Senate to Hillary: Support Cyber-Dissidents
By DAVID FEITH
This month, amid record profligacy on Capitol Hill, Sens. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) and Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) pushed for spending that all Americans can celebrate: $30 million of the Senate’s State Department appropriations bill will go to support digital tools for undermining Internet censorship. If the initiative is properly implemented, the politically repressed from Havana to Rangoon will have cause for celebration.
Authoritarian regimes spend fortunes censoring the Internet because they fear the subversive potential of digital communications. China and Iran are world leaders in this regard—models for other rogues such as Syria and Saudi Arabia.
In countering the Green Revolution this summer, Iran unveiled a new high-tech apparatus for blocking some Internet communications outright, while monitoring others in order to intimidate dissenters. China uses more than 40,000 censors in a dozen government agencies to limit Web content via the so-called Great Firewall. As Chinese President Hu Jintao said in 2007: “Whether we can cope with the Internet is a matter that affects the development of socialist culture, the security of information and the stability of the state.”
The Soviet Union felt similarly about the Berlin Wall. Just as East Germans diminished Soviet legitimacy by escaping across Checkpoint Charlie, “hacktivists” today do the same by breaching Internet cyberwalls. Which is why, as the bill says, the Senate is funding groups with “scalable, field tested programs . . . for large numbers of users living in closed societies.”
Arguably the most important of these groups is the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF), whose software has been critical in Iran. During the protests of June 20 alone, more than one million Iranians used GIF tools to visit 390 million pages on the uncensored Internet.
GIF has an impressive history of aiding anti-authoritarian movements in real time. When Burmese monks and others rose up against their military rulers in August 2007, its programs saw a threefold increase in average daily hits from Burma. During the March 2008 anti-Beijing protests in Tibet, Tibetan usage of GIF’s tools rose by 300%.
The consortium was launched in 2000 by Chinese-American practitioners of Falun Gong, the spiritual group persecuted by Beijing. Using computers in data centers scattered around the world, it provides a series of programs that can be easily downloaded or distributed by email. The programs allow users to bypass censored domestic servers and access the Internet via GIF’s foreign servers. Users in Damascus can make the same Google searches as users in New York, without leaving a trace.
The widespread use of GIF’s technologies among Falun Gong practitioners and others has infuriated Beijing. So concerned is China with GIF that when the American technology giant Cisco solicited the Chinese government’s business in 2002, it did so by explaining how its technologies could help “combat the ‘Falun Gong’ evil cult.”
But Cisco’s pitch—contained in a PowerPoint presentation later obtained by GIF and presented before Congress last year—was for naught. Despite Beijing’s efforts to neutralize it, GIF has become so popular that it’s had trouble accommodating demand.
World demand approaches 10 million unique users per day, but GIF has capacity for only about 1.2 million. So when Iranians flooded its servers last month, GIF had to block usage temporarily to preserve capacity. Iranians sent the group thousands of messages pleading for restoration. Without GIF’s tools, one user wrote, “we have no contact with true data and true news.”
Were $30 million added to its volunteer-driven operation, GIF would reportedly be able to accommodate more than 50 million unique users per day.
But this opportunity could yet be squandered. First, members of the House and Senate will decide in conference whether to appropriate the Senate’s full $30 million, or a sum closer to the $15 million contained in the House’s version of the bill.
More worrying is that Congress’s funding will go to the State Department, where deference to the world’s worst regimes too often takes precedence over human rights. Funding programs like GIF will doubtless anger leaders in Beijing and Tehran with whom the Obama administration seeks engagement. Yet pursuing the favor of such leaders by misallocating these Internet freedom funds would be a grave mistake.
It would not be unprecedented, though. The 2004 North Korea Human Rights Act was another welcome congressional effort that would have furthered human rights, in that case by aiding North Korean refugees. The law angered Beijing, which opposes anything that might encourage North Koreans to flee their neo-Stalinist prison. So the State Department—unjustifiably hoping that China would help the U.S. disarm North Korea—ignored or undermined the law’s intentions at every turn, severely limiting diplomatic, legal and humanitarian assistance to refugees.
