Haiku Politics

A story in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle reports that the California State Assembly unanimously voted for a bill that gave AT&T exactly what it wanted in the way of a telephone and cable deregulation bill. Not a single Democrat voted against this bill.

As the article points out:

How did the phone companies get such royal treatment from legislators? Was it simply that, as Ken McNeely, president of AT&T California, said after the vote, "It's hard to be against competition and choice for consumers." Hardly. As usual, it was about money.

AT&T's wooing of the bill's sponsor, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, included hosting a Pebble Beach golf fundraiser for Núñez's Assembly Democrats, raising $1.7 million for their re-election. Perhaps not coincidentally, Núñez threw out the opening pitch at the Giants' AT&T Park on Monday.

This is, by the way, the same AT&T that now claims that its customers have no right to privacy involving their personal data.

Here we have once again an example cozy relationship between the Democratic Party and its corporate sponsors.

Posted by The Haikuist on Monday, June 26, 2006 at 9:02 AM | Permalink