In terms of shock to the national psyche, the parallel between Challenger and 9/11 is legitimate. However, the parallels end there.
The Challenger was a one-shot tragedy, and most importantly it was an accident. 9/11 was not a tragedy, it was an atrocity. It was an act of war by a movement that has made subsequent attacks against civilians in the U.K. and Indonesia since then and has expressed a desire to hit the U.S. again when the opportunity presents itself.
It's quite possible that the same cultural mistakes of corner-cutting and underfunding led to the Columbia disaster 17 years after Challenger. Heaven forbid that we fall into the same complacency with national security that we were in five years ago in the U.S. If al Qaeda has its druthers, after the next terrorist attack here, we'll be saying "Well ONLY 3,000 people died on 9/11..."
For various reasons, it's virtually impossible to live on $10/hr. in the U.S., at least in most urban areas. So it's unlikely that ANYONE in the U.S., native-born or immigrant, will be willing to work in a skilled labor (IT, plumber, auto mechanic, etc.) for that type of wage. In much of the world, one can have a better standard of living (satisfactory housing, nutritious food, decent health care, etc.) making $10/hr. than an American would making $20/hr. at home. Thus, it's not unreasonable in a truly capitalistic global economy to assume that labor will move to other parts of the world where opportunities are better.
However, there's one major flaw to that assumption. As an American, would I allowed to TRY to find work in India, China, or other countries with lower pay scales? In most cases, the answer would be absolutely not. Therefore, the game's not fair! Why shouldn't the competition for jobs paying a certain wage in a certain location be open to EVERYONE in the world? Companies shouldn't be allowed to move overseas unless potential employees are allowed to move there as well. If a company has a right to move my job to India, then I damn well better have the right to move to India to try to win my job back if I'm willing to work for that wage!
Until that's the case, then we're not really talking about a capitalistic economy. We're dealing more with a plutocracy that calls itself capitalists.
I knew VHS was going the way of the doodoo as soon as DVDs started hitting the shelves.
I've heard of the dodo going extinct, but there's more doodoo being produced than ever. I'll have to rebalance my stock portfolio when No. 2 ceases to be a primary means of waste elimination in humans. Of course, at least in the good ol' U.S.A., we're more likely to reduce our feces production to 1990 levels than we're likely to achieve the goal of the Kyoto greenhouse gas treaty...
Osama is powerless to transform the United States into a totalitarian regime. GW Bush is well on his way.
I think this "Anybody But Bush" (ABB) nonsense is getting old. My personal belief is that if either Al Gore or John Kerry were in office either (a) the U.S. would have effectively appeased OBL either to prevent something like the destruction of the WTC or in response to such an event or (b) such a President would have allowed himself to be browbeaten into taking the same, if not worse, "liberty-stealing" actions as some Slashdotters love to accuse Bush 43 of partaking in. Yeah, he's not perfect, but at least he's got the balls to back up some of his policies with action. IMO, if he really were a totalitarian, it would have been much simpler for him to support a handpicked tyrant to replace Mr. Hussein in Iraq than to go through the complicated process of setting up three elections in a year and try to corrupt either the electoral process or the results of that process.
I get the impression, perhaps accurately or perhaps not, that writers of posts like this think that the current president is Pure Evil and that if he were deposed and just about anyone else of the 100 million+ eligible Americans for this office replaced him, all our liberties would be protected and all will be right with the world. Unfortunately, Bush had over 400 supporters in Congress to help get the PATRIOT passed, including all but two Senators. This means that many Congressmen from both sides of the aisle were perfectly willing to let this "totalitarian" state come to be.
Fortunately, this law was crafted with sunset provisions that allow us to revisit the debate on civil liberties. This time around, some Senators on both parties feared the balance struck four years ago was tilted too far towards the government and away from the people, and have to this point stalled a renewal of this bill. IMO, Mr. Bush's seemingly unconditional insistence on this law's renewal is misguided, and unless he gives some compelling reason why these powers need to be extended for several more years, the PATRIOT act should be allowed to expire.
It's not clear to what extent the Bush administration eavesdropped on Americans' communications without warrants to do so, ostensibly to monitor or prevent terrorist activity. At this early stage, I'm not willing to belive any particular report about this. However, the fact that we're even aware about these activities through the media and Mr. Bush has acknowledged at least some of these activities publicly shows that we still live in the freest nation in the world. We have court systems in which those who feel they have been wronged can sue the Justice Department or other government agencies, where courts will decide whether the government behaved in accordance with the Constitution and laws consistent with this document, or the government overstepped its boundaries. And, if those in Congress decide Bush has gone too far, they have the legal means to overthrow him: impeachment. It worked 30 years ago when it became clear that Nixon had broken the law (there, the mere threat of impeachment was sufficient). And there's no reason that I can see right now why it wouldn't work now.
I personally think that in the past four years, the U.S. has done a pretty good job balancing liberty and security, and that we have the tools in place to improve this balance. From what I've read about the 1940's, we've done a much better job now than we did during World War II, where one's Asian descent was often enough to be put into an interment camp. I belive that the idea that we're inevitably headed to a totaltiarian state is a load of bunk.
It's your right to say whatever you want about our president. I think it does a disservice to everyone, though, to just hurl invective against any particular politician without coming up with an alternative solution.
I wouldn't want anyone insisting i was at fault because someone cut in front of me quickly and immediately slam on thier brakes.
In Massachusetts, this already happens. I was involved in a situtation where a 17 year old girl in a Volvo cut about 10 feet behind me and 10 feet ahead of a Saab on a busy 4-lane road. Unfortunately, at the time, I was slowing down since someone in the left lane was waiting to make a turn. So, immediately after I reach the end line of cars and stop, the Volvo driver realizes she's about to hit the back of my car, slams on her brakes, and skids stops about 2 feet behind my car. The Saab driver wasn't able to react to the Volvo driver's panic stop, so the Saab rear-ended the Volvo, and pushed the Volvo into the back of my car.
If I were to be the judge, I'd assign most of the blame to the Volvo driver for the accident, since by her maneuver, she rendered the Saab driver unable to respond to a panic stop. However, in Massachusetts, the rule is you hit an uncited driver's car from behind, you're by definition at fault. Since there was only hearsay evidence from me and the Saab driver regarding the Volvo driver's aggressive actions, the responding police officer couldn't give the Volvo driver a citation.
So, in addition to taking about $5,000 damage (which would result in four insurance points) to his car, he was given four points for causing the accident and two more points for a following-too-close citation, even though he had pretty much no say in how far he was behind the Volvo. If he had any other moving violations in the past year or received a new one in the following year, he would have gotten hit with a license suspension (I believe it's 6 months, but don't quote me on that). A typical cost for the 10 points in Massacusetts would be a $1200/year surcharge on the guy's insurance.
Long story made short: arbitrary rules in the insurance industry already can screw driver's big time. If there were some data regarding the last 15 seconds of each of our actions before the accident, perhaps more of the blame would have rightfully pushed onto the Volvo driver.
Of course, the other side of the black boxes is the privacy issue. I think there need to be very strong measures in place before these boxes become mandatory: restricting the maximum length of data recording time to something like 1 hour to prevent police from accumulating a long history of one's driving, no mandatory or encouraged (i.e. by providing insurance "discounts" or in practice a lack of additional charges) recording of location information, no mandatory or encouraged broadcasting of recorded information to authorities, making a vehicle's involvement in a collision with another vehicle or person a necessary condition for access to the black box, etc. But I think that with the proper safeguards in place, black boxes in cars can end up doing more good than harm.
The really depressing thing is that, even though I can see the system is broken, I really have no idea what to do about it. The system needs to be reformed, but I'm not entierly sure where to start.
How about a new law or constitutional provision guaranteeing those named as defendants in civil lawsuits to competent, court-appointed attorneys if the defendant cannot afford to pay for legal counsel? In criminal cases, the right to legal counsel regardless of ability to pay for it has been established by the Miranda vs. Arizona case (it's one of the so called Miranda rights: "You have the right to remain silent...")
Granted, it won't be a perfect fix, but I think it would be a start. Court-appointed attorneys usually aren't the most skilled in the nation, but they would certainly be competent enough to defend an individual against a ridiculous lawsuit based primarily on the premise of getting the defendant to agree to a certain course of action because he/she doesn't have the money for lawyers to fight back.
Why shouldn't the same standards regarding due process of law that are used in criminal matters be used in civil matters as well? The consequences of one losing a $250,000 lawsuit (currently allowable under copyright law) can be as least as harmful to one's lifestyle as getting sent to jail for a couple of years for a drug offense. People should have the same basic right to protection from B.S. lawsuits as they do from B.S. criminal convictions.
seen that the rest of Europe (and indeed US) drives on the left?
I understand your point you were trying to make, but I think you wanted to reverse left and right in your argument. That is, in the UK and many Commonwealth countries, they drive on the left, and in North America and continental Europe driving is done on the right.
As far as I know, the only place in the U.S. where driving on the left is common is Boston and its immediate bordering cities and suburbs. In fact most traffic conventions are ignored or perverted in this area: for instance, red lights in addition to green lights are interpreted to mean "proceed at your current speed through the interesection" while yellow lights mean "please place your accelerator pedal on the floor as you go through this intersection." And everyone except for the police officers around here seems to read speed limits as meters/sec. values instead of MPH or km/h values.:)
I don't see how this follows. With the notable exception of Microsoft, most technology firms have come out publicly AGAINST laws attacking users' rights like S. 2048.
Granted, these objections are generally based on pragmatic concerns (e.g. Why should Sun be forced to spend more money on its product line to include DRM, especially if it's solely for the protection of Hollywood?) instead of ideological ones. But the maxim "an enemy of my enemy is a friend" applies here.
Existing laws like the DMCA restrict entry into markets such as DVD players. The licensing fees for technologies like CSS increase the price of making products. Most often, the manufacturers don't have enough pricing power to get away with passing the entire increased cost to customers, so these companies' profit margins are squeezed.
Meanwhile, the importance of the media has not diminished in the past several years, since politicians continue to rely on the media to get or keep themselves in office. If, as you claim, the technology industry's political weight has diminished as a result of the dot-com bust, then that would mean that the media and related industries (movies, music, etc.) will have an even greater influence relative to the tech industry than the media enjoyed a few years ago.
Given the public positions of those like Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti, if these people now have a greater influence over the U.S. Congress than they've previously had, then it looks like we're heading in the direction of progressively more Draconian laws against "piracy," i.e. one's right to use a device he or she purchased in any way said person sees fit.
I wonder how the petroleum industry or the NRA feels about these issues. If the technology industry isn't going to matter as much as it formerly did in speaking a voice (accidentally)consistent with most Slashdotters' opinions, I think we're going to need a replacement ally as powerful as Big Oil to fight the attack on users' rights mounted by the "content industry." And it looks like we need one ASAP.
"Yeah, well don't be so sure. Others have tried and failed... The entire population, in fact."
Sam Jackson's a little bit off. The NJ/NY Port Authority makes tons of money off those desperate to leave New Jersey. I really hope Rhode Island and New Hampshire don't decide to follow suit and proceed to gangbang Massholes like me who will be fleeing Big Dig-related taxes in a few years.
This is why the free market always fixes problems-- it took care of Enron, Global Crossing and Tyco rather fast, and exerted its maximum penalty- death, on the companies.
While congress is a bunch of jack asses that do more harm than good and never get anything done that actually helps people.
What about the "penalities" on those who caused those companies to die? Right now, I don't see anyone in immediate jeopardy of a long sentence in a "pound-me-in-the-ass" prison. Just a few token arrests of higher-ups. The "free market" requires some level of government regulation to insure that buyers of goods can be confident that they will receive what the seller has advertised. If the government doesn't do its best to keep fraud out of the marketplace, then the market itself will fall apart. This disillusion is part of the reason behind this most recent stock market crash, as well as others in the past.
Companies who, in an effort to keep their stock price high, fraudulently report profits as they're burning cash like crazy deserve to die. CEOs and others who develop and execute schemes to defraud shareholders to receive pay in excess of what they would have received if they were telling the truth need to be punished severely. I believe the government needs to do all three of the following things to such crooks: (1) seize all assets from those involved in the fraud and from those, including family members, involved in covering up the fraud (like the ImClone guy who couldn't sell his own stock, so he asked his daughter to sell hers), (2) send them to prison for many years (if those involved knew that they were likely to destroy the company beforehand, then they deserve a life sentence), and (3) after the long sentence prevent them from ever working again in any capacity at a publicly traded company.
People are really underestimating the damage that the managements of Enron and Tyco, among others, has done to the United States. It's probably going to take the country the better part of a decade to recover from this decline. And if history is any guide, the ones that inflicted the damage are going to get off lightly. A year in prison, a $1 million fine, and a promise not to do it again would be my over/under line on punishments on those like Ken Lay's. And after the ordeal, he'll still have most of his 9-figure fortune that he obtained largely through fraud.
If I go into a bank, hold it up, and walk out with $100K, I would be looking at a 10+ -year sentence, and no one would be dramatically hurt, either physically or financially. A couple of people who attempted to defraud Michael Jordan out of a few hundred grand are facing up to 25 years in jail for an action that would have not ruined the superstar's livelihood, let alone that of thousands. In neither case would the perpetrators expect to keep their illegally-obtained goodies.