Will the State Department again bow to tyrants, or follow Congress’s guidelines? Millions of would-be cyber-dissidents are waiting.
Mr. Feith is a Robert L. Bartley fellow at the Journal this summer.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Jupiter Gets a Black Eye
By MICHIO KAKU
We sometimes forget that the universe is a violent place.
This week, astronomers in Hawaii recorded an exceedingly rare event. An amazing photograph revealed a comet or asteroid, probably no more than a mile across, plowing into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The impact created a fireball roughly the size of the planet earth.
The good news is that Jupiter was just doing its job, cleaning out the solar system of stray comets and asteroids. Jupiter, 318 times more massive than the earth, acts like a cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking in or deflecting debris left over from the solar system’s birth 4.5 billion years ago. If it weren’t for Jupiter’s colossal gravitational field, we wouldn’t be here, since the earth would be hit with deadly comet and meteor impacts every month or so. Most of the U.S. would just be an empty graveyard of bleak craters.
The bad news is that a comet impact could happen to us. A black eye for Jupiter would be a body blow to the earth. We got a taste of this back in 1908, when something the size of an apartment building plowed into Tunguska, Siberia. This “city-buster” flattened 100 million trees with the force of a hydrogen bomb. But this recent Jupiter comet, much larger and coming in at perhaps 100,000 miles per hour, would have unleashed the power of hundreds of H-bombs. It might have engulfed most of the East Coast in a huge firestorm, triggering a massive tsunami and destabilizing the weather.
According to Hollywood, we can always send our astronauts on a space shuttle to intercept a comet and blow it up with H-bombs. Wrong. Blowing up a comet with nuclear bombs creates chunks of debris, increasing the area of destruction. So we are sitting ducks to a potential impact from deep space.
So what’s the lesson from all of this?
Maybe Mother Nature has a sense of humor. An impact like the recent one in Jupiter happened 15 years ago, in late July, after the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet broke up into 20 pieces, each of which plunged into Jupiter, creating a dazzling display of cosmic fireworks. Scientists used to believe that these collisions took place once every few thousand years, not 15 years. So perhaps Mother Nature was just trying to show what little scientists really understand about these cosmic collisions.
But it also happened on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. So maybe Mother Nature was reminding us that the universe is, after all, a violent place—that we may one day need a new home. The earth lies in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery. The proof comes out every night when we gaze at the moon.
When viewing the film of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bobbing among the barren craters of the moon, we are reminded that each crater was gouged out by a titanic impact.
In addition, there are more than 5,000 so-called near-earth objects, carefully tracked by telescope, that can cross near the orbit of the earth. One of them, the asteroid Apophis, is about the size of the Rose Bowl. It will graze the earth in 2029 and again in 2036, passing below some of our satellites.
But there are also many unnamed comets outside the solar system whose orbits are totally unknown and unpredictable. They would give us little warning and catch us totally off-guard, like the comet that just hit Jupiter.
So in the long term, perhaps we should look at the space program as an insurance policy. Not only has the space program given us a bonanza of benefits (such as weather satellites, the Global Positioning System, telecommunications, etc.), it also provides a gateway to the stars. Over the course of the next few centuries, maybe we should use that gateway to plan to be a “two planet species.” Life is too precious to place in one basket.
In August, President Barack Obama will receive a major report from the U.S. human space flight plans committee about the future of space travel, which could be a turning point for NASA in the 21st century. He should remember the Jupiter hit as he considers the report.
Mr. Kaku is the author of “Physics of the Impossible: a Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel” (Doubleday, 2008).
By MICHIO KAKU
We sometimes forget that the universe is a violent place.
This week, astronomers in Hawaii recorded an exceedingly rare event. An amazing photograph revealed a comet or asteroid, probably no more than a mile across, plowing into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The impact created a fireball roughly the size of the planet earth.
