TeleTruth

I received this letter from Shirley Rooker, President of Call To Action,
who is currently the chairman of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee,
claiming we had a ‘error’ on our web site.

As you will read, we found that Sam Simon, one of the masterminds’ of the Bell companies ‘Skunkworks’, had listed “Called To Action” in his bio for TRAC. The date we found this was January 2005.

It is true that TRAC updated the site, because it has changed since we last visited it… obviously from comments made by Ms. Rooker and others.
http://www.trac.org/about_us/directors.html

Please notice that Call To Action has been eliminated, not the other affiliates, such as “National Consumers League” and the “World Institute on Disability”.

Ms. Rooker claims that Simon was only on the board sometime in the 1990’s.

Here’s our response and her letter. We have not heard from Ms. Rooker about the exact dates Simon was on the board.

You wrote:
>Please note that there is an error on the webpage
>www.newnetworks.com/skunkworks101.html

======================================================

I beg your pardon, but I don’t make mistakes with data. Below is the Sam Simon TRAC bio that was on the TRAC site during the beginning of 2005…. I just checked and noticed it was recently updated.

However, as you will see, the material on the site — that I quoted —-had no date and the language indicates that the connection to Call For Action is current, not past tense. As I said, I don’t make mistakes with data.

Please give us the exact dates of when he was and was not on your board and I will adjust this.

And if you no longer want to be associated with Sam Simon, as the Chairman of the Consumer Advisory Committee, why haven’t you complained about the fact that APT, TRAC and other groups on your committee are working out of the Issue Dynamic’s cabal, funded by the Bell companies, run by Sam?

How does that help the public interest? It’s the CAC that is in error, I would think.

Bruce Kushnick, Teletruth

===================================

This was the material I quoted.

TRAC president — phone number for TRAC — IDI offices.

Samuel A. Simon, Chairman
Mr. Simon served as Executive Director of TRAC’s predecessor organization, the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting from 1979-1983, when he reorganized it and founded TRAC. Mr. Simon is a lawyer. He graduated from the University of Texas Scho ol of Law in 1970, and went to work as one of the first full-time lawyers for Ralph Nader in June of that year. He served as president of TRAC from 1983 to 1986, and was elected chairman of its board in 1998. Mr. Simon’s professional affiliation is as p resident of Issue Dynamics, Inc., a Washington, DC based consumer affairs firm. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Consumers League, the World Institute on Disability and Call For Action.

==========================================
—– Original Message —–
From: “Shirley Rooker” >
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 3:17 PM
Subject: Web page error

Please note that there is an error on the webpage
www.newnetworks.com/skunkworks101.html
The page contains inaccurate information about Call For Action. Sam Simon is not a member of our board of directors. He served on our board in the 1990’s for less than two years. We have had no connection with him since that time.

Please make this correction immediately. Thank you in advance for honoring
this request

Shirley Rooker
President, Call For Action, Inc.

Teletruth news analysis, August 30th, 2005

An article in the Financial Times, ” Verizon rejects MCI governance condition”, By Stephanie Kirchgaessner, August 25 2005,
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/cf83db44-1591-11da-8085-00000e2511c8.html

states that Verizon’s Board of Directors is independent and is not subject to specific corporate governence as part of the MCI deal. “Verizon, the US telecoms giant, has set a closing condition on its $8.5bn takeover of MCI. It will not be subject to corporate governance principles that were adopted by the former WorldCom following its accounting scandal and emergence from bankruptcy”

The article also states that “The principles, which at the time were hailed as a model for other companies, also call for a company’s board to consist entirely of independent directors other than the chief executive, and gave shareholders the right to submit resolutions and nominate board members”.

And it claims that “Nine of Verizon’s 11 directors are independent, including Mr Seidenberg.”
.
However, a letter to the Verizon shareholders by the Bell Tel Retirees, dated April 2, 2004 tells a different story. :
“At least six of the 11 Verizon directors nominated on the 2004 proxy have what we view as material financial
relationships with the Company or its officers, directly or through their firms.

