Politics: Al Gore's War on High Tech
Norquist, Grover G .
POLITICS by Grover G. Norquist Al Gore's War on High Tech D eclan McCullagh, a writer for Wired magazine, was watching CNN's "Late Edition" last March 9 when Vice President Al Gore told host Wolf...
...He has asserted his interest in new technologies and appeared for photo-ops...
...The tax-and-spend politicians always seem to have Gore's ear...
...Because self-employed individuals are not subject to the New Deal's Wagner Act—and cannot be forced to join unions and pay dues...
...Yet even here, Gore's support for environmental and labor regulations in trade agreements have him backing impediments to trade as great as today's tariffs...
...In 1995, Congress passed Rep...
...Limiting this export would cost an estimated $40 billion to $97 billion in lost revenue over the next five years...
...Against Gore and White House opposition, the Senate voted 78-20 for Abraham's bill...
...Clinton and Gore fought the bill and Clinton vetoed the final version, only to be overridden by Congress...
...What's more, Gore has paid only lip service to the campaign to give the president "fast track" authority to negotiate trade agreements...
...Forget the image—the veep loathes Silicon Valley...
...To have any success next year Gore needs to maintain the fiction that he is pro-business, at least in the high-tech area...
...Currently 70 to 8o percent of schools are already wired, and only 4 percent of the funds actually cover Internet access...
...Now we know: The trial bar is planning an estimated $1 trillion in lawsuits over anticipated Y2K problems...
...After visits from mayors and other big-city pols he will44 In Gore's world union bosses trump high tech— and so do trial lawyers...
...One explanation comes from Richard Rahn, the former chief economist of the U.S...
...for up to six years), the White House threatened a veto...
...66 July 1999 • The American Spectator John Doerr, the famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist, first organized the apolitical world of high-tech entrepreneurs to defeat California's Proposition 211, which was backed by trial lawyers like Bill Lerach who wanted to make it even easier to file "strike suits" against high-tech firms...
...Every time...
...economy an estimated $350 billion a year and 600,000 jobs...
...In the Web pages of Wired News, McCullagh reported on Gore's cavalier attempt to take credit for the work of others...
...Gore opposes every one of these measures...
...need next year, Gore worked to put a time limit on the ban...
...Opponents of Internet taxation credit Gore with weakening the final bill, which only delayed Internet taxation by three years and created a commission intended to endorse Internet taxation in the future...
...In fact, the first plans for what became the Internet were devised by MIT's Lawrence G. Roberts in 1966—when Al Gore was all of 18...
...Thomas M. Davis's bill to limit class-action lawsuits and restrict punitive damages in the event of Y2K computer failures...
...Blitzer didn't question Gore's claim, but McCullagh did...
...More campaign cash there, for one thing...
...In this symbolic issue for Big Labor (an additional 30,000 nonunion workers weren't about to depress U.S...
...At present, we have the right to encrypt our computers...
...Gore's ability to work with traditional business leaders has been badly damaged by his support for the Kyoto environmental treaty, which would shut down much of the auto, oil, electric power, and mining industries, costing the U.S...
...postage stamp for actually inventing the modern Internet is named Al Gore...
...Bob Goodlatte's (R-Va...
...Gore and Clinton want to give government a key to open all American encryption—just as it can tap phone lines...
...The real beneficiaries are school bureaucracies, which find they can use the money any way they want...
...Entrepreneurs want to protect businesses that make good-faith efforts to prepare for January 1, 2000...
...Business leaders report that the White House has told them trial lawyers will have the final say on how Clinton and Gore approach this legislation...
...Everyone wondered who would be next after the tort lawyers gnawed the tobacco industry to the bone...
...Cox led an effort to ban taxation of the Internet...
...John Doerr, who began in politics fighting tort lawyers and went on to create TechNet— regarded by many as a transparent front to support Gore's presidential ambitions—has been publicly humiliated by Gore's continued support for the trial lawyers...
...Like Bill Clinton before him, Gore has posed as a New Democrat...
...Why support the FBI over high tech...
...Then Gore & Co...
...descended on the House with 15 demands from labor to raise the costs to business...
...I n Gore's world high tech also takes a back seat to the tax-and-spend demands of big city machines...
...Explained as financing the wiring of schools for the Internet, it is possibly a pork barrel program for some high-tech firms...
...Moreover, neither of the two men who've been nominated for a U.S...
...They say Bill Clinton treats Hillary better than Al Gore does John Doerr...
...Chamber of Commerce whose new book, The End of Money, describes how electronic commerce will make taxation more difficult—unless, of course, the government can listen in on all our electronic communications, whether e-mail or bank transfers...
...Christopher Cox's Private Securities Litigation Reform Act to limit frivolous "strike suits...
...As it happens, the most outrageous of Gore's falsehoods has largely gone unchallenged, namely his claim of being friend and ally of the nation's high-tech industry...
