Perfect Storm

The Purple States are Meaningless

2004-05-07T13:45:00.000-04:00

Editorial in the Post by the directors of ABC Polling and the Washington Post polling (Richard Morin and Gary Langer) that the "battleground states" label is meaningless, and the coverage needs to be on the entire country.

A valid point (New Jersey, for instance, is inching into play for the Republicans), but a few caveats.

The "purple states" (5% margin in the 2000 election) are different than the ACT 17 "battleground states"

The "battleground" states label is mostly just shorthand for states where the earliest and deepest work will be performed. As the cycle shortens, more tactical considerations will take over in terms of where to target TV buys and candidate appearances.

Also, it seems to me the best coverage of the "Battleground" states is coming from Gallup, not the Post-ABC News Poll. If you want even more granularity, go look at Zogby. All of which suggest that the op-ed might have an angle...

Update: Read the Mark Gersh article in the DLC Blueprint Magazine. Excellent points about linking the message to the target states.

Money is no longer a story; staffers are

2004-05-07T13:15:00.000-04:00

We're seeing the death of the "money" story in this cycle. Both presidential candidates are well funded until the $75 million kicks in after the conventions. The "horserace" is largely tied, and consequently of little interest. The Note isn't even focused on the money angle.

Three datapoints:

1. Almost no coverage of the record Kerry 1Q haul, and zero coverage of the cash on hand figures for both campaigns at the end of April.

2. The coverage we are seeing (see this LA Times story) is very general.

3. Almost no coverage or attention on the proposed FEC 527 final rules; a recognition that the 527s served their purpose (TV buys in in March and April) and even if the FEC rules against them it will only take out a component of the Democratic GOTV strategy.

We are seeing a spate of stories on WHO is getting jobs in the campaign. See this excellent Ryan Lizza story on more Kerry staffer turmoil.

Is this a bad thing? The money coverage has been process and money driven; we've learned about the internet and multilevel marketing and just how much the campaigns can rake in, but we've learned a lot less about how the need to keep donors happy has influenced the campaign and their strategies.

I think we'll be seeing a number of other stories coming up in the next few months as various interest groups (besides the donors) jockey for influence. Take for example, this The New Republic article on how unhappy the organized Jewish leadership is with Kerry. For contrast, see this Thomas Edsall piece (couldn't find the original Washington Post story) on an Arab American Institute poll in MI, OH, PA and FL that 49% of Arab Americans are supporting Kerry. Also another Washington Post story on Detroit Muslims who gave Bush an 85% job performace disapproval rating.

More on the Benefits of Globalisation

2004-05-06T14:27:00.000-04:00

Review in the Economist of Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization. I haven't seen what Dr. Bhagwati has said about outsourcing (when I contacted him last year he was supremely dismissive of the entire problem) but his newest book is an important tool in the arsenal of pro-globalization forces (is globalization spelled with a S or an Z? - perhaps we need to figure out that answer first)

A useful reminder that trade protection "however well intended, lead to bad or unintended consequences that leave the poor worse off."

The News.com Outsourcing Special

2004-05-06T13:45:00.000-04:00

I've tried to resist reading the News.com Offshoring series because I didn't want to raise my blood pressure. However, it's fairly balanced. I'd make two points:

1) Benefit to Consumer: The hard part of any pro-outsourcing or off-shoring argument is there is almost no benefit to consumers. Our consumer level interaction is limited to call centers, and let me be honest, it's a horrible experience. I can think of two interactions with call centers (AT&T and Citibank) with obvious Indian workers. The connection was terrible (some VOIP static); the call center drones were clearly reading from a manual and consequently taking 5x as long as necessary to answer my simple questions, and while they were fluent in English, they couldn't' deal with my accent -- and after a while I couldn't deal with theirs.

Jobs going to Japan (or Korea, or China) translate into smaller and cheaper cars and electronics. You can only be a Japan basher for so long while driving around in a Honda. But we don't have that experience with outsourcing. Even with call centers -- when we get 24 HR customer service on the phone -- that's not a benefit we attribute to globalization.

2) Looney Policy Ideas: The lack of real policies in the area leads to some looney ideas being put on the table. Take, for instance, the key finding of the News.com special: 40% of technology executives supported a hypothetical proposal that corporations pay a "per-head tax" for every position they send to another country.

The "Offshoring Tax" is a really, really, really, really bad policy idea. On a strategic level, why do we treat workers whose jobs have been offshored different than ones who lose jobs through technology or innovation? A bank teller out of work because she's been replaced by an ATM is in just as much pain as a call center employee whose jobs moved to India. And do we want to protect all jobs? Should we have protected the buggy-whip makers against the auto-workers? It goes to show that when you start imposing these trade restrictions, the ones who are the best organized tend to benefit.

On a tactical level, think about how you would administer such a tax and the problems crop up all over the place. Take a new company with NO employees that contracts IT work though TCS -- should they be subject to the tax? What about a company that fires 500 people and then hired 50 people in Ireland to do the same job -- is that 500 workers lost or just 50.

If you want to talk taxes; take a look again at Kerry's overseas tax reform plan, which is actually a really good idea.

A tax creates a penalty and a disincentive to move jobs overseas, but in order for the pain to be real we need to be talking about some serious dollars here. Companies don't decide to send their jobs overseas unless there are serious cost savings, and I would imagine the tax penalty would have to be very, very high -- in the order of $100,00 or more per worker.

The Ground Game in Floridia

2004-05-06T13:12:00.000-04:00

Very good regional press in the St. Petersburg Times on the ground game in Floridia. First Kerry field staffers being hired. Good Marcus quote.

The Purple States

2004-05-06T12:43:00.000-04:00

We know the Gallup "Purple States": Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

We also know that the Gallup March 23 polls had Bush up by six points in the purple states, and that the April Gallup poll had Bush and Kerry tied.

Now, the newest (May 2-4) poll has Kerry leading among likely voters 48 to 44. Campaign Journal correctly notes this is after the massive Bush ad campaign ($40 million? $60 million?) and before the most recent Kerry ad campaign. Of course, the March 9 Gullup had Kerry leading Bush by 55 to 39. And of course, Nader is pulling 5% in the purple states.

I wish we had some access to the Zogby breakdown on a state by state level, because my sense is there is a wide disparity in the purple states: Ohio is essentialy tied, and Bush has a slight lead in Floridia, so the must be some pretty big shifts (read PA and MI) in the other states to give Kerry the lead.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

2004-05-04T18:17:00.000-04:00

Remember the tale of the blind men and the elephant? Let me share with you a spate of recent stories about fundraising that have popped up in the last month.

First : Mother Jones tells you that BC04 relies on super rich people to finance the election. John Kerry does as well, just not to the same degree (184 vice chairs and co-chairs who have raised $100K and $50K)

Second: Guess what, the Atlanta Journal Constitution tells you being a Ranger is pretty meaningless, with public financing for the general election and all; what you really want to be a "Super-Ranger" and raised 300K for the RNC.

Third: You know, actually it's all about SMALL donors this year. Or at least that's what the Washington Post will tell you. Amazing, the entire article doesn't even mention the word "credit card" or "internet".

Fourth: Perhaps the big donors are sick of the Rangers and the small donors, because the New York Times tells us that big business donors are using $100,000 checks to charities to get access to politicians during the conventions.

Fifth: Perhaps the New York Times is one to something, because Mother Jones is backing harping on the charity angle again.

I must be using the wrong analogy with the elephant, because the elephant is the room that nobody is talking about is CASH ON HAND AT THE END OF APRIL. According the very precise calcualtions, Kerry should be about even with BC04 in the cash on hand figures.

Review of Toshiba SD-H400

2004-05-02T19:53:00.000-04:00

I recently (last week) broke down and got a Toshiba SD-H400 combination TIVO/DVD player. It's something I've been thinking about for a while, and when Best Buy announced $150 in rebates, I couldn't say no.

I did the requisite googling before purchase, but didn't find that much. I wanted to put out my two cents into the googlesphere.

Thoughts on the Tivo Service:

I don't really watch that much TV, and after a week my viewing habits haven't' really changed. However, the service is excellent. Tivo Basic (the free service that comes with the unit) is very, very good. Although it doesn't produce steady revenue streams, they should be moving that product out quickly. I see branding opportunities for channels (I notice that some of them have their logos in the channel page, and others don't) and the viewing data alone is priceless. The only annoying this is that after 10 minutes of inactivity, it switches to Live TV, and it would be nice to have a silent screensaver, or at least a Bloomberg-like information dump. I suspect most Tivo Basic users will upgrade.

I could go on; the possibilities of the Tivo service are endless, and my sense is that Tivo is moving very slow to address the opportunities.

Thoughts on the SD-H400:

Random jottings:

1. It's louder than I expected; the fan runs all the time.
2. Biggest disappointment; the front LCD does not display the time. Funny how you miss that.
3. The DVD player is NOT integrated into the Tivo Interface. You press a button to turn on the DVD and it dumps you into a cryptic Toshiba DVD menu. After a few days, you get very used the elegant, almost ipod-esque Tivo menus.
4. Toshiba also missed a chance to do some very cool web integration. Imagine an interface to CDDB when you insert a CD. Or a "Buy this DVD" from Amazon when you play a rental DVD. Or keep a record of the DVDs you buy and your reviews and suggestions.
5. The remote is NOT good; weak signal and bad layout. In addition, you have to use the old "try as many codes as possible" to program the remote to work with your TV and audio.
6. The unit itself looks very sharp
7. The 30-second ad skipping cheat does not work on the Toshiba.
8. From what I read, the unit's hard drive is NOT upgradable.
9. You cannot eject the DVD while the Tivo interface is on (very minor point).
10. COMPOSITE VIDEO OUT.

All in all, I'm happy to get rid of an old DVD player and VCR and replace it with one box. I'm now looking at the Home Media Option and wondering if I can get rid of the Audiotron.

Bush to the Base, Kerry to the Swingers

2004-05-01T12:56:00.000-04:00

An interesting commentary by William Schneider through National Journal and the The Atlantic.

Starts off strong: delinates the plans of both candidates -- Bush stabilizing the base, Kerry fishing for swing voters, but then spends most of the time going through the Iraq issue.

