Smokin’ guns: inhale. Better than tobacco and cheaper.
David S. Broder’s great column on the disillusionment with our political parties these days; Justin Blum’s article on the oil executives’ ‘retooling’ of whatever double-speak they passed off to our elected representatives as truth; Alito’s fingers in whatever pies he may have passed judgment on; Caroline Meyer and Terence O’Hara’s article on how the hurricane victims potentially face foreclosure on their mortgages (guess who wins big if and when this comes to pass?); big business’s big try at corralling that darned internet in order to make money on it; and last but not least, an article on Diebold’s messed up software which wants to ‘count’ our votes and which software Diebold will not make available to North Carolina folks who think discrepancies in vote counts might be a tad unconscionable makes enough smokin’ guns to arm a constituency mired in battle against corruption in our elected officials.
Speaking of ‘smokin’. This writer was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina: the heart’s home of American Tobacco Company and Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, among others, and when I was a girl, the Saturday shopping trips to downtown Durham were always footnoted by my mother’s comment to “Smell that! Doesn’t the tobacco smell good?” And it did—a very fragrant smell of miles of tobacco stored a few blocks from downtown Durham in those days, heightened by the humidity and heat of a southern summer morning.
This writer has been a committed smoker for all these years—sometimes five packs a day, at the height of my addiction to this demon weed. Currently, at sixty-one years of age, I have ‘normal’ heart and arteries, low cholesterol, high blood pressure (to be fair), and no cancer, now or in the past. Maybe cigarettes are bad. Maybe if more of these neo-cons smoked, the world would be better off. Specious reasoning, to be sure, according to the current red herrings and myths about cigarettes, (i.e., if everybody worries about somebody else’s smokin’, then nobody will notice the thousands and thousands of pounds of pollution that big business pours into the atmosphere on a daily basis). Please...
Where are your minds? It seems that a growing majority of Americans are so worried about denying someone else’s rights they’ve voted in a pack of criminals just because those same slippery dudes have convinced their constituency that they’ll vote against abortion, gay rights, and whatever else some crank-false-God-prophet has told them is wrong (and meanwhile send in your money).
This white tribal experience is no substitute for compassion, for openness of mind, for the benefits regarding the long-held belief that separation of church and state is a good thing, and for the good, ol’ Southern belief that “your rights end where mine begin, and the shotgun behind the door will concur”.
Abortion? Well, that’s something a mother has to live with if she does it and ask any woman who’s had one. She’ll have grown up now and lived to regret her choices (or not) forever. That is her business: not yours. Gay folks? Who really cares what goes on in somebody else’s bedroom? You can’t be made to be gay if you’re not gay, and gay folks are too busy enjoying a rich and pleasant sex life with willing partners to be concerned with folks who aren’t all that interested.
Perverts? Well, perverts are a different story entirely: child molesters deserve a quick death. Never mind all the whoop-tee-doo about their so-called rights. They don’t have any. Execute them and be done with it, before another child is taken, tortured, and murdered by some sociopathic moron who thinks his desire is worth more than the life of a child.
Come to think of it, there isn’t much difference between the religious right and the current crop of child-killing perverts—the ol’ “what-I-want-for-you-is-more- important-than-what-you-want” crowd. Not much difference there at all.
Give me a committed cigarette smoker any day.
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Lingering disillusionment
By David S. Broder
Syndicated Columnist
WASHINGTON — To understand why the level of public disillusionment with politics is so high in this country right now, it helps to go back a dozen years.
The Democrats took power in 1993 with a young and obviously talented Bill Clinton succeeding George H.W. Bush, who seemingly had played out the string on the shift to conservative government launched in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. Clinton took office as a plurality president, but with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate seemingly primed for action.
His first year did not go well. His first budget — with a tax increase for top-bracket earners and benefits for lower-income families — barely survived in Congress. He found himself snarled in unproductive fights over gays in the military and other side issues, and in the fall, his big initiatives — reorganization of government, approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and passage of health-care reform — were piling up in Congress.
By the spring of his second year, the most important politically of those priorities — the overhaul of the health-care-delivery system — was hopelessly mired in committee, unable to muster enough support even to bring it to a floor vote in the House or Senate. The problem that Clinton had recognized as most disturbing for families, for business and for all levels of government was left to fester, unsolved.
In November 1994, with thousands of disillusioned Democrats boycotting the polling places, the Republicans won nearly everything, retaking the Senate, capturing the House for the first time in 40 years, and boosting their strength in the state capitols.
The lingering effects of that failure in one-party Democratic government are still felt. While Clinton was able to win a second term and avoid conviction on the Lewinsky scandal impeachment charges, he was never again able — while campaigning for himself or others — to persuade voters to entrust his party with the reins of government.
At some level, the message that many voters took away from the experience was that Democrats may talk a good game, but they don't deliver. It has not helped that subsequent Democratic nominees Al Gore and John Kerry were people who had built their careers in the Senate, a place where the public knows that talk is cheap and action rare.
Fast forward now to 2005, five years after the voters (with a nudge from the Supreme Court) entrusted Republicans with complete control of the elected branches of the federal government. What do they have to show for it?
