10 December 2007 
Business 100 Syllabus Law Outline
Lex Rex
Law, a system of rules enforced by the power of the state.
Sources of Law
1. US Constitution, Our constitution is a system for governance; a written document that gives us the constraints for creating laws.
2. Statutory Law, formal written laws enacted by legislature. The Uniform Commercial Code exists to provide a seamless platform for sales across the 50 state lines. Applies to transactions of personal property (movable property), not real property (immovable property) or services.
3. Common Law, laws created by the courts and judges by using precedence, stare decisis.
Public Law
Governs the relationship between the state and individuals.
Private Law
Governs the relationship between individuals.
Constitutional Law
Administrative Law
Criminal Law
Product Liability, This law governs manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, who make products and can be held responsible for the injuries those products cause.
Contract Law, A contract is a legally binding exchange of promises or agreement between parties that the law will enforce.
Elements for a valid contract:
Offer, Acceptance, Consideration.
Breach of Contract, is a where a bargained-for exchange is not honored.
Sales Law, Warranties: is an obligation that an article or service sold is as factually stated or legally implied by the seller, and that often provides for a specific remedy such as repair or replacement in the event the article or service fails to meet the warranty.
Property Law, Real Property: real estate — it includes many legal relationships between owners of immovable property (real estate) that are purely conceptual such as the easement, where the owner of one property may have some right on a neighbouring property, right-of-way, or the right to pass over a property.
Personal property
Tangible assets are referred to as PPE (property, plant, and equipment), or tangible assets, these are purchased for continued and long-term use in earning profit in a business. This group includes land, buildings, machinery, furniture, tools, and certain wasting resources e.g., timberland and minerals.
Intangible assets are defined as those non-monetary assets that cannot be seen, touched or physically measured and which are created through time and/or effort. There are two primary forms of intangibles - legal intangibles (such as trade secrets (e.g., customer lists), copyrights, patents, trademarks, and goodwill) and competitive intangibles (such as knowledge activities (know-how, knowledge)
Agency Law is an area of commercial law dealing with a contractual or quasi-contractual tripartite set of relationships when an Agent is authorized to act on behalf of another (called the Principal) to create a legal relationship with a Third Party.
source: Wikipedia and Managers and the Legal Environment, Strategies for the 21st Century, second edition, Constance E. Bagley.
5 December 2007
Management Training: 10 Mistakes Managers Make
Your Business Blogger was honored to be interviewed for a podcast some time ago by Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends.
“Top 10 Mistakes Small Business Owners Make with Their Employees.”
10 Mistakes Every Manager Makes: And How To Correct Them
1) What is the biggest complaint you hear from managers?
Lack of time…
2) What do you see as the biggest challenge managers face?
Delegation; getting completed staff work…
3) What do you see the real job of a manager is?
Getting work done through people…
4) So how’s the best way to get this done?
Persuasion…
5) The manager as nice guy? Don’t they finish last?
No surprises…
6) How can a manager have certainty?
Benchmark expectations…
7) You write a lot about appearances. Isn’t beauty skin deep?
The soul of a man is in his clothes…
How do you advise managers in decision making?
Henry Ford: judgment and experience…
9) What tools do you recommend?
Personal personnel data base…
10) All the military examples – isn’t hierarchy on its way out? Aren’t most high performance teams using a matrix management structure?
Budget, promotions…
11) What is the biggest challenge female managers face? And how should they fix it?
Negotiation skills…
Backgrounder: The most valuable possession a leader can have is discretionary management time. To be efficient and effective. Here’s how.
We all want military-like discipline as we run our business units.
The Army has the perfect definition for discipline. It has two components. Most would be familiar with the first part:
1) Prompt obedience to orders.
But it’s the second part that managers really need from subordinates:
2) Initiation of appropriate action in the absence of orders.
Most often, we think prompt obedience will get the manager more time. Efficiency.
But what most managers really need is initiative from their team. More effectiveness.
This is a review of the basics to get more discipline in your business.
