The well-oiled machine at work…

It’s no secret that polls are used to shape public opinion at least as much as they’re used to measure it. The website of one major U.S. polling firm, the Mellman Group, boasts its “extensive experience developing effective communications strategies that lead people to choose our client’s product or service, join their organization, hold their opinion, or vote as we would like.”

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Last year, a poll purported to show strong opposition to “net neutrality,” the principle that networks should provide access to any data, without discrimination. But the poll questions were highly leading, asking participants whether they preferred “new TV and video choice” and “lower prices for cable TV,” or “barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services.” The poll was funded by Verizon Communications, which opposes net neutrality.

Another telecom-related poll was unveiled last month at a press conference in Madison, Wisconsin. According to a press release put out by the newly-formed Wisconsin Video Choice Coalition, “Wisconsin residents across demographic, geographic and party lines overwhelmingly support a state bill that would encourage competition to cable TV.”

By all accounts, the legislation in question is controversial. Why, then, did the poll find such strong support for it?

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Accordingly, AT&T has devoted major resources to ensure the bill’s passage. Representatives from AT&T and the state cable industry met with legislative staff as the bill was being drafted, reported Madison’s Capital Times newspaper. AT&T also hired 15 lobbyists and ran full-page newspaper ads touting the bill. The Milwaukee branch of the AT&T supported “astroturf” group TV4US ran television ads around the state. In May, TV4US sent every state legislator binders full of what it said were the names of constituents “demanding an end to the cable monopoly” and wanting “real alternatives to cable in Wisconsin.” However, several people named in the binders, including two state lawmakers, said they didn’t support the bill and hadn’t given permission for their names to be used.

There is almost nothing about this legislation that isn’t a fraud. The fact that AT&T can manage to continue to slide these industry-crafted and self-servingly designed business plans disguised as ‘public legislation’ through state legislatures like sh*t through a goose says volumes about the state of our lawmaking processes in our country today.

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