Category Archives: Politics

Reading List October 24, 2005

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  • The Entrepreneurial Mind Set (Moore’s Lore) – Dana Blankenhorn is entering the entrepreneurial realm himself and it has caused him to take that position that countries like China and India are developing more entrepreneurs, the US education system stinks and the Baby Boomers have killed the golden goose (the last are my words, not his).  It’s an interesting take on our society right now.
  • The Fall of the Warrior King (New York Times Magazine) – The story of Col. Nick Sassaman, his role in Iraq and how it led to his fall from grace.
  • Good News: People are Social Animals (Fractals of Change) – Tom Evslin talks about why peer-driven services on line have developed, and how/if they will continue to work.

Hometown Heroes?

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In a stunning display of PR-prowess (my tongue is firmly planted in cheek) Winston-Salem’s own corporate goliath, R.J. Reynolds, allowed Tom Delay to fly to his arraignment in Texas on one of its corporate jets.  It also seems that the company has contributed $17,000 to Delay’s legal defense fund.

Well I guess it is fitting that the 2nd-largest US manufacturer of cancer sticks is jetting Congress’s own melanoma around the country.

Mom was right; you are judged by the company you keep.

It Gets Worser and Worser

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I’m on record as thinking that the vast majority of the members of the US Congress and the current administration are a bunch of sniveling, self-absorbed bastards and bastardettes.  The Vice President isn’t doing anything to change my mind.  Some highlights:

  • Vice President Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options
  • 100,000 shares at $54.5000 (vested), expire 12-03-07
    33,333 shares at $28.1250 (vested), expire 12-02-08
    300,000 shares at $39.5000 (vested), expire 12-02-09
  • Halliburton shares are currently trading at $61.27
  • Halliburton shares were trading at $17.93 in January ’03
  • Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2001: $205,298
  • Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2002: $162,392
  • Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2003: $178,437
  • Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2004: $194,852
  • The Vice President has attempted to fend off criticism by signing an
    agreement to donate the after-tax profits from these stock options to
    charities of his choice, and his lawyer has said he will not take any
    tax deduction for the donations. Valued at over $9 million, the Vice
    President could exercise his stock options for a substantial windfall,
    benefiting not only his designated charities, but also providing
    Halliburton with a tax deduction.
  • In September 2003, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a
    memorandum to Senator Lautenberg concluding that holding stock options
    while in elective office does constitute a "financial interest"
    regardless of whether the holder of the options will donate proceeds to
    charities. CRS also found that receiving deferred compensation is a
    financial interest.

Of course the source of alot of this is Senator Lautenburg who is a member of the same dishonorable fraternity as the Vice President (that would be the Senate), so you have to make sure that the information is correct.  All of the numbers are all public record, as is the Congressional Research Service memo, so I’d say the data is right.  The context might be a different story…nah.

I’m not saying the Vice President talked the President into going to war for the purpose of Halliburton’s profits.  I am saying that it’s unseemly for the Vice President to retain any ties to his old company when the US government is one of its key customers, and was when the Vice President was elected. I am also saying that all the money he’s received from Halliburton since the start of the war is blood money. Like I said, unseemly.

Reading List October 4, 2005

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  • Important Stock Tip (The Post Money Value) – A venture capitalist thinks the news of desktop applications’ demise is greatly exaggerated.
  • Web 2.0! = A Check (The Post Money Value) – The new-new thing is getting old.
  • It Just Doesn’t Matter (Patrick Eakes) – Patrick doesn’t care about major league baseball anymore (not that he hates it, he’s just indifferent), and I’m with him there.  It was great seeing the Expos turn into the Nationals and see my kids and my friends’ kids really get into it.  But this year’s Nationals were lightning in a bottle because they had to play with kids and re-treads and because Washington had baseball-starved fans in a long-neglected market.  Once the money kicks in and the Nats begin to look like the Mets or the Braves it will be harder to get excited.  From national pastime to irrelevance, what a shame.
  • Blogs and Marketing (The Lex Files) – Lex Alexander points to a report on how well some ads campaigns are doing via blogs, and thinks that it is good news for the Greensboro News & Records "Hometown Hubs" effort.
  • The Road to Greenville (A Little Urbanity) – Greenville, SC offers some great lessons in urban planning.

Reading List October 3, 2005

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  • Geeks and the Technology Feedback Filter (The Post Money Value) – Geeks have a hard time communicating in laymen’s terms, and that’s a problem.
  • The Tower of Babel Has Fallen (Moore’s Lore) – Is the internet about to be broken up into "alternate, regional, and national authorities, replicating the
    stupidity of the old monopoly telecomm system, and preventing all but
    the elites of various nations from reaching one another?" Dana thinks so.
  • Internet War Begins…in the US? (Moore’s Lore) – A private company has established its own DNS root server for a proprietary domain name.  Apparently this is bad, and is a bad omen for the internet in general.  I’m not smart enough to know, but I trust Dana’s judgment on this one.
  • Business Blogging != Executive Blogging (The Long Tail) – If you think business blogging is all about the CEO writing missives then you’ve got it all wrong.