Following are 10 tips to remember, on avoiding mistakes as you knock about your office:
Delegation Desk
1) Desk. Think of your desk as a pyramid with the apex pointing up. Paper does not rest on your desk, nor your boss’s desk.
Scheduling Calendar
2) Calendar. If an action comes to you from a subordinate, it should only require a decision. If you cannot make a decision immediately, direct your staff to return later with more detail. Open your calendar and you both set an appointment.
Follow-up Phone
3) Telephone. Get the resources your staff needs to accomplish the project.
Persuasion 4)
Shoe leather. Management by walking around made the rounds a few years ago and is still useful if you need to plant your boot on a backside. Or to deliver an atta-boy in real life. The most effective persuasion is done face-to-face. Toe to toe. Walk over and overwhelm in person.
Human Touch
5) Fountain Pen. A hand-written note, black ink, heavy card stock, delivered by snail mail. Your cursive writing will almost balance your cursive yelling.
Benchmark
6) Ruler. Your standards and measurements should be open and transparent. A subordinate should never be surprised by personnel evaluations.
Dress Uniform.
7) Rank. Your appearance should mirror your boss’ boss’ boss. Not your staff. You must be seen to be different.
Hands Free
Briefcase. Do not carry papers in your briefcase. You get paid for your wisdom in making decisions. Not schlepping around pulp.
Exchange technology for labor
9) Laptop. With a detailed dossier on everyone you know.
Heaven is Hierarchy
10) Blackberry. A typical span of control is 10. An Army squad. A football team.
You will notice one office accoutrement not listed above: A clock. This was not an exercise in time management.
More time to simply think and to dispense wisdom. True discipline will give you those moments to reflect, per chance to dream.
The clock will now become your friend.
###
Read the original article here. Listen to the podcast here.
BIO/Intro:
Jack Yoest is a management consultant in the high technology and biotechnology sectors, drawing on his expertise in operations and sales and marketing, and senior management training. Jack has managed entrepreneurial, start-up ventures, which included medical device companies, high technology, software manufacturers, and business consulting companies.
Jack also served as a gubernatorial appointee in the Administration of Governor James Gilmore in the Commonwealth of Virginia, serving as the Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Resources, acting as the Chief Operating Officer of the $5 billion budget. During his tenure in state government, Jack acted as the Chief Technology Officer for the Secretariat, where he was responsible for the successful Year 2000 (Y2K) conversion for the 16,000-employee unit.
Previously, Jack served as a manager with Menlo Care, a medical device manufacturer. While at Menlo, he was a part of the team that moved sales from zero to over $12 million, resulting in a buy-out by a medical division of Johnson & Johnson.
A former Captain in the United States Army, having served in Combat Arms and on the U.S. Armor and Engineer Board, Jack directed research and conducted testing, and recommended solutions to problems in night vision and electro-optics.
Jack earned an MBA from George Mason University and completed graduate work in the International Operations Management Program at Oxford University. His under graduate degree is in education.
His publications include “Doing Business in the Values Vacuum,” an article syndicated by Scripps-Howard News Service to over 350 newspapers worldwide. (And ghostwriter for high profile managers, including a Presidential candidate.)
Assignments have included:
Serving as Chief Operating Officer of Job Accord, a multi-national human resource company
President of Distro-Cal, a marketing company in the advertising specialty industry;
Managing the transfer of patented biotechnology from the National Institutes of Health to his client, which enabled the company to raise $25 million in venture capital funding.
Vice President of Certified Marketing Services International, an ISO 9000 business-consulting firm, where he assisted international companies in human resource certification.
President of Computer Applications Development and Integration, the premier provider of software solutions for the criminal justice market.
Jack competes in 26.2-mile marathon runs, and he and his wife, Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D., who is an author and a political commentator, live in the Washington, D.C. area with their five children.
22 November 2007
Management Training of DC, LLC
Managing Management Time…was profound, entertaining, …practical –
Management Training of DC is a management training company that advises managers on tactics and strategies to be better bosses.
Since 1960, over one million people have been touched by our unique – and timeless — practice of management. Other types of training teach time-management. They teach how to manage the individual’s own time. With the Managing Management Time seminar™ (MMT), we teach you, the manager, to leverage your time, and the time of your team, to get more done.
