It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an entry. Part of the reason it’s been so long has to do with a significant amount of activity around end-of-year projects at work. The need to have several contracts done, dusted and in place by the end of the year has been driving my activity for the last month or so, and is likely to occupy much of my time in the weeks that remain in 2008.
I’ve also diversified my content creation pretty far and wide. I’ve been posting some entries to my internal blog within Verizon, which of course only those inside the company can see. I’ve also been posting a lot of short thoughts to my Twitter feed that also are posted on Facebook. Finally, more of my content is finding its way onto social networks as opposed to a stand-alone blog. I like the interaction, and it’s easier for people to read and comment on a site that gives them so many reasons to visit.
So much has been going on in the past few months, that several times I felt like I wanted to blog but couldn’t find the bandwidth to spend some time putting together my thoughts to say anything substantive. The turn of events in the financial markets actually kept me up several nights in September and October. The $700 Billion TARP plan seemed to me poorly considered and since inception poorly executed. The decision to use the funds to shore up banks as opposed to purchasing assets seems treating a symptom rather than trying to address the cause. It could also be said that we would have been better off letting the market adjust itself. I tend to agree with this sentiment, and our current approach encourages the very moral hazard that got us into this problem in the first place.
There is a great discussion happening on the Competitive Intelligence social network on the Ning social network platform. For my professional field of interest this has raised a question about whether or not the financial collapse is a failure of commercial intelligence. I tend to regard the situation as an inability to clearly evaluate the risk of new financial products and a faith in a fundamental assumption that “the price of real estate always goes up.” This unquestioned assumption led borrowers to buy more house than they could really afford (with little or no money down or even negative equity), lenders to disregard a borrower’s ability to pay and purchasers of asset-backed securities to vastly underestimate the likelihood of defaults and the magnitude of the damage from that possibility. I’m also convinced that greed and cognitive dissonance make it more difficult for groups of leaders to hear contrarian views and convince themselves that they’ll get out of a bubble market before it bursts– even after they recognize the bubble. People become like sinners convinced that they’ll repent on their deathbed, never considering that they might get hit by a bus.
Questions of risk and challenges to unquestioned assumptions are core to competitive intelligence. The real challenge is in communications and persuasion. Telling decision-makers what their options are or what they should do is often considered blasphemy by intelligence professionals. Recent national security and commercial intelligence failures are clear evidence that quality intelligence needs to have a perspective and needs to have teeth. An important question about this is whether or not intelligence professionals in government or commercial organizations can strike the right balance here and not truly over-step their bounds.
I’ve gone so far in conversations with fellow intelligence professionals to question whether or not the current financial crisis doesn’t show us that we are ready to turn a page on our economic model. I don’t mean to suggest the “End of Capitalism” that so many have suggested. Mainly I mean to hypothesize that we’ve seen the limits of how big companies are able to become under current management practices and technology. Certainly we’ve seen that there is a limit to the level of complexity we are able to grasp in our financial products and understand the inherent risk behind them. Subsequently we’ve seen a boundary to our current ability to calculate the real value of these financial vehicles as well as the ability to regulate their structure and trade.
Barack Obama’s election is another big news event from my blogging hiatus. The historical significance of the election is obvious. I hope that the election of such a thinker will re-establish the notions of debate and evidence in American culture. After the past few years Americans have become numb to “truthiness” pandered by “scientific” think tanks on the religious right. While I’m not so naive to think that political survival will trump rational policy decisions, I do believe Obama and his leadership team named so far represent a considerable improvement over the current cast of characters in the White House. A critical challenge for President Obama is going to be controlling some of the more extreme elements of the Democratic leadership, and we must all remain diligent that a Democratic majority doesn’t behave as the Republican majority did from 2001 – 2006.
Don’t even get me started on the bailout of the big three auto makers. That’s so much a non-starter. The best we should offer these companies is government-backed debtor financing under a major Chapter 11 restructuring. According to the Economist the auto industry is set for substantial growth in the next four plus years as the new middle class in China and India purchase more and more cars, including those produced by Ford and GM’s overseas units. That may very well be the case. A major restructuring now under Chapter 11 will help these companies get their operations and organizations in shape to reap the rewards of this potential market. All that said, the assumption that the new middle class in China and India will continue to grow and see income growth that affords them automobiles in large numbers is an assumption that needs to be questioned.
Anybody who has been reading my blog for a period of time is probably aware that I am a big fan of the free videos made available of presentations at the TED conference. The topics are great, the speakers are phenomenal and EVERY person who is required to speak in public should be required to watch the fantastic delivery. If we could all be half as good as these presenters death by PowerPoint would be a thing of the past.
Just released in the TED podcast feed today was a presentation by Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia entitled “The Real Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives.” The presentation is an examination of the human moral mind, and begins with the hypothesis that we are not born tabula rasa and rather have an innate sense of morality. As Hiadt shows, liberals and conservatives prioritize five different moral factors differently, and that these differences are largely common accross national and cultural boundaries. Take a look and hopefully you’ll agree that, while remaining true to one’s convictions, building an echochamber for ourselves or demonizing the political opposition is not a road to progress. Let me know what you think.
