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charles habernigg

Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > A refresher on how the press failed the people

Tags: no_tag on 2008-07-06 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Ruth Parlin

Nieman Watchdog > Ask This > The next president should open up the Bush Administration's record

A new President may find it advantageous to quickly distinguish himself (or herself) from the current Administration and its policies. By exposing what is “shameful” in our recent past the new Administration could demonstrate a clean break with its p

Tags: secrecy on 2008-02-25 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Ruth Parlin

Nieman Watchdog > Are political journalists falling prey to technological misdirection?

There’s been remarkably little press coverage of the apparent disappearance of millions of White House e-mails. And what little there’s been has underestimated both the negligence of the White House’s information technologists and the troubling nati

Tags: technology, gov_docs on 2008-04-18 -All Annotations (0) -About

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laura lo forti

Nieman Watchdog > About Us > Why Watchdog? And why questions?

Tags: CitizenMedia, thoroughness, journalism on 2006-08-28 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Nathan Rein

Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > Iraq through the prism of Vietnam

Retired Gen. William Odom, head of the NSA in the 80s and former head intelligence officer for the Army, on the striking similarities between the Iraq situation and Vietnam.

Tags: bad_news, commentary, del.icio.us_import, iraq, military on 2006-03-09 -All Annotations (0) -About

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AceDeuce 18Expand

Nieman Watchdog > Ask This > Where’s that broadband fiber-optic access?

Tags: cable, connectivity, fiber optic cable, msm, regulation, telecoms, verizon on 2007-05-11 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Through most of the 1990s, the United States led the world in high-speed connectivity. Yet according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United States, despite having the most broadband connections, has stumbled to 16th in broadband technology and continues to fall.
By 2006, according to telecommunication companies’ own documents, 86 million customers in the United States should have received 45 Mbps service. In fact, South Korea and Japan do even better: they routinely offer 100 Mbps connections in both directions, uploading and downloading, for around $40 per month. But in the United States, the best connections top out at 1/3 this speed and cost 400% more—and very few places even have access to the new fiber-optic services being offered.
The FCC defines anything above 200 Kbps as broadband (1000 Kbps = 1 Mbps), allowing them to claim that Americans have broadband access
Through tax breaks and increased service fees, Verizon and the old Bells reaped an estimated $200 billion since the early 1990s to improve subscriber lines in the United States.
One study—titled “Dataquest: Implementation of ‘true’ broadband could bolster U.S. GDP by $500 billion a year,”—claimed that with “true” high-speed broadband services, the United States could add $500 billion annually to its GDP because of new jobs, new technologies, new equipment, and new software designs. It might even lead to less dependence on oil because of a growth in telecommuting. Moreover, countries that lead the world in broadband technology, like Korea and Japan, turn out more scientists and engineers. It is clear that connectivity drives technology design and creation.
The U.S. does face the challenge of wiring huge rural expanses, a problem not faced by, say, Japan. But this does not explain why close-packed metropolitan areas like New York and Chicago lag far behind Tokyo and Seoul.
In the 90s, the Clinton-Gore Administration called for a "National Infrastructure Initiative" to upgrade American homes, offices, schools and libraries with a fiber-optic network that would replace the older copper wiring.
increased rates for certain services and tax breaks. In addition, “rate-of-return” regulation—laws which monitored phone-company profits—were replaced with either price caps or alternative regulations. The former cap the prices of certain products; unlike before, however, no regulator would examine the profits to see if they were out of line. While this provides benefits to customers, the price-freezes were accompanied by cuts in staff and cuts in new construction, allowing the companies to increase profits. Some services were also deregulated, including Call Waiting, which costs less than a penny to offer and yet earns $4-5 a month per customer.
Bell profits (return on equity) jumped to 30%,
received massive tax write-offs on the promise they would build fiber-optic networks (over $25 billion).
If the phone companies had kept up their original capital expenditure rates, an additional $92 billion would have gone into new construction
Japan and Korea and other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades
The Bell companies submitted cost analyses to the public service commissions, such as the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, which were supposed to outline the actual costs of doing the upgrades. These “actual costs” models were intentionally kept low so the commission would approve. The original cost models showed costs of about a thousand dollars a customer; the actual cost in an installation in Dover, New Jersey, as reported by the New York Times, was $17,000 a line.
Profits were essentially capped somewhere between 11-13% (as a percentage of revenues)
In fact, however, such “capital expenditures” dropped from 24% of Bells’ total expenses in the early 1980s to just 14% of expenses in 2004.
after the state deals went through and the mergers were completed, they simply closed everything, even though they had commitments under state laws
In the case of New Jersey, I believe that what happened was illegal. Verizon NJ had a contract with the state to rewire, got paid for that rewiring and didn't do it.
we argue that the laws were changed based on deceptive speech