Kerry's strategy on Iraq is to reach out to swing voters. They're the ones who think that the United States was right to go to war with Iraq but that the Bush administration isn't conducting the war properly. The most recent Time/CNN poll indicates that a majority of Americans think attacking Iraq was the right thing to do (53 percent to 41 percent) but that the Bush administration does not have a clear, well-thought-out plan in Iraq (51 percent to 43 percent).

Concludes with a warning: that playing with the anti-war people, like playing with the anti-outsourcing nuts, is dangerous:

A lot of Democrats may not be interested in supporting a candidate who promises to turn Bush's Iraq policy into a "success." Is there anyone they can turn to? Yes�a candidate who offered this thinly veiled warning to Democrats earlier this year: "If they persist in supporting a further quagmire war in Iraq without end ... if they side with President Bush, they will be criticized. But I don't think they're going to." If the news from Iraq gets worse, a powerful anti-war movement could emerge and transform Ralph Nader into a candidate with a cause.

Kerry Infighting, in detail

2004-04-30T18:02:00.000-04:00

Campaign Desk has a very detailed post on the lack of Kerry minority advisors meme. Calls it more press driven than anything else, which is probably correct. Ignores the powerplay and WHY MB-Cahill defined the "six insiders" in the Post.

One thought: could be signs of fights over VP vetting as well. Although I haven't seen an African American named as a potential VP, Richardson could be consided a Hispanic.

More on Wireless Broadband as a Campaign Issue

2004-04-30T16:08:00.000-04:00

The Register also has commentary on Bush's wireless broadband plans. Not sure how this will sway any voters.

Proposed FEC 527 rules posted; op-ed on 527s

2004-04-30T15:42:00.000-04:00

Bob Bauer has posted a link to the proposed 527 rules with some commentary. It would limit 527s that engage in voter registration and GOTV, and also engage in public communications that promote, support, attaack or oppose federal candidates or political parties to using federal hard money ($2000 limit).

Should be fun.

Also, The New Republic has an op-ed on the dangers of 527s to the Democratic Party in the long term.

Outsourcing bites back

2004-04-29T17:16:00.000-04:00

Four points on outsourcing:

one: the The New York Times story on the 28th by Eduardo Porter on why some high value jobs are staying in the US. Duh, the customers are there.

two: CWA ran an anti-outsourcing ad on yesterday's West Wing.

three: Last night's South Park was on outsourcing.

four: I got #2 and #3 thanks to a new Tivo. Perhaps we should be protesting the massive job losses in the advertising industry do to technology.

Smartphone Market Share

2004-04-29T17:10:00.000-04:00

Brighthand writes up a NPD Group report on preferences for Smartphones in the US and Europe. Not surprisingly, in the US the dominant platform is Palm, followed the PocketPC and MS Smartphone; and in Europe the dominant platform is Symbian.

I had written about the European reports before and I don't think they are comparable; two different research companies using different definitions of smartphones.

Kerry infighting....

2004-04-29T17:02:00.000-04:00

AP story on how Kerry doesn't have enough minorities. We find out who's on the morning conference calls. Builds off another story from last week about lack of senior African American staffers, and also from statements by M-B on who is really running the campaign.

Red, Blue and Purple

2004-04-29T16:57:00.000-04:00

Finally got around to reading David Von Drehle's Sunday article in the Washington Post on the Red/Blue split. Was very disappointed. Was hoping to find out more about the micro-targeting of message, but instead got a long discussion of the red/blue split. So 2000. Or 2001.

We did get a list of the Gallup "purple states": Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin. Twelve states.

For more confusion, see David Broder today for his interview with the governors of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Of course we don't learn much from that as well except that, well, the people in those states are split. We get hints of message: Vietnam vet, job losses, Ashcroft, gun control, but not much else.

I enjoyed this one from Slate much more on how Kerry is pandering to much to hard line Cubans and is alienating moderate Cubans and other Floridians. Takes a national message (Kerry shifts around too much) and ties it down to a very local issue (Cuba).

Slate catches on to the BCRA online advertising loophole

2004-04-28T12:47:00.000-04:00

Slate figures out there's a giant loophole in BCRA. Parties can raise soft-money to engage in internet advertising. The policy goal was to allow parties to spend as much as possible on two-way communication, which the FEC ruled also included the internet. Internet buys are also immune from the 60 day prior to the general election disclosure requirement.

Very quick, guys.

It just goes to show how meaningless the campaign finance reform debate has become. Reporters just care as long as we're able to track HOW the money comes in, and get a rough idea how it's being spent. Putting limits on HOW the money comes into politics is going to useless unless you can control how the money is spent -- which, by the way, is mostly through television advertising. Political campaigns are essentially just a fundraising stream for television stations.

CJR Campaign Desk also just figured out there is a 527 story, quoting the March 8 Weekly Standard article, and ignoring the reams of reporting on the entire NPRM in the last month. Wow. Scary. Where do these guys live? As much as I may disagre with the reporting of Edsall, Justice and Co. they are in the papers on a pretty regular basis.

Cybersecurity

2004-04-28T12:08:00.000-04:00

One of the other topics I like to keep up with is cybersecurity, as a result of a paper I helped write last year on the issue. The New Republic has a brief polemic on the need for Congress to bring back the Office of Technical Assessment, which provided science analysis for proposed legislation. If we are bring back dead agencies may I recommend two: The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) which gathered improvements in the administrative process which the Newt killed in a fit of spite, and Board of Tea Appeals. (see here for a PDF of a 3L HLS paper on the Tea Importation Act).

But my point about TNR article is an attack on the priority of cybersecurity:

This lack of technical muscle showed itself February 25 when the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Science, and Research & Development held a hearing on next year's budget with Charles McQueary, the DHS undersecretary for science and technology--possibly the only such hearing this year. McQueary's purview spans a host of important issues, such as bio-surveillance, detection of suicide bombers, and wireless communications, and the committee might have been expected to delve deeply into several of those. Yet the most probing questions came on cybersecurity, though it accounts for less than 2 percent of the proposed DHS research budget.�

Why? In a telling aside, Texas Republican Kay Granger informed the witness that, "some of us attended the National Defense University Tuesday morning for an exercise on cybersecurity, which is probably why you're getting these questions on cybersecurity." If Congress had the resources to seriously investigate homeland security science and technology, the hearing would never have spent so much time on questions raised by a single, marginally related seminar--it would have focused on research generated by Congress itself. All the talk of cybersecurity was a sign of a vacuum in Congress, which lacked in-depth understanding of the other 98 percent of McQueary's purview.�

It's nice to know that Richard Clark's work in bringing cybersecurity to the forefront of obscure government issues was not in vain.

Outsourcing and Macro Economic Policy

2004-04-27T11:51:00.000-04:00

Robert Samuelson writes a big picture overview on 25 years of macro economic policy in The New Republic. It's mostly about what Robert Rubin didn't do as Secretary of the Treasury: find a political solution to social security. But he also manages to compress 25 years of macro economic history into the essay. He also manages to explain fairly clearly about WHY the current accounts deficit is so dangerous for the dollar and our economic health.

He takes the last quarter to go over the two future threats to economic stability: the welfare state and globalization. We get the beginning of an answer to the welfare state problems -- trimming Social Security and Medicare -- but even he admits that the globalization problem is non-trivial:

In contrast to the welfare state--where conflicts are obvious if unpalatable--the problems of globalization are often murky. One overlooked question is whether or not the global economy is stable. When trade was modest and limited mainly to goods, from steel to sugar, countries were mostly in charge of their own economies. It was national politics and culture that largely determined which societies succeeded and failed, and though trade was often vital--to Japan and many Asian nations especially--it was rarely decisive. But as trade has expanded, as production systems have become more global, and as international flows of money and information have increased, the domestic model of how economies operate has to be modified. No one would now say that the economy of Connecticut exists apart from the larger American economy, even though Connecticut's economy is different from, say, Colorado's. The same parallel is not yet fully true of the American and the global economy, but it is becoming more so.

Well, at least when you develop a headache when thinking about outsourcing you have good company. Related ancedote: talked to a friend yesterday about his company and the subject of his workers in India came up. They do sales support -- essentially 30 year MBAs in India combing through lists to get sales leads for the salespeople in the US to follow up. Amazing. The producivity gains would be tremendous.

What all this is leading to is a need to understand better HOW countries like India are intergrating into the US economy. We sometimes like to talk about how Indian IT companies will buy more computers from us. But even if the computers come from Dell (and they don't) the parts are being made in South-East Asia and China. A better comparision would be the financial market, where London, New York and Tokyo are all tied into the same market. AEI just did an event on this subject, but I managed to miss it.

French Extrasolar Mission

2004-04-26T23:01:00.000-04:00

A press mention from Astrobiology Magazine on the French Corot mission. Scheduled for launch in 2006, it will be a transit (or as the French say, occultation) based project to examine 60,000 stars.

The Ground War

2004-04-26T22:12:00.000-04:00

This all began as a way to document the "Perfect Storm"; eager and naive Dean Stormtroopers crashing into Iowa to soften up the vote banks and instead turning voters against them. The ground-war is achieving mythical heights this year in the coverage. One reason is directly attributable to Iowa: despite the polls breaking towards Kerry for two weeks prior to the caucuses, the national media never managed to predict a Kerry victory. In a spate of self-analysis, they tried to understand how the DFA machine had broken down and one key conclusion was the Kerry folks had outmaneuvered them on the ground. Other reasons include is an increased Republican effort in GOTV during the 2002 elections, a general awareness that this election will be close, and a host of 527s pumping data into the media machine on their voter contact programs.

But, I still don't think reading the national media captures the boring reality of the "ground war". Matt Bai has a feature story in this week's The New York Times Magazine that captures the feeling of the ground war, and yet it moves from impressions into analysis, and end up weaker as a result.

The strong part of the piece is understanding that the "ground war" in politics is more analogous to a multi-level marketing scheme than a military campaign, and that like any multi-level structure it is dominated by two factors: a cult of personality and statistics.