The good news is that Jupiter was just doing its job, cleaning out the solar system of stray comets and asteroids. Jupiter, 318 times more massive than the earth, acts like a cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking in or deflecting debris left over from the solar system’s birth 4.5 billion years ago. If it weren’t for Jupiter’s colossal gravitational field, we wouldn’t be here, since the earth would be hit with deadly comet and meteor impacts every month or so. Most of the U.S. would just be an empty graveyard of bleak craters.
The bad news is that a comet impact could happen to us. A black eye for Jupiter would be a body blow to the earth. We got a taste of this back in 1908, when something the size of an apartment building plowed into Tunguska, Siberia. This “city-buster” flattened 100 million trees with the force of a hydrogen bomb. But this recent Jupiter comet, much larger and coming in at perhaps 100,000 miles per hour, would have unleashed the power of hundreds of H-bombs. It might have engulfed most of the East Coast in a huge firestorm, triggering a massive tsunami and destabilizing the weather.
According to Hollywood, we can always send our astronauts on a space shuttle to intercept a comet and blow it up with H-bombs. Wrong. Blowing up a comet with nuclear bombs creates chunks of debris, increasing the area of destruction. So we are sitting ducks to a potential impact from deep space.
So what’s the lesson from all of this?
Maybe Mother Nature has a sense of humor. An impact like the recent one in Jupiter happened 15 years ago, in late July, after the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet broke up into 20 pieces, each of which plunged into Jupiter, creating a dazzling display of cosmic fireworks. Scientists used to believe that these collisions took place once every few thousand years, not 15 years. So perhaps Mother Nature was just trying to show what little scientists really understand about these cosmic collisions.
But it also happened on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. So maybe Mother Nature was reminding us that the universe is, after all, a violent place—that we may one day need a new home. The earth lies in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery. The proof comes out every night when we gaze at the moon.
When viewing the film of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bobbing among the barren craters of the moon, we are reminded that each crater was gouged out by a titanic impact.
In addition, there are more than 5,000 so-called near-earth objects, carefully tracked by telescope, that can cross near the orbit of the earth. One of them, the asteroid Apophis, is about the size of the Rose Bowl. It will graze the earth in 2029 and again in 2036, passing below some of our satellites.
But there are also many unnamed comets outside the solar system whose orbits are totally unknown and unpredictable. They would give us little warning and catch us totally off-guard, like the comet that just hit Jupiter.
So in the long term, perhaps we should look at the space program as an insurance policy. Not only has the space program given us a bonanza of benefits (such as weather satellites, the Global Positioning System, telecommunications, etc.), it also provides a gateway to the stars. Over the course of the next few centuries, maybe we should use that gateway to plan to be a “two planet species.” Life is too precious to place in one basket.
In August, President Barack Obama will receive a major report from the U.S. human space flight plans committee about the future of space travel, which could be a turning point for NASA in the 21st century. He should remember the Jupiter hit as he considers the report.
Mr. Kaku is the author of “Physics of the Impossible: a Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel” (Doubleday, 2008).
Sunday, July 19, 2009
They put a man on the moon, and a comedian in the Senate.
Sotomayor Hearing Escapes Gravity
They put a man on the moon, and a comedian in the Senate.
By PEGGY NOONAN
Everyone is noting the 40th anniversary, on July 20, of the moon landing. Good. It was an epic moment in history, though its memory is accompanied by an unsatisfied feeling, as if Columbus came to America and then no one followed. People will ask again why we've stopped visiting other places and have instead spent the past few decades watching the space shuttle orbit the Earth. There are many reasons for this (budgets, the end of the space race, an inability to understand the human imagination) but let me throw forward this one: The space program of the past 32 years unconsciously mirrored a change in American psychology. Once, we saw ourselves as a breakthrough people, a nation with a mission to push beyond ourselves. Now, in the age of soft narcissism, we just circle ourselves. Which is what the shuttle does: It is on an endless loop, going 'round and 'round and looking down at: us.
We should take our eyes off ourselves. We should go someplace again. It would remind us who we've been, which would remind us who we are.
