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Wednesday, July 10, 2002 |
Spitting out Pitt?. A growing bipartisan movement is demanding the head of SEC chief Harvey Pitt. [Salon.com]
Pitt was a high-powered attorney and lobbyist whose clients included Arthur Andersen. Pitt lobbied hard against a proposal by his predecessor at the SEC, Arthur Levitt, to prohibit auditing firms from serving as consultants for their auditing clients -- part of the behavior that got Arthur Andersen into trouble. Talk about the fox watching the hen house.
9:41:07 PM 
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Lou Dobbs downgrades President Bush. And so do I.
[Salon.com]
Quotation of the Year candidate: "When George W. Bush talks about the importance of honest business practices and corporate integrity, it's like listening to Bill Clinton lecture about chastity."
9:38:44 PM
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Starving the SEC. Bush is suddenly calling for a stronger SEC -- but his previous actions make a mockery of his words. [Salon.com]
This is the part of the article I like best:
But even earlier this year, Bush was pursuing a markedly different strategy, catering to a pro-business lobby and rejecting pleas from within the SEC to strengthen the commission.
In the first two budgets his administration submitted to Congress, funding for the SEC was essentially frozen at a time when the commission was reeling from an exodus of employees.
In Bush's first budget, for fiscal year 2002, the SEC's budget was increased a meager 3.5 percent, to $437 million, barely more than the rate of inflation. In fact, the Bush budget forced the commission to eliminate 57 staff jobs, 13 of which were related to preventing fraud.
The horses are already out of the barn, Dumbya, and you're the one who let 'em out. I only hope that the American people can see through the bullshit you're dumping on them on a daily basis.
9:22:16 PM
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Qwest Discloses U.S. Attorney Is Investigating the Company. Qwest Communications International, the nation's fourth-largest local telephone company, said today that it was the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. By Kenneth N. Gilpin. [New York Times: Technology]
More corporate crime. What a surprise. Anyone want to bet whether a single rich white guy goes to jail with Dumbya as president?
9:18:41 PM
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CNN.com - Passenger taken off flight for drunk pilot joke - July 9, 2002 [Daypop Top 40]
This boggles the mind. Somehow a passenger joking with the crew about whether they were sober or not is a "potential security risk." Bullshit. America West deserves to be the butt of jokes, they had two pilots show up for work drunk. Punishing passengers is only getting them more bad publicity. God knows I'll never fly them. Corporate death penalty for America West, please.
9:16:44 PM
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Network World: ACLU says cable could close Internet. As Americans move from dial-up Internet access to logging on via cable broadband networks, they're also moving from the open, regulated telephone network to proprietary cable networks that are controlled by a few large companies, according to an ACLU report issued Wednesday. [Tomalak's Realm]
9:13:56 PM
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al-Qaeda poised to strike hard via the Internet Now, with the current struggle on Capitol Hill to approve Dubya's new Gestapo, it's essential that the man in the street be frightened and confused by a torrent of 'news' pointing to incomprehensible threats which only Big Bro has the knowledge and skill to protect him from.
Look for a lot more of this cyber-terror drivel over the next two months -- or until the Department is created to the administration's satisfaction, or until Enron, Harken Energy and Halliburton cease making headlines. [The Register]
Precisely. Internet terrorists are supposed to distract us from the white collar crimes of the rich white boys in the White House, nothing more.
9:13:29 PM
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Cheney Accused of Corporate Fraud A US pressure group has filed a lawsuit against Vice-President Dick Cheney, accusing him of defrauding shareholders in a company he used to run.
Judicial Watch, based in Washington DC, says Mr Cheney artificially boosted the share price of the Halliburton energy company during the time he was chief executive in the 1990s.
In another development, it has emerged that Mr Cheney took part in a promotional video for the disgraced accounting firm Andersen.
[Daypop Top 40]
You watch. Somehow this won't get nearly the amount of hue and cry and investigation from Congress as the whole Monica Lewinsky affair. After all, this time the guy committing the crime is a Republican, and a rich white Republican defrauding the general public is not nearly as horrible as a Democrat having an affair with an intern.
8:59:07 PM
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R.I.P. Audiogalaxy "If you haven't skimmed the RIAA's suit against Audiogalaxy, I would suggest that you do. It's a brilliant case of misinformation. It alleged that AG was woefully inadequate at stopping piracy, and in a classic quote, mentions that AG's filtering system "could have been done better by a first year programmer". It also alleged that Audiogalaxy existed solely to profit off of copyright violations, and thus should pay back royalty compensation.
AG provided extensive extra value to its users. But it doesn't really matter; the RIAA is a 3000 lb gorilla, and even if AG had tried to fight this in court, perhaps they could have won a pyhrric victory at best. The RIAA has the money to stomp anybody smaller, and they're showing what they can do. Unless backed by a truly large corporation with pockets a mile deep, I really don't think any p2p company is going to be able to stand up to the RIAA." [Kuro5hin]
This is a great, first-person account of what Audiogalaxy was providing to their customers, and how they got shut down by the RIAA. Who really didn't care what they were up to, just that it was possible to swap files using this service. The RIAA is going to be the death of the music industry, but they are guaranteed to take down a whole lot of casualties with them...
1:18:02 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Michael Alderete.
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