This is kind of a political rant, so far warning and I apologize if I offend you in advance.

Voter Suppression, media green zones like in Baghdad (and here),indefinite detention of Americans by military, the revolving door between lobbyists and government, SOPA, Congressional insider trading, shorting on the debt ceiling, re-districting to keep power – aren’t we tired of this crap yet? I am. Very tired. DC and state capitals are owned and run by career politicians and lobbyists. This truly is Corporate America or America, Inc.

I have spent the last few weeks trying to decide if I should run for Congress. I spoke with several campaign people in Tampa Bay as well as a few close friends, family and advisors. Despite my being a registered Democrat – and most of the folks I spoke with being Republican – everyone was very supportive, some even a little too giddy at the idea of me running for Congress.

I bitch about politics, so I figured I needed to get involved. More accurately, I want to fix it. It’s a tall order. Either you are a part of the problem (empathy, not voting, blaming) or part of the solution. I want to be a part of the solution.

I have to tell you that what I learned is that the process to run for office is challenging. It takes a lot of money to run for office. A standard Congressional seat needs a minimum of $1.3 million dollars for staff, advertising, printing, office and travel. That’s a minimum. The candidate will be asking for money 4 to 6 hours per day, every day. The candidate will be stumping, at events, at churches, in neighborhoods, seven days a week, long days, for a year. There’s no way my business would survive that schedule. And anything less than going 110% just isn’t in my DNA. I want to win, even on projects with clients – I want a win. I want a positive outcome.

A few people told me to start small – like a county seat – but the point is: I don’t want to be a career politician! They are the problem! We have politicians, not Statesmen. It’s a Big difference.

The other problem is the national blame game. “It’s the Dems!” “It’s the GOP!” PUH-lease! The difference between the two parties is slim at best. Take the politics out of it and look at the issues: healthcare, education, economy, foreign policy, term limits, civil liberties and the US Constitution.

I could point out that in 1992 the Clinton Administration was trying to design a healthcare solution, but the GOP stalemated the whole Clinton Administration, like it is doing to the Obama Administration now. But that’s being political. The issue is that the elected Congress Critters are NOT doing their JOB! Stalemating isn’t governing. We have real issues in the country that need to be fixed before we begin a slide into third world status.

People forget that the US economy is service based. The Bush tax cuts put money back in consumers – not voters, Consumers – pockets. Why? So they would spend it in our economy, since our economy is built on consumers buying stuff. Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Apple, Microsoft, etc. require the US consumer to buy their stuff. And to buy more of it every quarter in order to maintain the stock price for the fat cats on Wall Street. (I won’t go on a tangential rant about how Wall Street only extracts value from the economy.)

When the Middle Class gets squeezed, there is less money being spent in the economy. I wrote a while back about how banks, credit card companies and insurance companies had reached their peaks, when the economy was humming along on the real estate bubble up to June of 2006. Since then, it has been downhill for these companies and they have to find new ways to make money from the shrinking number of customers. (That would be you!)

Small businesses don’t think about raising prices to make more revenue or how to add fees to customers’ bills to make a few extra dollars. Only public companies think that way, since they are a slave to Wall Street.

What happens when the economy slows down further??

Here’s a scenario for you: the payroll tax cut doesn’t get renewed, the holiday credit card bills arrive in January to lucky that are still employed but now with less take home pay. Whoops! Now even less money for restaurants, gas, food, lottery, etc. This cycle ends up with small businesses closing. McDonalds won’t close, but a franchise may close. Wal-Mart won’t close, but a few mom-and-pops will. BP won’t close, but the gas station owners may. Now we have more unemployment, more vacant buildings, and more burdens on society, which ripples to more bankruptcies and foreclosures. The pool of people paying for the largesse is shrinking. It’s a mess. In addition, small business is the job growth engine, not large business. As small business dies, so does job growth and the economy.

But can a freshman Congressman make a difference? Not likely alone. He or she would need help from a lot of places.

Am I going to run? Not this time. I would need a lot of money. My business would suffer. The spotlight and mudslinging would be annoying. The political process is daunting, so I am going to get my feet wet by helping others this time round. I am going to shed some light on the DC mess and make some noise (not here, don’t worry). I also may be joining these three organizations: NoLabels, Rebuild the Dream and My America.

What do you want Your America to look like in 5 years? What are you doing to get it there? The elected are not leading us; they are screwing us down the river. Ranting on twitter, FB and your blog is fun, but action is where the tires meet the road. You can make fun of Occupy but at least they got up and did something. Are you?

And voter ignorance in this country is epidemic. See here and here and here. Maybe it is head in the sand defense against so much going wrong that is out of our control or maybe it is that we are getting so dumb as a nation that we can’t grasp the debt any more than we can balance our check book or maybe it is an attention deficit society looking for immediate gratification. 

Master Agent MicroCorp announced yesterday another acquisition (following the purchase of 5 Star Communications in June).

Combined the Company will be the largest Telecom Agency on the East Coast.

MicroCorp will also expand its portfolio by signing a strategic partnership agreement with Premier Solutions Group, LLC to provide Technology Solutions throughout the United States.