The notion of translating the MLM concept into politics is visionary -- and also a little disquieting. Pyramid-based companies have proved amazingly successful at raising up armies of enterprising Americans; Amway, the world's most successful MLM, has more than 3.6 million distributors. But some MLM's thrive by imposing their own strange and insular cultures on their recruits, and while they offer the illusion of self-employment, those at the top of the pyramid often demand a rigid kind of uniformity and loyalty

Bai also captures the essence of why the ground war works: it's like MSG; doesn't taste much on it's own but makes the other outreach efforts (mail, TV, radio, press) much more effective.

Come the fall, whatever 30-second message the Bush team decides to spread in its latest TV ad or mailing -- ''Bush will keep us safe,'' for instance, or ''Kerry wants to raise your taxes and send the money to France'' -- will be reinforced immediately by volunteers fanning out across their neighborhoods, talking points in hand. In other words, when you have a successful grass-roots machine, you can get more leverage from each dollar you spend on the other facets of your campaign.

So far, so good. He also does a good job of capturing what it's like ON the ground, where you are much more concerned about making today's numbers than about armchair punditry:

But as with other volunteers I met, there was, in Ashenhurst's disdain, a notable dispassion. The actual politics of the election didn't seem to interest them all that much. From the ground, the campaign as it is being fought in Washington seems like an abstraction -- a parallel line moving along the same axis, but far out of sight. The volunteers are more concerned with meeting their quotas of yard signs and bumper stickers.

I would critique this article on three points. First, it doesn't go into any depth on the linkages between TONE and STRUCTURE. This goes back to something I was harping about the DFA message, which is that they didn't have one, except for "Join Us and Change the World". Paul Maslin's (DFA pollster) confession in the Atlantic is a useful historical mirror:

On September 24 and 25, when it was not clear whether Clark would be competing in the Iowa caucuses (ultimately he did not), we conducted a new poll that in its focus on comparing the candidates revealed more of the emerging contours of the race. Dean held solid advantages over his competitors when it came to who represented change, who would stand up to Bush, and who was bringing new energy and volunteers into politics.

Despite these strengths, the results revealed some bad signs about where the race was going. First, although Dean led the field on who would best stand up to Bush, a quarter of likely caucus-goers thought all the candidates would stand up to him equally. To us, this suggested that our message was being borrowed and diffused. Second, 13 percent thought Kerry was the candidate best described as having "opposed the war," despite his vote in favor of it. His circuitous statements on that subject may not have been helping him in New Hampshire, where Dean's lead was increasing, or with media insiders, but plenty of Iowans still thought he was against the war.

The third finding that raised a red flag was the so-called "electability" question: Dean's lead was narrower here, and Kerry was already in second place. Kerry's hope, it seemed at the time, was that the discussion would swing back to foreign policy, where his more "presidential" qualities could come into play.

I wouldn't say DFA was a MLM; it didn't depend on friends recruiting friends; it was more of a mob that attracted people due to gravity. What will be interesting to see if a MLM BC04 structure (which they have on the fundraising side as well) will limit their ability to message. I think they are going to be very good at painting a scary picture of John Kerry, but far less effective in painting a picture of a shared future.

Second, I think the article ignores the online aspects. That's a good thing, in some ways; it shows a maturity that emails to hundreds of campaign volunteers doesn't count as "new age politics."
Wired had a nice little article last week on how anti-Bush website are popping up, but it doesn't tie it back to the ground war. The great insight of DFA was that all you had to do with presidential politics was put out a "help wanted" webpage and hundreds of self-generated volunteers would show up. And when you're talking about white exurban communities, you need to laern how to recruit online. The great internet political bubble may have burst when they realized that people couldn't vote online, but the larger Ganzian point I am trying to make is the message that works may be different online than it is in person.

Third, Mai's piece tries to draw a conclusion: that the MLM are here to stay:

To watch them recruit new voters and volunteers in exurban town houses, cajoling one neighbor at a time, is to imagine how it might have looked to see the Democratic ward bosses organize their tenements in the days of Tammany Hall. The comparison suggests a vision of the future: win or lose, a lasting political organization could well be the legacy of the Bush pyramid. It's not unrealistic to think that these new precinct-by-precinct county organizations in fledgling communities all over America may endure long after Karl Rove has retired to lead seminars at a Texas university.

Campaign tactics are very much flavor of the month; if BC04 loses the Rove mail vendor approach is going to be hard to sustain inside the party for the future. I have no doubt that the fundraising MLM BC04 invested will remain; but the funny thing about any modern political machine is how much it melts away during the offseason.

Bush Broadband Policy

2004-04-26T12:15:00.000-04:00

The "Broadband policy is a campaign issue" is turning into a bad joke. I think it's also dangerous for Kerry with ML and their long history of telecom politics lurking in the background. However, RCR reports on Friday a group a senior Democrats sent a letter criticizing the lack of Bush leadership on broadband deployment. The response? The president announces that government agencies need to "improve right of way management of federal lands to foster greater broadband deployment." This isn't a bad joke, it's a sick joke, and about a month late for April Fools.

Update: OK, there's a bit more on the BC04 side. Wired has Bush in Minnesota calling for "Congress to slap a permanent ban on taxes consumers pay for high-speed Internet hookups." CNET News.com has some commentary with more details. It's a great example of how a President's statement can shake the tree.

Update 2.0: Maybe there is something here. Mathew Yglesias also has a long post in TAPPED on Bush broadband policy. It is something we understand on a gut level when we have to pay the bill every month.

AT&T Wireless: The Rebound

2004-04-23T17:34:00.000-04:00

I don't want to make this an AWS journal, but it's a great story. News.com on the rebound plans. They are opening 100 new stores and adding staffing to call centers, as well as announcing the improved network.

CEO Zeglis blames the problem on number portability, and it's likely that AWS will go in history as a victim of the rule change. He claims that in November there was a "contact bulge" of people whose contracts were nearly up and hadn't renewed, and after November they found it easier to switch carriers.

Small suggestion: if they would focus on the customer and find ways to 1) add minutes on the monthly plans or 2) incentivize exisiting GSM customers to upgrade their phones and add a contract extension the problems may be easier solved. The best deal I could get for an upgrade to a S-E t616 was $150, while the new customer price is $100 (after a $120 instant rebate).

I don't want to make this an AWS journal, but it's a great story. News.com on the rebound plans. They are opening 100 new stores and adding staffing to call centers, as well as announcing the improved network.

CEO Zeglis blames the problem on number portability, and it's likely that AWS will go in history as a victim of the rule change. He claims that in November there was a "contact bulge" of people whose contracts were nearly up and hadn't renewed, and after November they found it easier to switch carriers.

Small suggestion: if they would focus on the customer and find ways to 1) add minutes on the monthly plans or 2) incentivize existing GSM customers to upgrade their phones and add a contract extension the problems may be easier solved. The best deal I could get for an upgrade to a S-E t616 was $150, while the new customer price is $100 (after a $120 instant rebate).

Update: MobileTracker is reporting that AWS is offering an unlimited data plan for $45, as opposed to $80 previously. Small change for the better.

Kerry Strategy

2004-04-23T12:07:00.000-04:00

Ryan Lizza writes in The New Republic on Kerry's new strategy: take a punch.

Good points of article:

1. Manadatory Tony Corrado Quote
2. Estimated cash on hand at end of April: Kerry: $60 million, BC04 $70 million
3. quote from unnamed Kerry advisor on political media: ""I'm not paying attention to you guys anymore," he said." Of course, the issue isn't that Kerry is laying groundwork as he did in Iowa, he is fundraising.
4. Another quote from unnamed Democrat strategist: Others blame the memory of the last Massachusetts Democrat to win his party's nomination. "One theory is that the Kerry people are obsessed with Michael Dukakis," says the strategist. "They are fighting the last war--rapid response above all else."
5. An entire paragraph on the tactics of timing the conventiona and getting the $75 million in public funds. Two months ago CV was that Kerry would be hurt by this (he has one more month to spread the public money around), but Lizza turns that argument on its head.

Ties in my earlier post about the $40 million in ads being a very expensive firewall to prevent Kerry from breaking out in March and April. In any case, there is no question that Iraq/Richard Clark and the 9/11 commission have stolen a lot of mojo.

Details of Kerry Broadband Policy

2004-04-22T12:31:00.000-04:00

Reed Hundt is talking up Kerry's broadband policy. He wants to define broadband as a universal service to help push out implementation in rural and low-income areas. Spectrum reform would also be part of the agenda. Not sure how that is going to lower the monthly cost for most users...

NextWave Spectrum Reform

2004-04-21T21:33:00.000-04:00

More details on the NextWave spectrum deal. Nextwave will return 60 licences, and also pay $386 million in cash/or returned licences. Sweetheart deal; they are retaining licences in 25 cities and will easily be able to sell them off to pay the FCC. FCC also gets the money from the Cingular sale last year.

An era has ended; this has been a fight since 1996.

NASA requests on extrasoloar planets

2004-04-21T18:04:00.000-04:00

NASA released Sean O'Keefe testimony before the House Appropriations Committee (subcommittee on VA-HUD-Independent Agencies) on NASA's 2005 budget. On extrasolar planets:

Extrasolar Planets -- NASA will launch advanced space telescopes that will search for Earth-like planets and habitable environments around other stars. The budget includes $1.1 billion for the Astronomical Search for Origins, a 19 percent increase over FY 2004, to support the recently launched Spitzer Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope development, as well as several future observatories. This funding also supports investments to extend the lifetime of the Hubble Space Telescope to the maximum extent possible without a Shuttle servicing mission and to safely deorbit the observatory when its science operations cease.

Let's break this down:

$1.1 Billion for NASA's Origins Program, which includes all of NASA's extrasolar projects.

But the bulk of the funding is going to three projects in 2005 that have little to do with the search for extrasolar planets: The James Webb Space Telescope the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. With last of course, the budget is mostly for de-orbiting.

NASA has three targeted extrasolar planet missions: Kepler, SIM and the Terrestrial Planet Finder. Of the three, Kepler is scheduled for launch by 2007. SIM is scheduled for a 2009 launch, and TPF is still on the drawing board.

In terms of Kepler, we are seeing a large budget increases: $23 million in 2003, $50.8 million in 2004 and a proposed $127.2 million in 2005.