Well, taxes have been cut — as promised — more for the wealthy than for others, but that promise has been kept. The overall economy has grown, but — in part because of tax policy — the gap between the rich and the rest has increased. The nation, caught unawares, has suffered a grievous homeland attack and the chief instigator of that 9/11 savagery remains at large. We have invaded two countries seeking out terrorists — and years later, violence continues to cost the lives of Americans trying to pacify both Iraq and Afghanistan.
President Bush's chief domestic initiative — reform of the Social Security system — suffered the same fate as Clinton's health-care effort: So little agreement within his own party he was never able even to bring it to a vote.
The self-described "compassionate conservative" has been so lax in his budgetary policy that deficits have reached dismaying levels, and compassion was compromised by gross incompetence in the response to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Meantime, after 11 years of unbroken majority, congressional Republicans are displaying the same personal arrogance (in grabbing for favors) and the same penchant for petty scandals as plagued the Democrats after their 40-year run.
There is one difference. Congressional Republicans, by and large, have maintained greater cohesion and discipline than did the Democrats under Clinton. But the price has been subservience to White House whims and wishes. This has been the most compliant congressional leadership in modern times, one that until very recently was unwilling or incapable of asserting itself against even a minor presidential preference.
Now, with Bush weakened by the war and other problems, Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to scramble for safety by voting their districts, not heeding partisan commands.
It is not an edifying spectacle. And the result may well be what it was for the Democrats in 1994, when the cry, "Every Member for himself!!" turned into a rout.
Leaving behind one big question: When both parties have lost public confidence, where do voters turn?
David S. Broder's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is davidbroder@washpost.com
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
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Top Oil Company Executives Retool Responses on Energy Task Force Roles
Thursday, December 1, 2005; A23
It's time for another installment in the saga about the energy executives and the vice president.
The story began last month, when executives were asked by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) at a hearing if their companies participated in Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001. The chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co. and Chevron Corp. said no. The president of Shell Oil Co. said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.
But a White House document subsequently obtained by The Washington Post showed that officials from Exxon Mobil, Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil and BP America met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
Last week, the Republican staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee suggested that the executives did not mislead the committee because whatever they did with the task force did not meet the legal definition of "participate."
After the Post report, the energy panel asked the executives to clarify their testimony. The committee released the carefully crafted responses yesterday.
Ross Pillari, chief executive of BP America, said in his letter that company representatives met with task force staff "and provided them with comments on a range of energy policy matters." He said his response at the hearing -- that he did not know -- was truthful.
John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil, said that to his knowledge the company did not meet with the task force. However, he said, Shell representatives "did meet with the administration -- including the Vice President and his staff -- on a broad range of energy policy issues."
James J. Mulva, chairman of ConocoPhillips, said that he answered the question "based upon my knowledge of Phillips' conduct prior to the merger with Conoco and on my knowledge of ConocoPhillips' conduct subsequent to the merger." Officials of Conoco met with task force staff before the merger.
Chevron, whose statement was previously released, said the company provided written recommendations on energy policy to President Bush but did not participate in task force meetings. Exxon Mobil, which also previously made its statement public, said the company did not participate in the task force; but the company said it presented information on global energy supply and demand to an administration official.
Lautenberg, who has asked the Justice Department to investigate the executives' testimony, said he is not satisfied. "These responses are corporate doublespeak that only further demonstrate the need for a criminal investigation," he said yesterday.
-- Justin Blum
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Firm Noted in Complaint Directs Alito Investments
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 1, 2005; A06
Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in stocks, money market funds and mutual funds, many of them handled by Vanguard, the company at the center of a conflict-of-interest complaint leveled by some of his opponents.
Alito, an appellate court judge for 15 years, has money invested in more than a dozen Vanguard funds, according to his financial disclosure report for 2004, released yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Last May, when the report was filed, Alito had more than $50,000 each in Vanguard's Tax-Exempt Money Market Fund, Wellington Mutual Fund, Small Cap Stock Fund, Total Stock Market Index Fund and New Jersey Tax-Exempt Money Market.
His largest holding, however, was in Exxon Mobil Corp. common stock, valued at more than $100,000 and less than $250,000. He listed no financial liabilities and no outside income beyond the $6,000 he was paid for teaching a class at Seton Hall Law School.
Alito's precise wealth is not publicly known because the federal government disclosure forms require employees to list assets in broad ranges, not exact amounts.
When Alito was named to the appellate court in 1990, he told the Senate he would not rule in cases involving Vanguard, to avoid any possible conflict of interest. But in 2002, he ruled in a routine case that benefited Vanguard. When the losing party complained, Alito recused himself, and another panel of judges reheard the case and again ruled in Vanguard's favor.
Alito's critics do not allege that he could have benefited from his ruling, but they fault him for reneging on his promise to avoid cases involving Vanguard. Alito first blamed the situation on a courthouse computer system that failed to alert him to the possible conflict. He later said that his promise had been "unduly restrictive" and that it applied only to his initial time on the court.
