Posted on 02/21/2014 6:50:45 AM PST by Phillyred
s Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. roll out a massive lobbying effort to win regulatory approval for the merger of the nation’s two largest cable companies, one key step for the companies will be garnering the support of prominent civil rights and minority groups.
Comcast has already shown it can pull support from key minority groups — dozens sent letters of support to the Federal Communications Commission, which must approve the buyout, while it was considering Comcast’s last mega-deal — its 2011 purchase of NBC/Universal.
As tax data analyzed as part of a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and the New York Times show, 55 such groups both accepted funds from Comcast’s corporate foundation between 2004 and 2012 and sent letters to the FCC supporting the Comcast-NBCU deal.
Those include large and well-established organizations such as the National Urban League, which received $835,000 from Comcast’s foundation during the period, as well as local groups such as the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, which received $42,300 in grants from Comcast since 2009.
The data also show an emphasis by Comcast in building links to the Hispanic community. Of the $8.6 million given to groups that offered support in the NBC deal, nearly 60 percent went to Hispanic groups. The recipients included the National Council of La Raza ($2.2 million), the Hispanic Federation ($345,000) and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce ($320,000).
Indeed, the USHCC hailed the Comcast-Time Warner Cable announcement on the same day the deal was announced for “forging an innovative world-class technology company, with increased capacity to deliver ground-breaking products.”
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Brian Roberts, the head of Comcast, is a solid progessive and golf partner of Caliph Baraq.
I’m sure the motto of their NBCU division (NBC/MSNBC/Weather Channel, etc) is “ideology over profits”
Because TOGETHER they can provide worse customer service than either of them could alone...
$2.2M to La Raza, a sworn enemy of the United States. As a Comcast customer, that doesn’t make me very happy.
This merger is going to be bad for competition and prices.
So. . . to get a deal approved, a corporation has to essentially pay a fat bribe to a government-approved lobbying group. Extortion?
Comcast does evil things. If you buy services from them, you will be disappointed. If you have real business dealing with them, your business will die at their whim. I’ve seen it happen.
Comcast does evil things. If you buy services from them, you will be disappointed. If you have real business dealing with them, your business will die at their whim. I’ve seen it happen. They pay to get influence on a company’s board, then they poison the operation.
Comcast should be broken up — it is the perfect example of an out of control corporation that is too big for the marketplace. This manipulation of “minority groups” to influence government market regulators is reason enough to break them up.
I noticed recently a new channel popped up on my dish. The El Rey Network.
Since that’s Spanish for “The King” I thought perhaps it was a Spanish language Christian network. Turns out it is English language programming, but owned by Hispanics.
The channel was apparently launched by Comcast. Surprise, surprise, surprise!
Who knew Hispanics wanted to see reruns of The X-Files and Starsky and Hutch in English?
Comcast sucks. I do not want it to take over Time Warner. Their customer service is much worse than that of Time Warner.
I really have no complaints about Time Warner except that I have to go through this Kabuki dance ever year where I threaten to go to someone else if they try to raise my fees and then they back down again for another year.
One would think that Time Warner would have learned its lesson after the AOL merger.
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