Harvard Business Review published Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? in 1974. The article is an edited excerpt of the MMT seminar, and went on to become one of the most requested reprints in the history of the Review. The training summarized in the article is sometimes called the “Monkey Management” seminar.
What We Do
Workshops and Seminars As a licensed agent for the William Oncken Corporation we bring the proven Managing Management Time ™ series that has been the gold standard in educating leaders in planning, organizing, motivating, coordinating and controlling. more
Individualized Training Managers must foresee future events. Managers are paid to anticipate, adapt and learn to accomplish the mission; to deliver the numbers. We create discretionary management time. more
Nothern Virginia Community College, Syllabus
Upcoming luncheons to introduce the MMT seminars:
Washington, DC, October 16th SOLD OUT
Washington, DC, October 17th Private Client
New York City, October 18th
Washington, DC, October 20th Private Client
Arlington, Virginia, November 9th
SOLD OUT
Bill Maher, flogging Charmaine’s book.
In 1996 HarperCollins published Mother in the Middle: Seaching for Peace in the Mommy Wars, by Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D. Her work is on the application and challenges of women in the workplace. Her dissertation was on the Family Medical Leave Act and human resource management problems.
17 November 2007
The Beauty of the New Closed Door Policy
By Jack Yoest
Our business schools teach that structure follows strategy. And the big picture landscape is important to know.
But what Your Business Blogger sees as an Adjunct Professor most often is the boss missing the basic questions — the easy stuff.
Such as:
What should the company organization chart look like?
In our egalitarian new-age of Aquarius we are all equal to each other, and the boss considers the individual input of each of her employees to be the equal of her own, or of anyone else.
After all, we are all family here.
This, of course, is nonsense.
(Especially if you are all family.)
Anyway, companies should be designed on the old-fashioned hierarchical inverted ‘V’ organizational chart so that praise can easily flow up. And the heart-burn can flow easily down.
Instead, we are noticing a horrific pattern where the owner has direct, unfiltered communication with Every. Single. Employee.
The astute observer will note the nifty hands-free cell phones attached (surgically?) to the ears of many in-touch professionals. But these permanent ear-buds on budding managers give us a clue: he thinks he’s telegraphing “with-it wonk.” No, this is an amateur at work. The cell signal is our first indication that someone is micromanaging. It might be up, or it might be down. But it is wrong.
The unseen managerial habits might be worse. We see another insidious time-waster, that some business owners employ instead of managing the time of the employee. This abomination is known as an,
Open Door Policy
Which leaves the harried manager at the mercy of his minions . . . who stroll by to cry about a missing cat or babble about a boyfriend.
Not that we could ever tell the difference when we observe CEOs. The-dog-ate-my-spreadsheet, and the occasional death in the family, the whining all sounds the same.
The business owner must remember that he is the center of the universe. And if he forgets, he must pay someone to remind him. These rented friends are called consultants.
And Your Rented Friend, will remind you (and you may not need to be taught, you might only need to be reminded) that You Are The Apex.
And More. Yes, you are the center of the universe. But let us elevate you, the business unit owner, the harried manager, away from the center of the circle — to the top of the triangle.
The best management structure is a pyramid, not a wagon wheel.
The popular wagon wheel model has you, the boss in the center with the many, many spokes coming directly to the hub. The spokes are the employees, each with a direct line to the boss.
This is not good.
Your management team would be bypassed and ignored. Why talk with the first-line supervisor? Why waste time with layers of management overhead over head? When entry-level enthusiasts and interns can walk through The Big Guy’s Open Door and shoot the breeze. As if all were equal.
As If.
The amateur boss soon becomes an armature spinning in circles.
But not now. Not after reading this article.
The best structure is a pyramid with the manager at the tippy-top with a few, no more than ten, direct reports. The employee wanting to bother and waste the time of the boss will have to crawl over layers of managers before getting to you, the owner.
Whose Door Is Always Open. Because Employees Are Our Most Important Asset.
