Slashdot Mirror
Boardroom Spying Debacle at HP
theodp writes "As word spread that HP was dumping Board member George Keyworth for press leaks, Newsweek broke the bigger story: HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn was so obsessed with finding the leaker that she authorized a team of independent electronic-security experts to spy on the phone records of calls made from HP Directors' home and private cell phones. Not only that, phone records were obtained via pretexting, the controversial practice of obtaining information under false pretenses. After Dunn laid out the surveillance scheme for the Board last May, HP Director Tom Perkins quit on the spot, characterizing Dunn's actions as illegal and unethical. HP is also coming under fire for playing dumb to the SEC about the reasons behind Perkins' resignation. Perkins, who helped launch HP's computer division in the 60's, has asked the FTC, FCC and the Justice Department to investigate."
The leader of our country sets an example for the leaders of our corporations
Sounds like a good way to get anyone to leave, from top to bottom.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
having women in power won't necessarily make for a kinder, gentler world.
Legal experts vary in their views on the extent to which pretexting is a violation of criminal law.
I work at a bank, and we have to take yearly courses on Pre-Text calling, because it's such as issue here.
also here is printer unfriendly with the annoying javascript popup
kinda makes you wonder what she'd do to find out who leaked the info about her spying on people.
now stop reading and go play Dance Dance Revolution!
...or is corporate America really out of control now? I mean, COME ON! If she did this, who else was she spying on?
*reads article with my hp monitor and posts a reply with with my hp keyboard and hp mouse*
For good measure, I think I'll print this out on my hp keyboard.
Its sad. HP used to be such a great engineering company. Now it has been taken over by MBA type idiots who are doing their best to keep HP in razor thin market segments. It sounds like the boardroom is zoo too. Too all you HP shareholders who voted against the proxy ballot issue (and for the Compaq takeover): you obviously voted the wrong way. We are reaping what we have sowed now. The stock is down over 1% today, but look for it to get hammered.
Bring back the old management!
Can someone please explain to me what authority she had to authorize phone taps on private cell phones? She is not law enforcement. WTF?
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Tom Perkins, as in Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.
This is pretty dramatic.
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. So he is obviously a terrorist.
Short sell! Short sell!!!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Looks like another day in the boardroom :)
. . . has documents here: Hewlett-Packard Targeted Board In Leak Probe
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
HP used to make decent products. Now they make craptacular products and have management that read from Stalin's playbook.
It's a shame, really.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
I don't think tritonman was referring to PlameGate, which was really Rove and Cheney more than Bush anyway. Rather, I think he refers to the unconstitutional wiretapping the Bush administration has been performing on American citizens in the name of national security.
Either way, I fail to see why the article was modded funny. It's really just sad.
Am I the only one who read the title as "Bedroom Spying"?
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
Dunn sounds like a melodramatic sociopath bent on her own power trip. It's bad enough to hire outside inspectors to track down a leaker, and to resort to snooping on personal call records, which is truly dirty pool. But once she had her proof, why not confront that director personally, rather than pull a stunt like this in front of the full board? Had she confronted this guy directly, he may have resigned quietly. Instead, she's now thrown the spotlight on her disregard for personal ethics or the respect of her colleagues.
That said, it's pathetic how easy it was for these investigators to get personal phone records on these accounts. You'd think there would be some standards in place, such as only sending the information to addresses already tied to the account, or something. I'm no security expert, but this looks pretty shoddy.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I thought it was interesting that finding leaks, and their relative importance, was cited as a major reason for Carly Fiorino's departure -- she thought they were important, the rest of the board didn't (or, maybe, they were concerned about performance and she was concerned about finding something other than performance to distract their attention.) It's also interesting to wonder whether leak-fixing/spying on fellow board members is more likely to happen in the wake of the increasing publicity surrounding NSA wiretapping. I wonder if this was also going on during the Nixon era -- is there a correlation between government willingness to spy on its own, and corporate willingness to do so? (Obviously corps are always willing to spy on the Little People, but I'm talking about corp officers, which is a little bit more personal.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Believe it or not, it's hard to get worked up about this. Sure, reading the Slashdot text got me mad. It sounds shocking -- what a huge violation of privacy! But then, reading the article, you see that aside from 1 director who resigned, all the other directors, including the leaker, have stayed on board! In other words, the guys whose privacy was invaded didn't care. It was done to them, and their response was to keep serving.
So why care on their behalf? These walking lobotomies need to stand up for themselves.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Funny, but quoting from The Register article
"The situation is regrettable," Ms. Dunn said in a statement provided to the Wall Street Journal. "But the bottom line is that the board has asserted its commitment to upholding the standards of confidentiality that are critical to its functioning. A board can't serve effectively if there isn't complete trust that what gets discussed stays in the room."
Can the board serve effectively if there isn't complete trust or confidentiality anyway? If the CEO is spying on you at any or at all times?
More music, fewer hits
I can't help but think of the Admiral's statement in the movie, "Enemy of the State". Loosely, it was, "...if this was someone's unilateral wet dream, then that someone is going to prison..." Now I'm all for making money at someone else's expense; But not at the risk of getting caught breaking the law. I think we'll be seeing HP public relations types clawing their brains trying to put a positive spin on this. Maybe I can help, "George Bush does it; Why can't I?"
"slowly, one by one, the penguins steal my sanity" - Unknown
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5321034.stm
Funny. I'd call it 'lying'.
If you have to think up a euphemism for what you're doing, it's probably wrong.
Unless it's funny, like 'bumping uglies' or 'dropping the kids off at the pool'
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
That's right. In fact, no one should ever mind anyone reading their (e)mail or listening to their phone calls, unless they have something to hide. It should be legal for cops to just come in your house any time they feel like it, just to make sure you're not doing anything you shouldn't be. Random house checks by the cops would help put an end to the evil crimes of pot smoking and non-missionary sex. After all, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide.
OK, who's the first to volunteer for random house checks?
It was an effective way at spotting the leaks, which were pretty uncool, but the means were also uncool. In a more ideal world, neither the leaks nor such measures to catch them would be necessary..
