Whose Problem Is 2000?
II, John Roberts
WHOSE PROBLEM IS 2000? Unable to process the next millenium, computers threaten to bring the international economy crashing down with them. And government is still not responding adequately....
...Over the next year and a half the senator introduced a series of bills to create, first, a bipartisan national commission on Year 2000 conversion...
...Just as Bush was bewildered and confused by his sudden drop in popularity after the Gulf War, Gore may be in for a shock when the voters connect him with the Year z000 computer crashes...
...WHAT'S IN A NUMBER...
...As Mannie Lopes says, there was time to train most of the 121,000 technicians the U.S...
...The economic impact of the S&L bailout, coupled with the cost of the Gulf War, were factors in the recession of 19912...
...We had time to train ioo,000 techies, but we lost that opportunity," says Lopes, whose consortium of small and minority-owned computer consulting firms has been handling conversions for almost three years...
...The president's council attributes the revisions to an improved understanding of the situation...
...But it's one thing if an elevator halts at midnight on December 31, 1999...
...In 1996, Chairman Horn called witnesses from the Treasury, the Social Security Administration, and the Defense Department to testify about their agencies' preparations...
...Less than three months later, only 7,85o systems were on the "mission-critical" list...
...The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation gave one minority-owned company, Marlaw Systems Technology, its first-ever Year 2000 contract...
...We all must defend our nation and support its laws in word and deed, no matter how trivial the situation seems...
...How will people react when they go down to their bank to draw out some money and find long lines around the corner...
...Nor do I share Fine's opinion that "there is no one else working today who has the same courage and daring as an actor, the same restless urge to explore uncharted territory of the human soul...
...In an age of global communications, only financial stabilization policies carried out in cyber-transactions traveling at the speed of light through fiber optic cables can outrun panic spread by ticker-tape reports, cable and broadcast television, cell phones, and whatever will remain of the Internet in the Year woo...
...Moynihan cautioned that the debugging process needed to be completed by January 1, 1999, in order to leave twelve months for testing and fine-tuning the newly converted software...
...What these computers will do when they start reading "end of file" and "throw away" applications at midnight, December 31,1998, is anyone's guess...
...But for any set of interdependent systems to function properly, all the computers linked in a given chain must be Year 2000 compliant...
...The Defense Department earned a "D" grade in Congressman Horn's most recent report...
...It was late in 1995, and although the millennium was slightly less than five years distant, Westergaard said the problem was urgent...
...IBM's "Total Solution" systems are not Year 2000 compliant...
...30 August 1998 • The American Spectator 33-year-olds because its computers are confused by the dates...
...The team in charge of Year moo compliance for the financial services giant claims to be on schedule...
...The problem is that if everyone in the U.S...
...Personal computers and small businesses will not be immune...
...Lopes expects the company will face some $50 billion in lawsuits...
...ROBERT VAN PEER Chatsworth, California Freedom's Rings Regarding Ben Stein's aphorism about freedom ("A Golden Age for Thugs," TAS, May 1998), I have a slight disagreement...
...1. First of all, the name is Robert not Richard...
...I am a tough outspoken guy of 77 years young who works out every day at the athletic club, and I don't kid around...
...Since then, he has done exemplary work in The Piano, Reservoir Dogs, Smoke, Clockers, Pulp Fiction, Blue in the Face, and Head Above Water, all of which have made him bankable, none of which have made him "explode...
...Assume for the sake of argument that the real financial impact of the world's Year moo troubles is no worse than the recession of 1991-92 (a fairly mild assessment, according to many experts...
...Between 1990 and 1994 angry voters directed their wrath at incumbents of both parties...
...There is very little realization that there will be disruption of basic services," Sherry Bums, a CIA analyst, recently told Reuters...
...And when it does, they will have every right to be angry...
...Spock, Nixon, and a party that actually had "Socialist" in its name...
...The duties of soldiers, sailors, airmen, pilots, and police are the duties of citizens in a specialized form...
...If the Year moo problem starts in January 1999, he might want to move up his timetable...
...WHY'S GOOD HELP SO HARD TO FIND...
