Byron Dorgan For FCC Chair

President Obama has not yet selected a chair for the Federal Communications Commission. To be fair, the crises in Afghanistan, Gaza, and in the US economy have been taking most of his time.

I'm a communciation person, however, and I beleive that communication is going to be increasingly important in the near future. I nominate North Dakota Senator, Byron Dorgan.

First, a little backstory: the entire three-man North Dakota congressional delegation came out early for Obama. So, there is no political rancor to deal with here. The Obamaadministration has previously sought the services of another qualified North Dakotan, Kent Conrad, to oversee the Office of Managment of the Budget. Conrad has a rep as a numbersman in the senate, and was a tax commissioner in North Dakota. To his credit, Conrad demured, saying that he wanted to continue serving the people of North Dakota and savehis home state from a future Duane Sand run for office.

Would Dorgan be asked, I think he would say the same thing. But, there are lots of reasons to like Dorgan for this job.

Dorgan is completely right on communication issues.

Dorgan became an enemy of the rampant media consolidation we have seen in the past ten years over an incident in the city of Minot. A train car containing anhydrous oxide had spilled and emergency officials needed to get emergency information out via localmedia. Unfortunately, Minot's radio station was owned by Clear Channel and the companyhad decided that an unmanned radio station programmed with canned programming was in the best interest of that community. There was nobody home to get the information out. Dorgan became a quick study on this issue and has been telling those who would listen for years that consolidated media corporations are not serving their legally-mandated public interest. Dorgan would be a great tonic to an FCC that has given the broadcasting industry pretty much everything it has wanted.

Dorgan has also been leading the charge on net neutrality. Right now, everyone gets the same Internet. The ISP industry, emboldened by a supreme court decision that says theydo not have to treat everyone equally has been toying with the idea of tiered Internet service. Those who have more, would get more. The Internet has been a great equalizer and those days would be over if the ISP industry has its way.

Supposedly, Amazon.com CEO, Jeff Bezos, has the inside track on the nomination. Bezos
is a proponent of net neutrality, and so I couldn't complain too much about that.

But please, Mr. President, consider Byron Dorgan for this important job.