The other two mission are included in the "Technology and Advanced Concepts" programs and we see a large boost there as well: $178.5 million to 302.9 million.

See JPL's page on Extrasolar Planets and a list of NASA missions for more -- including the wonderful 3D atlas of our neighboring stars and their planets.

Internal Kerry dynamics

2004-04-21T14:45:00.000-04:00

Three articles (two of them from last week) on internal Kerry dynamics.

Lobbyists Try to Parlay a Presidential Campaign Washington Post

The Kerry Tribes - The seven factions fighting for control of his campaign and his presidency Slate.com

Old-School Team To Sell Kerry as Modern Centrist Washington Post

Clearly a lot of infighting in the last week.

1Q fundraising totals

2004-04-21T14:41:00.000-04:00

Total counts:

JK: $54 million
BC04: $52 million
The Group of 21: $57 million

Wow.

So many queries. So many links.

Bush Spent a Record on His Race in March New York Times, Glen Justice

Bush Campaign Has Raised $184 Million Washington Post, Dana Milbank

Bush Campaign Spent Monthly Record of $50 Million in March LA Times, Lisa Getter and Michael Finnegan

Kerry, Bush Set Fund-Raising Records AP, SHARON THEIMER

527 surge takes Kerry past Bush The Hill, Alexander Bolton (linked to yesterday but worth repearting)

Wow.

Some other numbers:

Kerrrry spent $14.6 million this quarter. BC04 spent $52 million this quarter. The G21 spent $57 million.

Kerry raised $27 million through web, BC04 about $5.8

RNC has raised $157 million; DNC has raised $76 million. I doubt these are quarterly totals.

Bush is not longer doing fundraising event for BC04, only for the RNC.

BC04 raised $126 at events, $52.4 through direct mail/telephone and $5.8 through web.

BC04 spent $40 million on ads. Very expensive firewall.

BW on Nokia woes

2004-04-21T12:11:00.000-04:00

Business Week Online has a nice little story on the current Nokia woes. However, it misses the elephant in the room. Narrative: Nokia, S-E and Motorola are suffering because the market is more CARRIER driven than HANDSET driven. The big 3 refuse to customize their phone. Quotes:

LG is a good example of that. To build its sales in the U.S., the Korean manufacturer aligned with cellular leader Verizon. LG stationed nearly 50 of its engineers in the U.S. for weeks to help tailor its phones to Verizon's requirements -- from the location of buttons to how picture mail operates. By contrast, Nokia only recently began accommodating certain design requests from Verizon.

Isn't the real issue NOT that Nokia is recalcitrant in customizing their phone (logos, customizing buttons etc) but that they only offer one CDMA phone on the Verizon network?

However, AWS, Cingular and T-mobile are missing their biggest opportunity to retain customers by being more flexible with handset choice. Right now to upgrade your GSM phone with AWS they are asking for a two year contract. Very little incentive to buy a new phone when you SIM card is put into bondage. And the direct price of an unlocked phone is still too high for people to upgrade every six months.

See The Register for a story on how the large Euro networks are trying to get the same control over customizing handsets as the American carriers currently have.

latest Charlie Cook moving beyond the perfect 18

2004-04-20T12:57:00.000-04:00

The latest Charlie Cook column lists the "broadcast targets" : Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota,
Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin, plus Arizona and Delaware. But he goes off and lists a few more:

Colorado (moving from red)
North Carolina (moving from red)
New Jersey (moving from Blue)

the eights closest states: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio and
Wisconsin

The Hill on Republican Outsourcing and 527s

2004-04-20T12:53:00.000-04:00

The Hill is running two stories today; one of the the Republican response to the outsourcing threat and the second a quick update on 527s.

Reeling Republicans craft counterattack

527 surge takes Kerry past Bush

quotes on outsourcing:

House leaders want to push the debate beyond tax issues, which have been the focal point of the Bush administration and the GOP-led Congress. While reforming elements of the tax code is crucial, Republicans want to offer new solutions on other matters, said a leadership aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because plans have not been finalized.

The game plan is for Republicans to launch their counterpunch initiative with eight weeks of debate and votes on what they say are �populist� measures to reduce healthcare costs, eliminate red tape, curb abusive lawsuits, simplify the tax code, improve worker-training programs, enforce trade law and reshape energy policies

on 527s:

�Thanks to 527s, we will be outspent by the Democrats,� said Mehlman , according to a participant who took notes of the meeting. �MoveOn.org is a huge threat and has hurt the president. Every action makes a difference.

Twenty-one of the largest Democratic-allied 527 groups � named after a section of the tax code � raised nearly $57 million in the first three months of this year, according to reports filed last week with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and sorted by fundraising watchdog groups such as PoliticalMoneyLine.com and the Center for Public Integrity.

who are the 21 groups: CRP lists both D and R 527s, 501(c)(3) and (c)(4)s.

Also see Political Money Line

The 21 left-leaning groups surveyed matched in three months what they raised in all of 2003.

Users and their phones....

2004-04-19T23:00:00.000-04:00

The Feature is running a little piece on the emotional bond between users and their phones. Key business finding: PTT increases immediacy of communication, and turning their emotional phones into productivity tools is going to be hard.

Ohio, the Key State?

2004-04-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

Front page (A1) Washington Post story on Ohio and the ground war. Good details on the BC04 efforts. Little on the Kerry stuff, except for mandatory plug for 527s.

But is Ohio really a battleground state? Polls are tied, but with the bumb from primary/Iraq/9-11 commision and Clarke it should be higher. Ohio Democratic Party is weak statewide. Democrats do have mayors in place. Social issues do work in Ohio.

Apple -- the hardware company -- and quality control

2004-04-19T12:14:00.000-04:00

Still a bit better with the problems from the ibook a few weeks ago, but saw this in the Inquirer and it hit home. Three points: 1) Mac hardware quality control is slipping -- no question there. 2) Apple are closed systems that only Apple can repair. Iffy. The new laptops are pretty closed; and require professional servicing to change a hard drive or logic board -- although the G4 ibooks are apparently a bit easier to swap out a drive. In any case, not as good as PC. However, you have to give props to Apple for a very seamless repair experience once you send the machine in. I wish they had a swap program rather than the current one, but with a three or four day turnaround time you shouldn't complain too much. Also, if you keep your laptop for more than a year Applecare is not a bad deal, although I do wish they sold it by the year and included an integrated insurance program as well. Three, Apple should switch to Intel. Stupid argument. The problem with Apple isn't the fact that the G4 is underpowered compared to an Intel/AMD offering, but that the Diversity of selection is limited (no 3 pound notebook, no massive server farms).

A detailed breakdown of AT&T Wireless Woes

2004-04-19T10:21:00.000-04:00

CIO has a very long and detailed article on the breakdown of the AWS CRM system last year that destroyed the company. Also, hints of outsourcing as well -- the CIO was hired from Wipro and constant fears of being outsourced help up the Siebel implementation. Of course, it doesn't matter now...they will all be fired by Cingular in 9 months...

Let me go into some detail: the new CIO hired in April 2003 was a former Wipro exec. Lots of fears about outsourcing. They both the Siebel upgrade and choose the wrong vendor for number portablity. Lots of fear about outsourcing. In November of 2003 CEO annouces it will lay off 1900 workers -- this is after they botch the Siebel upgrade and can't sign up any new customers for months. OF course IT is worried. TCS report found on offshoring pieces of AWS IT infrastructure including the Siebel system the AWS IT workers had just managed to junk. Wonder why the management wanted a change of hands? On Nov. 19 WSJ runs a report on outsourcing, and it turns out HP new vendor. On Nov 24 number portability begins and AWS can't run that as well. the CIO should be fired. In January 2004 AWS is in "advanced plans" to overseas 3000 computer and customer service jobs. Of course, also in January AWS has to put itself on the block because it's own IT workers had taken SO MUCH VALUE off the company it could not exist as an independent entity. And the final result -- when Cingular comes it, ALL those IT workers will be gone -- you don't need two IT systems for one telecom company. And the kicker -- they are losing jobs to India - 220 in March, 250 in June and 250 in September. 700+, not 3000.

another extrasolar planet mission

2004-04-18T14:08:00.000-04:00

This one a Brit mission -- SuperWASP. A transit discovery mission. Looks for Jupiter sized planets.

Another take on the Nokia earnings debacle....

2004-04-16T15:18:00.000-04:00

The Feature is running a brief article on the possible implications on the Nokia 1Q earnings. This is part of a larger argument about whether the mobile phone market is "PC oriented" -- specs as the marketing handle -- or something else -- where design and usability take over. Of course the real reason is that Nokia just doesn't sell enought CDMA phones, and with the GSM problems at Cingular/AWS/T-Mobile in the US it's no surprise they are missing out on the upgrade cycle.

Personal take: I wish usability was higher on the list. I was admiring a V60 Motorola last night, but the interface is terrible. I really like the S-E interface, but I wish the phones would lose a little weight.

Macro point: We're taken it for granted that consumers in the US are LOOKING at handsets as opposed to service plans. Big change.

Updated: Nokia is a cultural metric, because New York Times also is running story, with addition that Samsung is now largest tech company outside US. See my earlier comments as well.

Update 2.0 Sony-Ericsson posts a third straight quarterly profit. Driver: camera phones -- not flip phones. Average handset price this quarter was 152 euros. For the last three it was 180 euros. Expansion of low end market. Nokia average handset price was 114 euros in 1Q.

Update 3.0: April 20th report in The Register on smartphone sales in Europe. Nokia is leading, although Siemes had a big quarter and S-E held steady. Palm is not selling the Treo in Europe. I don't know how you define "smartphone" but my sense is the bulk of the smartphones sold by Nokia are not very sophiscated. They do have a lot of models though.

A foreign policy perspective on 527

2004-04-16T15:12:00.000-04:00

This is a bit attentuanted, but see Joshua Kurliantzick's indictment of the Bush policy of de-democratization around the world. A funny quote:

And in sunny Kyrgyzstan, the least repressive of the three authoritarian countries, Human Rights Watch reports that the government has banned non-governmental organizations for getting involved in politics, manipulated election monitoring, and "enacted draconian laws ... to deprive citizens of their right to free assembly."

