From today's NY Times, the favorite mouthpiece of the ruling class, I see Tom Daschle, Senate Democratic Minority Leader poobah, has read(?) Thomas Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Nah, probably just picked it up from business/marketing lobbyists. Just like empowerment, synergy and diversity and other corporate cliches some with their now ironic origins on the left.
And remember re: e-commerce, privacy, etc. as Ed Markey of the V-Chip says, " It's not the Contras vs. the Sandanistas." Gee thanks, at least the bills that get passed (or run around by Executive branch covert ops/NSC/CIA agencies) on this issue won't kill Nicaraguans!
Michael Pugliese
December 26, 1999
High-Tech Industry,
Long Shy, Is Now
Belle of Ball
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
ASHINGTON, Dec. 25 -- At
a time when Congress is bitterly
divided and unable to reach
consensus on issues like gun
control and health care,
Democrats and Republicans are
happily reaching across party
lines to pass legislation backed by
high-tech companies.
The
high-tech
industry, at
the same
moment, is
lavishing
new attention
on
Washington
and changing
its once-aloof
posture
toward the
federal
government.
Republicans
and Democrats are both eager to
win the loyalties of high-tech
companies and executives,
knowing that they represent
untold jobs, wealth and,
ultimately, votes and campaign
contributions.
For its part, the industry has
realized that the federal
government can do its members
as much harm as good. Microsoft,
and its battle with the Justice
Department, along with a spate of
other threatened legal problems,
drilled this point home.
"Microsoft was a poster child for
our industry," said Connie
Correll, director of
communications for the
Information Technology Industry
Council, a trade organization that
represents America Online, Dell
and I.B.M., among others.
Now, the city the industry once
eschewed -- along with
standard-issue,
inside-the-Beltway practices like
lobbying and writing campaign
checks -- is full of visiting
high-technology barons and
marquee lobbyists who are
working long hours to press the
industry's agenda.
When representatives of Silicon
Valley arrive in Washington they
often receive the kind of
red-carpet treatment once
reserved for Hollywood stars. In
September, Meg Whitman, the
founder of the auction site eBay,
made her third trip to Washington
this year. In a single day, she met
with more than 20 senators and
House members, dividing her
attentions carefully between the
political parties. She was feted by
Republicans at lunch and
Democrats at dinner.
"They are stars," said
Representative W. J. (Billy)
Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican
who heads the
telecommunications
subcommittee that oversees many
Internet start-ups. "People want to
know them, touch them," added
his colleague Representative
James P. Moran, Democrat of
Virginia.
Like suitors cooling their heels on
the front porch, Republicans and
Democrats on Capitol Hill have
spent the last year doting on the
high-technology industry and its
kingpins, often working in rare
harmony on issues dear to the
heart of high-tech companies.
"We've been able to get stuff
through Congress at a time that it
is hard to do that," said Marc
Andreessen, the co-founder of
Netscape Communications who
has now started his own
company. It is tough, he said, for
members "to be anti-high tech."
Last year, Congress granted the
industry a three-year moratorium
on e-commerce sales taxes,
increased the number of job visas
for high-tech workers and
tightened restrictions on
class-action lawsuits against
high-tech companies whose stock
prices plummet. This year,
Congress extended a tax credit for
research and development to five
years and limited lawsuits arising
from Year 2000 computer
failures, among other things.
More complicated issues await
Congress next year, including
new bouts on visas and taxation
and a debate over expanding
access to Internet lines.
"A few years ago you had a
handful of bills that affected the
industry," said John Scheibel, the
point person for Yahoo in
Washington. "This year you have
literally hundreds of bills."
And both Republicans and
Democrats are unrelenting in
their devotion to the industry.
Congressional Republicans point
proudly to their "e-contract,"
Democrats promote their
"e-genda." But the two packages
of bills have one thing in common
-- they greatly benefit the
high-technology industry. In fact,
high-tech issues are so popular,
the House and Senate both
formed high-tech working groups
this year, and members virtually
stampeded to sign up.
"The level of interest is as high or
higher than any other set of issues
I'm aware of," said Senator Tom
Daschle, the Democratic leader
from South Dakota.
"It's a new paradigm."
The most important victory for
the industry this year was passage
of a bill that will limit lawsuits
arising from Year 2000 computer
failures. The measure, one of the
few high-technology issues of the
year with partisan overtones,
pitted big business, which
aggressively pushed for the
measure along with the industry,
against trial lawyers. The
matchup put Democrats in an
uncomfortable position, because
trial lawyers are an important
Democratic cash constituency.
Still, such is the power of the
high-tech industry that enough
Democrats banded together to
pass the bill.
Then just before the recess came
another victory. Mr. Moran and
other moderate New Democrats
bucked their Democratic leaders
to help salvage a digital signature
bill, which would give cyber
signatures the legal weight of
ink-and-paper signatures. That
measure must still be reconciled
with the Senate version next year.
Lawmakers also extended a
crucial research and development
tax credit to five years from one
year.
The battle over the digital
signatures bill is a textbook
example of how the new politics
of high-tech has changed the
workings, and the old alliances,
in Congress. Just before Congress
went home for the holidays, 30
lobbyists piled into Mr. Moran's
office to try to resurrect the bill
before the end of the session.
"They knew they needed our
votes," Mr. Moran said. "They
realized we understood the issue,
and that we wanted to be helpful
and that we had the largest
caucus in Congress -- 64
members."
The New Democrats, a collection
of moderate House members who
bill themselves as
high-technology's sweethearts,
then banded with Republicans to
defeat the Democratic leadership
bill, which included consumer
protections the industry deemed
objectionable.
