bill:politics

Michael Bloomberg has resigned from the Republican Party, launching rumors that he’ll run for the presidency as an independent next year even though he issued the standard denials. Can he succeed where John Anderson, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader failed miserably? Can he make the leap from governing a city which, no matter how large, bears no organizational semblance to how things work at the natioal level? I don’t know and he’s certainly done the improbable in the past.

Let’s say he does win. How will he govern, as a practical matter, with no party members to support him in the House or Senate? Even with the Democrats in control of both houses this year, Bush has a completely staffed system to carry legislation and nominations, operate the executive branch departments and grease the wheels as lobbyists. This is a practical problem that I’ve wondered about since voting for Anderson in 1980 and have never seen it answered satisfactorily. Focusing solely on the election, there is also the substantial concern that if the Democrats choose a candidate who doesn’t appeal strongly to the centrist voters a pure centrist like Mayor Mike will drain enough votes to ensure another four Years of the Elephant.

DC politics may be—make that are!—in need of a huge overhaul but unless he follows an electoral victory with the creation of a new party, similar to what Ariel Sharon did in Israel at the end of 2005 and Morihiro Hosokawa did in Japan in 1993 after handing the Liberal Democratic Party their only defeat, or comes to a working arrangement with either the GOP or Dems I don’t see how a Bloomberg Presidency would be anything but a tragic waste of years.

There are so many huge issues that will need attention when we’re finally rid of the Bush Crew that the country cannot lose another four years. So, Mayor Bloomberg, consider this a request from a pragmatic fan: Please keep your word in today’s statements and don’t run.

The good news is that the I.R.S. is reviewing companies involved in the options backdating scandal and will go after corrupt corporations and executives whenever a case can be made, which with any luck ought to be even more often than the S.E.C can get criminal convictions on securities violations. As the saying goes, Capone never did time for murder.

If it turns out that Sun Microsystems took this liberty in the one grant I got from them the feds can count on an updated tax return–and Sun can expect a lawsuit looking to recoup any money involved.

The S.E.C., though, wiped out a big chunk of goodwill when they “waived nearly $15 million in payments from Scott Sullivan, former WorldCom CFO, and two other executives who were jailed over the $11 billion fraud that drove the company into bankruptcy.” The money was to come from bonuses he was illegally awarded so why should the fine be waived? If the answer is that Sullivan spent the money on lawyers then I think he should have been stuck with a public defender, same as any other indigent defendent.

Not wanting to be topped, the Republicans in Congress are making a shallow election year ploy to score points with less well off supporters through a minimum wage increase, all the way to a whole $7.25 in hour in three small, annual steps. Though this is the first increase they’ve come close to passing in 10 years the real beneficiaries of the bill are–knock me over with a feather–the ultra-wealthy.

Amazing how they can spin the legislation since the real meat of it is $310 billion in tax cuts. That’s right, Bush and his crew are trying to hide yet another attempt to whack the estate tax though fortunately the Democrats have enough votes to block passage in the Senate. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) admitted as much by saying he thought the tax cuts would make the medicine of the minimum wage increase go down easier!

Todd Huffman, an Oregon pediatrician, really says it well:

“Families that work hard and full-time shouldn’t be poor in America. This November, Americans need to elect politicians of every stripe who will support a living family income, who will put poverty relief ahead of tax relief for the rich, and who will put the interests and needs of America’s workers ahead of corporations and wealthy estate-owners. In the fight against poverty, there’s no Republican or Democrat way - there’s only the right way. We have the wallet - can we find the will?”

America: from Freedom to Fascism

Determined to find the law that requires American citizens to pay income tax, producer Aaron Russo (”The Rose,” “Trading Places”) set out on a journey to find the evidence. This film which is neither left, nor right-wing is a startling examination of government. It exposes the systematic erosion of civil liberties in America since 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was fraudulently created. Through interviews with U.S. Congressmen, a former IRS Commissioner, former IRS and FBI agents and tax attorneys and authors, Russo connects the dots between money creation, federal income tax, and the national identity card which becomes law in May 2008. This ID card will use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips which are essentially homing devices used to track people. This film shows in great detail and undeniable facts that America is moving headlong into a fascist police state. Wake up!

After watching the two trailers available I think Russo has gone off the deep end. Maybe it was too many years in Hollywood. This movie, self-described as a documentary, seems to be little more than an update of the income tax denier movement with national ID paranoia added in. The movie repeats the assertion that there is no constitutionally valid federal statute which provides for the federal income tax and that the Real ID act wil be the final straw in transforming America into a fascist state controlled by the bankers and corporate elite.