...The S&L crisis and the collapse of the commercial real estate market were key to George Bush's ill-fated decision to abandon his "no new taxes" pledge...
...The daily cashflow overseen by its Financial Management Service is more than $10 billion...
...I did smoke for twenty-two years, but when my father died, I quit...
...Incumbents of both parties will be too fearful of catching the blame for system failures if they fail to vote for replacement purchases...
...The war masked deep public discontent and brought Bush high popularity ratings throughout much of 1991, but focus groups conducted by the GOP still showed tremendous public cynicism about politicians...
...The number of Americans who thought the country was headed in the right direction shot downward...
...Candidly, I don't think he's being fed enough accurate information to take a more aggressive position...
...But in any massive effort like that facing the world's computer technicians, there are bound to be a certain number of flaws...
...We could have taken care of this whole problem if the president made it a national priority...
...Lucky for people like Ben and myself, they never did...
...In the late eighties, the U.S...
...I am returning your magazine for credit with regrets, but I cannot in good conscience support anybody who I believe is pushing this drug by advertising...
...I thought Ben would have realized I was playing a character when I selected a question about First Ladies because I was "one of those right-wing conspiracy nuts that Hillary's trying to warn the country about...
...Then he sprang his trap...
...Banks and stock brokerages may have difficulty computing interest...
...One point of contention is how to define which computers need to be fixed first...
...Russia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and other Pacific Rim countries are ranked between nine months and a year behind the United States, says the CIA...
...Human error is, of course, the point...
...Rossotti wants more than $1 billion to try to upgrade the IRS computer systems on time...
...A panicked Congress will have little choice but to appropriate the funds through renewed deficit spending, perhaps for millions of computers...
...ROBERT L. PLUNKETT Lancaster, California Shown the Money It's nice to know that my performance on "Win Ben Stein's Money" was memorable enough to merit so much space in Ben Stein's column (TAS, May 1998...
...As I recall, the on-campus vote was over 95 percent McGovern with the rest about evenly split among Dr...
...GOP pollster Glen Bolger says that the factors which gave rise to the anti-incumbent mood of the early nineties have abated...
...Correspondence (Continued from page 13) and published a regular pamphlet entitled Occam's Razor...
...Too little, too late," says Larry Martin of the federal government's response to the crisis...
...The general anti-incumbent mood born in the S&L crisis catapulted Ross Perot's short-lived candidacy in 1992 and carried Bill Clinton into the White House...
...I have threatened men twice on this...
...A soaring stock market and a relatively peaceful world are setting up the American public for a rude awakening when the Year 2000 problem hits home...
...Imagine the political fallout...
...Worldwide, there are thousands of computers with the "99" end-of-file glitch...
...If the failures involve chips no longer in production, the fix could be very costly, though not as costly as sending troops into the Persian Gulf or Kosovo with unreliable high-tech arms...
...Congressman Horn's most recent report gave the Treasury Department a "C...
...Two years ago he was guardedly optimistic...
...This is a public health issue...
...Appealing to Clinton's keen sense of political priorities, Moynihan warned that the only way to avoid serious economic problems in his second term was to set strict deadlines and appoint JOHN ROBERTS II is a writer and television producer...
...Twenty-one months from now, there could be 90 million taxpayers who won't get their refunds, and 95 percent of the revenue stream of the United States could be jeopardized...
...On the other hand, the religious thinker and writer Gary North, whose view can be summed up as "we're in for the next Great Depression," foresees a domino effect from the computer breakdown, extending from utility companies through the banking system, with a cumulative impact that will devastate the world economy...
...It turned out, however, that he was a rather prominent student government type...
...The only thing I would ever agree with the Democrats on is the issue of smoking and health...
...31 The upshot is that most of the world's computers will not be ready by midnight, December 31, 1999...
...A comprehensive Year 2000 bailout bill could easily top $100 billion in direct spending and tax breaks...
...I have been mentioning the show to all my friends, but have yet to tell them the result...
...As the deadline approaches, the pressure only increases for organizations to define down their systems, making it seem they have made greater progress," warns economist Yardeni...