...It is of a piece with Gore's claim that he and Tipper Gore were the models for Eric Segal's Love Story or his boast that he grew up ploughing hillsides in Tennessee...
...Not only was it not true, as the Wall Street Journal's John Fund pointed out, but Gore had earlier attended a White House state dinner for Ghanian strongman Jerry Rawlings at which the real first Peace Corps volunteer, Thomas Scanlon, was honored...
...The American Spectator • July 1999 67...
...Gore knows this well...
...Union bosses are also hostile to Americans who choose to work as independent contractors rather than employees...
...Silicon Valley and its counterparts nationwide thrive on self-employment, mobile workforces, and individual independence...
...Newt Gingrich's and Trent Lott's nominees may yet keep that commission from delivering as planned...
...These exports pose no threat to national security...
...To keep it safe for commerce, Rep...
...Asked for a single congressman he has successfully lobbied to support fast track, Gore's office could not name one...
...They are Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, who published "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection" in 1974, years before Gore was old enough to serve in Congress...
...POLITICS by Grover G. Norquist Al Gore's War on High Tech D eclan McCullagh, a writer for Wired magazine, was watching CNN's "Late Edition" last March 9 when Vice President Al Gore told host Wolf Blitzer that "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet...
...SAFE legislation to allow American firms to export software and hardware with encryption (i.e., codes to protect privacy of communications...
...Tech entrepreneurs would like to cut or abolish the capital gains tax, lower income taxes for independent contractors, and abolish the inheritance tax that will seize as much as half of new companies...
...High-tech companies support legislation to make it easier for Americans to be independent contractors...
...But on issues of importance to computer manufacturers, software producers, and telecommunications companies, he has consistently opposed the high-tech community and its interests...
...When Michigan's Sen...
...Spencer Abraham fought to expand H-1B visa totals from 65,000 to 95,000 (these visas allowforeigners with special skills to stay in the U.S...
...High-tech lobbyists in Washington believe there's a limit to how long Gore can have pleasant chats with high-tech CEOs while trashing their entire policy agenda...
...Gore has traveled often to Silicon Valley and raised money from high-tech executives...
...He also sent an e-mail alert to the several thousand subscribers of his Politech mailing list...
...Four years later, the trial lawyers are once again facing off with high tech over legislation to limit frivolous Y2K lawsuits...
...He was a member of the Democratic Leadership Council that supposedly stood for a Democratic Party no longer tethered to labor unions, trial lawyers, and big city machines...
...Business Week found that only 17 percent of businessmen like his views on regulating the economy...
...A higher level of skilled immigration remains a top priority for a broad range of high-tech industries...
...Gore announced this tax at the National Education Association — an important spending constituency...
...Union bosses, however, oppose more immigration...
...In Gore's world, union bosses trump high tech —and so do trial lawyers...
...Recall also that Gore told C-SPAN's Brian Lamb that his sister was the first GROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...From there, at the speed of light, Gore's lie entered the popular culture, from teenage slang to Jay Leno's monologue, and is now as well known as Dan Quayle's spelling of "potatoe...
...Yet every time these pillars of the old Democratic Party have clashed with the high-tech world, Gore has sided with the forces of the past...
...It is available from 949 companies in 68 nations...
...wages), Gore sided with union leaders against high tech...
...High tech faces a shortage of talent that can only be fixed by dramatic increases in the number of highly skilled workers allowed to enter America...
...At the same time, Gore supports a plan to allow the FBI to read everyone's e-mail in the U.S...
...Typically, he's demanding that phone companies hide it in your phone bill without explanation...
...In the trial lawyers' relentless wars on tech entrepreneurs, Gore has repeatedly sided with the most abusive of the tort lawyers...
...One threat to electronic commerce and such start-up successes as Amazon.com and E*trade is posed by state and local politicians set on taxing Internet sales of goods and services...
...Someday Doerr's stockholders may notice...
...The Clinton-Gore administration has sicced the IRS on independent contractors in an effort to drive more Americans into working as employees subject to unionization...
...Free trade is the one issue on which Gore would seem to be most in sync with the high-tech community...
...On May 17 the House voted 236-190 to pass Rep...
...Gore's least understandable attack on the tech community is his joining with the administration to oppose Rep...
...Indeed, Daniel H. Pink, a former Gore speechwriter, is perhaps the most articulate student of what he terms the "Free Agent Nation," the 25 million Americans who work for themselves outside the grasp of John Sweeney's AFL-CIO: 14 million self-employed, 8.3 million independent contractors, and 2.3 million who work at temporary jobs...
...The final bill included a tax on each foreign worker and other anti-business restrictions...
...Peace Corps volunteer...
...Gore has even created a telecommunications tax of his own, the $2.4 billion a year "Gore tax" on phone lines...
...Less credulous than Wolf Blitzer, Lamb asked Gore to repeat his assertion—and he did...
...America doesn't have a monopoly on robust encryption...
Vol. 32 • July 1999 • No. 7
