A silver anniversary for the worldwide web
The Scott County Record • Page 5 • Thursday, March 20, 2014
by Sam Pizzigati
Exactly 25 years ago, British computer scientist Tim BernersLee conceptually “invented” the World Wide Web - and set in motion a process that would rapidly make the online world an essential part of our daily lives. By 1995, 14 percent of Americans were surfing the web. The level today: 87 percent. And among young adults, the Pew Research Center notes, the Internet has reached “near saturation.” Some 97 percent of Americans 18 to 29 years are now going online. Tim Berners-Lee never saw this inequality coming. He didn’t invent the web to get rich. He released the code to his new system for free. But others certainly have become rich via the web. Some
123 billionaires today, Forbes calculates, owe their fortunes to high-tech. The top 15 of these high-tech billionaires hold a collective $382 billion in personal net worth. Numbers like these don’t particularly alarm many of today’s economists. Their conventional wisdom holds that grand new technologies always bring forth grand new personal fortunes for the entrepreneurs who lead the way. In the 19th century, the coming of the railroads created wildly-wealthy railroad tycoons. In the early 20th century, the dawn of the automobile age created huge piles of dollars for car makers like Henry Ford. Why should the Internet age, mainstream economists wonder, be any different? A new technology gives rise to a new cohort of rich people. The simple way of the world.
In our deregulated U.S. economy, meanwhile, these Internet kingpins encounter precious few public-interest rules that keep them from charging whatever the market can bear - and rigging markets to squeeze out even more.
But epochal new technology doesn’t always automatically generate grand new fortunes. The prime example: television. TV burst onto the scene even more rapidly - and thoroughly than the Internet. In 1948, only one percent of American households owned a TV. Within seven years, televisions graced 75 percent of American homes. These TV sets didn’t just drop down into those homes. They had to be designed, manufactured, packaged, distributed and marketed. Programming had to be produced. Imaginations had to be captured. All of this demanded an enor-
mous outlay of entrepreneurial energy. But this outlay produced no jaw-dropping billionaire fortunes. That would be no accident. By the 1950s, the American people had put in place a set of economic rules that made the accumulation of grand, new private fortunes almost impossible. Taxes played a key role here. Income over $400,000 faced a 91 percent tax rate throughout the 1950s. Regulations played an important role as well. In television’s early heyday, for instance, government regulations limited how many commercials could run on children’s TV programming. TV’s original corporate execs could only squeeze so much out of their new medium. And television’s early kingpins couldn’t squeeze their workers all that much either.
Most of their employees, from the workers who manufactured TV sets to the technicians who staffed broadcast studios, belonged to unions. TV’s early movers and shakers had to share the wealth their new medium was creating. Today’s Internet movers and shakers, by contrast, have to share nothing. In an America where less than seven percent of privatesector workers carry union cards, online corporate giants seldom ever need to bargain with their employees. In our deregulated U.S. economy, meanwhile, these Internet kingpins encounter precious few public-interest rules that keep them from charging whatever the market can bear - and rigging markets to squeeze out even more. (See WEB on page six)
Do you like where this road could lead? by Chief Justice Lawton Nuss
Be careful what you put in your head
by H. Edward Flentje
Mothers everywhere warn children not to put any food in their mouths unless they know where it came from. The same should apply to putting information in our heads. For instance, the Employment Policy Institute has recently run fullpage newspaper ads alerting the public and policymakers that an impressive group of some 650 economists who are supporting an increase in America’s minimum wage includes many who are “radical researchers.” The institute’s message is that no one should listen to, much less respect, this group of economists. But wait - “many” in the group are radical? How many? The ads
only list eight and offer only innuendo as “proof” of their radicalism. And, by the way, what and who is the Employment Policy Institute? Sounds legit, but is it? Not at all. It’s a non-profit front group run by longtime corporate operative Richard Berman. It gets millions of dollars in tax-exempt donations from fast-food chains and other corporate interests trying to kill the wage increase, then funnels that money into Berman’s for-profit PR firm, which also represents the restaurant industry. To make its case, the institute has cited several “academic” reports that assail the wage increase on multiple fronts. But, just as Berman refuses to disclose the names of the
corporate giants funding him, he also never mentions that more than half of the economists whose papers he cites are paid by him. One, Joseph Sabia, has been given a quarter-million dollars in eight grants from Berman’s institute. In addition, an independent analysis of one of Sabia’s reports found that the data was skewed to make it seem that a New York wage hike had a negative impact on employment, which simply was not true. This phony institute is a scam and a scandal - so momma says don’t put any of its stuff in your head.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author
A commitment to the needy Faith traditions can be so harsh that they drive away everyone but the self-righteous scolds. Or they can so indulge in therapeutic comfort and manufactured joy that they come to seem like a charlatan’s game. They can be so otherworldly that they offer no guidance to those living in this one on matters of justice, freedom and how we should live together. Or they are so captive to the here-and-now that it becomes hard to distinguish between a congregation and a party headquarters. And for many in the wealthy nations and among the young, religion has no relevance to their lives whatsoever. It’s seen by some as a charming throwback and by others as one more insidious force focused on power, money and self-preservation. When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope a year ago, only a few expected that the new Catholic leader would confront all of these challenges simultaneously. Yes, his choice of the name Francis was a promising sign that
behind the headlines by E.J. Dionne, Jr.