Don’t worry, that’s not my conclusion or belief but the title of a videoblog entry by Mattias of Sweden. Through the bountiful bandwidth of YouTube, and a cheap webcam, this guy has posted a whole blog full of this ridiculous crap.

He claims the pharmaceutical and media corporations are tools of wealthy Western elites, aided by governments filled with politicians dependent on their campaign donations, and these people care nothing for the lives or suffering of others. Only for money, always more money in their pockets.

In this specific instance Mattias rails about the spread of AIDS through Africa, which truly is a sad epidemic, but where he veers off into La La Land is the assertion that the main cause is vaccine supplies tainted with the AIDS virus. Pharmaceutical companies didn’t want to just throw out the poisoned batches so they shipped it to Africa instead. And the US and European governments passed legislation allowing this intentional murder.

Anyone else thinking of Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory?

The New York Times has a brief article today on a bogus tax shelter scheme apparently originated by James Clark’s essentially failed MyCFO dotcom. Yes, the Clark of Netscape and SGI fame who thought he could extend the online model into managing the wealth of his fellow New Economy multimillionaires. One tool they devised seems to have been a tax shelter which the government now claims shortchanged them by $1.8 billion.

This is small potatoes compared to the burgeoning stock options scandal, though, which has now reached the real effects stage with the release of Mercury Interactive Corp’s report on its internal investigation. This was one of the first companies put on notice by the SEC for playing games with the grant date of stock options awards to executives and so one of the first to bring the details to light.

What a mess they made! The CEO, CFO and general counsel were all fired six months ago and the company’s stock was delisted by the NASDAQ until years of financial statements were recalculated. At least $570 million dollars in profits will be subtracted from their books and have no doubt that criminal and civil charges will be forthcoming, not to mention investor lawsuits.
Mercury Interactive is far from alone–the SEC is investigating at least 55 other companies for similar practices and Microsoft and Apple have admitted to routinely using the most advantageous date within a given month to date grants for all employees. Research done by Randall Heron, an Indiana University associate professor of finance, and University of Iowa professor Erik Lie predicts the number of companies under investigation will quadruple by year’s end!

So for all of you (and by you I mean my fellow techies) who think that technologists , while hardly immune to the lure of the dollar, are driven at bottom by a desire to build cool stuff and make it available to the world I suggest you think again. How many of you had nice stock options grants in the pre-2002 boom? I did, though I didn’t use the best judgment to time sales, and I wonder if any fell into this bucket.

L.A. Chung, Mercury News:

Bill says (in an email to Ms. Chung):

Perhaps illegal aliens is a poor choice of words to describe this group of people. I don’t personally see it as racist though since for me the national origin is irrelevant and I feel the same way whether the individual is from Mexico, China or the Ukraine.

On the other hand, your newspaper has often used the phrase undocumented immigrants. That’s no better since it ignores the illegal nature of the behavior.

To use a more accurate name, how about we just call them criminals? When necessary to refer to them as a group the Mercury News can use the phrase foreign national criminals? Sure that removes any racist taint from the nomenclature. People who violate the law are criminals, people in the US who are citizens of another country are foreign nationals.

Considering the bigger picture, let me run a short story by you:

Paul is born in an American city, his parents don’t have much money and one day when he’s five his father is gone. Paul’s mom acts like he disappeared, there’s no funeral, she just says “dad’s gone” with no explanation. Mom doesn’t work much, doesn’t take much care of Paul though she tries, and as he grows up he sees other kids with sneakers and TVs and other stuff he can’t have.

When he’s 13 he goes to work for a small businessman in the neighborhood. Just trying to get some cash for a warm coat for the winter and a decent stereo. A few years go by, he drops out of school at 16 to work full time and gets himself a used car. He starts dating a pretty girl, the job gets him money to take her out and buy her birthday and valentine’s presents.

After so many years working for the same business Paul’s been given better jobs, more responsibility. He and his girl get married, they talk about leaving the neighborhood but he says no, he doesn’t want to leave his job because not having finished school the idea scares him. Plus, where would he get work that pays as well or is as secure?

She gets pregnant and they have a son, Paul’s really proud and determined that his boy will have a father to love him and show him the things his own never did. He’s working hard at the only thing he knows to put food on the table and a roof over his family’s head.