If this type of fraud or extortion is grounds for a sentence of 10 years or more, then why isn't executive fraud held to the same standards when formulating a punishment. The MAXIMUM sentence in the new law passed by Congress for executive fraud is 10 years. Those at companies who have already collapsed will be subject to a maximum sentence of FIVE YEARS, because the actions in question took place before the enactment of the new law. And as far as a I know, there's no requirement that the sentencing judge of a guilty party include forfeiture of assets in the sentence. Does anyone else see something unjust in this picture?
Whether the U.S. government is overstepping its bounds and stomping all over its citizens rights is a debate for another thread. But I do believe that the government has been derelict in one of its few duties in a "free market" economy: keeping people honest. Would you really want to take part in a completely unregulated market? Ironically, the only such markets that I know to exist have been those that are outlawed by governments, such as the market for cocaine and heroin in the U.S. In markets such as these, fraud and violence is just as likely to gain someone additional market share as a supplier who produces a superior product. Would you call such a market truly free?
Nice to hear of your success in life. I think the statement you make about having "so much debt and so few assets" is outright insulting.
Sure, there are some college students I know who do stupid things like using credit cards for "emergencies" including a week long Spring Break orgy in Dayton Beach. However, there are also quite a few people I know who did nothing wrong except for taking a chance, working their asses off to get a good degree while taking on a big chunk of debt, and rolling snakeyes as they graduated into an unwelcoming job market.
What were an 18-year-old's options circa 1998? Go without a degree, and wind up at a McDonald's level or low-end blue collar job? Nothing morally wrong with that. However, those jobs, even in the best-paying regions of the country, usually pay no more than $10/hr, with few or no fringe benefits like a health plan. This will probably allow a frugal person to make an acceptable living for him/herself, but forget about raising a family with two jobs of this nature. And as far as the future goes, people who are in these sorts of jobs tend to be compensated at about the same level related to minimum wage (e.g. a position that paid $6/hr. in the 1980's when minimum wage was $3.35 would probably pay no more than $9/hr. today). And we know how the minimum wage has always kept pace with inflation, especially since the 1970's. Right.
How about joining the armed forces? A noble proposition, but with two significant drawbacks: low pay (especially for enlisted personnel) making it difficult to make a decent living for oneself off-base, and more importantly, having to deal with the fear that you'll be among the first called to put your ass on the line to defend American Freedom(tm). I know a couple of people who have more balls than I'll ever have that enlisted in the past year. I pray for their safety and success.
The only other major alternative was to get a degree of some sort, which is a necessary condition for most jobs paying a decent or better amount. Degrees aren't cheap, and if one's parents aren't able or willing to pony up some of the money required, there's going to be a hell of a burden on the student, either in hours worked during school or in debt serviced afterward. Even at a state school, you're talking $5K a year easily unless you happen to qualify for special scholarships. I don't know many people in high school (outside of a couple of drug dealer types) who could accumulate more than a few grand from their teen jobs, leaving one with a nasty choice: take a full-time job during school to pay your expenses and risk not having enough time and energy to complete your degree, or focusing on studies and accumulating a five-figure debt.
I chose the latter route, and am dealing with a $600 payment on my loan. At this rate, I'll be done in about 6 years. If I lose my job and have to take a significant pay cut, I'm toast. Most of my college classmates are in a similar situation. If I make it through the next 6 years with my job, I'm basically in the clear either living a pretty damn good lifestyle or saving a lot of money (in reality, it will probably be somewhere in the middle). If I don't make it, then I'm basically fucked for life. I took a gamble based upon the premise that if I worked hard that, I COULD make myself a good living. In the Boomer generation, the "could" in that last sentence was pretty much a "would". That's the major difference between the 1950's and today. Working one's ass off 40 years ago would give one close to a 100% chance of "living the good life." Today for most people in or recently out of college, that probability can only be raised to maybe 75% or 80%.
I get tired of when people say "well, I did XYZ and live in the lap of luxury." I don't know about your particular situation, but more often than not in my previous experience, these sorts of people essentially fell into money rather than spending a entire career earning it through continuous hard work wise investment decisions. So get the hell of your high horse when criticizing those whose luck turned out differently. If for some reason the Silicon Valley real estate market tanks for reasons outside your control and you become upside down on your house, wouldn't you be offended if someone labeled you "irresponsible"?
I bet this was probably the RIAA's plan all along. THey own a monopoly through all the distribution channels so they can raise the prices. I also believe consumers have been boycotting them and the RIAA blames this on piracy and continues to fund new laws. It seems like the more they boycott the more they pribe the politicians and the more they can use these figures to make it look like piracy. Either way were screwed.
Isn't this sort of combined monopoly what the Sherman Antitrust Act is supposed to prevent? You have an organization made up of not one but five major players (and a boatload of minor players) joining forces to act as a monopoly. If that's not a cartel, then I don't know what would qualify as one. Sure, the FTC has accused the RIAA of price-fixing schemes and has managed to get Hilary's boys to agree to some token settlements, but that has little changed the economic arena for either the consumers (CD prices have yet to fall as a result of competition amongst labels) or the signed artists.
I know Microsoft hasn't been a Boy Scout in its business dealings and probably needs to be smacked around for its arrangments it makes with OEM's to help support their monopoly position. But IMHO, the RIAA is in even bigger violation of antitrust laws. I think it's high time for the DOJ to dismantle the RIAA and make all labels, majors and indies alike, to compete in the marketplace. Then, you'll see some labels raise their market share as a result of signing superior talent, superior marketing of said talent, and selling their music as at a fair price. And you'll see others fall by the wayside. The ones that fail will not fail as a result of "piracy," but instead as a result of not running their business as well as their competitors.
Even a monopoly can't charge arbitrarily high prices without driving customers away. Only in the IP industry can one claim that all declines in sales are the result of "piracy." In the IP industry, the music and movie industries are the ones beating the piracy drum the loudest. Is deciding that I won't buy the newest Nelly CD because its price is $18 "piracy"? Or how about the fact I've slowed my CD-buying to a trickle because the music that's coming out of this cartel almost never coincides with my music preferences? Is that piracy? What about the fact that I find other things more worthwhile for my entertainment budget than buying CD's? Is spending my money (which the RIAA practically claims is their entitlement from God) on a museum admission, an evening of blackjack at the casino down the road, or seeing (gasp!) a live band piracy?
It's a shame we don't have term limits on members of the U.S. Congress in this nation. We have Congressmen that have been in office 30 or 40 years, and a few even longer than that. And we expect those people, who probably lost touch with the music industry in the early part of the vinyl LP era, to make lasting policy decisions that will affect not only the music industry but the entire "intellectual property" industry as a whole? I just hope that the damage that the DMCA and future legislation that this underinformed Congress passes at the request of the RIAA's (and its allies') lobbyists reveals itself slowly enough that the next generation of legislators who grew up in the "Information Age" can take steps to stop and eventually reverse it.
In most cases, the cable internet situation is in fact a monopoly. If Cox, RoadRunner, AT&T, et. al. actually went head-to-head in THE SAME MARKETS, then you'd have oligopoly. Unfortunately, most municipalities have one cable franchise with a long-term license. Here in Mass., it doesn't really matter whether Cox offers cable modem service for $30/month in Georgia (I know, probably not true, just a hypothetical situation); Cox isn't an option here. If you want cable modem service, it's either AT&T for nearly $50/month or "Hit the road, Jack." A situation where one must spend several thousand dollars to move to a town with a different cable company is not my idea of competition at work.
In terms of broadband access as a whole, many places are lucky to have a duopoly (cable plus a single DSL provider). Slightly better, but still not enough competition for my blood: when one raises prices, the other is just as likely as not to sacrifice an increased market share and choose a higher price and profit margin.
Granted, there might be places where there really is an oligopoly at work, but my belief is that those places are the lucky, small minority. Now, if you had no choice (i.e. like auto insurance in most states, doing without was not an option) but to buy cable modem service from your city's franchisee, then I suppose one could say that cities with a less expensive cable company were competing on the cost of living there. I really hope the U.S. doesn't reach that point of corporate domination, however...
yeah, like the chief of staff needs a vote in congress (a law) anymore to go to war. the constitution has long gone out the window...
The way things are today, it can be pretty unclear what "war" is. When U.S. Armed Forces invaded Afghanistan to attack the Taliban and al-Queda, one can justifiably claim that the invasion was an act of war against the de facto government of that country. But is the U.S. still involved in a war with Afghanistan when the U.S. continues its operations against al-Queda and remnants of the Taliban after that government was overthrown and a new coalition government installed? When another nation asks the U.S. for military assistance against a specific subnational (i.e. not a sovereign state) threat or another nation gives the U.S. permission for U.S. forces to perform unilateral action against a group like al-Queda, who is the U.S. really at war with? Certainly not the nation on whose territory the military action is occuring. And at least the traditional sense of war is an exchange of hostilities among sovereign states; that is, it would not make traditional sense to claim that the U.S. could "declare war" on al-Queda, the Irish Republican Army, or the Michigan Militia, even though most would agree the U.S. has the right to defend itself from such subnational entities.
It is this confusion that justifies the President's right (not necessarily the Joint Chief of Staff's right, though presidents have often accepted their advice) to order limited military action against specific threats without the approval of Congress. When Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon abused their right to perform "limited" military actions in the ridiculously long Vietnam conflict, Congress passed a law exerting its power of the purse over future military operations lasting six months or more. The President must now get Congress's approval before launching such substantial operations or else risk running out of money for his war machine. Former President Bush received permission from Congress for the Gulf War. While the resolution may not have contained the word "war" in it, Congress did everything except declar war on Iraq when it gave the commander-in-chief carte blanche in carrying out Persian Gulf area operations.
Personally, I believe that it is crucial to the seperation of powers to allow the president to have a substantial amount of leeway in controlling the military. If the president needed Congress's approval for everything regarding the armed forces, the president would become little more than a figurehead and the U.S. federal government would essentially be a parlimentary system. However, Congress's power over the federal budget does serve as a check against the president abusing his right to unilaterally order huge military operations that can end up costing the nation tremendously, both in dollars and in lives.
The last paragraph parent post makes what I interpret to be an indirect shot at the current president's economic policies. While this may or may not be the intent of the post, the mindset that I have mentioned is common enough in media reports and ordinary conversation that I feel the need to rant about how I believe President Bush is getting the shaft for a problem he is not primarily responsible for creating.
I can't stand how many people claim that the political blame behind the Enron, WorldCom, and other fradulent companies' downfalls is solely that of President George W. Bush. I find that charge to be along the lines of claiming that Bush's foreign policy failures were the chief reason for last September's terrorist attacks.
As with the terror attacks, there were many causes for the ongoing meltdown of the United States capital market. The factors leading to the sudden bankruptcies of these large companies existed long before the current president moved into the White House, and some existed even before his father lived there. Most important among the causes: the executives themselves that lied about the state of their companies. In at least the Adelphia and WorldCom scenarios, it is pretty clear that blatantly criminal acts took place: they falsely claimed profitability to obtained credit from banks that would not have loaned them money if the banks knew that these companies were in fact losing money hand over fist. These executives should be jailed for AT LEAST 10 years (if they knew that these acts were ruining the company for their own personal benefit, then I would like to see them jailed for life) in addition to making as complete a restitution as possible for bondholders and stockholders.
In addition, the incentives behind this lying about companies' financial statemets has been around since the 1980's, when the "Greed is Good" mantra began to sweep Wall Street. Both in the 1980's (until October 1987) and in the 1990's the booming stock market encouraged companies to do whatever was necessary to boost their stock price. Also, especially in the 90s, the ridiculous growth of executive pay, primarily in the form of stock and stock options, gave executives a personal incentive to boost their share prices as soon as possible. Boards of directors, who also largely paid themselves in stock, turned their backs on their obstensible duties to protect shareholders' long-term interests to bolster their own short-term interests.
There were many economists who railed against these conflicts of interest and urged the SEC and Congress to pass new regulations regarding the nature of executive pay and how publicly traded companies were to be governed. But, with the economy appearing to continue to grow robustly, the federal government saw no need to rock the boat. Hell, stock prices grew substantially for 16 of the 18 years between 1982 and 1999 (IIRC, 87 and 90 were the only two down years for the Dow Jones average in that time), so The Market couldn't be wrong, right?
Presidents Reagan and Clinton essentially got a free pass for the way they allegedly handled the economy. All they really did was continue the charade of passing off a modestly growing economy as a tremendously growing economy and let their successors worry about it when it comes to reconcile Wall Street's figures with Main Street's. In addition to coming in at the end of a business cycle, both Bushes suffered tremendous external shocks that hurt the U.S. economy: the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that caused oil prices to double plagued the first Bush's economy; the hijackings gave the current economy a significant body blow. Neither President can be accurately blamed for these problems.
Am I claiming that the current president or his father is infallible? Absolutely not. But using him as a scapegoat for problems that have infected the entire public and private sectors does a disservice to the president and leads to the political squabbling that will slow down the necessary reforms to the economy. The older Bush was in office for four years; Reagan and Clinton lived in the White House for eight years. GWB has barely been in office for 18 months. Which presidents do you think have had the biggest opportunity to influence economic policy since 1981? And another thing to keep in mind: before he can act, the president often needs the consent of another government body -- Congress.