he would emulate a saint devoted to the poor and to simplicity. Yes, he was already on record with searing criticisms of the injustices of global capitalism. From the beginning, he stressed his more humble role as the “Bishop of Rome,” suggesting an anti-imperial papacy. And then it continued. He disdained the trappings of piety and might, including the ornate regalia that appeal to so many prelates. The Roman joke was that as priests got with his program, one could find many lacy surplices on sale at steep discounts on eBay. On his first Holy Thursday, Francis washed the feet not of the usual group of priests but rather of a dozen young people being held at a juvenile detention center, including two women and two Muslims. He has not altered church doctrine, but his shift in emphasis has
been breathtaking. “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” he has said. “This is not possible.” He thus declared that the church’s main mission would no longer be as a lead combatant in the culture wars. It would stand primarily with and for the neediest. The most important aspect of a Pew survey released this month was not its finding that 68 percent of U.S. Catholics thought Francis was changing the church for the better, or that 76 percent said he was doing a good or excellent job of addressing the needs and concerns of the poor. No, the truly revealing fact about this study is that it did not even occur to Pew’s pollsters to ask in their benchmark poll a year ago whether poverty should be a priority of the new pope. This is no knock on Pew; the fact that its researchers had to include a new question about poverty this year shows how much Francis has transformed the church. (See NEEDY on page six)
Last year several legislators crafted a proposal for changing the constitutional process chosen by the people of Kansas for selecting Supreme Court justices. These legislators sought endorsements by the Kansas Bar Association and the Kansas District Judges Association (KDJA). According to several sources, the endorsements would induce the Legislature to give judicial branch employees their first pay raise in more than four years. I told our 1,500 employees that while the justices supported the pay raises, we opposed the trade. Later one of the crafting legislators publicly denied any linkage between the overdue pay raises and selection of justices and demanded my apology. Recently one of these legislators advanced a new proposal. Linking money to other court issues can no longer be denied. Rather, it is glaring. Instead of pay raises, this time legislative money is being offered to keep all Kansas courts open after July 1 - in direct exchange for some important restructuring of the judicial branch. More specifically, the money would be given if the KDJA now endorsed the “package deal.” The package includes changing the statewide unified court system in two fundamental ways. First, it allows the chief judge in each of Kansas’ 31 judicial districts to submit and control his or her own budget. Second, it allows the judges in each judicial district to choose their own chief judge. The Supreme Court has exclusively exercised the authority for both actions since at least the late 1970s after a constitutional amendment. All 31 chief judges - the ones most directly affected by the decentralizing budget provision - oppose it. Additionally, many prefer the Supreme Court’s traditional chief judge selection process, where for almost 40 years the Court has sought input from all judges and employees working closely with them before making the appointment. Chief judges and justices alike ask, “What needs fixing?” One packaging legislator informed the KDJA that without a positive statement about the entire package, it would fail. The money for keeping the courts open would then be lost. And no other legislative revenue proposal for keeping courts open was planned. In other words, no endorsement means closed courts. So while disagreeing with a significant part of the package, the executive committee concluded, “The KDJA can accept (it), because the courts of Kansas will be allowed to remain open for business.” The Kansas Senate approved it a few hours later. The Supreme Court strongly opposes the package - for reasons that should be clear. Most objectionable is the diffusion of the unified court system’s centralized authority in exchange for money to keep Kansas courts open. Some argue this legislative action violates the people’s constitution. The 1968 Legislature’s “Citizens’ Committee” recommended all the various courts be unified, modernized and administered by one central authority. (See ROAD on page six)