(Yes, you can keep that silly policy, and even deploy the slogan, but with luck no one will get close enough to you to use it.)
So here’s your step-by-step guide to moving from the hub and spoke to the triangular pyramid, pointing, reaching, to the sky.
First. Appoint a deputy. A second in command. A chief of staff whose job is the management of your most valuable resource, your discretionary management time. It could be your secretary. Or your Second Banana or Girl Friday — your hatchet person.
Second. Stop Thinking Outside the Box. Put each business function in a box. Every action and process gets a discrete description. A box on the organizational chart with hard edges and one single line going in. And if a manager, no more than 10 lines going out. Each employee gets a clearly labeled box.
And finally, Third. Close your door. Because: Time is your most valuable possession.
The best company structure is a pyramid-shaped org chart. Get yourself at the top to be on top of your business.
###
Jack Yoest is President of Management Training of DC and blogs at Reasoned Audacity and at Yoest.com.
The Beauty of the New Closed Door Policy
But what we see most often is the boss missing the basic questions — the easy stuff.
Such as:
What should the company organization chart look like?
In our egalitarian new-age of Aquarius we are all equal to each other, and the boss considers the individual input of each of her employees to be the equal of her own, or of anyone else.
After all, we are all family here.
This, of course, is nonsense.
(Especially if you are all family.)
Anyway, companies should be designed on the old-fashioned hierarchical inverted ‘V’ organizational chart so that praise can easily flow up. And the heart-burn can flow easily down.
Instead, we are noticing a horrific pattern where the owner has direct, unfiltered communication with Every. Single. Employee.
The astute observer will note the nifty hands-free cell phones attached (surgically?) to the ears of many in-touch professionals. But these permanent ear-buds on budding managers give us a clue: he thinks he’s telegraphing “with-it wonk.” No, this is an amateur at work. The cell signal is our first indication that someone is micromanaging. It might be up, or it might be down. But it is wrong.
The unseen managerial habits might be worse. We see another insidious time-waster, that some business owners employ instead of managing the time of the employee. This abomination is known as an,
Open Door Policy
Which leaves the harried manager at the mercy of his minions . . . who stroll by to cry about a missing cat or babble about a boyfriend.
Not that we could ever tell the difference when we observe CEOs. The-dog-ate-my-spreadsheet, and the occasional death in the family, the whining all sounds the same.
The business owner must remember that he is the center of the universe. And if he forgets, he must pay someone to remind him. These rented friends are called consultants.
And Your Rented Friend, will remind you (and you may not need to be taught, you might only need to be reminded) that You Are The Apex.
And More. Yes, you are the center of the universe. But let us elevate you, the business unit owner, the harried manager, away from the center of the circle — to the top of the triangle.
The best management structure is a pyramid, not a wagon wheel.
The popular wagon wheel model has you, the boss in the center with the many, many spokes coming directly to the hub. The spokes are the employees, each with a direct line to the boss.
This is not good.
Your management team would be bypassed and ignored. Why talk with the first-line supervisor? Why waste time with layers of management overhead over head? When entry-level enthusiasts and interns can walk through The Big Guy’s Open Door and shoot the breeze. As if all were equal.
As If.
The amateur boss soon becomes an armature spinning in circles.
But not now. Not after reading this article.
The best structure is a pyramid with the manager at the tippy-top with a few, no more than ten, direct reports. The employee wanting to bother and waste the time of the boss will have to crawl over layers of managers before getting to you, the owner.
Whose Door Is Always Open. Because Employees Are Our Most Important Asset.
(Yes, you can keep that silly policy, and even deploy the slogan, but with luck no one will get close enough to you to use it.)
So here’s your step-by-step guide to moving from the hub and spoke to the triangular pyramid, pointing, reaching, to the sky.
First. Appoint a deputy. A second in command. A chief of staff whose job is the management of your most valuable resource, your discretionary management time. It could be your secretary. Or your Second Banana or Girl Friday — your hatchet person.
Second. Stop Thinking Outside the Box. Put each business function in a box. Every action and process gets a discrete description. A box on the organizational chart with hard edges and one single line going in. And if a manager, no more than 10 lines going out. Each employee gets a clearly labeled box.
