Capital Ideas

September 5, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Another hurricane has crashed into New Orleans just as the city seemed to be completing its recovery from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Hurricane Gustav swept in from the Gulf of Mexico on Labor Day, with powerful winds forcing millions to evacuate their homes to avoid repeat of the Katrina disaster.

But hurricane season, it seems, isn’t all doom and gloom at the Federal Communications Commission because the late-August, early-September period is bonus season for top bureaucrats. And nothing gets between FCC leaders and their cash rewards.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin was supposed to be...Read More

September 2, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Washington—Cablevision Systems Corp. last week named senior Federal Communications Commission official Catherine Bohigian as the company's first Washington-based lobbyist in many, many years.

The announcement by the Bethpage, N.Y., cable company rocked the industry because no one has worked more closely with FCC chairman Kevin Martin in carrying out his relentless regulatory assault on cable operators and programmers since taking office in March 2005.

“We might have to send her to reform school,” a cable industry source deadpanned.

Bohigian has known Martin since their days at Harvard Law School and their time together at the Wiley, Rein law firm. When Martin joined the FCC in July 2001 as a regular commissioner, Bohigian was among his first per...Read More

July 9, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Washington—When Sen. Barack Obama speaks at a private fundraiser, his campaign workers bar reporters who show up on the spot. Only a handful of campaign reporters, pre-assigned for the occasion, are allowed into the function. No exceptions.

“That's the policy,” said Courtney Chapin, the Obama campaign aide assigned to give drive-by reporters the human Heisman trophy.

The ban was rigidly enforced Tuesday night at a Washington D.C. hotel where Democratic presidential hopeful Obama spoke briefly at a rally organized by many former Clinton administration officials and Harvard Law School classmate Julius Genachowski.

The event—attended by 550 people at $2,300 a pop—represented a wide cross-section of Democratic Party all-stars, power brokers and various insiders from the D.C. telecommunications policy w...Read More

July 7, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

June 27, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Fifty-five years of peace on the Korean peninsula suffered a minor setback last week after Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin landed in Seoul for a two-day ministerial session of the 30-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

According to a published report, Martin held a press conference that U.S. Embassy officials limited to U.S. media outlets, angering an excluded journalist with the Korean Times.

Reporter Cho Jin-seo described Martin's press conference as “a back-door meeting” planned by the FCC, and “officials from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul blocked access to reporters from other countries.”

Cho anonymously quoted an OECD official on the press management ways of U.S. government officials in other parts of the world.

...Read More