by Al Franken
But that doesn’t look terribly likely right now. Having successfully blockaded President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, the extremely well-qualified and widely admired Judge Merrick Garland, Republicans succeeded in preserving the right to fill that seat for the next president. Who did not turn out to be Hillary Clinton. So that’s going to be a problem.
Worse, the current president, real estate developer Donald Trump, has signaled that he doesn’t intend to be part of any climate change solution. This is a guy who has said that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. Why would they do that? And why am I even trying to find any speck of logic in anything he says?
The thing is, it’s not what Trump says that matters. It’s what he does. And the first thing he did on climate change was to appoint a bunch of climate deniers to key posts. He picked a guy to run the Environmental Protection Agency who made his bones as Oklahoma’s attorney general by suing the Environmental Protection Agency. And to succeed nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz as energy secretary, he picked Rick Perry, who famously blanked on the name of the Department of Energy when he was trying to include it in a list of Cabinet agencies he wanted to get rid of.
Maybe the president is just a big fan of irony. But more likely these selections mean that this is now going to be even more of an uphill battle. But no less of an important one. Climate change is an existential threat. That’s why the Pentagon considers global warming to be “an urgent and growing threat to our national security.” And it’s why the Defense Department, the institution that uses more energy than any other in the world, is ordering the top brass to incorporate measures to combat climate change into virtually everything they do: war planning, joint exercises with allies, training our troops—they’re even developing algal jet fuel.
So, what can we do?
First of all, don’t get discouraged. Recent advances in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage technology have changed the trajectory of our energy use. Even if it feels like Washington isn’t rising to the challenge, states and cities and universities and researchers and ordinary citizens are finding ways to make progress. This is not a hopeless cause.
Also, Koch Industries isn’t the only big corporation in America. Scores of Fortune 500 companies, including, oddly, ExxonMobil, whose former chief executive is now Trump’s secretary of state, have endorsed the Paris accords. They understand that this isn’t just an environmental issue, but an economic one. There are going to be millions of good-paying jobs created by these new energy technologies. I want them created here. These CEOs want them created here. And maybe we can convince President Trump that they ought to be created here. I hear the guy is big into America winning? Well, staying in the Paris accords would help America win the fight to own the clean energy economy.
But if we’re going to do this, our movement is simply going to have to get stronger. Those of us who’ve been fighting for a solution to climate change for years are going to have to redouble our efforts to mobilize the American people behind this cause. It isn’t going to be a fair fight, not with Citizens United in place. But what choice do we have?
As for me, I’m going to keep making the case to my colleagues. It may seem kind of bleak to say that the future of our planet rests in large part on the consciences of Republican politicians. But it kind of does, at least right now. The thing is, like me, many of my colleagues have grandchildren. And grandchildren can be a powerful motivator, even if they don’t have a Super PAC.
I can’t speak for the Republicans I serve with, but in fifty years I don’t want my three grandkids saying to me, “Grandpa, you were a senator and you knew there was climate change. Why didn’t you do anything? Also, why are you still alive? You’re a hundred and sixteen years old!”
Chapter 41
No Whining on the Yacht
Those of us serving in government today have many more issues to deal with than the Founding Fathers had to contend with. They didn’t have to worry about antibiotic-resistant bacteria, because there weren’t any antibiotics. If they got a blister and it got infected, they were dead. It was a simpler and, some would argue, happier time.
They didn’t have to worry about cybersecurity. Then again, we don’t have to worry about slavery. Then again, they didn’t seem too worried about it, either.
Our Founders didn’t have to deal with GMOs, or nuclear proliferation, or airline deregulation, or airline safety, or the use of portable electronic devices on airplanes. Or aircraft carriers. You get the idea. They had a very easy job, compared to mine.
It’s not just that there are more issues to keep track of than ever before. Policymaking itself has become more politicized than ever. Every single issue also now has a variety of groups advocating for one position or another. For every line in every bill, there’s someone whose job it is to care about that one line in that one bill. There are people in Washington making six figures a year whose entire livelihood involves making sure that the formula for calculating depreciation on tractors doesn’t change in the next five-year farm bill, or fighting to protect the Medicare reimbursement rate for a certain kind of kidney procedure, or advocating for the right of Amtrak passengers to smoke e-cigarettes onboard trains.
The late political scientist James Q. Wilson described it this way: “Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything.” No issue is so obscure or, frankly, boring that someone can’t muster a high-pressure campaign to get you to vote one way or the other on it.
This means you’re constantly deluged with information—from lobbyists, from public interest groups, and from the people you represent. Email has replaced postal mail as the main form of correspondence between constituents and elected officials, and it’s great that a citizen now no longer has to buy a stamp to share his or her opinion. But it also means you get a lot more correspondence than ever before—Congress receives some three hundred million emails a year—and you have no way of knowing whether the person who sent you that email feels really strongly about the issue or just spent five seconds clicking on a link they were sent by some advocacy group that generated a message automatically.
