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It’s not a good political sign at all that liberals seem to be departing the president in droves. The more things “change,” the more it appears politicians give us more of the same.
As the Nation’s Pulse Races, Obama Can’t Seem to Find His [NYTimes.com].
President Obama’s favorite word is “unprecedented,” as Carol Lee of Politico pointed out. Yet he often seems mired in the past as well, letting his hallmark legislation get loaded up with old-school bribes and pork; surrounding himself with Clintonites; continuing the Bushies’ penchant for secrecy and expansive executive privilege; doubling down in Afghanistan while acting as though he’s getting out; and failing to capitalize on snazzy new technology while agencies thumb through printouts and continue their old turf battles.
Yes, it is manifestly true that, led by the iPhone, of course, wireless Internet-enabled devices are chewing up bandwidth on 3G and other cellular networks at an unprecedented rate. But is that really a crisis? FCC Chairman Warns of “Looming Spectrum Crisis” for Wireless Devices.
I’ve got a lot of respect for Julius Genachowski. But on this point, I suggest he is all wet. Look at the historical parallels. Thomas Malthus warned more than 200 years ago of a food crisis as the industrial revolution expanded populations, and that did not happen either. In wireless data, the technology has advanced by an order of magnitude in just the past 3-4 years, like fiber optics using WDM to cram more capacity into the same amount of bandwidth. What is 3g today is almost 4G in Japan and other nations.
So don’t bet against technology. Increased efficiency in wireless data protocols — OFDM, for instance — trumps spectrum capacity all the time.
Posted via email from glenn’s posterous
Speech is indeed effectively free in the age of YouTube. So that does undermine the scarcity argument traditionally used for the (now-defunct) “fairness doctrine” and the like. But some conservative pundits, like Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal today, argue this makes political campaign contribution limits both obsolete and unconstitutional. Why Campaign Political Speech Restrictions on Unions and Corporations Make No Sense [WSJ.com].
The problem is that while speech is free, campaign $$ is not. Crovitz equates money with political speech, something the Supreme Court did (erroneously in my view) way back in the 1970s in upholding some, but not all, Watergate-era campaign spending and contribution limits. That does not mean, as he implies, that restricting corporate political contributions is “silly,” because Cravitz’s own analysis shows that it is communication where technology has leveled the playing field, not political campaigns, with all their expensive pre-Web 2.0 trappings like air travel, rally planing and event staging.
In his defense, what Crovitz appears to be saying is that bans on pure corporate political speech, rather than monetary contributions, are problematic:
Whatever the arguments for blocking direct contributions by corporations and unions, McCain-Feingold goes beyond this and directly limits First Amendment speech. The Constitution doesn’t promise “equal” speech, just the freedom to speak.
I agree with that. But the premise that “direct contributions” are different should be the start, not a footnote, to this debate.
The Obama administration shocked a lot of people — including this author — when an advisor announced Sunday that taxing medical insurance benefits is on the table as part of its so-called “health care reform” initiative. White House Open to New Tax on Health Benefits [washingtonpost.com]. The explanation, namely that everything is negotiable, rings very hollow. Obama campaigned hard on a pledge that anyone earning less than $250,000 would not see a tax increase under his health care reform proposal. Indeed, this was a central point during the debates in differentiating Obama from John McCain and painting a picture of a candidate more in touch with the concerns of everyday Americans.
Part of the real explanation, of course, is that to avoid (correct) charges of budget-busting, the Obama administration needs to craft a more “revenue-neutral” plan, and thus really needs the incremental revenue from such taxes. But from my vantage point, this is both opportunistic and cynical. Why should insurance proceeds, used to defray health care expenses, be taxed when for almost all taxpayers, insurance premiums are not tax deductible? This makes no sense from a tax fairness or financial perspective. To paraphrase a famous Ronald Reagan quip from New Hampshire in 1980, “we paid for those health benefits, Mr. Obama!”
Technology has fundamentally changed the way we interact, do business and make political decisions over the past 15 years. And yet now, after an historic election, the Luddites are saying that technology has no place in government. According to the New York Times, on taking office as president in January, Barack Obama will be forced to stop using email and turn in his BlackBerry. Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? If Obama Has to, Yes He Can [NYTimes.com].
The rationales given for this are plain stupid — that presidential records need to be preserved and that private communications might be intercepted. The Bush Administration has ignored email preservation anyway. And all presidential communications, including face-to-face conversations, can be leaked, recorded or intercepted, regardless of technology. No, this reactionary rule is simply an effort by the Secret Service and the permanent bureaucracy in Washington to prevent change, to keep the president in the “walled garden” of the White House. John Kennedy famously went around the bureaucracy (which he compared to “nailing Jello to the wall”) and cultivated direct relationships with agency staffers. Barack, I’ll give you an email alias to use from your iPhone if you want. And I bet your friend Eric Schmidt at Google could do you even better!!
The lawyers at WilmerHale are undoubtedly excellent. But this "advice" is hardly new or newsworthy. Washington Lawyers' Advice to Silicon Valley: Don't Sit on Sideline [SiliconValley.com].
I've been representing high-tech companies, start-ups and VCs on technology policy issues for more than 15 years, including many many heavyweights — starting with Netscape at the dawn of the commercial Internet in 1995. To do a good job on tech issues, one must not only understand the technology itself, but how to relate to the values of Silicon Valley. So the question in my view is not whether the Valley will sit on the sidelines — Eric Schmidt's high-level economic advisory role with Obama shows clearly it does not — but rather how, when and on what issue(s) it will engage Washington. The days of the "ostrich syndrome," like Bill Gates in the early 1990s, ignoring D.C. in the hopes it would just go away, are passe — LONG long gone.
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has been a fixture for decades on Capitol Hill, which means by definition folks are afraid of him. In this case it also mean’s he’s dirty. Now the federal government — prosecuting Stevens for omitting $250,000 in home improvements from his financial disclosure forms — has totally botched the case by itself failing to disclose evidence to Stevens’ defense team. Judge Threatens to Throw Out Corruption Case Against Ted Stevens [L.A. Times].
That’s a Brady violation, so named for the Supreme Court case requiring disclosure of exculpatory materials to a criminal defendant. Basic, basic. Here the Assistant U.S. Attorney disclosed only a “redacted” — incomplete — copy of the government’s interview of its star witness. Turns out the missing stuff was also the good stuff. Good for Stevens and now bad for the people. In think this sullied old crook should be hounded out of office by the Alaska electorate or banned by the Senate Ethics Committee. A long time ago, Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo asked whether “the criminal should go free because the constable has blundered.” The answer to that is yes, but it’s no solace that a crooked politician gets away with corruption for such a stupid blunder.
So the Department of Justice has concluded that its Office of Legal Counsel and related hiring practices under President Bush broke civil service laws in favoring applicants with political connections and conservative political credentials. But they refuse to do anything about it. Justice Dept. Issues a Callback [washingtonpost.com].
"Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute," the attorney general said. " But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."
Wow, what a concept. If a government official breaks the law governing his or her core official functions, how can that NOT be a crime?
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December 30th, 2009 | 
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