According to the 2004 disclosure report, Alito held more than $15,000 each in U.S. savings bonds, Intel Corp. stock, McDonald's Corp. stock and a Fidelity stock mutual fund.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Hurricane Victims' Bills Coming Due
Many Homeowners Face Deadline for Mortgage Payments
By Caroline E. Mayer and Terence O'Hara
Washington Post Staff WritersThursday, December 1, 2005; D01
Katrina victims Ed and Elsa Gaskell realized only last week that their last three months' worth of mortgage payments on their damaged New Orleans home were due today.
After the hurricane, their mortgage company, like most lenders, suspended payments until Dec. 1.
The Gaskells said they thought that meant monthly payments would resume in December, with the three missed payments due at the end of their loan. But last week, they said, their mortgage lender called to say they needed to make all three payments now -- or face late fees and penalties as well as an adverse credit report.
Many lenders are extending the deadline for repayment or making arrangements to spread the payments over several months to make life easier on borrowers, some of whom are jobless and displaced.
For instance, New Orleans resident Louis Green has until January to make his first payment, but even that deadline is negotiable. "They told me we should talk again then to see what arrangements will be made." The Gaskells said they weren't given such leeway, although their lender, when asked about their situation, said the couple should call.
But as the moratorium on payments comes to an end, borrowers, lenders and investors holding the notes are heading into uncharted territory, without clear guidance from the government or a historical precedent for what to do next.
"We're at the point today where there are no hard and fast rules," said Kurt Pfotenhauer, senior vice president of government affairs for the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The result is confusion for already-stressed homeowners, said Mike Shea, executive director of Acorn Housing Corp., a national nonprofit group that provides free housing counseling to low- and moderate-income home buyers. "It's all over the map. Some lenders are granting a 30-day reprieve; some, six months." So far, few lenders have made extensions automatic, granting additional time only if a borrower specifically requests it.
Mortgage executives and banking regulators, saying they want to be flexible, are urging customers to contact lenders immediately if they need more relief.
The federal government and its sponsored mortgage investment companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee or own most U.S. mortgages, have taken measures to give borrowers more time. Shortly after Katrina hit, they announced the now-expiring 90-day moratorium on all loans in the affected area and gave companies the option of delaying payments up to a year on a case-by-case basis.
Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development instructed lenders who provide federally insured mortgages to low- and moderate-income home buyers to extend additional relief to Katrina and Rita victims and told lenders to refrain from moving ahead on any foreclosures until Feb. 28. Yesterday, Freddie Mac announced a similar order and also said it is modifying existing policies to expedite further mortgage relief, while Fannie Mae asked its lenders to refrain from reporting hurricane-related delinquencies to credit reporting agencies. Also yesterday, federal and state financial regulators encouraged lenders to provide flexible repayment terms to borrowers affected by the storms.
That followed a meeting on Tuesday by a group of bankers, consumer group representatives and regulators from several federal banking agencies. According to officials who attended the private meeting, consumer groups pressed for an automatic one-year stay of mortgage payments, late fees, penalty interest and adverse credit reports for all victims in the declared disaster areas. Payments could resume sooner if the property is not significantly damaged or if the homeowner has a job and has received insurance payments covering the damage.
The mortgage industry, on the other hand, is proposing an additional 90-day automatic reprieve but for only the hardest-hit homeowners -- those with completely uninhabitable, uninsured homes; the rest of the victims could get waivers, but on only a case-by-case basis.
"The clock is ticking, and we need to make a decision on what to do," said Peter K. Gwaltney, head of the Louisiana Bankers Association. "We want to do everything we can for our customers, to make sure they are here in the long run; we don't want to give them any incentive to leave or not come back. We're looking to the regulatory agencies to see how flexible we can be, not what we can get away with."
Houston's Litton Loan Servicing LP, which receives monthly payments on about 500 mortgage loans in Katrina-affected areas, is still in the process of determining where many borrowers are and what condition their homes are in. Larry B. Litton Jr., chief operating officer, said his biggest problem is lack of information about the status of the actual properties. Of the 500 Gulf Coast loans totaling $85 million that Litton services, he has good information about the status of only 100 of the properties.
"It's going to be a very slow process," Litton said. "In many cases, we won't know about the actual condition of these loans for another three to six months." Litton is not planning on beginning foreclosure proceedings any time soon, even on borrowers he has not heard from.
"I can't imagine a servicer is going to foreclose on a property right now, because what are you going to do with the property? Sell it? It makes no sense to own property in the city of New Orleans right now," he said.
New Orleans-based Standard Mortgage Corp., one of the most active mortgage lenders in the metropolitan area, is accepting signed payment plans -- even a pledge scratched out on a napkin -- with a promise to become current by August of next year if borrowers in the disaster areas can't make their Dec. 1 payment deadline.
Metairie Bank & Trust, a small, 56-year-old commercial bank in Jefferson Parish, granted an automatic four-month deferral of payments after the flooding to all of its 5,000 borrowers. Most of those borrowers are now current, said chief executive Ric Smith. For those who aren't, the bank this week began sending letters reminding borrowers that they are expected to become current on their interest payments by Jan. 1.