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Have you ever had to deal with the types of women who become CEOs? It's quite difficult to consider them "women", in the sense of the attitudes and composure of most females in our society. When it comes to their personality, they're often far more like men than they are like women. They often have little of what me might consider "motherly instinct", let alone kindness or gentleness.
Much like most male CEOs, they often got to that position be being real bastards, and squishing a lot of people on their way up. There's really little difference between the two, when you get up to those levels of power. Both the males and females of the calibre care little for anything besides money, their egos, and their careers.
Corporate malfeasance was unheard of prior to January 20, 1969. It went away on August, 1974, only to return January 20, 2001.
If Patricia Dunn spies on her employees like this, how can I trust her enough to be a customer of HP?
If they were looking at company issued phones, computers, or other equiptment I would say that is fair game. When they pretend they are you and get information from services providers where you pay the bill they have crossed the line. I was shopping for a new laptop and HP is now out of contention.
The only way this can be corrected is if HP cans Patricia Dunn ASAP. Tom Perkins should be running HP. He actually has a moral compass and stands by what he thinks is right.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Most leaks are acceptable by societal norms, but a few leaks are not. Examples include leaking the name of a CIA agent or leaking the invasion plans for the landing at Normandy in World War II. These types of leaks can kill people.
The leaks "suffered" by the HP board fall into the category of the acceptable types of leaks.
The attempts by Patricia Dunn (the HP chairwoman of the board) to violate the privacy of board members in order to "stop" these leaks is excessive and illegal. The person who should immediately leave the board is her, not Tom Perkins. Dunn should also spend some time in a California prison.
I don't know if there's a legal precedent for email, but I do know that you usually sign an agreement stating that the corporation can watch anything/everything you do using their workstations, telephones, email servers, etc, etc.
Keep in mind though, that response is more relevant in the context of an employer-employee relationship. Board of Directors are not "necessarily" employees of the company. Their election by the shareholders binds them to the company, what the company can do with them is limited, and I certainly would think the company could not dictate an agreement to them to do X or Y. The Directors have an obligation to the shareholders, not to the "company."
The real boneheaded move here is that she disclosed to everyone what she was up to, presumably because she thought it would be OK with them or something. That was totally stupid! Anyone knows that if you want to break the law like that, you have to keep it under the table and OUT of the boardroom discussions... DUH!
stuff |
"Sonsini acknowledged that Dunn's security consultants "did obtain information regarding phone calls made and received by the cell or home numbers of directors" and that it was "done through a third party that made pretext calls to phone service providers." "
PROSACUTE THE BIMBO
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
GreenSwirl needs a dirty swirly since he/she apparently hasn't read the news lately - Armitage was Novak's source. Armitage was anti-Iraq invasion, therefore your Rove/Cheney conspiracy theory went down the drain. Now that the facts are out, babbling on about Rove/Cheney in this instance only makes you look like a fool w/ tunnel vision.
Actually, it was a guy by the name of Richard Armitage who leaked the information. Who BTW was agains the Iraq invasion as well. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,212317,00.html
When a man lies he murders a part of the world.
...is Tom Perkins's ethical behavior. I only hope that when I get to be a director, I would have the cajones to resign rather than to serve under or carry out orders from a boss with a history of such behavior. Well, that and the handwriting on the wall (SEC investigation) might have helped influence his decision. But what a way to go!
Nah, we'll hit "Random Cavity Searches" at the airport first.
(YOU might not be allowed the use of Gels once you go through the first screening point
If someone has broken no laws, and has nothing to hide, then they should be doubly pissed that someone invades their privacy.
Considering that libby implicated his boss's boss as having approved this and that he reported to Cheney, then you have to ask who is the VicePresident boss?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The movie Anti-trust comes to mind...
More like it won't make any difference, though not for the obvious extrapolation that everyone will make at that phrase. It's that regardless of which gender you favour, there'll be a certain _kind_ of person who makes it to the top. It's not whether most men are better or most women are better, it's that those who end up at the top will _not_ actually be representative of the majority of men or women anyway.
The world today, at least the western world (though I wouldn't be surprised if other parts too) has a very different minority that's disproportionately represented at the top: the sociopaths. It's not even much of a surprise. In a society and culture where we expect -- and indeed _demand_ -- sociopathic behaviour from corporations and politicians, the ones that make it to the top are those who can promise just that: to behave like a sociopath, and take decisions without letting emotions or empathy get in the way. And there are reasons too, such as their being natural actors and having no loyalty except to themselves. So they can put up an outstanding show for the boss and get a promotion, while you're busy doing actual work.
The thing is, what they do has no resemblance with what Joe Average and Jane Housewife does. Only about 1% of the population scores clean over 30 on an APD (Antisocial Personality Disorder = sociopathy/psychopathy) test. We're talking the creme de la creme, the elite among the elite. (To put it into perspective, the average Joe or Jane have maybe 1 confirmed trait or spurious minor manifestations of 2-3, and even those are often just bad habits or benign when they're not accompanied by others.) They're people who are actually more anti-social (in the medical sense) than the hardened criminals in a prison (who tend to average somewhere in the 20's), yet are smart enough to not end up in prison. You can't really look at what a sociopath does and extrapolate it at what the average man or woman would do, nor viceversa.
They're not only a minority, but they don't even function mentally in the same way as you do. Even if a lot of common people do get caught in an admiration of sociopaths and their methods, in practice they couldn't do the same things. They're just not wired the same way.
I.e., what I'm saying is that you can't look at this case and think she's representative for women as a whole. And conversely, those who think that "having women in power would make for a kinder, gentler world" make the wrong extrapolation in the other direction. They look at some of the average women around them and think, basically, "hey, I bet if she was a CEO/Chairman/President/whatever, it would be a nicer world." Well, maybe it even would, except it won't those who end up in position of power.
Just changing the genre stereotype won't make the world any better, as long as the same kind people are left to run the show. What can change the world is (A) recognizing these people for what they are, and (B) having enough checks and safeguards so they can't run amok and cause major damage.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There's no law that makes it a crime to get someone to give you information (unless it's banking information). Whether you can get other laws to apply to this situation is up in the air.