Something about the steely-eyed rocket men of the Mercury and Apollo programs: They weren't criers. Now, on TV every day as people remember some trauma or triumph, they stop as if on cue—they know this is expected of them—and weep. They think this shows sincerity and sensitivity. But they feel too much about their struggles. I sometimes watch with fascination those shows where people lose weight. They often begin to sob as they fall off the treadmill or remember the Twinkie they didn't eat. This is now the national style. It makes Europeans laugh. When they're about to be mawkish or overly emotional they say, "I don't mean to get American on you." The men who took the moon will be all over TV the next few days. I bet they don't cry as they remember "Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed." How moving their dry eyes will be.
* * *
The Sotomayor hearings were unsatisfying and relatively unilluminating. She was moderate in tone and manner, said little, will be confirmed, and over the years, decision by decision, we will find out who she is and how she thinks. They're all a mystery going in and then, paradoxically, cover themselves in a long black robe and reveal themselves. The Republicans questioning her never seemed to gain purchase, never quite succeeded in making the interesting (the Ricci case) interesting. Looking at things shallowly, and let's, Sonia Sotomayor seemed weirdly overrehearsed, speaking v e r y s l o w l y, gesturing with her hands in a way that was no doubt supposed to look natural and warm, like grandma in the kitchen, but instead came across as artificial and mildly animatronic.
She took refuge (as did some of her questioners) in the impenetrable language of the law, and in what seemed (and this is becoming a regular strategy in politics) to be the deliberate jumbling of syntax, so people at home won't be able to follow what is being said. To be clear and succinct is to look for trouble. Better to produce a mist and miasma of jumbly words, and sentences that do not hold. You're talking, so you'll seem alive—in fact people using the syntax dodge are often quite animated—but as to meaning, you can leave that to the TV producers, who'll wrestle around trying to get something that makes sense and then settle for the Perry Mason soundbite. (Well, in truth the Perry Mason soundbite is pretty much what they want.)
I suspect the hearings added to a general sense of Washington's surface comity and essential sketchiness.
* * *
The new senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, signaled in his questioning that he will spend the next few years playing the part of the reasonable fellow who's awed to be here, eager to learn and ready to work. He's doing a Full Hillary. When Mrs. Clinton entered the Senate 8 years ago, there was about her the constant air of fisticuffs and scandal. But she did the absolute commonsense thing, keeping her head down and charming people with her hardworking, non-
Diva-like attitude. This was not only a great move, which opened her to subsequent journalistic reassessments, it was also probably an actual relief for her. Removed from the daily grind of White House attack-and-defend, with a solid six-year sinecure, she was free for the first time to be what she likely wanted to be when she started out. She tapped into the part of her that really was a policy wonk who wanted to work on legislation, wanted to be liked, and wanted, even, to like. She tapped into her seriousness. We will see if Mr. Franken has any to tap into.
He will devote his time to appearing affable, speaking in a faux regular guy language—the Perry Mason question was his—curbing his crazy, and working well with the big fat lying liars on the other side. His job is to make Minnesota happy he's there so he can stay longer.
* * *
Mrs. Clinton is in a different position now. By this spring it must have become apparent to her that when the nice new president came and offered her the secretary of state job, and she said yes, she got rolled. What he got was clear: He took her off the chessboard. She wouldn't be in the Senate being a counterforce, wouldn't be planning her next move or become the rallying point of anti-Obama Democrats. She'd be on board, part of the team and invested in the administration's success, for now its success would ensure her future. If their relationship didn't work, nobody would think it was his fault.
What she would not have known was that she would be a public face of American diplomacy—not the face but a face—and not a decisive inside power. The portfolio for key areas—Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Mideast—was day by day given to others. She was sent off to do interviews on "Good Morning Manila." In a foreign-affairs apparatus of clashing egos, she'd be just another ego. A Henry Kissinger or George Shultz would never have allowed this. She didn't even go to the G-8 or the Russia meeting. President Obama, that canny fellow, only wants Obama in the room. It is true she broke her elbow, but they make it sound like a farming accident where her elbow was torn from her arm as she fed the thresher. Tina Brown wrote a witty column saying Mr. Obama should let Hillary out of her burqa.