"But for those that ask us -- and all they have to do is call us and ask us -- we'll let them push the interest payments back," Smith said. He added that the bank has not initiated any foreclosures on loans secured by real estate, "and we don't plan to."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Executive Wants to Charge for Web Speed
Some Say Small Firms Could Be Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 1, 2005; D05
A senior telecommunications executive said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates.
William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.
Or, Smith said, his company should be allowed to charge a rival voice-over-Internet firm so that its service can operate with the same quality as BellSouth's offering.
Network operators can identify the digital "packets" of content moving through their wires from sites and services and can block some or put others at the head of the stream.
But Smith was quick to say that Internet service providers should not be able to block or discriminate against Web content or services by degrading their performance.
Rather, he said, a pay-for-performance marketplace should be allowed to develop on top of a baseline service level that all content providers would enjoy.
"If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."
Smith said his company supports the latest draft of a House telecommunications bill that would prohibits network operators from impeding Internet content but allow the type of marketplace Smith envisions.
Several big technology firms and public interest groups say that approach would enshrine Internet access providers as online toll booths, favoring certain content and shutting out small companies trying to compete with their offerings.
"Prioritization is just another word for degrading your competitor," said Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group. "If we want to ruin the Internet, we'll turn it into a cable TV system" that carries programming from only those who pay the cable operators for transmission.
In a recent letter to Congress, a coalition of technology companies called on members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to strengthen the draft bill's "network neutrality" provisions, some of which were recently changed in response to lobbying by telephone and cable firms.
"The incredible potential of broadband will be severely compromised if network operators are permitted to be the gatekeepers of the Internet, deciding what content, applications and services succeed or fail on the Internet," wrote the coalition, which includes Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc., Google and IAC/InterActive Corp.
Consumer groups wonder, for example, how any Web start-up that might want to challenge an incumbent could expect to outspend it to get top or even equal performance over a network charging for the privilege.
Smith, echoing recent sentiments by AT&T Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr., responded that network operators must be free to control the type and quality of service on the system in which they have invested heavily.
Legislating otherwise "would be the same thing as saying to Google, 'I think we ought to have regulation on Google that says when I enter a search term, the top search result is always a random event,' " Smith said, claiming that Google allows clients to pay to influence the ranking of search results. In fact, Google does not allow payments to influence general search results, although advertisers pay for top billing on the lists that run on the right side of Google's pages.
Smith said the ability to prioritize traffic would benefit consumers, such as with online services providing medical alerts. And he said his company wants to be able to assure vendors such as online-gaming firms that their subscribers will get top performance even when there is heavy network traffic, which can slow a system.
Smith said BellSouth is especially concerned about new-generation television services it wants to provide via the Internet that would require large amounts of bandwidth.
Allowing it to give priority to TV traffic would ensure that television quality does not decline when other heavy-bandwidth applications are used simultaneously.
Sohn said claims of bandwidth scarcity are overblown. The real agenda, she said, is to put rival services at a disadvantage.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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The Register » Internet and Law »
Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/30/diebold_hides_source/
It's official: Diebold election bugware can't be trusted
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Published Wednesday 30th November 2005 14:50 GMT
Diebold would rather lose all of its voting machine business in North Carolina than open its source code to state election officials as required by law, the Associated Press reports.
Due to irregularities in the 2004 election traced to touch screen terminals, North Carolina has taken the very reasonable precaution of requiring vendors of electronic voting gizmos to place all of the source code in escrow. Diebold has objected to the possibility of criminal sanctions if they fail to comply, and argued for an exemption before Wake County Superior Court Judge Narley Cashwell. The judge declined to issue an exemption, and Diebold has concluded that it has no choice but withdraw from the state.
The company's explanation is that their machines contain Microsoft software, which they have no right to make available to state election officials. This seems disingenuous, as it is hard to imagine Microsoft suing Diebold for complying with the law. It would hardly be Diebold's fault if it released MS code to a lawful authority on demand; that issue would be something for MS and North Carolina to work out.
One far-fetched explanation would be that MS has licensed its software to Diebold with a provision that the company withdraw from jurisdictions where the law requires the release of its source code. It's possible, but there's no reason to believe it.
A considerably more plausible explanation is that Diebold is using this non-problem as an excuse to keep its bugware from the prying eyes of government regulators. And the most likely reason for that is that they've got a lot of blunders to hide. If North Carolina were to reject the machines on the basis of their software, other states would undoubtedly become suspicious, and begin doing their own investigations. So in that case, withdrawing from the market is the smartest move the company can make.
