bill:politics

[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.

Though I ought to expect crap like this, I’m still surprised when the Bush Administration pulls stunts like putting a journalist in jail for refusing to give up videotape he made of a protest last summer in San Francisco. The guy was blogging right up until the court hearing from whence he was sent to the stir.

Really unbelievable and yet a totally transparent ploy. California law protects the press so–on the flimsiest of connective tissue–the fact that the SFPD gets federal funding, the Justice Department jumped in and brought the case in federal court. Of course the judge had to go along with it and he did.

The other question I have is whether the major media outlets will jump on Wolff’s story as they did in the celebrated Judith Miller fiasco. Coverage by the local daily is not the same, but we need to hold the government accountable for yet another board in our fence of rights pulled away.

President Bush does it again, saying newspaper reports on the Administration’s use of bank data was “disgraceful.” Cheney called out the New York Times by name in a speech. Because of course these people are always right, never violate any laws or the Constitution and are allowed to do whatever they choose to protect us from nasty terrorists.

I’m not saying this particular program is illegal, unconstitutional, doesn’t work or won’t help. That’s not the point. Comments like these from our top two ‘elected’ officials alone are sad signs of the times, when freedom of the press is being attacked more often than is our nation.

Far worse, though, is the ignorant, fascist call by Republican congressman Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who called on the attorney general to investigate whether The Times’s decision to publish the article violated the Espionage Act. In an interview Sunday, King described the disclosure as “absolutely disgraceful” and said he believed that the newspaper’s action had violated the statute.

How can a person of such high office even think this is possibly true? Sometimes I think the current crew slept (or ws stoned) through the entire Nixon episode. If the Supreme Court, which was much more rational in those days, refused to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers I thought the days when politicians tried to stiffle and censor were essentially through.

Tragically, not.

This idea is cropping up all over but so far it leaves me pretty cold. Three examples: Dan Gillmor’s Bayosphere, BlueHereNow’s NowPublic and WikiPedia offshoot WikiNews. Each takes a different approach to breaking the corporate stranglehold on newsreporting but all expect individuals to publish content to their site with little compensation except a vague good feeling.

Why we should do so is puzzling to me. I draw a distinction from other ‘open’ systems gaining momentum, like WikiPedia itself, software projects such as Linux, Apache and PHP, and classic literature publisher Project Gutenberg. These projects have an enduring quality that news does not and for the most part aggregating personal blogs can serve much the same purpose while leaving material in control of the authors.

Especially as the three listed projects in my opening paragraph are either commercial companies or run advertising. So, for instance, Dan wants to build a new business but for now is keeping the revenue model to himself and his investors. Hmm.