I wonder what the Human Rights Watch could say about the proposed 527 NPRM at the FEC...

Kerry's attack on outsourcing

2004-04-16T12:59:00.000-04:00

A pretty good argument on Slate on why Kerry's outsourcing attack on corproations is actually pretty cogent.

Things looking up for 527s

2004-04-16T12:56:00.000-04:00

Glen Justice reports today (the 16th) that things are looking up for the 527s at the FEC. Bradley Smith money quote: "I think we'll need more time," Bradley A. Smith, the election commission's chairman and a Republican, said, echoing the sentiments of several commissioners. "We've got to have the time for this to be properly done. We know it will be challenged in court."

From the electionlaw email list, we also get a brief breakdown of what might happen if the FEC ties 3-3:

Pursuant to 2 USC s437g(a)(8), the RNC can file suit against the FEC 120 days after the filing of its administrative complaint for failure to act. The standard applied to determine whether the FEC is acting quickly enough is in an unreported D.C. Circuit case called In re Congressional Club, 1984 WL 148396, Case Nos. 84-5701, 84-5719 (D.C. Cir. Oct. 24, 1984) (citing Common Cause v. Federal Election Comm'n, 489 F. Supp. 738, 744 (D.D.C. 1980) and Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. FCC, 750 F.2d 70 (D.C. Cir. 1984) ("TRAC")). As implied above, this suit would not lead to a judicial determination of the 527 issue but, rather, would lead to a judicial determination as to whether the FEC was proceeding quickly enough.

If the FEC "acts" by dismissing the RNC complaint, then the RNC can sue the FEC (again under s437g(a)(8)) for "acting contrary to law" in dismissing the complaint. This might lead to a determination of the merits of the 527 issue (but not necessarily).

Exsolar Planet found with new method

2004-04-15T17:33:00.000-04:00

Three new planets were found today, and NASA also annouced the success of a new
method: microlensing.

That gives us three types of detection methods for extrasolar planets: microlensing, transit, and the wobble. The microlens is considered very good for finding planets far from the suns, and the wobble method is good at finding close-in planets.

Also, thanks to
Space.com we also get some information on three NASA missions to detect extrasolar planets: Kepler, SIM, and TPF. Of the three, only Kepler has a firm date.

Was the 527 NPRM hearing geared toward nonprofits

2004-04-15T11:43:00.000-04:00

I had earlier noticed that the FEC NPRM on 527s was a "bit heavy" on the liberal side, but didn't really do any follow up.

The Washington Post today ran a piece, not by Edsall, noting that Bradley Smith "gently adomished" the RNC for decling to testify at the NPRM hearing, saying in addition ""It would have been valuable for the RNC in this forum to put to rest the accusation that theirs is a strategy of short-term political advantage."

The Post piece also reported that a "theme running through many of the record 150,00 comments on the proposed rules was the the Republican Party's interest in limiting 527s was poltiically motivated." Well, duh. However, see this Cox News story by Andrew Mollison which claims that 48% of the emails comments came from the BC04 website. The Cox story also claims that Moveon.org did not set up a form letter machine.

AWS does 850 GSM roaming, Cingular gets Data

2004-04-14T16:24:00.000-04:00

Two recurring pieces:

1) AWS announces GSM America, which is a no-roaming charge plan on the GSM networks. Looks like a result of the Cingular-AWS roaming agreements which have been signed in the past month.

2) Cingular goes for a $20/month unlimited Data usage plan. Unclear if this will include GPRS services over bluetooth. However, a good move from the previous $80 a month charge for unlimited data. Will AWS be far behind?

Also, see RCR for a March 30 article on the probability of an divorce between Cingular and T-Mobile on their California, Nevada and NYC roaming agreements.

Multiple Outsourcing Posts�

2004-04-14T12:53:00.000-04:00

The difficulty of monitoring outsourcing stories is selecting a few to focus on is a highly imprecise science. However, before I can get smart, let me characterize a few more "types of stories" out there:

1. Lack of Tech Leadership: much like the earlier post from CNET, here is another story on the lack of tech leadership and how "offshoring" has become an "inshoring" or "right shoring" or whatever. Newsweek has a similar piece. I think most serious observers realize that these tactics won't work in the long term. However, it shows how far the consultants who write this stuff are from the political world. See also this piece from CareerJournal.com through EditorandPublisher.com on more of these language. I also have noticed that the number of stories has dropped down as the Presidential campaign have concentrated elsewhere.

2. Foreign Workers are Taking Over. Stories that suddenly realize that American companies employ foreign workers and in some cases have been doing so for over 100 years. Terrible. More on the Dell numbers from The Register.

3. If I add outsourcing to a dry Academic Study, perhaps I'll get written up: Check this from The Economist which starts off as a sober discussion of whether the GDP is being measured properly, and then manages to conclude that it's not because it doesn't include all the call centers work increasing our productivity.

Edsall/Justice cut-n-paste

2004-04-14T12:36:00.000-04:00

The start of the big 527 hearing. Here is the coverage from Justice and Edsall:

Latest Big-Money Fight, Over Fund-Raising Groups, Will Be Heard by Panel New York Times, Glen Justice

Proposed Rules for '527' Groups Lead to Some Unusual Alliances Washington Post, Thomas B. Edsall

And here is the cut n'paste:

Proposed rules to restrict the fundraising and spending activities of independent political organizations have prompted unusual new alliances of convenience, pitting the GOP and campaign watchdog groups against a coalition of conservative family advocates and liberal abortion rights groups. (WP)

These are the latest voices that will join the campaign finance debate on the future of so-called 527 committees as the Federal Election Commission opens two days of hearings on Wednesday. The committees are among the last avenues for injecting six- and seven-figure contributions into the political system, with hundreds having raised more than $120 million for this year's elections. (NYT)

The FEC is to begin hearings today on the regulatory proposal, drafted by the agency's general counsel, which would impose tough limits on third parties raising and using "soft money" contributions from unions, corporations and wealthy people. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance law cracked down on the use of soft money by political parties but did not address third-party activities (WP)

How to regulate these committees is the latest chapter in the new McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which was passed in 2002 and was upheld, for the most part, by the Supreme Court last year. The law banned political parties and candidates from collecting soft money, the unlimited contributions from companies, labor unions and wealthy donors that had come to dominate federal elections in the last decade (NYT)

Democrats were more dependent on soft money than were Republicans. So several veteran Democratic operatives turned to 527 committees to offset the Republicans' significant financial advantage. They created a group of organizations to raise soft money and to work together to defeat President Bush, who has raised more than $180 million, the most of any presidential campaign. (NYT)

Both sides recognize that Kerry has benefited over the past six weeks from television advertising paid for by such groups as MoveOn.org and the Media Fund, which operate independently of the Democrats' campaign organization. These groups have stepped in to counter the $40 million or more spent by the Bush campaign on television and radio advertising, at a time when the Kerry campaign has had less than $10 million to invest in television ads. (WP)

Republican Party leaders appear willing to restrict the activities of GOP 527s to constrain Democratic 527s and prevent them from chipping away further at the president's funding advantage. The Bush campaign began March with a huge cash advantage -- $110 million in the banks, compared with just under $3 million in Kerry's account. (WP)

The FEC is considering a range of options that would greatly increase the number of politically active groups regulated by the agency. Those groups would be required to regularly file disclosure reports with the agency and would operate under stringent limits on the use of soft money to finance "issue ads" and other activities that "promote, support, attack or oppose" a federal candidate. (WP)

However, the scope of the new regulations has also drawn the attention of charities, unions, trade associations, social welfare groups and other nonprofits. Leaders of these groups cite a wide range of concerns, including a fear that the commission's work will cut into free political speech on issues like the environment or abortion rights. (NYT)

Legally, the question is whether 527 committees must register with the commission as political committees, which would prompt contribution limits and other restrictions. The law says that organizations must register if they raise or spend more than $1,000 in a federal election and if their major purpose is to affect elections. (NYT)

A crucial issue before the FEC is whether the commission could limit the applicability of any new rules it promulgates to 527 groups, or whether such rules would also apply to the thousands of existing advocacy groups whose main functions include the evaluation, criticism and praise of elected officials (WP)

Campaign finance watchdogs dispute these contentions. They are pressing the FEC to carefully limit any regulations that are adopted and exempt charitable and nonprofit groups organized under separate provisions of the IRS code, 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4). (WP)

The IRS regulations governing 527s do not bar the groups from collecting soft-money contributions. The 527s are required to file periodic disclosures of money raised and spent, although with less frequency and less detail than the ones required of political groups registered with the FEC -- ranging from the national political parties to corporate and union political action committees (WP

Gmail

2004-04-13T16:37:00.000-04:00

A lot has been written about Gmail in the last 14 days, but this was the first post I saw that brought up zoe, which is a very cool way to search your email. It's why I'm stuck on Eudora; it has the best search of any client.

And, of course, if Google would offer VOIP they could begin to track phone call usage as well. Pretty amazing.

Cingular purchasing NextWave PCS licences

2004-04-13T12:59:00.000-04:00

Cingular announced last week that it's buying 34 PCS licenses from NextWave for $1.4 billion. I believe NextWave had something like 90 C and F block PCS licenses, and I haven't been able to find exactly which licenses are being transferred. RCR is also reporting that Cingular is testing a CDMA2000 1x EV solution. WirelessWeek.com has more details, including why Nextel is upset about the deal. Nextel, of course is also fighting with Verizon over Nextel's interference with public safety radio frequencies.

One more outsourcing tidbit

2004-04-13T12:35:00.000-04:00

Washingtonpost.com did a LIVE discussion with Ron Hira of IEEE-USA. Interesting points: only one question about h1B/L1, a lot of ranting. As I mentioned before on IEEE-USA's outsourcing position paper, it is surprising rational. They don't have too much interest in this issue going binary either.

Levels of outsourcing stories

2004-04-13T12:13:00.000-04:00

I wanted to put out three levels of outsourcing stories:

First, an older example from November 2003 from The Register. What we're seeing is that Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and Infosys are for the first time really looking to compete with the big boys (IBM, Accenture) for clients. Let me highlight that with a more recent story from last week on how Infosys is planning to hire professionals here in the US. They'll be doing sales, but that always pays better anyway.

