-2. Just blocking a nominee is a win for the Republicans right now.
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Well here is the gargantuan task that Biden took 25+ months to figure out:
1. nominate someone that even the democrats on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee could approve for a full Senate vote.
2. also make sure that same nominee would get all Senate democrats to vote for confirmation (previous nominee failed this step)
3. make sure your nominee isn't going to say stupid shit in the committee hearings, and make sure they're capable of absorbing all the trolling questions about non-sequi
Biden had a replacement 2 years ago (Score:2)
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last i checked its not biden who is unwilling to extend the debt ceiling which is nothing more than a simple vote. (and really the whole idea should be adandoned entirely)
the fact that some people are using this simple procedure to leverage other goals of theirs is gross and borderline fucking evil. the time to argue about how much money the government spends is you know, when the negotations for budget spending is done, not afterwards you blithering dollards
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Senators Cruz and Paul are powerless morons in this particular instance. They're two votes among 100, where the other 98 very much do not want to share responsibility for setting off a nuclear bomb in the middle of the economy.
This is completely between what the Speaker thinks he can get 218+ votes for, and what Biden is willing to sign. The Senate is along for the ride on this one, and they know it so strongly that the leadership has said as much in recorded remarks.
And if you weren't a complete fucking
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Re:Debt ceiling first? (Score:5, Insightful)
Biden: Give me a bill to sign.
Senate majority and minority leaders: Give us a bill to vote on, and we'll schedule it immediately.
House minority leader: Let's pass a clean 1-sentence bill that just increases the limit to get us through the current fiscal year, and then let's negotiate on the budget through regular order.
House speaker: we need to attach ridiculous spending cuts to what should be a near-unanimous pro-forma legislative action! And I'm going to stamp my feet and refuse to move until I get my way, because the only way I could get the Speaker's gavel is if I also accepted a noose around my neck that only takes the 4 most extreme members of my caucus to yank on to expose my speakership for the powerless sham it is! ... but somehow it's Biden's fault?
Also, you do realize that the Congress is capable of having votes on more than one thing at a time, right? I'm pretty sure while the House is figuring out the most efficient way to send the global economy off the cliff (or not), the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation can be having confirmation hearings for FCC Chairperson without either one blocking the other.
TL;DR: not one single thing in your comment makes any sense, or intersects with easily observable reality in any way.
FCC (Score:2)
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Any engineer worth their sheepskin is not likely to be able to play politics for long enough to make it to a place of power. The deceit and outright manipulation of facts that you have to engage in as a politician goes against the years of training and sense of ownership that a good engineer has in their head.
The FCC has plenty of good engineers...you'll find them stuffed in cubicles or in test labs. What they produce may, or may not, influence policy.
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More than the fact that they're all lawyers - they're all ex-telco lobbyist lawyers.
Because clearly they're going to have the best interests of ratepayers and subscribers at heart.
Fuck the FCC.
Wouldn't it be nice... (Score:3)
If the FCC could deal with issues in a non-partisan manner?
For example, net neutrality is actually an issue for rural (mostly Repubilcan) areas - urban residents are more likely to have more than one way to connect to the net, which keeps the worst impulses of the ISPs in check.
An FCC that actually reflected the citizens' needs would have figured out a compromise net neutrality regulation, instead of the current all-or-nothing-depending-on-the-party-in-the-majority stuff we do now.
Re: Wouldn't it be nice... (Score:2)