I have a strange sense of humor. As evidence of that, I think the Barack Roll video is funny to a degree disproportionate to how funny it probably is to normal people.
When the Mark Foley scandal broke I knew it was only a matter of time before socially conservative Republicans would make an attempt to spin the story to their benefit with a logical train that would lead to the conclusion that if we were more restrictive towards gays and lesbians the whole Foley thing never would have happened. Well, here’s what the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins has to say about the cultural genesis of the scandal:
We are all shocked by this spectacle of aberrant sexual behavior, but we shouldn’t be. This is the end result of a society that rejects sexual restraints in the name of diversity. When a 16-year-old boy is not safe from sexual solicitation from an elected representative of the people, we should question the moral direction of our nation. If our children aren’t safe in the halls of Congress, where are they safe? Maybe it’s time to question: when is tolerance just an excuse for permissiveness?
OK, that and
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Give us all a f’ing break for once!! What Foley did was extremely abhorrent, and there’s no damn way you can extrapolate from his bad behavior to tag a whole community of people. These social conservatives drive me crazy with their insistence on grinding their axes and maintaining a strong sense of denial about their own hypocrisy. Sorry, folks, but whenever I encounter some holier-than-thou person I know it’s only a cover for a strong sense of shame about their own flaws. The better of them are simply unable to accept the minor frailties, personality flaws and sexual kinks that the rest of us don’t really get worked up about. The worst of them are engaged in illegal, unethical, immoral and damaging behavior. I guess I’m with Bill Maher on this subject.
In the case of the West Wing, Democrat Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits of LA Law and NYPD Blue fame), a Represenative from Texas is facing off against Republican California Senator Arnold Vinick (played by Alan Alda, Hawkeye from TVs M*A*S*H). Mr. Roberts seemed fairly taken with Senator Vinicks response to questions on the economy as they relate to pharmaceuticals, energy and job creation. I have to say that I was, too, and I share his skepticism that an actual politician would ever be so frank about his economic philosophy. The Senator certainly did not pull any punches last night and did not take any opportunities to placate voters by telling them only what they wanted to hear. If only real politicians would be so courageous.
This has always been one of the trade-offs of the West Wing, is that they show the world of politics in an idealized way, as they should be as opposed to how they are. For seven seasons Democrats have had President Jeb Bartlett to show them how things should have been during the Clinton years, going so far as to say I was wrong for having hiding his multiple sclerosis from the voters during his first campaign for the White House (and then going on to win re-election after the revelation had been made).
When West Wing was at its best it asked both voters and politicians to look beyond the sound bites and character assassinations to the people and the issues behind all of the garbage that usually confronts us when we talk politics. Pine as we may for a politician like Jeb Bartlett, how many of us would be willing to overlook the inevitable character assassinations from across the aisle for someone who hid such a facet of his life from voters while he ran for President? Until we do this, how honest and forthright can we really expect our politicians to be? Dislike Karl Rove as many do, his methods work because voters fail to look beyond the character assasinations. Sometimes there may even be germs of truth in negative claims, but why do these always seem to stop us from saying “Who cares?” or make a big deal out of them? We can blame the Roves of the world and the media as much as we like, but really when it comes down to it it is all OUR fault.
Last night moderate Republicans and libertarians got a taste of that medicine and saw a character who could be their own version of Jeb Bartlett. Of course two things beyond honesty and courage differentiate these candidates from real world candidates. One is that social issues were completely absent from the staged debate and secondly that a moderate Republican would stand a chance of winning the partys nomination in the current environment.
A new bill came to my attention following the latest This Week in Tech podcast. It seems that the replacement for the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been christened the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act. That link is to a .pdf summary, and John Dvorak also has some discussion on his blog. This bill is co-sponsored by John McCain, and this is the basis of some of my confusion, because McCain is also a sponsor of the Community Broadband Act of 2005.
From the latter bill: No State statute, regulation, or other State legal requirement may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting any public provider from providing, to any person or any public or private entity, advanced telecommunications capability or any service that utilizes the advanced telecommunications capability provided by such provider.
This bit seems to run counter to a section of the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act, as quoted here from the summary of the bill as linked:
A state or local government seeking to provide a communications service must give notice of and permit non-government entities to bid to provide such service preference is to be given to non-government entities. Existing government owned network offerings are grandfathered.
While the two clauses do not directly contradict one another, they seem to be in a somewhat different spirit. The former makes it clear that governments (most likely at the state level) will not prohibit municipalities from building their own communications infrastructure. The latter, while fine in concept, would likely open up an opportunity for commercial organizations to tie up community efforts in court battles. Hopefully the full text of the bill (I have not been able to find it as of yet) will address what constitutes a community having done their due diligence in giving commercial firms a right of first refusal.
In principal I do believe commercial organizations are better suited to provide communications services, and using tax dollars to fund the build-out of infrastructure is a gray area. However, with commercial companies such as the incumbent telcos and cable television providers picking and choosing the neighborhoods in which to build out advanced services, you cant help but encourage cities to build out their own offerings such as municipal Wi-Fi. However, if cities were to open up their rights of way, franchises and zoning in order to facilitate a more competitive last mile infrastructure build, they would make it easier for competing low-cost commercial firms to offer services in underserved areas. There is a certain degree to which the municipalities themselves create the problem they then must then try to solve.