And finally, Third. Close your door. Because: Time is your most valuable possession.
The best company structure is a pyramid-shaped org chart. Get yourself at the top to be on top of your business.
###
Bill Oncken is President and CEO of the William Oncken Corporation. Jack Yoest is President of Management Training of DC and blogs at Reasoned Audacity and at Yoest.com. They are both former Army Officers in Combat Arms.
30 October 2007
The Mission and Purpose of the Manager
My college text book reminds us that management is
Planning, Organizing, Leading, Motivating and Controlling.
But before the manager can proceed with the text book solutions, he needs something even more basic.
And this is not taught in our institutions of higher learning.
(Except if you do Business with me…)
25 October 2007
Capitalism: Self Interest
Your Business Blogger is honored and delighted to teach business management at the local college. As part of my continuous learning, I am on the look-out for refined ‘methods of instruction.’
MOI as it was known when I was in the Army back in the days of the horse cavalry…
Anyway, John Stossel from ABC has an outstanding video clip outlining capitalism. On why greed is good (from The Wealth of Nations).
Thank you to SCSUSCHOLARS for posting.
20 October 2007
Management of New Media: 4 Lessons From The Washington Briefing
Your Business Blogger is observing The Washington Briefing in Washington, DC, hosted by the Family Research Council.
All nine presidential candidates are speaking. Some 2,600 people from 48 states are cheering on their favorites.
As I sit here live blogging I count some 37 people with media credentials typing away on Bloggers Row.
Over 400 media credentials have been issued. The event is progressing, well, uneventfully. No visible glitches. Little is going wrong in the mechanics.
It is a success.
I ask Charmaine, the VP of Communications on the number of media hits. She doesn’t know. I press for a guess. No one on her staff knows either.
But she smiles and concedes that there has been a “complete international domination” of news. (I accompanied her to her live interview on the local BBC News bureau last night.)
As a management trainer, I am most curious how I can advise clients on using cutting edge technology and advances on management development.
Getting a member of the media to ask about and publish information on an organization’s product or service is a marketer’s dream scenario.
So what did Charmaine do to encourage both the Fourth Estate and new media outlets to come and visit?
I was expecting brilliance to match Charmaine’s beauty.
The beauty was obvious but the brilliance was not quite as I expected in her management style. She simply got the basics right. Which is, indeed, brilliant.
We do not need to be taught, only to be reminded.
Charmaine has been a blogger for almost three years — a lifetime in the on-line business. She founded Reasoned Audacity in February of 2005 and manages the FRC Blog. Her blog was a WebLog Awards Finalist in 2005.
She knows new media.
Here are the four basics that Charmaine got right with new media:
1) Bloggers were treated like humans. The Blogger’s Row (with power outlets!) is in the main room to watch the event live — getting the feel for the crowd on the molecular level.
In contrast with another major event by another organization, the Blogger’s Row was shunted off into the exhibit area. The event was piped in through very nice Trinitrons. But we bloggers missed the seeing and feeling the crowd, the audience response.
2) Wireless for media, not cables. Yes, this sounds basic, but at still another event Your Business Blogger attended, bloggers had to dig around for the hard wire hook-up that didn’t always work. Wireless works wonders.
Peter Shinn reports the wireless here is 8 Mb, upstream and down stream vs T-1 at 1.5 Mb. See his analysis and photos and streaming video here.
3) Get funded. Americans United for Life generously provided a $10,000 donation for the set up of the “Bloggers’ Row.” As Morton Blackwell says, “You can’t change the world if you can’t pay the rent.”
4) The Bloggers were granted real media/press credentials. The blogger pass worn by NZ Bear is the same as worn by Byron York from National Review or Jeff Greenfield from ABC.
As the bloggers typed away it was like watching a live, unedited transcription of the event. The main stream media could still edit, but the former monopoly now has real competitors. Who work a bit cheaper. Most were doing it for the pure joy. The main stream media cannot compete with writers who are willing to work for free, as Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit said.
