Patent Reform? Really?

In the context of a big ideological battle between those who think government can be a force for societal good (New Deal Democrats, progressives) and those who believe in the Law of the Jungle (fascists, Republicans, conservatives), Americans Outside-the-Beltway are hoping-- by large margins-- that President Obama will step up to the plate tomorrow and do something big to turn around the economy. Republicans Inside-the-Beltway, not really giving a damn what Americans Outside-the-Beltway think and-- knowing full well that the millions of dollars spent on overtly and covertly fascist propaganda by billionaire crackpots like the Koch Brothers, Charles Schwab, the DeVos family and other extreme right billionaires can persuade at least 40% of voters that, for example, arbeit macht frei-- they are determined to obstruct and sabotage anything President Obama proposes that will alleviate any of the country's worst problems. Republicans and Bush may have created those problems but they have been determined since the day he was elected not just to pin them on President Obama but to prevent him from doing anything to ameliorate them.

Tuesday the Senate was back from its summer vacation. Miss McConnell, who declared long ago that his number one priority for Obama's 4 years who be to make sure he is a one-term president. He and his caucus have blocked every effort to help the American people overcome the effects of Republican policies. He got up on the floor, hissing and lisping that he and his caucus are as determined as ever to obstruct and obstruct and obstruct. "[E]very one of us, I'm sure, is aware of the fact that many Americans are not only frustrated with the state of our economy, but also with the state of their government. I don't think any one of us is under any illusion that the American people were particularly eager to see us come back."

Well, as much as many Americans loathe these partisan hacks and evil-doers, they would like to see some action to create infrastructure jobs, as Obama says he intends to propose tomorrow. Miss McConnell and his cronies are having none of that, of course. As far as they're concerned President Obama's proposals are DOA:

"I'm...certain that, taken as whole, they'll represent more of the same failed approach that's only made things worse over the past few years, and resulted in even fewer jobs than when he started. Over the weekend, the President tested a few of the lines I expect we'll hear on Thursday. His central message, evidently, is that anyone who doesn't rubber stamp his economic agenda is putting politics above country. With all due respect, Mr. President, there's a much simpler reason for opposing your economic proposals that has nothing to do with politics: they don't work."

Miss McConnell wasn't done yet. He let the ever-compromising president know that, predictably, the scrapping of regulations to reduce smog pollution would only make the far right feel more entitled to scrap all regulations. McConnell wasn't giving him any credit or even meeting him halfway: "[Y]ou don't lift a single regulation and suddenly claim to be Margaret Thatcher," he said archly, opening his closet door just a teensy-weensy little crack.

Tuesday, though, something did pass: a cloture vote to shut down the right-wing filibuster to prevent patent reform. It isn't a big sweeping piece of legislation that most Americans care about or even understand. Here's Austan Goolsbee explaining what it's all about and how the Obama administration is trying to solve it:



In the end the filibuster was shut down 93-5, only teabaggers Jim DeMint (R-SC), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) obstructing even this. (Marco Rubio was out.) The only other vote Tuesday was to confirm Bernice Bouie Donald, of Tennessee, as a judge for the Sixth Circuit Court. After months of foot dragging, it passed 96-2, only DeMint and Vitter voting against her, just because that's what they do.

Back to patent reform again. According to IT World, the new legislation isn't likely to even do the trick in terms of the software industry's actual needs. There's been a whole lot of suing going on.

There has been a lot of hullabaloo about the validity of software patents, what with everybody seemingly suing everybody in the mobile sector these days.

It has also been noted that some of the companies who actually have instigated some of these lawsuits have, at one point or another, actually had public positions against software patents.

Microsoft, curiously, was one of those opponents. Just after software patents were found to be enforceable in the 1980s, CEO Bill Gates wrote a memo arguing that such patents would be the worse thing in the world for a company like Microsoft:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then they have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want."

Of course, those were different times, when Microsoft was young and carefree and their own patent portfolio was meager. Contrast those ideas from Gates to those of Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith in a 2007 CNET article:

"Protection for software patents and other intellectual property is essential to maintaining the incentives that encourage and underwrite technological breakthroughs. In every industry, patents provide the legal foundation for innovation. The ensuing legal disputes may be messy, but protection is no less necessary, even so."

In other words, software patents are bad, until you have enough of your own to start setting up your own lawsuits.

I could level off some of the usual scathing "Microsoft is evil" remarks that one would expect from an open source user and advocate, except it would be inappropriate because nearly every other company does business this way.

This morning while I was waiting for my daughter to get ready for school, I read an interesting blog entry on litigious business practices using what's known as occupational licensing. The main thrust of the article described how many state and municipal food inspection and licensing processes are being abused by competitors to keep new businesses from interfering. Street food vendors, for instance, are among those business groups that keep getting targeted by Draconian enforcement of existing (and sometimes brand spanking new) regulations.

It's not just the food industry. Many of the situations the article described were simply egregious:

"My home state of Ohio fined a parent $10,000 for competing with the Cleveland Bar Association. The CBA filed a complaint that the concerned parent represented his autistic son without a CBA-approved attorney when he sued his school board because of the poor quality of his son's education.