Did it change in 2005?

- BOARD COMPOSITION: ITEM NO. 4 URGES THE BOARD TO
NOMINATE DIRECTIONS SUCH THAT, IF ELECTED, A TWO-
THIRDS MAJORITY OF DIRECTORS WOULD BE TRULY
INDEPENDENT. PROPONENTS PROPOSE A DEFINITION OF
“INDEPENDENT” COMPARABLE TO THE STANDARD ADOPTED
BY THE COUNCIL OF INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS.

At least six of the 11 Verizon directors nominated on
the 2004 proxy have what we view as material financial
relationships with the Company or its officers,
directly or through their firms. In addition to CEO
Seidenberg, we believe that at least five outside
directors are non-independent due to board interlocks,
or because their own employer receives substantial
grants, fees, or business from the Company, or did in
the very near past.

- Richard Carrion is the CEO of a bank that is
Verizon’s co-investor in Puerto Rico Telephone, in
which Verizon owns a majority share.

- Robert Storey is partner in a firm providing legal
services to Verizon.

- Joseph Neubauer is Executive Chairman and former
CEO of ARAMARK, where Verizon President Lawrence
Babbio participated in setting his compensation
until last year as a member of the board
compensation committee. Verizon’s Board finds him
non-independent (see 2004 proxy, page 3).

- Hugh Price was, until last year, CEO of a nonprofit
that received millions of dollars in grants from
Verizon and included Verizon CEO Seidenberg on its
governing board (Seidenberg has since left the board).

- Sandra Moose, until year-end 2003 was Senior Vice
President of a firm paid at least $3.5 million for
consulting services since 2000.

A more independent board is particularly needed at
Verizon. The Corporate Library rated Verizon’s Board
as one of the “ten worst” among 1,700 U.S. companies
in its 2003 Board Effectiveness Ratings, stating that
“the contracts and compensation policy for both
Seidenberg and former co-CEO Lee contain virtually
every example of excess and lack of control that
could be found at a U.S. corporation, as well as a
few that can be found nowhere else.

Although the Company argues that a substantial
majority of the board is “independent” under the
NYSE’s new minimum standard, we believe that outside
directors should not be considered independent when
they have non-trivial financial relationships with
the Company, or its officers, different from
shareholders generally. By voting for this
proposal, we believe shareholders send a message that
an independent director is a person whose
directorship constitutes his or her only connection
to the corporation.

TeleTruth’s Director of Audits, Tom Allibone, is quoted as an authority on phone bill charges in the New York Times feature, August 27, 2005

A Monthly Mystery: Fee-Plagued Phone Users May Be Mad, but Rebellion Seems Futile
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/27/business/27phone.html

Here’s an excerpt (registration required for the full article)

“For many Americans, figuring out the monthly phone bill has become the consumer’s equivalent of deciphering hieroglyphics, with baffling new fees creating a thicket of items at the bottom of the bill. Some providers like MCI have even started adding a “paper bill” fee to pay for the bill itself.

“…The carriers might promote flat-rate phone plans for, say, $49.99 a month, but once the many indecipherable fees are larded into a bill, a customer may actually pay $10, $20 or more a month.

“The proliferation of these charges is happening because the carriers are playing a shell game, plain and simple,” said Thomas Allibone, an independent auditor and a former member of the consumer advisory committee at the Federal Communications Commission. “They’d rather weather a customer’s complaint because they are making $20 or more in surcharges.”

Teletruth has been documenting problematic phone bill taxes and surcharges, advertised package prices vs actual costs, questions about the FCC Line Charge and Universal Service, and a lot more

For some of the work we’ve been doing:
http://www.teletruth.org/Phone/phone.html

And for the chart the New York Times didn’t run about phone bills
click on http://www.newnetworks.com/dirtyphonebill.htm

To read what’s broken with phone bills and Truth-in-billing.
http://www.newnetworks.com/phonebillinto.html
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