January 2012

President Obama created more jobs than Steve Jobs' Apple

There's no doubt that Apple is doing far better than the U.S. economy as a whole. But that doesn't mean Steve Jobs had a better jobs record than President Barack Obama. In the Republican's response to the president's State of the Union address, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) proclaimed that Apple has created more jobs than President Obama's job creation program did. The only problem with that nice play on the Apple founder's name is that Daniels' math just doesn't add up. Not even close.

Apple's latest filing shows the company had about 60,400 full-time employees and 2,900 temporary and contract workers. About two-thirds of those jobs are in the United States. And most of those Apple employees are not high-paid engineering or manufacturing jobs -- 36,000 are in company's retail division.
Jobs also founded animation studio Pixar, which he sold to Disney in 2006. It had 850 employees at the end of its last year as an independent company.
But estimates of jobs created by the $787 billion 2009 stimulus act show that Obama's stimulus program helped many more people become gainfully employed than did Apple. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the stimulus act passed in February 2009 saved or created at least 1.4 million jobs. And a separate study by Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics and an advisor to John McCain's presidential campaign, and Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman and advisor to President Clinton, estimates that the stimulus act created about 2.7 million jobs.
According to a study by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) a Michigan think tank, the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler Group saved 1.5 million jobs.

Analysis: Wall Street puzzles over Google's new direction

Google, which revolutionized Internet searches with an easy-to-use website, has itself become an increasingly tricky business to grasp. That issue leapt to the fore last week when the company stunned Wall Street by missing financial expectations for the fourth quarter -- sending its stock into a tailspin and triggering a flurry of questions over what went askew.

Analysts say Google is simply putting its fingers in too many pies. Forays into television, Android mobile phones and music sales in the past two to three years have left the investment community straining to recognize the company. A surprise drop in Google's search advertising rates in the fourth quarter raised questions about how its rapidly expanding mobile business was affecting its main money-making machine. With investors still uneasy about Google's proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of smartphone maker Motorola, the earnings disappointment underscored a big challenge facing Chief Executive Larry Page as he positions the company for new growth opportunities.

FCC Releases tentative Agenda for February Open Meeting

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the following items will be on the tentative agenda for the next open meeting scheduled for Tuesday, February 15, 2012.

The FCC will consider:

Robocalls Report and Order: a Report and Order that protects consumers from unwanted autodialed or prerecorded calls (“robocalls”) by adopting rules that ensure consumers have given prior express consent before receiving robocalls, can easily opt out of further robocalls, and will experience “abandoned” telemarketing calls only in strictly limited instances.
Streamlining Cellular Service Licensing Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Order: a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Order proposing a staged approach to
revising the licensing model for the Cellular Service from a site-based to a geographically-based approach. The proposal will offer greater flexibility and reduce regulatory requirements, while enabling greater rural deployment. The item also includes several other proposals to streamline the Cellular Service rules, including interim restrictions and procedures for cellular service applications.
Extending Outage Reporting Obligations to Interconnected VoIP Services Report and Order: a Report and Order to extend outage reporting under Part IV of the rules to interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers. Extended reporting will enable the Commission to fulfill statutory E9-1-1 obligations and help protect the growing number of Americans who rely on VOIP phone service.

US has already flexed cyberwar muscle, says former NSA director

National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell claimed that the US has already used cyberattacks against an adversary successfully. And it's just a matter of time before someone unleashes cyberattacks on US critical infrastructure, he warned.

McConnell didn't spell out who exactly the US had attacked with its offensive capabilities. However, security experts have "all but confirmed" that the US was at least partially behind the Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran's efforts to enrich uranium, working in concert with Israel. Now a vice-chairman at Booz Allen Hamilton and leading the firm's cyberwork, McConnell is on a campaign to raise awareness of the threat of such attacks being used against the US. "There will be a thousand voices on what is the right thing to do," he said. And, he added, it will likely take a crisis to achieve consensus—a consensus that would arrive too late.

Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions

Wearing leg irons and guarded by federal agents, David Whitaker posed as an agent for online drug dealers in dozens of recorded phone calls and email exchanges with Google sales executives, spending $200,000 in government money for ads selling narcotics, steroids and other controlled substances. Over four months in 2009, Mr. Whitaker, a federal prisoner and convicted con artist, was the lead actor in a government sting targeting Google Inc. that yielded one of the largest business forfeitures in U.S. history.