"In California you can't help people devastated by forest fires unless you're part of a politically connected contracting crew. The government went so far as to send out a press release during a massive fire warning unlicensed workers that doing things like removing debris is a serious felony subjecting them to $10,000 fines and 16 months in prison.

"Monks were threatened with crippling fines and jail for selling wood boxes. The funeral industry didn't like the competition."

So again, it's pretty hard to single out a company like Microsoft when all they are doing is playing the same stupid game nearly every other company is playing: abusing the legal system to get what they want.

And history is about to repeat itself. Google, which has the oft-cited motto "Don't be evil," has been very loud about their opposition against software patents. But after buying Motorola Mobility (and presumably getting their hands on some software patents), how long will it be until Google initiates their own big patent infringement lawsuits? Many will argue that it will be in defense, sure, but will there ever be a point when someone will just keep making a stand?

Critics of software patents argue that it would be great if all the extra legal overhead of this litigation could just go away. But if the bottom line says that it's cheaper to just hire better lawyers rather than suffer the potential risks of young upstart competitors stealing even more revenue and customers, then businesses will opt for the former every time.

This is why lawmakers only make half-hearted efforts to examine patent reform. They may listen to the latest big company that complains (like Google), but if and when that company moves on to pursuing their own litigation, why bother listening? Not to mention lobbying pressure from all the lawyers who are getting paid quite well to pursue these cases on behalf of their clients.

It's a depressing situation all the way around, in all business sectors, at all levels of government. Litigation is a business expense that many businesses are willing to put time, effort, and money into if it can give them an edge over a competitor.

Can software patents ever be reformed? Possibly, if enough lawsuits lose and companies realize that there's no percentage in the game.

It won't be an ethical decision that drives reform, sadly, but a financial one.

Plutocracy Has No Place In America-- But It Is Now Our Effective Form Of Government

For all the fascination with Hitler and Nazis and World War II on the History Channel and History International, Americans are reticent to engage in a serious discussion of what fascism is and how dangerous to the American way of life it still is. Many Americans don't understand that fascism isn't just about exterminating Jews or about TV war-pornography. I'm going to forego mentioning fascism in this post, although I'll be quoting from Glen Yeadon's book Nazi Hydra In America, and instead talk about plutocracy, which wikipedia defines like this:

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy... [A]ccording to Kevin Phillips, author and political strategist to U.S. President Richard Nixon, the United States is a plutocracy in which there is a "fusion of money and government."



The wealthy minority exerts influence over the political arena via many methods. Most western democracies permit partisan organizations to raise funds for politicians, and political parties frequently accept significant donations from various individuals (either directly or through corporations or advocacy groups)... Many corporations and business interest groups pay lobbyists to maintain constant contact with elected officials, and press them for favorable legislation. Owners of mass media outlets, and the advertisement buyers which financially support them can shape public perception of political issues by controlling the information available to the population and the manner in which it is presented.

At the end of World War II, it was clear that America had defeated the forces of plutocracy on the battlefields. But they were already plotting to destroy democracy and find a different host to infect for their next great battle to take over the world. By the end of 1944 it was obvious the U.S. was going to defeat the Germans and the Japanese. Their legions of supporters among the American plutocrats were frantic to minimize the damage and save as many of their allies (and investments) as possible. Roosevelt was old and sick (and dying) but he held out against Republicans who wanted a soft peace with Germany and a war against the Soviets-- which was the German and plutocratic goal. When the OSS, precursor to the CIA asked FDR for permission to recruit Nazis and bring them to America, FDR refused. Here's what he told Bill Donovan, head of the OSS, on December 1, 1944:

"I do not believe that we should offer any guarantees of protection in post-hostilities periods to Germans who are working for your organization. I think that carrying out of any such guarantees would be difficult and probably we widely misunderstood both in this country and aboard. We may expect that the number of Germans who are anxious to save their skins and property will rapidly increase. Among them may be some who should properly be tried for war crimes or at least arrested for active participation in Nazi activities. Even with the necessary controls you mention I am not prepared to authorize the giving of guarantees."

Nor did he. Right after he died, though, Truman relented a bit-- with strict guidelines... that were stealthily, systematically-- and gleefully-- ignored. But once the GOP retook the White House, and the Dulles Brothers, those pillars of American plutocracy, grabbed the levers of power, the floodgates opened-- and they opened wide. Almost a dozen programs, starting with Project Overcast and then Paperclip, were used to bring tens of thousands of Germans and brutal far right quislings, primarily from Eastern Europe, into the U.S. It was a determined, if semi-secret, wave of right-wing immigration specifically meant by anti-Semites like the Dulles Brothers, to counter the influence of Jews and "leftists" in America. War criminals of every stripe, including mass murderers were resettled in America under the auspices of the Dulles Brothers and, later, Richard Nixon. Did these immigrants make a contribution, as other waves of immigrants have? Well, they certainly made a contribution to Republican Party fortunes in states where they settled-- and being able to continue their work in biological and psychological warfare here brought America Lyme Disease, West Nile Virus, and drug, chemical and radiation tests on unsuspecting Americans... and, a major goal of the international plutocrats-- the Cold War and the rise of plutocracy here in America (see, especially, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, the House of Representatives, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign...).