Before pointing the finger at anyone or anything for a problem like today's business fiascos, one must realize that it's not that simple. If there were one cause, then it would have already been dealt with and confidence would already be on its way back into our stock markets. Our entire financial system needs to be tweaked; if one person or group ends up taking the blame for an entire economy's faults, it will end up being an injustice to everyone in the United States.
The USA focuses on freedom because it's how the government pushes its agenda on the masses. The USA, like every other nation, has never been a truly free country. Instead, the US picks an evil contrary to the government's desires and urges its citizens to attack it by saying that eliminating that evil will lead to a Free(tm)-er America.
In 1775, residents of the "13 colonies" began to take up arms against Great Britain. At the beginning of the war, the gripes against the British Crown were primarily commerical, such as being allowed to buy tea only from one Crown-backed company and having to pay what they felt were ridiculous taxes on this tea and many other goods traded throughout the colonies. In April 1775, things like freedom of speech weren't a very important issue; those in North America just wanted the Crown to get the fsck out of of affairs that were previously left to the colonies to deal with internally.
When it became clear that it would be useless to extract these commerce-based concessions from the Crown, by the middle of 1776, the colonists began to move towards secession from the British Empire. They knew that they would not be able to sucessfully fight the war by themselves, so they needed help somehow. They drafted the Declaration of Independence, which detailed a set of ideals that the newly created United States would aspire to. In addition to solidifying the patriots' side (many in the would-be U.S. were sympathetic to the Crown at the beginning of the war), they managed to gain support from British people and companies who felt that the Crown's hunger for power was once again out of control (Britain's "Glorious Revolution" against royal tyranny had taken place 90 years previously). Ultimately, these ideals, along with existing distate for Britain, encouraged France to enter the war on the side of the colonists. So, it can be argued that the Declaration of Independence was as pragmatic a device as it was idealistic.
Did the newly created United States become a free nation? Largely so, provided you were a wealthy white male. Women and the poor were judged to be unqualified to handle the responsibilities of democracy; and blacks, almost all of whom were slaves at that time, were judged to be so lowly ranked in the animal kingdom that in addition to not being worthy of participating in the "democratic" government, counted as only 3/5 of an oppressed white person in the decennial census.
Fast forward 75 years to the Civil War. This time around, even wealthy white males weren't spared the shaft of tyranny. You may recall that self-determination was one of the major rallying cries in the Revolutionary War. So South Carolina, along with about a dozen other states, determines that its time to secede from the Northern states, just as the United States seceded from Britain. Well, we all know about how the folks in Washington D.C. felt about that decision. Especially the Maryland legislature, who were ordered to be arrested by President Lincoln without being accused of a criminal act (blatantly violating the "habeus corpus" provision of the Constitution) before they could convene and vote to secede from the Union. That's Freedom(tm) at work.
Northern opposition to slavery was again a largely pragmatic belief; the climate of the northern states wasn't very conducive to the slave-intensive agriculture found in the South and the new industries in the North required educated labor that would not tolerate the idea that they would be bound to the whims of a single master for their entire lives. So, Northern factory owners were forced to give a few crumbs and a few liberties to their employees; these factory owners were upset that they could not keep 100% of their factories' profits as plantation owners did. So, they led the crusade to "free" the slaves on these plantations in order for Northern and Southern businesses to run in the same set of economic rules. As in the Revolutionary War, the peddling of these ideas was also important to ensuring a favorable external political situation. In the early part of the Civil War, Great Britain seriously considered coming to the aid of the Confederacy. But then, the U.S. government managed to convince London that this war was not about economics; it was about bringing Freedom to oppressed slaves on plantations. Britain stayed out, allowing the North to take two years to get its military together (the South had nearly won the war by 1863) and rout the Confederacy.
As you all know, the years since 1865 have also been a sham in terms of giving true freedom to Americans. I just wanted to point out that the United States has always, from the time of its founding, been hypocrital regarding freedom. The hypocrisy predates the Red Scare, McCarthyism, Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No!" campaign, and it certainly predates September 11, 2001.
Hopefully these examples illustrate the true meaning of the concept of Freedom(tm) and how it differs from true freedom.
Right. I'll go out on a long limb here and claim that the mi2g 'study' was financed by an unnamed corporate monopoly.
Why on earth would my electric company care whether I was running a Linux box or a Windows box? Unless someone manages to root a box and cut its power, they should be happy regardless of which OS I'm running. Of course, they have told me they'd rather have me hack my hair drier that draws 10 amps and use it as a file server; they claim one of those has never been OwN3d by a script kiddie before.
This age restriction, IMHO, is absolute bullshit. It's primarily price discrimination; younger people who tend to travel more often and/or have not purchased or leased a car yet tend to be the ones with the most interest in renting. They claim that the higher insurance costs related to renting to 18-to-24 year olds forces them to charge premium rates to these "underage" drivers.
I can understand that inexperienced drivers may cost more to insure, but at least in Massachusetts, you can qualify for the best available insurance rates after 6 licensed years without at-fault accidents and moving violations. Typically, drivers reach that point near age 23. So, it appears inexcusable for companies to charge a $20-$25 PER DAY on 23 and 24 year olds with a good driving record. Or instead of high insurance costs, the excuse is really the fact that auto rental is an oligopoly with not enough competition to drive "underage" surcharges down to levels more in line with any increased costs associated to renting to these people.
What's even more ridiculous is that many drivers' insurance policies already cover rental cars, which reduces the rental company's exposure to almost nothing in regards to the risk associated such a driver damaging or losing such a car. I think states should pass a law stating that age shall not be a factor in determining basic rental rates or policies; anyone of the age of majority shall be served at the same basic price. (This policy would not cover any negotiated discounts that rental companies enter into with good customers that cover employees of certain companies or the government).
Insurance should only be mandated with the rental if a potential renter cannot provide proof that he or she is covered by one's own auto insurance policy for liability and damage to the vehicle to be rented. If it turns out that providing insurance to renters for liability and collision coverage is more expensive for younger drivers, then it is reasonable to pass along this increased cost to the renter, as costs are now passed on to people with short or bad driving records on their own autos' policies.
I find it strange that U-Haul and Ryder will gladly rent one of their 13-ton trucks to anyone legally able to enter into a contract. They also provide liability insurance (most standard auto policies won't cover a vehicle bigger than 5 tons), at a rate at worst equal to auto companies' surcharges and more often at $10-15 a day. Yet, just about anyone in the auto rental industry will say "no" or ("yes, but it'll cost you $175 extra for your week's rental") to a 24-year-old with a personal insurance policy and a good driving record.
Well, there's oligopoly at work for you. And things won't change unless lots of people realize what's going on here, or the government make it clear to the companies themselves what's going on.
Microsoft will continue to find
ways to gain more control of computers,
and eventually will try to directly
attack other operating systems and make
them illegal.
You're wrong on the "eventually" part. This campaign against other operating systems, as well as other technologies that threaten MS's dominance. What do you think the SSSCA/CBDTPA/S. 2048 bill is all about? Why do you think that Intel, IBM, and just about every other major tech company is screaming that they're scared shitless about this bill? Right now, Microsoft is going for checkmate in the technology game and this bill is their first move in their campaign. Should Microsoft even partially succeed in this campaign to bring every other tech company to its knees and force them to pay tribute (both financially and in policy matters) to Redmond, Microsoft will become the most powerful modern corporation in history.
Although this legislation has the proverbial snowball's chance of passing this time around, I feel that its main provisions will be enacted by the end of the decade unless Congress and Microsoft both get bludgeoned severely. These provisions may get enacted in a piecemeal fashion, but the two factors that will cause S. 2048 to become law are (a) Microsoft's huge war chest from which it can make "campaign contributions" and (b) Congress's tendancy to accept these "contributions" in exchange for favorable legislation for the contributor. The most obnoxious part of this legislation is the fact that it requires all hardware made in or imported to the United States to implement one DRM scheme dictated either by industry consensus or by the Commerce Department in 12 to 18 months if the industry can't reach a consensus. In addition, antitrust concerns will not be applicable to the process of reaching this DRM standard.
Here's the killer for all the other players in the tech industry: Microsoft holds most of the important patents for implementing DRM in software as well as major portions of implementing it in hardware. Unless another company's DRM research pans out no later than a year after this provision were to become law, there would be no alternative to whatever scheme Microsoft comes out with. Then, the Commerce Department would then impose the Microsoft standard on the nation's technology industry, extending Microsoft's grasp from the PC world to a significant portion of the U.S. GNP. Sun and IBM would be at the mercy of Microsoft, and since these companies are enemies of Gates & Co., it is likely that Microsoft would be able to use its control over these DRM patents to marginalize or even destroy these companies by making it impossible for these competitors to release new, innovative products that would, by law, include these DRM technologies.
Intel, AMD, Cisco, and other companies that primarily make hardware and most importantly don't produce software products that compete head-on with Microsoft's will also have a harder time profiting. Though it wouldn't be in MS's interest to destroy them, the folks in Redmond would be interested in taxing these companies based on a portion of their revenues for access to DRM technologies that they would need to sell new products. And MS would probably also wield enough muscle to force AMD and Intel to design future processors to run only future versions of Windows. If the Pentium 7 proved capable of running Linux, BeOS, or even Windows 2000, Microsoft could flush Intel down the drain faster than you can say "Enron."
Intel and IBM have advocated that the market determine the fate of DRM schemes. This will allow American businesses and consumers to determine which ones get adopted and which ones fall away. It should not be the government's right to state that Americans have the choice of buying a PC with Palladium installed or not buying a PC at all. It especially is not the government's prerogative to grant a company what is effectively an unregulated monopoly to a major portion of the U.S. economy, as every software and computer hardware company would be under the foot of Microsoft in a post SSSCA world.
We Americans like to boast about the fact that we reap the benefits of participating in a "capitalist" economy. Capitalism, in the ideal sense of the word, has never been practiced in history, just as communism has never been truly enacted in a country. If you define capitalism as the "Golden Rule" of "he who has the gold rules", then perhaps by vision of capitalism should really be called "laissez-faire socialism" or something. In my book, as soon as a movie studio buys the DMCA, or Microsoft buys the CBDTPA, or any other company purchases legislation that treats itself or its industry differently than the rest of the economy, it's proof that the U.S., like the rest of the world, is really a plutocracy. I think that the Microsoft situation is really just a symptom of a much larger illness of the American economy.
The next several years will determine the fate of the American economy and as well as the U.S. role in world affairs for the next several generations. This claim covers a lot more than Microsoft. It covers the tendancy of the U.S. government allowing Big Business to take on a bigger and bigger role in dictating legislation and policy matters. It may be that the Enron and WorldCom fiascos, the mega-mergers of the 1990s, the artificial "oil crisis" that caused the price of gasoline to exceed $2.50/gallon in some parts of the U.S., and the tens of billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that major employers across the country have been able to extort from cities and states have pissed Americans to the point where they feel the pendulum has to start moving the other way. I really hope we've reached that point, because if we're not there now, things may never change. If we were to continue on the present course, I think in the next 30 years, we're going to see the game of capitalism end once and for all, and the handful of winners of that game forming an oligarchy that will control the U.S. and its sphere of influence for the forseeable future. We would get to the point where each major sector of the economy is subject to the stranglehold one company which carries enough power to destroy any challenger to its market share before it can gain a foothold. There would be one dominant software company (in this post I have discussed my fear that this would be Microsoft), one dominant electronics company, one dominant energy company, one dominant bank, one dominant food supplier. The U.S. was actually pretty close to this point shortly after 1900, with Standard Oil, Ma Bell, the bank trusts and the like, and it took a remarkable shift in government policy (antitrust laws, worker safety laws, etc.) to change the American economy into a more truly competitive game. The U.S. is nearing the high-water mark of industry consolidation reached at the beginning of the 20th century. The industry consolidation scenario has repeated itself; I really hope that the popular uprisings that occured as a result of that are about to repeat themselves too.
Please tell me that the scenarios I've described are unrealistic. I really hope I'm being paranoid and that Microsoft will become merely a player and not The Player of the 2010's technology industry. IBM was stopped in the 1970's and 1980's in the courts (ironically enough it was never even convicted of antitrust violations), hopefully Microsoft will be next.
If your analyst estimate is low 61 out of 63 times, either A) you need a new analyst or B) someone is feeding the analyst bad numbers. In this case, probably both.
I think this is the key statement in the story post. There is corruption EVERYWHERE in the finance industry. This includes the government, corporate management bodies, and the people (both in the media and the private finance industry) that make money off of reporting on companies and the government.
Enron is by far not the only company with a corrupt management that artificially inflated their numbers throughout the late '90s and early 2000's. It just happens to be the first company to get caught by the national media red-handed. Nearly every failed dot-com with a successful IPO did the same things Enron did, such as under-reporting liabilities by giving much of their compensation in stock options and B.S.-ing about projected billions of future revenues from customers that would never exist. Other more traditional companies like Xerox and Polaroid have also been caught doing the same sort book-cooking. If it had turned out that Microsoft was not engaging in such accounting tricks, Microsoft's board would clearly be in the small minority of the Fortune 500 in that regard.
