bill:politics

I’ve been a reasonably happy customer of Wells Fargo for this entire century (damn, doesn’t that sound impressive!) and I suppose they’re more or less as good as any of the other big national banks. Your experience may be different, of course, as the collision of individuals dealt with and company policies create an individual track record so I’m not asserting anything other than my own.

This morning I’m beginning to wonder. Wells Fargo sent me the latest installment of their monthly customer newsletter email and I clicked a link labeled Detect Credit Fraud Early: ID Theft Protection because, hey, who isn’t interested in bank security. The page beings okay, with a headline of “Protect Your Good Credit with Identity Theft Protection” and is short too, covering the program with six bullet points, all less than two narrow lines.

And then I my eyes reached the closer: “Enjoy peace of mind for just $12.99 a month.” That’s right, Wells Fargo expects you, me and Dupree to pay $156 per year for keeping safe what I–and you may feel differently–expect ought to be the normal course of business! Not necessarily by a bank, maybe by the major credit bureaus, but if I had to guess I’d say that Wells Fargo is doing this in some sort of partnership with them.

Credit card companies and banks, here’s a competitive advantage you can offer customers: do this service, maybe minus the personal credit analysis, for free. Make a big deal about it in your advertising and marketing. Most other things being equal I’d sign up and blog you very positively, just drop me a note.

One the one hand we have my old high school chum Christopher Christie taking down the rat bastards who tried to get rich off the backs of investors and employees at Cendant with former Chairman Walter Forbes getting a 12 year jail term, former Vice Chairman E. Kirk Sheldon getting ten years and each ordered to pay restitution of $3.275 billion. They can spend their days in the pen comparing notes with the Rigas men, Jeffrey Skilling and Dennis Kozlowski, remembering the days of $15,000 shower curtains and private jets.

On the other we have the sleazy Bush team trying to quietly do what they can for supporters and allies before the Democrats run them out of DC. In this instance that means firing US Attorneys like Carol Lam in San Diego before they can bring folks like Republican congressman Jerry Lewis (who is still very popular in France, right?) to trial for giving fat government contracts to businesspeople willing to give fat lobbying and consulting contracts in return. At least Lam convicted ex-Representative Randy Duke for taking a million dollar plus home in exchange for getting a few earmarks into legislation.

I really like this quote the Times has about Lam’s dismissal from the F.B.I. chief in San Diego: “What do you expect her to do? Let corruption exist?â€Â

Update: Richard Koman reports in Silicon Valley Watcher that Kevin Ryan, the US Attorney leading the stock options backdating investigation, is another target of the Bush purge and that “[t]he Department of Justice has asked for resignations of all but one US Attorney in California and Democrats see the moves as at attempt to replace Attorneys who don’t meet the Bush Administration’s conservative litmus test.” Sad, really farking sad.

[This is a Letter to the Editor to the NY Times, which they chose not to publish.]

Editor:

I’m frankly astonished you published this fig leaf of apologia by Phyllis Korkki. For starters, the Times has published many articles over the years on how high income individuals have used and abused tax shelters and other schemes to avoid paying their allegedly high share of taxes, meaning the assertion that “The tax bite from a six-figure bonus is likely to be substantial” is hardly likely to be accurate.

Second, while the $137,000 amount may be accurate in the broadest terms I doubt its meaningful in the context of this discussion since the secretaries, couriers and shipping department staff are hardly likely to get six figure bonuses and ought to be excluded. The true relevant number should be the average bonus paid to partners, executives and other top of the line Wall Streeters and I expect it would be far greater than $137,000.

Finally, the entire short article reeks of condescension. Even if the people getting high six and seven figure bonuses pay out half in taxes then the bonuses are still many multiples of the average American take home earnings each year, with these bonuses coming on top of high salaries, benefits and perks.

If anyone criticizes the New York Times as a card-carrying member of the liberal media, you can correct them by pointing them to Ms. Korkki’s article.