Bloggers sat next to other press outlets in the prestigous roped-offed press gallery. They are, today, indistinguishable. This may be the real news.
###
Thank-you (foot)notes:
Full Disclosure: Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D. is the wife of Your Business Blogger.
(When Charmaine and I were talking to Max Blumenthal, and he realizes that we are married, he says to me, “Way to go,” with thumbs up. Charmaine asks what that was all about. “It’s a guy thing,” I said. “It was a compliment one male gives to another on getting the hot chick…”)
Charmaine and presidential candidate Huckabee had an extended conversation backstage on mapping out a winning strategy; a top-secret plan on how to cross the finish line. They talked about running…marathons.
Jared Bridges, from FRC writes on the FRCBlog:
Briefing Coverage from the Washington Briefing’s New Media Row
We’ve got a full slate of bloggers here at New Media Row, which is sponsored by our friends at Americans United for Life
- PoliPundit.com
- Randy Thomas is posting at randythomas.org
- Erick Erickson of Redstate
- Ana Marie Cox from Time’s Swampland Blog
- Jim Geraghty of NRO’s Campaign Spot
- Anastasia Uglova and J.P. Freire from NBC Universal’s Politalk Blog
- Matthew Anderson of Mere Orthodoxy
- Dan Nejfelt from Faith in Public Life
- Justin Hart of Race 4 2008 and mymanmitt.com
- Melinda Penner and Amy Hall from Stand To Reason
- Democratis
- Nathan Bradfield from Church and State Blog
- N.Z. Bear from The Truth Laid Bear
- Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic
- Byron York from NRO’s The Corner
- Philip Klein of The American Spectator’s AmSpecBlog
- Jill Stanek of JillStanek.com
- Sharon Soon from Conservatives With Attitude
- Mary Katharine Ham, Amanda Carpenter, Matt Lewis, and Kevin McCullough of Townhall.com
26 September 2007
Emotion Trumps Data on CNN’s ‘Your $$$$$’
The numbers are good, but the reporting is fearful.
No matter what the data show, ‘Your $$$$$’ on CNN stays resolutely committed to anecdotal evidence and pessimism.
“When we were talking to people and asking them about The Economy, most said there’s a problem; most said something’s wrong” reported Ali Velshi, co-host of CNN’s ‘Your $$$$$.’ He quoted an unsourced/unnamed man-in-the-street.
Water-cooler scuttlebutt on consumer pessimism now passes for news data.
However people feel about the economy, the numbers are clear. The show’s graphics gave these facts: the Dow is up 10%, NASDAQ is up 10%, the S&P is up 7%.
The Heritage Foundation reports the, “average hourly wages…have risen 3.9 percent over the past year.”
Ignoring any good news from a source such as The Heritage Foundation or from her own graphics, Christine Romans, the co-host, reported “a one in three chance of recession.”
Velshi juxtaposed the “short-term thrill of watching investments go up vs. the long-term risk of lower interest rates.”
Much of the “thrill” may be that home buyers with good credit can get a 30 year fixed rate for 6.29 percent or a one-year ARM for 6.39 percent, again noted in the show’s graphics.
The ‘Your $$$$’ team never explained the “risk” of lower interest rates announced by the Federal Reserve last week. But one of the day’s guests, Ned Riley, from Riley Asset Management, made it clear that the perceived risk of lower rates should not be the possible increase in the rate of inflation. “Inflation is low and going lower [at] two percent,” Riley said.
Riley also cited that in 2003, the Feds were concerned about deflation with a two percent inflation rate.
‘Thrill’ and ‘risk’ were not explained by Romans either. The half point interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, said Romans, “is a little like chicken soup if you got a bit of a cold, [it] can’t hurt.” The rate cut is, said Romans, “a little bit of a salve, but we’ve got some big issues.”
Even when economic numbers are up or interest rates down, the drumbeat of economic downturn continued on CNN. There must be a cloud in this silver lining somewhere, they seemed to say.
