(Must get this off chest).... Unless Obama walks his talk on Net Neutrality, he is a Phony

[onenote]

161. No, he didn't pull them out of a hat. Here's how it works.

For a number of years, the decision as to gets appointed to the FCC (other than the Chairman) is based on who is pushing that person.

Thus, the two Democrats appointed to the FCC by Obama, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel are, respectively, a former member of the South Carolina Public Service Commission and not coincidentally, the daughter of senior Congressional Democratic member of Congress James Clyburn, and, in the case of Rosenworcel, a career FCC and Hill staffer who served as senior advisor to former Commissioner Michael Copps and Senators Inouye and Rockefeller.

The two repubs named to the FCC by Obama, Pai and O'Rielly, were the choices of certain senior repubs with whom those two had previously worked at the FCC and/or the Hill. (Pai did have a short stint as in-house lawyer for Verizon, but the bulk of his career before the FCC was spent at the FCC, on the Hill, or at the DOJ.)

It has worked this way on both sides of the aisle for a long time. For example, the two Democrats nominated to the FCC by Bush II were Michael Copps, former staffer to Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings and Jonathan Adelstein, former staffer to Tom Dachle.

Only the Chairman generally is picked directly by the President and it generally is someone with whom the President or the Vice President has a close relationship. Kevin Martin was close to Dick Cheney (his wife worked for Cheney) and he had led the brigades fighting against the recount in Florida. Genachowski was a former classmate of Obama and Tom Wheeler was a major Obama fundraiser and campaign official.

That is not to say that (for the most part) the President appoints someone with no experience in the telecommunications field to be Chairman. Martin had served as an advisor to a previous FCC Commissioner and had been a Commissioner himself before being upgraded to Chairman. Genachowski also had served as an advisor to a previous FCC Commissioner and had then worked for communications entrepreneur Barry Diller. And Wheeler's background is now well known: served as president of the National Cable Television Association from 1979-1984 before leaving to try his hand at starting up companies himself (not all that successfully for the most part), before becoming the second president of the Cellular Television Industry Association, a post he held for around 12 years, before going back into the investment business. (FWIW, the cable industry when he ran NCTA did not resemble today's cable industry in the least; only around half the country was wired and, including broadcast and public access channels, more than 90 percent of the country had access to fewer than 30 channels; Comcast not the behemoth it has become -- it was a regional company with fewer than a half million customers and no programming interests).

Not attempting to defend how it works, just explaining.