Obama's FCC Chief Could Be ...
Everything is rumors now and the real discussions are still to come. Possibilities
include:
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Any of the crowd of brilliant, honest and hardworking people who have actively supported Obama in public . Many came together more than a decade ago while working under Reed Hundt at the FCC, and have remained close since that time. Don Gips and Julius Genachowski from that era are on the "transition team" choosing Obama's appointees. Blair Levin is the frontrunner. Bill Kennard is said to support Larry Strickling.
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Michael Copps or Jonathan Adelstein, respected current commissioners
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Women, Afro-Americans, Latinos and a Native American. Obama's staff is likely to be the most diverse in U.S. history. Jessica Rosenworcel has strong D.C. respect, Mignon Clyburn is Business Week's choice, Kathy Brown, Jessica Zufolo, and Susan Crawford have my respect. Susan Ness is close to Hillary Clinton. Julia Johnson was rumored to be interested but tells me she prefers to remain in the private sector and doesn't want a government job. Male prospects of color include John Muleta, Broderick Johnson, Dewayne Hendricks, Joe Garcia, and Danny Sepulveda.
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Any of a half-dozen academic stars who have transformed how we think about the Internet and see the fallacies in the old regulatory battles. Larry Lessig, Tim Wu, Yochai Benkler, Susan Crawford, Eli Noam, Phil Weiser, and Jonathan Askin are first-rate.
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A senior technology or finance expert, my personal choice. I don't know whether Bill Smith, Dick Green, Niel Ransom, Ron Dykes, John Hodulik, Dan Reingold, or Frank Governali are interested, but they exemplify the skills needed. I placed Robert Pepper here rather than with his policy colleagues, although he's part of that group. He has gone beyond policy to a professional level understanding of technology, finance, and lessons from around the world. Because of those skills I would place him above any of his extraordinary peers.
The takeaway if policy bores you: The folks coming in are liberal Democrats like Hundt, Kennard, Copps, Adelstein, and Obama himself. Those I know are very smart, hardworking, ethical and effective. The policies will be similar to what the Democrats in the minority have been championing for the last eight years: more direct attention to consumer interests as opposed to “incentives for carriers,” deregulation when it makes sense rather than as religion, opposition to media concentration, and protection of the open Internet. Results instead of hope.
Change will probably be slow. What's done cannot be easily undone; the last ten years have cut competition in many areas. Often it will be unrealistic to restore strong competition in less than a decade without wildly unlikely moves like a second breakup of AT&T. Many of these people were enormously successful in the 1990's, but will need to do some profound rethinking.
Better policy makes a difference, although less than policymakers think. On $200B in Bell sales, I would guess that 2-3% more went to profit because of Powell-Martin policy than if the Democrats had made the decisions. That $4-6B is a plausible estimate of the “political risk” faced from the regime change. Both companies would remain among the most profitable in the world. (more policy at end)
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