Media critic Michael Medved, at a recent conference hosted by the Culture and Media Institute spoke on changes in news reporting. News reporters, he argues, have changed from “fact tellers” to “truth tellers.” The print reporters — or CNN hosts in this case — report the ‘truth’ as they believe the truth to be. Even if their ‘truth’ is inconsistent with facts.
The Fed cut rates by 50 basis points, a full half percent. And based on this fact, CNN’s guest, Riley predicted a 14,500 DOW at year’s end.
But he got no reaction to this healthy prediction from the CNN hosts.
Can continuous bad news reports cause economic downturns? The evidence is clear that mass marketing does affect consumer behavior. Marketing works toward transference of emotion, moving consumers to avoid pain and toward a pleasurable solution. CNN is pursuing political marketing to make consumers feel the emotion of a “loss of confidence” using continuous bad news.
It is accepted that negative political advertising works for the trailing candidate. This is negative economic advertising by CNN; a network that trails FOX.
During the Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt bolstered the consumer confidence of the Nation, encouraging Americans with “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” The economic numbers were slow to improve, but the Nation felt better.
CNN does the opposite. The numbers are good, but the reporting is fearful. Communicating gloom seems to make CNN hosts happy.
After guest Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover spoke of a possible recession, Romans said it was, “depressing.”
But then she smiled and laughed.
###
Jack Yoest, a freelancer for the Business & Media Institute, is president of Management Training of DC, LLC and teaches business at the
10 September 2007
FCC: Is an auction still best to allocate the airwaves?
A wireless company attempts to get sweetheart-spectrum deal from FCC.
CEO does not reveal that he once worked for the FCC on CNN’s “Your $$$$$” on September 8, 2007.
“Do you want to get free wireless internet service?” Asks Ali Velshi, host of “Your $$$$$.” “Well you could, but the Federal Communications Commission dismissed a proposal” to provide this broadband service to everyone, everywhere across the nation.
Velshi was in high dudgeon, “It can’t be true. It sounds like a great idea.”
Guest John Muleta, CEO and Founder of M2Z Networks has a plan to provide this free wireless internet service, if only the FCC had approved his application.
Why did the FCC rule against M2Z? Why oppose free service for consumers? Muleta says he has the answer, “The only people that opposed…are…big telcos who make a lot of money from…wireless broadband.”
Earlier Velshi told the audience, quoting Muleta: “Pressure from telecom giants Verizon and ATT is preventing you from getting a free, fast internet hookup…”
Muleta was a somber, unsmiling CEO with a compelling argument. His company objective is “to provide fast, free, family-friendly wireless broadband Internet connectivity to 95% of the
Velshi offered an answer: the FCC “likes” to auction off broadband spectrum. And, he added, the FCC makes a lot of money from wireless broadband.
Is that really the issue? Since CNN didn’t provide any competing viewpoints, I sought out some perspective on the issue. Frank R. Jazzo, an attorney familiar with the application and M2Z is an expert in compliance with the rules and regulations of the FCC. He said the issue was simple. “As a general matter, the FCC follows Congressional legislative intent [where] the spectrum must be auctioned off.”
Jazzo who is the co-manager at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth in Arlington, Virginia, explained that the government did not wish to repeat mistakes in the spectrum land rush of years past, where middle men simply acquired at low cost the rights to the public airways, then redirected to companies that would actually create value.
Muleta said his company, “would pay the American public 5 per cent of the revenues” in exchange for a license. This would avoid Muleta’s company from having to compete for the spectrum by bidding and creating the fair market value.
John Muleta was most articulate on the workings of the FCC. As well he should be: CNN didn’t mention that he was the head of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau from 2003 to 2005.
***
The Land Rush of 1889 encouraged settlers to stake a claim on 160 acres. With a caveat: a settler must physically live on and improve the land. Only then could the settler secure the title. But even so, there was rampant cheating. In today’s Spectrum Rush, Congress has decided that the best way to avoid cheating, and to ensure compliance to the public interest, is to license the broadband spectrum to the highest bid
See Washington Post, Selling a Long-Shot Idea: Free Internet Access, Former Regulator Bucking Telecoms, Internet Giants and a Skeptical FCC.