But you know, one thing Mrs. Clinton's learned is how to wait. Things turn on a dime, you wake up in the morning and there's a new headline that changes everything. Sooner or later Mr. Obama is going to get in trouble, sooner or later the trouble will take hold and settle in, and sooner or later she will be the unsullied one who quietly did her duty in spite of the slights to which she's been subjected. And when that happens, she will emerge—reluctantly, painfully—as the Democratic alternative. The one who almost won, who knew—who learned the hard way—that you can't do everything all at once, that it's the economy, stupid.
They will look like kids playing with history. Hillary isn't a kid. She's experienced, and has been roughed up by history. Watch. She'll roll right back.
They put a man on the moon, and a comedian in the Senate.
By PEGGY NOONAN
Everyone is noting the 40th anniversary, on July 20, of the moon landing. Good. It was an epic moment in history, though its memory is accompanied by an unsatisfied feeling, as if Columbus came to America and then no one followed. People will ask again why we've stopped visiting other places and have instead spent the past few decades watching the space shuttle orbit the Earth. There are many reasons for this (budgets, the end of the space race, an inability to understand the human imagination) but let me throw forward this one: The space program of the past 32 years unconsciously mirrored a change in American psychology. Once, we saw ourselves as a breakthrough people, a nation with a mission to push beyond ourselves. Now, in the age of soft narcissism, we just circle ourselves. Which is what the shuttle does: It is on an endless loop, going 'round and 'round and looking down at: us.
We should take our eyes off ourselves. We should go someplace again. It would remind us who we've been, which would remind us who we are.
Something about the steely-eyed rocket men of the Mercury and Apollo programs: They weren't criers. Now, on TV every day as people remember some trauma or triumph, they stop as if on cue—they know this is expected of them—and weep. They think this shows sincerity and sensitivity. But they feel too much about their struggles. I sometimes watch with fascination those shows where people lose weight. They often begin to sob as they fall off the treadmill or remember the Twinkie they didn't eat. This is now the national style. It makes Europeans laugh. When they're about to be mawkish or overly emotional they say, "I don't mean to get American on you." The men who took the moon will be all over TV the next few days. I bet they don't cry as they remember "Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed." How moving their dry eyes will be.
* * *
The Sotomayor hearings were unsatisfying and relatively unilluminating. She was moderate in tone and manner, said little, will be confirmed, and over the years, decision by decision, we will find out who she is and how she thinks. They're all a mystery going in and then, paradoxically, cover themselves in a long black robe and reveal themselves. The Republicans questioning her never seemed to gain purchase, never quite succeeded in making the interesting (the Ricci case) interesting. Looking at things shallowly, and let's, Sonia Sotomayor seemed weirdly overrehearsed, speaking v e r y s l o w l y, gesturing with her hands in a way that was no doubt supposed to look natural and warm, like grandma in the kitchen, but instead came across as artificial and mildly animatronic.
She took refuge (as did some of her questioners) in the impenetrable language of the law, and in what seemed (and this is becoming a regular strategy in politics) to be the deliberate jumbling of syntax, so people at home won't be able to follow what is being said. To be clear and succinct is to look for trouble. Better to produce a mist and miasma of jumbly words, and sentences that do not hold. You're talking, so you'll seem alive—in fact people using the syntax dodge are often quite animated—but as to meaning, you can leave that to the TV producers, who'll wrestle around trying to get something that makes sense and then settle for the Perry Mason soundbite. (Well, in truth the Perry Mason soundbite is pretty much what they want.)
I suspect the hearings added to a general sense of Washington's surface comity and essential sketchiness.
* * *
The new senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, signaled in his questioning that he will spend the next few years playing the part of the reasonable fellow who's awed to be here, eager to learn and ready to work. He's doing a Full Hillary. When Mrs. Clinton entered the Senate 8 years ago, there was about her the constant air of fisticuffs and scandal. But she did the absolute commonsense thing, keeping her head down and charming people with her hardworking, non-
Diva-like attitude. This was not only a great move, which opened her to subsequent journalistic reassessments, it was also probably an actual relief for her. Removed from the daily grind of White House attack-and-defend, with a solid six-year sinecure, she was free for the first time to be what she likely wanted to be when she started out. She tapped into the part of her that really was a policy wonk who wanted to work on legislation, wanted to be liked, and wanted, even, to like. She tapped into her seriousness. We will see if Mr. Franken has any to tap into.