So L.A., who is Paul? The obvious answer is a drug dealer though he could be working at the corner shop but I’m not trying to trick you; this Paul is a criminal, making his living by breaking the law. If foreign national criminals should be given amnesty and the ability to work legally in the US because they’re only trying to escape poverty and the circumstances of their birth why shouldn’t we legalize drugs so Paul and his colleagues can do the same? Why not legalize prostitution, gambling or a number of other activities which people do to make a living?

More fundamentally, I object to the current and proposed manner in which our country deals with this situation because we are a nation of laws. I certainly agree with those who point to the employers and demand the government charge them for their crimes as well. And pragmatically, deporting 12 million (and almost certainly more) people is nearly impossible but hey, we’ve been fighting the war on drugs for 35 years now and the lack of success has hardly stopped us from filling up prisons and building more.

Legal residents of America can fight to change the laws, perhaps starting by changing people’s perception of the problem. Maybe the planned May 1 boycott will show me and others who share my opinion the reality that this fight is already lost. But for now, I don’t see why these people should not be treated the same as anyone else who breaks our laws, whatever name we use for them as a group.

Regards,
Bill Lazar

DeLay Is Quitting Race and House: Of course, with a second aide taking a plea on Friday, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

Push to Tighten Lobbying Rules Loses Strength says a report in today’s New York Times. According to Florida Republican Adam Putnam, who sits on the controlling House Rules Committee, the only reason we might have seen meaningful new restrictions was perception of vulnerability at the polls. “I think this entire Congress is schizophrenic on this right now,” he said. Putnam is one of the principles drafting lobbying legislation, so when he says schizophrenic that probably translates to “phew, we dodged the bullet this time.”

Because really, why would politicians pass a law so definitively against their own interest unless not doing so posed an even greater threat? Consider how many of the Republicans signed the 1994 Contract With America, which included term limits to end the practice of members serving in Washington for decades, and yet are still holding office–this is just an example, though, since the inaction on lobbying is attributable to Democrats as well.

The linked article claims that new legislation on lobbying has lost its window of opportunity due to the recent uproar over Dubai Ports World’s bid to acquire a half dozen American ports. Frankly, this is a much better explanation of the uproar than I’ve seen before: good ol’ distraction! Really, the ports were already owned by a British company and many other American ports have been owned by foreign companies for some time.

DPW may be based in a country where two of the September 11 terrorists were born, have loose financial controls that allowed Al Qaeda money to flow through its banks, and been the base of operations for Pakistani nuclear renegade AQ Khan. Those are the three primary arguments used by politicians for blocking the deal. If America really felt so strongly, then how come we aren’t blocking the much larger and more numerous investments from Saudi Arabian companies?

No, I think the reason is obvious for anyone who looks. Feeding the ports deal fire is terrific cover for letting much more important–but politically undesirable–work go undone.

Later: My new friend Dan Shafer touches on some very similar concerns from a different angle, the possibility that in 2008 a woman will be elected President because both major party candidates will be women.

Freedom to Tinker: RIAA Says Future DRM Might “Threaten Critical Infrastructure and Potentially Endanger Lives”

How do the people we elect to Congress even consider this a reasonable law? Well, just look at the craptacular bill the House passed today to give the FDA authority to invalidate state and local food safety rules. Passed today without a single committee hearing or open floor debate. Yeah, that’s the kind of government I like: our leaders are so certain they’re right they don’t need to put the arguments pro and con in the light of day.

Notice that today’s bill got 289 votes in the House which has only 232 Republican members. That didn’t stop Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, representing a district just a few minutes north of here, from sending out press release blaming the Rpublicans. What about the 57 Democrats, Nancy, that’s over a quarter of your team, don’t they deserve the same measure of derision?

Anyway, one can only hope the RIAA isn’t able to steamroller this bill as easily.

I like to think of myself as reasonably well educated on American history but I had no idea that the state government of North Carolina was essentially deposed in a coup in 1898 when white Democrats decided that post-Reconstruction black men were getting a bit too successful and politicall powerful. Shameful, not only that it happened but that it was kept so quiet for so many years. Brent Staples has a good essay on the NY Times Editorial page on the report of the commission bringing the truth into the light.

Scoble does stand up against the Microsoft Machine on the censorship of Michael Anti though his response in the comments is underwhelming. Unlike apparent official blog spokesperson Michael Connolly, product unit manager for MSN Spaces, who gives a mealymouthed explanation of Microsoft’s position of why the company took down this pro-China democracy blog.

This is a tough issue which both Google and Yahoo have previously faced and also handled poorly, not to point the finger only at MSFT. It’s one which we need to find a better answer as a culture; as one of Scoble’s commenters said, why are we fighting for democracy in the Middle East but allowing US-flagged corporations to toss it aside as they like elswhere?
[cross-posted]

1/5/06: InformationWeek has the official Microsoft response. Still weak.