*BUT*, it probably *IS* illegal for a company to improperly divulge your social security number to a 3rd party. And one of the pieces of information that the private investigators workingon HP's behalf used to do their pretexting was a social security number. Where do you think they got that?
paintball
Don't go inserting facts into this, Joe, you'll get modded down in a heartbeat.
As a former employee of Pattie Dunn when she worked at Wells Fargo Nikko Investment Advisors which became Barclays Global Investors, I always found Pattie to be a person who really cared about her employees and their personal lives. She was always approachable, listened to your concerns no matter how high or low you were in her chain of command, and without sounding too sexist, had a great smile, a charming personality, and was the easiest on the eyes boss I've ever had. I can only imagine what HP has put her through to cause such a change in her attitudes. On the other hand, perhaps this is an example of what has happened to America in general. "Truly a sight to behold. The man, beaten. The once great champ, now a study in moppishness. No longer the victory hungry stallion we've raced so many times before. But a pathetic, washed-up aged ex-champion. " (obscure Better Off Dead quote :) )
You guys missed it all.
She was looking for a quick bonus. She'll get fired and receive a severance pay of 50+ millions... That's it.
Why was the parent modded "Insightful", when his comment was obviously meant to be "Funny". ...
Or has Slashdot been compromised by the secret police, in which case
I, for one, welcome our new randomly house-searching overloards.
In my mind this is symptomatic of the corporate life in the higher echelons. Basically, these people at the top don't have te requisite life experience, or call it wisdom, or even common sense, to act like adults. Corporate life to these people is nothing more than a replay of high school. They're scheming, pulling pranks, cheating, and generally making stuff up as they go along.
It's not that there aren't established procedures and rules (and laws) of how to monitor employees (even board members). It's that this Ms. Dunn can't be bothered to look it up. Or even ask human resources. Making stuff up as you go along is what passes for "innovative", "bold", "leadership.
She's cut from the same jib as, say, those Enron guys. These are people who see life as a game, and yes, they're winning, if you keep score the way they do. Morally, as human beings, they're of course pieces of shit.
It's not surprising the rest of the board members stayed on board. They're used to treating people like children, and they've not fully grown up themselves, so this sort of irresponsible prank seems logical to them. They're the business equivalents of Bill O'Reilly - great ratings, but ultimately they're just spewing hot air, and their oversimplified black-and-white world is so disconnected from the real world, they wouldn't know it if it bit them in the ass.
But there you have it. Apparently the Chairwoman at HP is willing to go to great, and illegal lengths, to run the company. Will the shareholders say "hey, wait, maybe having someone at the top who's willing to commit felonies isn't such a great idea"? Only time will tell..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Coming from someone who was ripping HP up and down at the time for their moronic behavior, I can say three things with authority. First, I had sources on that level. Second, they didn't get my sources, not even close. Several witchhunters resigned and/or were canned while looking for Inq sources, but as far as I am aware, they did not find a single one, teh fewls. Third, my sources are a lot smarter than Mr Keyworth or Ms Dunn.
The sad part is, they will probably get away with all of this. The sadder part is they are looking in the wrong place. As a member of that nebulous group know as 'the press', I can say that people speak out and leak when things are going badly, wrong, and management has their heads stuck up their collective asses. Rather than fixing the problem, they assign blame.
In any case, I should drop my guys a line and have a laugh.
-Charlie
I don't mind the insertion of facts, but using Foxnews as the basis is just low.
However, she is easily indictable and her imprisonment will serve as a fine example for others of her ilk who doubtless think likewise.
As I was saying in another post, the fallacy there is assuming that it would be the Jane Average that ends up in those positions of power. Except those who end up at the top, male or female alike, are the kind that aren't representative of the John Does and Jane Averages that make up the rest of the population. But that goes the other way too: comparing Stevens to Clinton doesn't really say anything about comparing men to women in general.
I don't know if men as a whole are better or women as a whole are better (probably neither is better), but comparing the sociopaths at the top won't tell us anything about that. The ones at the top will be the ones who _don't_ actually have the instincts/reflexes/education/etc associated with being either the average man or the average woman. You won't find any maternal or paternal instincts there, just people whose only loyalty is to themselves and care less about everyone else than you'd care about the NPCs in a computer game. You won't find any inherent adherence to either male or female hierarchy/clique/whatever dynamics and mechanisms, either, but at most a determination to mis-use and abuse those to one's own interests. Etc. Anything that you might think of as an inherent trait of either males or females in the average people around you, at that level you won't find people actually displaying either. They may fake it, they may use it to push your buttons, but essentially both are a category of their own that's neither male nor female.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Keyworth was asked to resign but has refused to do so. HP said it will not renominate him to its xxx-member board."
Just where are HP getting their board members?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I mean, I'm not suggesting you have anything up there you aren't supposed to, but if that's the case, you certainly shouldn't mind me having a peek.
You're not HIDING something in there are you?
Now if you will, just drop those trousers, bend over the table there, close your eyes, and think of England.
It's really for your own safety. You should thank me...and America thanks YOU!
Well, I'm actually Al Gore's personal valet and I'm here to tell you that he strangles kittens when he thinks no one is watching. He has baskets of the little cute things delivered to the house every week...
Why can't you simply argue (or villify) on the facts? Why is it that the rabid left insists on making ad hominem attacks? In fact, it appears that is the only type of argument these people are able to make.
There are plenty of centrists that are (or rather, would be) sympathetic to whatever your *actual* point may be, but instead lose faith in the quality of the person making the argument based on a reliance on insults and/or attacks on intelligence/religious beliefs. How can you be for increased tolerance and equal rights when you are so intolerant of anyone who doesn't strictly emulate your thought process?!
To hell with my karma, I'm not posting AC...
Armitage was ONE of Novak's sources, and he leaked it by accident. Whereas Cheney and Rove began an independent campaign of revenge on Wilson by leaking his wife's name. In fact, Armitage got the Plame name from the briefing sheet published internally by Rove and Cheney, which seems to have accidentally -- nudge, nudge -- wink, wink -- left out the fact known to them that she was an undercover agent.
