SamKat: 12/07/16

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Michael Reagan says Trump right to worry about AT &T, Time Megder ,,, Thx Newsmax!

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Reagan: Trump Is Right! Oppose the AT&T, CNN Merger

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Trump Right to Worry About AT&T, Time Warner Merger

By Michael Reagan
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary committee will hold a significant hearing on the proposed $84 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner, which owns CNN.
AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson will be testifying, as well as others, who support or oppose this merger.
The senators should be prepared to ask Stephenson some tough questions – because allowing this merger will have important implications for a free press and American democracy for many years to come.
During the recent election candidate Trump said, "AT&T is buying Time Warner, and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few."
Since then a number of press reports – no doubt pushed by AT&T – are suggesting President Trump will have a laissez faire approach and the deal will go through.
Knowing of the grassroots concerns that many conservative leaders share, I doubt President Trump or Congress will rubber stamp this deal.
Trump was right when he warned of the massive concentration of media power in a few hands.
Consider that today 90 percent of cable television networks are owned by just six companies: Time Warner (CNN), Viacom, CBS, ABC, Comcast (NBC) and 21st Century Fox.
Of these major conglomerates only Fox gives conservatives a fair shake. New, independent networks like Newsmax TV are on the rise, but the big media still controls, dangerously, the flow of information to the public. Trump was their most recent victim.
A combination of AT&T and Time Warner will be toxic, further constricting competition and press diversity.
AT&T is a giant media company which also owns DirecTV. They also were a major corporate backer of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. They strongly opposed Donald Trump's election.
Time Warner's CNN was nothing short of the "Clinton News Network" – a 24-hour propaganda machine spewing out anti-Trump and anti-Republican venom.
Right now AT&T has 26.3 million pay TV subscribers through DirecTV and ATT U-verse service – controlling about 25 percent of the U.S. cable market. They are the largest cable/satellite operator in the U.S. bar none.
By owning the largest chunk of cable home distribution, AT&T will obviously be in a position to favor their own channels like CNN, over other channels like Fox News, Newsmax and many others.
The ability for AT&T to discriminate against other cable networks that could compete against CNN or their other networks would be endless.
AT&T, which controls a huge percent of the mobile telephone market, could exempt its mobile customers from data usage charges if they stream CNN content, but streaming independent news networks like Newsmax might continue to count against high speed data caps.
Frankly, I am usually in favor of government keeping its hands-off business activities.
But there are exceptions.
When certain businesses act like monopolies or near monopolies, have unusual access to publicly-owned or controlled distribution systems, and get preferential access to broadcast/satellite airwaves, then government has a compelling need to ensure that such media companies act in a fair way to foster competition and the diversity of public opinion.
We already know that vertical integration of cable operators undermines competition.
For example, when Comcast completed its merger of NBC back in 2011, it promised that it would not favor its own channels over other channels.
For example, it agreed to a condition that would have put the Bloomberg financial news channel on equal footing with CNBC across its distribution platform.
In one instance, it agreed to a condition that would have put the Bloomberg financial news channel on equal footing with CNBC across its distribution platform.
AT&T has not demonstrated, in my opinion, a real desire to support the public's interest in the areas of competition, diversity and fairness.
Recently the Department of Justice sued AT&T and its subsidiary DirecTV for price fixing and illegally colluding to harm consumers.
There are many reasons why the FCC and Congress needs to handle this merger with intense scrutiny and remember this is not a business decision, but a matter that affects our democratic institutions.
President-elect Trump knows this first hand.
Michael Reagan is the son of President Reagan and chairman of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. A New York Times best-selling author, he is a commentator for Newsmax.
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Pentagon reportedly buried study exposing $125 billion in waste

Published December 06, 2016

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Report: Pentagon buried study on $125 billion in waste

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Senior defense officials suppressed a study documenting $125 billion worth of administrative waste at the Pentagon out of fears that Congress would use its findings to cut the defense budget, the Washington Post reported late Monday.

The report, which was issued in January 2015 by the advisory Defense Business Board (DBB), called for a series of reforms that would have saved the department $125 billion over the next five years.

Among its other findings, the report showed that the Defense Department was paying just over 1 million contractors, civilian employees and uniformed personnel to fill back-office jobs. That number nearly matches the amount of active duty troops — 1.3 million, the lowest since 1940.

The Post reported that some Pentagon leaders feared the study's findings would undermine their claims that years of budget sequestration had left the military short of money. In response, they imposed security restrictions on information used in the study and even pulled a summary report from a Pentagon website.

"They’re all complaining that they don’t have any money," former DBB chairman Robert Stein told the Post. "We proposed a way to save a ton of money."

Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, who originally ordered the study, told the paper that the plan laid out in the report was "unrealistic."

"There is this meme that we’re some bloated, giant organization,” Work said. “Although there is a little bit of truth in that ... I think it vastly overstates what’s really going on."

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook echoed Work's claim in a statement to Fox News, which said that the DBB report "had limited value" because it "lacked specific, actionable recommendations appropriate to the department."

Work claimed that some of the report's recommendations were being implemented on a smaller scale and would save an estimated $30 billion by 2020. However, the Post reported that most of the programs had been long-planned or unreleated to the Defense Business Board report.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.