This Vilification Would be Called Bullying at a School
Kimberley Strassel offers another example of President Obama's penchant for personalizing opposition to himself or to his policies ("Trolling for Dirt on the President's List," Potomac Watch, May 11). She rightly condemns his public excoriation of eight U.S. citizens who had the temerity to contribute to a PAC that supports Mitt Romney. Ms. Strassel's focus is on the unprincipled use of presidential power and its effect on one of the contributors.
What is missing in the account is the real purpose of publicly flagellating eight opponents of Mr. Obama. Intimidation is the real objective of Mr. Obama's attack. Discouraging those who might be considering contributing to Mr. Romney's campaign is the ultimate aim of this and other attempts to stifle Republican efforts to raise money for their election campaigns. As one who grew up in Chicago and spent many years observing the Democratic Party machine there, I can attest that Mr. Obama has once again shown his penchant for Mayor Daley-style campaigning in which elections are too important to be left to chance.
James R. Baehler
New York
Ms. Strassel offers a chilling account of the president's threat to a private citizen, Frank VanderSloot. Such intimidation by the president implies the fate that awaits any citizen who supports Mr. Romney's campaign, not just the wealthy donors. The Obama machinery is likely to expand its intimidation activities to anyone who campaigns against the president. Smearing private individuals is nothing more than a "look over here" tactic to shine the spotlight anywhere but on Mr. Obama's failed record.
Sharon DeMers
Ankeny, Iowa
In school systems, such behavior is recognized as bullying. Why is the president allowed the privilege to bully? There are thousands of school counselors qualified to offer guidance to Mr. Obama, although Democrats seem quite capable of identifying bullying in others—witness their criticism of Gov. Mitt Romney's recently disclosed high-school incident.
Where is the ethical line between investigative political research and stalking? This unflagging spitefulness broadcasting from the White House is disgusting.
Debra Newman
Eagan, Minn.
U.N. Control of the Internet Will Likely Hurt Innovation
Gordon Crovitz alleges that "authoritarian regimes want to prohibit people from being anonymous on the Web, which would make it easier to find and arrest dissidents," among the reasons many nations are urging that the U.N. should "run the Internet" ("The U.N. Wants to Run the Internet," Information Age, May 7). In fact, all nations, not just authoritarian regimes, favor seeing one agency with responsibility to the world community undertake the role of setting policy for growth and development of the Internet.
Now that the Internet has tied the world together and every nation is dependent on fashioning ways to harness the net for economic, political and social success and survival, it is in the U.S.'s interest to accelerate this process. Assuming the network of networks is relatively free and open, it is and will be the continued mechanism for world economic development and, while unstated, a major foreign-policy objective of the U.S.
Prof. John M. Eger
San Diego State University
San Diego
My early career developed in the background of the Arpanet (funded by Darpa that gave us the Internet) culture, where researchers had free access to technical literature. Everyone shared his code and ideas just as freely. This was vital for many derived services and products such as Ethernet, the UNIX operating system and for advanced programming concepts flowing into the industry.
Later, I encountered the United Nations and other agency involvement in developing some significant industry standards having to do with metadata standards now reaching into large, enterprise-scale, big-data computing. These standards encapsulate some significant information-technology breakthroughs. But here is the catch: This information from the U.N. isn't easily available to the public in its entirety. It costs substantial money for the entrepreneur to navigate through a network of related literature that is also under lock and key. The big corporations and large institutions are already taken care of in their role as sponsors, with an early access to standards. This is thoroughly against the spirit of the entrepreneurial culture that will be needed to drive forward the very technologies and standards that the U.N. wants to manage.
If you doubt this, just look at the results compared with the Arpanet/Darpa initiative. The technologies built around the U.N. standards now sit in the hands of a few large companies as part of their proprietary systems. Open-source innovation hasn't been able to use these standards to create tangible value from it for the society at large.
Yes, U.N.-Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business needed to raise some capital to develop these standards. But should they be in this business at all if they have to run it as a private enterprise? Free enterprise always found ways to keep some of these crucial elements of technology development available for free and to recoup the costs later through their own proprietary products and services.
George Thomas
Mesa, Ariz.