But if the software is as good as the company claims, then North Carolina's future endorsement will make for excellent free advertising. Withdrawing from the market would be a very foolish move in that case, but, again, only if Diebold has nothing to hide. ®
Related stories
Florida e-vote conspiracy theories grow (12 November 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/12/florida_e-vote_conspiracy_theories_grow/ Did electronic voting pass the test? (5 November 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/05/us_election_electronic_voting/ E-vote kit makers go 'shared source' (28 October 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/28/evote_source_stunt/ California sues Diebold over e-voting snafu (8 September 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/08/calif_sues_diebold/ California green lights e-voting (25 August 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/25/evoting_california/ E-voting terminals: gambling with data? (20 July 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/20/e_voting_terminals/ We want our e-voting paper trail (11 July 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/11/evoting_paper_trail/ E-voting security: getting it right (8 July 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/08/getting_e-voting_security_right/ E-voting security: looking good on paper? (7 July 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/07/e_voting_security/
© Copyright 2005
Speaking of ‘smokin’. This writer was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina: the heart’s home of American Tobacco Company and Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, among others, and when I was a girl, the Saturday shopping trips to downtown Durham were always footnoted by my mother’s comment to “Smell that! Doesn’t the tobacco smell good?” And it did—a very fragrant smell of miles of tobacco stored a few blocks from downtown Durham in those days, heightened by the humidity and heat of a southern summer morning.
This writer has been a committed smoker for all these years—sometimes five packs a day, at the height of my addiction to this demon weed. Currently, at sixty-one years of age, I have ‘normal’ heart and arteries, low cholesterol, high blood pressure (to be fair), and no cancer, now or in the past. Maybe cigarettes are bad. Maybe if more of these neo-cons smoked, the world would be better off. Specious reasoning, to be sure, according to the current red herrings and myths about cigarettes, (i.e., if everybody worries about somebody else’s smokin’, then nobody will notice the thousands and thousands of pounds of pollution that big business pours into the atmosphere on a daily basis). Please...
Where are your minds? It seems that a growing majority of Americans are so worried about denying someone else’s rights they’ve voted in a pack of criminals just because those same slippery dudes have convinced their constituency that they’ll vote against abortion, gay rights, and whatever else some crank-false-God-prophet has told them is wrong (and meanwhile send in your money).
This white tribal experience is no substitute for compassion, for openness of mind, for the benefits regarding the long-held belief that separation of church and state is a good thing, and for the good, ol’ Southern belief that “your rights end where mine begin, and the shotgun behind the door will concur”.
Abortion? Well, that’s something a mother has to live with if she does it and ask any woman who’s had one. She’ll have grown up now and lived to regret her choices (or not) forever. That is her business: not yours. Gay folks? Who really cares what goes on in somebody else’s bedroom? You can’t be made to be gay if you’re not gay, and gay folks are too busy enjoying a rich and pleasant sex life with willing partners to be concerned with folks who aren’t all that interested.
Perverts? Well, perverts are a different story entirely: child molesters deserve a quick death. Never mind all the whoop-tee-doo about their so-called rights. They don’t have any. Execute them and be done with it, before another child is taken, tortured, and murdered by some sociopathic moron who thinks his desire is worth more than the life of a child.
Come to think of it, there isn’t much difference between the religious right and the current crop of child-killing perverts—the ol’ “what-I-want-for-you-is-more- important-than-what-you-want” crowd. Not much difference there at all.
Give me a committed cigarette smoker any day.
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Lingering disillusionment
By David S. Broder
Syndicated Columnist
WASHINGTON — To understand why the level of public disillusionment with politics is so high in this country right now, it helps to go back a dozen years.
The Democrats took power in 1993 with a young and obviously talented Bill Clinton succeeding George H.W. Bush, who seemingly had played out the string on the shift to conservative government launched in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. Clinton took office as a plurality president, but with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate seemingly primed for action.
His first year did not go well. His first budget — with a tax increase for top-bracket earners and benefits for lower-income families — barely survived in Congress. He found himself snarled in unproductive fights over gays in the military and other side issues, and in the fall, his big initiatives — reorganization of government, approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and passage of health-care reform — were piling up in Congress.
By the spring of his second year, the most important politically of those priorities — the overhaul of the health-care-delivery system — was hopelessly mired in committee, unable to muster enough support even to bring it to a floor vote in the House or Senate. The problem that Clinton had recognized as most disturbing for families, for business and for all levels of government was left to fester, unsolved.
In November 1994, with thousands of disillusioned Democrats boycotting the polling places, the Republicans won nearly everything, retaking the Senate, capturing the House for the first time in 40 years, and boosting their strength in the state capitols.
The lingering effects of that failure in one-party Democratic government are still felt. While Clinton was able to win a second term and avoid conviction on the Lewinsky scandal impeachment charges, he was never again able — while campaigning for himself or others — to persuade voters to entrust his party with the reins of government.
At some level, the message that many voters took away from the experience was that Democrats may talk a good game, but they don't deliver. It has not helped that subsequent Democratic nominees Al Gore and John Kerry were people who had built their careers in the Senate, a place where the public knows that talk is cheap and action rare.
Fast forward now to 2005, five years after the voters (with a nudge from the Supreme Court) entrusted Republicans with complete control of the elected branches of the federal government. What do they have to show for it?
Well, taxes have been cut — as promised — more for the wealthy than for others, but that promise has been kept. The overall economy has grown, but — in part because of tax policy — the gap between the rich and the rest has increased. The nation, caught unawares, has suffered a grievous homeland attack and the chief instigator of that 9/11 savagery remains at large. We have invaded two countries seeking out terrorists — and years later, violence continues to cost the lives of Americans trying to pacify both Iraq and Afghanistan.