The government, both under the Clinton and Bush administrations, did virtually nothing to reform regulations that were being exploited legally but unethically by corporations around the U.S. and also virtually nothing to punish those executives engaging in insider trading and other practices that have been illegal for decades. Had the government stepped in and set some reasonable rules, the boom of the late 90's would have been much more reasonable in scope (Dow 11K and Nasdaq 5K would never have happened, but the gains in stock prices would have still been substantial and, most importantly, justified) and we'd still be in very good economic situation now. Unfortunately, the watchdogs were either sleeping or put to bed (by some well-placed "bones" if you get my drift), and did not attack the biggest ripoffs since the late 1920's that the U.S. stock market has seen.
And the media and the analysts glorified everything that was going on. Back in 1998 and 1999, I was shocked at how many companies' stocks had been given "strong buy" upgrades AFTER A RISE of 20, 30, even 50 percent in the previous month or two. WTF? Any person with a modicum of experience in the market would take such a dramatic increase as an opportunity to cash in a portion of his/her holding in that stock for short-term gain or to stand pat if the holding was for a long term investment. To do as these analysts were suggesting would be essentially refusing to pay $10 for something because it's overpriced, but to buy two of that thing when its manufacture raises the prices to $20. In fact, it has been alleged that some analysts were in fact trading against their recommendations, upgrading stocks that they wanted to take profits on and downgrading stocks that they themselves had wished to accumulate.
As the saying goes, "you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time." The "some" time in the first part of that statement began to end in the spring of 2000, and many more woke up following the Enron debacle. Only now are we beginning to understand how broken the regulatory structure necessary for a successful, mostly capitalist (but obviously not pure capitalism) was in the U.S. in the 1990's. Just like it wasn't until after 1900 Americans didn't understand why having an economy dominated by a few "Robber Barons" was bad, or not until the 1930's was it known why having a market based on uninsured banks and buying stocks on margin was bad. Many of the flaws in the U.S. financial system WILL be fixed. At some point, the American people will not accept anything but a good-faith effort to correct these problems. At first, the existing government will be given a year or two to make the required changes. After that, people will begin to demand a "New Deal" and clean house on Capitol Hill. If things don't change significantly by early 2004, the voters will bust out the brooms in November of that year.
However, it is likely that we will endure another period of economic ugliness like we did in the 70s before things brighten signficantly. It took nine years (1973-82) for the U.S. to determine a successful course of action after the end of the Vietnam War required the nation to turn away from a largely military-industrial economy to one better suited for a peacetime environment. My guess is that it will take until at least 2006 or 2007 for the U.S. economy to rationally handle the changes effected by the so-called Information Revolution and prosper again. Things won't be horrible between now and then (barring any further Sept. 11-scale or greater terrorist attacks), but they probably won't be peachy either.
People have rightly questioned the integrity of the entire financial system and are waiting for things to improve before increasing their commitments to it. As a matter of fact, the U.S. is the last major market in the world that has been challenged by investors: while Japan, Europe, and later Latin American and southeast Asia floundered, people flocked to the U.S. believing that our system was infallible. It was not, and never will be infallible, though it has been and will become much more sound than it is today. As the next couple of years unfold, people will gradually learn what the biggest reasons for the unsustainable bubble and subsequent bust were and proceed to try to correct them. After that, people will begin to regain faith in the market, they will begin to realize that current valuations of stocks are by-and-large reasonable again, and the U.S. economy will begin to poke its head out of the clouds.
The stench of corruption right now is everywhere. We're just going to have to give ourselves a while for it to subside.
Here's something really scary that I found in Senator Kerry's (from Mass.) reply to a letter I sent him shortly after the CBDTPA reared its ugly head:
"I believe that particular attention must be given to the writers, artists, and other creators of copyrighted material whose works are entitled to protection from piracy in the digital age."
My response to this: these parties already have this protection, and have had it much longer than four years (when the DMCA was enacted). It's called (oh, the irony!) "Copyright Law." It's already ILLEGAL to take that xxAA-produced "artistic work" and offer it up for public distribution on a P2P network, a Web site, a rare record shop, or a street corner.
The point behind the DMCA, CBDTPA, and other legislation down the pipeline is not to protect "Attack of the Clones" or "Oops! I Did It Again" from "piracy"; the five year jail sentence and $250,000 fine that pre-1998 copyright law provided for this action already is ample punishment for this regard. These laws rather instead attempt to limit the range of works that can be "pirated" (i.e. distributed) to only those with licenses to the "copy protection" technologies. Yes, the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA are trying desperately to prevent the "piracy" (i.e. appearance) of Linux, garage band MP3's, and independent films on the Internet. They don't give a flying fsck whether someone can see Spiderman over a low-quality connection, install Office XP gratis or download recycled Top 40 hits on the Internet; if they really cared about this, thousands of Napster users and Web hosts would have already been convicted of felony charges and be serving the hefty penalties mentioned above.
Until we can convince people that this battle is not really over licensing the use of content as opposed to licensing to create it, we have no hope of winning the battle to keep laws like the DMCA and CBDTPA out of the U.S. code.
Unfortunately, Senator Kerry's response to me indicates not only don't they accept our arguments, they appear to not want to hear them. I haven't even heard back from Sen. Kennedy regarding this letter. In November, I will be voting for the first time and making sure that I select anyone else but Kerry's spot for the Mass. Senate seat. Unfortunately, it will be four years before I get a chance to do the same thing to Kennedy.
One more thing regarding Constitutional Amendments mentioned in the parent post: the one you're looking for is not one regarding fair use rights; it's one where corporations have their right to "contribute to campaigns" legislators removed. All donations must be limited to a set dollar amount and come from an individual's finances. Period. Corruption in government created by campaign contributions has created more substantial problems than the inability (legally) to view DVD's on a Linux box. By far the biggest of these is the lack of integrity in the finance industry. What would be your bigger gripe: being legally harrassed for distributing DeCSS code; or having your entire life savings wiped out by your employer's corrupt management with no recourse or defense against their actions (i.e. Enron), not being given a fair chance to make some of it back (by the less-than-enthusiastic enforcement of anti-discrimination laws including those regarding age discrimination), and knowing (albeit after-the-fact) that the management will be walking away scot-free as a result of the favorable legislation and enforcement policies they (along with bigshots at other Fortune 500 companies) bought in the past 10 years. I certainly think the latter is a bigger injustice, and it's that along with other injustices Mainstream America can deal with that are going to give us a much better chance at getting part of this country back than any cry of "Free Dimitri!"
When you make a budget, always include a bogus item (example:.5 million paperclips) for the bean-counters to eliminate. Otherwise, they will cut something real. The beanie boys have to justify their existence by quantifying how much money they saved the company through budget analysis and streamlining.
The FBI and CIA will never let you cut paperclips from the budget. How else are these agencies going to get funding for Carnivore and covert intelligence ops? Congress has already found out about the $600 toilet seats, so now they're forced to use the $1.5 billion budget item for "1 trillion paper clips" for these expenses. If these guys are only allowed to buy 200 billion paper clips as a result of the bean counters' cuts, there would be no way the U.S. will have enough resource to fight The War Against Terrorism(tm).
While there was a little bit of mention about it prior to it being passed into law, the DMCA was passed very quickly and very quietly. There are enough people pissed off about that to disallow that tactic from being used again for a while. We should be fighting against that tactic but you have to get legislators prepared to fight that for you... there is no other way.
Ahem...ever heard of something called the "Patriot Act"? Its time of passage (late September 2001) was as dubious as any law enacted by the U.S. in at least 50 years and has the potential to erode Americans' rights at a rate the DMCA could not in the latter law's wildest dreams.
Right now there are a lot of people urging their legislators to fight against this crap, but most in Congress, especially the more junior members, are scared shitless to break from their party line. Why? Because if they do, they'll be embarassed (if anyone spoke out against a bill called the "Patriot Act", he or she would at best become a laughing stock; at worst be branded as a terrorist) and possibly have their political balls chopped off. Right now, the power in Congress is concentrated into the hands of a very small group of senior members. This power imbalance is especially evident in the Senate, where unless 60 colleagues can stop him or her, a determined Senator can block any bill from being acted upon by means of filibuster. Piss off one of these elite members, and forget about ever getting your pet legislation up for a vote.
In the mid 1990's, Mass. Governor Weld was nominated by President Clinton for the Mexican ambassadorship. Weld and Clinton both knew that getting Weld confirmed would be a tough battle with the Senate; Weld in fact resigned as governor to pursue this federal position. Little did they know that the Senate would never get the chance to confirm or reject him. Jesse Helms, the chair of the Foreign Affairs committee in the Senate, prevented the nomination from ever getting to a vote because of a personal problem he had with Weld. Apparently, he pulled a parliamentary maneuver that could not be overruled by the rest of the Sentate, unlike a filibuster. WTF? I thought the Constitution allowed the President to appoint people to executive branch positions with the "advice and consent of the Senate", not with the "advice and consent of the Senate, provided that no prominent members of the Senate object to giving to or witholding from the President said consent." I'm sorry, I think that in all such situtations, the President is entitled to a "Yes" or "No" response from the whole Senate. Period. A "we're not allowed to decide because Daddy Helms won't let us" response should be unconstitutional.
I gave this nomination example since I'm more familiar with it than most other failed legislative exploits (it was a big story in the Boston media at the time), but I know it happens all the time with Congress members' legislation too. I understand that there are only a finite number of bills that can be considered during a two-year term and that of this number, some of them absolutely must be debated (e.g. the budget), but the way the Speaker of the House, the Senate President, and select heads of committees in each house have control over the legislature's agenda more closely resembles a dictatorship than a democracy. I wonder how many times a rookie Senator from a small state has successfully managed to keep a pork bill sponsored by Senator Hollings, Hatch, Helms, or Kennedy off the agenda in recent years? Not many. There always seems to be enough time to debate and vote on those bills for some reason. But then time mysteriously expires when Sen. Rookie introduces his bill...
Right now, members outside of the elite will get run out of office before they can substantially affect the way things are done in Congress. Unfortunately I don't see a way this will change any time soon. Changing the way Congress works would require the work of 300 to 400 members; that is a substantial majority of each house. Considering that this majority will in all likelihood consist of a relatively equal mix of Republicans and Democrats (and possibly a few of other or no party affiliation), there will be a multitude of reforms proposed and debated. Unfortunately, this divided group will end up implmenting very few if any of these reforms, thus allowing the elite members to retain their stranglehold over the legislature's agenda.
Also, the belief that every voter has the power to change this is oversimplified at best.
Over 98% of the U.S. population will have absolutely no say over whether Senator Hollings will get re-elected in South Carolina. 99 percent will not get to voice their opinion of Orin Hatch the next time his term comes up. Considering at most a few dozen lawmakers are in this elite group that sets each term's legislative agenda, I would venture to guess that over 90% of eligible voters will have no direct say over whether the present state of affairs changes on Capitol Hill.
The best most Americans can do is vote for outsiders (i.e. against the incumbents) and hope that a critical mass of fresh blood can get together and begin to buck the oligarchy's hold over the U.S. This will take either a miracle or at least several decades to pull off.
Until then, I really don't see how the special interests (including the media) are going to stop having an inordinate amount of influence over U.S. policy. Changing this situation is something that's going to require at least a nationwide (some international pressure may even be necessary) grassroots effort. In other words, try as we might, don't expect any meaningful results for many years from your campaigns. Hell, it took 90 years and half a million wartime casualties to ostensibly eliminate slavery from this country. Many would argue that de facto slavery continued in the U.S. for nearly a century after the Civil War. If that kind of effort is required to defeat an blatant injustice like slavery, it's going to require a lot more than a "FP? I love CowboyNeal" post on Slashdot to eliminate the threats created by the likes of the DMCA and CBPTDA. I think these laws will be overturned or at least their effects will be mitigated eventually. However, "eventually" is a very open-ended term.
Also, it's in Pittsburgh.. ya know, Da 'Burgh. Stillers!
Does (American) football count as an engineering discipline? It's certainly measurable, and as a Patriots fan, I'm sure hoping it's repeatable come Opening Sunday.:) As least I know after the AFC Champsionship game why yinz call them "Terrible Towels": you wave them when the home team is playing terribly.
Here are a few quotes from the article for those who haven't read it.
"Sponsors said the bill would establish basic privacy protections for consumers while minimizing the impact on business."
OK, this seems reasonable at face value. Now let's see what protections consumers will in fact get from this bill.
More than a year in the making, the privacy bill unveiled in the House differs from a competing bill making its way through the Senate that would require businesses to get consumers' explicit permission before sharing sensitive information such as income level, religious affiliation or political interests.
Not that I think the Senate bill goes quite far enough for my liking, this opt-out policy essentially states that businesses will be free to do whatever they please with my information, especially if it turns out that businesses can reset their customers' privacy preferences (cough...Yahoo...cough) at any time. So I think the word negligible best describes our privacy rights under this bill.
Let's assume that this bill does give us Americans a few crumbs of privacy. Here's what will happen to businesses that violate these rights:
Consumers would have no right to sue if their privacy was violated. Enforcement would be left in the hands of the Federal Trade Commission, which usually does not impose fines on a first offense.
Companies submitting to a self-regulatory privacy regime such as TRUSTe or BBBonline would enjoy protection from FTC actions.
We all know how valiantly TRUSTe fights for consumers' privacy rights and how fiercely they punish businesses that violate their privacy policies, right. Give me an effing break! Not only do we end up with very few privacy protections, but the maximum punishment for violating the few rights (at least the first time around) that we have is a rebuke from a government bureau or an industry organization? Sounds like a great bill to me.