Happy holidays to all you rabid NRA card-carrying 2nd Amendment mouth frothers. This year’s present is courtesy of Nathan Cheatham (Christmas slayings shock D.C. suburbs) who, because guns are so easily available even to the mentally ill in our country, was able to murder his own mother and three other people before ending his own misery. For good measure he shot a couple of dogs as well.

I tend to agree with John Robb as he’s far closer to intelligence matters than am I but when he simply highlights and confirms the words of Bruce Schneier ( as he does today in Accelerating the Decline and Fall) then there really can be no doubt. So let me give you John’s warning:

Talking, of course, about Bush’s assertion that his executive order allowing warrantless spying on American soil is within the scope of authority granted by Congress in the joint resolution passed by Congress after 9/11 that led to the war in Iraq.

The sheer arrogance of Bush, Cheney, Rice and the rest of them is barely believable but that many of their supporters would call me a defeatist, traitor or worse for writing this post demonstrates that if you stay on message, and the message is scary yet filled with bravado, then many people will check their thinking caps at the door.

My roving eye finds these bits about yesterday’s elections and my wiseass mouth chimes in with the snark:

California: Governor reaches out, doesn’t concede because losing every single ballot measure he wasted tens of millions of state dollars on isn’t enough of a lesson for this supposedly very intelligent man. One wonders how badly Schwarzenegger will hurt California in the remaining 14 months of his term, but at least re-election is looking less and less likely.

NJ and VA: Thumbs up for giving the finger to GWB by electing Kaine and Corzine. I especially love this headline from UK newspaper The Independent: Bush is humiliated as Republicans suffer losses in local elections.

Kansas: Board of Ed == Big Idiots, but hey, the Americans who self-describe as believing in the literal truth of the Bible have to be living somewhere I guess. Fortunately none of my neices or nephews live anywhere near that blighted state.

TX: Why am I not surprised that this state continues to disgrace itself? Texas voters add gay marriage ban to constitution, ’nuff said.

Joel “on Software” Spolsky wrote one of his typically common sense yet insightful essays a couple of weeks ago, Set Your Priorities, in which he explains:

This has stuck with me, wandered around my skull, bounced off the new Bank of America Keep the Change program and finally emerged out the other end driving home from work tonight.

Bush wants to cut spending on programs here, there and everywhere which (from my perspective) generally benefit the least fortunate in America in favor of more tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. Who needs the feds money more? But its more than that, because I’m starting to wonder about some federal programs which never caused me to think like this before.

I’m talking about things like the National Endowment for the Arts and the Public Broadcasting System. Mind you, I think our dollars are used reasonably well by these programs, I’m not suggesting they have a liberal bias or one of those foolish charges. The typical explanation is along the lines of “Man does not live by bread alone.”

I just wonder how we can spend the money when there are people who don’t actually have bread to eat. Or a warm place to sleep, medicine and medical treatment, education to improve their lot. How are we following the real priorities? The love thy neighbor as thy self priorities. Read the quote from Joel again and then ask yourself if we should be spending tax dollars on Antique Roadshow or Soundstage when millions of Americans don’t have medical insurance.

There’s another campaign to amend the Constitution to make flag burning illegal. But this is wrong on several levels and one can only hope enough Americans realize this and act on it. For starters, burning is the proper way to dispose of an old flag. Of course the flag is supposed to be treated with respect and ceremony and that’s not how a flag being burned as a protest is treated. Still, if the burning is removed as the objection then what’s left is a question of free speech. That’s the objection of at least of of the more vehement supporters of the proposed amendment and of course exactly why we should vote against it.

How some people get elected to some offices is a complete mystery to me. This is my extra-special 20/20 hindsight talking, as I’m sure that if you went back and read the newspapers the reasons would be clear. But many politicians give their supporters sour gas and a strong desire to rewrite their ballot. Gray Davis, for example, went so far that some crafty Republicans were able to get him thrown out of office less than a year after he’d been re-elected.

So today comes word of a comment yesterday from Rick Santorum, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania and third ranking member of his party’s Senate hierarchy, that he stood on the floor and compared the Democrats to the Nazis. Santorum’s previous claim to infamy came a couple of years ago when he made a few offhand remarks about gay people. Please, Pennsylvania, do not send this man back to Washington or any elected office above dogcatcher.

Rude Pundit is, as always, nowhere near as polite or civil as me.

What is Godwin?