Infuriate left and right
You know, there used to be a time, not so long ago, when evil corporate muckety-mucks took pride in their backstabbing and machinations...
Maybe it is time to get some real entrepreneural CEOs back on board - somebody with the insights of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Carly screwed things up and now Dunn isn't doing much better.
Remember their great test equipment? Their calculators? Other advanced technology? Those days passed on. The women want their PCs and servers and can't seem to see beyond that. Oh, ripping off the consumer for ink is another female created advancement.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were just ahead of their time and were ethical, inventive and made the name a world-wide recognized leader.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
This was not pointing out the flaws in a company's computer system. This isn't a story about some geek calling the help desk and saying, "Hi, I'm Fred Fustus' new secretary and I need his password," and then getting it.
This was a person in a position of power (The Chairwoman of the Board at HP), who had access to personal and confidential information about an employee (his Social Security Number), and used it to obtain additional personal and confidential information (his phone records) through fraud (by having someone pose as the target).
Do you see the distinction? This isn't a story about how the security practices of an organization were called into question, although it does highlight how bad the SSN is as a security measure. This is about a person in a position of authority and trust misusing her power for personal/corporate gain.
That's just bad no matter how hard you slice it.
I got fooled bad by Tricky Dick Nixon and now so many in the country have been fooled by the Bush Bunch. The war in Iraq is bad, but history will record that loss of privacy and other government excesses marked the end of "rule by law" in the USA. When the Executive Branch does not obey the laws of the Legislative Branch every citizen loses.
This HP employee exceeded her mandate; the HP board of directors better get rid of her pronto. You seldom can shine up a tarnished image.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Correcting the problem means admitting that there is one to begin with, and perhaps that one might even be partially responsible for it. These are difficult acts for anyone, let alone someone who seems to think of themselves as infallible. Much easier to dump the complainers and leakers, and continue behaving as before, being careful to make sure that your options can be cashed out quietly, that any contractual benefits are felony-proofed (if such is possible), and that your stockholders and customers can be lulled back to sleep.
Is this how business always was, and we're just more aware (or cynical) about it, or have the people that run corporations gotten more self-serving recently?
... there is no doubt that these guys are going to vote this bitch back to the stoneage.
And you seem agast that the "leaker" is still there... How likely is it that that "leaker" didn't really "leak" ANYTHING, and this bitch blew up some tiny cnet story into a full scale "leak?"
1. We don't know the full story of the alleged "leak." It is just as likely bullshit.
2. The chairwoman broad is CRACKED and certainly is going to be on the wrong side of a boardroom vote or two.
HP is a sewer of incompetence and dishonesty. They screwed me once. I'll never do business with them again. Caveat emptor.
Insert witty sig here.
What's amazing is how "data mining" is accepted by so many big companies. So it's OK for them to know where I shop, what I buy, where I go and who I talk to but not OK for others to know the same about them? They think it's OK to read through employee email and listen in on their phone calls but God help the poor slob who does it to a member of the board? Welcome to the reality of Big Brother: Lawless power is not collective, it always concentrates to a single person and that single person never lasts very long because they are subject to the same abuse everone else is. It's better to have respect for everyone up front.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
She is (soon was) chairwoman of the board of directors. Where do they grow you people?
When governments do it, it is EVIL and AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS. When corporations do it, it is survival of the fittest, and tough shit to you.
Oh come on!
Their actions have been completely logical and consistent if you ignore the media propaganda about terrorism. Wake up, stop looking at what they're saying and start looking at what they're doing.
Deleted
She's the chairwoman, not the CEO.
I used to work for a VP at a Fortune 500 company. When the company wanted to get rid of him they moved him, laterally, from a position where he had six direct reports and about 50 people below him to...
They harrassed him repeatedly and gave him objectives he could not complete on his own. Over time his evaluations declined as he was unable to complete his objectives. He left of his own free will before further damage could be done to his file.
This is how you get rid of people with golden parachutes. It takes time.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Allow me to add a little something that poped-up to my mind today:
This kind of behaviour is tipical of a certain kind of people who hide behind a crowd and lead it to act in ways which solo individuals never would.
- If the crowd is on the streets they're "a mob" and the aboved mentioned people are called "rabble rousers" or "inciters to violence"
- If the crowd sits down in buildings they're "a corporation" and the above mentioned people are called "directors"
I strongly suspect that personality-wise the same kind of people are behind inciting a mob to linch someone and deciding not to recall a defective product because it's cheaper to pay the familiy of the victims - the only difference is that some have an MBA and some don't.
It's a strong sign of the decadence of a society when the ones with the MBAs usually get away with a pat on the wrist (and a multi-million dollars golden umbrela).
PROSECUTE
The guy who quit should have gotten even instead, and had HER followed/investigated. I'm sure this Dunn woman, like all power-mad people, has some awful habits of her own -- embarassing sex habits, booze/drugs, gambling, whatever.
I'm sure she'd like getting a plain brown envelope at the office with 8x10 glossies of her taking a nose full of coke, blowing her tennis coach, or trying out a new vibrator, along with a note that says "quit spying on people."
Anyone who "aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures" the commission of an offense against the United States is punishable exactly as if they had committed the offense (18 USC 2(a)), so no statute regarding procuring someone else to commit the particular illegal act is necessary for federal offenses (some have such provisions to modify the punishment in those cases.)
Further, federal law is not the whole of the law, and most states have false personation laws which could be applicable: most relevantly, probably, given where HP is located, California, in particular, clearly does.
This reminds me of a couple of years ago when the football (soccer if you're an american) club i'm a fan of elected as president a shaddy lawyer character which years before had scammed some persons out of their moeny but somehow managed to sleeaze his way out of ending up in jail (mostly due to his connections).
At the time i thought: "Hey, this guy is a bit of a mobster, but at least he's our mobster".
I believe he's still in jail for defrauding that same football club.
If you have shares in HP, i suggest you keep this story in mind
"Dude, don't you hate it when you forget to check "Post Anonymously" box?"
