Comcast Moves To Merge With FCC

by Stuart Shapiro

No, not really, but it just feels that way.  Meredith Baker (pictured) announced yesterday that she was resigning her position as a Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission to take a high ranking job with Comcast-NBC.  Who cares?

The commissioner’s announcement comes four months after she voted to approve a merger between Comcast and NBC Universal.

In a March speech on the FCC merger process, she said that, in her opinion, “the NBC/Comcast merger took too long.”

Have we completely lost our sense of shame?  Maybe Ms. Baker, out of the blue decided that it was time to leave government and move on to industry.  Maybe after spending “too long” studying Comcast/NBC, she decided it would be a great place to work.  Maybe her motives are completely innocent.  But when you vote to approve a controversial multi-billion dollar deal and then get a job with the company making the deal, you should pause and say to yourself, “Self, this looks bad.”

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.