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Comment by va_coder | Hacker News Reader

Would this have happened to ATT under a different administration?

Impossible to know. FCC Chairman Genachowski is indeed a friend of the president, but this merger faced challenges on a several other fronts (e.g. the FTC and the DOJ).

Also consider that McDowell, the lead Republican on the FCC and a Bush appointee, didn't say much publicly about the merger and what he did say was less than a full throated endorsement.

It's also rather a bad time to approve a deal that--based on any half-way independent analysis--would have resulted in large numbers of layoffs. AT&T claiming otherwise was a total farce.

I think that the FCC under Michael Powell would've approved this with nary a second thought. His M.O. was paying lip service to the disruptive adaptive powers of free markets and modern technology when people accused him of unfairly granting natural monopolies. IIRC this happened when he exempted cable ISPs from common-carrier regulations.

Of course. You're not under the impression that Obama is more for the people than Bush was, are you? [1]

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/bank-earnings-obama...

"For the people" is frankly a bullshit metric. Different presidents can and will act differently even if they're both on the same "for the people" level. Even with a completely cynical view, they'll at least have a different set of lobbyists who they're loyal to.

But doesn't that make the initial "observation" nonsensical? What could be meant by "would this have gotten by in another administration" other than, "wow, we're so blessed to have these guys" yet it's just cherry picking (same as I did, but for the opposite point-of-view).

We (well, you) may very well be "blessed" to have that administration in terms of the choice of the FCC commissioners. That GP was making an overreaching observation is an unfounded assumption.

>>"wow, we're so blessed to have these guys"

Don't put words in my mouth. I asked a simple question.

What could your question possibly mean? My claim is that it's meaningless. Maybe this could or could not have happened with another administration. But bad things that happened with this administration could or could not have happened with another.

You know it is a ridiculous headline when the article refutes itself in the third paragraph:

But the discrepancy is in large part due to the $24.75 billion loss within the securities industry during the financial crisis of 2008 -- the last year of Bush's Presidency -- followed by a gain of $49.53 billion during the country's first year under Obama.

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