Second, in the last two weeks both IBM and Citibank made two major acquisitions of Indian call center firms (as opposed to IT). IBM purcahsed Dakash, and Citibank bought e-Serve. These are both second and third tier firms within India. Surprising, but I haven't seen much backlash from either India or the US on either acquistion.

Third, you can benchmark the level of inanity on the jobs debate when we get articles on how a slim majority of Dell workers are overseas. I used to remember that being a source of pride that our companies are taking over the world. Let's not even look at our trade deficit, and our current account problems.

Macro point: In a debate about jobs, the loudest squeakers get their axles greased. IT workers can make more noise than stay at home call center employees. And instead of looking at how we create NEW jobs, we are just trying to protect our old ones.

Final Posting of FEC NPRM schedule of testimony

2004-04-12T15:36:00.000-04:00

It's out

Seems a bit heavy on the liberal side, but I guess that makes sense.

Kerry Broadband Policy

2004-04-12T10:04:00.000-04:00

BW Online story outline a possible Kerry Broadband/Tech policy speech in Mid-April. Highlights: tax credits for higher speed connections (20 megabits/s!), spectrum reform, and a nasty combination of healthnet/Universal Service Fund issues.

EV-DO reports from Mossberg

2004-04-12T09:44:00.000-04:00

Mossberg reports on his experience with EV-DO in Washington. Very happy with the speed, not so happy with the price (and point out that AT&T Wireless EDGE services costs the same for unlimited data) and worried about the upload speed (40 to 60 kps)

Massive Cell Phone News

2004-04-09T17:23:00.000-04:00

First, Nokia reported this week that handset sales have not kept pace with consumer demand, and that sales for this quarter will be DOWN 2%. The Register thinks it's mostly Nokia's fault, and not reflective of the industry. Nokia blames a lack of medium priced products in North America and Europe.

I can't say anything about Europe, but in the US the problem is lack of CDMA offerings; Sprint and Verizon (and Nextel) are doing great; Cingular, AWS and T-mobile all have some issues they are working through. See this related story about the lack of CDMA Nokia phones and the diffcult of competing against the Asian on a cost basis.

Also, thankfully, Consumer Union has started a new campaign to force carriers to unlock their phones. If we did that, it was start a much easier path for UPGRADING your current phones as well. Nokia should be 100% behind this. I know plenty of people willing to pay $700 to a p900 phone just to be cool, and if you knew your could recycle your old phone without going through the unlocking maze sales of new, more expensive handsets would rise.

Tech Leadership During Outsourcing Storm

2004-04-09T17:06:00.000-04:00

Excellent editorial in News.com on the lack of tech leadership in the outsourcing debate. Excellent point. Most tech CEOs don't want to touch this issue. However, actions speak louder than words....look at IBM's acquisition of a large Indian outsourcing firm.

A New Link

2004-04-08T17:02:00.000-04:00

A new link to the The Campaign Finance Institute after their very helpful eGuide to FEC regulations on coordination. Tony Corrado is on their board...he is everywhere.

Illegal coordination with 527s

2004-04-08T15:23:00.000-04:00

The The New York Times covers a MoveOn.org staffer who is now working for the Kerry campaign and how the Republicans are howling about illegal coordination. I'm not sure if the FEC has a working definition of "coordiantion" but despite the best internal Chinese walls it will break down. Information wants to be free...

The Battleground States

2004-04-08T15:13:00.000-04:00

Today's The Note alludes to the most recent Greenberg ACT/AV poll of the 17 battleground states. It shows 48 to 48 with 2 percent undecided. I'm starting to wonder if Ohio is actually one of the key states, or rather if the campaign is going to target it. The Mason-Dixon poll puts Bush up 8 points in Flordia, and the Ohio Poll from last week had Bush and Kerry even. Perhaps you can leave Ohio to the 527s, unions and other D groups without investing the camaign there.

In addition the DesMoinesRegister is running a piece of what it feels like at the state level for the 527 worker bees.

I won't even comment on how the term "grass-roots" used to mean "coming from the people" and now means "going to the people".

Distraction play....

2004-04-07T13:29:00.000-04:00

USA Today covers the 97,000 emails nonprofits have sent into the FEC on the NPRM. CRP notes that the larger 527 are using them as a hedge. I don't have access to Roll Call, but the Note summary today suggests that this is working: "An intense battle over the future of so-called 527 groups reached a fevered pitch this week as more than 97,000 individuals across the country deluged the Federal Election Commission with their thoughts on the controversial committees." Of course the bulk of those comments are for excluding 501(c)(3)s from the NPRM.

Extrasolar planets...

2004-04-06T16:47:00.000-04:00

The laptop was dead last week, and we missed: Kerry $50 million target met, the associated need for 527 soft money, details of the RNC complaint, my personal two cents on Mr. Clarke, innumerable outsourcing stories, more Ohio as the key state of 2004, Bush broadband policy, transnational terrorism, a tell on all on DFA, my first BC04 ad, Ian Buruma and much, much more! And you thought it was slow.

You also missed this piece on extrasolar planets, and some new calculations of the "habitable zone" based on the data from the 100+ extrasolar planetary systems so far discovered. The good news: half the systems have a zone where an earth-like planet could have existed for over a billion years.

If this is true, quite a big discovery, as the presences of so many large gas giants would lead one to imagine the habitable zones would be small or non-existent. Don't know if this includes calculations on meteors, coments and collisions.

Upside down reading mystery solved again...

2004-04-06T16:40:00.000-04:00

Don't ask why Timothy Noah spent days puzzling over a picture in the Washington Post. At least we know that there are people out there scrutinizing every inch of the papers to keep watch for the rest of us. However, the good news is, the mystery is solved. The bad news is, the Post is right.

The picture is of Jenna, the ex-Edwards staffer, reading the Handmaiden's Tale in the rain. The cover is missing. Jenna is friends with Vishal, who is friends with Parag (see earlier Slate story) and who we met a few months ago at a dinner party at Parag's.

Vishal has confirmed the picture is on Jenna, and has promised scans of the book cover soon. Another slow news week in Washington...

A local media strategy on outsourcing

2004-03-30T11:31:00.000-05:00

When an outsourcing story gets into the Portland Press Herald you know you have problems. Not a bad piece, but it relfects that while outsourcing has been going on for years, it is only now starting to hit small business. And there are some positive pieces as well; with the possibility of outsourcing you can buy services that before we out of range (advanced graphic design, video work) for your typical small enterprise. However, you can see why it causes so much fear; in any small business your personal relationship with your employees matter much more.

I wonder how many people have been put out of work by QuarkXPress?

ITAA Outsourcing Report

2004-03-30T09:48:00.000-05:00

ITAA has released a new study on the impact of outsourcing on the IT sector. It found a loss of 104,000 jobs. It also tried to spin the old arugment that "cost savings from outsourcing creates jobs" which may be true in a macro sense but not helpful for someone laid off.

An old Atlantic article by Thomas Edsall on sex and politics

2004-03-29T18:12:00.000-05:00

I don't want this to become the Thomas B. Edsall watch, but here isan old (from January 2003!) article on sex and politics, and the possible implications for the 2004 race. Interesting in hindsight.

A series of links to outsourcing resources

2004-03-29T17:52:00.000-05:00

National Journal's cover story this week is outsourcing. I can't reproduce the text, but they have a nice collection of links I can rip off. Already mentioned Drezer's Foreign Affairs essay, but this link may be a cleaner version.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary
BLS's 2012 Employment Projections (PDF)
Bush's Economic Plan
Kerry's Economic Plan
Senate GOP Policy Commitee Report On Outsourcing (PDF)
Progressive Policy Institute's "Education, Skills, and the New Economy (PDF)
Foreign Affairs: "The Outsourcing Bogeyman"
David Ricardo and Comparative Advantage

Open source, automation and outsourcing

2004-03-29T17:46:00.000-05:00

A journalist's attempt to find a link between offshoring and open source. I think he is missing the bigger picture; which is there an many, many factors driving down wages in the IT sector: educational oblescence, offshoring, immigraiton, automation, and better tools. I don't think it's any more likely that Indian companies are using open source tools; but the pressure on cutting costs is universal.

The Politics of Symbian

2004-03-29T12:25:00.000-05:00

The Register has more details on the internal politics of Symbian. Basically Sony-Ericsson want to keep Nokia from owning over 50% of the company, and is asking Pansonic to help out. Panasonic does not want Nokia to control the company, but also has not shelled out cash to acquire some of Psion's stake. Some good pointers on why S-E is so concerend, and why the other phone companies are not. UIQ is my favorite interface for Symbian, and I think they need to sell it back to S-E.

A lot of noise, and very little signal, on the implication of the EU fine on Microsoft and possible implications on the cell phone OS market.

McKinsey report on Ireland outsourcing

2004-03-26T14:08:00.000-05:00

Om Malik quotes an AlterNet article which quotes a McKinsey study which found that for 2002 Ireland�s share of outsourcing dollars was $8.3 billion. India came in second with $7.7 billion and Canada nailed $3.7 billion. Helps put the debate in some perspective.

IEEE Policy Statement on Outsourcing

2004-03-26T13:59:00.000-05:00

IEE adopts a Position Statement on Offshore Outsourcing. In this round of the debate, they have been fairly moderate, although in the H1B debates of the late 90s there were quite vehment about H1b and Indians. I won't even point out the irony that Indian born engineers are revitalzing the profession. Link through Politech.

The position are pretty moderate; however they do make a direct link between h1b and l-1 vias and outsourcing. That's a contridiction; either we need to make our internal markets more flexible OR we are going to send more service work overseas, but you can't restrict your internal market and also ban outsourcing.

The final point I'd make in a protectionist political debate, the macro economic winners are the ones who are best organized. The interests of consumers are not factored into the debate (the old public commons argument). Innovation is not just about protecting the innovaters.

More confusion on outsourcing

2004-03-26T11:30:00.000-05:00

A St. Lous Times Dispatch article that just further confusing the outsourcing issue.