Not at all. They know who I am, and if they had a shred of evidence that I did anything wrong, they would have sued me long ago. I post everything with my name attached, and with my email on it where applicable. I tried calling HP and talking to them several times, but they did not return my calls. I did leave all my contact info, and have done so numerous times at trade shows. If you don't do anything illegal, you don't have to hide behind anonymity.
That said, I did not do anything wrong, have never signed an NDA with HP, or agreed to anything of the sort. On top of that I scrub my emails religiously and regularly so if they send me paperwork, they will get nothing because I have nothing. That said, I have looked for the names of the people I wanted to talk to, and I don't have them any more. Sad, a quote on the Inq now would have been quite topical. Scrubbing mail is a double edged sword.
Either way, I am not worried at all, what are they going to do call up my ISP and pretend they are me to get my records? That would be flat out illegal, and they would never do such a thing.
-Charlie
How in world is this crap NOT flamebait?!?!?!
You mods should be ashamed of yourselves. If I had so much as a single mod point, it would go towards giving this post the downmod it so richly deserves (and I'm passing NO judgement on the opinions contained therein, merely on the parent's ad hominem attacks.)
Of course, we all know that Cheney/Rove are incapable of subtlety, so they couldn't *possibly* have deliberately leaked the information to Armitage with the full knowledge that Armitage would then leak it to the press.
No, that can't possibly be what happened. I credit our leaders with far too much intelligence.
Well, since bus drivers and construction workers (and, yes, software engineers) have to take invasive tests (I had to pee in a cup ... kinda irritated me at the time but I wanted the job and they didn't require any kind of non-compete agreement so I figured it was a reasonable tradeoff) of one sort or another in order to obtain work, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be a requirement for corporate upper management to have to take an APD test. At the very least, they should have to take something like the old MMPI so that we have at least some idea if they are complete whackjobs or not.
... that's rather private data and isn't something that most people would want available to anyone, but if you're not willing to submit to such a test, maybe you shouldn't be allowed to run a major corporation.
I'm not saying that should result in their not being hired for such positions: that would depend upon an individual corporation's policies. But if the results of such testing were required to be a matter of public record, it would be the first thing a potential investor would examine. It would also discourage other sociopaths from even applying for such positions: the last thing a true sociopath wants is to be unmasked. Yes, I know
Now, granted, there are those that will complain that such testing and publication would be grossly unfair and violate various civil liberties and all that. And I suppose they'll be right in that: I'm not an attorney so I have no idea of what laws such testing would run afoul. But the unfortunately reality is that many of these individuals absolutely cannot be trusted and some means of early detection needs to be put in place. It really doesn't help when the Ken Lays and Bernie Ebbers and others like them are eventually caught (if they are ever caught) because by then the damage has been done, people have been hurt. Look at what Ms. Fiorina accomplished in just a few short years, and managed to walk away from scot-free. It's also obvious that stringing a few of them up hasn't had the desired deterrent effect either. And why should it? If you feel that you're above the law you're not going to let the law get in your way.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm quite sure, but this is why major corporations like HP staff huge legal departments. You can't tell me that at some point it didn't occur to them "Hmmm, maybe we should run this past Legal?"
Her goal was admirable, but her tactics to achieve that goal were clearly unethical.
Simple. Because:
* He voted for the retard in 2000
* Bush is a fuckup
* The man is an asshole, as are Rumsfeld and Ashcroft
* Pat Robertson's followers are complete and total morons falling for a transparent 19th-century snake-oil style charlatan
In short: it's all true, hence not really flamebait. Calling Saddam Hussein a bloodthirsty dictator or calling Adolf Hitler a murdering Nazi would not be ad hominem either.
- Perpetual Newbie (Different AC, never made an account)
Board members are not employees. They tend to be outsiders brought in because of their relevant experience in successfully running a business, to guide the company management into making good decisions. While there sometimes are heirs of the company founders or members of the management team on the board, most members are outsiders.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Could that put the lot of them in prison? Community service? Tidying up Sun's parking lot would be appropriate.
Deleted
If you want to randomly check out my house, come on over, big fella.
You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I do not think it is relevant. I do not think you want to debate the original statement on its merits. I think you are afraid.
While prevarication CAN be a tool in the bag of a social engineer, it's not the only tool. There are numerous times you can tell the entire truth, or say nothing at all, and still elicit the response you desire.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Get used to it. Perkins quit on the spot because he was in a hurry to get to the launch of his 290-foot yacht. I'd be in a hurry, too, to get the hell out of Silicon Valley if I had spent as much time there that he has. (Having a few billion in the bank would help.)
It must disappointing to view its decline from back in the Bill and Dave days, when actual smart people developing real products ran the place, and not VCs interested in sucking as much cash out of companies as possible before loading them with debt and selling them to consortiums of gullible cardiologists.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
HP unfortunately is showing that it will become even more irrelevant. H & P must be turning in their graves now.
After all, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide.
I heard a response to this that I really liked...
If I'm not doing anything wrong, why are you wasting scarce police resources looking into my private life?
The only problem with that is that it only works until the invasive checks are automated and conducted by (unlimited-resource) computers. But until then, it's a good response.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
The Board represents the stockholders and the C-level employees work for the board and at their discretion. That said, there's usually contracts involved that would require substantial payouts when the CEO is canned, but there is absolutely no reason why the board couldn't have heard this relevation, held a vote, then had her escorted off the property on the spot.
As I understand the situation, the remaining board members aren't entirely in the clear since the CEO appears to have committed criminal acts as a corporate officer and they took no action. At a minimum I would expect them to get rather interesting calls from their corporate director insurance carrier. Nothing like facing personal liability from stockholder suits to focus your attention.
In the real world, it's much murkier since you can have people who are both C-level employees and board members, and in many cases the CEO is also the chairman of the board. In those cases individuals can have mixed loyalties, but that's why you want outsiders on the board.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
would anybody be upset to see HP die any more?
I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be a requirement for corporate upper management to have to take an APD test.