Showing that corporate criminals are starting to get the proper rewards, Judge Glasser sentenced former Computer Associates Chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar to 12 years in prison for his part in a $2.2B accounting fraud that would have taken a weaker company down Enron-style. CA’s chief financial officer, head of worldwide sales, general counsel and three other executives have already admitted their guilt related to the accounting scandal and the company also agreed to pay $225 million in shareholder restitution.

Somehow I don’t think the Dave Packard or Bill Hewlett would duck the blame for actions taken by people working directly for them. After all, this isn’t like asking a corporate chairperson to put her neck in the noose for something done four levels away. But HP Chair Patricia Dunn today defended her role in an inquiry into a boardroom leak that has led the California Attorney General to open an investigation, and said she has no plans to resign unless asked by the board.

Dunn said she did not know private investigators hired by the computer maker had used questionable tactics to access private phone records of board directors and journalists.”Our board certainly had no idea” of the privacy breaches, Dunn said in an interview on Friday, adding, “This problem won’t recur.”

The thing that smells really bad to me about this, beyond the nasty, chilling snoopery, is that Dunn and the HP board knew about the seemingly illegal behavior since at least its May board meeting–four months ago–and yet we’re just finding out now. At least one board member, Tom Kleiner (an HP executive himself before co-founding the legendary Kleiner, Perkins VC firm), had the grace and guts to resign when he learned of the misdeeds; apparently he “ratted out” Dunn and the rest, who preferred to sweep things under the rug, by informing numerous prosecutors and regulators.

Dunn may not plan to resign but I hope that someone else gets to make that decision. As we’re beginning to see in the stock options scandal, corporate leaders are no longer quite as invulnerable and unaccountable as in years past.

CNN Money: HP Chair: Lying, or incompetent. “At Enron, WorldCom, Tyco … this type of conversation probably happened in one way or another. It shouldn’t happen anymore. So which is it? You are either lying now and did actually know what was going on with the phone records … or the whole corporate upheaval of the past three years totally blew by you.”

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.

These days it’s hard to imagine anyone in America who hasn’t been touched by cancer themselves or through a close friend or family member. Both my parents have had bouts with it–fortunately mild and caught early–and I’ve seen how it can ravage a body that just days before was strong.

Today, May 17, 2006, is LIVESTRONG Day, a program from the Lance Armstrong Foundation to raise awareness of what is still a major health problem all around the globe despite years of effort by researchers. Lance said “It’s time for our nation to address our issues. Together, we can help change things for the better. As a team, we can make a difference for survivors.”
The LAF is asking bloggers to participate by making a post, to “write about how cancer has affected you or your loved ones and what could have improved the experience or made it less traumatic. You can also add your view about health policy issues facing cancer survivors.”

I think the biggest problem we have in health care today is that corporate financial interests are allowed to outweigh individual health concerns. That is, almost all aspects of medicine and treatment are controlled by the profit demands of pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance companies (and the many other industries which serve them).

This results in over 15% of Americans having no medical insurance and many others with insufficient coverage for disastrous episodes such as cancer, no research being done on treatment for illnesses which have too few patients, and doctors forced to treat patients like cars on an assembly line.

Another element of the disease our culture faces is the lack of responsibility from the people who work at cigarette and food companies. The problem with cigarettes is obvious but not enough people look at the way food companies behave like drug pushers. Whether its Taco Bell’s “I’m Full” and Fourth meal campaigns or Nabisco Oreo’s cute little kid vs. Grandma quick licking ads, their only thought is to sell you more food that’s no good for you.

I’m not suggesting everybody turn into stern-faced vegetarians. But the problem we have from eating poorly are just starting to surface as the Baby Boomers start to reach retirement age; consider the huge increase in Stage 2 Diabetes as a pretty good predictor of future problems. In 10 to 20 years all the huge people you see on the street (or in the mirror) will be facing heart disease, high blood pressure and worse.

What I think I’m trying to say here is that new drugs and better insurance coverage are necessary but not sufficient. We need to develop wellness care systems as well, programs that help people make the right choices now to prevent terrible problems later. Free speech and free markets are great things but, as with anything, only in moderation.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took a break from the War on Terror and defending our country from external threats to drop by a San Jose middle school yesterday and lecture students about the War on Piracy. Seriously.