Yesterday Sam Stein reported on what appear to be an anomaly, a teensy weensy little flip flop by Republican Senate Majority Leader-- and plutocracy fanatic-- Mitch McConnell. Miss McConnell, like Mitt Romney, was for raising taxes on the rich before he was so hysterically against it that he would rather see the country go down the drain. In a 1990 campaign ad, Miss lisped, "Unlike some folks around here, I think everyone should pay their fair share, including the rich." The ad was produced by Roger Ailes, like the Dulles Brothers in their day, a pillar of Plutocracy in ours.

The 1990 campaign ad still stands out for what it says about the political mood of the country-- specifically the mood in economically depressed areas that usually vote Republican. McConnell is known for being one of Congress' more astute political minds. The fact that he once espoused tax code fairness in the heat of a tight election shows that even people from Kentucky, at one point, applauded lawmakers for asking the wealthy to further subsidize the social safety net for the middle class and poor.



"What has been amazing, watching his career, is it doesn't bother him a bit to say whatever he needs to say to get re-elected. Mitch would just say whatever he needed to say," said Jim Cunningham, a long time Democratic operative who managed the campaign of McConnell's 1990 challenger, Harvey Sloane.



In Kentucky, "there was a time when... you could poll people on taxes and they believed that if you needed to raise their taxes, especially to take care of education, you should do it," Cunningham said. "Over the years it seems like folks pay less and less attention. At the same time that the Republican Party in our state has helped them buy into this notion that we don't need to tax the rich because they are the ones who create the jobs."

This week Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and 22 other senators called on Miss McConnell to put job creation first, rather than the deranged rush towards Austerity that is ripping apart the social fabric of England, Greece and a dozen other countries right now.

“For families across the country, the biggest economic problem is high unemployment,” wrote the senators. “As you know, the lack of jobs and anemic growth rate of the economy are not only enormous problems in their own right, causing great pain for millions of Americans, they are a major component of our deficit. Indeed, the loss of revenue resulting from the recession accounts for nearly $4 trillion of the projected deficits over the next 10 years.



“It is therefore appropriate and important that the JSC explicitly embrace job creation as a part of its mission,” they continued. “Targeted investments in economic growth and job creation can complement and even enhance long-term deficit reduction efforts and should be a priority that the JSC embraces.



“Let us be very clear: our fiscal challenge is directly linked to the jobs crisis and we cannot solve the former without tackling the latter.”

maybe if these 23 senators followed former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, they would have sent a copy of their letter to President Obama as well, who really ought to present a bold plan to create jobs if he would like to jumpstart the economy. Reich:

Americans are deeply confused about why the economy is so bad-- and their President isn’t telling them. In fact, the White House apparently has decided to join with Republicans and blame it on the long-term budget deficit.



Before I turn to the President, though, let’s be clear: The lousy economy is due to insufficient demand. Consumers-- who are 70 percent of the economy-- can’t and won’t buy because they’re running out of cash. They can’t borrow against homes that are worth a third less than they were five years ago, and most consumers are bad credit risks anyway because they’re losing their jobs and their wages are dropping.  They also have to start saving for the kids’ college or for retirement, which will cut their spending even more.



Without enough consumers, businesses won’t hire enough people and pay them enough to reverse the vicious cycle. So we’re dead in the water. Even the stock market has caught on to the truth.



Which means government has to step in to boost the economy-- as it has every time the economy has fallen into recession over the last eight downturns. Include the massive spending on World War II that lifted us out of the Great Recession, and it’s nine. The Fed can help, but it can’t do it alone. And it’s least helpful after a huge asset bubble has burst because the financial system won’t channel low interest rates where they’re most needed-- to small businesses and average consumers.



This time we tried one stimulus that was way too small relative to the size of the falloff in demand that started in 2008-- especially given that states and locales cut their spending by almost as much as the federal government increased it.



So we need another-- a bold jobs plan.

 

Which gets me to the President. Even though the President’s two former top economic advisors (Larry Summers and Christy Roemer) have called for a major fiscal boost to the economy, the President has remained mum. Why?



I’m told White House political operatives are against a bold jobs plan. They believe the only jobs plan that could get through Congress would be so watered down as to have almost no impact by Election Day. They also worry the public wouldn’t understand how more government spending in the near term can be consistent with long-term deficit reduction. And they fear Republicans would use any such initiative to further bash Obama as a big spender.



So rather than fight for a bold jobs plan, the White House has apparently decided it’s politically wiser to continue fighting about the deficit. The idea is to keep the public focused on the deficit drama-- to convince them their current economic woes have something to do with it, decry Washington’s paralysis over fixing it, and then claim victory over whatever outcome emerges from the process recently negotiated to fix it. They hope all this will distract the public’s attention from the President’s failure to do anything about continuing high unemployment and economic anemia.