...Sixty to seventy percent of countries are not paying adequate attention to the problem...
...Meanwhile, he has hired headhunters to replace his chief information officer Arthur Gross, who left the embattled agency on April 1. Whether Gross's departure had any connection to a recent spate of IRS computer embarrassments and the prominent failure of an earlier computer-upgrade effort isn't clear, but the experience of taxpayer Kenneth Steen suggests that the IRS may be in trouble...
...The following remarks are from the subcommittee's hearing record...
...al Benefit Life Insurance and Penn Central...
...J. HANSEN Los Angeles, California 76 August 1.998 • The American Spectator...
...Even after reading The Art ofDarkness, I am not entirely sure that the world actually needed a biography of Harvey Keitel anymore than it needs a biography of the equally fine, though dearly departed, J.T...
...Imagine the stock market reactions...
...DON'T EXPECT GOVERNMENTS TO CALM MARKETS June's move by the United States and other countries to prop up the value of the Japanese Yen depended on computers, since it is computers that trade currencies...
...The Social Security Administration may start issuing checks to What happens when individual small investors remove $1 trillion in demand deposits, IRA's, and stock portfolios...
...The failure to act meant a lost opportunity...
...Are you going to get a bill for a few minutes, or for a century...
...Two-and-a-half years had passed since Moynihan's lunch with Westergaard...
...Steen expected a $513 tax refund, but instead received a bill saying he owed the government $300,00o,0o7.57...
...Those chips may no longer be in production...
...Yet recent history suggests that a traditional Republican presidential candidate might not benefit from Gore's tech woes...
...Emmett Paige, assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications, and intelligence, also testified before Horn's subcommittee in 1996...
...One way to determine the extent of "fudging" by government is to see what the people in charge of the Year 2000 problem said a few years ago, when the deadlines were more distant...
...IBM may be particularly vulnerable...
...Global elites seem to have little comprehension of the problem...
...However, scrutiny of the U.S...
...In today's high-tech, globally linked financial markets, no such market intervention is possible unless all the computers in an international chain work together...
...When the predicted systems failures occur, Gore and Clinton will have had almost eight years in the White House — precious lead time they will be seen to have squandered...
...Some three thousand taxpayers around the country received similar bills, which the IRS attributes to "human programming error...
...2. The Contestant Co-ordinator wanted "memorable contestants...
...Our software inventory includes software written in computer languages, such as the language Jovial, not widely used elsewhere...
...I am returning it to you with this explanation...
...We like to think the senator planted the seed of this idea in the president's head," Moynihan spokesman Mike Waterman says with more than a touch of irony...
...I guess he didn't realize it...
...28 August 1998 • The American Spectator The American Spectator • August 1998 29 a top-level Year 2000 federal czar to oversee the conversion of government computers...
...So to maximize the amount of information they could jam into a finite amount of memory, programmers used a kind of shorthand, entering dates in double digits: for instance, the year 1967 as "67...
...By spring of next year, there will be no shortage of political candidates taking aim at Al Gore...
...There's no point in sugar-coating the problem," IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti said in April of this year...
...Even worse, despite its name, the problem will actually begin in January of 1999...
...Yet Munoz predicted confidently in 1996 that Treasury could not only handle the Year 2000 transition but actually use the opportunity to upgrade its computer systems...
...Another set of crash dates will come in August and yet another in September of 1999, as different program commands conflict with computers' internal calendars...
...Walsh, another gifted second banana...
...Koskinen's spokesman terms the working relationship between the vice president's office and the council a "partnership...
...Harvey Keitel has always been the emissary of Not-So-Good...
...political fallout of the Year z000 problem is not the Great Depression...
...Koskinen regularly briefs Gore on the council's overall progress, and Gore personally oversees an informal working group of "high impact" agencies, such as the Social Security Administration, with the potential to do incalculable political damage if their computer systems crash...
...Until very recently, all suffered from limited memory space with which to run programs —which in turn ran applications as complex as monitoring the safety of nuclear power plants...
...Americans have been feeling better recently...
...Three months later, Moynihan received a perfunctory and dismissive response from the Office of Management and Budget...