Lewisville Politicians Face the Public October 20

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The Lewisville Civic Club is hosting a Candidate’s Forum on October 20, 2005 from 7:30 – 10:00 p.m. at the Lewisville Elementary School auditorium.

Click here to see the candidate bios (PDF) and informational flyer about the event.

Lewisville is a great little town to live in and although we’ve only lived here for 16 months we are very interested in helping it stay that way. As with most communities Lewisville is facing significant changes in the coming years and the leaders we select now will have a large impact on the direction that change takes.

On Saturday Celeste and I attended a dinner hosted by the Mayor for the town’s volunteer community (members of various boards and committees) and we definitely had the sense that the town has a lot of people who have lived here most of their lives and have seen it grow from a rural, agricultural community into a bedroom community for Winston-Salem.  Now they are faced with the inevitable development of becoming a full-fledged suburb of the city.

Having grown up in the Northern Virginia area Celeste and I saw first hand what happens when areas grow in a haphazard and uncontrolled fashion.  Sprawl, traffic and a general degradation of quality of life.  That’s one of the things that prompted us to move to Lewisville and that’s why we don’t want the same thing to happen here.

But change happens and the only thing we can do is decide how change happens.  As much as some people might like to keep everything as-is, it just doesn’t work that way.  If I’m in town on the 20th I plan on attending the meeting to find out which candidates understand controlled growth and how to build a sustainable community and those are the folks I plan on voting for.

Specifically I think we need to concentrate on developing a mixed-use town square, with green space, shopping areas that can be easily accessed on foot and homes on smaller lots (cluster homes maybe).  Mixed use will broaden the towns tax base, give residents an option for shopping without having to hop in their cars, and build on the activities being held in Shallowford Square.

Quick aside: Events like the free Friday night movies in Shallowford Square (next one is School of Rock on October, 15), and the free theater productions put on in the square are a great family activity.  Definitely a jewel in the town’s crown…here’s a schedule of events.

Something else I’d like to see is for us to embrace the bicycling community.  We literally have dozens (maybe even hundreds) of visitors from outside the town who drive in, park their cars and then ride the bike routes on roads throughout Lewisville.  Why not capture some of that energy by hosting special events to attract them and perhaps even contribute a few dollars to Lewisville’s coffers?

Okay, I could go on and on, but I won’t.  What I will do is get more involved, starting on the 20th.

Reading List September 28, 2005

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  • I Am a Broadband Liberal (A VC) – Fred Wilson is a liberal and proud of it.  Any bets on how many comments he gets on this post?
  • Wikimania (A VC) – Fred’s really liking his JotSpot wiki as an organizational tool.
  • Apple Veep Responds to Blogger Outcry (MicroPersuasion) – An Apple VP responded to the criticism of the Nano in the blogosphere and main-stream media.  Jeff just wishes Dell would learn from Apple.
  • NYC Mayor Bloomberg Rewrites Opponent’s Blog (MicroPersuasion) – Mayor Bloomberg’s staff caught an error on his opponent’s blog and cried foul.  Just goes to show that it’s not enough to blog, you must blog well.
  • Seeing the Forest for the Flood (Jeff Jarvis) – An examination of the Katrina "story" and the exaggerations, corrections and perceptions that came with it.
  • The Chrystal Meth/"Purpose-Driven Life" Coefficient (Freakonomics) – Did you know that the woman who was held hostage by an escaped murderer in Atlanta gave him her stash of chrystal meth after reading passages of "The Purpose-Driven Life" to him?  Now that’s a strange trip.

About Time

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If you are among the group of people that thing think the average politician is a slime ball (I am one of those people), then you’ll probably have the same reaction to the news that Tom Delay has been indicted by a Texas grand jury for what the New York Times (via Political Wire) reported as "conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme."

My reaction is, "It’s about damn time."

If you want to see a copy of the indictment go here (Find Law).

That Was Close

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David Crawford was running in the Republican primary for the Southwest ward of Winston-Salem.  I say he was because he withdrew from the primary yesterday after the Winston-Salem Journal discovered that the address he gave the Forsyth County Board of Elections was his former business address, so he can’t meet the residency requirement.  From the story:

He acknowledged
yesterday that he has no permanent address and that he was not aware of
the rules that require a candidate for office to live in the ward that
he intends to represent.

"Even though I’m
living in Winston, on the streets basically, I have to have a physical
address," he said. "I don’t really have that."

