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Originally Posted by alansmithee
First, it's not non-partisan. Nothing is non-partisan.
And second, have you checked the respective qualifications of those who replaced the initial choices, or the credentials of the initial conference members? You must have, because you said that those Bush selected were less qualified. If not, you were just spouting a baseless opinion.
And as for my stance on affirmative action, I have made it clear in many threads that I support it in most cases. Although what affirmative action has to do with this situation I have no idea.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
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Sorry alansmithee, your argument does nothing to address the damage to the perception of the Bush admin., and of Republicans. Perceptions are everything, especially when they are associated with people's pocketbooks and the economy.
The two companies mentioned in the lead article,
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<a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1053595,00.html">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1053595,00.html</a>
The White House admits as much: "We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and--call us nutty--it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that," says White House spokesman Trent Duffy. Those barred from the trip include employees of Qualcomm and Nokia, two of the largest telecom firms operating in the U.S., as well as Ibiquity, a digital-radio-technology company in Columbia, Md. One nixed participant, who has been to many of these telecom meetings and who wants to remain anonymous, gave just $250 to the Democratic Party. Says Nokia vice president Bill Plummer: "We do not view sending experts to international meetings on telecom issues to be a partisan matter. We would welcome clarification from the White House."
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<a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=nok">Nokia</a> and <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=qcom">Qualcomm</a>, have combined market capitalization of $130 billion. That dollar figure represents an investor interest in the success, linked to maintaining a technical lead in a still emerging and cutting edge technology, of both of these companies.
I think that your apologist stance in the wake of poor and petty decision making of Bush admin. officials, is off the mark nearly as much as Bush and his people are on this one. The Nasdaq tech stock index has not recovered from it's 80 percent decline between March 2000, and March, 2003. This article appears in the new Time magazine. Is not the risk that Bush will be spun as unsupportive of leading tech companies and their shareholders, much greater than any future political support of a party that already owns the business lobby can hope to gain?
This is a juvenile and petty new practice on the part of this administration, and IMO, you work against your own reputation as a thoughtful participant on these threads by supporting this disenfranchisement and deliberate interference in the management decisions of these tech companies, since employees planning to attend this conference were, if not selected by their superiors, were certainly approved by them to spend the time and the money to represent the interests of the companies who they work for.