:D
The reason that would be a waste of time is that most of these people are really, really smart. Maybe not maths geniuses or that kind of smart, but they know exactly how to pull the levers in people to get what they want. Unless the APD test checks for some sort of chemical imbalance (preferably while they are comatose), they will know exactly what to say to the relevant questions in order to make themselves look as un-sociopathic as possible. Hell, most of them will look it up before the test, or pay a psychologist to do it for them.
We are trying to determine if you have any positive emotions towards your fellow man. Do you like children?
Why yes, I love children, I donated $500 to a childrens foundation just this month!
There really isn't an easy answer to this one. Can they do the jobs they are employed to do better than anyone else? If the answer is yes, then they belong in that job. The only thing that can be done is to ensure that if they commit crimes, they are punished to an extent that it will give other sociopaths pause before attempting the same thing. If the RIAA (sociopath city) can sue someone per song in their collection, high level corporate crime should be dealt with on a per-victim basis.
Steal the pension funds of 500 people? Thats 500 counts of theft or fraud, to be run one after another. Even if they only get 6 months per case, thats still 250 years of hard time. That might seem a bit harsh, but as they say, with great power comes great responsibility.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
If I'm not doing anything wrong, why are you wasting scarce police resources looking into my private life?
That's easy. We don't know that you're not doing anything wrong, so we have to check to make sure. It's a lot easier to check if we don't have to waste time and effort with things like warrants, and can just check on you randomly. Besides, what's this stuff about a "private life"? There's no guarantee of privacy in the Constitution. Nothing you do is private, and is subject to laws. If you're doing something immoral and illegal, like getting a blow-job (yes, this is illegal in many states) from your wife, then you should have no expectation of privacy and should be prepared to suffer the consequences of your crime. As for scare resources, what kind of society would we have if we just allowed people to get blow-jobs, or have sex doggy-style? No amount of resources is too great in pursuing these acts of wanton immorality and stamping them out.
You're right however; it'll be much better when we can just install surveillance cameras in everyone's home and have computers automatically watch for illegal activity using machine-vision technology.
It's not my job as a private citizen to do such things. We need to lobby our government to pass laws to allow the Police to randomly check peoples' houses, and better yet to install surveillance equipment which can be monitored 24/7 for any illegal or immoral activity by computers. After all, if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't have a problem with having government surveillance camers installed in your house, and you should even be happy to pay for it.
And if you want to get technical about it, yeah, it's not just sociopaths out there, it's pretty much a split between those and "narcisists". It's not as much of a saving grace as it may seem. Both have exactly zero empathy for their fellow human, both are equally self centered, both are willing to step on your corpse on their way up. Both are incapable of feeling guilt for it. Both don't show much of either paternal or maternal instincts, and certainly not to their employees. So in a way, we're just splitting hairs at this point. It may not be the medical definition, but I tend to see them as basically nuances of being a sociopath.
The technical difference is that the narcisist is mostly focused on his own glory, while the sociopath is mostly in it for the entertainment that comes from having the power and causing distress. E.g., a sociopath might fire half the personnel or make everyone take unpaid vacations when there's actually work to do, just because he enjoys abusing his power. The narcissist might do the same thing because he can get more money or glory out of it. Even if just the glory of seeing his name in the newspaper for doing it. E.g., the sociopath might demand 80 hour weeks because he finds it entertaining to show you he's boss. The narcissist might do it because he smells more profit for him that way, and it's only him that matters, not you. The narcissist may then reduce it to 60 hours if it looks like it'll make him look good in the press, though.
A bigger difference for corporations is that the narcissist is able to plan farther ahead. He's willing to put some long term work and planning into getting a lot of glory and power. The sociopath tends to be focused more on the immediate and short term. Ergo, a lot of them enjoy coming to a company, taking some disastrous decisions, and moving on to the next one. Wall Street loves the sociopaths more because (A) they're more available to be moved in and out for massive axe jobs, and (B) because Wall Street itself has the attention span of a bad ADHD case. It wants action, hype, and big fluctuations _now_.
This, however, is just an ad-hominem based on nothing more than pompous presumptions. You assume too much about what control I have or don't have, or what I need to belive. It's not a matter of comforting thoughts, it's a matter of calling it how I see it. When you read stuff like this (or most of the news about corporate America these days), and the unrepentance that invariably comes with it, it's hard _not_ to recognize sociopathy.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
May 18th is also the day Mt. St. Helens blew up. Generally a bad day.
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
Normally when I comment in relation to HP (I'm an employee) I stay anonymous and just correct facts. ACs tend to get modded down but hey, at least that way I don't get my posts interpreted simply by what the reader thinks of HP. But typically the topic is "Alpha vs. Itanium" or somesuch where no matter anyone's claims to knowing the one shining truth, it comes down to matters of opinion (hey, I'm a software guy, what would I know...).
But this situation is different. It's truly embarassing and I hope Dunn suffers in consequence. Talking to the press is bad. Whether or not you agree, that was what the board decided. Any board member who disagrees should stand up and be counted or have the guts to resign. I get paid good money, have access to confidential information, and would like to think I have the standards to quit rather than get petty ego-boosting revenge by talking to the press. Whistle blowing bad business practice etc is noble. Leaking product roadmaps etc is just masturbating.
So Keyworth deserves to leave the board. His actions, however, just don't compare to Dunn invading the private lives of her colleagues.
HP has done a lot and does a lot to be proud of. Every once and a while a salesperson does a stupid thing or a business decision is "sub-optimal", but for instance we haven't joined the ranks of the many tech companies playing silly buggers with the financials. We've been getting our act together over the past year and a lot of us are hopeful we will become a great company again.
Then last thing before I go to bed (I'm in the UK), I hear that the board doesn't even understand that lying to get an innocent person's personal information is a bad thing. I don't care whether it's illegal or not. It's a shit thing to do. And I hate going to bed pissed off.
There's one combination of things that always makes me angry. First, acting in a clearly "bad" way - whether that's illegal, unethical, plain rude, whatever. Second, when it's also a stupid thing. What do we get for outing the leak? Not much (but there can be minor advantages to the competition being in the dark for a few months, trust me). Will the way we've behaved come to light? Of course - look at Tom Perkins letters, this eventually becomes a matter of public record via the SEC for fuck's sake! Will it be embarassing if a customer brings it up? Yes, perhaps with a financial impact, and with the story on e.g. front webpage BBC, everyone's going to know about it.