President Bush's chief domestic initiative — reform of the Social Security system — suffered the same fate as Clinton's health-care effort: So little agreement within his own party he was never able even to bring it to a vote.
The self-described "compassionate conservative" has been so lax in his budgetary policy that deficits have reached dismaying levels, and compassion was compromised by gross incompetence in the response to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Meantime, after 11 years of unbroken majority, congressional Republicans are displaying the same personal arrogance (in grabbing for favors) and the same penchant for petty scandals as plagued the Democrats after their 40-year run.
There is one difference. Congressional Republicans, by and large, have maintained greater cohesion and discipline than did the Democrats under Clinton. But the price has been subservience to White House whims and wishes. This has been the most compliant congressional leadership in modern times, one that until very recently was unwilling or incapable of asserting itself against even a minor presidential preference.
Now, with Bush weakened by the war and other problems, Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to scramble for safety by voting their districts, not heeding partisan commands.
It is not an edifying spectacle. And the result may well be what it was for the Democrats in 1994, when the cry, "Every Member for himself!!" turned into a rout.
Leaving behind one big question: When both parties have lost public confidence, where do voters turn?
David S. Broder's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is davidbroder@washpost.com
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
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Top Oil Company Executives Retool Responses on Energy Task Force Roles
Thursday, December 1, 2005; A23
It's time for another installment in the saga about the energy executives and the vice president.
The story began last month, when executives were asked by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) at a hearing if their companies participated in Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001. The chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co. and Chevron Corp. said no. The president of Shell Oil Co. said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.
But a White House document subsequently obtained by The Washington Post showed that officials from Exxon Mobil, Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil and BP America met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
Last week, the Republican staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee suggested that the executives did not mislead the committee because whatever they did with the task force did not meet the legal definition of "participate."
After the Post report, the energy panel asked the executives to clarify their testimony. The committee released the carefully crafted responses yesterday.
Ross Pillari, chief executive of BP America, said in his letter that company representatives met with task force staff "and provided them with comments on a range of energy policy matters." He said his response at the hearing -- that he did not know -- was truthful.
John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil, said that to his knowledge the company did not meet with the task force. However, he said, Shell representatives "did meet with the administration -- including the Vice President and his staff -- on a broad range of energy policy issues."
James J. Mulva, chairman of ConocoPhillips, said that he answered the question "based upon my knowledge of Phillips' conduct prior to the merger with Conoco and on my knowledge of ConocoPhillips' conduct subsequent to the merger." Officials of Conoco met with task force staff before the merger.
Chevron, whose statement was previously released, said the company provided written recommendations on energy policy to President Bush but did not participate in task force meetings. Exxon Mobil, which also previously made its statement public, said the company did not participate in the task force; but the company said it presented information on global energy supply and demand to an administration official.
Lautenberg, who has asked the Justice Department to investigate the executives' testimony, said he is not satisfied. "These responses are corporate doublespeak that only further demonstrate the need for a criminal investigation," he said yesterday.
-- Justin Blum
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Firm Noted in Complaint Directs Alito Investments
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 1, 2005; A06
Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in stocks, money market funds and mutual funds, many of them handled by Vanguard, the company at the center of a conflict-of-interest complaint leveled by some of his opponents.
Alito, an appellate court judge for 15 years, has money invested in more than a dozen Vanguard funds, according to his financial disclosure report for 2004, released yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Last May, when the report was filed, Alito had more than $50,000 each in Vanguard's Tax-Exempt Money Market Fund, Wellington Mutual Fund, Small Cap Stock Fund, Total Stock Market Index Fund and New Jersey Tax-Exempt Money Market.
His largest holding, however, was in Exxon Mobil Corp. common stock, valued at more than $100,000 and less than $250,000. He listed no financial liabilities and no outside income beyond the $6,000 he was paid for teaching a class at Seton Hall Law School.
Alito's precise wealth is not publicly known because the federal government disclosure forms require employees to list assets in broad ranges, not exact amounts.
When Alito was named to the appellate court in 1990, he told the Senate he would not rule in cases involving Vanguard, to avoid any possible conflict of interest. But in 2002, he ruled in a routine case that benefited Vanguard. When the losing party complained, Alito recused himself, and another panel of judges reheard the case and again ruled in Vanguard's favor.
Alito's critics do not allege that he could have benefited from his ruling, but they fault him for reneging on his promise to avoid cases involving Vanguard. Alito first blamed the situation on a courthouse computer system that failed to alert him to the possible conflict. He later said that his promise had been "unduly restrictive" and that it applied only to his initial time on the court.
According to the 2004 disclosure report, Alito held more than $15,000 each in U.S. savings bonds, Intel Corp. stock, McDonald's Corp. stock and a Fidelity stock mutual fund.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Hurricane Victims' Bills Coming Due
Many Homeowners Face Deadline for Mortgage Payments
By Caroline E. Mayer and Terence O'Hara
Washington Post Staff WritersThursday, December 1, 2005; D01
Katrina victims Ed and Elsa Gaskell realized only last week that their last three months' worth of mortgage payments on their damaged New Orleans home were due today.