So there are a lot more issues to keep track of, and there are a lot more considerations determining how you vote on these issues, and you’re under constant pressure to do not just the right thing but the politically smart thing, and also everything you say and do is covered in real time by a 24/7 press corps, and you have less time in the day to talk to your colleagues or do research or just sit and think for a friggin’ second.
This sounds like I’m complaining, doesn’t it? Well, I’m not. As Sherrod Brown likes to remind us, “No whining on the yacht.” My job is a privilege, and every moment I spend in Washington an unadulterated delight. Did that sound sarcastic? I’m sorry. I’m writing this not long after Trump’s inauguration, and it’s been rough. But: No whining on the yacht. No whining on the yacht. No whining on the yacht.
Okay, here’s a bright side. Because we live in such a complex world—and because there are only a hundred senators—each senator has a real opportunity to find an issue that is of particular appeal and really grab the ball and run with it.
For example, Elizabeth Warren spent her entire career worrying about how average people get ripped off by big banks and other corporations. So when she came to the Senate, she immediately became a leader on those issues. John Barrasso, the Republican from Wyoming, was a doctor before he came to the Senate. So he became one of the Republicans’ point men on spreading disinformation about the Affordable Care Act.*
When I first came to the Senate, I was ready to seize the mantle of leadership on any issues related to sketch comedy or the Grateful Dead. But in my heart, I knew it was unlikely that I’d be called on to share any of that expertise. I decided just to focus on representing Minnesota the best I could, contributing to big debates on health care and education, building on Paul’s legacy on issues like mental health, and figuring out as I went along where el
se to focus my time and energy.
Ironically, my experience in show business turned out to come in pretty handy after all.
In December 2009, Comcast announced its plan to buy NBCUniversal, a merger that would unite the country’s biggest cable TV and broadband provider with one of the world’s biggest content providers. NBCUniversal didn’t just own NBC and Universal Studios. It owned twenty-some other networks, including MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, USA Network, and Bravo.
The proposed deal made me immediately uncomfortable, not just because of its size but because, as you may recall, I had worked in color television—and I had seen a version of this before.
In 1993, during my thirteenth season at Saturday Night Live, the Big Three networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC) pressured Congress to change the rules that had prevented the Big Three from owning any of the shows they aired in prime time. The purpose of the rules was to prevent the networks from monopolizing the broadcast landscape.
Opponents of repealing the rules argued that if networks could put shows in which they had a financial stake in the best time slots, they would favor their own programs over those of independent producers or demand a share of ownership as a cost of getting a show on the air. The networks swore up and down in hearings that nothing of the sort would happen. It’s in our interest to have the best shows on our networks. We want ratings. We’re not going to pick an inferior show just because we own it.
You’ll never guess what happened. After the rules were repealed, not only did the networks start putting on more and more of their own shows, but they gave shows they owned preferential treatment. Remember a little hit called Seinfeld, about the continuing misadventures of a bunch of misfit New York Jews? Well, Seinfeld itself was not owned by NBC (it first aired in 1989). But it quickly became the number one show on TV, making the Thursday night time slot following Seinfeld the most valuable real estate on television. And the shows that wound up in that premium location on the schedule were all owned, at least in part, by NBC.
Of course, there were a bunch of them, because they quickly wore out their welcome with audiences. At the time, I performed at a fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Free Clinic with Jon Stewart. Jon told the industry-savvy audience that NBC had just announced its next post-Seinfeld show: A Guy Takes a Shit on a Desk.
Fast-forward to 2009. Seinfeld is off the air. I’m a U.S. senator. I lost track of what happened to Jon. Seemed like a nice guy, though.
Anyway, you’ll recall that Harry Reid had assigned me to the Judiciary Committee because, basically, he had no choice. But as it turned out, being on the Judiciary Committee gave me a platform to share my concerns about the proposed deal.
On average, an American household pays $2,700 a year for Internet, video, and phone service. Cable companies have increased their costs to consumers over the last twenty years by more than twice the rate of inflation. And historically, mergers of giant telecommunication conglomerates had led to higher costs, worse service, and fewer choices for consumers.
I also knew from experience that a new Comcast/NBCUniversal would have a huge incentive to promote the programming it owned at the expense of content it didn’t. Even if a network was already being carried on Comcast, it had to worry that the new combined Comcast/NBCUniversal would want to favor its own competing channels. For example, the new Comcast/NBC would want as many eyeballs as possible watching its business news channel, CNBC. What would keep Comcast from putting CNBC on, say, channel 32—next to MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and CNN—and putting its business news competitor, Bloomberg News, in the nosebleed section at, say, channel 531?