...And according to Larry Martin of Data Dimensions, "Latin America is way behind the rest...
...If you are, you should have a few weeks' cash on hand in December 1999...
...It's about faith and the loss of faith and the journey through hell to regain it," he is talking pure indy-flick nonsense...
...The other way is if Gore's opponent could tie it in a specific way to Gore and some action he has, or hasn't, taken...
...Let's say you want to call a friend long-distance while you both watch television coverage of the scene in Times Square as the new millennium begins...
...Moynihan asked the Congressional Research Service to assess the potential impact of Year 2000 computer glitches on the federal government...
...Other programmers have used the "99" command to mean "throw away...
...because government procurement officials haven't solicited competitive bids...
...Many observers expect these early computer crashes to create a cascade of litigation...
...But Gore's "partnership" with Koskinen sets him up for blame...
...Top estimates of the cost of fixing the federal government's computer systems are already $30 billion and climbing...
...has closely monitored the problem since 1996...
...But that doesn't mean that [the mood] can't come roaring back again with a bad economy...
...Consequences of the Year 2000 problem are largely unforeseeable...
...32 August 1998 • The American Spectator "Another problem is that we may find the Year 2000 date problem in computer chips used only by the Department of Defense," Paige continued...
...This is a crisis...
...Time was short, because the solution was driven by the labor-intensive job of reviewing and revising billions of lines of computer code...
...computers are loo-percent ready, our ability to intervene in global markets will still be limited by the readiness of foreign systems...
...By positioning himself as a champion of the Information Superhighway—and of the wealthy industries that are sprouting up along its cyber-corridors—Gore seeks the image of a president for the zest Century, a man of vision ready to lead America into the future...
...Of all those in government who ought to shoulder some responsibility, the vice president will stand above the rest because of the image he has so carefully and calculatingly crafted as a high-tech guru...
...The CIA found that Canada, Britain, and Australia are closest to the U.S...
...is one of the handful of countries that are better prepared to deal with this...
...DATED DEFENSES If there is doubt about the federal government's continuing ability to collect revenue, it is also unclear whether America's superiority in combat arms will survive the Year z000...
...But this spring, his panel reassessed the federal government's progress and graded each agency and department on its readiness...
...It was this same rebellion—not the Contract With America—that gave Newt Gingrich control of Congress in 1994...
...The reason...
...He is never going to get the parts Harrison Ford gets...
...Federal Reserve Governor Edward Kelley offers a sanguine "educated guess" that this will cause economic growth to dip by only one-tenth of one percent...
...That might turn out to be his biggest problem...
...to function as a cash economy for two weeks...
...After a family was murdered in the state park adjacent to UCSC, some student plastered the main Stevenson College men's room with graffiti in several-inch-tall letters using that $=S device and declaring how"right on" this action was...
...We're concerned about the potential disruption of power grids, telecommunications, and banking services...
...The Department of Defense has some relatively unique Year 2000 problems," Paige said...
...Pollster Dick Wirthlin has data showing that within days after the 1990 budget summit between the White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress, the public mood soured dramatically...
...It's as if the call went out, 'all ostriches with their heads in the sand—pull 'em out!' Our phones are ringing off the hook...
...It was a way of saying that this person was part of the class which was oppressing the world and probably deserved to die...
...I assume you're a prudent person," he said to me in a recent interview...
...K eitel's elevation to the cult status he currently enjoys began in 1991, when he played a likable cop in Thelma and Louise...
...Then there is the secondary economic effect to consider...
...Designated "8-A" by the Small Business Administration, these firms get preferential treatment in federal contracting...
...You make the call at one minute before midnight, December 31, 1999, and stay on the phone until the clock turns to moo...
...You can bet the house on it...
...But I am also an outspoken critic of smoking and of those who advertise tobacco...
...By the end of the lunch, Moynihan was convinced...
...The power of world leaders to ensure stability depends on computers...
...They pinned their hopes on outsider candidates like Perot...
...Taxpayers may also have to resupply the armed forces with reliable high-tech weapons systems...