The government built its criminal case against Google using money, aliases and fake companies—tactics often used against drug cartels and other crime syndicates, according to interviews and court documents. Google agreed to pay a $500 million forfeiture last summer in a settlement to avoid prosecution for aiding illegal online pharmaceutical sales. Google acknowledged in the settlement that it had improperly and knowingly assisted online pharmacy advertisers allegedly based in Canada to run advertisements for illicit pharmacy sales targeting U.S. customers.

Chairman Walden Bullish on Spectrum Legislation's Prospects

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) is confident that House and Senate negotiators will include his version of spectrum legislation in a payroll tax package given that it would generate more cash to pay down the deficit than the Senate Commerce Committee's version.

Chairman Walden and House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) are among the House conferees picked to help negotiate the differences between the House and Senate versions of legislation that would extend a payroll tax holiday and other tax breaks. The House's payroll tax bill, passed last month, included the spectrum legislation authored by Chairman Walden that was approved by his subcommittee in November. The Senate Commerce Committee approved its own version of spectrum legislation last summer. Both the Walden and Commerce bills would authorize auctions to entice broadcasters to voluntarily give up some of their spectrum for a share of the money generated. Among the notable differences between Walden's measure and the Senate Commerce bill is that his would generate about $10 billion more for deficit reduction, Chairman Walden said. Walden said he believes it's likely that some version of the spectrum legislation will be included in the payroll tax package the House and Senate negotiators are trying to hammer out.

Netflix streaming users now outnumber DVD subscribers 2:1

Netflix may be getting out of the DVD business sooner that previously predicted, if Q4 financial results are any indicator. The company now has close to twice as many streaming subscribers as DVD subscribers in the U.S., and it lost some 2.76 million DVD subscribers in the last quarter alone.

Netflix had 21.76 million subscribers at the end of Q4, which is 220,000 more than in the previous quarter. Internationally, it now has 1.86 million subscribers. The number of DVD subscribers shrunk to 11.17 million, down from 13.93 million in Q3. That means that for the first time ever, streaming plans outperform DVD rentals by a ratio of close to 2:1. The good news for Netflix is that even with its steep decline in DVD rentals, the overall number of customers is growing again.

Piracy Shmiracy: We Need New 21st Century Business Models

[Commentary] Which business models are going to be successful in tapping the entertainment content market in the 21st century? The only way to stem piracy is to make more content more widely available at a competitive price point, and include added-value that pirates can't match.

It seems so obvious, at least to those of us not invested in failing 20th century business models. Piracy exists because consumers want content and can't get it legitimately. Legislation can't fix this. Technology will find a way around enforcement every time. We have to figure out new ways of dealing with the fact that consumers are telling us what our content is worth. We can no longer dictate pricing based on what our content cost to produce. We have to figure out how to work within the new consumption patterns in the market to successfully monetize and drive buyers to our products.

Obama 2012 campaign enlists technology bigwigs

President Barack Obama is assembling a cast of tech industry bigwigs to rake in campaign cash from Silicon Valley. And any technical know-how they can provide would certainly be welcome, too.

His campaign has created a fundraising focus group co-chaired by leading lights in the tech industry whose job it is to “rally the tech community to endorse, and to commit time and talent to the campaign.” Called Technology for Obama, the committee co-chairs include Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com, Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp and LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman. Sean Parker, who co-founded Napster and was Facebook’s original president, is on the committee, as is Craigslist’s Craig Newmark. The list includes a number of venture capitalists, including former California Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly, and Steve Spinner, who was involved in the Solyndra debacle. The campaign said the group was formed by technology leaders who are fundraisers for Obama 2012. The committee’s website says the committee list is “in formation.”

Obama Campaign Selling $71,600 Fundraising 'Packages' in Hollywood

A committee working on behalf of President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee is offering an array of novel fund-raising “packages” to deep-pocketed Hollywood supporters.

An invitation being circulated this week by the Obama Victory Fund, which splits the contributions it receives between the president’s campaign and the DNC, offers well-heeled entertainment industry Dems three contribution opportunities built around the First Family’s upcoming visits to Los Angeles. Donors willing to give $71,600 per couple will receive the “Platinum Package”, which entitles them to two seats at the Democrats’ five-event local 2012 speaker series, entry to a Jan. 31 reception for first lady Michelle Obama with a photo opportunity and a February dinner with the President at a private home.

Benton

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