Understanding Government

You’ve heard about the FCC commissioner, Meredith Baker, who has taken a job with NBC Universal (as senior VP for government affairs, of course) just four months after voting to approve the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal.  Then there’s the the too-cozy relationship between regulators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the power companies they are supposed to regulate, because many employees at the NRC are aiming to land top jobs in industry when they leave government service.  And let’s not forget that beyond-cozy relationships in the oil and gas regulation business helped create a culture of permissiveness that made catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon explosion more likely. (more…)

Around many of America’s largest cities, high occupancy toll lanes offer drivers the option of paying to get to their destination faster.  Similarly, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner are gatekeepers to broadband Internet access lanes and have the ability assign priority lanes — with better quality and faster speeds — to those who pay a premium.  The ISPs also have an incentive to provide slower access and to block services that compete with their telephone and video services. Advocates for Internet neutrality – a term that connotes different things to different people – want the government to step in to ensure that Internet users (both subscribers and companies that work on the Internet) will have access to the services and applications they choose without interference.

In December, the Federal Communications Commission waded into the net neutrality debate, where Congress has thus far feared to tread, when it voted 3-2 to establish rules to preserve open Internet access.  With over 100,000 comments filed in the leadup to the FCC decision, it’s clear that the public is concerned about the future of access to the Internet. (more…)

Leapfrogging over federal regulators, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave preliminary approval to rules requiring retailers to post radiation exposure ratings for each handset model offered for sale, reports Rachel Gordon of the San Francisco Chronicle.

There’s a huge variation between the hundreds of models available, ranging from handsets like the (more…)

A federal appeals court struck a blow for net neutrality yesterday, but, for now at least, the ruling shouldn’t impact how we use the internet. (more…)

By Marci Greenstein

National Institutes of Health chief, Dr. Frances Collins was talking up his agency’s partnership with the Food and Drug Administration on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show last week.  The move is intended to speed up the process for getting drugs from laboratories to the marketplace.  What’s surprising is that this collaboration hasn’t happened sooner.  How often have we heard about patients desperate to get drugs that are successful in clinical trials but are moving at a snail’s pace through the FDA’s regulatory maze? (more…)