Proposed New Seal for the Department of Justice
I have been very disgruntled over my cell phone carrier being bought out by AT&T and becoming "the new AT&T." For those of you who missed it, here's the story:
Back in the 80's, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) decided to split up AT&T's government sanctioned monopoly over phone service. Back then, AT&T was able to charge exorbitant rates for long distance. In some cases, people were paying $1.00 a minute to talk to someone in the next city. When the government broke up AT&T and the "baby Bells," the largest being Southwestern Bell (SBC), which I had the misfortune of being "served" by, the market opened up for competition among long distance carriers. MCI was already established, but had very limited service allowances prior to this, but their market expanded overnight. Sprint was quick to follow. Over the nineties, many carriers came and went, but it was all good because competition drove the price down to as low as 4 cents a minute. Cell phone carriers soon began offering free nationwide long distance. In the first decade of the 2000's now, land lines are all but obsolete.
Now comes the bad part. I signed up with Cingular because they seemed to have the best deal, and also, in large part, because they weren't AT&T. Sure, they were owned by SBC, but that was the lesser of two evils. What was cooler was that it seemed that AT&T was suffering. Good. They had abused customers for years. It was about time they got what they had coming, from an open free market. Reward the companies that are good to customers, punish those that were bad, like AT&T. Because of this, AT&T sold their cellular business to Cingular. AT&T Wireless became "Cingular Blue." Things were looking up. Then, in a bizarre, but typical turn of events, it turnse out that AT&T was liquidating their wireless business to raise the rest of the capital needed in order to purchase... get this... SBC, the very parent company of Cingular, which has now become "the new AT&T." All of this was done with the stamped seal of approval of the DOJ, which is supposed to be the government watchdog for antitrust violations. It seems that AT&T acquired another entity in this purchase - the DOJ itself.
Because of this, I propose a new seal for the DOJ. Here is their old one:
And here is the newer, more honest, realistic one I came up with:
Back in the 80's, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) decided to split up AT&T's government sanctioned monopoly over phone service. Back then, AT&T was able to charge exorbitant rates for long distance. In some cases, people were paying $1.00 a minute to talk to someone in the next city. When the government broke up AT&T and the "baby Bells," the largest being Southwestern Bell (SBC), which I had the misfortune of being "served" by, the market opened up for competition among long distance carriers. MCI was already established, but had very limited service allowances prior to this, but their market expanded overnight. Sprint was quick to follow. Over the nineties, many carriers came and went, but it was all good because competition drove the price down to as low as 4 cents a minute. Cell phone carriers soon began offering free nationwide long distance. In the first decade of the 2000's now, land lines are all but obsolete.
Now comes the bad part. I signed up with Cingular because they seemed to have the best deal, and also, in large part, because they weren't AT&T. Sure, they were owned by SBC, but that was the lesser of two evils. What was cooler was that it seemed that AT&T was suffering. Good. They had abused customers for years. It was about time they got what they had coming, from an open free market. Reward the companies that are good to customers, punish those that were bad, like AT&T. Because of this, AT&T sold their cellular business to Cingular. AT&T Wireless became "Cingular Blue." Things were looking up. Then, in a bizarre, but typical turn of events, it turnse out that AT&T was liquidating their wireless business to raise the rest of the capital needed in order to purchase... get this... SBC, the very parent company of Cingular, which has now become "the new AT&T." All of this was done with the stamped seal of approval of the DOJ, which is supposed to be the government watchdog for antitrust violations. It seems that AT&T acquired another entity in this purchase - the DOJ itself.
Because of this, I propose a new seal for the DOJ. Here is their old one:
And here is the newer, more honest, realistic one I came up with:
posted by Justin at 5:06 PM
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