...Focus groups conducted from late 1989 through 1991 showed dramatically increasing public cynicism and anger, driven by (Continued on page 75) 33 hello, this is Harvey Keitel," the actor rasped into the phone, then snorted: "You wouldn't do this to Marlon Brando...
...Nor is the world ready...
...Because there is often less red tape in dealing with them, many are experiencing a boom in Year z000 business...
...It dispenses the money it collects in some 800 million individual payments totaling more than $1 trillion annually...
...government's readiness shows that not only are most federal agencies behind schedule in debugging their critical computers, they are lowering standards by redefining computer systems as not important enough to fix by the deadline...
...Puerto Rico alone has more than 1,2oo AS400 IBM systems which control warehousing and distribution for exports throughout the Caribbean and Latin America...
...Few have turned to private companies for help...
...So did measures of approval for the institutions of Congress and the presidency...
...Armed with the CRS study, on July 31, 1996, Moynihan sent a letter to President Clinton urging action...
...JOHN ROBERTS 11 S enator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was lunching with one of his key campaign supporters, John Westergaard, a New York-based financial writer and Democratic fundraiser...
...Imagine the media reaction when the first "real" Year 2000 problem arrives twelve months ahead of time...
...And the federal government may not be the The American Spectator • August 1998 75 only recipient of a crisis-driven bailout bill...
...That means one out of three critical government computer systems will crash...
...economy was humming along nicely until the corruption-driven S&L failures and multi-billiondollar bailout produced a domino effect that ultimately toppled the Bush presidency and opened the doors of the White House to longshot candidate Bill Clinton...
...Without computers, the entire system is unmanageable...
...The sum of bills and coins in circulation is $586 billion—a little more than half the amount required for the U.S...
...The movie is about vampires and special effects, and he took the job because he likes to work...
...We have lost more freedom to our own government, than we are ever likely to lose to a foreign power...
...needs...
...Government agencies can only get so far by "defining down" their mission-critical systems...
...Steve Horn (R-Calif...
...What is the computer going to do when confronted by hundreds of thousands or even millions of calls spanning the same few minutes...
...Merrill Lynch has some 170 million lines of code which must be fixed for its computers to function properly...
...I have been a supporter of ASH (Americans on Smoking and Health) for a number of years, and wrote an article years ago on the need for control of tobacco use in public...
...Dire as the possibilities may seem to some, the model for understanding the U.S...
...When the actor asserts that he appeared in Robert Rodriguez's slimy, stupid horror flick From Dusk Till Dawn because "it presents a theme that appears in many movies I do...
...Jack Gribben, spokesman for the White House Year 2000 Council, agrees: "The U.S...
...Yet the experts concur on one thing: We're not ready, and there isn't enough skilled manpower to get ready on time...
...But he did the right thing when he cut him out of the film...
...Following that group is the rest of Western Europe, ranked at between six and nine months behind America...
...When I opened the magazine today I was shocked by the ad for cigars in addition to the ad for cigarettes...
...There are only 25-30 companies in the entire country who know how to remedy Year 2000 problems," he says, and calls upon the president to speed up contracting with firms that have a proven track record of fixing computer code...
...Incidentally, the use of the dollar sign in place of the S in someone's name (i.e., $tein) was a common way of branding someone a capitalist pig, even if one had to use a plural of the name to do so (i.e., Wilson...
...It's the savings and loan crisis of 1989-90...
...The digits "999" and "9999" are other popular programming commands which mean "go to end of file...
...Some experts see a silver lining here, since the relatively small 1999 meltdowns will spur people to take the problem seriously...
...When the Symbionese Army killed a black superintendent of schools, the main comments I heard from my classmates were to the effect that they weren't sure they could be strong enough to take such decisive action...
...Their deaths were attributed by their doctors to their smoking...
...Horn's subcommittee estimates the year 2002 as the earliest date by which the Pentagon will have all its "mission-critical" computers working properly...
...While Assistant Secretary Paige only raised the possibility of upgrading or replacing costly high-tech weapons, he was blunt about the Pentagon's computers...
...One of the agency's sources said the problem wouldn't affect his country because it uses a different calendar...