Sam

Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > Arabs, Israelis voice pessimism on Baker/Hamilton

Tags: no_tag on 2006-12-13 -All Annotations (0) -About

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charles habernigg

Watchdog Blog » Blog Archive » On Calling Bullshit

Tags: no_tag on 2006-12-03 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Sam 8Expand

Nieman Watchdog > Ask This > Any questions for Gates? (Part 1)

Tags: politics, us on 2006-11-28 -All Annotations (0) -About

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The issue is not what questions Senators might ask in confirmation hearings with Secretary of Defense designate Robert M. Gates but whether they will ask any real questions at all. If past is prologue, there will be few questions posed, and those that are asked will be both pro forma and unanswered.
Form over Substance: The Senate is steeped in tradition and ceremony, and no senator is a bigger devotee than the current – outgoing – chairman, John Warner (R-VA). He will start the hearing with a long “opening statement.” It will include a concerned but not graphic description of the unfolding disaster in Iraq, the need for a new strategy there, and a few polite words – but not too many – about Donald Rumsfeld.
We will then be subjected to an agonizingly long series of “opening statements” from each and every other senator. Most will strive prodigiously to make some sort of news that earns a few seconds of coverage in the evening’s TV news. Very probably, one winner will be Senator John McCain, (R–Ariz), calling for more troops to go to Iraq with some sharp rhetoric. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), will make news, or not, depending on her political calculation of whether or not she wants attention in connection with Gates’s nomination hearing.
All these opening statements will take about an hour or two. Then it will be Gates’s turn for his statement. Assuming he follows the advice given to all presidential nominees appearing before the Senate for confirmation, he will say absolutely nothing but he will appear very authoritative in doing so.
Then, the “questioning” will begin. Chairman Warner will be first. He will give what amounts to yet another opening statement. At the end of it he will pose a question, but it will be utterly predictable. The big issue is, of course, Iraq; he will ask something like “Will there be a new strategy?” (Note: he will not ask what the new strategy will be.) Having been told exactly what the question will be several days earlier, Gates will “answer” it: Everything is under consideration; he has spoken at length with the president; the goal is “victory,” but, no, he can’t talk to specifics (or to criteria, methods, parameters, conditions, factors, particulars, or prerequisites).
More Speeches: Having already explained themselves with their “opening statements,” the members will re-profess what they think is the most important national security issue in yet another speech. It will invariably take up virtually all of the senator’s allotted time. In some cases it will end in a question. In others, it will end with a request that Gates simply respond. The subject matter will vary from more on Iraq – such as another attempt to get Gates to say what he said he wouldn’t say – to why some defense program or facility in some senator’s state should be preserved for time immemorial.
An Actual Question? Somewhere along the line, some senator will ask an actual question without a five-paragraph preamble. It will, however, be read off, or summarized from, a staff memo. It may be a legalism about Gates’s involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, what parts of the U.S. can North Korea’s newest missile reach (if it were ever to work), or how many F-22’s would be needed to “win” against China (Saxby Chambliss again). In all cases, two things are sure to happen, or rather not: Gates will not provide a concrete answer, and the questioner will respond not with a follow-up question, but a new one – almost certainly entirely unrelated – that is again read off or summarized from a staff memo.
I hope I am wrong, especially regarding the Democrats. We already know from 12 years of experience from Republican control on this committee that one of Congress’s most important duties – oversight – has been deeply interred. It would be a welcome and important new development if the Democrats have awoken from their slumber, have disinterred a few investigative skills, and choose to ask real questions and extract meaningful answers.