Republicans looked on that
Democratic battle with glee --
along with the fight over Y2K
lawsuits -- convinced many more
would follow, including next
year's possible vote on China's
trade status.
Unlike the titans of the old
economy, like the oil companies
and farmers, the high-tech sector
has no particular home in
Congress, no single committee to
fight its battles, like energy or
agriculture. Instead, it has a
plethora of benefactors, working
across party lines to get things
done on issues they consider
nonpartisan and nonideological.
"You have to work hard to make
technology issues Democrat or
Republican, liberal or
conservative," said
Representative Edward J.
Markey, Democrat of
Massachusetts. "It's not the
contras versus the Sandinistas."
That is an important change. In
1996, when Congress passed a
bill that would make it a crime to
distribute indecent material on the
Internet, there was a partisan
free-for-all in which social
conservatives rallied against
pro-business Republicans and
Democrats. It was one of the first
efforts Congress had made to
grapple with the Internet. The
United States Supreme Court
found the law unconstitutional.
Nowadays, on many high-tech
issues, it is not unusual to find a
liberal Democrat, like Senator
Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont,
working closely with
conservative Republican
colleagues, like Senators John
Ashcroft of Missouri and Orrin
G. Hatch of Utah, on encryption
legislation. Representative
Christopher Cox, a conservative
Republican from California,
bonded with Senator Ron Wyden,
Democrat of Oregon, in battling
efforts to tax sales on the Internet.
Typically, these coalitions hew to
their constituents -- I.B.M. is
Vermont's largest employer and
Novell has its headquarters in
Utah.
In the House, Representative
David Dreier, Republican of
California, Robert W. Goodlatte,
Republican of Virginia, and
Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia
Republican whose district
includes a growing number of
high-tech companies, among
others, are viewed as industry
experts.
The New Democrats are often
willing to buck their own
leadership to live up to the label
as technology boosters.
In the past two years, their
numbers have grown, to 64 this
year from 41 in 1997.
These New Democrats have
breakfast with high-tech
executives every week and visit
Silicon Valley routinely. "I think
they are trying to create a mini
high-tech party in a way," said
Wade Randlett, a co-founder of
TechNet and now an executive at
Red Gorilla, an Internet
company. "It's a smart political
approach."
The bulging docket of high-tech
issues had led to dramatic growth
in the industry's lobbying on
Capitol Hill. Internet and
software companies have snagged
some of Capitol Hill's best talent
this year -- former Congressional
aides whose expertise blends
technology and politics. While
Microsoft built a large battery of
lobbyists, beginning two years
ago, few other high-tech
companies had Washington
lobbying operations. Suddenly,
companies, including Yahoo and
Gateway, are busily opening
Washington outposts, hiring
lobbyists and starting trade
associations. And in yet another
coming-of-age gesture, executives
are beginning to dip into their
coffers.
"It's so critical that Silicon Valley
be involved in Washington right
now," said Chris Larsen, the
39-year-old founder of E-Loan
who has made six trips here this
year to meet with members. "The
stakes are really high."
High-tech lobbying has become
so profitable that some
high-powered lobbyists are
carving out specialty niches and
crossing party lines to do it.
Edward W. Gillespie, a former
policy and communications
director for Representative Dick
Armey of Texas, the House
majority leader, and Jack Quinn,
Vice President Al Gore's former
chief of staff, have teamed up to
start a firm. The two have worked
together on legislation to ease
encryption export restrictions, a
high priority for the high-tech
industry. Tony Podesta, the
brother of John D. Podesta, White
House chief of staff, has also
taken on a number of high-tech
clients and even renamed his firm
Podesta.com.
Other notable Washington names
have been recruited. Michael D.
McCurry, the former White
House press secretary, and Susan
Molinari, a former Republican
Congresswoman, are working in
tandem for iAdvance, a recently
formed coalition that seeks to
widen access to broadband
Internet lines. Various high-tech
companies on the West and East
coasts have banded together on
various legislative issues.
Silicon Valley, meanwhile, has
become a favorite destination for
lawmakers during the
Congressional recess. Members of
both parties have embarked on
fact-finding missions to stay
abreast of new technology and the
issues they may spawn, and, to
mine for campaign cash.
Two weeks ago, Senator Trent
Lott of Mississippi, the majority
leader, still weary from budget
wranglings on Capitol Hill, led
five colleagues, including his No.
2 man, Senator Don Nickles of
Oklahoma, to the West Coast.
They attended tutorials with
executives from Autoweb.com
and Flextronics International,
among others, and came home
with a bushel of campaign
money.
Not to be outdone, Mr. Daschle
of South Dakota, the minority
leader, touched down in Silicon
Valley the next week with 12
colleagues. The delegation raised
even more money than the
Republicans. Others visited as
well: Mr. Hatch, a Republican
presidential candidate and
Microsoft nemesis, attended a
glitzy fund-raiser; Senator John
Kerry, Democrat of
Massachusetts also visited.
For now, though, industry
campaign contributions have not
kept pace with the rapid growth
of the high-tech sector and are
nowhere near the size of other
corporate giants like AT&T, or
labor unions or ideological
groups like the National Rifle
Association.
As of Dec. 1, the computer
industry, including Internet
companies, gave more than $4.4
million through individual
contributions, political action
committees and unregulated, soft
money. It gave double the
amount for the first six months of
this year than in the
corresponding period in 1998.
Fifty-four percent went to
Republicans, according to the
Center for Responsible Politics, a
nonpartisan research group.
So far, the high-tech industry has
promised itself to no one.
"We're the prettiest girl at the
dance right now," said Ms.
Correll of the Information
Technology Industry Council.
"Everyone wants to curry favor
with the high-tech industry."