Records Indicate Bells Engaged in 'Astroturf' Lobbying

Shocked, I'm telling you! Shocked! RBOCs are deceitful? No! Couldn't be. They never lied to the FCC or a state PUC about losing money while making billions in income. (They were losing money but it was in investments in Latin America and overseas - and in salaries to thousands of lawyers and lobbyists, like Dave McClure at IISPA.) New Millennium Research Council and Sam Simons' Issue Dynamics are "actually undercover stalking horses for the special interests of the large phone companies", "an examination by Larstan Business Reports of publicly available documents indicates". "The record reveals inconsistent arguments from four highly visible groups in particular: the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA); Consumers for Cable Choice (CCC); Frontiers of Freedom (FOF); and the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies..... "The Bell companies are building a coffin to bury the competition that has managed to surface in consumer telecom services and they want the FCC and Congress to help them," stated CCC president Robert K. Johnson, in a press release, Oct. 15, 2002." Now the RBOCs have bought out these groups and are getting positive rhetoric at a time of legislative importance. [The fact that the FCC, the FTC, the DOJ, our beloved members of Congress, and our ever vigilant media haven't seen through this earlier is rather amazing in breadth.]