The Romneys of Belmont, Massachusetts

Mitt Romney has lived in the Boston metropolitan area for 30 years. He has built two great companies there, raised his kids there, been active in politics and philanthropic work there. When the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics were nearly derailed by scandal in 1999-2000, the elders of the Mormon Church asked Romney to move to Salt Lake City and clean up the mess. Which he did. And the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games were a spectacular success.

The Democratic Party of Massachusetts now argues that Mr. Romney is unqualified to serve as governor of Massachusetts because he fails to meet the "residency requirement." I'm not making this up. You can't make this stuff up.

One of the reasons people view the political process with such complete contempt is because of chickenshit like this. To quote the great James Lileks, wish the Massachusetts State Democratic Party luck with a capital F.

The Beast Is Back

I was beginning to wonder what had become of Michael Thomas, but he's back on the blog.

"The Stakes Are Enormous"

So said Henry Paulson Jr., chairman and chief executive of the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, who spoke yesterday at The National Press Club in Washington, DC. You can listen to the whole speech by visiting the National Press Club site. Paulson acknowledged the obvious -- that investor confidence has declined sharply due to rampant corporate dishonesty and fraud -- and outlined a number of measures he thought necessary to restore confidence.

"I come here as an individual who believes passionately in the strength of our free market system -- a system that generates growth, creates jobs, rewards initiative and fosters innovation like no other in history.....In my lifetime, American business has never been under such scrutiny. To be blunt, much of it is deserved. But let's be clear, the overwhelming majority of American executives are men and women of integrity who are committed to the long-term success of their companies, and to creating value for their shareholders. And so, I see this as an opportunity to reassess our practices, renew our principles and rebuild the trust that is so fundamental to our markets and their vitality."

The amazing thing about Paulson's speech is that it took so long for someone on Wall Street to give it. The poll numbers on corporate dishonesty and malfeasance are off the charts. Charles Schwab is running a national television advertising campaign aimed directly at disaffected investors and it is getting terrific results.

In fact, the Schwab campaign has been so successful that big Wall Street firms are demanding that the major television networks not run it. (CBS caved immediately and is refusing to air the Schwab spots). Given the breadth of the anger and the importance of the issue (from a kind of future of capitalism point of view), one would think that every chairman and chief executive would be banging Paulson's drum.

Critical Mass

Dennis Kozlowski resigned yesterday as Chief Executive Officer of Tyco, one of the world's largest conglomerates, amid allegations that he will soon be indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney's office for (personal) sales tax evasion. Today's papers are chock-a-block with Tom Wolfean details of Mr. Kozlowski's business excesses, which were legion. In the last four years of his Tyco employment, Mr. Kozlowski was paid roughly $400 million in cash, stock, stock options and other treats from the "shareholder value" goodie bag. He leaves behind a company that has lost roughly 75% of its market capitalization in the last six months and is staggering under the weight of a $27 billion debt load. There are a lot of people who believe that Tyco will shortly sell off its pieces and cease to exist (as a conglomerate) two years from today.

The sheer volume of corporate scandal is beginning to take its toll. Telecom, financial services, energy trading and a variety of other business categories are reeling. It is likely that more bad news is on the way. The possibility of Dow 8000 now looms large. The virtuous circle has become, with all the bad news, a vicious circle.

Interoperability

First we had the Phoenix memo, then we had the Minneapolis memo, then we had the Newsweek report about the CIA not telling the FBI. Soon enough, we'll have another report about somebody somewhere saying that "these guys" or "this guy" were/was a potential threat to the United States of America. And it's all meaningless unless and until the federal government fixes the underlying technological problem, which is interoperability, or, more accurately, non-interoperability.

Here's the deal. Mohammed Atta got a visa from the INS months after he drove a plane into the World Trade Center. The reason Mohammed Atta got a visa from the INS is because the INS computers didn't talk to the FBI's computers, or the CIA's computers or DOJ's computers, or any of the other computer networks of the national security/law enforcement apparatus. The reason the Phoenix memo and the Minneapolis memo and all the other memos never became a file, that someone could read and make a judgement about is because the computers didn't talk to each other.

There are enormously promising platforms and applications that will enable every computer to talk to every other computer within the Federal government. Sun Microsystems, IBM, Microsoft and others are all working feverishly on "web services" applications that address the interoperability/data sharing issue directly. Companies like Groove are working on P2P platforms that could make "interoperability" a reality throughout the national security/law enforcement apparatus.

The system failure of September 11 was caused by many things, including an over-reliance on signal intelligence at the expense of our human intelligence capability/capacity. But the key failure was technological. Our computers didn't talk to each other. Fix that and you go a long way toward fixing the larger problem.

Potus Uses the "P" Word

The "p" word is preemption, as in preemptive military attack. It is not a word that an American president uses lightly. President Bush used it in his speech to the graduating class at West Point today. It was the beginning of a re-defined US national security doctrine.

Anyone who thinks Bush has gone wobbly on the War on Terrorism should read this speech twice.

Light Blogging

I've been busy on other projects and such and so have not posted much for the last 8 days. A more regular schedule will resume next week.

Under the Media Geezer Wire

A number of people e-mailed today to ask why I had not posted something on Tom Brokaw's announcement that he would retire after the 2004 election. I think some of you were expecting another Media Geezer hatchet job, which I would ordinarily be happy to provide.

But Brokaw is not a media geezer. He's 62 and will retire at 65, which is retirement age. So good for him.

And as it happens, I wouldn't have done a hatchet job on Brokaw anyway, partly because I worked for him but mostly because his leaving elevates the chatterbox Brian Williams to the anchor chair. Does the man ever shut up? Williams's "acceptance speech" yesterday in Studio 8-H was a parody of a self-absorbed television personality run amok. It read like a Saturday Night Live script.

Kelly

Michael Kelly's column today is exactly right.

Only in Boston

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

I had the privilege of playing three days of tournament golf at The Country Club in Brookline, site of the 1999 Ryder Cup and the 1988 U.S. Open. The course was in rough shape -- the April aeration of the greens had still not healed -- but the physical beauty of the layout and the landscaping was magnificent. Saturday afternoon, well into the grim grind of our afternoon match (we were two back after 11 holes), I hit a solid six-iron approach to the 3rd green and walked around the mound to see the result. I saw the ball front right, but what really caught my eye were the azealas to the left, the pond in back and the late afternoon sun through the trees. If you ever get the chance, play the course. It is a truly special place.

One of the treats of going up to Boston is visiting with my brother-in-law, who was in fine form. He always has the perfect Boston story and here is this spring's edition:

In the town where he lives, which is a suburb south of The Hub, they have a Little League parade every year. All the kids get dressed up in their uniforms and walk down the Main Street. Everyone goes. It's a town event. This year, one of the Little League teams is called the Yankees.

So the parade comes through town and after a while, the Yankees come marching along. These kids are 8 and 9 years old, mind you. And from the sidewalks comes the chant "Yankees Suck," led by a coach of one of the other Little League teams. And soon enough, a number of these people and their children are chanting "Yankees Suck" as 8 and 9 nine year old Little League kids with Yankee jerseys pass by.

There were letters to the editor of the local paper afterward, decrying this behavior. That it could happen at all is astonishing.