Lost In Cyberspace? Does the Bush administration get the New Economy?
eisenach, jeffrey a.
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4) Endowment for the Arts. Two 14-yearold girls standing close to the stage during a stupendous crescendo by the singing group Shower Rangers suddenly found themselves...
...On encryption, for example, FBI Director Louis Freeh teamed up with Gore to maintain export controls...
...Relylng on hs close ties to the Clintons, Magaziner assembled 18 federal agencies to develop a "Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" that was breathtalung in its aversion to government control...
...That never happens with good old English body odor...
...Kvamme must win the case for a third leg: revive the tech sector...
...The tech sector, accounting for only 8 percent of the economy, has driven nearly a third of real GDP growth since 1995 and lowered inflation by a point a year...
...No one expected immedate answers, but as the days and weeks passed, and the Nasdaq continued to slide, Silicon Valley grew anxious...
...According to a report in the April 27 issue of Science, scientists in China have found the first feathered dinosaur, a duck-sized bird dubbed the dromaeosaur.The bird is 130 million years old, has small wings, and would be delicious if prepared in a light wine sauce...
...Does the Bush administration get the New Economy...
...But President Bush should pay even closer attention to what happened during the final two years of the Clinton administration...
...I don't thmk anythng has gelled yet,'' saidTechNet president and former Congressman Rick Xhte in mid-February...
...On privacy, Magaziner potential for promoting individual free- favored industry self-regulation: "A govdom and individual empowerment...
...The natural inclination of government to tax and regulate took charge...
...Bush's appeal to the tech community was based primarily on tax cuts, education reform, fiee trade, and tort reform...
...They delivered the votes too...
...varnrne has his work cut out for him.The Bush economic policy .agenda so far is a two-legged stool: Tax cuts and interest rate reductions to spur demand...
...Details are vague, but doctors familiar with recent Iraqi history speculate that the pill will have something to do with members receding into the interior...
...The singers had lost control...
...On the international front, government telecommunications authorities were getting ready to regulate Internet access, and some European countries were thnlung about imposing a "bit tax...
...In the United Kingdom adepts of the anti-fragrance movement felt vindicated when 100 guests fled a Travelodge in Piccadilly, York, after a guest's "over-exuberant" application of deodorant triggered smoke detectors...
...The federal government needed to get things back on track, by lowering the cost of capital and reducing regulation, followed by a major How, Kvamrne and the assembled leaders wanted to know, did the admnistration plan to proceed...
...On taxes and tariffs, Magaziner headed off European and Japanese plans to impose some form of bit tax...
...over the next two months, the tech sector would lay off 95,000 workers...
...20001 www.clto.org THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR . June 2001 ning the administration's support for deregulatory legislation in Congress...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR . June 2001 On March 28, high-tech leaders were summoned to the White House, where Bush surprised them with real news: The head of Bush's advisory council on science and technology would be none other than-Floyd Kvarnrne...
...Then comes the odd part...
...Nor was he successful in persuadng FCC Chairmen Reed Hundt and Bill Kennard to speed telecom deregulation, or in winIs Nation Building a -Mistake...
...Dennis Dowthitt, 55, who was convicted of murder and rape in 1990...
...He won Clinton's support for the Internet tax moratorium and helped persuade standstill, winning a "safe harbor" agreement to protect U.S...
...The bottom line for Kvarnrne and Bush...
...Meanwhile the FCC continued its pro-regulatory, incentive-destroying policies discouraging the existing Baby Bell-the local phone companies-from malung money bringing broadband to the neighborhood...
...He fought the Europeans to a Where can the administration go for advice?The best answer, surprisingly, is Ira Magaziner, known to most people as the architect of Mrs...
...On issues like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, digital signatures, and so forth," he reflects, "the differences really aren't partisan...
...Graden expressed his regret that "these women" were "hurt...
...We &d that by getting agreement on our global fi-arnework document, which established some general principles to limit government's role...
...The almost daily reports of bankruptcies from the telecom sector are proof-positive of failure...
...and is set to expire this September...
...Vice President Gore called for forcing the "Clipper Chip" into every PC, and Congress was preparing to pass the Communications Decency Act to control online porn...
...Fahng prices for computers, software, communications equipment, and information technology services have lowered inflation by roughly a percentage point each year...
...So when President-elect Bush sat down in Austin with the campaign's "high-tech" corporate advisory council effort to speed broadband deployment "to every household and business...
...Released in July 1997, the h e - work was based on the idea that "the Congress to approve the Internet Tax Internet is a medlum that has tremendous Freedom Act...
...He also took the hands-off position on content controls: "I thmk the initial impulse to censor or control was a mistaken one...
...To these it added a few targeted promises, including increasing spending on R&D, extendmg the Internet tax moratorium, raising the number of HIB visas, and reforming export controls...
...Floyd Kvamme, a respected venture capitalist and co-founder of the Silicon Valley lobby TechNet, made the key presentation to the president-elect...
...A giant Iraqi pharmaceutical firm announced in May that it is marketing a male anti-impotence pill similar to Viagra...
...When he left the Clinton administration in December 1998, Magaziner had done more to save the Internet from government control than anyone before or since...
...Independent agencies, especially the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission, took over policy making from the executive branch...
...Magaziner's appointment came at a crucial time...
...The thlrd lesson, Magaziner doesn't dlscuss: When push comes to shove, you need the president of the United States to do some of the shoving...
...The tech-sector meltdown was in full swing...
...As a result, the Internet tax tious "Project Pronto" plan to deploy moratorium was extended for only a year, broadband across the state...
...The tech sector would have its man in Washington after all...