...Koskinen's career may be an apt model for the looming Year z000 problem: His specialty is crisis management...
...Treasury's computers are projected to be fixed by 1999, but the agency has cut its testing time perilously close...
...Bear in mind, too, that not only are the economies of these regions fragile, but they are months if not years behind the U.S...
...At the beginning of 1998, the U.S...
...Glitches in embedded chips will also affect more commonplace technology, from air-conditioning systems to automobiles...
...its domestic and Of all those responsiinternational client list ble, Gore will stand spans some fifty-three countries and includes above the rest because well-known multinational corporations...
...Buchanan says he'll declare whether he's running for president next spring...
...He explained the Year z000 problem and the adverse impact it could have on the economy...
...Martin paused to let this sink in while I calculated how much cash to keep in the safe-deposit box...
...The American Spectator • August 1998 Yet the idea of millions of people waking up to the Year 2000 problem simultaneously is hardly consoling...
...He remains what he has always been— a superb character actor who is most convincing when he plays flawed, creepy, small-time losers, sometimes exposing the crown jewels...
...in preparing for the millennium...
...Only improved monitoring and verification can prevent such dangerous fudging...
...THE GREAT PANIC OF 1999 Larry W. Martin is CEO of Data Dimensions, Inc., a computer consulting firm which has specialized in fixing Year 2000 problems since 1991...
...Moynihan's letter warned the president that the entire federal government needed to debug its computers...
...Jeff Jinnett, of counsel to the law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, has produced seventeen pages of guidelines, covering everything from officers and directors of publicly held companies to software vendors, concerning Year 2000 legal liability...
...If the S&L bailout bill is any guide to go by, the taxpayers are going to be asked to foot the bill for a massive Year 2000 crash program that probably won't work...
...Yet Lopes is among the first to urge a wider mobilization...
...In April, Microsoft posted a notice on the Web that not all of its systems are compliant...
...By 1998 this number was 53 percent...
...Treasury and Defense are not the only government agencies with Year z000 problems, but given the critical nature of their missions, they illustrate the seriousness of the situation...
...How will the telephone company computer read your New Year's Eve midnight phone call starting in "99" and ending at "oo...
...Tobacco is a proven drug...
...Add the impact of globalization, and the speed with which turmoil in Asian and European financial markets rebounds in New York and Chicago...
...During his twenty years at the Palmieri Company, Koskinen's clients included bankrupt companies such as Mutu...
...years as an active voter...
...The Department of Defense and other federal agencies have not anticipated the requirement to purchase Year 2000 compliant hardware and software," he said...
...government identified 8,589 computer systems as "mission-critical" for various government agencies and departments and therefore deserving high priority for Year 2000 remediation...
...it's something altogether different if our "smart weapons" stop working...
...Al Gore's Year 2000 Problem "It will happen right in the middle of the presidential campaign," says Tony Blank-ley...
...George Munoz, then the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for management, testified on a wide range of functions that could be affected by the Year z000 bugs...
...Intuit, which manufactures popular small-business accounting software, uses the "9999" command in some of its programs...
...THE POLITICAL IMPACT IN THE UNITED STATES "It's just on the radar screen of a few prescient politicians," says Tony Blankley, former press aide to House Speaker Newt Gingrich...
...3. I have yet to reveal the results of the show to anyone except my immediate relatives...
...Mannie Lopes believes that small and medium-sized businesses lacking the funds to upgrade their computer systems will instead opt to sue software vendors...
...Bush sought to reduce deficits in order to forestall a stock market sell-off by jittery Wall Street...
...In its simplest terms, the Year z000 problem means that many computers are run by programs which won't know how to interpret a date like "oo...
...This is the most sustained period of optimism in America since Ronald Reagan's second term," says Republican pollster Bob Teeter...
...It could cost Gore the election," says entrepreneur Mannie Lopes, founder of the Year 2000 Alliance...
...This interdependence means that even if U.S...
...in readiness, but are still an average of six months behind...
...decides to act prudently, we'll run out of cash...
...STANLEY WILLIS Overland Park, Kansas A Smokeless Republican Enclosed is my copy of the May American Spectator...