He will devote his time to appearing affable, speaking in a faux regular guy language—the Perry Mason question was his—curbing his crazy, and working well with the big fat lying liars on the other side. His job is to make Minnesota happy he's there so he can stay longer.
* * *
Mrs. Clinton is in a different position now. By this spring it must have become apparent to her that when the nice new president came and offered her the secretary of state job, and she said yes, she got rolled. What he got was clear: He took her off the chessboard. She wouldn't be in the Senate being a counterforce, wouldn't be planning her next move or become the rallying point of anti-Obama Democrats. She'd be on board, part of the team and invested in the administration's success, for now its success would ensure her future. If their relationship didn't work, nobody would think it was his fault.
What she would not have known was that she would be a public face of American diplomacy—not the face but a face—and not a decisive inside power. The portfolio for key areas—Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Mideast—was day by day given to others. She was sent off to do interviews on "Good Morning Manila." In a foreign-affairs apparatus of clashing egos, she'd be just another ego. A Henry Kissinger or George Shultz would never have allowed this. She didn't even go to the G-8 or the Russia meeting. President Obama, that canny fellow, only wants Obama in the room. It is true she broke her elbow, but they make it sound like a farming accident where her elbow was torn from her arm as she fed the thresher. Tina Brown wrote a witty column saying Mr. Obama should let Hillary out of her burqa.
But you know, one thing Mrs. Clinton's learned is how to wait. Things turn on a dime, you wake up in the morning and there's a new headline that changes everything. Sooner or later Mr. Obama is going to get in trouble, sooner or later the trouble will take hold and settle in, and sooner or later she will be the unsullied one who quietly did her duty in spite of the slights to which she's been subjected. And when that happens, she will emerge—reluctantly, painfully—as the Democratic alternative. The one who almost won, who knew—who learned the hard way—that you can't do everything all at once, that it's the economy, stupid.
They will look like kids playing with history. Hillary isn't a kid. She's experienced, and has been roughed up by history. Watch. She'll roll right back.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Why We'll Leave L.A.(buisness)
Why We'll Leave L.A.
The business climate is worse than the air quality
by RICK NEWCOMBE
Los Angeles
If New Yorkers fantasize that doing business here in Los Angeles would be less of a headache, forget about it. This city is fast becoming a job-killing machine. It's no accident the unemployment rate is a frightening 11.4% and climbing.
I never could have imagined that, after living here for more than three decades, I would be filing a lawsuit against my beloved Los Angeles and making plans for my company, Creators Syndicate, to move elsewhere.
But we have no choice. The city's bureaucrats rival Stalin's apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place.
I founded Creators Syndicate in 1987, and we have represented hundreds of important writers, syndicating their columns to newspapers and Web sites around the world. The most famous include Hillary Clinton, who, like Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote a syndicated column when she was first lady. Another star was the advice columnist Ann Landers, once described by "The World Almanac" as "the most influential woman in America." Other Creators columnists include Bill O'Reilly, Susan Estrich, Thomas Sowell, Roland Martin and Michelle Malkin -- plus Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonists and your favorite comic strips.
From the beginning, we've been headquartered in Los Angeles. But 15 years ago we had a dispute with the city over our business tax classification. The city argued that we should be in an "occupations and professions" classification that has an extremely high tax rate, while we fought for a "wholesale and retail" classification with a much lower rate. The city forced us to invest a small fortune in legal fees over two years, but we felt it was worth it in order to establish the correct classification once and for all.
After enduring a series of bureaucratic hearings, we anxiously awaited a ruling to find out what our tax rate would be. Everything was at stake. We had already decided that if we lost, we would move.
You can imagine how relieved we were on July 1, 1994, when the ruling was issued. We won, and firmly planted our roots in the City of Angels and proceeded to build our business.
