Monthly Archives: September 2004

Legacy Media & Dan Rather

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There’s been no shortage of discussion regarding the apparent forged documents that 60 minutes used last week on a Bush National Guard Story. Jay Rosen has written a “stark message” for legacy media here.
I lived in San Francisco during the 1989 “pretty big one”, the Loma Prieta earthquake. I remember reading about this, and frankly feeling repulsed at the image of a Rather in a limo next to the flattened I-880 expressway stating this:

Some time after dark, a long white stretch limo pulled up beside the remaining structure in West Oakland. The back door opened and Dan Rather got out. He pulled down his tie, rolled up his sleeves, mussed his hair a bit so it might look as if he?d actually been somewhere doing something, looked into the camera and said, ?We?re here in San Francisco, where the freeway ??

When, in fact, he was in Oakland….

The SUV; take to it’s “logical” extreme

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Autoextremist:

When is too much, just plain too much? When International, a maker of heavy-duty trucks, decides that what the world needs right now more than anything is a monster SUV that weighs 7 tons, twice as much as a Hummer H2. The new CXT (for Commercial Extreme Truck) stands 9 feet tall and is more than 21 feet long – more than 4 feet longer than the Hummer H2 pickup. The CXT is a development off of the heavy-duty platform that International uses for its rugged-use trucks designed for road work and snow plowing, etc., and gets between six and 10 miles per gallon (we’d venture closer to six) from its commercial truck diesel engine.

“Creative Destruction”

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A term coined in 1942 by Joseph Schumpeter in his work, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, to denote a “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”
I thought of this concept (which I learned in High School many years ago) and refined at the UW recently while visiting with a local small business owner. This guy’s firm formerly sold voice mail systems. That business has changed quite a bit therefore, he is now selling services and IT solutions including replication, archive and “secure” email products.
I told him that I was impressed by his ability to zig and zag as the market changed. It’s clear that every worker today, at any level must be ready for new challenges and opportunities, as this article on the NY Times outsourcing plans illustrates.

IP Extremists & Kerry: Lessig

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Larry Lessig:

One of the exciting thing about the early days of the Democratic primary was that there was at least some debate about whether the Democratic Party would continue to be led by IP extremists. Some of the worst in IP came, after all, from the Clinton administration. Reflecting on that, many were hopeful we?d see some new thinking. Many of the most passionate Deaniacs were eager to see new thinking on this issue. Senator Edwards addressed some of this on this blog.
Word now is that Bruce Lehman, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and Commissioner of Patents, is spreading the word that he is running IP policy on the Kerry campaign. In the scheme of extremists, few are more extreme. Of all the government ?Czars? in our form of government, he proved himself to be most to be feared.
Yet another bit of depressing news, if true, from this extraordinarily important campaign.

Speaking of IP, the Gutenberg Project is publishing Scientific American e-zines that have entered the public domain. This is a useful article, from 1891 (!) on “The Business End of American Newspapers.

Secret Laws

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Secret Hearings, trials without a defendant or defense attorneys? Right here, in the USA:

John Gilmore describes himself as “a civil libertarian millionaire eccentric.” He has recently garnered headlines because he refuses to show ID when boarding airplanes and is suing the Justice department and Southwest Airlines for not allowing him to travel in the U.S. without “showing papers.”
Some commentators, notably Hiawatha Bray at the Boston Globe don’t have much sympathy:
“The idea that we should be wasting our time arguing over whether it’s right to have to show ID before boarding a plane is too silly to deserve further discussion. I’m not trying to be rude; I just can’t take you [Todd Pinkerton] seriously, or Mr. Gilmore either.”
But Gilmore raised one deep concern in his foray against the Justice department: there appears to be a secret law that is being applied by the airlines, if not the TSA. What is the law? Who made it? How can I comply if I don’t know what it is? In a democracy that believes in the rule of law, this has got to be troubling.
t Gilmore raised one deep concern in his foray against the Justice department: there appears to be a secret law that is being applied by the airlines, if not the TSA. What is the law? Who made it? How can I comply if I don’t know what it is? In a democracy that believes in the rule of law, this has got to be troubling.
So, when the Ashcroft Justice Department demanded that the first hearing of the Gilmore case be held in secret, and that Gilmore and his attorneys be barred from it, things got even weirder, IMHO. This was beginning to sound like a proceeding from some totalitarian regime. The good news, in my opinion, is that the Court denied the DOJ motion.

– Chris Gulker
Memo to Republican Senate contender Tim Michels (running against incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold): The Patriot Act argument will not carry the day…..

09/14/2004 Primary Results

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Dane County has a useful site with results from yesterday’s primary here.
In an election related article, John Harwood discusses Colorado’s ballot initiative that would split the state’s electoral votes:

hile Colorado leans toward the Republicans, Democrats are hoping to grab some of the state’s nine electoral votes anyway, in a tactical strike that could lead to broader changes in America’s system of picking presidents.
Rick Ridder, a Denver-based political consultant who once managed Howard Dean’s campaign for the 2004 Democratic nomination, is pushing an initiative to amend the state’s constitution in the November general election and scrap the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes practiced by 48 states. Instead, the state’s votes would be divided in proportion to the popular vote, which would almost certainly assure Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry of at least four of them (See related article).

Banks & State Taxes

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Paul Gores:

Twenty-six banks have agreed to pay a total of $23 million in back taxes stemming from their use of Nevada tax shelters, and state tax officials said more settlements are imminent.
The back-tax total announced Monday was the first released by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue since it began a crackdown this year on the practice by many banks of shifting some of their income-earning assets, such as loans and bonds, to subsidiaries in Nevada.

This doesn’t seem like a whole lot of money given the size of the banks, perhaps it’s more of a PR deal.

Public Fiber Tough to Swallow?

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John Gartner:

Across the United States, towns and cities dissatisfied with data services provided by the private sector are now delivering high-speed connectivity to the doorstep, often at lower prices.
In the process, however, municipalities are facing increasingly fierce opposition from cable operators and telecommunications companies unhappy with the competition. In some cases, cable companies and telcos are fighting to bar utilities entirely from providing broadband in the future.
Special Partner Promotion

Note that our current slow “broadband” providers are lagging the world in costs and speed. Much like roads, sewer and water, fiber networks should be a public good (transport only) while others provide services on those very fast networks.
John Perry Barlow comments on this. Robert Berger also has some useful notes vis a vis widespread free WiFi deployments. Doc Searls offers some useful notes on the “lame” broadband services available today.
Governments should be paying attention as their POTS (plain old telephone system) tax revenue will rapidly diminish over the next 5 years. Telephone calls have declined 50% since 1997.