He flew all the way from D.C. to make a brief appearance to pimp for the RIAA/MPAA membership because, well, other than campaign contributions I can’t really figure out why. Bush is done in less than two years (oh thank you please come sooner please please please) so maybe Gonzales is positioning himself to run for the Senate or Governor down in Texas.

Downloading a song for free from a file-sharing Web site, Gonzales declared, “is just like stealing blue jeans or copying off a neighbor’s (school) paper.” Not really, Alberto. Although if I copy a song from a friend’s CD, my friend can still listen to his copy but the neighbor can’t still wear his jeans. My copying a test answer doesn’t change the other student’s grade or, more importantly, doesn’t change what he’s learned and can use. Not that pirating music or movies is morally or legally right but it sure isn’t in the same category as these two examples.
Maybe your time is better spent on getting the FBI a functional computer network or defending our right to free speech, two things your department seems to have ongoing trouble accomplishing. The record and movie companies can buy their own advertising.

“There is no cost,” declared Representative Joe L. Barton, a Texas Republican who was presiding over Congressional negotiations on the sprawling energy bill last July. An obscure provision on new drilling incentives was “so noncontroversial,” he added, that senior House and Senate negotiators had not even discussed it.

Vague Law and Hard Lobbying Add Up to Billions for Big Oil just goes to show that politicians are either in the pocket of the big corporations, stupid or just don’t particularly care about anyone else. I don’t know if the Democrats or anyone in the Congress attempted to stand up on this provision, so I won’t try and attribute blame to just Bush and the Republicans even though this certainly smacks of their style.

But, you know, we voted for these swell folks.

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 was trading some emails the other day with a very thoughtful friend. He asked me “Whatever happened to enforcement of anti-trust laws? Is it a matter of interpretation? Or is it that they think that the existence of the internet justifies any media monopoly?” After I stopped laughing I sent him the following response.

Antitrust? Please. Bush is giving shit away to his friends:

Seriously, there is no end to the examples one could cite but this is enough to make me sad.

One day later: AT&T regains supremacy with purchase of BellSouth. One day later! Jeeze!

Driving home tonight from work I notied something odd on a pickup truck in the other lane on San Antonio Rd. Though wearing commercial license plates, the identifying/marketing text included prominently the phrase “Anti-Terrorism Unit.” I should have been quicker to think of taking a picture with my phone camera. I did write down the phone number and some other details and googling 800-690-7707 turned up Viable Alternatives Corp. / San Mateo Security.

Nothing on the company website mentions this ‘unit’, and this could be an overreaction, but in these times I don’t think too highly of marking up a truck with a decal that is probably just this side of the line in looking like a governmental insignia, a lightbar across the roof and prominently displaying those words. True, the truck did also show San Mateo Security but the positioning was such that one could easily miss the commercial nature.

What is a private company in the Bay Area doing with an anti-terrorism unit anyway?

Royalty Plan Windfall to Oil Companies: “The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.” Yeah, record profits mean Bush’s closest corporate aliies need even more help from our deficit-ridden pockets.

As detailed in Waking up to recurring ID nightmares, Raymond Lorenzo’s life has been one nightmare (bankruptcy), hassle (suspended driver’s license) and hurdle (felony conviction) for fifteen years, ever since his ex-wife’s boyfriend at the time made Lorenzo a very early victim of modern identity theft. One can hardly imagine the toll this has been on him and even after so long has not yet been cleared up.

The case is a sad example of what we get when corporations driving laws rather than basing them on the needs of individuals. The big culprit here are the data brokers (remember ChoicePoint?) and financial institutions which they serve. These companies are fighting tooth and nail to minimize their responsibility to safeguard our personal data, to take action after our data finds its way to thieves and other malicious users, and to maximize their ability to gather and use it.

To quote the linked article: “Congress … introduced more than a dozen bills, but managed to reach consensus on none of them.” Why is that? Because the corporate money is flowing fast and hard to keep lobbyists maneuvering at every angle! Screw the little guys like Raymond Lorenzo; it’s probably his own fault for not staying married.

