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October 25, 2004
NYRAG's 25th Anniversary
New York's professional philanthropic community showed up at Gracie Mansion to celebrate the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers' twenty-fifth anniversary. I was invited because two years ago I worked for NYRAG. The mansion had a lot of wood and expensive furniture. The awards ceremony wasn't bad, except that the last presenter droned on for seven minutes with a spoken word recitation.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 20, 2004
Corporate Greed Is a Problem, Duh
Nomi Prins talked about her new book, Other People’s Money, at a conversation sponsored by the Demos think tank. She is a former investment banker who blames politicians for letting businesses hurt consumers and citizens. Prins said that deregulation of banking, telecommunications and energy industries in the 90’s removed existing protections that allowed unethical businessmen to run rampant.
I don’t blame the politicians per se, put I do think that principles of long standing laws and regulations should be applied to new and emerging sectors – the Internet, hedge funds and energy trading shouldn’t be exempted.
John Cassidy of the The New Yorker said that the general public and the business press have to accept blame for their uncritical optimism during the 90’s bubble.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 10:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2004
What’s New? Half-truths and Spin in Politics
The blare of talk radio and 24/7 cable news reminds us that political communication is like the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. Each side feels the need to create weapons (talking points) and worries that unilaterally disarming (being candid) will be a damning sign of weakness. Instead of giving peace (intellectual policy discussion) a chance, the Bush Administration has decided that going on the offensive (full-fledged spinning) is the best approach to fighting the media wars.
Maybe I’m being too creative, but this is the allegory that came to my mind while listening to Bryan Keefer and Dan Senor at a debate sponsored by the Donald & Paul Smith Family Foundation and moderated by Harvey Shapiro of Institutional Investor.
Keefer operates the websites Spinsanity and Campaign Desk. He blames the media for its inability to hold politicians accountable. While I sympathize with his arguments, I strongly disagree that spin is the media’s fault. I tend to agree with the Bush Administration’s operating assumption that the media is just another interest group; I don’t hold the media to a higher standard than any other entity in society.
Senor was the former Chief Spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. I generally agreed with him when he wasn’t busy defending the Bush campaign. Senor thinks that level of discourse in politics hasn’t devolved and is similar to the tone of previous years. He defended the use of slogans as an honest way to communicate messages to the public.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 18, 2004
Bush vs. Kerry: Who’s Good for High Tech?
It just wasn’t even close. In a debate sponsored by the New York Software Industry Association, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform got lost a debate against former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt about which presidential candidate would be better for the IT industry. Hundt supported Senator John F. Kerry and Norquist supported President George W. Bush.
Norquist was totally unprepared for the debate. He relied on his static view that all industries benefit from low taxes, fewer regulations and a hands-off government. Unfortunately, Norquist didn’t seem to know about many of the intricacies of tech policy.
Hundt knew much more about the subject. I was impressed that he didn’t brag about working with Al Gore to create the Internet – he obviously didn’t, but under Hundt’s visionary leadership of the FCC the Information Society flourished.
With the able help of Moderator Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, and questioners Jonathan Krim of the Washington Post, Paul McDougall of InformationWeek and Time Race of the New York Times, the following positions were taken:
-- Self-employed Tech Workers – Kerry offers them affordable healthcare plans. Bush will cut their taxes.
-- Immigration & Outsourcing – Norquist supports bringing in more foreign workers using H1-B Visas. Hundt talked about Kerry’s plan to eliminate tax breaks for sending jobs overseas.
-- Industrial Policy – Norquist tried to tag Democrats as supporters of “industrial policy” and “command-and-control” economic policy. In my opinion, Hundt didn’t do a good enough job proving Norquist wrong. While Clinton/Gore may have supported some proactive policies, they were also very strong advocates of the private sector leading the economy and technology industries.
-- Internet Tax Moratorium – Norquist supports keeping it. Hundt ridiculed the Bush Administration for not eliminating the 3% excise tax on telecommunications.
Larry Greenmeier wrote up this summary, A Left-Right Technology Debate for InformationWeek.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 06, 2004
Best Practices for Storage Compliance Management
It just wasn't about Sarbanes-Oxley. Nope, this vendor sponsored seminar also dealt with other requirements for regulatory compliance, like HIPAA in healthcare and ISO 18501/18509 in manufacturing. In fact, a lot of requirements for storing data are for internal compliance. Marc Farley said that legal demands to retain records in lawsuits will be a big driver for storage in the future.
Brian Babineau of the Enterprise Storage Group seemed very knowledgeable, but his presentation did not cover anything I did not know. He did claim that the permanence requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley did not necessarily mean WORM technology had to be used.
Rob Peglar of Xiotech made an interesting point by saying that meta data like indices should not be backed up to tape.
Bill Reed of Business Launch hosted the event, and he was very funny.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