Everything was fine until the city started running out of money in 2007. Suddenly, the city announced that it was going to ignore its own ruling and reclassify us in the higher tax category. Even more incredible is the fact that the new classification was to be imposed retroactively to 2004 with interest and penalties. No explanation was given for the new classification, or for the city's decision to ignore its 1994 ruling.
Their official position is that the city is not bound by past rulings -- only taxpayers are. This is why we have been forced to file a lawsuit. We will let the courts decide whether it is legal for adverse rulings to apply only to taxpayers and not to the city.
We work with hundreds of outside agents, consultants, independent contractors and support services -- many of whom pay taxes to the city of Los Angeles. This spurs a job-creating ripple effect on the city's economy. Yet I suspect many companies like ours already have quietly left town in the face of the city's taxes and regulations. This would help explain the erosion of jobs.
Regardless of the outcome of our case, the arbitrary and capricious behavior of some bureaucrats is creating a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If we win in court, the taxpayers of Los Angeles will have lost because all those tax dollars will have been wasted on needless litigation.
If we lose in court, the remaining taxpayers in Los Angeles will have lost because their burden will continue to swell as yet another business moves its jobs -- and taxpayers -- to another city.
As long as City Hall operates like a banana republic, why is anyone surprised that jobs have left the city in droves and Los Angeles is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy?
Mr. Newcombe is president of Creators Syndicate
The business climate is worse than the air quality
by RICK NEWCOMBE
Los Angeles
If New Yorkers fantasize that doing business here in Los Angeles would be less of a headache, forget about it. This city is fast becoming a job-killing machine. It's no accident the unemployment rate is a frightening 11.4% and climbing.
I never could have imagined that, after living here for more than three decades, I would be filing a lawsuit against my beloved Los Angeles and making plans for my company, Creators Syndicate, to move elsewhere.
But we have no choice. The city's bureaucrats rival Stalin's apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place.
I founded Creators Syndicate in 1987, and we have represented hundreds of important writers, syndicating their columns to newspapers and Web sites around the world. The most famous include Hillary Clinton, who, like Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote a syndicated column when she was first lady. Another star was the advice columnist Ann Landers, once described by "The World Almanac" as "the most influential woman in America." Other Creators columnists include Bill O'Reilly, Susan Estrich, Thomas Sowell, Roland Martin and Michelle Malkin -- plus Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonists and your favorite comic strips.
From the beginning, we've been headquartered in Los Angeles. But 15 years ago we had a dispute with the city over our business tax classification. The city argued that we should be in an "occupations and professions" classification that has an extremely high tax rate, while we fought for a "wholesale and retail" classification with a much lower rate. The city forced us to invest a small fortune in legal fees over two years, but we felt it was worth it in order to establish the correct classification once and for all.
After enduring a series of bureaucratic hearings, we anxiously awaited a ruling to find out what our tax rate would be. Everything was at stake. We had already decided that if we lost, we would move.
You can imagine how relieved we were on July 1, 1994, when the ruling was issued. We won, and firmly planted our roots in the City of Angels and proceeded to build our business.
Everything was fine until the city started running out of money in 2007. Suddenly, the city announced that it was going to ignore its own ruling and reclassify us in the higher tax category. Even more incredible is the fact that the new classification was to be imposed retroactively to 2004 with interest and penalties. No explanation was given for the new classification, or for the city's decision to ignore its 1994 ruling.
Their official position is that the city is not bound by past rulings -- only taxpayers are. This is why we have been forced to file a lawsuit. We will let the courts decide whether it is legal for adverse rulings to apply only to taxpayers and not to the city.
We work with hundreds of outside agents, consultants, independent contractors and support services -- many of whom pay taxes to the city of Los Angeles. This spurs a job-creating ripple effect on the city's economy. Yet I suspect many companies like ours already have quietly left town in the face of the city's taxes and regulations. This would help explain the erosion of jobs.
Regardless of the outcome of our case, the arbitrary and capricious behavior of some bureaucrats is creating a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If we win in court, the taxpayers of Los Angeles will have lost because all those tax dollars will have been wasted on needless litigation.