Seriously, though, reading articles like this make me wonder how some people get themselves out of bed in the morning. Forget the out and out criminals like Peter Perro (the guy who did Lorenzo), the sociology of crime is not what I’m getting at. I’m referring to the people who work at companies like ChoicePoint, TransUnion, the big financial companies, and the law firms and lobbyists which support them. And not so much the top executives and partners, because you can point to the huge paydays they get, but the line workers and middle managers who don’t particularly get paid so well yet are the essential enablers.

Let’s say your a secretary of a lobbyist, the product marketing manager, or the accounts payable clerk. You people are the unmentioned yet vital factors in your company’s success; the entire machinery would fall apart without you and your peers. I know, everyone needs a paycheck, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stand up to your bosses when you see this kind of pathological behavior!

I’m not suggesting these companies, or at least most of them, be put out and shot, corporate lobbyists being the key exception. Data handlers and, even more so, large financial institutions provide incredibly valuable services to our society. They just need to start operating within boundaries so that people (not counting the executives and large shareholders) are treated as more important than the interests of some business.

In our madly consumerist American society good price is nearly everything. Nothing affirms this more than the massive success of Wal-Mart and the way in which it’s ridden ever-lower prices to greater and greater share of retail spending. Yesterday, the year’s pagan shopping holiday known as Black Friday, at our local house of worship shoppers were so anxious to save $22 off an admittedly already low price of $400 for an HP notebook PC they nearly rioted in efforts to claim one of the slim supply.

People raced to the consumer electronics department as the store opened at 5 a.m., jumping over counters and pushing over a display case. Store managers, downplaying the scrum afterwards, needed help from Mountain View PD to restore order. Mothers were overheard berating their 10 year old sons for not being aggressive enough and so missing out on the day’s big bargain. And, as Rogers writes, this wasn’t an isolated incident.

Really, though, are these rapacious consumers to blame? Obviously not from this sideline view or I’d not be writing this. No, to me this is a case of Wal-Mart and the supporting squads of advertisers and media partners stoking the acquisitive fires with barrages of commercials and planted news pieces.

A perfect example just came on while we’re watching Mad TV, the three ladies from Destiny’s Child pretending to celebrate Christmas with their families. These women are all worth many millions so for them passing out all kinds of expensive consumer electronics is a trivial expense. For the group’s biggest fans, who tend to be between 10 and 25 years old, plasma TVs, digital cameras and laptop computers are extremely costly, but mostly paid for by parents after rounds of extreme begging. Somehow I doubt Beyonce worries about that.

But back to the Mountain View Almost-Riot. Wal-Mart and its competitors pour out the hype and create an atmosphere where getting to the sales becomes a sporting event. The prize, of course, is being allowed to hand over as much of your cash as possible as long as you have the chance to walk out the door with the day’s best deals. Americans love to compete, there’s no other culture with so many awards and top 10/100 lists as us, but these sales days are different because usually the average American has no chance to win.

The stores really take it to the next level and Wal-Mart has got to be about the best at this part. Usually stores are required to have sufficient supply on hand to meet reasonably expected demand, which is why auto commercials are so explicit about specifying the VINs, and otherwise hand out rainchecks. Somehow Wal-Mart (and Fry’s Electronics!) gets away with blatantly violating this aspect of consumer protection laws because if they brought in anywhere near enough of the ‘big deal’ items like the HP notebooks there’d be no need to crush little kids to get one. I’m sure a lawyer will explain Wal-Mart abides by regulations by squeezing qualifiers in the small print.

Too bad parents can’t answer their kids’ screaming with the small kind of print. Maybe they can explain that not everyone makes it to the pros.

Reading Wireless devices could foil hijack attempts gives me one of those ’smack me in the face’ moments. How obvious is this idea and yet it’s just now being proposed? I’m not talking about 9/11 obvious, though one wonders why this concept didn’t get pushed from the after-analysis, but even going back to the initial hijacking troubles in the ’70s. TVs, for example, had wireless remotes by then and an airplane security scenario needs a much simpler device than even that.