...But if past experience is a guide, wholesale shutdowns—also called system failures —are most likely...
...Moynihan, who is not particularly well-versed in high technology (his staff say he is more comfortable with a typewriter than a computer), listened intently...
...The school uniformly admired the Chinese Cultural Revolution and would, no doubt, have joined Pol Pot's gestapo given the chance...
...The 739 removed systems haven't been fixed, but the government has decided that they aren't critical after all...
...It's dramatic," says Lopes, whose Year 2000 Alliance comprises 114 minority and women-owned firms...
...To understand the problem you need to know something about the history of computers...
...then as an alternative, the office of federal Year 2000 czar...
...There are two ways it could have an effect on politics...
...The telephone company isn't the only one with a problem...
...For the record I am a card-carrying conservative Republican who has voted against major GOP candidates only three times in 24...
...Moreover, Westergaard warned, the timing of the Year 2000 problem was bad news for Al Gore's presumed succession to the presidency...
...Among the casualties could be Al Gore's presidential aspirations...
...my performance against someone whom I respect a lot speaks for itself...
...The CRS reported back in 1996 that the problems were not only serious but underestimated...
...The Treasury also manages the income from public debt auctions, and its securities market is $2 trillion annually...
...Much hardware and systems software must be replaced or upgraded, including the majority of hundreds of thousands of personal computers...
...THE REST OF THE WORLD IS EVEN FURTHER BEHIND The Central Intelligence Agency has recently begun to assess the readiness of the world's computers for the Year 2000, and the news is bad...
...The Treasury collects 97 percent of all federal revenues through the IRS, Customs,and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms...
...Yet Data of the image he has so Dimensions doesn't have any federal contracts, nor carefully crafted as a do other similar non-8-A firms Martin knows of, high-tech guru...
...This is a legacy of past policies that permitted the proliferation of different computer languages and dialects...
...The guy who goes up the river to deal with Marlon Brando has to be an emissary of Good...
...Not all these systems will fail...
...Horn's overall grade for the government effort was an "F...
...The show is on Comedy Central, after all...
...The vice president and Koskinen are collaborating closely on the federal government's belated response to the Year z000 challenge...
...Soldiers, sailors, airmen, pilots, and police are essential to protect freedom in extreme situations, but day to day it is up to all citizens to protect their own freedom...
...We must prepare for the possibility of business failures and the collapse of essential government services," he warns, "including tax collection, welfare payments, national defense, and air-traffic control...
...We don't agree with that grade," says Jack Gribben, the White House Year z000 spokesman, who calls the OMB's assessment a more reliable measure of the administration's progress...
...Marshall Fine is too nice a person to say that some of Keitel's work (Copland, Sister Act, Rising Sun) has a phoned-in quality, and that some of his public utterances are idiotic...
...The high-priority federally funded crash effort Mannie Lopes hopes for will have to include streamlined contracting procedures if it is to succeed...
...Judging from the experience of the IRS, Munoz seems to have been a little optimistic...
...Clinton named John Koskinen chairman of the Year z000 Conversion Council...
...Industry experts see a preview in a 1996 case, in which a program incorrectly calculated the Leap Year dates for several aluminum smelters in Australia and New Zealand...
...And that's not all...
...Three were in their late forties...
...I don't need to brag...
...Some comments need to be made to set the record straight...
...Martin's company Data Dimensions has been in business since 1968 and has annual The American Spectator • August 1998 revenues that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars...
...Coppola did the wrong thing when he stranded him in a Philippine jungle tributary with nothing but some extras and a walkie-talkie...
...For me, he falls into the same class as John Malkovich and Christopher Walken: intriguing weirdos who have trouble carrying a film...
...Westergaard had a sobering message for the senator...
...Lopes's group bids on government contracts by putting together "swat teams" pulled from its various member companies...
...As the computers read the lines of code, refineries in three separate time zones began sequential cold-stops of their production lines, causing millions of dollars of damage to the refineries...
...Until very recently at least one major American computer manufacturer's programming manual told technicians to use "99" as a command meaning "end of file...
