• House Democrat accuses the FCC of colluding with telecoms to game court battle
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https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/25/fcc_accused_of_colluding/ US telecoms regulator the FCC has been accused of colluding with companies it is supposed to oversee in order to protect a controversial decision over new 5G networks. Chair of the House Commerce chair, Frank Pallone, has sent a letter to FCC chair Ajit Pai asking for copies of communications between the FCC and the big telcos regarding legal challenges to the regulator's 5G order, which forces local governments to charge a flat fee for installing new base stations. In the letter [PDF], Pallone strongly implies that the committee has heard from a whistleblower. In effect, the letter alleges that FCC staff – almost certainly from Pai's office – put pressure on the big telcos to challenge an order that is designed to benefit them as a way of gaming the judicial system so the case didn't end up in a court likely to overturn it. Due to the concentration of Californian legal challengers, the issue would naturally expect to be heard in California's Ninth Circuit. Enter the telcos. All the main four mobile operators challenged the order with their own lawsuits. It was an approach that baffled observers, including ourselves. As a result, the various lawsuits were consolidated and under the legal system's way of handling such disparate appeals, a lottery was held. That lottery in November led to the cases being moved to the Tenth Circuit - which covers the middle of the country – Oklahoma, Utah, Colorado, etc – and the appellants were told to migrate their cases accordingly. In short, if the plan was to get the case out of California, it worked.
I am eagerly awaiting for this to blow up in all their faces.
I'll take "no duh" for $500, Alex.
Conservatives judge shop? never, never in my life! never except when they found a judge that was willing to say the entire ACA was illegal based on a technicality created by the GOP.
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