Bovis Case Isn't at all About Unions
Regarding Holman Jenkins's "Wal-Mart Is Not Alone" (Business World, April 28): Bovis Lend Lease is accused of billing clients for extra hours paid to its foremen who are union members and covered by a collective-bargaining agreement. Being a union member in no way constituted a relevant part of the alleged crime. The fact that Bovis paid valued employees greater compensation than the minimums the collective-bargaining agreement provided is neither a crime nor a violation of the collective-bargaining agreement. Plainly, what is at issue in the indictment is Bovis's entry into contracts with clients to charge for time worked, but then billing them for bonus payments to foremen. This would have been just as illegal had Bovis been a nonunion employer.
In the ordinary course, an employer's preferred compensation of its most-valued employees is probably something Mr. Jenkins applauds. Here, however, because the rewarded individuals were union members, he chooses to characterize the payments as union bribes. This falls outside the scope of editorial opinion.
Mr. Jenkins states, not as opinion, "What motive would Bovis have for overpaying union workers? Because it was the victim of a labor racket that's been going on in New York for decades." He also says, "builders bound by union contracts will be even more pressured to pay union bribes to allow cheaper nonunion workers on site—what this scandal fundamentally was all about."
Had Mr. Jenkins taken the time to read the collective-bargaining agreement or understand the allegations underlying the indictment, he might have figured out what the Bovis case was about.
Robert Bonanza
Business Manager
Mason Tenders District Council of Greater New York and Long Island
New York
Talent Beats Gender For Competent Bosses
The business-meeting experiences of Ellen Mayock and Stacey Vargas sound diametrically opposite of mine ("Professional Women's Careers Face Unique Problems," Letters, May 16). As a male chemical engineer, I have seen solutions offered by female chemists or engineers given the same respect and critical analysis as if offered by a man. Taking credit for another's idea was treated scornfully, regardless of gender.
The letter writers say men "were just handed the tough tasks," depriving the women of a chance to prove themselves. Managers usually give tough tasks to their most able people.
Elliott Doane
Oklahoma City
Arbitration Is Better for Consumers
A May 16 letter from James G. Russell expresses skepticism about compulsory Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) arbitration in customer/broker securities disputes.
I have been a Finra arbitrator for more than 20 years. The process is fair, and although designed by the brokerage industry, it does not favor brokers. It is in the best interest neither of the customer nor the broker to have disputes heard in court. Arbitration permits comprehensive production of documents but generally does not allow costly and protracted depositions and interrogatories. Arbitration cases are scheduled for hearing in a fraction of the time that it would take for a case to be tried in court. The three arbitrators, two of whom must be unaffiliated with the brokerage industry, generally have a greater familiarity with the issues being argued than many judges and most juries.
It is my belief that if disputes were resolved in court, the process would be cost prohibitive for cases seeking less than several hundred thousand dollars of actual losses.
Nothing would prove my point better than giving customers the option of filing claims as law suits in court. The word would quickly get around that arbitration is both the most efficient and economic method of resolving these disputes, and most importantly it is fair to the customer.
Sheldon I. Saitlin
Chicago
Obama Displaced Top Female Executive
As a Barnard graduate, Class of 1978, and a mother of two daughters who graduated from Barnard and Columbia, I fully concur with Daniel Henninger's take on the overt politicizing of Barnard's commencement ("A Tale of Two Commencements," Wonder Land, May 17).
Remarkably, Barnard pushed aside the previously scheduled speaker, Jill Abramson, executive editor of the New York Times. I find it ironic and disappointing that President Obama effectively bumped a prominent, female executive while at the same time purporting to support women. I haven't been this disappointed since Columbia invited Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak.
Patricia Becker
Pohatcong Twp., N.J.
Optimism Is a Part
Of a Good Work Ethic
"For Most Graduates, Grueling Job Hunt Awaits" (The Outlook, May 7) reports that many students express optimism and possibly see themselves as above-average exceptions to the rules of the difficult job market. Perhaps graduates see optimism as the only alternative to the crushing disappointment they know from personal experience and grim outlooks such as this.
What the article categorizes as silly optimism is more the belief that eventually, if we work hard enough, we can make it.
Ashley Amidon
Alexandria, Va.