Theres always the hope that Wi-Max will make this entire discussion irrelevant.
The bit that really got my attention was this tidbit from Rove’s appearance on Fox News hosted by Chris Wallace this past Sunday:
“WALLACE: So the president intends to go ahead and push for the constitutional amendment?
“ROVE: Absolutely. . . .
“WALLACE: Explain to me why civil unions can be handled at the state level but marriage can’t.
“ROVE: Well, marriage is a very important part of our culture and our society. If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal. And the ideal is that marriage ought to be and should be a union of a man and a woman.
“And we cannot allow activist judges to overturn that. We cannot allow activist local elected officials to thumb their nose at 5,000 years of human history and determine that marriage is something else.
“And the people have a right to be involved. And since this was forced upon the political process by activist judges, we need to do everything we can to keep it from being decided by activist judges.
“WALLACE: OK.”
Can we just let this amendment DIE already?
I am moderately hopeful that this effort will fail once again based on seeing some of the results from the recent New York Times/CBS News poll that show a majority of Americans not supporting the amendment. If judicial review is “forcing” same-sex marriage on America, then so would this amendment need to be forced onto America.
Now, if only that side of the argument wins out over the side that passed amendments to 11 state constitutions this past election day. Unfortunately for us, what Rove has done well is build a grass-roots structure to mobilize voters which will be difficult to counter.
Like so many others in the blogoverse, I am bummed by the outcome of the Presidential election. As a historical libertarian-leaning Republican, it was not easy for me to say that I supported and voted for John Kerry. However, in the choice we had available to us in this election, I believed he was clearly the better choice that reflected my ideals. An intrusive, moralistic government racking up runaway deficits and reversing a trend towards freer global trade and engaging in willy-nilly diplomacy (where they engaged in diplomacy at all) were not qualities of which I wanted to see four more years. Well, we have four more years of George Bush, so what kind of presidency will his second term represent?
NPR’s Morning Edition has been running a series of stories on how the religious right played a major role in the Bush victory. Evidently the larger Republic majority in the House and Senate is even more conservative. The Washington Post ran an article this morning on the question of what role moral values played in the election. The Post seems to speculate that those in Washington missed the importance of same-sex marriage for that 20-plus percent of voters for whom “moral values” were the deciding factor. There are a number of leaders of religious right organizations quoted in the article, and in general many have a sense that these people are going to look to collect from President Bush during his second term for their support. With more conservative legislators behind them, this concerns me.
This is the deck of cards weve been dealt by this election. Rather than continue to cry about it, we need to pick ourselves up and articulate our issues and our concerns better. For one, the scare quotes around moral values are accurate, because I dont hold for an instant that anti-abortion, anti-gay religious leaders hold a monopoly on morality, which is unfortunately something we are ceding to them in our choice of language.
Secondly, I really feel like this issue is bigger than simply Democrat or Republican. I dont like the ideological tilt that either parties are taking. The middle has continued to suffer during the past election cycles as moderate Republicans are picked off by the Democratic base and vice versa. Were losing the great middle in both parties that enables problems to be solved by reaching across the aisle.
The middle needs to stand up. How are we going to do that?
The article also reports that private detectives are watching those in Florida who are voting early.
Really this is a very scary situation. In an election where the margin of victory is projected to be so very thin in key states like Florida, Ohio and elsewhere and there are so many questions about voting procedures that the legitimacy of the entire system is open to being challenged. Very scary for the worlds sole hyper-power to be teetering on the edge of chaos like this. The real deal killer is that whoever wins on Tuesday, unless they win by an unexpectedly high and wide margin in the states they need to win to get to 270 electoral votes, the other side is not going to accept the legitimacy of the election. Republicans are claiming voter registration fraud on the part of the Democrats (think old school Chicago politics), and the Democrats are claiming voter intimidation on the part of Republicans (think old school politics in the deep south).
Along these lines, I actually had a dream last night that John Kerry actually ended up with a significant margin in all of these key states. In my dream all of the news reports were focusing on how all of the polls could have been so wrong to show a close race. Wishful thinking on my part, perhaps.
USA Today had this bit on what viewers can expect from this season’s West Wing. It was something of an interesting read, because it looks like the cast is really going to be shaken up quite a bit. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Last season was the first full season, to my knowledge, without Aaron Sorkin doing the writing. That fact really showed in the lack of quality on the show. The characters became shadows of their former selves and were no longer compelling. The quality of the earlier seasons on DVD almost brought me to tears to see how the mighty show had fallen. In Season 5 the show had to resort to ER-esque efforts at drama to get people to watch. Some prospective plot lines for this season: helicopter crashes into the press briefing room! A single-mom staffer gives birth in the Oval Office! Everybody’s a lesbian!
Just bring back, Sorkin, guys. You really didn’t deserve the Emmy you won for last year, and if you don’t turn this ship around and soon you are going to lose one rabid fan. Were it not for the mind-blowing strengths of the first four seasons you would have lost me already.