Atlanta, GA & Lancaster, PA – December 7th 2011 – MicroCorp, Inc., the Nation’s leading Telecom Master Agency, announces today the signing of a definitive agreement under which they have acquired the assets of Premier Management Group (PMG) of Lancaster Pennsylvania. PMG is a business unit of Premier Companies, LLC and provides managed telecom solutions to small, medium and enterprise sized business customers throughout the Northeast.

This strategic relationship will allow MicroCorp to expand its portfolio of services through a partnership agreement with Premier Solutions Group, LLC (PSG), thereby allowing MicroCorp to provide converged single-source-solutions to its nationwide distribution channel.

MicroCorp will retain the “Premier” brand and operate PMG as a wholly owned subsidiary that will collaborate with PSG in providing integrated and converged telecom and technology solutions. The Company will continue to operate from the Premier Office Building in Lancaster, PA, alongside the PSG team. PSG will increase its focus on application development, managed services, Cisco advanced technologies such as wireless, voice, video, data center and security, while also launching some voice cloud services through a soon-to-be announced joint venture.

The PMG and MicroCorp transaction closed on December 7th and the full integration of operations will be completed by February 1st 2012.

It’s an example of the channel side consolidation. As carriers acquire cloud and managed services companies, master agencies are bulking up to migrate from a transaction only model as well.

In the wake of AT&T getting caught misleading the federal agencies about the benefits of its merger with T-Mobile (FCC report here), we see that the merger of PAETEC and Windstream has already resulted in job losses.

Windstream cuts 58 jobs at Palm Harbor office is just the start of at least 280 jobs being cut from its combined workforce of 14,500. Synergies require job cuts. Richmond is losing 70. Even Rochester is losing 52 jobs, according to 13 WHAM TV.

Mergers can’t work without job losses, office closings, and other economic detriment. It is what it is, but don’t put lipstick on it and try to sell the pig as a boon to anyone but your shareholders. And I think that means short term shareholders, because mounting debt combined with flat markets and more competition in a climate of stagnate job growth means the long term picture is worse than the pig.

Now the ILEC mouthpieces are writing about how unfair the FCC report was. Really? Because the FCC staff had 2 million pages of documents from AT&T and T-Mobile to sift through, including the “smoking gun memo” that said AT&T didn’t need to buy T-Mobile, it could spend one-tenth the $39B price tag to build out the network itself. AT&T also admitted to Congress that it mismanaged its network. They all have spectrum. Or be like VZW and buy it from Leap and SpectrumCo – or LightSquared or DISH et al.

And let’s not forget one big thing: both cellcos have lousy customer service records. That HARMS consumers. The FTC, DOJ and FCC were established to protect CONSUMERS, not other companies (Sprint) or shareholders. We have very little (real) competition in telecom.

Final thought: Most mergers fail!

It isn’t about bigger. It’s about Better. Zappos grew to a $1B with great culture and customer service. Say that about a telco.

It isn’t about bigger. Ask Intermedia (ICI, the first billion dollar CLEC that had to sell to MCI) or PAETEC (the company that Arunas Chesonis said needed to be a billion dollar company. For what?). It’s about Innovation. Ask a company in the Duopoly about Innovation.

The best details of the Sprint-Clearwire deal is at Marketwatch, but Tammy Wolf at TMC did a good job, too. Clearwire gets “up to $1.6 billion over the next four years in payments for WiMAX services, possible pre-payments for LTE services and potential equity investments” from Sprint. “Sprint will pay Clearwire a total of $926 million, approximately two-thirds of which will be paid in 2012, for unlimited 4G WiMAX retail services during 2012 and 2013, subject to certain conditions.” So Clearwire is stuck with WiMAX until like 2015 while also building an LTE network. The speculation begins: is $1.6B enough for Clearwire? Who will buy the bundle (Sprint-Clearwire)? The Senate wants to know more about Lightsquared. DISH wants someone to build it an LTE network. VZW picked up the SpectrumCo 20 MHz from the cablecos. The cablecos will now be selling VZW services to its customers as an authorized VZW sales agent. (Isn’t that stupid?)

Dag Peak explains the difference between BroadTouch and BroadCloud by BSFT.

That Carrier IQ key logging software has Sprint and AT&T caught in lawsuits. This privacy issue reminds me of the cigarette suits — keep suing and when you win one, you crack the whole thing open and huge sweeping change must follow. So lawyers start your engines and get out those lawsuits! (Like I have to tell you to.)

Obama names new FCC nominees for Senate approval. Copps is term limited and Meredith Baker left for a lucrative job at Comcast! (No conflict of interest there, just part of the revolving door in DC.)

CenturyLink adds broadband caps to compete better with Cox, who does too.

I’m still working on my blog post about this: FCC Releases Connect America Fund Order, Reforms USF/ICC for Broadband

It’s a week where SAP feels like Ron Paul, because its cloud acquisition got about 90 seconds of space. AT&T has to feel like Herman Cain, after the FCC released its report about why the cellular merger was a no-go. Is VZW like Romney for quietly scooping up the cableco spectrum AND getting them to sell VZW services?! T-Mobile is quietly in the corner like Bachmann trying to figure out the next move.