Great googly-moogly!  Can you imagine what would have happened if this guy had won the primary?  The Southwest ward Republicans would have been represented by a guy who is either so dumb that he doesn’t even know the most basic rules that apply to his new "job" or he’s such a bad liar that he can’t come up with something better than (I’m paraphrasing here), "Well I live there, but like, I don’t really have a street address so I kind of just, you know, live on the street."

Later in the story we learn that "Crawford, a
self-employed computer technician and a senior vice president with
Sigla Furniture Co. in High Point, had been making his first run for
public office."

Now, this is a little confusing because according to the article Mr. Crawford is both self-employed and a senior VP at a local company.  Is the computer thing a side job or is he the former senior VP?  If he is indeed the senior VP  then obviously his statement that he’s living on the street is even more far-fetched.  Not many senior VPs are living on the streets, know what I mean?

So yes it was close.  We almost had another politician who was either a bad liar or incredibly dumb.  We’ve already got plenty of those around.

For Those of You Who May Still Doubt that the US Congress is a Festering Boil Oozing Slimy Power Brokers

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Okay, the headline is a sweeping generalization about the legislative branch of the US government, but these folks are intent on reinforcing this image of themselves.

Today’s story involves Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. who’s district includes New Orleans.  ABC News reported that the Congressman decided to tour his district on September 2 during the height of the post-Katrina chaos.  While on this excursion the Congressman and his National Guard escorts stopped at his house and the guard members waited around for an hour until the Congressman "Jefferson emerged with a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box
about the size of a small refrigerator, which the enlisted men loaded
up into the truck."

Here are some excerpts from the story followed by my own comments:

On Sept. 2 — five days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast — Rep. William
Jefferson, D-La., who represents New Orleans and is a senior member of
the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was allowed through the military
blockades set up around the city to reach the Superdome, where
thousands of evacuees had been taken.

How admirable that he was making an effort to be on the ground with the people he represents.  Or could there be another motivation?  Keep reading.

The Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News the truck became stuck as it waited for Jefferson to retrieve his belongings.

Two weeks later, the vehicle’s tire tracks were still visible on the lawn.

The soldiers signaled to helicopters in the air for aid.
Military sources say a Coast Guard helicopter pilot saw the signal and
flew to Jefferson’s home. The chopper was already carrying four rescued
New Orleans residents at the time.

A rescue diver descended from the helicopter, but the
congressman decided against going up in the helicopter, sources say.
The pilot sent the diver down again, but Jefferson again declined to go
up the helicopter.

After spending approximately 45 minutes with Jefferson, the
helicopter went on to rescue three additional New Orleans residents
before it ran low on fuel and was forced to end its mission.

"Forty-five minutes can be an eternity to somebody that is
drowning, to somebody that is sitting in a roof, and it needs to be
used its primary purpose during an emergency," said Hauer.

Coast Guard Commander Brendan McPherson told ABC News, "We
did have an aircraft that responded to a signal of distress where the
congressman was located. The congressman did decline rescue at the time
so the helicopter picked up three other people.

Rep. Jefferson claims that he didn’t ask for the escort from the National Guard but they insisted because of his safety.  At this point did it not occur to him that maybe the tour could wait until it was safer and he wouldn’t be diverting valuable resources from their core mission of search and rescue?  Again, maybe there was another motivation for him to visit his district.  Read on.

Jefferson insisted the expedition did not distract from rescue efforts.

"They actually picked up a lot of people while we were
there," he said. "The young soldier said, ‘It’s a good thing we came up
here because a lot of people would not have been rescued had we not
been in the neighborhood.’"

With all due respect to the Congressman, he’s full of it.  Still, I ask, was there another motivation for getting to his house?

In an unrelated matter, authorities recently searched Jefferson’s
property as part of a federal investigation into the finances of a
high-tech firm. Last month FBI officials raided Jefferson’s house as
well as his home in Washington, D.C., his car and his accountant’s
house…

Jefferson has not commented on that matter, except to say he is cooperating with the investigation…

Last week, Jefferson set up a special trust fund for contributions to
his legal defense in light of the FBI investigation. A senior federal
law enforcement source tells ABC News that investigators are interested
in learning if Jefferson moved any materials relevant to the
investigation. Jefferson says he did not.

 

Why is it that the Ways and Means Committee seems to attract these guys
(Dan Rostenkowski, anyone?) in disproportionate numbers?  Oh, right.  Money.

After reading the last segment of the report I actually find it easier to believe that the Congressman didn’t want a National Guard escort after all.  I mean who needs witnesses?  Of course you have to wonder how he might have gotten around without them, but I suspect he would have found himself right at home in the sewage that was flowing around his house.