It seems like the Senate bill is going to be the best case scenario for privacy advocates in this country, and the more likely scenario is a compromise between the House bill and Senate bill. In other words, we Americans will be lucky if the few basic protections we have regarding the privacy of bank and medical records we have still exist when the President signs whatever comes out from Congress. If only there was a "Control-Alt-Delete" option on ballots that indicated a desire for all 535 members of Congress and the President to be removed at the same time instead of having a voice over at most 4 of these officials' futures...
One last thought: if this bill were to pass, maybe we could boomerang it back onto Big Business. The Supreme Court has decided that corporations are people, right? Corporations purchase services from people (e.g. developing software, fixing cars, making purchasing decisions), and often give those employees access to proprietary data in the process. Could the courts conclude that businesses have no right to privacy as well, claiming that the employees can reset the company's "privacy policy" (NDA) at any time, like businesses do to customers? Then, maybe, just maybe, things might not be so bad after all...
Slashdot Mirror
In terms of shock to the national psyche, the parallel between Challenger and 9/11 is legitimate. However, the parallels end there.
The Challenger was a one-shot tragedy, and most importantly it was an accident. 9/11 was not a tragedy, it was an atrocity. It was an act of war by a movement that has made subsequent attacks against civilians in the U.K. and Indonesia since then and has expressed a desire to hit the U.S. again when the opportunity presents itself.
It's quite possible that the same cultural mistakes of corner-cutting and underfunding led to the Columbia disaster 17 years after Challenger. Heaven forbid that we fall into the same complacency with national security that we were in five years ago in the U.S. If al Qaeda has its druthers, after the next terrorist attack here, we'll be saying "Well ONLY 3,000 people died on 9/11..."
For various reasons, it's virtually impossible to live on $10/hr. in the U.S., at least in most urban areas. So it's unlikely that ANYONE in the U.S., native-born or immigrant, will be willing to work in a skilled labor (IT, plumber, auto mechanic, etc.) for that type of wage. In much of the world, one can have a better standard of living (satisfactory housing, nutritious food, decent health care, etc.) making $10/hr. than an American would making $20/hr. at home. Thus, it's not unreasonable in a truly capitalistic global economy to assume that labor will move to other parts of the world where opportunities are better.
However, there's one major flaw to that assumption. As an American, would I allowed to TRY to find work in India, China, or other countries with lower pay scales? In most cases, the answer would be absolutely not. Therefore, the game's not fair! Why shouldn't the competition for jobs paying a certain wage in a certain location be open to EVERYONE in the world? Companies shouldn't be allowed to move overseas unless potential employees are allowed to move there as well. If a company has a right to move my job to India, then I damn well better have the right to move to India to try to win my job back if I'm willing to work for that wage!
Until that's the case, then we're not really talking about a capitalistic economy. We're dealing more with a plutocracy that calls itself capitalists.
Quoting from the parent:
I knew VHS was going the way of the doodoo as soon as DVDs started hitting the shelves.
I've heard of the dodo going extinct, but there's more doodoo being produced than ever. I'll have to rebalance my stock portfolio when No. 2 ceases to be a primary means of waste elimination in humans. Of course, at least in the good ol' U.S.A., we're more likely to reduce our feces production to 1990 levels than we're likely to achieve the goal of the Kyoto greenhouse gas treaty...
Osama is powerless to transform the United States into a totalitarian regime. GW Bush is well on his way.
I think this "Anybody But Bush" (ABB) nonsense is getting old. My personal belief is that if either Al Gore or John Kerry were in office either (a) the U.S. would have effectively appeased OBL either to prevent something like the destruction of the WTC or in response to such an event or (b) such a President would have allowed himself to be browbeaten into taking the same, if not worse, "liberty-stealing" actions as some Slashdotters love to accuse Bush 43 of partaking in. Yeah, he's not perfect, but at least he's got the balls to back up some of his policies with action. IMO, if he really were a totalitarian, it would have been much simpler for him to support a handpicked tyrant to replace Mr. Hussein in Iraq than to go through the complicated process of setting up three elections in a year and try to corrupt either the electoral process or the results of that process.
I get the impression, perhaps accurately or perhaps not, that writers of posts like this think that the current president is Pure Evil and that if he were deposed and just about anyone else of the 100 million+ eligible Americans for this office replaced him, all our liberties would be protected and all will be right with the world. Unfortunately, Bush had over 400 supporters in Congress to help get the PATRIOT passed, including all but two Senators. This means that many Congressmen from both sides of the aisle were perfectly willing to let this "totalitarian" state come to be.
Fortunately, this law was crafted with sunset provisions that allow us to revisit the debate on civil liberties. This time around, some Senators on both parties feared the balance struck four years ago was tilted too far towards the government and away from the people, and have to this point stalled a renewal of this bill. IMO, Mr. Bush's seemingly unconditional insistence on this law's renewal is misguided, and unless he gives some compelling reason why these powers need to be extended for several more years, the PATRIOT act should be allowed to expire.
It's not clear to what extent the Bush administration eavesdropped on Americans' communications without warrants to do so, ostensibly to monitor or prevent terrorist activity. At this early stage, I'm not willing to belive any particular report about this. However, the fact that we're even aware about these activities through the media and Mr. Bush has acknowledged at least some of these activities publicly shows that we still live in the freest nation in the world. We have court systems in which those who feel they have been wronged can sue the Justice Department or other government agencies, where courts will decide whether the government behaved in accordance with the Constitution and laws consistent with this document, or the government overstepped its boundaries. And, if those in Congress decide Bush has gone too far, they have the legal means to overthrow him: impeachment. It worked 30 years ago when it became clear that Nixon had broken the law (there, the mere threat of impeachment was sufficient). And there's no reason that I can see right now why it wouldn't work now.
I personally think that in the past four years, the U.S. has done a pretty good job balancing liberty and security, and that we have the tools in place to improve this balance. From what I've read about the 1940's, we've done a much better job now than we did during World War II, where one's Asian descent was often enough to be put into an interment camp. I belive that the idea that we're inevitably headed to a totaltiarian state is a load of bunk.
It's your right to say whatever you want about our president. I think it does a disservice to everyone, though, to just hurl invective against any particular politician without coming up with an alternative solution.
I wouldn't want anyone insisting i was at fault because someone cut in front of me quickly and immediately slam on thier brakes.
In Massachusetts, this already happens. I was involved in a situtation where a 17 year old girl in a Volvo cut about 10 feet behind me and 10 feet ahead of a Saab on a busy 4-lane road. Unfortunately, at the time, I was slowing down since someone in the left lane was waiting to make a turn. So, immediately after I reach the end line of cars and stop, the Volvo driver realizes she's about to hit the back of my car, slams on her brakes, and skids stops about 2 feet behind my car. The Saab driver wasn't able to react to the Volvo driver's panic stop, so the Saab rear-ended the Volvo, and pushed the Volvo into the back of my car.
If I were to be the judge, I'd assign most of the blame to the Volvo driver for the accident, since by her maneuver, she rendered the Saab driver unable to respond to a panic stop. However, in Massachusetts, the rule is you hit an uncited driver's car from behind, you're by definition at fault. Since there was only hearsay evidence from me and the Saab driver regarding the Volvo driver's aggressive actions, the responding police officer couldn't give the Volvo driver a citation.
So, in addition to taking about $5,000 damage (which would result in four insurance points) to his car, he was given four points for causing the accident and two more points for a following-too-close citation, even though he had pretty much no say in how far he was behind the Volvo. If he had any other moving violations in the past year or received a new one in the following year, he would have gotten hit with a license suspension (I believe it's 6 months, but don't quote me on that). A typical cost for the 10 points in Massacusetts would be a $1200/year surcharge on the guy's insurance.
Long story made short: arbitrary rules in the insurance industry already can screw driver's big time. If there were some data regarding the last 15 seconds of each of our actions before the accident, perhaps more of the blame would have rightfully pushed onto the Volvo driver.
Of course, the other side of the black boxes is the privacy issue. I think there need to be very strong measures in place before these boxes become mandatory: restricting the maximum length of data recording time to something like 1 hour to prevent police from accumulating a long history of one's driving, no mandatory or encouraged (i.e. by providing insurance "discounts" or in practice a lack of additional charges) recording of location information, no mandatory or encouraged broadcasting of recorded information to authorities, making a vehicle's involvement in a collision with another vehicle or person a necessary condition for access to the black box, etc. But I think that with the proper safeguards in place, black boxes in cars can end up doing more good than harm.
The really depressing thing is that, even though I can see the system is broken, I really have no idea what to do about it. The system needs to be reformed, but I'm not entierly sure where to start.
How about a new law or constitutional provision guaranteeing those named as defendants in civil lawsuits to competent, court-appointed attorneys if the defendant cannot afford to pay for legal counsel? In criminal cases, the right to legal counsel regardless of ability to pay for it has been established by the Miranda vs. Arizona case (it's one of the so called Miranda rights: "You have the right to remain silent...")
Granted, it won't be a perfect fix, but I think it would be a start. Court-appointed attorneys usually aren't the most skilled in the nation, but they would certainly be competent enough to defend an individual against a ridiculous lawsuit based primarily on the premise of getting the defendant to agree to a certain course of action because he/she doesn't have the money for lawyers to fight back.
Why shouldn't the same standards regarding due process of law that are used in criminal matters be used in civil matters as well? The consequences of one losing a $250,000 lawsuit (currently allowable under copyright law) can be as least as harmful to one's lifestyle as getting sent to jail for a couple of years for a drug offense. People should have the same basic right to protection from B.S. lawsuits as they do from B.S. criminal convictions.
seen that the rest of Europe (and indeed US) drives on the left?
:)
I understand your point you were trying to make, but I think you wanted to reverse left and right in your argument. That is, in the UK and many Commonwealth countries, they drive on the left, and in North America and continental Europe driving is done on the right.
As far as I know, the only place in the U.S. where driving on the left is common is Boston and its immediate bordering cities and suburbs. In fact most traffic conventions are ignored or perverted in this area: for instance, red lights in addition to green lights are interpreted to mean "proceed at your current speed through the interesection" while yellow lights mean "please place your accelerator pedal on the floor as you go through this intersection." And everyone except for the police officers around here seems to read speed limits as meters/sec. values instead of MPH or km/h values.
I don't see how this follows. With the notable exception of Microsoft, most technology firms have come out publicly AGAINST laws attacking users' rights like S. 2048.
Granted, these objections are generally based on pragmatic concerns (e.g. Why should Sun be forced to spend more money on its product line to include DRM, especially if it's solely for the protection of Hollywood?) instead of ideological ones. But the maxim "an enemy of my enemy is a friend" applies here.
Existing laws like the DMCA restrict entry into markets such as DVD players. The licensing fees for technologies like CSS increase the price of making products. Most often, the manufacturers don't have enough pricing power to get away with passing the entire increased cost to customers, so these companies' profit margins are squeezed.
Meanwhile, the importance of the media has not diminished in the past several years, since politicians continue to rely on the media to get or keep themselves in office. If, as you claim, the technology industry's political weight has diminished as a result of the dot-com bust, then that would mean that the media and related industries (movies, music, etc.) will have an even greater influence relative to the tech industry than the media enjoyed a few years ago.
Given the public positions of those like Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti, if these people now have a greater influence over the U.S. Congress than they've previously had, then it looks like we're heading in the direction of progressively more Draconian laws against "piracy," i.e. one's right to use a device he or she purchased in any way said person sees fit.
I wonder how the petroleum industry or the NRA feels about these issues. If the technology industry isn't going to matter as much as it formerly did in speaking a voice (accidentally)consistent with most Slashdotters' opinions, I think we're going to need a replacement ally as powerful as Big Oil to fight the attack on users' rights mounted by the "content industry." And it looks like we need one ASAP.
"Yeah, well don't be so sure. Others have tried and failed... The entire population, in fact."
Sam Jackson's a little bit off. The NJ/NY Port Authority makes tons of money off those desperate to leave New Jersey. I really hope Rhode Island and New Hampshire don't decide to follow suit and proceed to gangbang Massholes like me who will be fleeing Big Dig-related taxes in a few years.
This is why the free market always fixes problems-- it took care of Enron, Global Crossing and Tyco rather fast, and exerted its maximum penalty- death, on the companies.
While congress is a bunch of jack asses that do more harm than good and never get anything done that actually helps people.
What about the "penalities" on those who caused those companies to die? Right now, I don't see anyone in immediate jeopardy of a long sentence in a "pound-me-in-the-ass" prison. Just a few token arrests of higher-ups. The "free market" requires some level of government regulation to insure that buyers of goods can be confident that they will receive what the seller has advertised. If the government doesn't do its best to keep fraud out of the marketplace, then the market itself will fall apart. This disillusion is part of the reason behind this most recent stock market crash, as well as others in the past.
Companies who, in an effort to keep their stock price high, fraudulently report profits as they're burning cash like crazy deserve to die. CEOs and others who develop and execute schemes to defraud shareholders to receive pay in excess of what they would have received if they were telling the truth need to be punished severely. I believe the government needs to do all three of the following things to such crooks: (1) seize all assets from those involved in the fraud and from those, including family members, involved in covering up the fraud (like the ImClone guy who couldn't sell his own stock, so he asked his daughter to sell hers), (2) send them to prison for many years (if those involved knew that they were likely to destroy the company beforehand, then they deserve a life sentence), and (3) after the long sentence prevent them from ever working again in any capacity at a publicly traded company.