Meanwhile, what about other cable companies that needed to carry NBC’s programming and the content from all the other networks that Comcast would now own? Couldn’t Comcast/NBCUniversal charge other cable companies more for its content, and wouldn’t that cost be passed on to consumers?
All this raised a lot of questions, and because the Judiciary Committee had scheduled a hearing on the merger, I would have a chance to ask them.
As the hearing approached, I got a visit in my office from Jeff Zucker—then the president of NBC—who brought along Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. The first thing Jeff said to me was, “This will be good for Lorne.”
That cracked me up. “I don’t represent Lorne,” I said. “I represent the people of Minnesota.” I know that sounds like the kind of dialogue a writer from The West Wing might write for an inferior sequel about the Senate. But that’s what I said. Sorry.*
I was the first senator to come out against the merger, and unfortunately, I wound up having very little company. Ultimately, we lost on this one. Comcast bought NBCUniversal. But, in part because of my advocacy, the FCC and DOJ placed a number of conditions on the deal.
The new Comcast/NBCUniversal would have to put content produced by competitors in the same “neighborhood” as Comcast’s own content. For example, Bloomberg TV would have to be placed in the same “cable news neighborhood” as CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News Network.
And Comcast, which of course was the nation’s largest Internet service provider, would have to create an affordable standalone broadband package for low-income customers and people who wanted to “cut the cord” on cable television and just get Internet service without signing up for an expensive bundle.
I cite these two conditions in particular because Comcast agreed to them, and then ignored them.
On the Comcast dial, Bloomberg TV was placed in a galaxy far, far away from CNBC, MSNBC, et al. As for that inexpensive unbundled package, Comcast did create one. It just didn’t tell anybody. Hard to buy a package that you don’t know exists.
SMASH CUT TO: One evening in early 2014. I’m at the dining room table, reading my briefing materials for the next day. Franni is on her laptop in the living room. “Hey,” Franni shouts, “Comcast wants to buy Time Warner Cable!”
“What?!” I say incredulously.
“I’m reading here that Comcast/NBCUniversal wants to buy Time Warner Cable.”
“That’s nuts!!!”
Comcast was the largest cable TV provider in the country and the largest broadband provider. Time Warner Cable was the second-largest cable TV and third-largest broadband provider. This new behemoth would not only be the dominant player in a cable market already suffering from lack of competition (do you like your cable service?), but it would control 57 percent of the high-speed Internet market, too. Less competition would mean higher rates and worse service for Minnesotans who already hated paying as much as they did for the service they got.
“That’s crazy!!!” I said, finding another word for “nuts.”
I immediately called my Judiciary counsel and told him to start working on a letter to DOJ and the FCC. This was insane! This was lunacy! This was… nuts! We had to stop this from happening.
Unfortunately, when my team got the lay of the land the next day, it looked like, once again, I would be the only senator coming out in opposition to the merger. The deal looked like a fait accompli.
Part of that was because of Comcast’s lobbying might. Comcast has about a hundred lobbyists on Capitol Hill—a lobbyist for each senator, more or less. But this merger was so important to Comcast that it had hired virtually every other telecom lobbyist in town. Not to lobby for the deal. Comcast paid them not to lobby against the deal. They just took them off the playing field.
I made my case to a number of colleagues, but didn’t have much luck. Once again, for fourteen months, I was the only senator to speak out publicly against the deal.
But over the next year, alongside a coalition of allies like Public Knowledge, Consumers Union, and Common Cause, I continued to fight the merger. We rallied the public, and the FCC received nearly a million comments and petition signatures from people opposed to the deal. And this time, the good guys won. After meeting with regulators and being told that the jig was up, Comcast withdrew the proposed merger. One of the big reasons for the rejection? Comcast’s failure to comply with conditions on the NBCUn
iversal deal.
In other words, I got conditions put on Comcast’s first big, problematic acquisition. They failed to comply with them. I pointed this out when they tried to make another bigger, problematic-er acquisition. And that helped sink the deal.
Over the years, I’ve found myself doing a lot more work on issues of media consolidation and the rights of consumers when they interact with the most powerful companies in their lives, many of which don’t offer products like cars and refrigerators but rather services like cable TV and broadband Internet.
We’ve won some enormous victories, like protecting net neutrality—an issue on which four million Americans took action by submitting comments to the FCC. We’re going to need to keep fighting, though, because net neutrality is in real danger now that Donald Trump is in the White House and an avowed enemy of net neutrality is running the FCC—and because media consolidation continues to represent a real threat to the free flow of information in America.
These issues affect every one of us, every day. And while I certainly didn’t expect that being a senator would mean spending so much time working on this stuff, it’s become one of the most rewarding things I do.
All thanks to a career in comedy and Harry being stuck with an empty seat on Judiciary.
Chapter 42
I Win Awards
When I first got to the Senate, I scheduled a few appointments with my new colleagues, just to spend a little time getting to know them and getting their take on how to be a good senator.