After the hurricane, their mortgage company, like most lenders, suspended payments until Dec. 1.
The Gaskells said they thought that meant monthly payments would resume in December, with the three missed payments due at the end of their loan. But last week, they said, their mortgage lender called to say they needed to make all three payments now -- or face late fees and penalties as well as an adverse credit report.
Many lenders are extending the deadline for repayment or making arrangements to spread the payments over several months to make life easier on borrowers, some of whom are jobless and displaced.
For instance, New Orleans resident Louis Green has until January to make his first payment, but even that deadline is negotiable. "They told me we should talk again then to see what arrangements will be made." The Gaskells said they weren't given such leeway, although their lender, when asked about their situation, said the couple should call.
But as the moratorium on payments comes to an end, borrowers, lenders and investors holding the notes are heading into uncharted territory, without clear guidance from the government or a historical precedent for what to do next.
"We're at the point today where there are no hard and fast rules," said Kurt Pfotenhauer, senior vice president of government affairs for the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The result is confusion for already-stressed homeowners, said Mike Shea, executive director of Acorn Housing Corp., a national nonprofit group that provides free housing counseling to low- and moderate-income home buyers. "It's all over the map. Some lenders are granting a 30-day reprieve; some, six months." So far, few lenders have made extensions automatic, granting additional time only if a borrower specifically requests it.
Mortgage executives and banking regulators, saying they want to be flexible, are urging customers to contact lenders immediately if they need more relief.
The federal government and its sponsored mortgage investment companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee or own most U.S. mortgages, have taken measures to give borrowers more time. Shortly after Katrina hit, they announced the now-expiring 90-day moratorium on all loans in the affected area and gave companies the option of delaying payments up to a year on a case-by-case basis.
Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development instructed lenders who provide federally insured mortgages to low- and moderate-income home buyers to extend additional relief to Katrina and Rita victims and told lenders to refrain from moving ahead on any foreclosures until Feb. 28. Yesterday, Freddie Mac announced a similar order and also said it is modifying existing policies to expedite further mortgage relief, while Fannie Mae asked its lenders to refrain from reporting hurricane-related delinquencies to credit reporting agencies. Also yesterday, federal and state financial regulators encouraged lenders to provide flexible repayment terms to borrowers affected by the storms.
That followed a meeting on Tuesday by a group of bankers, consumer group representatives and regulators from several federal banking agencies. According to officials who attended the private meeting, consumer groups pressed for an automatic one-year stay of mortgage payments, late fees, penalty interest and adverse credit reports for all victims in the declared disaster areas. Payments could resume sooner if the property is not significantly damaged or if the homeowner has a job and has received insurance payments covering the damage.
The mortgage industry, on the other hand, is proposing an additional 90-day automatic reprieve but for only the hardest-hit homeowners -- those with completely uninhabitable, uninsured homes; the rest of the victims could get waivers, but on only a case-by-case basis.
"The clock is ticking, and we need to make a decision on what to do," said Peter K. Gwaltney, head of the Louisiana Bankers Association. "We want to do everything we can for our customers, to make sure they are here in the long run; we don't want to give them any incentive to leave or not come back. We're looking to the regulatory agencies to see how flexible we can be, not what we can get away with."
Houston's Litton Loan Servicing LP, which receives monthly payments on about 500 mortgage loans in Katrina-affected areas, is still in the process of determining where many borrowers are and what condition their homes are in. Larry B. Litton Jr., chief operating officer, said his biggest problem is lack of information about the status of the actual properties. Of the 500 Gulf Coast loans totaling $85 million that Litton services, he has good information about the status of only 100 of the properties.
"It's going to be a very slow process," Litton said. "In many cases, we won't know about the actual condition of these loans for another three to six months." Litton is not planning on beginning foreclosure proceedings any time soon, even on borrowers he has not heard from.
"I can't imagine a servicer is going to foreclose on a property right now, because what are you going to do with the property? Sell it? It makes no sense to own property in the city of New Orleans right now," he said.
New Orleans-based Standard Mortgage Corp., one of the most active mortgage lenders in the metropolitan area, is accepting signed payment plans -- even a pledge scratched out on a napkin -- with a promise to become current by August of next year if borrowers in the disaster areas can't make their Dec. 1 payment deadline.
Metairie Bank & Trust, a small, 56-year-old commercial bank in Jefferson Parish, granted an automatic four-month deferral of payments after the flooding to all of its 5,000 borrowers. Most of those borrowers are now current, said chief executive Ric Smith. For those who aren't, the bank this week began sending letters reminding borrowers that they are expected to become current on their interest payments by Jan. 1.
"But for those that ask us -- and all they have to do is call us and ask us -- we'll let them push the interest payments back," Smith said. He added that the bank has not initiated any foreclosures on loans secured by real estate, "and we don't plan to."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Executive Wants to Charge for Web Speed
Some Say Small Firms Could Be Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 1, 2005; D05
A senior telecommunications executive said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates.
William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.