People are really underestimating the damage that the managements of Enron and Tyco, among others, has done to the United States. It's probably going to take the country the better part of a decade to recover from this decline. And if history is any guide, the ones that inflicted the damage are going to get off lightly. A year in prison, a $1 million fine, and a promise not to do it again would be my over/under line on punishments on those like Ken Lay's. And after the ordeal, he'll still have most of his 9-figure fortune that he obtained largely through fraud.
If I go into a bank, hold it up, and walk out with $100K, I would be looking at a 10+ -year sentence, and no one would be dramatically hurt, either physically or financially. A couple of people who attempted to defraud Michael Jordan out of a few hundred grand are facing up to 25 years in jail for an action that would have not ruined the superstar's livelihood, let alone that of thousands. In neither case would the perpetrators expect to keep their illegally-obtained goodies.
If this type of fraud or extortion is grounds for a sentence of 10 years or more, then why isn't executive fraud held to the same standards when formulating a punishment. The MAXIMUM sentence in the new law passed by Congress for executive fraud is 10 years. Those at companies who have already collapsed will be subject to a maximum sentence of FIVE YEARS, because the actions in question took place before the enactment of the new law. And as far as a I know, there's no requirement that the sentencing judge of a guilty party include forfeiture of assets in the sentence. Does anyone else see something unjust in this picture?
Whether the U.S. government is overstepping its bounds and stomping all over its citizens rights is a debate for another thread. But I do believe that the government has been derelict in one of its few duties in a "free market" economy: keeping people honest. Would you really want to take part in a completely unregulated market? Ironically, the only such markets that I know to exist have been those that are outlawed by governments, such as the market for cocaine and heroin in the U.S. In markets such as these, fraud and violence is just as likely to gain someone additional market share as a supplier who produces a superior product. Would you call such a market truly free?
Nice to hear of your success in life. I think the statement you make about having "so much debt and so few assets" is outright insulting.
Sure, there are some college students I know who do stupid things like using credit cards for "emergencies" including a week long Spring Break orgy in Dayton Beach. However, there are also quite a few people I know who did nothing wrong except for taking a chance, working their asses off to get a good degree while taking on a big chunk of debt, and rolling snakeyes as they graduated into an unwelcoming job market.
What were an 18-year-old's options circa 1998? Go without a degree, and wind up at a McDonald's level or low-end blue collar job? Nothing morally wrong with that. However, those jobs, even in the best-paying regions of the country, usually pay no more than $10/hr, with few or no fringe benefits like a health plan. This will probably allow a frugal person to make an acceptable living for him/herself, but forget about raising a family with two jobs of this nature. And as far as the future goes, people who are in these sorts of jobs tend to be compensated at about the same level related to minimum wage (e.g. a position that paid $6/hr. in the 1980's when minimum wage was $3.35 would probably pay no more than $9/hr. today). And we know how the minimum wage has always kept pace with inflation, especially since the 1970's. Right.
How about joining the armed forces? A noble proposition, but with two significant drawbacks: low pay (especially for enlisted personnel) making it difficult to make a decent living for oneself off-base, and more importantly, having to deal with the fear that you'll be among the first called to put your ass on the line to defend American Freedom(tm). I know a couple of people who have more balls than I'll ever have that enlisted in the past year. I pray for their safety and success.
The only other major alternative was to get a degree of some sort, which is a necessary condition for most jobs paying a decent or better amount. Degrees aren't cheap, and if one's parents aren't able or willing to pony up some of the money required, there's going to be a hell of a burden on the student, either in hours worked during school or in debt serviced afterward. Even at a state school, you're talking $5K a year easily unless you happen to qualify for special scholarships. I don't know many people in high school (outside of a couple of drug dealer types) who could accumulate more than a few grand from their teen jobs, leaving one with a nasty choice: take a full-time job during school to pay your expenses and risk not having enough time and energy to complete your degree, or focusing on studies and accumulating a five-figure debt.
I chose the latter route, and am dealing with a $600 payment on my loan. At this rate, I'll be done in about 6 years. If I lose my job and have to take a significant pay cut, I'm toast. Most of my college classmates are in a similar situation. If I make it through the next 6 years with my job, I'm basically in the clear either living a pretty damn good lifestyle or saving a lot of money (in reality, it will probably be somewhere in the middle). If I don't make it, then I'm basically fucked for life. I took a gamble based upon the premise that if I worked hard that, I COULD make myself a good living. In the Boomer generation, the "could" in that last sentence was pretty much a "would". That's the major difference between the 1950's and today. Working one's ass off 40 years ago would give one close to a 100% chance of "living the good life." Today for most people in or recently out of college, that probability can only be raised to maybe 75% or 80%.
I get tired of when people say "well, I did XYZ and live in the lap of luxury." I don't know about your particular situation, but more often than not in my previous experience, these sorts of people essentially fell into money rather than spending a entire career earning it through continuous hard work wise investment decisions. So get the hell of your high horse when criticizing those whose luck turned out differently. If for some reason the Silicon Valley real estate market tanks for reasons outside your control and you become upside down on your house, wouldn't you be offended if someone labeled you "irresponsible"?
Isn't this sort of combined monopoly what the Sherman Antitrust Act is supposed to prevent? You have an organization made up of not one but five major players (and a boatload of minor players) joining forces to act as a monopoly. If that's not a cartel, then I don't know what would qualify as one. Sure, the FTC has accused the RIAA of price-fixing schemes and has managed to get Hilary's boys to agree to some token settlements, but that has little changed the economic arena for either the consumers (CD prices have yet to fall as a result of competition amongst labels) or the signed artists.
I know Microsoft hasn't been a Boy Scout in its business dealings and probably needs to be smacked around for its arrangments it makes with OEM's to help support their monopoly position. But IMHO, the RIAA is in even bigger violation of antitrust laws. I think it's high time for the DOJ to dismantle the RIAA and make all labels, majors and indies alike, to compete in the marketplace. Then, you'll see some labels raise their market share as a result of signing superior talent, superior marketing of said talent, and selling their music as at a fair price. And you'll see others fall by the wayside. The ones that fail will not fail as a result of "piracy," but instead as a result of not running their business as well as their competitors.
Even a monopoly can't charge arbitrarily high prices without driving customers away. Only in the IP industry can one claim that all declines in sales are the result of "piracy." In the IP industry, the music and movie industries are the ones beating the piracy drum the loudest. Is deciding that I won't buy the newest Nelly CD because its price is $18 "piracy"? Or how about the fact I've slowed my CD-buying to a trickle because the music that's coming out of this cartel almost never coincides with my music preferences? Is that piracy? What about the fact that I find other things more worthwhile for my entertainment budget than buying CD's? Is spending my money (which the RIAA practically claims is their entitlement from God) on a museum admission, an evening of blackjack at the casino down the road, or seeing (gasp!) a live band piracy?
It's a shame we don't have term limits on members of the U.S. Congress in this nation. We have Congressmen that have been in office 30 or 40 years, and a few even longer than that. And we expect those people, who probably lost touch with the music industry in the early part of the vinyl LP era, to make lasting policy decisions that will affect not only the music industry but the entire "intellectual property" industry as a whole? I just hope that the damage that the DMCA and future legislation that this underinformed Congress passes at the request of the RIAA's (and its allies') lobbyists reveals itself slowly enough that the next generation of legislators who grew up in the "Information Age" can take steps to stop and eventually reverse it.
In most cases, the cable internet situation is in fact a monopoly. If Cox, RoadRunner, AT&T, et. al. actually went head-to-head in THE SAME MARKETS, then you'd have oligopoly. Unfortunately, most municipalities have one cable franchise with a long-term license. Here in Mass., it doesn't really matter whether Cox offers cable modem service for $30/month in Georgia (I know, probably not true, just a hypothetical situation); Cox isn't an option here. If you want cable modem service, it's either AT&T for nearly $50/month or "Hit the road, Jack." A situation where one must spend several thousand dollars to move to a town with a different cable company is not my idea of competition at work.
In terms of broadband access as a whole, many places are lucky to have a duopoly (cable plus a single DSL provider). Slightly better, but still not enough competition for my blood: when one raises prices, the other is just as likely as not to sacrifice an increased market share and choose a higher price and profit margin.
Granted, there might be places where there really is an oligopoly at work, but my belief is that those places are the lucky, small minority. Now, if you had no choice (i.e. like auto insurance in most states, doing without was not an option) but to buy cable modem service from your city's franchisee, then I suppose one could say that cities with a less expensive cable company were competing on the cost of living there. I really hope the U.S. doesn't reach that point of corporate domination, however...
It is this confusion that justifies the President's right (not necessarily the Joint Chief of Staff's right, though presidents have often accepted their advice) to order limited military action against specific threats without the approval of Congress. When Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon abused their right to perform "limited" military actions in the ridiculously long Vietnam conflict, Congress passed a law exerting its power of the purse over future military operations lasting six months or more. The President must now get Congress's approval before launching such substantial operations or else risk running out of money for his war machine. Former President Bush received permission from Congress for the Gulf War. While the resolution may not have contained the word "war" in it, Congress did everything except declar war on Iraq when it gave the commander-in-chief carte blanche in carrying out Persian Gulf area operations.
Personally, I believe that it is crucial to the seperation of powers to allow the president to have a substantial amount of leeway in controlling the military. If the president needed Congress's approval for everything regarding the armed forces, the president would become little more than a figurehead and the U.S. federal government would essentially be a parlimentary system. However, Congress's power over the federal budget does serve as a check against the president abusing his right to unilaterally order huge military operations that can end up costing the nation tremendously, both in dollars and in lives.
The last paragraph parent post makes what I interpret to be an indirect shot at the current president's economic policies. While this may or may not be the intent of the post, the mindset that I have mentioned is common enough in media reports and ordinary conversation that I feel the need to rant about how I believe President Bush is getting the shaft for a problem he is not primarily responsible for creating.
I can't stand how many people claim that the political blame behind the Enron, WorldCom, and other fradulent companies' downfalls is solely that of President George W. Bush. I find that charge to be along the lines of claiming that Bush's foreign policy failures were the chief reason for last September's terrorist attacks.
As with the terror attacks, there were many causes for the ongoing meltdown of the United States capital market. The factors leading to the sudden bankruptcies of these large companies existed long before the current president moved into the White House, and some existed even before his father lived there. Most important among the causes: the executives themselves that lied about the state of their companies. In at least the Adelphia and WorldCom scenarios, it is pretty clear that blatantly criminal acts took place: they falsely claimed profitability to obtained credit from banks that would not have loaned them money if the banks knew that these companies were in fact losing money hand over fist. These executives should be jailed for AT LEAST 10 years (if they knew that these acts were ruining the company for their own personal benefit, then I would like to see them jailed for life) in addition to making as complete a restitution as possible for bondholders and stockholders.
In addition, the incentives behind this lying about companies' financial statemets has been around since the 1980's, when the "Greed is Good" mantra began to sweep Wall Street. Both in the 1980's (until October 1987) and in the 1990's the booming stock market encouraged companies to do whatever was necessary to boost their stock price. Also, especially in the 90s, the ridiculous growth of executive pay, primarily in the form of stock and stock options, gave executives a personal incentive to boost their share prices as soon as possible. Boards of directors, who also largely paid themselves in stock, turned their backs on their obstensible duties to protect shareholders' long-term interests to bolster their own short-term interests.
There were many economists who railed against these conflicts of interest and urged the SEC and Congress to pass new regulations regarding the nature of executive pay and how publicly traded companies were to be governed. But, with the economy appearing to continue to grow robustly, the federal government saw no need to rock the boat. Hell, stock prices grew substantially for 16 of the 18 years between 1982 and 1999 (IIRC, 87 and 90 were the only two down years for the Dow Jones average in that time), so The Market couldn't be wrong, right?
Presidents Reagan and Clinton essentially got a free pass for the way they allegedly handled the economy. All they really did was continue the charade of passing off a modestly growing economy as a tremendously growing economy and let their successors worry about it when it comes to reconcile Wall Street's figures with Main Street's. In addition to coming in at the end of a business cycle, both Bushes suffered tremendous external shocks that hurt the U.S. economy: the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that caused oil prices to double plagued the first Bush's economy; the hijackings gave the current economy a significant body blow. Neither President can be accurately blamed for these problems.
Am I claiming that the current president or his father is infallible? Absolutely not. But using him as a scapegoat for problems that have infected the entire public and private sectors does a disservice to the president and leads to the political squabbling that will slow down the necessary reforms to the economy. The older Bush was in office for four years; Reagan and Clinton lived in the White House for eight years. GWB has barely been in office for 18 months. Which presidents do you think have had the biggest opportunity to influence economic policy since 1981? And another thing to keep in mind: before he can act, the president often needs the consent of another government body -- Congress.
Before pointing the finger at anyone or anything for a problem like today's business fiascos, one must realize that it's not that simple. If there were one cause, then it would have already been dealt with and confidence would already be on its way back into our stock markets. Our entire financial system needs to be tweaked; if one person or group ends up taking the blame for an entire economy's faults, it will end up being an injustice to everyone in the United States.
