As many of you know, I live in California. And as you also probably know, we Californians' have not only a new governor but also a state budget that is out of balance (in the bad direction) by many billions of dollars.
Today I sent the following letter to our new governor suggesting that he inquire into certain tax exemptions granted to corporations that claim, without meaningful foundation for that claim, to exist for the purpose of benefiting the public.
November 24, 2003
The Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger
Governor of California
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Congratulations on your recent election and inauguration.
I have no doubt that the matter of California’s fiscal situation is occupying much of your time.
I would like to bring to your attention a means through which California could, to a degree, improve the financial situation. This is not something that would bring in a large number of dollars. But when we are forced to borrow it does seem that we ought to look to the pennies as well as to the dollars.
The situation is this: California grants privileges, such as exemption from taxes, to certain types of non-profit/public-benefit corporations. For the most part these privileges are well deserved and form an important part of the vitality of our state.
However, there are some non-profit/public-benefit corporations in California that have that status, and obtain those privileges, even though there is little, if any public-benefit.
One example will illustrate:
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
California Corporation number C2121683
ICANN is a California non-profit/public-benefit corporation with an annual budget reaching towards $10,000,000 per year. Its headquarters are in Marina del Rey, California.
ICANN has no public membership; in fact it has worked hard to insulate itself from meaningful contact with the public and, as a practical matter, is accountable to no one. ICANN has not held a meeting within the United States, much less within California, since year 2001. Since then it has held many meetings, all outside California, and all outside the US. A partial list includes Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Carthage, Montevideo, Bucharest, Accra, Amsterdam, and Montreal. ICANN acts primarily as a forum for commercial interests to regulate the business practices of those who sell names in the internet’s domain name system. The public, whose pocketbooks, privacy, and activities on the internet are clearly affected by ICANN’s policies, is denied effective access to the forums in which ICANN enacts those policies. In addition ICANN is far from a model of corporate governance - ICANN has even tried to deny its own Directors the right to inspect its financial records.
Is this the kind of entity that deserves to be exempt from California taxes? That exemption is unfair to those of us who do pay California taxes and who are going to have to repay the loans that you are asking California to undertake.
California should require that non-profit/public-benefit corporations actually benefit the public. Those, such as ICANN, that serve mainly as industry forums should not be granted this privileged status and should not be subsidized by the State of California and its citizens.
I ask you as our new Governor to make an inquiry into this matter and, if appropriate, to take steps to eliminate the gifts that California makes to those corporations that claim to benefit the public but that, in reality, are really nothing more than facades for for-profit industries who use the State of California as a nothing more than flag of convenience.
Karl Auerbach
XXX XXXX
Santa Cruz, California 95060
So, CBS is dropping its miniseries on President Reagan because some feel it may be historically inaccurate and cast the Great Communicator (also known as the Teflon President) into a less than flattering light.
This leaves CBS with a need to fill several hours of dead air. Might I suggest that CBS fill that time with readings from Lawrence E. Walsh's book Firewall, a book that recapitulates the events of Iran-Contra and the subsequent investigation.
Walsh, who no one can call a radical, was the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation. Walsh ends his book by condemning Reagan for his "willful disregard of constitutional restraints on his power." [page 531 in the paperback edition]
With lines like that, those who wish to continue to perpetuate the movie land white hat image of Reagan might want to resurrect the plausible deniability of CBS's now canceled fictional portrayal.
It is interesting how Mr. Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher tried to make us believe that government is a bad thing, that governmental powers are best exercised by private actors. One of the progeny of such thinking is ICANN.
ICANN continues the Iran-Contra style of government - "openness" is achieved by circling the wagons to lock out the public, "transparency" is achieved by preventing the public from observing ICANN's decision-making processes except through the most processed of press-releases, and "accountability" is achieved by elimination of responsibility.
There are many who claim that despite its flaws, Iran-Contra was in the interest of the public (I do not agree.) Are there any who are able to make a believable argument that ICANN, despite its ejection of the public, has benefited the public and that the benefits obtained from ICANN by special commercial groups are merely the ancillary aspects of a larger public benefit?
Mark Jeftovic of easyDNS Technologies Inc. posted an item today on ICANN's "GNSO" registrars' mailing list titled "unsanctioned whois concepts".
In that item he suggests that the control and actual publication of contact information about a domain be put into the zone file itself, a file maintained by the registrant (purchasor) of the domain name.
It turns out that such an idea has been floating around for several years - I have heard the idea credited to Kent Crispin. It is, by my way of thinking, a very good idea.
[Update: I have been informed that Richard Sexton suggested this idea in 1996.]
Take a look at the whois.cavebear.com. TXT resource records in the cavebear.com zone:
dig @cavebear.com. whois.cavebear.com. txt
What you will see is pretty much what Mark is asking for, the contact information for the zone, in a format that is readible by both people and software.
All I had to do was add a couple of TXT records to my zone file - a few seconds effort.
This technique is easily extensible and places the control of, and the responsibility for, the information, squarely in the hands of the person most likely to care and know - the registrant.