Congress took a stand on Friday against corporations abusing their government benefits and violating the public trust. Well, it took a stand against one corporation, anyway.
They “receive tremendous assistance, huge benefits from the Congress,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “But that doesn’t give them the right to abuse this privilege,” he added.
“The government certainly shouldn’t endorse abusive behavior. The public benefits come with a public trust.”
Senator John McCain, was so fed up with corporate abuse, he demanded to testify at the hearing.
“[They] have benefited from myriad public benefits including exemption from antitrust rules, specialized tax status and taxes that subsidize their multibillion [operations]. These benefits carry a responsibility back to the public,” McCain told his fellow Senators.
Rarely do you hear this sort of talk from a Senate that routinely defers to its neoliberal paymasters. But Thursday was different. In fact, senators heard testimony from just regular people frustrated with corporate misbehavior.
“We think anytime the government gives a gift…it is perfectly legitimate to ask, ‘should any conditions be attached to that gift,’” David Goodfriend, a sports fan, told the committee.
In case you were wondering which particular corporations were drawing the uncommon ire of lawmakers, it wasn’t the banks, or the oil companies, or the health insurance cartels. All have reaped enormous public benefits in the form of tax breaks and subsidies, all have engaged in some sort of collusion or behavior detrimental to the public interest.
But none of them have prevented Sen. McCain from watching his favorite NFL team, the Arizona Cardinals, on Sunday afternoon.
And that, ultimately, is why everyone was all hopped up on anti-corporatist whippets Thursday.
It was a hearing about legislation to repeal public benefits granted to the National Football League unless its executives agree to drop their television blackout deals.
The bill specifically targets the anti-trust exemption that has applied to the league since the 1960’s. It gives the NFL free rein to act like a monopoly. Armed with this special status, the NFL can extract lucrative broadcasting deals that include black-out stipulations, which force local markets to cut the TV feed to football games if the stadiums don’t sell out.
“The NFL…has an obligation to treat their loyal fans with fairness,” said Sen. McCain, likely referring to himself.
“Americans really love sports and they deserve to see them at their terms. Not the terms that are prescribed by the professional sports leagues,” demanded Sen. Blumenthal.
Sure, Senators could have used their bully pulpit to demand that the providers of healthcare, which Americans also “really love,” stop “blacking out” coverage by preferred doctors. Insurance corporations, after all, also operate with an antitrust exemption granted by Congress. But even sick people like watching football.
And sure, maybe instead of the NFL’s anti-trust exemption, Senators could have explored the public benefits of giving oil companies billions of dollars in subsidies. Or the costs of giving hedge fund managers massive tax breaks.
Toward the end of the hearing, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) even capitalized on his colleagues’ selective outrage to steer the hearing toward a matter of relatively more importance.
“Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable is currently being reviewed by the FCC and the Department of Justice,” he said. “It’s a deal that would unite the two largest cable operators in the country. It should be rejected. It’s simply a bad deal for consumers.”
In other words, “Guys, while we’re all concerned about monopolistic corporate influences taking away our TV football games, we should show just as much concern of about those same influences restricting our entire system of communication and content delivery.”
Just to make sure everyone understood, he steered it back to sports. This merger would “exert particular power in the sports programming market,” Sen. Franken said.
David Goodfriend, the sports fan (he’s actually the founder and chair of the Sports Fan Coalition) took Franken’s bait.
“When a cable company owns a regional sports network the tendency is for fans who don’t subscribe to that cable company to not be able to see the game…as opposed to an independent regional sports network that’s carried more widely,” said Goodfriend.
A hearing that, by all reasonable expectations should have been (and largely was) a waste of time ended up producing a nugget worthy of consideration.
