Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Tuesday urged regulators to stop AT&T\u2019s merger with T-Mobile, saying the $39 billion deal would drive up prices for consumers and threaten jobs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In a filing sent to the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission, Franken said the deal would lead to a market duopoly and that conditions attached to the merger wouldn\u2019t stop what could be as much as a 25 percent increase in wireless costs for consumers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe competitive effects of a merger of this size and scope will reverberate throughout the telecommunications sector for decades to come and will affect consumer prices, customer service, innovation, competition in handsets, and the quality and quantity of network coverage,\u201d said Franken, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. \u201dThese threats are too large and too irrevocable to be prevented or alleviated by conditions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now, in a sense, this isn’t a surprise. \u00a0The far left, the “Nutroots”, hate<\/em>\u00a0this merger. \u00a0Behind the banner of “Net Neutrality”, they’d much prefer the government to control the world’s bandwidth.<\/p>\nFranken\u2019s move comes after committee chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis. wrote a letter to federal officials last week, saying such a merger would violate antitrust law.<\/p>\n
But we’re not here to debate Net Neutrality. \u00a0We’re here to talk Al Franken.<\/p>\n
Franken has two main bases of support in Minnesota, which pushed him – a political neophyte, albeit a pundit with portfolio – over the top in the 2008 Senate race against Norm Coleman; the Netroots – the mass of far-left “alternative” media activists – and the unions.<\/p>\n
And on this issue as few others, those two bases are very much in conflict.<\/p>\n
And if you’re a union worker, you need to know what Franken did.<\/p>\n
More at noon today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What if Minnesota’s unions gave their all to support a DFL senate candidate – and he stood them up when it was time for their key bit of swag? Yesterday, it got a column in the WaPo. In the Tech section, in a piece by Cecilia Kang. \u00a0Al Franken filed a brief with the FCC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-senator-franken","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21445"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21452,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21445\/revisions\/21452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}