The USA focuses on freedom because it's how the government pushes its agenda on the masses. The USA, like every other nation, has never been a truly free country. Instead, the US picks an evil contrary to the government's desires and urges its citizens to attack it by saying that eliminating that evil will lead to a Free(tm)-er America.
In 1775, residents of the "13 colonies" began to take up arms against Great Britain. At the beginning of the war, the gripes against the British Crown were primarily commerical, such as being allowed to buy tea only from one Crown-backed company and having to pay what they felt were ridiculous taxes on this tea and many other goods traded throughout the colonies. In April 1775, things like freedom of speech weren't a very important issue; those in North America just wanted the Crown to get the fsck out of of affairs that were previously left to the colonies to deal with internally.
When it became clear that it would be useless to extract these commerce-based concessions from the Crown, by the middle of 1776, the colonists began to move towards secession from the British Empire. They knew that they would not be able to sucessfully fight the war by themselves, so they needed help somehow. They drafted the Declaration of Independence, which detailed a set of ideals that the newly created United States would aspire to. In addition to solidifying the patriots' side (many in the would-be U.S. were sympathetic to the Crown at the beginning of the war), they managed to gain support from British people and companies who felt that the Crown's hunger for power was once again out of control (Britain's "Glorious Revolution" against royal tyranny had taken place 90 years previously). Ultimately, these ideals, along with existing distate for Britain, encouraged France to enter the war on the side of the colonists. So, it can be argued that the Declaration of Independence was as pragmatic a device as it was idealistic.
Did the newly created United States become a free nation? Largely so, provided you were a wealthy white male. Women and the poor were judged to be unqualified to handle the responsibilities of democracy; and blacks, almost all of whom were slaves at that time, were judged to be so lowly ranked in the animal kingdom that in addition to not being worthy of participating in the "democratic" government, counted as only 3/5 of an oppressed white person in the decennial census.
Fast forward 75 years to the Civil War. This time around, even wealthy white males weren't spared the shaft of tyranny. You may recall that self-determination was one of the major rallying cries in the Revolutionary War. So South Carolina, along with about a dozen other states, determines that its time to secede from the Northern states, just as the United States seceded from Britain. Well, we all know about how the folks in Washington D.C. felt about that decision. Especially the Maryland legislature, who were ordered to be arrested by President Lincoln without being accused of a criminal act (blatantly violating the "habeus corpus" provision of the Constitution) before they could convene and vote to secede from the Union. That's Freedom(tm) at work.
Northern opposition to slavery was again a largely pragmatic belief; the climate of the northern states wasn't very conducive to the slave-intensive agriculture found in the South and the new industries in the North required educated labor that would not tolerate the idea that they would be bound to the whims of a single master for their entire lives. So, Northern factory owners were forced to give a few crumbs and a few liberties to their employees; these factory owners were upset that they could not keep 100% of their factories' profits as plantation owners did. So, they led the crusade to "free" the slaves on these plantations in order for Northern and Southern businesses to run in the same set of economic rules. As in the Revolutionary War, the peddling of these ideas was also important to ensuring a favorable external political situation. In the early part of the Civil War, Great Britain seriously considered coming to the aid of the Confederacy. But then, the U.S. government managed to convince London that this war was not about economics; it was about bringing Freedom to oppressed slaves on plantations. Britain stayed out, allowing the North to take two years to get its military together (the South had nearly won the war by 1863) and rout the Confederacy.
As you all know, the years since 1865 have also been a sham in terms of giving true freedom to Americans. I just wanted to point out that the United States has always, from the time of its founding, been hypocrital regarding freedom. The hypocrisy predates the Red Scare, McCarthyism, Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No!" campaign, and it certainly predates September 11, 2001.
Hopefully these examples illustrate the true meaning of the concept of Freedom(tm) and how it differs from true freedom.
Right. I'll go out on a long limb here and claim that the mi2g 'study' was financed by an unnamed corporate monopoly.
Why on earth would my electric company care whether I was running a Linux box or a Windows box? Unless someone manages to root a box and cut its power, they should be happy regardless of which OS I'm running. Of course, they have told me they'd rather have me hack my hair drier that draws 10 amps and use it as a file server; they claim one of those has never been OwN3d by a script kiddie before.
This age restriction, IMHO, is absolute bullshit. It's primarily price discrimination; younger people who tend to travel more often and/or have not purchased or leased a car yet tend to be the ones with the most interest in renting. They claim that the higher insurance costs related to renting to 18-to-24 year olds forces them to charge premium rates to these "underage" drivers.
I can understand that inexperienced drivers may cost more to insure, but at least in Massachusetts, you can qualify for the best available insurance rates after 6 licensed years without at-fault accidents and moving violations. Typically, drivers reach that point near age 23. So, it appears inexcusable for companies to charge a $20-$25 PER DAY on 23 and 24 year olds with a good driving record. Or instead of high insurance costs, the excuse is really the fact that auto rental is an oligopoly with not enough competition to drive "underage" surcharges down to levels more in line with any increased costs associated to renting to these people.
What's even more ridiculous is that many drivers' insurance policies already cover rental cars, which reduces the rental company's exposure to almost nothing in regards to the risk associated such a driver damaging or losing such a car. I think states should pass a law stating that age shall not be a factor in determining basic rental rates or policies; anyone of the age of majority shall be served at the same basic price. (This policy would not cover any negotiated discounts that rental companies enter into with good customers that cover employees of certain companies or the government).
Insurance should only be mandated with the rental if a potential renter cannot provide proof that he or she is covered by one's own auto insurance policy for liability and damage to the vehicle to be rented. If it turns out that providing insurance to renters for liability and collision coverage is more expensive for younger drivers, then it is reasonable to pass along this increased cost to the renter, as costs are now passed on to people with short or bad driving records on their own autos' policies.
I find it strange that U-Haul and Ryder will gladly rent one of their 13-ton trucks to anyone legally able to enter into a contract. They also provide liability insurance (most standard auto policies won't cover a vehicle bigger than 5 tons), at a rate at worst equal to auto companies' surcharges and more often at $10-15 a day. Yet, just about anyone in the auto rental industry will say "no" or ("yes, but it'll cost you $175 extra for your week's rental") to a 24-year-old with a personal insurance policy and a good driving record.
Well, there's oligopoly at work for you. And things won't change unless lots of people realize what's going on here, or the government make it clear to the companies themselves what's going on.
Microsoft will continue to find ways to gain more control of computers, and eventually will try to directly attack other operating systems and make them illegal.
You're wrong on the "eventually" part. This campaign against other operating systems, as well as other technologies that threaten MS's dominance. What do you think the SSSCA/CBDTPA/S. 2048 bill is all about? Why do you think that Intel, IBM, and just about every other major tech company is screaming that they're scared shitless about this bill? Right now, Microsoft is going for checkmate in the technology game and this bill is their first move in their campaign. Should Microsoft even partially succeed in this campaign to bring every other tech company to its knees and force them to pay tribute (both financially and in policy matters) to Redmond, Microsoft will become the most powerful modern corporation in history.
Although this legislation has the proverbial snowball's chance of passing this time around, I feel that its main provisions will be enacted by the end of the decade unless Congress and Microsoft both get bludgeoned severely. These provisions may get enacted in a piecemeal fashion, but the two factors that will cause S. 2048 to become law are (a) Microsoft's huge war chest from which it can make "campaign contributions" and (b) Congress's tendancy to accept these "contributions" in exchange for favorable legislation for the contributor. The most obnoxious part of this legislation is the fact that it requires all hardware made in or imported to the United States to implement one DRM scheme dictated either by industry consensus or by the Commerce Department in 12 to 18 months if the industry can't reach a consensus. In addition, antitrust concerns will not be applicable to the process of reaching this DRM standard.
Here's the killer for all the other players in the tech industry: Microsoft holds most of the important patents for implementing DRM in software as well as major portions of implementing it in hardware. Unless another company's DRM research pans out no later than a year after this provision were to become law, there would be no alternative to whatever scheme Microsoft comes out with. Then, the Commerce Department would then impose the Microsoft standard on the nation's technology industry, extending Microsoft's grasp from the PC world to a significant portion of the U.S. GNP. Sun and IBM would be at the mercy of Microsoft, and since these companies are enemies of Gates & Co., it is likely that Microsoft would be able to use its control over these DRM patents to marginalize or even destroy these companies by making it impossible for these competitors to release new, innovative products that would, by law, include these DRM technologies.
Intel, AMD, Cisco, and other companies that primarily make hardware and most importantly don't produce software products that compete head-on with Microsoft's will also have a harder time profiting. Though it wouldn't be in MS's interest to destroy them, the folks in Redmond would be interested in taxing these companies based on a portion of their revenues for access to DRM technologies that they would need to sell new products. And MS would probably also wield enough muscle to force AMD and Intel to design future processors to run only future versions of Windows. If the Pentium 7 proved capable of running Linux, BeOS, or even Windows 2000, Microsoft could flush Intel down the drain faster than you can say "Enron."
Intel and IBM have advocated that the market determine the fate of DRM schemes. This will allow American businesses and consumers to determine which ones get adopted and which ones fall away. It should not be the government's right to state that Americans have the choice of buying a PC with Palladium installed or not buying a PC at all. It especially is not the government's prerogative to grant a company what is effectively an unregulated monopoly to a major portion of the U.S. economy, as every software and computer hardware company would be under the foot of Microsoft in a post SSSCA world.
We Americans like to boast about the fact that we reap the benefits of participating in a "capitalist" economy. Capitalism, in the ideal sense of the word, has never been practiced in history, just as communism has never been truly enacted in a country. If you define capitalism as the "Golden Rule" of "he who has the gold rules", then perhaps by vision of capitalism should really be called "laissez-faire socialism" or something. In my book, as soon as a movie studio buys the DMCA, or Microsoft buys the CBDTPA, or any other company purchases legislation that treats itself or its industry differently than the rest of the economy, it's proof that the U.S., like the rest of the world, is really a plutocracy. I think that the Microsoft situation is really just a symptom of a much larger illness of the American economy.
The next several years will determine the fate of the American economy and as well as the U.S. role in world affairs for the next several generations. This claim covers a lot more than Microsoft. It covers the tendancy of the U.S. government allowing Big Business to take on a bigger and bigger role in dictating legislation and policy matters. It may be that the Enron and WorldCom fiascos, the mega-mergers of the 1990s, the artificial "oil crisis" that caused the price of gasoline to exceed $2.50/gallon in some parts of the U.S., and the tens of billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that major employers across the country have been able to extort from cities and states have pissed Americans to the point where they feel the pendulum has to start moving the other way. I really hope we've reached that point, because if we're not there now, things may never change. If we were to continue on the present course, I think in the next 30 years, we're going to see the game of capitalism end once and for all, and the handful of winners of that game forming an oligarchy that will control the U.S. and its sphere of influence for the forseeable future. We would get to the point where each major sector of the economy is subject to the stranglehold one company which carries enough power to destroy any challenger to its market share before it can gain a foothold. There would be one dominant software company (in this post I have discussed my fear that this would be Microsoft), one dominant electronics company, one dominant energy company, one dominant bank, one dominant food supplier. The U.S. was actually pretty close to this point shortly after 1900, with Standard Oil, Ma Bell, the bank trusts and the like, and it took a remarkable shift in government policy (antitrust laws, worker safety laws, etc.) to change the American economy into a more truly competitive game. The U.S. is nearing the high-water mark of industry consolidation reached at the beginning of the 20th century. The industry consolidation scenario has repeated itself; I really hope that the popular uprisings that occured as a result of that are about to repeat themselves too.
Please tell me that the scenarios I've described are unrealistic. I really hope I'm being paranoid and that Microsoft will become merely a player and not The Player of the 2010's technology industry. IBM was stopped in the 1970's and 1980's in the courts (ironically enough it was never even convicted of antitrust violations), hopefully Microsoft will be next.
I think this is the key statement in the story post. There is corruption EVERYWHERE in the finance industry. This includes the government, corporate management bodies, and the people (both in the media and the private finance industry) that make money off of reporting on companies and the government.
Enron is by far not the only company with a corrupt management that artificially inflated their numbers throughout the late '90s and early 2000's. It just happens to be the first company to get caught by the national media red-handed. Nearly every failed dot-com with a successful IPO did the same things Enron did, such as under-reporting liabilities by giving much of their compensation in stock options and B.S.-ing about projected billions of future revenues from customers that would never exist. Other more traditional companies like Xerox and Polaroid have also been caught doing the same sort book-cooking. If it had turned out that Microsoft was not engaging in such accounting tricks, Microsoft's board would clearly be in the small minority of the Fortune 500 in that regard.
The government, both under the Clinton and Bush administrations, did virtually nothing to reform regulations that were being exploited legally but unethically by corporations around the U.S. and also virtually nothing to punish those executives engaging in insider trading and other practices that have been illegal for decades. Had the government stepped in and set some reasonable rules, the boom of the late 90's would have been much more reasonable in scope (Dow 11K and Nasdaq 5K would never have happened, but the gains in stock prices would have still been substantial and, most importantly, justified) and we'd still be in very good economic situation now. Unfortunately, the watchdogs were either sleeping or put to bed (by some well-placed "bones" if you get my drift), and did not attack the biggest ripoffs since the late 1920's that the U.S. stock market has seen.