If we lose in court, the remaining taxpayers in Los Angeles will have lost because their burden will continue to swell as yet another business moves its jobs -- and taxpayers -- to another city.
As long as City Hall operates like a banana republic, why is anyone surprised that jobs have left the city in droves and Los Angeles is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy?
Mr. Newcombe is president of Creators Syndicate
Monday, July 6, 2009
I called into a radio show today and was put on the air...
Listen here:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/patt-morrison/2009/06/25/
http://www.scpr.org/programs/patt-morrison/2009/06/25/
Finally Minnesota has a 2nd senator, and it's Al Franken - the man who once played Liam the Loose-Boweled Leprechaun
There are some funny lines in this story, including the one I took for the headline.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/06/franken.bio/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/06/franken.bio/index.html
Phelps Subway Commercial
Has anyone else seen this? Apparently Subway doesn't have a problem hiring pot smokers. I guess that shouldn't be surprising...
Honduran Coop on Left Wing Show
I think what's going on in Honduras is super interesting, but try getting through all the Micheal Jackson coverage to find out what's going there on CNN. Thus I turn to my trusty left wing radio/TV show Democracy Now :-) :
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/6/honduran_military_blocks_ousted_president_zelayas
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/6/honduran_military_blocks_ousted_president_zelayas
LAUSD's Superintendent's statement on budget crisis
Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Budget Woes
At my first school, the sixth-graders raised their hands and called me "teacher." Elementary, middle school, and high school--I have been in those classrooms and taught students at every level. As a principal, I have led schools. As a superintendent, I have served in several school districts including this one since January.
As an educator, I relish the challenges of helping all children learn. Instruction remains my passion; teaching remains my joy. Yet, dollars--millions of them--dominate my thinking as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) grapples with the largest budget deficit in its history.
Because California law requires school districts to submit balanced budgets for the next three years by June 30, I was forced to ask the Los Angeles Board of Education to approve cuts that violate my core beliefs. The worst cuts aren't scheduled to take effect until the 2011-2012 school year, which allows time to stop them.
A parcel tax--a slight increase of property taxes--would keep students in classes small enough to permit the attention they need from teachers. Adequate funding, instead of broken promises from Sacramento and another deluge of new cuts, would help educate students.
Help from our employees, in the form of furlough days and small pay cuts negotiated by the unions that represent them, would stop the avalanche of layoffs on and off campuses.
Balancing the books should not be my priority. I am neither a mathematician nor a magician. A veteran educator, I prefer to help our students read more books.
Click to see a brochure and budget myths about our current financial crisis. Click here to view the PowerPoint presented to the Board of Education on Thursday, June 18.
Ramon C. Cortines, Superintendent
At my first school, the sixth-graders raised their hands and called me "teacher." Elementary, middle school, and high school--I have been in those classrooms and taught students at every level. As a principal, I have led schools. As a superintendent, I have served in several school districts including this one since January.
As an educator, I relish the challenges of helping all children learn. Instruction remains my passion; teaching remains my joy. Yet, dollars--millions of them--dominate my thinking as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) grapples with the largest budget deficit in its history.
Because California law requires school districts to submit balanced budgets for the next three years by June 30, I was forced to ask the Los Angeles Board of Education to approve cuts that violate my core beliefs. The worst cuts aren't scheduled to take effect until the 2011-2012 school year, which allows time to stop them.
A parcel tax--a slight increase of property taxes--would keep students in classes small enough to permit the attention they need from teachers. Adequate funding, instead of broken promises from Sacramento and another deluge of new cuts, would help educate students.
Help from our employees, in the form of furlough days and small pay cuts negotiated by the unions that represent them, would stop the avalanche of layoffs on and off campuses.
Balancing the books should not be my priority. I am neither a mathematician nor a magician. A veteran educator, I prefer to help our students read more books.
Click to see a brochure and budget myths about our current financial crisis. Click here to view the PowerPoint presented to the Board of Education on Thursday, June 18.
Ramon C. Cortines, Superintendent
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