...TEXAS HAS EXECUTED ANOTHER glutton, Mr...
...A Business Week election postmortem found that Bush won a majority of New Economy voters...
...You need to get out in front of the natural inclination of government to tax and regulate," Magaziner says...
...You dunderhead, "these women" are only 14 years old...
...regulatory reform to increase energy supplies and lower oil and electricity prices...
...States and locahties threatened to tax Internet access...
...Though cheered by the appointment of Michael Powell to head the Federal Cornrnunications Commission and by TechNet executive Lezlee Westine's appointment to a Xhte House political job, hgh-tech leaders wanted to know who to look to for leadershp...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR . June 2001...
...His legacy ths time, to the amazement of many, was a critical policy fiamework that relied heavily on markets and deregulation...
...The Federal Reserve Board credits information technology with more than two-thirds of the productivity spurt that drove the economy in the late 1990s...
...The Internet inhstructure had just been privatized, Netscape was only a year old, and governments everywhere were eyeing the new phenomenon, as Magaziner says, "wondering what they needed to do to regulate or control it...
...I I " ~ f ~ d c m r a J t r P t e s t h e ~ ~ d t y l n g t o l m p o e e ~ ~ % o n p e o p l e w b o R l e c t t b a n , = ~ astbehypoaIsyhdwdkcahgeurb~~lls b u u a r o g ' ~ D e m p e e y p r o v l d e s ~ ~ ~ ~ rnaiQbkoCthcself-defeahing-dkm W & m t h i n B a a n i a a n d ~ , M a n d smndia" -Roben M. Hayden Direcm Center for Russian & East European Studies Unimity d Pitlsburgh 1OOO M E S I & ~ k., N.W...
...On the Internet tax front, the Clinton adrmnistration effectively sabotaged the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce (chaired by Virginia Governor Jim Gilrnore), worlung "How many megabytes is that in dog memory...
...Two 14-yearold girls standing close to the stage during a stupendous crescendo by the singing group Shower Rangers suddenly found themselves dripping with the Rangers' loose stools...
...Wdhgton, D.C...
...privacy, the Federal Trade Commission, which previously had supported Magaziner's self-regulatory approach, did an about-face in mid-2000, a move so completely unjustified by anything but politics that Republican Commissioner Orson Swindle called it "embarrassing...
...Where can Kvarnme go for advice...
...Officials of the soft drink giant Vrumona have sent out employees wearing padded suits to "defuse" 300,000 bottles after two customers complained...
...Lost In Cyberspace...
...Since Labor Day, Nasdaq investors had lost over $3 trfion...
...The worst news facing Kvarnme may be that the Bush admmstration does not yet have a high-tech policy agenda...
...But beginning in 1995, he had a second, much less visible career as Clmton's point-person on the Internet and electronic commerce...
...firms &om the EU's Orwelhan "data dlrective...
...The Internet moves rapidly, mutating as technology changes," Magaziner said...
...In late 1998, the Commission denied requests to deregulate the phone companies' broadband offerings...
...The crucial project of deploying a nationwide broadband infrastructure was falling behind schedule, he warned...
...Governments inherently move slowly, bureaucraticdyslower than is necessary for the Internet to flourish...
...Clinton's failed health care plan...
...The almost daily reports of bankruptcies fi-om new entrant local telecom companies and the collapse of the telecom equipment sector are proof positive of the failure of the HundtKennard approach to broadband...
...ernment-centered approach will not Therefore, "competition and inchidual work...
...on January 4, expectations-and concernsran high...
...FROM HOLLAND COMES WORD that the Dutch may have overdone it with one of their favorite drinks, exploding orange juice...
...In mid-2000, it began a proceeding to impose sirmlar regulations on cable...
...Send them to dull Vorarlberg...
...A second key, he says, is bipartisanship...
...But on key issues like broadband, Bush has said little, and the ahnistration's cupboard is nearly bare of relevant proposals...
...And since broadband is an essential link in the "virtuous circle" of continued innovation and growth that drives the new economy, there's no doubting the consequences are contributing significantly to the tech (and therefore the economic) recession...
...Government should keep its hands off...
...His last meal included a dozen fried eggs, a loaf of bread, a bowl of salad dressing, French fries, and three cartons of milk-whole milk...
...Most people know Magaziner only as the archtect of Mrs...
...And how can anyone ever be "hurt" by Art, you pathetic philistine...
...behind the scenes to support the pro-tax created complex new regulatory schemes, forces of the National Governors' costly enough in the case of Ihnois to Association and the National Association cause phone giant SBC to cancel its ambiof Counties...
...Without Magaziner, technology policy responsibilities were divided up between the White House, the Vice President's office, and the Department of Commerce...
...Magaziner's views didn't always prevail...
...On No one knows how much damage No one knows how much damage these policies have done...
...The best answer, surprisingly, is Ira Magaziner...
...Clinton's failed health care plan...
...After all, the tech sector, accounting for only 8 percent of economic output, has driven nearly a third of real GDP growth since 1995...
...While Magaziner admits to having been "less than completely successful" in winning support for his telecom views, he does take credit for having at least "sustained the principle that there should be no regulation of high bandwidth packet switched networks...
...BY JEFFREY A. EISENACH he conventional wisdom bemoans Silicon Valley's Democratic bent, but high-tech chlefS like Jim Barksdale, John Chambers, and Michael Dell raised twice as much for the Bush campaign as their Democratic counterparts raised for Gore...
...choice should be the watchwords of the new digital economy...
...Following the FCC's example, state PUCs in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere these policies have done...
Vol. 34 • June 2001 • No. 5