And the media and the analysts glorified everything that was going on. Back in 1998 and 1999, I was shocked at how many companies' stocks had been given "strong buy" upgrades AFTER A RISE of 20, 30, even 50 percent in the previous month or two. WTF? Any person with a modicum of experience in the market would take such a dramatic increase as an opportunity to cash in a portion of his/her holding in that stock for short-term gain or to stand pat if the holding was for a long term investment. To do as these analysts were suggesting would be essentially refusing to pay $10 for something because it's overpriced, but to buy two of that thing when its manufacture raises the prices to $20. In fact, it has been alleged that some analysts were in fact trading against their recommendations, upgrading stocks that they wanted to take profits on and downgrading stocks that they themselves had wished to accumulate.
As the saying goes, "you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time." The "some" time in the first part of that statement began to end in the spring of 2000, and many more woke up following the Enron debacle. Only now are we beginning to understand how broken the regulatory structure necessary for a successful, mostly capitalist (but obviously not pure capitalism) was in the U.S. in the 1990's. Just like it wasn't until after 1900 Americans didn't understand why having an economy dominated by a few "Robber Barons" was bad, or not until the 1930's was it known why having a market based on uninsured banks and buying stocks on margin was bad. Many of the flaws in the U.S. financial system WILL be fixed. At some point, the American people will not accept anything but a good-faith effort to correct these problems. At first, the existing government will be given a year or two to make the required changes. After that, people will begin to demand a "New Deal" and clean house on Capitol Hill. If things don't change significantly by early 2004, the voters will bust out the brooms in November of that year.
However, it is likely that we will endure another period of economic ugliness like we did in the 70s before things brighten signficantly. It took nine years (1973-82) for the U.S. to determine a successful course of action after the end of the Vietnam War required the nation to turn away from a largely military-industrial economy to one better suited for a peacetime environment. My guess is that it will take until at least 2006 or 2007 for the U.S. economy to rationally handle the changes effected by the so-called Information Revolution and prosper again. Things won't be horrible between now and then (barring any further Sept. 11-scale or greater terrorist attacks), but they probably won't be peachy either.
People have rightly questioned the integrity of the entire financial system and are waiting for things to improve before increasing their commitments to it. As a matter of fact, the U.S. is the last major market in the world that has been challenged by investors: while Japan, Europe, and later Latin American and southeast Asia floundered, people flocked to the U.S. believing that our system was infallible. It was not, and never will be infallible, though it has been and will become much more sound than it is today. As the next couple of years unfold, people will gradually learn what the biggest reasons for the unsustainable bubble and subsequent bust were and proceed to try to correct them. After that, people will begin to regain faith in the market, they will begin to realize that current valuations of stocks are by-and-large reasonable again, and the U.S. economy will begin to poke its head out of the clouds.
The stench of corruption right now is everywhere. We're just going to have to give ourselves a while for it to subside.
Here's something really scary that I found in Senator Kerry's (from Mass.) reply to a letter I sent him shortly after the CBDTPA reared its ugly head:
"I believe that particular attention must be given to the writers, artists, and other creators of copyrighted material whose works are entitled to protection from piracy in the digital age."
My response to this: these parties already have this protection, and have had it much longer than four years (when the DMCA was enacted). It's called (oh, the irony!) "Copyright Law." It's already ILLEGAL to take that xxAA-produced "artistic work" and offer it up for public distribution on a P2P network, a Web site, a rare record shop, or a street corner.
The point behind the DMCA, CBDTPA, and other legislation down the pipeline is not to protect "Attack of the Clones" or "Oops! I Did It Again" from "piracy"; the five year jail sentence and $250,000 fine that pre-1998 copyright law provided for this action already is ample punishment for this regard. These laws rather instead attempt to limit the range of works that can be "pirated" (i.e. distributed) to only those with licenses to the "copy protection" technologies. Yes, the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA are trying desperately to prevent the "piracy" (i.e. appearance) of Linux, garage band MP3's, and independent films on the Internet. They don't give a flying fsck whether someone can see Spiderman over a low-quality connection, install Office XP gratis or download recycled Top 40 hits on the Internet; if they really cared about this, thousands of Napster users and Web hosts would have already been convicted of felony charges and be serving the hefty penalties mentioned above.
Until we can convince people that this battle is not really over licensing the use of content as opposed to licensing to create it, we have no hope of winning the battle to keep laws like the DMCA and CBDTPA out of the U.S. code.
Unfortunately, Senator Kerry's response to me indicates not only don't they accept our arguments, they appear to not want to hear them. I haven't even heard back from Sen. Kennedy regarding this letter. In November, I will be voting for the first time and making sure that I select anyone else but Kerry's spot for the Mass. Senate seat. Unfortunately, it will be four years before I get a chance to do the same thing to Kennedy.
One more thing regarding Constitutional Amendments mentioned in the parent post: the one you're looking for is not one regarding fair use rights; it's one where corporations have their right to "contribute to campaigns" legislators removed. All donations must be limited to a set dollar amount and come from an individual's finances. Period. Corruption in government created by campaign contributions has created more substantial problems than the inability (legally) to view DVD's on a Linux box. By far the biggest of these is the lack of integrity in the finance industry. What would be your bigger gripe: being legally harrassed for distributing DeCSS code; or having your entire life savings wiped out by your employer's corrupt management with no recourse or defense against their actions (i.e. Enron), not being given a fair chance to make some of it back (by the less-than-enthusiastic enforcement of anti-discrimination laws including those regarding age discrimination), and knowing (albeit after-the-fact) that the management will be walking away scot-free as a result of the favorable legislation and enforcement policies they (along with bigshots at other Fortune 500 companies) bought in the past 10 years. I certainly think the latter is a bigger injustice, and it's that along with other injustices Mainstream America can deal with that are going to give us a much better chance at getting part of this country back than any cry of "Free Dimitri!"
The FBI and CIA will never let you cut paperclips from the budget. How else are these agencies going to get funding for Carnivore and covert intelligence ops? Congress has already found out about the $600 toilet seats, so now they're forced to use the $1.5 billion budget item for "1 trillion paper clips" for these expenses. If these guys are only allowed to buy 200 billion paper clips as a result of the bean counters' cuts, there would be no way the U.S. will have enough resource to fight The War Against Terrorism(tm).
Ahem...ever heard of something called the "Patriot Act"? Its time of passage (late September 2001) was as dubious as any law enacted by the U.S. in at least 50 years and has the potential to erode Americans' rights at a rate the DMCA could not in the latter law's wildest dreams.
Right now there are a lot of people urging their legislators to fight against this crap, but most in Congress, especially the more junior members, are scared shitless to break from their party line. Why? Because if they do, they'll be embarassed (if anyone spoke out against a bill called the "Patriot Act", he or she would at best become a laughing stock; at worst be branded as a terrorist) and possibly have their political balls chopped off. Right now, the power in Congress is concentrated into the hands of a very small group of senior members. This power imbalance is especially evident in the Senate, where unless 60 colleagues can stop him or her, a determined Senator can block any bill from being acted upon by means of filibuster. Piss off one of these elite members, and forget about ever getting your pet legislation up for a vote.
In the mid 1990's, Mass. Governor Weld was nominated by President Clinton for the Mexican ambassadorship. Weld and Clinton both knew that getting Weld confirmed would be a tough battle with the Senate; Weld in fact resigned as governor to pursue this federal position. Little did they know that the Senate would never get the chance to confirm or reject him. Jesse Helms, the chair of the Foreign Affairs committee in the Senate, prevented the nomination from ever getting to a vote because of a personal problem he had with Weld. Apparently, he pulled a parliamentary maneuver that could not be overruled by the rest of the Sentate, unlike a filibuster. WTF? I thought the Constitution allowed the President to appoint people to executive branch positions with the "advice and consent of the Senate", not with the "advice and consent of the Senate, provided that no prominent members of the Senate object to giving to or witholding from the President said consent." I'm sorry, I think that in all such situtations, the President is entitled to a "Yes" or "No" response from the whole Senate. Period. A "we're not allowed to decide because Daddy Helms won't let us" response should be unconstitutional.
I gave this nomination example since I'm more familiar with it than most other failed legislative exploits (it was a big story in the Boston media at the time), but I know it happens all the time with Congress members' legislation too. I understand that there are only a finite number of bills that can be considered during a two-year term and that of this number, some of them absolutely must be debated (e.g. the budget), but the way the Speaker of the House, the Senate President, and select heads of committees in each house have control over the legislature's agenda more closely resembles a dictatorship than a democracy. I wonder how many times a rookie Senator from a small state has successfully managed to keep a pork bill sponsored by Senator Hollings, Hatch, Helms, or Kennedy off the agenda in recent years? Not many. There always seems to be enough time to debate and vote on those bills for some reason. But then time mysteriously expires when Sen. Rookie introduces his bill...
Right now, members outside of the elite will get run out of office before they can substantially affect the way things are done in Congress. Unfortunately I don't see a way this will change any time soon. Changing the way Congress works would require the work of 300 to 400 members; that is a substantial majority of each house. Considering that this majority will in all likelihood consist of a relatively equal mix of Republicans and Democrats (and possibly a few of other or no party affiliation), there will be a multitude of reforms proposed and debated. Unfortunately, this divided group will end up implmenting very few if any of these reforms, thus allowing the elite members to retain their stranglehold over the legislature's agenda.
Also, the belief that every voter has the power to change this is oversimplified at best. Over 98% of the U.S. population will have absolutely no say over whether Senator Hollings will get re-elected in South Carolina. 99 percent will not get to voice their opinion of Orin Hatch the next time his term comes up. Considering at most a few dozen lawmakers are in this elite group that sets each term's legislative agenda, I would venture to guess that over 90% of eligible voters will have no direct say over whether the present state of affairs changes on Capitol Hill.
The best most Americans can do is vote for outsiders (i.e. against the incumbents) and hope that a critical mass of fresh blood can get together and begin to buck the oligarchy's hold over the U.S. This will take either a miracle or at least several decades to pull off.
Until then, I really don't see how the special interests (including the media) are going to stop having an inordinate amount of influence over U.S. policy. Changing this situation is something that's going to require at least a nationwide (some international pressure may even be necessary) grassroots effort. In other words, try as we might, don't expect any meaningful results for many years from your campaigns. Hell, it took 90 years and half a million wartime casualties to ostensibly eliminate slavery from this country. Many would argue that de facto slavery continued in the U.S. for nearly a century after the Civil War. If that kind of effort is required to defeat an blatant injustice like slavery, it's going to require a lot more than a "FP? I love CowboyNeal" post on Slashdot to eliminate the threats created by the likes of the DMCA and CBPTDA. I think these laws will be overturned or at least their effects will be mitigated eventually. However, "eventually" is a very open-ended term.
Also, it's in Pittsburgh.. ya know, Da 'Burgh. Stillers!
:) As least I know after the AFC Champsionship game why yinz call them "Terrible Towels": you wave them when the home team is playing terribly.
Does (American) football count as an engineering discipline? It's certainly measurable, and as a Patriots fan, I'm sure hoping it's repeatable come Opening Sunday.
Here are a few quotes from the article for those who haven't read it.
"Sponsors said the bill would establish basic privacy protections for consumers while minimizing the impact on business."
OK, this seems reasonable at face value. Now let's see what protections consumers will in fact get from this bill.
More than a year in the making, the privacy bill unveiled in the House differs from a competing bill making its way through the Senate that would require businesses to get consumers' explicit permission before sharing sensitive information such as income level, religious affiliation or political interests.
Not that I think the Senate bill goes quite far enough for my liking, this opt-out policy essentially states that businesses will be free to do whatever they please with my information, especially if it turns out that businesses can reset their customers' privacy preferences (cough...Yahoo...cough) at any time. So I think the word negligible best describes our privacy rights under this bill.
Let's assume that this bill does give us Americans a few crumbs of privacy. Here's what will happen to businesses that violate these rights:
Consumers would have no right to sue if their privacy was violated. Enforcement would be left in the hands of the Federal Trade Commission, which usually does not impose fines on a first offense.
Companies submitting to a self-regulatory privacy regime such as TRUSTe or BBBonline would enjoy protection from FTC actions.
We all know how valiantly TRUSTe fights for consumers' privacy rights and how fiercely they punish businesses that violate their privacy policies, right. Give me an effing break! Not only do we end up with very few privacy protections, but the maximum punishment for violating the few rights (at least the first time around) that we have is a rebuke from a government bureau or an industry organization? Sounds like a great bill to me.
It seems like the Senate bill is going to be the best case scenario for privacy advocates in this country, and the more likely scenario is a compromise between the House bill and Senate bill. In other words, we Americans will be lucky if the few basic protections we have regarding the privacy of bank and medical records we have still exist when the President signs whatever comes out from Congress. If only there was a "Control-Alt-Delete" option on ballots that indicated a desire for all 535 members of Congress and the President to be removed at the same time instead of having a voice over at most 4 of these officials' futures...
One last thought: if this bill were to pass, maybe we could boomerang it back onto Big Business. The Supreme Court has decided that corporations are people, right? Corporations purchase services from people (e.g. developing software, fixing cars, making purchasing decisions), and often give those employees access to proprietary data in the process. Could the courts conclude that businesses have no right to privacy as well, claiming that the employees can reset the company's "privacy policy" (NDA) at any time, like businesses do to customers? Then, maybe, just maybe, things might not be so bad after all...