I hope they ask her to resign.
Nah, we'll hit "Random Cavity Searches" at the airport first.
Yes, the TSA should absolutely start doing this right away, to protect us from terrorists! If you don't have anything to hide when you're at the airport, then surely you won't mind these burly, male agents checking your wife's body cavities in a private room, right?
As I was saying, the western culture as a whole and USA in particular are at a point where we actually _demand_ that a corporation behaves like a sociopath. We _want_ merciless cost cuts, inhuman sweatshops in other countries, etc, if it makes our shares rise by 50 cents or so.
And we have this illusion that they can be sociopaths only half the time. That they'll act merciless to their competitors or enemies, but somehow retain a sense of loyalty, duty and maybe even grattitude to those of us (voters, shareholders, etc) that got them into that job. Unfortunately that doesn't work that way, and plenty of examples to the contrary exist. Ken Lay had no trouble telling people to buy his shares, while he was selling his, for example. But at any rate, the illusion exists and is very widespread.
So by now you probably see the risk I'm talking about: that if you actually gave prospective CEOs an APD test, it may come to pass that the one with the _higher_ score would get the job.
(Not to say that the rest of the world doesn't have their sociopaths, btw, but the culture tries to at least hide it. Asian countries like Japan for example have a more paternalistic-autocrat kind of business culture for example, so sociopaths have to at least pretend to respect that.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The chair of HP's board didn't start the company - she was hired, as were Fiorina, and other female executives.
It's possible that the executives are chosen for their behavior - the people who hire the executives may want ones willing to trample their customers, employees, and stockholders for their own interests and profit, or act in the best interests of a few, or something else. The character of men or women in general would not matter - companies get people that most represent their positions, and the people hired are expected to change to fit the corporate ethic rather than expecting the company change to theirs (or, more accurately, those who don't have to change to fit in).
If executives are chosen by those who act in their own best interests rather than those of the company, it seems predictable that you'd get the same behavior from those they hire - the sex of the person doesn't matter.
In another arena, does it matter who the Presidential candidates are if a small set of people were allowed sole discretion to choose the candidates? At that point, the decision power isn't in the election of a President, but in the mechanism by which the small group chooses the candidates. The behavior of Presidential candidates would not necessarily be representative of those who wished to run for office, but only of those chosen to do so.
Conversely, if someone has broken laws, and does have something to hide (and everyone does), chances are they're even more mad at the invasion of privacy.
Bush is NOT a hero to the Cato Institute.
Get a clue before you run your mouth, it'll make you look less like an ignorant ass than you just did.
Libertas in infinitum
But the labor wasn't obtained using the information, the labor was obtained by calling the customer service number. Saying you obtained their labor because you had personal information of a customer is like me calling the phone company's customer service and claiming I obtained their labor because I mentioned that I own a car. Sure, I own a car, but the labor was obtained by dialing.
The customer service rep was going to talk to the caller whether they provided a valid social security number or not.
Since obtaining the labor wasn't enabled by having the personal information, there's no crime here. Now, if I had them install a phone line by impersonating someone else, then you might have something.
paintball
They do it same sex. Your wife isn't the one who's cavaties the burly, male agent will be checking out.
Just out of wondering, what company provides the address 68.99.17.80? Apparently, that's the address of the recieving email. Is it HP? or a local ISP? What is the state law of that ISP regarding phishing?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I've noticed that many times, a seemingly "Funny" comment is modded "Insightful" when it seems uncomfortably close to the awful truth.
Let's face it, honor and integrity are meaningless today. 90% of you are ready to string Mrs. Dunn up. Meanwhile there is a corporate officer who was scrwing over the shareholders by leaking corporate planning to the press and you want to give him a pat on the back. I see the same thing in world politics.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
There's no reason they have to leave it like that. In fact, it's discriminatory and sexist to require that body cavity searches be done by a person of the same sex! If you truly have nothing to hide, you should be happy to be subject to a body cavity search by a TSA agent of either sex, and you shouldn't complain if they seem to take much longer than is necessary, or don't use gloves. After all, if you don't trust our friendly government agents, then you're probably a criminal or terrorist.
>And I just can't resist even though it's non-sequitur:
> You don't start wars on questionable intelligence.
The United States went to war partly because of the end of First Gulf War, in which the United States military had troops based in Saudi Arabia to enforce the No-Fly-Zone provisions (to protect the Iraqi Kurds) in the cessation treaties with Saddam Hussein.
Now, Saudi Arabia is Mecca -- the Holy Land, and the direction which Muslims face when they get down on their knees and pray five times a day. Osama Bin Laden decided to exploit this fact, and claimed that it was blasphemous to have infidels (non-Muslims) on the sacred land . So he issued religious edicts (fatwas) demanding every Muslim to kill Americans in order to drive them from Saudi Arabia. To drive the point home, airplanes were crashed into the World Trade Center.
In response, would the United States get up and leave Saudi Arabia? No, they had Saddam Hussein to deal with. If they just left the area, tantamount to surrender, this would have emboldened him further -- he had already violated treaties by firing on U.S. military planes enforcing the No-Fly-Zone. As the Dulfer report showed, he was succesfully circumventing the U.N. barriers in order to reconstitute WMD. Saddam Hussein also refused to offer diplomatic condolences to the United States in the wake of 9/11, which only raised suspicions that had been mounting after his previous charades with U.N. weapons inspectors, whom he had kicked out.
Furthermore, if the U.S. had merely left Saudi Arabia after 9/11, this would have simply emboldened more terrorist actions. If you think the number of terrorists recruited now is bad, it arguably would have been a lot worse if the U.S. decided to become a sitting duck, especially because millions of Muslims must participate in the pilgramage (Hajj) to Mecca as part of their religion.* In fact, the reverse happened: Libya's leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhfi, once a sworn enemy of the U.S. during the Reagan administration, confessed up to his own WMD plans and offered to dismantle them, and now Libya and the U.S. have restored diplomatic ties. Iraq has followed pretty well a timetable to get further closer to democracy (under Saddam Hussein, it was not even a consideration), with their own security forces building up.