...The only candidate on the scene now who would stand to benefit from an anti-politician, anti-global mood is the economic populist Pat Buchanan...
...As chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee's subcommittee on management, information, and technology, Rep...
...Unification compounds Europe's problems, since millions of its computers must be reprogrammed to handle the switch to a common currency, the Euro, in January 011999...
...He cites a recent General Accounting Office report which states that, at best, the federal government will have 70 percent of its critical systems ready by the deadline...
...The record of Senator Moynihan's unsuccessful efforts to warn the administration may be just the linkage Gore's opponents (including fellow Democrats in the primaries and a Republican nominee in the fall) need to make their case...
...Year 2000 problems have to be diagnosed, fixed, and tested by human programmers...
...Sometime between now and mid-1999, they will do as the IRS has done and start asking for more money to buy brand new systems...
...It will be hard for Congress to resist political pressure to include financial aid to state and local governments, and even private companies deemed too critical to fail...
...According to Bolger, "the economy is the Number One driving factor of the political environment...
...For example, a typical "baby bell" telephone company has a chain of some 3,000 suppliers, all of whose computers must be compliant for trouble-free operations...
...Voters might be willing to exonerate Gore of blame for a recession triggered by something other than computer programming glitches...
...In questioning Treasury's projections, skeptics note that the IRS spent almost $4 billion on an eleven-year computer upgrade project that ultimately failed...
...If someone were to smoke near me and I were to courteously ask him not to smoke near me, and he refused, I would place him under citizen's arrest for a personal attack on my body, or punch him out...
...I assumed that this graffitist was some crazy-eyed burn out case...
...They operate turnkey systems ranging from manufacturing to inventory control and distribution, and there are thousands in use around the globe...
...But there are some members in the House who are beginning to see it as a political problem that can be laid at Gore's doorstep...
...Skeptics say that the bureaucracy is redefining the problem to make it easier to call it solved...
...And which century is it, by the way-1900 or 2000...
...None of the Moynihan bills ever passed, but finally last February President Clinton signed Executive Order 13073 chartering the president's Year z000 Conversion Council, a high-level, coordinated effort to update the federal government's "mission critical" computer systems...
...This, combined with the economic downturn, scuttled Bush's reelection campaign...
...Some of them were still living on campus in November 1972...
...The Gartner Group, a computer technology research firm, estimates that fixing the world's computers will cost between $300 and $600 billion...
...When government agencies do contract out, it is often with computer consulting companies owned by women and minorities...
...What happens when individual small investors remove $1 trillion in demand deposits from banks, IRA's, and stock portfolios...
...Microchips embedded in all kinds of technology from elevators to automobiles may have date bugs...
...I am not...
...This continued until someone wrote "Stop writing this [censored]"—and named the author...
...I have been an active conservative Republican for fifty years, doing precinct work, writing letters and articles for the local paper on conservative issues...
...Roberts/Year 2000 (Continued from page 33) perceptions of corruption, narrow self-interest, and blatant deception by most politicians...
...Yardeni puts the chance of a consequent global recession at 6o percent...
...In the summer of 1996, for the first time in six years, polls showed that a majority believed the country to be on track...
...Some say that Koskinen's latest crisis-management case is Al Gore's presidential campaign...
...When not simply defining down the Year z000 problem as if to make it go away, most government agencies have taken an inadequate "do it yourself" approach, using their own personnel...
...No other politician is so closely identified by public and press with the high-tech industry and the wonders of our increasingly wired world...
...I lost eight friends to the effects of smoking, one of whom was my father...
...One is the general view of the future and how things are going...that will burden the incumbent—Gore...
...Some of these chips are because of special military requirements, such as in a missile...
...Between these extremes stands Edward Yardeni, chief economist at the investment banking firm Deutsche Morgan Grenfell...
...No matter how angry Americans might be at their own government and companies for a failure to be ready for the Year z000, they are likely to be even more angry at being mired in a global economy so much slower than we to straighten out its computer bugs...
...Maybe there won't be problems with banks or ATMs or the utilities, but if you're prudent, you'd like a little money on hand, wouldn't you...
Vol. 31 • August 1998 • No. 8