The real issue is the export tax subsidy (known as the Foreign Sales Credit), which the WTO declared illegal and the EU threatening to impose sanctions unless it is removed. Bill Thomas (R-CA) has sponsored a bill which removed the subsidy and replaces it with tax breaks, although the tax breaks will only apply to offshore operations of US companies. The EU sanctions, (and more background here from the WP), have threatend to target the sanctions to hurt Bush in key states, although I wasn't able to find much about the targeting.

We could go into a long tirade on why we need MORE exports and MORE investment abroad to remedy the trade deficit. Midwestern republicans are running scared of supporting a bill that will companies that will invest overseas. OK, understandable. But what does this have do with outsourcing jobs? Absolutley nothing.

Where the TV dollars are being spent

2004-03-26T11:17:00.000-05:00

A great study from the Wisconsin Advertising Project (warning PDF format) on where the TV dollar are being spent. One weakness: they are only looking at 17 key states and the national cable market. Key conclusions:

As the strategies emerge, it is becoming clear the Bush-Cheney campaign views Florida as their most important battleground state. A full 20% of early Bush campaign TV advertising spending and spots was centered in Florida. Pennsylvania (12%) and Ohio (10%) rounded out the top three states where the Bush campaign chose to air its first wide-scale advertising campaign.

Bush investment from March 2 to March 22: $15,015,000
Kerry investment from March 2 to March 22: $1,955,000

Echos the point today's Note makes on the "...relentless Kerry-image-shaping of the Bush ad campaign, whose work in defining Kerry isn't fully appreciated by national political reporters who fail to reside in battleground states."

Commentary on Campaign Finance law

2004-03-26T10:38:00.000-05:00

A suprising cogent commentary on campaign finance law from NPR although I do wish they would explain WHY campaign cost $1.6 billion in the last cycle (federal and state combined)

State parties in the last cycle

2004-03-26T10:28:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Votelaw for a link to a Center for Public Integrity report on state party fundraising in the last cycle (2001, 2002). State parties raised $823 million, 53% D and 47% R.

It also found that $303 million came from the six national party committes, and that $217 was soft money. Under BCRA, the national parties can continue to send money but it needs to be hard money (raised within the federal contribution limits).

Now, this all includes both 100 state parties (50 R, 50 D), and also legislative caucus committes (unknown number). In addition, the federal accounts of 100 state party committess were also added.

It will be interesting to contrast these numbers with what Professor Corrado has put together in his new paper.

The Business of Online Campaigns

2004-03-26T10:20:00.000-05:00

Business Week Online story on online political campaign software companies. Pretty silly; and just wants to make an open source arguments, but we do learn that the BC04 website cost $200,000 to build and $800,000 to maintain.

An interview with Raimon Panikkar

2004-03-25T16:17:00.000-05:00

An interview with Raimon Panikkar, a Spanish theologian who is currently living a monastic life in Catalonia.

Outsourcing, and how difficult it is to cover as a story

2004-03-25T15:50:00.000-05:00

Someone brought up a happy hour yesterday that the best role for Indian-Americans to take on the outsourcing issue was to present human faces.

I don't agree, but CJR's Campaign Desk has a post which highlights from a journalist's perspective why this debate is hard to cover. The political strategy is very clear: the prevent outsourcing from being on one side of a binary equation. That's hard to cover. So the only way journalists are covering the story is the human interest angle, which confuse the issue even more.

Democratic 527 activity is criminal?

2004-03-25T14:14:00.000-05:00

The Hill.com covers some Republican noise to refer complaints on Democratic 527 activity to the DoJ for criminal prosecution. This story could burn though several days of a new cycle, as we have to get an explations of what 527 are, why they are bad, what they are doing this year and why they are criminal, and why this is partisan politics. Rick Hansen has an op-ed in the March 14 L.A. Times on why under the First Amendment the 527 activity is permissible, but given how strange the S.Ct can be on restrictions to political speech I would not bank on a blanket defense.

Election Law also quotes a BNA report quoting FEC Chair Smith to the effect that the Democratic 527s are "in accordance" with BCRA.

MoreSoftMoneyHardLaw also had a piece a few days ago on how
CRP and the The Campaign Legal Center have called for 501(c) organizations to be excluded from the upcoming NPRM (PDF format, be careful)

Premium SMS and why we don't see it

2004-03-25T13:52:00.000-05:00

A great post on why we aren't getting premium SMS billing in the US. Apparently Cingular does offer it, but Verizon does not. No word or T-mobile or AWS.

Wouldn't necessarily say it's monopoly power; Verizon has a good chunk of the market but most of the customer lock in is due to two year contracts rather than the differences in networks.

But also a clear indicator on why data services are NOT taking off.

Updated: Here is a more detailed report from the same journalist. Great stuff.

Updated 2.0: even more on premium SMS which is third party billing for SMS messages. AWS is also out.

Online political advertising

2004-03-25T11:59:00.000-05:00

PC World covers online political advertising, noting that the "Stand by your ad" provision don't apply to internet attack ads.

Newt on Insourcing

2004-03-25T11:14:00.000-05:00

It's a sad, sad day when you can get Newt to sound rational and reasoned. His latest op-ed, however, makes a powerful case against the binary democratic argument of jobs vs. offsourcing; and without raising too many corporate tax breaks.

Second case of "binary" coming up this week; perhaps Newt went down to the EIA event last week to discuss the issue.

Crack from the EPI

2004-03-24T16:11:00.000-05:00

I got an email copying the EPI's "Snapshot of the week" that deals with job losses. One of the saddest things I've read in a while.

There are multiple levels of confusion here.

1. Job losses in the IT sector may have something to do with the IT sector collapsing

2. You can't assume that a percentage of job gains in directly in proportion to percentage of exports to a certain country.

3. There is no linkage between annual salaries in software and outsourcing to India. Or rather that linkage has not been proven.

The reason? Out of 130 million jobs in the United States, the movement of 100,000 of them to India is not large enough to generate such pressures.

Unfortunately, you now have of a sense of the intellectual crack the unions have been inhaling....

International SMS

2004-03-24T12:48:00.000-05:00

AT&T Wireless announced SMS interoperability with 71 Europeans companies. They have not gotten enough credit in the last year with their international integration. And now with the 850 Mhz/Cingular deal (along with the t68 tradein) they are blowing their lead. Sad. Perhaps we'll see a few more quad band phones.

Bauer and Corrado, Pt. 2

2004-03-24T12:43:00.000-05:00

Thanks again to Election Law for linking to further comments on Corrado's paper. He brings in an analysis of campaign finance reform on the state level, and finds that it shouldn't be surprising that campaign finance reform weakern parties and increases independent groups.

On that note, here is an article from the
Albuquerque Tribune Online which details the problems the new Republican state chair in New Mexico has with the state BC04 and Victory 2004 campaigns. It's pictured as a personal problem, but I'd argue it a great example of how the state parties continue to get weaker.

Three commentaries on the outsourcing debate

2004-03-24T12:22:00.000-05:00

It's been difficult to find a particular angle to write about on the outsourcing debate. I've been involved in this since January of last year with the debate in New Jersey. What would be most useful is looking only at the new federal legislation. I'm not sure I want to share all that quite yet.

That being said, here are three articles that appeared this morning. In comparison to Drezner's laissez-faire approach, they each advocate a slightly different argument. I think the goal right now is to keep this from becoming a binary debate, and the more arguments we can throw in the slow it down the better. However, each argument has some weak points.

Outsourcing Report Blames Schools Wired News

Ban Outsourcing? Bad Idea. Such legislation in the U.S. could derail India's moves to open its economy Business Week Online

What to do about outsourcing? Now that election battle lines are drawn, and outsourcing has become a debate issue, do we simply pick a side? Why not offer some solutions, instead? News.com

The Wired article just go through the argument that the reason we need outsourcing is our educational system is broken. It is, but telling people they are stupid is not the best solution. K-12 is clearly been broken for a while, but the higher education is still pretty good, and the problem there is one of allocation (not enough computer science majors) rather than resources. The other issue is that for technical jobs, your education is obsolete is a few years, as opposed to our lifelong liberal arts educations. You can sense the anger in the reporter in the Wired piece.

The "outsourcing debate will hurt American investment in India" argument in BW is also true, but it's a hard sell for the people out of work, who mostly hate Indians anyway. And it's American companies, not American workers, who are benefitting from increased investment. A better argument, made in part by Thomas Friedman, is a friendly and economically happy India is a better ally against terrorism.

I like the News.com piece, which goes through some solutions, but it is hopeselly politically naive. The issue in a binary debate isn't that there are solutions, but that you want to use it to beat up on the other side. What would be more productive would for both sides to agree the outsourcing debate needs to be about people, not companies. It's like buying American cars; noble sentiment, and it helps fill the pension holes, but it doesn't give American workers jobs.

527 ads in the Post

2004-03-24T09:06:00.000-05:00

An A1 article in the Washington Post on 527 ad buys. Very little new information. First mention of looking at 40+ media markets instead of 17 undecided states, which is how the campaign is looking at the problem.

More on outsourcing...

2004-03-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

Daniel Drezner's long article in the May/June Foreign Affairs. I'll post some comments tomorrow...

Outsource Lou Dobbs

2004-03-23T22:18:00.000-05:00

I was at the horribly named "THE MINDS RACE:
THE ROLL OF EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE SKILLS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY" at New America today. It was at boring as it sounded; very few new ideas coming out of the presentation, except picturing the education system as an circular system. The Q&A was good, however. New America almost always does a good job with their events.

Dave McCurdy, the President of EIA, continues to impress. He made the point that the outsourcing debate was being moved in a binary argument (jobs vs. outsourcing), and that anytime you had a debate that was binary you lose. He also brought an anecdotal Lou Dobbs story -- Dobbs hounding him saying "Do you really think America will catch the new big wave." McCurdy off course thought yes (the waves after that might be problematic) and Dobbs clearly thinks "no".

That triggered some other thoughts which have been floating around since last week. Glenn Reynolds in his MSNBC column made a comparison of the media to American beer producers in the 1970s -- sacrificing quality and not adapting to a choosier public. I had also seen two posts from the Bloggie awards -- Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything... and weblogs: a history and perspective

What this all got me thinking is the BIG FEAR, what keeps us awake at night, isn't really that our jobs will be outsourced to India. I'll give you that some IT workers are in danger of that fate. But for the rest of us, it's ludicrous. But we are all in danger that our skill sets are all being flattened; that knowledge is slowly becoming a collection of google searches, and the only thing that keeps the competition away is a loose bundle of relationships, networks and commitments.