It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback and point out everything that's gone wrong. On the other hand, given the circumstances, the realities, and the alternatives, there's a lot that's been done right. Prematurely pulling out of Iraq would be a disaster.
--------------
*These pilgramages have a reputation of being deadly just due to the congestion; it's not unheard of for hundreds of people to die in the crush of the fervor, particularly during the ritual of the stoning of the devil.
what the board member did was wrong and could get HP in much trouble with the SEC also. Somebody on the board leaking information to anybody not thru proper channels opens HP up for insider trading allogations, as well as other SEC violations. They needed to keep this quiet and now the "martyr" is going to ruin that for the company as well.
Say what you will about Dunn, but the fact of the matter is that she ousted both Keyworth, a hack and a leaker, and Carly Fiorina, who was just a hack. The loss of Perkins is regrettable, but I support Dunn all the way. If she continues to clean house she can administer anal probes to the Board and Executive Committee for all I care.
Here's a counter to the examples we so often see of businessmen doing the wrong thing. You don't often hear about people in business doing the right thing, because that seldom makes a juicy story. In business, you have to make ethical decisions all the time. It's nice to see a news story that sheds some light on one of those decisions properly decided.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's amazing to me that people seek to blame everything on George W Bush.
You think that's amazing? In a world where people tried to blame columbine on Marilyn Manson, you think it's amazing that someone would think that the CEO of our country would be a role model that could influence the CEOs of the corporations in our country? I honestly don't see what's so amazing about that.
I find Dunn's actions totally unethical, way more shameful than the actual leak. Given her irreverence for privacy towards HP's own board members and the leakers irreverence for sensitive company information, I can only imagine how that irreverence affects how the company prioritizes consumer privacy. This will be a real factor in my decision to purchase HP products and services in the future.
So how did she become HP's chairman? is it because she represents a big investor?
(i) Offered to call the "customer" back on the number in question.
(ii) Offered to post the information to the customer's home address.
I am reasonable sure that their actions would be illegal under UK data protection laws, although there is of course the usual question of whether anyone could afford to sue them. We do have a commissioner who is in principle responsible for enforcing data protection laws, but they are a toothless tiger who seem primarily interested in educating organisations in the hope that they won't do it again!
The people responsible for inspecting Iraq's military capabilities said unequivocally they did not find WMD. They said this at the time Bush and Co. were peddling their lies (and if they feel I am being libelous I invite them to sue me).
The team inspecting Iraq requested several more months to complete their work but the war was rushed well before that.
There were only two sides in this situation, the ones liying out of malice (Bush) or ignorance (Clinton) and the ones that stuck to the facts.
Any other accomodations are irrelvant, specially if it comes to US politics, where almost eevry single politician drank Bush's Kool Aid ans suspended critical thinking.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
www.newamericancentury.org
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You were obviously not in Europe then. Our newspapers had daily info from the UN inspectors claiming there were NO evidences yet of WMDs, despite many inspections and advicing against military action. They also stated Saddam made things difficult for them to inspect properly, which is the reason WHY USA attacked and invaded Iraq. It was all an ego-game between Saddam and Bush. Saddam betted Bush wouldn't dare..
Most every news in Europe was very sceptic towards the war and opposed to the spoutings of the Bush-administration at the time. Only Blair joined in, and is now regretting it dearly. Most of Europe PROTESTED before the war. We had e.g huge demonstrations in Oslo with thousands of people over the WHOLE DOWNTOWN. Didn't they show you on TV?
At NO time were there mentions of WMDs having been found, quite on the contrary. Many inspections that had found place in the last years, yielded no result. This led people to believe that they were being burried down, or constantly moved, despite satellite records showing no conclusive evidence (and later digging have shown this to be a false "hope" for the war-eager crowd).
The only regret of the world-community should be the failure to join in on the clean-up after the Iraq-war. Failing to aide the country with peacekeepers from the UN / NATO, is really a crime against the people of Iraq and the whole area of Middle-East. The reason? Petty grievances and politics, since everybody opposed the Iraq-war and the USA-administration.
Lessons that should have been learned here:
Wars don't make peace.
Differences shouldn't stop aid.
This is of course how I perceieved it at the time, but it may help others to get an honest review of how it looked for me at least.
Needs a new corrolary.
s/Hitler/Bush/g; s/Nazi/GOP/g;
END THREAD, eh? Yes, it's unfortunate. Of course, if they didn't promote strong militant nationalism in support of government-corporate alliance...
-5, off topic?
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Of course, because hiding leads to fear, fear leads to anger, and anger leads to the dark side!
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes, indeed. As a matter of fact, I understand that Google's hiring test procedures involve having to pee in a cup from several feet away. This tends to select for male engineers with exceptionally large penises, of course, and definitely puts the opposite sex at a disadvantage, but hey ... it's their company.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
(-)20% Off-Topic
(-)20% Flamebait
Okay, I know /. moderation almost never equals 100, but all this totals +5 positive karma?!? Hmmm, interesting.
The simple answer is, that armitage is trying to pull the wool over everybodies eyes. My guess is that Fitzgerald will have to extend the investigation out to say dec. or jan. At which time, Armitage will say, whoops, his mistake; he could not have leaked anything to Novak.
The simple answer is that you and your ilk won't accept reality. Nov. 8th is going to be a very, very satisfying day... Again...
What tax cuts are you talking about? I'm not aware of any tax cuts that affect me. It's funny; the estate tax (aka the "death tax") only affects people leaving large sums of money that most of us will never see, but by calling it the "death tax" Bush got a lot of enthusiasm for a tax cut for the rich. FOR THE RICH. It doesn't apply to over 95% of the population.
You should really watch Orwell Rolls in His Grave. (ObDisclaimer: This is a link to a review on my site, which contains amazon associate links. If you do a websearch for the title, the official site fo the movie should be at the top of the list of links.) You're a tool of the media and this might be the film that opens your eyes. Probably not, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"