Or, Smith said, his company should be allowed to charge a rival voice-over-Internet firm so that its service can operate with the same quality as BellSouth's offering.
Network operators can identify the digital "packets" of content moving through their wires from sites and services and can block some or put others at the head of the stream.
But Smith was quick to say that Internet service providers should not be able to block or discriminate against Web content or services by degrading their performance.
Rather, he said, a pay-for-performance marketplace should be allowed to develop on top of a baseline service level that all content providers would enjoy.
"If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."
Smith said his company supports the latest draft of a House telecommunications bill that would prohibits network operators from impeding Internet content but allow the type of marketplace Smith envisions.
Several big technology firms and public interest groups say that approach would enshrine Internet access providers as online toll booths, favoring certain content and shutting out small companies trying to compete with their offerings.
"Prioritization is just another word for degrading your competitor," said Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group. "If we want to ruin the Internet, we'll turn it into a cable TV system" that carries programming from only those who pay the cable operators for transmission.
In a recent letter to Congress, a coalition of technology companies called on members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to strengthen the draft bill's "network neutrality" provisions, some of which were recently changed in response to lobbying by telephone and cable firms.
"The incredible potential of broadband will be severely compromised if network operators are permitted to be the gatekeepers of the Internet, deciding what content, applications and services succeed or fail on the Internet," wrote the coalition, which includes Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc., Google and IAC/InterActive Corp.
Consumer groups wonder, for example, how any Web start-up that might want to challenge an incumbent could expect to outspend it to get top or even equal performance over a network charging for the privilege.
Smith, echoing recent sentiments by AT&T Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr., responded that network operators must be free to control the type and quality of service on the system in which they have invested heavily.
Legislating otherwise "would be the same thing as saying to Google, 'I think we ought to have regulation on Google that says when I enter a search term, the top search result is always a random event,' " Smith said, claiming that Google allows clients to pay to influence the ranking of search results. In fact, Google does not allow payments to influence general search results, although advertisers pay for top billing on the lists that run on the right side of Google's pages.
Smith said the ability to prioritize traffic would benefit consumers, such as with online services providing medical alerts. And he said his company wants to be able to assure vendors such as online-gaming firms that their subscribers will get top performance even when there is heavy network traffic, which can slow a system.
Smith said BellSouth is especially concerned about new-generation television services it wants to provide via the Internet that would require large amounts of bandwidth.
Allowing it to give priority to TV traffic would ensure that television quality does not decline when other heavy-bandwidth applications are used simultaneously.
Sohn said claims of bandwidth scarcity are overblown. The real agenda, she said, is to put rival services at a disadvantage.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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The Register » Internet and Law »
Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/30/diebold_hides_source/
It's official: Diebold election bugware can't be trusted
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Published Wednesday 30th November 2005 14:50 GMT
Diebold would rather lose all of its voting machine business in North Carolina than open its source code to state election officials as required by law, the Associated Press reports.
Due to irregularities in the 2004 election traced to touch screen terminals, North Carolina has taken the very reasonable precaution of requiring vendors of electronic voting gizmos to place all of the source code in escrow. Diebold has objected to the possibility of criminal sanctions if they fail to comply, and argued for an exemption before Wake County Superior Court Judge Narley Cashwell. The judge declined to issue an exemption, and Diebold has concluded that it has no choice but withdraw from the state.
The company's explanation is that their machines contain Microsoft software, which they have no right to make available to state election officials. This seems disingenuous, as it is hard to imagine Microsoft suing Diebold for complying with the law. It would hardly be Diebold's fault if it released MS code to a lawful authority on demand; that issue would be something for MS and North Carolina to work out.
One far-fetched explanation would be that MS has licensed its software to Diebold with a provision that the company withdraw from jurisdictions where the law requires the release of its source code. It's possible, but there's no reason to believe it.
A considerably more plausible explanation is that Diebold is using this non-problem as an excuse to keep its bugware from the prying eyes of government regulators. And the most likely reason for that is that they've got a lot of blunders to hide. If North Carolina were to reject the machines on the basis of their software, other states would undoubtedly become suspicious, and begin doing their own investigations. So in that case, withdrawing from the market is the smartest move the company can make.
But if the software is as good as the company claims, then North Carolina's future endorsement will make for excellent free advertising. Withdrawing from the market would be a very foolish move in that case, but, again, only if Diebold has nothing to hide. ®
Related stories
Florida e-vote conspiracy theories grow (12 November 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/12/florida_e-vote_conspiracy_theories_grow/ Did electronic voting pass the test? (5 November 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/05/us_election_electronic_voting/ E-vote kit makers go 'shared source' (28 October 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/28/evote_source_stunt/ California sues Diebold over e-voting snafu (8 September 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/08/calif_sues_diebold/ California green lights e-voting (25 August 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/25/evoting_california/ E-voting terminals: gambling with data? (20 July 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/20/e_voting_terminals/ We want our e-voting paper trail (11 July 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/11/evoting_paper_trail/ E-voting security: getting it right (8 July 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/08/getting_e-voting_security_right/ E-voting security: looking good on paper? (7 July 2004)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/07/e_voting_security/
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