Now tie that back to the cheap beer post, and what's scaring the hell out of Lou Dobbs is the only thing that keep him in his chair is his brand. It's not expertise, it's not quality, it's not unique. Lou Dobbs can only exist because CNN has such a big pipe into your TV. That's a powerful fear.

Does it give any answers? Only that having the space in your job to constantly rebuild your career is a necessity. I can even see a great divide opening up -- between people who have the time and the resources to build in this rebuidling time and everyone else.

One other point that came out fo the meeting. I've been trying to make the point that the real future victims of outsourcing are college grads; that hiring a 21 year old will make no sense when you can get someone with 10 years of experience instead. It's important to remember that college grads have the most recent experience in rebuidling themselves, and it's the folks in their 50s who have worked at one job their entire lives who are the most at risk.

Democracy for American, Pt. 2

2004-03-23T21:51:00.000-05:00

Salon.com write up on Democracy for America. A bit more insightful than the National Journal piece. I used to enjoy Salon.

interesting quote:
"It's easy to confuse an information network with an organization," says Marshall Ganz, a long-time organizer and lecturer in public policy at Harvard University and an advisor to the Dean campaign. "If the approach is the same as it was during the campaign, it'll be just another MoveOn, which has already been done. The Internet was a lot more effective at raising money than it was at delivering votes. In terms of helping people get elected, I'll believe it when I see it. The amount of money they raised and squandered is phenomenal. Who's going to say, Come teach me how to do that?"

The article actually follows up and suggests that the new DFA will be an anti-Nader group; targeting Nader where he can get on the ballot and win a few percentage points of the vote.

Let me address the issue of the elephant in the room: isn't this just a ploy to keep Howarddean politically alive for the next four years? And if they can use their 600,000+ list to build up a a friends through targeted credit card donations....

Smartphones, Symbian and European 3G

2004-03-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

AP tries to explain the smartphone market to the newpaper public. I don't think they understand that most "smartphones" don't look like PDA, which is how Nokia blows up their numbers.

It also misses the point that the Treo is the best selling smartphone out there, and only Palm is looking at developing a smartphone OS they can sell for $100. It's not Symbian vs. Windows; it's Symbian vs. Windows vs. Linux vs. Palm. Interesting point: 2600 applications avaibale for Symbian, vs. 800 for Windows smart phones.

The Register also pops the European 3G bubble story reporting that 49% of mobile users in Great Britian, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium are not interested in 3G.

Stopping Outsourcing in Massachusetts

2004-03-23T10:05:00.000-05:00

Governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts proposed a $29 million anti-outsourcing plan.

Key elements are $8 million in loans to keep companies in Massachusetts, $10 million in grants to companies that create 250 new jobs in state, and $11 million in grants to companies that hire longtime Massachusetts workers.

The last provision may not be constitutional. How can a state favor a long term resident against a short term resident? In addition, the grants come in $2000 chunks, which his not enough incentive to hire someone.

Typical of a republican response. Give more money to corporations to start the hiring process.

Democracy for America

2004-03-22T22:24:00.000-05:00

National Journal has a brief article on Democracy for America, Howarddean's new venture. It notes there is an attached 527. Misses the point a bit though. I don't think the problem the new DFA will face is a battle between soft money and hard money. It's whether it can raise any hard money and abandon the paranoid style evolved from the campaign.

Brzezinski's new book

2004-03-22T18:03:00.000-05:00

A long review in the The New York Review of Books of Brzezinksi's new book "The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership". A slick restatement of the CV. Personally, I think ZB wears better than the review gives him credit, although I do wonder if the "Global Balkans" are really a good test case for asserting American power. Reminds me a bit too much of the Great Game.

Bob Bauer on Tony Corrado

2004-03-22T17:12:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Election Law for pointing to Bob Bauer's comments on Tony Corrado's new paper on campaign finance.

I'll just quote a portion:

And one must pause to consider what it means that parties will depend for their fundraising potential on a continued partisan polarization in the country�s politics. Does this suggest that BCRA will simply encourage polarizing political appeals, because the small donor money the parties are chasing is more likely and effectively raised on that basis?

A point I made much back in January with my three models of internet fundraising. I think it would also been interesting to look at the Republican direct mail operation and see if that developed increased partisanship.

India and Pakistani Cricket

2004-03-22T16:17:00.000-05:00

Not a topic area usually, but check out Parag Khanna's latest piece in Slate on the need for more people to people contact between India and Pakistan. But also see the latest issue of the Economist for a more dismal reading of the peace talks. I participated in a Kashmir final status negotiation last Friday, and I'm still not optimistic about peace breaking out.

CTIA

2004-03-22T15:39:00.000-05:00

3G (or the lack of it) is the story emerging from CTIA. Regardless of the sorry state of 3G in Europe, we can always complaim about the lack of wireless broadband here at home.

News.com does its usual sloppy job. It annouces that AWS will announce camera phones for it's 3G DoCoMo networks, without even speculating what the Cingular merger will do those networks. RCR Wireless News at least gets the story that Nortel and Lucent are getting a $692 million contract to expand the 1xEV-DO Verizon network. Also coverage from RCR on megapixel camera phones and other new models.

Kerry Fundraising Part 2

2004-03-22T13:31:00.000-05:00

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times start off with more stories on Kerry fundraising. It's a bit unclear why the Washington Post jumped the gun with story Saturday giving some preliminary numbers. Perhaps they are getting some inside numbers (the FEC reports were due on Saturday). Could also explain why VandeHei got lead credit on the WP story.

As a result, the Washington Post story is much shorter, since most of the important numbers have already been released, and it just emphasizes how important the 527s will be for Kerry and the Democrats.

There are no real new numbers in the NYT piece. Kerry claims about $1 million a day in March, and $20 million in internet money in 2004, which matches with either the $14 or $18 million he's raised in internet money since Iowa.

The WP claims Bush has "invested more than $20 million in TV ads" although the NYT says BC04 only "spent about $8 million (in February).

One excellent comment in the NYT is that the advantage of direct mail/internet money is they don't require the personal attention and TIME of the candidate, although I would argue that raising internet money does require a different strategy.

Why Cell Phone Data Services aren't taking off

2004-03-21T09:54:00.000-05:00

The next wave of cell phone stories will be coming out of CTIA Wireless 2004 on March 21 and 22 (monday and tuesday).

News.com tries to anticpate one story line: why data services are not taking off in the U.S. The usual industry explantion is competition and too many standards. All of which are true, but they ignore the real issue: price.

Datapoint: Data services represent 3% of revenue of carriers revenue in the US, and 10% to 12% in Europe and Asia. I'd like to see figures for Korea, which has the most broadband in the world, as opposed to Asia, but let's not quibble.

So what's the driver for dataservices they have for us? cell phone blogging. Almost as much as success as MMS, and the inability to send a MMS to anyone outside your network.

Some decent details on the EV-DO (the Verizon 3G wireless solution, which is data only) and EV-DV (the Spring 3G solution, which does permit voice). Doesn't even mention that AWS was bought for it's EDGE 2.5G national network.

More Kerry Fundaising Benchmarks

2004-03-21T09:43:00.000-05:00

Thomas Edsall reports in the Washington Post on some new data on the Kerry Fundraising machine.

59 Vice Chairs: 100K+
122 Co-Chairs: 50K+
coordination with the DNC to target other primary candidates donor lists
BCO4 has 270 Pioneers (100K) and 188 Rangers (200K)
BC04 raised $13.7 million in Feb
BC04 hits goal of $170 million
BC04 only has $4.2 million internet donations
BC04 has $38 in direct mail and phone

Edsall and the Post continue the dubious and lazyhabit of reporting "corporate" contributions by summing up all the contributions from employees of a particular firm.

The AP's Sharon Theimer does a better job of looking at the FEC numbers, and finds Kerry raised $8.4 million in February, and spent $8.3 million. However, she also claims only $14 million in internet donations

Rapid Response

2004-03-20T11:01:00.000-05:00

Howard Kurtz writes on the growth and development of rapid response in Blackberry age.

Lou Dobbs, the Prevaricator

2004-03-20T10:53:00.000-05:00

Lou Dobbs interview in the New York Time magazine. The man is incapable of being objective.

quote: More globally inclined economists insist that the creation of a middle class in poor countries overseas benefits everyone. And aren't people in India as entitled to jobs as people in America?

Are you willing to sacrifice 600,000 American jobs and employees to create jobs overseas? I love India. I love the Indian people. But the idea that we can sacrifice an American family to create jobs overseas is insensitive beyond belief.

Whoa. Three false hoods. Where did he get the figure of 600,000 jobs? Estimates of service sector jobs that have been lost in the last year are in the two hundred to three hundred thousand range. And how did he then leap to the assumption that ALL those service sector jobs being lost are being lost to outsourcing in India. And who mentioned anything about sacrificing American families?

quote How many jobs, exactly, has this country lost to outsourcing?

A study at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that 14 million jobs are at risk of being lost to outsourcing in the next decade.

The same study, "The New Wave of Outsourcing", actually found that "... employment data for those sectors of the economy that felt a disproportionate impact of outsourcing. These include the computers and electronic products manufacturing sector (including its sub-sector, semiconductors and electronic components); professional and business services sectors such as business support services, which include call centers, and computer systems design services; and information industries such as telecommunications, software publishing, and Internet services providers. Between first quarter 2001 and second quarter 2003, i.e. in the course of just over 2 years, the employment in these sectors has plummeted by 15.5% in the US as a whole, and 21% in the state of California, corresponding to a job loss of over 1 million and 200,000 respectively in these sectors alone. "

Horrible, but but not we are talking about JOB LOSSES, not JOBS OUTSOURCED. Given that this sector included such winning areas such as "Internet Publishing and Broadcasting ", "Software Publishers" and "Telecommunications" is it any wonder that we are seeing some problems there?

Lou Dobbs is a racist and a weak journalist as well. And he supports Nader.